It’s not just in Tibetan Buddhism that you’ll find this said. It’s a common post-Nagarjuna POV. But according to Bhante @sujato this is a misreading of Nararjuna’s writing. Nibbāna === saṃsāra? - #9 by sujato
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Sorry, I forgot to address this. I don’t have a desire to see samsāra and nibbāna as opposites in the EBTs. I’m pointing out that although modern Buddhism (following earlier traditions) sees them as natural opposites, the Buddha himself doesn’t seem to have seen them this way. Doesn’t it make you curious when explanations of Buddhism seem to be in contradiction to what the Buddha taught?
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I like what you’re saying. One would think that the Buddha would have drawn attention to samsara and nibbana as being opposites if he saw it that way and if it was useful and important and we would see it spelled out directly somewhere in the suttas.
Hey, I’ll have a go too, for whatever it’s worth!
Samsara and Nibbana are not true opposites. To the extent that there are view points and the illusion of individuality persists, Samsara exists. What exists when Samsara ceases? Well, with the ending of Samsara, any mode of description or any framework of reference ends too. For want of anything better, we refer to that as Nibbana. But the two are not comparable. Trying to compare the two is like trying to compare the results of a proper formula with the #undefined result that shows up in excel sheets.
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Sorry to sound a bit obnoxius but let me see if I understand correctly:
You are coming to the (very important and far-reaching) conclusion that the traditional notion that presents nibbana and samsara as opposites, or at least in contrast with one another, must be erroneous just because the Buddha never said so explicitly, using exactly those two terms one next to the other?
This is basically an argument from silence and it seems a bit of a poor one to me 
We do see it, all the time (AN 3.47). He just uses more specific words that he defined as synonyms of those elsewhere: sankhata and asankhata.
I don’t know how much clearer one can make the point that the two are opposite if not by putting an a- in front of the other.
Why the insistence on this? How would the notion that nibbana and samsara are somehow not true opposites be useful?
a point that may help.
When I was teaching Religious Studies at Aberdeen University, I saw some students making the same assumptions: they were thinking nibbana and samsara through the idea of a binary “opposition” or not binary opposition between samsāra or nibbana or conditioned and unconditioned, like they where objects, locations, or concepts. They are not.
They are not both even states of mind. They are one the absence of the other. It is the same mistake people make with light and darkness. People see it as opposition, but in reality, there is no opposition. Simply darkness is the absence of light, as Nibbana is the absence of Samsara. Just that.
So, of course, the fact that they do not appear one as the opposite of the other is not significant per se since if the conditioned ends, there can be only the unconditioned. Still, the unconditioned cannot end, so there cannot be real opposition but only a negative (like minus) relationship.
I hope this may help.
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Absolutely. It really depends on what one means by the term “opposite”. In the context of conditionality there cannot be opposites in an absolute term, meaning that some kind of metaphysical quantum jump needs to occur to go from one to the other. There can only be two “states” that are furthest apart from each other, like in the example of the car being off and on.
So in this context can you not say that the absence of light is the opposite of light? I don’t see why not as long as you acknowledge the conditional relationship between the two and you don’t see them as metaphysically separate entities.
Even the Buddha refers to “the conditioned element” (sankhata dhatu) and “the unconditioned element” (asankhata dhatu), referring to them as two separate elements without problems.
Like for the question of Anatta and Arahants using the term “I”, it seems to me it’s a matter of using “the world’s usages, terms, expressions… without misapprehending them” (DN 9)
However, in this thread it seems to me the matter is slightly different, as the (conditional) opposition (as described above) between terms like sankhata and asankhata was acknowledged, since the Buddha uses these terms one next to the other, while the (conditional) opposition between the terms samsara and nibbana is put into question because the Buddha does not use them next to each other.
It seems to me the matter is solved by investigating the definitions and synonyms the Buddha gives for these terms.
If I see the problem wrongly and this is not what this thread is about please correct me.
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That’s a really interesting point—something I’ve never heard expressed before—and it has the ring of truth about it.
I’d just like to note that every time I’ve used the word “opposites” here I’ve felt a twinge of discomfort, having a feeling that it wasn’t quite the right way of looking at things, and possibly not a term the Buddha would have used. I wonder if “antonyms” would be more appropriate, since it more clearly refers to the relationship between words, rather than the relationship between ontological states.
Well, put. That very clearly expresses the issue I’m curious about. To put it another way, the Buddha does not treat samsara and nibbana as antonyms, while he does with regard to sankhata and asankhata. Modern writings on Buddhism, however, universally treat samsara/nibbana as antonymous, which means that those terms are not being used in the way the Buddha did. Since the antonymy of samsara and nibbana are presented as the foundational concept for understanding Buddhism, this may have consequences for the way we understand the Buddha’s teachings. Maybe that’s important, and maybe it isn’t, but it seems worthwhile examining it.
