What is Nirvana?...

Discourse by Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh

In Buddhism, we speak of nirvana which is the cessation of all suffering. Nirvana, first of all, it means the cessation, the extinction of all suffering. But our suffering come from our wrong perceptions. Avidia, misunderstanding. And that is why the practice of meditation, the practice of looking deeply has the purpose of removing wrong perceptions from us. If you are able to remove wrong perceptions, you will be able to be free from the afflictions and the sufferings that always arise from wrong perceptions. You have wrong perception on yourself and on the other, and the other has wrong perception on themselves and on you and that is the cause of fear, of violence, of hatred. That is why trying to remove wrong perceptions is the only way to peace. And that is why nirvana is, first of all, the removal of wrong perceptions. And when you remove wrong perceptions, you remove the suffering.
Ultimate reality is free from birth, and dying
To meditate deeply, you find out that even ideas like being and non-being, birth and death, coming and going, are wrong ideas. If you can touch reality in that, you realize that ultimate reality is free from birth, from dying, from coming, from going, from being, from non-being. That is why nirvana is, first of all, a removal of notions of ideas that serve the ways of misunderstanding and suffering. If you are afraid of death, of nothingness, of non-being, because you have wrong perceptions on death and on non-being. The French scientist, Lavoure, said there is no birth, there is no death. He observed reality around him and came to the conclusion that it isn’t so great, it isn’t so bad.

The notion of death cannot be applied to reality
When you look at a cloud, you think of the cloud as being. And later on when the cloud become the rain, you don’t see the cloud anymore and you say the cloud is not there. And you describe the cloud as non-being. But if you look deeply, you can see the cloud in the rain and that is why it’s impossible for a cloud to die. A cloud can become rain, snow or ice, but a cloud cannot become nothing. And that is why the notion of death cannot be applied to reality. There is a transformation, there is a continuation, but you cannot say that there is death because in your mind to die means from something, you suddenly become nothing. From someone, you suddenly become no one, and so the notion of death cannot apply to reality, whether to a cloud or to a human being.