How long does it take to reach Nirvana?
by Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering
Nirvana is an idea that represents the Absolute silent stillness that permeates everything and is therefore indescribable and without characteristics or limitations. As such, without the suffering of the mind or any distraction or thought, it is said to be a state of bliss. Nirvana is the same thing as the no-ego state, the complete absence of the “me,” which is the sense of an individual self. Because the egoic self causes suffering, when it is absent then what is left is an indescribable stateless state. While many have called this bliss, this is a paradoxical description since the state itself is without description.
To uncover the state called Nirvana, some people spend a lifetime while others have it occur to them right away (such as Jiddu Krishnamurti). Nisargadatta said it took him three years, and Ramana’s realization was shorter in duration. Aurobindo uncovered this state after a year or so. Anamayi-ma was born in this state and never left it. The timeline depends on the desire to be free of the egoic self combined with strength of belief that one is a person with a body that is associated to all sorts of phenomena, other people, objects, possessions, experiences, memories, and so on.
The Buddha’s story is a mythic example of one’s struggle against the egoic self, or sense of a “me,” and trying to figure out how to move beyond it. The obstacle to enlightenment, as the Buddha story illustrates so well, is that we are so used to using the mind to solve all our problems that we try to use the mind to get rid of itself. This does not work, and it takes varying amounts of time to discover how to realize one’s own core of existence without the use of the mind. The Buddha story is one of the struggle of the mind and then how the egoic self dissolves despite all of the allures, temptations, and assaults that it brings to mind — to the fore of awareness —in the process.
Siddhartha, who was to become the Buddha, spent years trying to figure out what to do. At first he studied the Vedas and filled himself with religious knowledge. However, he came to realize that learning did not create any sort of transformation beyond a mental or intellectual understanding. Despite a head full of knowledge, he continued to see the world the same way, which was in relation to his own sense of self, the “me,” associated with the body.
Next, strongly believing that mental and emotional attachment to the body was the thing holding him back, he starved and mistreated his body in an attempt to subdue and transcend it. If the body was the problem, he and other ascetics reasoned, then the body must be ignored and pushed out of the way. Eventually, though, with a failing, neglected and starved body now resembling a bony corpse, Siddhartha found himself at the brink of death. At this point he was discovered by a young village girl named Sajuta who nursed him back to health. After he recuperated he realized that the body is needed to find realization, because the body allows for consciousness to be aware of itself. In other words, the body is the medium from which realization can be had. Without the body, brain, and mind there is no thing that can experience, observe, or realize anything. The body provides the opportunity for transcendence.
With his health restored, Siddhartha found a spot beneath a fig tree and was resolved to meditate until he found enlightenment. He was determined to set aside the egoic self to see what actually exists without it. In the process Siddhartha was met with the powerful god Mara who threw everything at him in an effort to get Siddhartha to give up and give into the desires of the egoic self. Mara pushed all the buttons, so to speak, as the presented temptations of sex, wealth, power, and all the rest, trying to stir, arouse and entice Siddhartha’s sense of self.
Mara was the metaphor for Siddhartha’s Shadow, a representation of his own egoic self. One may discover, through this sort of meditation and self-enquiry that all things are in consciousness, and what we see is actually ourselves, including the god Mara, other people, animals, nature, objects, and all else. All is us. Consciousness is no more than a reflection of what we are, but the attention is too fixated on the things of the body that we do not see the obvious.
Once he was able to remain in the middle way between fighting and acquiescing, Siddharta had metaphorically defeated Mara. But what he had actually defeated was the egoic mind, and he thus discovered Nirvana, or the stateless state of the silent stillness of the Absolute. It took him many years to do so, and his journey is now mythic.
