Emma asked, she had a talk with a friend who's Muslim, and the friend told her that Nirvana and Heaven are just the same, meaning that people who do good things will be rewarded.
I think she's wrong, but I was not able to find good arguments.
Can you help?
I think Bante should answer this one because one of us will possibly say something inaccurate about this.
Well, it's a very kind of technical question.
I want to be perfectly orthodox.
Well, I mean, there are many ways of answering this question.
The Buddha did use the word sugati to describe both of...
or saga even, saga which means heaven, but to describe nibbana as well, or it seems anyway, that he would include it in a good destination.
So kind of lumping them together, the idea of heaven, the idea of nibbana.
So if you want to avoid an argument, you could just answer it in that way.
You could say to the Muslim friend, well yes, that's the point really.
You do good, you get good.
You do evil, you get evil.
You get bad come to you.
And why?
Because this Muslim friend is probably not going to be convinced by you that, oh yes, there is no self and there is no God and there is no entity whatsoever and everything that arises ceases and it's impermanent suffering and non-self and therefore we should let go of it and see things as just experiential in the present moment, give up past, give up future, etc., etc.
Probably not going to get very far with them.
So,
Rather than take them all the way to Nibbana, a deep understanding of the difference between Nibbana and heaven, encourage them in that.
Yes, do good deeds.
As a result, encourage them in doing meditation.
Buddhism only adds one aspect to the teaching of other religions, and that's the purification of the mind.
The Buddha taught that there are three aspects.
aspects to Buddhism and not doing any evil becoming full of good or the fulfillment of goodness of wholesomeness and the purification of the mind
So it's really this purification of the mind that enters into a different route.
Because you might even say that nibbana is beyond good and evil.
And the Buddha said in the Dhammapada, he said, this is an arahant has gone beyond and given up good and evil.
This is why they fly free like a bird.
But the point that I would recommend for the Muslim is to encourage them in the good deed of meditation as well.
So to help them to see that if they want to do good deeds, it really has to come from a good mind.
Because even Islam agrees with such things.
That if your mind is full of anger, then it's a bad deed if your mind is full of...
and it's a bad deed and so on.
And they do have this rudimentary understanding of the importance of the mind.
So for example, I've heard a teaching, I don't know, I'm assuming it's orthodox Islam, that there was a story of a Christian and a Muslim and they were fighting and the Islam was winning and he was about to kill the Christian and then the Christian spit on him.
And when the Christian spit on him, he got angry.
And so he put his sword away.
And he said, I can't kill you now because I have anger in my mind.
So yeah, if you're ever getting killed by a Muslim soldier, just make him angry.
I mean, it shows how rudimentary, because obviously from Buddha's point of view, we don't agree with that.
You can never kill without anger, without some cruelty in the mind.
But that's really the point.
So helping them to say, we're not asking you to become Buddhist, we're just encouraging you to become a good person.
So really, if you want to be full of good deeds and be avoiding evil deeds, the...
The performance of these deeds and the abstention from certain deeds isn't really enough, because the only way to really perform good deeds and to abstain from bad deeds is to purify your mind, to have a good source of your deeds.
And there's a way to avoid argument and a way to encourage people in meditation, because ultimately,
the only the only way to overcome people's views is through meditation and ultimately that's all they are is there's some belief some view that is really this it's part of this whole conceptual layer that is such a thin layer of of our experience and of our minds you'll find that christians muslims jews people from any religion or any walk of life within a week of meditating they can discard
any number of views.
It's in fact much less the views and more the addictions and defilements that tend to persist.
If you just give them straight vipassana insight meditation in line with the four foundations of mindfulness, if they practice it, in about a week they'll start to ease up on this sort of thing and not really care.
unless you make it a point of controversy with them.
You say, no, if you want to practice meditation, you have to give up God.
If you want to practice meditation, you have to give up heaven.
You have to understand the difference between nibbana.
