Quora Answer: To Achieve Nirvana, Do I Live a Life without Purpose?

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ 

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “If to achieve Nirvana, all my desires must go away, should not all the goals in my life go away, and I live a life without meaning or purpose?” 

In Buddhist thought, Nirvana is not “Heaven”, but the absence of desire.  The absence of desire is essentially the absence of self.  It is a concept shared in all spiritual traditions from Hinduism to Christianity to Islam.  The reason behind this is because the self is a veil between the apparent reality of Creation to the Real.  And that “Real” is God. That is why in Buddhism, in the tenth precept, which is not well-known, Gautama Siddharta Buddha said, that once you have Nirvana, “Behold the Supreme One.” 

As for your meaning in life, the entire idea is to reach a state of realisation that everything that you have chased in this world is temporary and eventually worthless.  The people of the world are chasing shadows, and then they die, and cannot take anything with them.  But once you realise that these things have no intrinsic worth, you are opened to the things that do have worth.




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