NIRVANA

Min Khin Kyaw

Average human consumption of resources in a lifetime is significant. As one lives, one must consume and get a share small or huge. Minimum is still significant to other life forms – even if you’re a vegetarian. A person needs an area to live in, some food, some water, some fresh air, some fuel, some carbon-footprint and some amount of fun. A vegetarian needs some plants on which other living things can rely on too. So a share is a share whether small or large.

The concept of nirvana is to give up that little share completely. Then other living things can share that tiny amount. Just think about both a whale carcass and a dead microbe – they both can be consumed by many.

To gain nirvana, a person gradually gives up his share he gains by any means. And when one has done by giving up the share, one achieves nirvana. In this case, the craving for the share has to be given up completely too. Giving up the share cannot be completed if the crave for a share is still remained.

The Buddha emphasized three kinds of cravings: the craving for materials and the sensual things, the craving for being or life and the craving for higher life-form, such as divinity; and each craving is the desire for a share. This is what to know.

Hence, there are the condition for desire and the condition for the need for desire – as a fact of the existence. Desire is just desire and common to every living being. The condition for the need for desire is also belongs to every living being. Upon these two factors, the existence has all the lures for both higher intelligence and lower intelligence. As for scientists, the complexity of existence is the lure; for a poet and writer, the beauty of words, the beauty of information and the beauty of creation are the lure; and for a tiny fish, a worm attached to the hook is the lure.

So the universe or the great existence is just us the beings and lures – nothing else. Maya is the word for lure which I learned when I was young and didn’t understand well then. Whether craving to know, or craving to have – whether for good or bad – are attached with strings with hooks but one is like the needle that injects medicine and the other poison.

It seems all the lures for both low and high intelligence are attached to hooks that have hooked the hearts of the beings. The reason for the hooks is when we remove or cut the lure or run out of the lure, we get hurt inside – and well, we crave for more. To a scientists, being unable to study the complexity hurts. To a poet, being short of words hurts. And to a tiny fish, the actual hook hurts. And each heart is hooked by countless hooks and hooked by the same hooks countless times. And being with more hooks those inject poison than those inject medicine is very painful.

Removing each hook seems really painful. But each hook in the flesh indeed hurts very painfully. However, a wound seems to be normal until the nurse comes and clean it up and put certain medicine, the pain becomes unbearable again – and that seems the reason why people don’t like the hooks removed to heal their wounds. At the same time, the hooks are pulled by the lures. Well, the lures are both inside the heart and out there.

Imagine an image of a person being his heart hooked and the lines are attached to the lures out there near and afar. Right now I can see myself this way –
And I’m craving for my share everyday!
Hooks look really shiny and beautiful although the lines are ugly and awful...