If you start requiring these things and arguing with them about them,
and making it clear to them that there's something important here that you're getting wrong, then they're going to just cling harder and harder to them.
And then it could be a lifetime or a million, you know, thousand, thousands of lifetimes, and they'll never get it.
They'll never stop clinging because there's the conflict.
So that's the first way I would answer this question, is to avoid that sort of conflict.
There was even an Iranian man, I don't know if he's here tonight, but he was asking my teacher about this because he had to go back to Iran and he was afraid that it would be very difficult to teach meditation there because the Iranian people are
or because the government would even put him in jail or even execute him for converting to another religion and for trying to convert other people to religion, not believing in God.
And my teacher said to him, well, just say it's the teaching of the Lord.
This is just the teaching of the Lord.
He's using Thai language to explain it.
And so the word basically Lord.
And so he said, because it's the law of nature.
It's reality.
It's the Lord.
Or you could say it's because it's the Lord Buddha.
But basically he was saying, you know, it comes from the universe, it comes from the creator.
So the point being to just encourage people in meditation.
Don't worry about who it belongs to or what are the words that you use and so on.
But if you're interested in the difference between heaven and nibbana,
It's that heaven is a myth and nibbana is reality.
Why?
Because the concept of heaven is intrinsically based on arisen phenomenon.
The idea of heaven is that there is something that has arisen.
And so it's describing a series of experiences with a term, with a conceptual name, nama-panyati.
So you're in heaven and you're experiencing the glory of God and so on, and you're praising God for eternity and there's all the virgins or whatever.
I mean, I don't know.
nymphs or whatever the truth is.
Because there's some controversy about the use of the word virgin.
It might just mean women, young women or something.
But at any rate, up in heaven, the idea is that there is an experience.
And those experiences are impermanent suffering and non-self.
That's reality.
And that's the reality that ordinarily we can't see.
So calling it heaven, calling it whatever you like is saying nothing.
It's still changing.
Every moment is changing.
And therefore it can't be stable.
There's no force that can keep it static.
Because it's changing.
Nibbana, on the other hand, is free from arising.
There is none of that experience arising.
There is no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no feeling, no thinking.
Everything that would arise has ceased and has ceased with that remainder.
It's like the ultimate rest, the ultimate cessation, the ultimate freedom from suffering.
It's the only possible alternative to arisen phenomena.
It's not some special state of arisen phenomena or arisen experience.
It's the only exception.
Everything else that you could possibly ever imagine that could possibly arise is subject to cessation.
Whatever reality, whatever thing really and truly arises, that thing must really and truly cease.
And from one moment to the next.
So the only way out of that, the only exception that could ever exist in reality, logically and experientially,
is cessation, this state of cessation.
Now, if you don't want to attain that, because there was actually this question was asked on our Q&A forum yesterday or something, and I was just answering it.
And the person said, well, there's someone who said they're so afraid of this idea of cessation because what will happen to their self, right?
It's the cessation of self.
It's annihilation of self.
And that's a whole other issue about the non-existence of self and so on.
If you want to go and read that question, it's quite interesting.
So it's one thing to say that you don't want to attain it, and of course there's various issues with that, and how to help someone to see that there's nothing being annihilated, there was nothing existing in the first place.
It's just those things that arise, that have ceased, they don't arise again, and there doesn't occur any arising.
but just to see that this is the only alternative, this cessation of suffering.
And so whether you want to realize it or not, it is the only alternative.
It's the only thing that could possibly exist outside of that.
And the great thing about it is that it actually does lead to peace, happiness and freedom from suffering.
And it is actually far preferable to any other experience.
It's in a whole other level of peace and happiness.
And because of its actual nature of providing freedom from this incessant arising and ceasing, it actually is true peace and happiness.
And a person who realizes it has no doubt.
That's why a sotapanna is free from doubt, because they have none of this doubt about whether it's useful or not useful.
They've come to realize it, and so they understand what is of true benefit, and that's
the cessation of suffering.
So I hope in some way that answers your question.