Nirvāṇa · निर्वाण · the blowing out

The word is a fire-metaphor: nir-vāṇa, extinguished, blown out — what happens to a flame when the fuel is withdrawn. Not annihilation and not a place; the burning of craving, aversion and confusion simply stops, and what remains the texts decline to describe, since every description would be another handhold. Against it stands tikkun olam, which is the least extinguishing goal any tradition has proposed: the vessels shattered, the sparks fell into the shells, and the world is repaired — deed by deed, spark by spark, forward in time, toward a cosmos more fully alive than the one that broke. One tradition puts the fire out; the other gathers the sparks. And then Mahāyāna complicates its own half: Nāgārjuna says saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are not different, and the bodhisattva stays in the burning house on purpose — which brings it startlingly close to the tzaddik who will not be complete until everyone else is.