In Sri Lanka, as a Buddhist, I was trained from childhood to recite paali gatha as the teachings of Buddha. I was reciting them robotically without knowing the true meaning, but hoping that it would lead me to the ultimate objective of attaining nirwana. Yet, until 4 years ago, I couldn't explain to a non-Buddhist what Buddhism meant or how to describe "nirwana", because I myself did not have a clear picture of it. As a child, I was lead to believe that one can attain nirwana only when one dies as we see "නිවන් සුව ලැබේවා" (English translation: May you attain nirwana) at every funeral house we see. I now understand that it was due to my meager understanding and knowledge of the Buddhism. However, I'm sure I'm not alone to have misunderstood this wonderful philosophy of Buddhism in this world.
I was taught that we cannot attain Nirwana in this life. It has to be trillions of lives after but the teachers always insisted that we needed to start now. So I was just like the rest of the Buddhists here thinking "ahh who needs to think of trillion of lives after.. so better have fun and enjoy this life. I'll start to practice from next life or life after as I have so much of lives to live". It used to be a carefree happy thought in childhood. But as I grew up and started feeling the frustrations and dissatisfaction in life ('suffering' as Buddha termed), I realized that what I knew was wrong.
In Sri Lankan Buddhism, most of the essence of the teaching is focused on the pre-life of Siddhartha Gauthama or the 550 jathaka stories. In those stories, it is meticulously described how the Bodhisathwa worked so hard, making unbelievable sacrifices to achieve the ultimate goal of being a Buddha. We were taught of Bodhisathwa's extreme sacrifices ranging from donating his own flesh by jumping into a devil's mouth to donating his children to an old-nasty man (Ref: Vessanthara Jathakaya). So such stories of extreme sacrifices which were reported as "required" to become a Buddha discouraged me a lot, to be honest. I thought to myself, "I can never do those things".
However, the most important factor I missed was that I wasn't looking to become a Buddha. What I wanted and therefore rightly I should be doing is to 'follow' his path. He has already laid a path for us and has made the journey easy. He already underwent all the difficulties to learn from those and found a right path and right way to attain nirwana. So we simply needed to follow it. But unfortunately, in today's world, we are focusing too much on whether what Buddha did or taught was right or whether it is in accordance of what we believe is true or whether it is 'scientifically proven' or not etc. Today, with so much development and mass communication, we have too many information, but yet too little understanding of what we know. If we consciously take a look at the things we've learned and still reading daily, 99% of it are useless. Only 1% or less is contributing to our well being or ultimate happiness.
In 2011, I was directed to the right path by a very simple man who had traveled along the path that Buddha laid down for all of us. So he made me understand the simple and practical truth in Buddhism. He told me that Buddha was very practical teacher and therefore he would not mandate rules and regulations upon us if those were difficult to attain. Below are the few most important lessons in my life which he taught me:
1. Only humans can realize nirwana because only humans can 'feel suffering'. If we don't feel suffering then we don't have a reason to 'end-the-suffering'. I was very happy to learn that it is a good thing that the life is not a bed of roses.
2. Every human being can 'realize' nirwana in this life. I never knew that I kept a heavy burden of void and guilt in my heart because of the reasons I've explained above in para 2. Many Buddhists I know believe that we can't realize nirwana in this birth. This notion of practicing and waiting (පාරමිතා පුරන්න) for trillions of years/lives to attain nirwana, had created a void in my heart with a feeling of unfulfillment or incompleteness. So when my teacher/guide told me that what I believed was untrue and that we all CAN realize nirwana in this life, I was jubilant. Knowing that we all can try and feel the blissful nirwana in this very own life is such a great feeling. So I underwent a series of unlearning of what I used to believe or learnt and then gracefully re-learned what I now believe is true.
3. Nirwana is not about becoming nothing, it is about feeling nothing.
I had misunderstood all these years about the famous discussion rotating around the question 'where does one go when he attain nirwana or parinirwana'? And the answer which was taught to us was "just like a flame of a blown-out candle disappears, the arahath one disappears. He becomes one with the whole". As I said, it was my misunderstanding of this candle and flame example. Since I couldn't understand the answer, I couldn't explain nirwana or parinirwana to a Catholic friend of mine and when I tried to explain this notion of candle flame, she told me, "I can't believe that God created everything if at the end we have to go to nothing". So I stopped trying to preach my religion which I didn't know well and decided to learn more about it.
When my guide told me that nirwana is not something you attain when you die and it is certainly not about becoming nothing, rather it is about feeling nothing, I thought "well that makes sense". According to my guide, realizing nirwana is seeing the true suffering in this world and learning to let go everyone and everything. So once you let go of everything including all bonding to other people, then you don't live in fear of losing the things you love or desire. Living without fear is what he called as nirwana. From the birth until we die, we live in fear every moment: we are scared of taking risks, of future, how to earn a living, how to get medicine, what if the child fall sick, what if my spouse leaves me, if I die who will take care of my children etc. Every feeling we feel today has an element of 'fear' in it. Most of the civilized society live in 'fear of what other people in the society may think of me'. So whatever we do is based on the factors to mitigate that fear - to please others not ourselves. All of us want to be slim, beautiful, fair skin, age-less superhuman beauty kings and queens. Why? It is because we are scared to be sidelined or looked down by others as old, wrinkled, having grey hair or fat with a big belly. It's fear consciousness cultivated by the materialistic world. So to let go of all that fear and many other feelings/emotions and senses is indeed nirwana. To let go and be happy of the moment, realizing that there's no past or future, there's only the present moment and to connect to that universal consciousness which breathes in that present moment is a blissful feeling indeed.
4. The true essence of Buddhism is taught in one gatha:
සබ්බ පාපස්ස අකරණන් - Avoid all evil
කුසලස්ස උපසම්පදා - cultivate the good and the true
සචිත්ත පරියෝ දපනං - purify your heart and mind like a mirror
එතං බුද්ධ සාසනං - this is the teaching of the Buddha
If you don't do any evil deed from your 6 senses (eye, ear, nose, tongue, skin and mind) and only do good from all those senses, your heart and mind would be purified like a clean mirror which would reflect only the good. This would allow you to be fearless of life and death and that is what Buddhism is.
Simple as that.
