Nirvana means to extinguish the burning fires of the Three Poisons: greed, anger, and ignorance. This can be accomplished by letting go of dissatisfaction.
Interpretation
Nirvana represents liberation from negative states of mind, achieved by overcoming greed, anger, and ignorance.
In this quote, Shinjo Ito explains that nirvana, in the context of Buddhist philosophy, is the state of enlightenment achieved by extinguishing the inner flames of greed, anger, and ignorance, which are seen as the root causes of suffering. To attain this state, one must learn to let go of feelings of dissatisfaction that fuel these negative emotions, ultimately leading to a sense of peace and liberation.
In practice
In a meditation retreat to help participants focus on overcoming negative emotions.
Everything we do really is just a little marker on the long road to death. And sometimes that’s overwhelmingly depressing to me, and sometimes it makes me feel kinship and forgiveness. We’ve all got the same ending to the story. The way we make that story more elaborate, I got to respect.
Animals used to provide a lowlife way to kill and get away with it, as they do still, but, more intriguingly, for some people they are an aperture through which wounds drain. The scapegoat of olden times, driven off for the bystanders sins, has become a tender thing, a running injury. There, running away is me: hurt it and you are hurting me.
She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound.
I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.
Where perception is, there also are pain and pleasure, and where these are, there, of necessity, is desire.
There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.
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