Nirvana

Nirvana !

Nirvana !

It was a charming and serene night at the nuns’ hermitage.

A nun rising up from her evening meditation came out of the hut to wash her face.

The full moon was shining in the cloudless sky. As she bent over the vessel of water, she was astonished to see golden reflection of the moon on it. She washed her face and feet.

The spilt water draining downward on the ground glittered like gold in the moon light. It disappeared as it got slowly absorbed into the soil. She sighed ‘Where is the shine?’

At that moment she realized that under the sky nothing is permanent. Everything that arises falls away. Whatever that forms dissolves away. The world is nothing but a continuous flow moment to moment like a never ending river. Pleasure and pain arise and fall away.

With this insight her mind stood still. No thought! No mind ! In that silence the boundless universe opened.

‘What a wonder! What a relief!”She exclaimed. ‘Aha! This what the Buddha called Nirvana.! The end of human suffering! Isn’t this what I had been seeking for ages? Freedom at last!’

With the overflowing ecstatic joy she heartily laughed and laughed.

Excerpt form A.S.Balasooriya's ' Joy of the Liberated Mind" (2007)