Translating Nibbana as extinguishment

Not in the Pāli language. In Pāli it is a Noun.
Nibbana (Ni + vāna)
Antonym of Vāna
Vāna means craving/ lust (tanhā), string, fire etc.

Nibbāti or Nibbāyati are the verbs.

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I’m a little late to the discussion, but it’s interesting to look how the Chinese translators dealt with terms to see how they were read in ancient times as opposed to now.

Nirvana was a term that was usually transliterated, indicating that it wasn’t so simple a meaning to them. When they did translate it, some coined new words. Kumarajiva translated it with a word that literally means “liberative cessation” or “extinguished liberation” (滅度). It seems that it was a technical term to them, meaning the end of rebirth in particular, with the connotations of both cessation (nirodha) and liberation ( mokṣa).

Simple words can end up with technical and prosaic readings. Chinese Dao is like this: It means path, and it means Dao (the underlying way of the universe).

Is nibbana ever used in a prosaic fashion in the Pali canon?

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What do you mean with ‘prosaic fashion’ - do you mean in a non-spiritual context?

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In an ordinary context instead of this particular usage of people not being reborn anymore. Is the term used for fire going out, a lamp being doused, etc?

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Ajahn Brahm recently said that it is still used to denote things cooling down, like hot food being left to ‘Nibbana’ - literally cool down.

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Any examples from Pali canon?

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He might refer here to nibbuta (Skt. nirvṛta, also not pre-Buddhist), which more often appears in a spiritual ‘nibbana’-sense, but a few times also in a more literal sense as ‘cooled down’ or ‘extinguished’. The root here is vṛ, no :

  • DN 23, as iron cooled down
  • AN 6.43, AN 6.62 coals cooled down
  • SN 11.20, MN 97, Snp 3.9, Dhp 276 v406 as soldiers who have ‘cooled down’?
  • MN 72, DN 23, Snp 1.2 v19 fire extinguished
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The PTS English Pali dictionary might be helpful. If I’m reading it correctly, here are the four primary definitions of nibbana:

  1. the going out of a lamp or fire (popular meaning).
  2. health, the sense of bodily well – being (probably, at first, the passing away of feverishness, restlessness).
  3. The dying out in the heart of the threefold fire of rāga, dosa & moha : lust, ill – will & stupidity (Buddhistic meaning). <->
  4. the sense of spiritual well – being, of security, emancipation, victory and peace, salvation, bliss.

It seems like nibbana is used to describe the extinguishment of fires and negative states and also used to describe positive states, as in definitions 2 and 4 above.

Fortunately, Bhante @sujato and the other supporters of SC kindly incorporated the PTS dictionary into SC for easy reference and learning.
Nibbana definition: [SuttaCentral]

And as you can see, SC presentation of PTS dictionary entries are accurate and easier to follow than the one, for example, here:

https://dsalsrv04.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/pali_query.py?qs=Nibbana&searchhws=yes

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I would translate Nibbana as cessation: cessation of suffering and birth/death, release from samsara, which is the ultimate goal of our practice. Following the Noble Eight-fold path, completely comprehending the Four Noble Truths, we’ll be released from samsara, the cycle of birth/dirth and associated suffering:

“Knowledge & vision arose in me: 'Unprovoked is my release. This is the last birth. There is now no further rebirth”. (SN 56.11)

May we all reach this stage of cessation. With metta,

Starter

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The examples of ordinary usage in reference to fires going out or being extinguished were what I was looking for. Thanks.

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I posted the PTS dictionary definitions because it seemed like it might be helpful to the conversation at large. I finally got around to consulting what the actual dictionary says today rather than relying on others and found it helpful; so I thought others might, too.

There’s actually quite a bit more there (in the PTS dictionary) – some of which required a greater knowledge of pali than I possess at this time. In fact, the definition does include a section on examples of usage, including some reference to fires, etc. Hope this is helpful.