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Thanks for prompting a smile!
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I don’t think that’s an accurate reflection of what I’ve said.
I’ve noted that the Buddha doesn’t ever seem to have used samsara and nibbana as antonyms. I’m not questioning that we start off samsara-ing and (hopefully) end up nibban-izing. Samsara is the faring-on through rebirths, and nibbana is the end of rebirth. Samsara is described as a state of suffering, while nibbana is the end of suffering. There is a clear contrast between the two.
The fact that the Buddha never combined these terms in an antonymous way (as he often did with sankhata/asankhata) struck me as interesting and worthy of a little thought, especially since introductions to Buddhism almost univesally pair samsara and nibbana as straightforward antonyms.
I don’t think that I’m arguing from silence. It’s a fact (and one I’m not sure has been noted very often, if ever) that the Buddha didn’t link the terms samsara and nibbana as antonyms, in the same way as he did for terms like sankhata and asankhata. What that means is open to question, as I think I’ve made clear from the beginning.
So far the most convincing explanation I’ve seen for the Buddha not treating the two terms as antonyms has been that samsara (faring-on) and nibbana (extinguishment) are incompatible metaphors. Other explanations have been put forward. Some of those I don’t find convincing, and others I’ll have to give more thought to when I’m less tired and have more time.
I’ll just say, thought, that I think the way we talk and think about samsara is important. As Bhante @Sumano noted, samsara and nibbana are often conceptualized, unhelpfully, as different realms or worlds.
I notice that Bhante @sujato renders samsara as “transmigrating.” In Iti 24 we have “one person roaming and transmigrating for an eon would amass a heap of bones the size of this Mount Vepulla.” Compare that with Ireland’s “the skeletons of a single person, running on and wandering in samsara for an aeon, would make a heap of bones, a quantity of bones as large as this Mount Vepulla.” In one case samsara is something we do, while in the other it’s a place through which we wander.
The repeated image of samsara - path - nibbana tends to reinforce the notion of samsara being a place where we are, and nibbana as a place we want to get to. Not only is nibbana seen as another place, but it’s often seen as impossibly distant, even remote and unreachable. This has an effect on many people’s relationship with the possibility of enlightenment, in effect undermining their faith and increasing their doubt.
More accurate ways of talking about samsara (as something we do) might be more empowering because they locate the problem within ourselves — we are doing things that perpetuate our suffering (and can choose not to). Talking about samsara as a place we are in locates the problem outside of ourselves — we are stuck in a bad place. And the only escape is also being presented as far, far, away.
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The only reason I would suggest that we might not say that is: while we can have the conditioned element without the unconditioned (precisely because conditioned), the unconditioned need the absence of the conditioned to ceased, nibbana it’s just the absence of something.
By using light and darkness. We cannot say that darkness is the opposite of light because darkness cannot exist without light since darkness is precisely the absence of light, not another entity that arrives when the light goes (as counterintuitive this may be). Interesting, I think “ dhatu” can be translated as” essence”.
Another example of counterintuitive things (where common sense goes wrong) is pain and not pain. Not having pain is not, in reality, the opposite of being in pain. It is the lack of any pain sensation recognised by the brain. There is the only sensation. The absence of pain is not a condition but a status.
In other words, @Bodhipaksa may be very right in his observation: the two may not appear in opposition to this case since Nibbana as essence cannot be without samsara as such. They are not in opposition, but I would say in consequential relationship. Nibbana is the consequence of the end of samsara, and indeed we know it is subconsciously terrifying for those who are not ready when they consciously deeply realise, you cannot come back from the extinguished, from cessation, from dissolution-and all the other terms Buddha used to describe the process (not the place) of the unconditioned.
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Well spotted indeed and I strongly agree with the bold (no pun intended 
) @sujato’s decision to make explicit in English what many appeared timid to do so by leaving the Pali word untranslated.
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I totally agree.
That’s why the possibility of liberation opens up only when one starts thinking in terms of conditionality, i.e. Dependent Origination.
So if the argument is that the Buddha doesn’t present samsara and nibbana as two separate entities in the absolute sense, I agree, otherwise liberation would not be possible.
We need a conditional relationship between them in order to have a path that takes us from one to the other. That’s why “The noble eightfold path is said to be the best of all conditioned things.” (AN 4.34).
But this is also true of sankhata/asankhata. They are also not two distinct categories in the absolute sense, even though, like I said above, the Buddha doesn’t have problems with describing them as two “elements” (dhatu) since they stand at the opposite ends of their conditional relationship, meaning there is nothing that is further away from samsara (or sankhata) than nibbana (or asankhata), yet they are in a conditional relationship. The only difference is that since nibbana is asankhata, it is not held together (or fueled) by conditions, so there is no way to put into motion the conditions to go back into the conditioned. That’s the way I see it.
