The Easy & Predictable Nibbana & The Hard & Unpredictable Nibbana

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Here I will be referring to Nibbana (or Nirvana in Sanskrit) mainly in two different capacities. The first will be satisfaction or happiness and the second will be referring to the cessation of perception, feeling, and experience sometimes called phala, fruition, cessation, or within the certain context of progressively reducing fabrication by going through the four formed and four formless jhanas in order to reach cessation which is called nirodha samapatti. 

The Easy & Predictable Nibbana

The easy and predictable Nibbana is that of satisfaction. Satisfaction is a word which is commonly used as a translation of the Pali word sukha. Other translations of sukha come up with things like happiness or things which otherwise contribute to a feeling of general well-being and comfort. In many respects, the core of the Buddha’s teachings come down to dukkha and dukkha nirodha (the cessation of dissatisfaction/suffering) or in other words dukkha and sukha. Nibbana in this sense is as simple as becoming a master at bringing yourself to a state of satisfaction quickly and easily regardless of external circumstances.
 

This type of Nibbana does not require gigantic blissful experiences and complex spiritual understanding, although these things don’t necessarily hurt. Being able to develop the skill of maintaining sati, or mindfulness, of the in and out breath which is called Ānāpānasati and described in the Ānāpānasati Sutta is the most straightforward path to developing this type of Nibbana. The whole of the Dhamma (or Dharma in Sanskrit) can be found in Ānāpānasati when it is practiced consistently enough and as insight into the nature of phenomena and reality is uncovered through this, but there are better meditation techniques for raw insight itself. Ānāpānasati is special because it uses an object of attention, or focus object, for the meditation which is a wholesome object that is accessible in almost all states. When attention goes to wholesome objects such as the breath or thoughts of comfort, safety, and other positive aspects of experience, satisfaction naturally rises. Eventually, this satisfaction and other factors of jhana become the objects of investigation and can be directly raised in a rather controllable way, but the main part of the practice is to develop one’s ability to give themselves a completely satisfying present moment experience. Building this ability is much like building a muscle. Consistent practice leads to increased ease when handling what used to be dissatisfactory in a way that can now be satisfactory. Intentionally slowing the breath to become long and easy in and out breaths slows heart rate and naturally reduces cortisol and adrenaline which contribute to anxious feelings and feelings of unease. 
 

Once you become better and better at creating satisfaction and breathing naturally rather than automatically, resistance to reality and the external world is heavily reduced. Previously challenging circumstances become easier and easier to quickly turn into a satisfying present moment experience. With this type of Nibbana, there is no moment of transformation in which you are “permanently enlightened.” Every moment is a new moment to either wake up to satisfaction or stay asleep in dissatisfaction. This practice is as simple as remembering to keep attention on the breath and satisfying and wholesome aspects of experience. An “end point” with this practice would look like having your brain rewired through consistent enough practice that satisfaction is almost always the case on its own and it can be immediately created, or rather found or remembered, in any cases where it might slip up for a moment. 
 

The Hard & Unpredictable Nibbana

This is the type of spiritual awakening that most modern and western spirituality is often focused around when it comes to Buddhism. An important thing to mention is that many people chase this type of awakening for the purpose of transcending suffering which is something the easy and predictable path to the type of Nibbana mentioned above is quite good at. This second type of awakening and Nibbana is thought by some, such as Daniel Ingram, the author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, to occur at the first attainment of cessation or fruition and in subsequent cessations which often happen spontaneously during spiritual practice/daily life or intentionally through going through jhanas 1-8 resulting in a cessation which is called nirodha samapatti.
 

This link to part of MCTB describes cessation and fruition: https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight/30-the-progress-of-insight/15-fruition/

This link to part of MCTB describes nirodha samapatti: https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-v-awakening/37-models-of-the-stages-of-awakening/the-cessation-of-perception-and-feeling-nirodha-samapatti/

It’s important to note that cessation is the exact same from an epistemic perspective in both fruition and nirodha samapatti. It’s all simply a complete “gap” in experience, and nirodha samapatti does not on its own unveil any new insights which a close examination of a fruition can’t unveil. It is simply a hard attainment to reach and exciting for that fact alone and also a predictable way of reaching this second type of Nibbana. 

Reaching this second type of Nibbana, no matter how you get there or if it is fruition or nirodha samapatti, usually takes people years of spiritual practice. It does have quite profound effects and can contribute to a lot of insight which allows one to relate to previously dissatisfactory sensations in a less adversarial light. I call this the unpredictable Nibbana because it is completely unknown when you’ll first reach fruition. The first fruition appears to just pop up at completely different amounts of practice and types of practice for different people. Vipassana meditation techniques are quite effective at getting people to this stage, but many spiritual practices and meditation techniques done enough will lead to fruition or cessation.
 

This type of Nibbana is rather complete, in a sense, because cessation is freedom from absolutely everything experiential. There are no samskaras, hindrances, selves, others, somethingness, or nothingness. There is no consciousness or awareness at all in cessation for any of those things in the previous sentence to appear in. There is no vantage point from which to even discuss nothingness or emptiness. There is no existence “in” this non-state. There’s quite literally nothing to it. This is precisely why this attainment is so transformative. It is the eradication of any possible sense of self while one is “in” cessation. It also shows impermanence by showing one what it truly would be like if existence disappeared and reappeared right before your eyes (your eyes are also part of what disappears and reappears, of course) giving the potential for a great deal of insight into what might have been before the conscious experience of being a human being and what might come afterward. There still feels to be some permanence to the human self structure and experience the way it is now before you see it all get eradicated by cessation. This also gives some insight into the nature of dukkha by showing just how much less suffering no existence or experience at all is compared to even the most rapturous and amazing existence or experience. 

Reaching cessation a number of times eventually unfolds a process which reveals new ways of perceiving the world. Eventually, the field of perception through all six sense doors gets fused into one sense door, emptiness can be directly grasped in all circumstances, the luminosity of all phenomena is unveiled, the impressions of concepts of things such as a physical body or gravity lose their power over perception, and the sense of self dissolves from an individual human being into the entire field of sensations which may be present at any given moment among many other things. All of these fancy things are helpful to the easy and predictable path to the first type of Nibbana in so much as they just provide more easily noticeable pleasant facets of reality to pay attention to and reduce the patterns of sensations which give experience the feeling of being only a human being with the rest of the world as an external entity which is in some way or another a dissatisfactory enemy to that imaginary self/soul. 

What should I do with any of this?

This is ultimately up to you, of course, but I will say that both of these “types” of Nibbana contribute to the ability to live without the five hindrances and the ten fetters. Although I’m not by any means at the end of the road in regard to hindrances and fetters, it is very clearly noticeable how these two types of Nibbana contribute to one getting closer to that goal which one might call a third type of Nibbana which would be the moment-to-moment experience of an Arahant or in other words the moment-to-moment experience of one who lives without hindrances and fetters.
 

The second type takes a lot of spiritual development to reach, but the first type only requires a consistent training of the mind to focus attention on wholesome objects and notice them with better efficiency. Both of these are very helpful to living a life with less dissatisfaction and more satisfaction. Most people chase the second type because they really just want the ability to feel more satisfied with life more of the time, and they think attaining cessation is the only way to do that. Even worse, people think attaining some experiential “heightened” state of consciousness is the only way to do that. Dissatisfaction can be turned into satisfaction in a much simpler way which is touched upon some in the first half of this post. Become mindful of the breath and the satisfactory parts of your experience by sustaining attention on them right here, right now, and your dissatisfaction will be lessened. Do that a lot in increasingly skillful ways, and you can make lemonade out of any lemons life has provided you.