Contrary to popular belief, Buddhists are not actively pursuing
peace-on-earth per se. The Buddhist’s Ultimate Reality is called ‘The Parinirvana’ (Complete Nirvana) or the freedom of
spirit brought about by release from the body. According to the Buddhist analysis of the human situation, delusions of
egocentricity and their resultant desires bind humans to a continuous round of rebirths and its consequent suffering (dukkha). It
is release from these bonds that constitutes Nirvana, or the experience of Enlightenment. Now, ‘Nirvana’ – in Buddhist
religious thought and spiritual philosophy – is but the initial goal of the meditation disciplines and practice in that it
signifies the transcendent state of freedom achieved by the extinction of desire and of individual consciousness.
That this is only the inaugural objective is very clear to the
discerning eye because – while liberation from rebirth does not imply immediate death and thus release into the Ultimate Reality
– the physical death of a perfected person (an Arhat or a Buddha) does. Thus while the immediate aim of the Buddhist path is
release from the round of phenomenal existence with its inherent suffering by attaining Nirvana (the enlightened
state in which the fires of greed, hatred, and ignorance have been quenched), Nirvana is not to be confused with total
annihilation because, after attaining Nirvana, the enlightened individual will continue to live, burning off any remaining karma
until the state of Final Nirvana (Parinirvana) is attained at the moment of physical death.
It may be noted that, during the early centuries of Buddhist history,
not only were there the three major pilgrimage centres – the place of Mr. Buddha’s birth at Lumbini, the place of his
Enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, the Deer Park in Varanasi where he preached his first sermon – but particularly the village of
Kusinara, (or Kushinagara) located in the eastern district of Deoria, which is the place of his Parinirvana. Quite obviously, this
is a very ‘self’-seeking approach to life on earth … something that all
metaphysical peoples are guilty of. The quest to secure one’s Immortality in some spurious After-Life is unambiguously selfish
... peace -on-earth is readily sacrificed for the supposed continuation of the imagined spirit after physical death.
So much for their humanitarian ideals of peace, goodness, altruism, philanthropy and
humaneness. All Religious and Spiritual and Mystical Quests amount to nothing more than a self-centred urge to perpetuate oneself
for ever and a day. All metaphysicists fall foul of this existential dilemma. They pay lip-service to the notion of self-sacrifice
– weeping crocodile tears at noble martyrdom – whilst selfishly pursuing the Timeless State of Being … the ‘Deathless
State’. The root cause of all the ills of humankind can be sheeted home to this single, basic fact: the overriding importance of
the survival of ‘self’ by whatever name.