Now, the other face of the coin is that we run the danger (as happened in later traditions) of going to the other extreme and say that since nibbana and samsara are not distinct categories in the absolute sense, they must be “closer” to each other than we imagine, all the way to “They are the same!”.
So you have teachers who teach that nothing is needed in order to attain nibbana 'cause you are already in it, just accept your suffering!
This is furthest from the teaching of the Buddha in my opinion and a very real danger.
That’s why:
“Avoiding these two extremes, the Realized One teaches by the middle way:
Ignorance is a condition for choices. Choices are a condition for consciousness. … That is how this entire mass of suffering originates.
When ignorance fades away and ceases with nothing left over, choices cease. When choices cease, consciousness ceases. … That is how this entire mass of suffering ceases.”
And:
“One who sees dependent origination sees the Dhamma. One who sees the Dhamma sees dependent origination” (MN 28)
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I think at some level I yearn for reincarnation ( not rebirth ) to be true and for there to be some magic in the universe. I feel if things I’ve read in popular books appear in the suttas that is more likely.
Other people can have great ideas too, and it has been about 2,6000 years since Siddhartha Gautama died.
The ultimate test is if something is truthful and if it makes you feel better, not who said it.
As far as runner up prizes go that isn’t too bad.
I agree with everything you said, but you seem to hold that somehow the term “opposite” implies an absolute separation between entities, hence my comment about misapprehension of the world’s expressions.
As I was trying to explain above, I don’t think this is necessary. You can define two things as “opposite” and still have them in a conditional relationship, and I think this is exactly what the Buddha is doing with these terms.
So by saying that darkness is the opposite of light what I’m saying is that in the conditional relationship between light and its absence there are two “states” that are furthest apart, namely: one state where light is being produced and sustained though causes and conditions, and another state where the conditions that keep the light on have ceased and now there is no light anymore. This I label darkness. The two states described I call “opposites”. No need for metaphysical separation between the two.
For what it’s worth, I think this is a great topic, and not at all a dumb question. It shows that you care about what the EBT’s actually say, and you are interested in finding differences between those, and modern presentations of the Dharma. I wish there were more topics like that.
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Thanks for your point. I will explain why I prefer not to use the “opposite” as a concept here and for samsara and nibbana.
The issue is that there are not two states. You need two states, two distinct reality to have opposition.
As in your example, the disappearing of light it’s not a state. Darkness is not a state. There is nothing call darkness. There is only light. There cannot be opposite philosophically (and in the case of light physically) speaking because one thing cannot be the opposite of itself. To have an opposite, you need to have a comparison, a two-element process. You have only one for both light and samsara. Otherwise, we confuse absence with the opposite. Unfortunately, this is a common logical problem, so much that our common sense is very little sensical.
The confusion comes that people think about light and darkness through switching the control as you do with a lamp. On and light appears, off darkness comes, on is indeed the opposite of off. But that is the condition of the instrument lamp, not the physical event called light. We should just have light and the absence of light. Darkness is imagination if perceived as reality, as a thing.
Light can be only present or absent. It does not turn in darkness; it does not give “space to darkness”. It just stops. The action of stopping (like in nibbana indeed) cannot be the opposite of anything.
We can conventionally in language say light is opposite to darkness, but it is just a convention.
We say “switching on or off the lights”. We never say “switching off or on the darkness”.
I may push things a bit, but in my observations of nature, I concluded that in nature (Dhamma), we have presence and absence through a transformation. Still, the dualistic conceptualisations are a creation of the human mind and one that has brought disastrous logical mistakes with horrible consequences for us as humans and the environment. But I am now moving away too much from the topic. Thanks 
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I’d just like to say that I love this conversation. Thank you.
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Thank you for that. I knew it wasn’t a dumb question, but I thought it might be attention-grabbing to describe it that way.
Over the years I’ve noticed a number of ways that what I’ve been taught about Buddhism is at odds with what’s in the suttas, and that furthermore this acquired information has blinded me to what the suttas actually say. One example is the jhana factors, which in the standard (i.e. Buddhaghosan) explanation are different from what’s in the suttas. This discrepancy actually got in the way of the development of my meditation practice, making it harder to create the conditions for jhana to arise.
Another example is the three forms of suffering, which it took me a long time to see correspond to the three forms of suffering described in the Sallatha Sutta (SN 36.6). There are actually two sources of distortion there: first the the order of the three forms of suffering is inevitably changed from what’s in the suttas (changing the meaning of sankhara-dukkhata), and second, almost everyone talks about the “two arrows” and ignores the third form of suffering that is described in the suttas.
There are other examples as well, but I don’t want to hijack my own thread 
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