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The dictionary is great, but it also just goes so far. When they compiled it they didn’t have some supernatural knowledge - they also just go back to the sources. And they not only took the suttas but also Buddhaghosa and the chronicles. If we’re interested in oldest meanings we still have to re-contextualize and see where those meanings actually occur in the suttas, and exclude the later usages and explanations. The PTS is a stepping stone, is what I mean

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Makes sense, but it does seem like a good stepping stone to start with when looking at how to translate a word or to understand what a word actually means. Do you have any other suggestions of where to start? Thanks!

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I feel we kinda started from the dict definitions and worked our way to the suttas and their Chinese parallels. But it’s surely good to take a loop back to the PTS as well

My Pali is probably only a little better, but I’ve spent enough time correlating Chinese with Sanskrit to at least find the roots in usage and then look at translations to see what they mean exactly. I have the annoying habit of a translator to set aside dictionaries and look for contextual readings, so I want to see examples. (Annoying in that sometimes I fall into rabbit holes deeper than they look.)

The trouble with transliterating words like this is that, as Sujato was pointing out earlier, a reader will think those are the only times a word occurs or they’ll imagine meanings to fill in a blank, not knowing that the same word is in the source text translated as extinguish, too (in this case).

It also emphasizes that it doesn’t just mean extinguish. Translators are wrong no matter what they do from one angle or another. We get used to it.

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Isn’t this a strong indication for us not to look for a literal translation but to go for something like moksa, salvation, or deliverance as well? Not that the Chinese translators knew perfect Sanskrit, but I would very much assume that if such a key word as Nirvana would have had a nice literal meaning they would have used it?

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Except for the later Chinese pilgrims, most of the Chinese translators weren’t actually Chinese. They were Central Asian or Indian missionaries who translated the texts from memory verbally with the help of Chinese assistants who were fluent with writing and Chinese grammar. So, I think the Chinese translations taken altogether are a good sampling of how Indian and Central Asian Buddhists understood their texts.

At any rate, yes, I think that the tendency to transliterate would indicate that they didn’t want to simply translate it as “cessation” and leave it at that.

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That’s very helpful, thanks. There’s still so much to learn for pali-centric researchers from the Chinese corpus.

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Nibbana is extinguishing, the extinguishing of the Nama-Rupa illustrations in consciousness. Those who attained Nibbana have non-illustrated consciousness.
Those who need to know more may refer to Ratana Sutta, “Nibbanthi Dira yatha ayampadipo”. The striving one with wisdom will attain Nirvana just as the flame of the lamp got extinguished.

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The last thing this thread needs is another personal opinion, but I’m going to express my personal opinion…

I find it interesting that we would suggest making the Dhamma accord with our limited and conditional use of language rather than making our language accord with the Dhamma…or better yet, not rely on language as the primary resource in the first place.
I agree with @sujato as well, “extinguishment” is not only accurate, it’s a perfectly apt word despite some English speakers equating it with annihilation… that’s a flaw of our language, or more specifically the cultural/social framework in which our language exists, it’s not a flaw of the term itself. And that limitation only exists in English, as far as I can tell, so even MORE the product of causes and conditions as opposed to the transcending of causes and conditions.

I like the term “extinguishment” not so much as a “killing the flame” idea (that therefore gets confused with annihilation), but more of a “removing one of the conditions required for a flame to exist.” A flame requires heat and fuel…in the case of a candle’s light, heat, wick, wax and air. The candlelight doesn’t exist separate from these conditional elements. “Blow it out” and you temporarily remove the air, which causes the heat to vanish, leaving only a smoking wick and some wax sitting in oxygen with no heat. If you don’t want that candle to light again, don’t apply heat - the other 3 conditions are already there, latent, waiting for heat to light them up.
Same is true for our defilements - remove a cause and condition of the defilement, and you remove the state in which the defilement can arise. You haven’t “annihilated” anything, you’ve merely prevented it from being born in the first place. If you don’t want that defilement to light up again, don’t apply one or more of the conditions to other latent conditions that would cause it to arise.

</ uninformed worldly person rant> :slight_smile:

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