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Nirvana   Listen
noun
Nirvana  n.  In the Buddhist system of religion, the final emancipation of the soul from transmigration, and consequently a beatific enfrachisement from the evils of worldly existence, as by annihilation or absorption into the divine. See Buddhism.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nirvana" Quotes from Famous Books



... physical: he experiences it himself, he inflicts it upon others; (ii) that this suffering is occasioned by desire; (iii) that the condition of suffering in which man finds himself admits of amelioration and relief; (iv) the way of release, and the attainment to Nirvana. ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.

... will not let her children be mishandled too far. "This is too much," she says; "this wounded leg, these crusted lips, this anxious, weary mind. Come away for a time, until your body becomes more habitable." And so she coaxes the mind away into the Nirvana of delirium, while the little cell-workers tinker and toil within to get things better for its homecoming. When you see the veil of cruelty which nature wears, try and peer through it, and you will sometimes catch a glimpse of a ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Ford,' through the ocean of existence. [273] But Jainism differs from Buddhism in that it holds that the soul, when finally emancipated, reaches a heaven and there continues for ever a separate intellectual existence, and is not absorbed into Nirvana or ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... lust Of life passed from me; so the narrow I Merged in the infinite, from hope set free— Heritor of Nirvana's holy calm, Wherein the voices of the heart's unrest Are stifled, and the soul expands to clasp Joy, nothingness, ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... aster. At intervals of about a minute, one of the Hindoos raised a short, wailing chant, in parts of which the others joined. On the ground in front of him lay a sweetly-scented manuscript whose pages he never turned. It was written in the Oriental characters, which seem to tell either of Nirvana or of the nightingale's cry to the rose. At times the other friends tapped gently on three painted drums, hardly bigger than tea cups. The enemy, seeing from Bulwan the little crowd of us engaged upon a heathen rite, threw shrapnel over our heads. It burst and sprinkled the dusty ground ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson

... preservation of the weak. There can be no question of the grandeur of this conception. To no man is given nobler aspirations than to him who conceives of a just distribution of comfort in an existence not idle, but without struggle. It would be a Nirvana glorious only in the absence of sorrow, but still perhaps a happy ending for our race. It may, after all, be our destiny. Nor can any right-minded man forbear his tribute to the good which Socialistic ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams

... higher aim, a greater mission. What is a kingdom? What are wealth and power? What crown and scepter? They are transient things, I yearn for the Immortal state, Nirvana. ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus

... to consist in absolute rest, the Oriental astrologers conceived a state of eternal and unconscious repose, equivalent to soul absorption, to which they gave the name of Nirvana, into which they taught that, by the awards of the gods, the souls of the righteous, or those who had lived what they called "the contemplative life," would be permitted to enter immediately after death. ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... may be associated with and evoked by Theism, or the belief in a Divine Father; by Pantheism, as in the case of Spinoza, whose face at the very first glance impresses you with its spiritual cast; or even by the Buddhist belief in Nirvana. It may also be attained by following the precepts and striving after the ideals of Ethical Culture. For spirituality is not indissolubly associated with any one type of religion or philosophy; it is a quality of ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... Multiplicity is appearance; the difference between the individual soul and the All Soul depends upon an error which we can overcome. The goal of salvation is the ascent into the universal spirit Brahma (in the nirvana of the Buddhists there is the same thought). Whoever has entered into the highest spirit, there is no longer any "other" for him. Brhadaranyaka-Upanishad, IV, 3: (23) "If he does not then [The man in the deep sleep (susupti),] see, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... to fall upon one another with naked swords. Their savage lust of battle was aroused. To fight, to kill, to die with cold steel buried in their vitals! Ah, that to them was Nirvana. ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... is a place of pilgrimage for Japanese ascetics who are desirous of attaining "perfect peace" by imitating Shitta-Tai-shi, the Japanese Buddha, who climbed to the summit of a mountain in search of nirvana (calm). Orthodox Japs believe that the grains of sand brought down on the sandals of the pilgrims ascend to the summit again of their ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... power like angels, and there was the Buddha (the just man made perfect), who had worked out for all men the way to reach surcease from evil; but of God I saw nothing. And because the Buddha had reached heaven (Nirvana), it would be useless to pray to him. For, having entered into his perfect rest, he could not be disturbed by the sharp cry of those suffering below; and if he heard, still he could not help; for each man must through ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... case of a larva. I feel myself returning into a more elementary form. I behold my own unclothing; I forget, still more than I am forgotten; I pass gently into the grave while still living, and I feel, as it were, the indescribable peace of annihilation, and the dim quiet of the Nirvana. I am conscious of the river of time passing before and in me, of the impalpable shadows of life gliding past me, but nothing breaks the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... colours. He doubted, and agonized in his doubt; but as the sun set, the religious side of his nature had won the victory, and seems to have come out even purified from the struggle. He had attained to Nirvana, had become clear in his mind, a Buddha, an Enlightened One. From that night he not only did not claim any merit on account of his self-mortification, but took every opportunity of declaring that from such penances no advantage at all would be derived. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... say so. The cashier of the local trust has compromised an astral body, and has squandered on her all our funds, including a lot of first mortgages on Nirvana. I suppose he's been dabbling in futures and is short in his accounts. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... go for the stenographer, but I remember very distinctly the sounds of the last few words he uttered, which were twice repeated. These I wrote down and sent away. I found the translation of the words was; "After a brief bird life I shall find Nirvana." ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... the magazine and thought for a while about these diverse men. In the days of his integrity he would have defended his attitude to the last—an Epicurus in Nirvana, he would have cried that to struggle was to believe, to believe was to limit. He would as soon have become a churchgoer because the prospect of immortality gratified him as he would have considered entering the leather business because the intensity ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Buddhism just now and much puzzled to describe, and I judge even to imagine, their heaven, I confidently recommend a week's continuous jar upon a rough railway as the surest preparation for attaining a just conception of Nirvana, where perfect rest is held the greatest possible bliss. Lying, as I did apparently, upon air cushions, and rocked so softly on the waves, I had not a wish; desire was gone; I was content; every particle of my weary body seemed bathed in delight. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... literature, but this obliges me to write the same word differently in different places, e.g. sometimes Ajatasatru and sometimes Ajatasattu, just as in a book dealing with Greek and Latin mythology one might employ both Herakles and Hercules. Also many Indian names such as Ramayana, Krishna, nirvana have become Europeanized or at least are familiar to all Europeans interested in Indian literature. It seems pedantic to write them with their full and accurate complement of accents and dots and my general practice is to give such words in their ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... NIRVANA.—Buddha taught, (1) that existence is always attended with misery; (2) that all modes of misery result from passion, or desire unsatisfied; (3) that desire must be quenched; (4) that there are four steps in doing this, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... oblivion. Gropingly his fingers went again into his pocket and came out holding the envelope out of which he had taken the death tablets. They, too, had betrayed him. Instead of torture they had brought the peace of Nirvana. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... which only a presumptuous form of religion has ventured to treat as transitory or insignificant. Let me use a technical word, and say that it is no pantheistic absorption in an impersonal Light, no Nirvana of union with a vague whole, which the Apostle holds out here, but it is the closest possible union, personality being saved and individual consciousness being intensified. It is the clothing of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... for aeons in a state of ecstatic being. But, beyond even this transcendent state, there is another, which is called the "Circle of the Infinite," or "Ceugant," which is identical with the "Union with God" of the Persians and Greek Mystics, or the "Nirvana" of the Hindus. Rather an advanced form of philosophy for "barbarians," is it not? Particularly when contrasted with the crude mythology of ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... demanda alors la permission de rester dans le temple, et elle passa le reste de sa vie faire du bien. Enfin elle mourut aussi et passa dans l'endroit immortel des Hindous, dans le Nirvana,[30] o elle ne souffrit plus jamais, et o elle trouva le bonheur complet et le repos qu'elle ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber

... to citizen and helot, while the sculptured ideals of Attica slept in Pentelican quarries; Brahmin and Sudra, according to deeds done in the body— strictly according to deeds done in some body—awake beyond the grave to share aeons of sorrowful transmigration, and final repose; Nirvana awaits the Buddhist high and low alike; Islamism sternly sends all mankind across the sharp-edged Bridge, which the righteous only cross in safety, while wicked caliph and wicked slave together reel into the abyss below. The apotheosis of pagan heroes rested on personal ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... sky, the distant town, the soft buffeting of the winds of heaven, are a joy to the aesthetic part of man, the freedom from all responsibility and accountability is Nirvana to his moral nature. A man who has once tasted these two joys together, the joy of being in the open air and the joy of being disreputable and unashamed, has touched an experience which the most close-knit and determined nature might well dread. Life has ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... life's dream is Nirvana. What Nirvana is the learned do not agree. But, since the best original authorities tell us there is neither desire nor activity, nor any possibility of phenomenal reappearance for the sage who has entered Nirvana, it may be safely said of ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... a prairie slew: long grass reaching up out of clear water, mossy bogs, red-winged black-birds, the scum a splash of gold-green. Kennicott smoked a pipe while she leaned back in the buggy and let her tired spirit be absorbed in the Nirvana of the incomparable sky. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... Star Hosts thy awe-struck devotees: The Moon, thy halo unchanging. White-robed time telling his beads Of aeons on the thread of Eternity By the ocean of space Slumbering in peace at thy feet; While Destiny stringing the lyre of death Sings Nirvana's hymn. ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji

... a lama must be present to see that the soul is properly separated from the body and to direct the spirit on its journey to paradise; the lama must also influence its rebirth in a happy existence and provide for its entrance upon Nirvana, or eternal rest. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... "Daddy, come out! Daddy darling, you must! Daddy come out and help Molly pick daisies!" And, since one's here, and the Spring's in the garden (How many lives hence will that thought earn pardon?) Since one's a man and man's heart is insistent, And, since Nirvana is doubtful and distant, Though life's a hard road and thorny to travel— Stones in the borders and grass on the gravel, Still there's the wisdom that wise men call folly, Still one can go ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit

... deck outside the combing of the cockpit. Nirvana had no attraction for him. He resented forced inactivity as an unendurable wrong. Instead of smoking with half-closed eyes, he peered eagerly forward under the sail. He noted everything—the floating gulls and puffins, the stiff, wild-eyed cormorants, the jelly-fish, ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... sits 'musing and fasting and hoping to die.' Fitzjames is the precise antithesis: his heart was with the trampling legions, and for the ascetic he might feel pity, but certainly neither sympathy nor respect. He goes out of his way more than once to declare that he sees nothing sublime in Buddhism. 'Nirvana,' he says in a letter, 'always appeared to me to be at bottom a cowardly ideal. For my part I like far better the Carlyle or Calvinist notion of the world as a mysterious hall of doom, in which one must do one's fated part to the uttermost, acting and hoping for the best and trusting' ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... boasts only one God and numberless creeds. Each creed claims superiority. This brings inharmony and causes Christians to snap at each other like a pack of wolves. We have many gods and only one creed. We have knowledge and enlightenment which finally lead to Nirvana." ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... of Norlaminians. From their tasks everywhere had come the mental laborers; the Country of Youth had been left depopulated; even those who, their lifework done, had betaken themselves to the placid Nirvana of the Country of Age, returned briefly to the Country of Study to speed upon its way that stupendous Ship ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... merits of these immense images have been numerous and by no means unanimous. To my mind they are superb specimens of the work of the old metallurgists of Japan, and they are, moreover, deeply interesting as indicative of the ideas of their designers in regard to the expression of placid repose of Nirvana. Mr. Basil Chamberlain has appositely remarked in reference to the great statue at Kamakura: "No other gives such an impression of majesty or so truly symbolises the central idea of Buddhism, the ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... the day was extremely inclined to mysticism, in which aesthetic, erotic, and all kinds of morbid and ill-defined tendencies were united, which was more than anything else tinged with a semi-Asiatic quietism, a longing for the passive ecstasy of Nirvana. This religious side of mediaeval life was also gratified by the Arthurian romances. Oddly enough, there existed an old Welsh or Breton tale about the boy Peredur, who from a complete simpleton became the prince of chivalry, and his many adventures connected with a certain mysterious ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... normal man has a more materialistic consciousness. But having lost that, your very spirit has dissolved into these strange illuminations which you call thought, but which I fear are only the ghostly rays of a Nirvana intelligence. With you life is but a breath without form, a whisper out of your long eternity. And I confess that to me the impression of a man not being at home in his own body ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... through the prosecution before the Patent Office and possibly before the courts shouting high praises of the invention, but all the tribunals turn a deaf ear. Sometimes the attorney finally reaches Nirvana; the invention comes into its own. It shakes the world, just as the attorney had always ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness

... still establishes on earth Desire and worship, through the radiant laws Of Duty, Love and Beauty; for through these As through three portals of the self-same gate The soul of man attains infinity, And enters into Godhead. So he gained On earth a fore-taste of Nirvana, not The void of eastern dream, but the desire And goal of all of us, whether thro' lives Innumerable, by slow degrees, we near The death divine, or from this breaking body Of earthly death we flash at once to God. Through simple love and simple faith, this man Attained a height ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... and, to begin with a negative, it is not the secret of Nirvana. There are misguided critics abroad in the land who seem to assume that life lived easily in a beautiful place, amid a society which includes all knowledge in its comprehensive survey, and far remote from the human tragedy of poverty and toil and pain, must necessarily ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... prodigiously comfortable bed; dead silence, not so much as an owl in the still night she looked out into during an excursion warranted to promote sleep—but never sleep itself! She had been dragged reluctantly from a dreamless Nirvana into the presence of a waking nightmare—two great beautiful eyes that looked at her and saw nothing; and this coercion, she somehow felt, was really due to an unaccountable absence of mind on her part. Surely she ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... creed is never to prepare food for myself if it is possible to get some one else to do it. A complete inertia is a vital step toward Nirvana." ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... yesterday. A full and significant life is its own justification; and in a last analysis philosophies and theologies offer us only the life more abundantly which the great Teacher said he came into the world to bring. Buddhism offers us eternal peaceful existence in Nirvana; Epicureanism offers pleasure, which is but an intensification of life; Stoicism offers us life freed from disturbing forces; and the great lure which Christianity has always held before humanity is life eternal. Life is its ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes

... free by deserting the rest. I know the Hindoos as you do, and I love them, but even among them, Buddha has not said the last word of wisdom. Do you remember that Bodhisattva, the Master of Pity, who swore not to become Buddha, never to find freedom in Nirvana, until he had cured all pain, redeemed all ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... found too tough and embarrassing a subject, and so it was thought expedient to ignore him for the more tractable prophet of India, whose doctrine of Transmigration might with a little sophistry be made to resemble the Christian doctrine of Immortality, and his Nirvana ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... meaning the enlightened one, was Prince Siddhartha of Hindustan, who died about 477 B.C. He was the founder of the Buddhist religion, which teaches that the supreme attainment of mankind is Nirvana or extinction. This doctrine naturally follows from the Buddhist assumption that life is hopelessly evil. Many of the moral precepts of Buddhism are closely akin ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... The Nestorians were far more active propagandists. Worship is a very high type of service; but worship becomes selfish and sickens into sentiment, if it neglects the inspiring tonic of contact with human need. The monophysite Christology encouraged that form of self-sacrifice, whose goal is Nirvana, which lapses lazily into the cosmic soul and loses itself there in contemplation and ecstasy. It supplies no motive for that finer piety which manifests itself in ethical endeavour and practical philanthropy. His Christ had not partaken of the cup of suffering. ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce

... upset the presiding genius of my culinary department, as she could not give us the bounteous feast she knew was expected on such occasions. I, as usual, when there was any lack in the viands, tried to be as brilliant as possible in conversation; discussing Nirvana, Karma, reincarnation, and thus turning attention from the evanescent things of earth to the joys of a life to come,—not an easy feat to perform with strong-minded women,—but, in parting, they seemed happy and refreshed, and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... only traces of it can be found in some Buddhistic sects in China. Mahayana Buddhism, on the other hand, developed into a true popular religion of salvation. It did not interfere with the indigenous deities and did not discountenance life in human society; it did not recommend Nirvana at once, but placed before it a here-after with all the joys worth striving for. In this form Buddhism was certain of success in Asia. On its way from India to China it divided into countless separate streams, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... seems to be sent out nightly on some extended excursion with orders never to let their gongs fall silent, and long before dawn even the few who have succeeded in falling into a doze are snatched awake by an atrocious din of church-bells sufficient in number to supply heaven, nirvana, the realm of houris, and the Irish section of purgatory, with enough left over to furnish boiling pots for the more crowded section of the Hereafter. Then with a dim suggestion of dawn every living dog and fighting-cock, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... patience, brotherly love, and repentance for sins committed above sacrifice and bodily mortification, and opened to his followers the prospect, after this weary life, no more to be exposed to the ever-recurring pains of new birth, but released from all suffering to return to Nirvana, or nothingness. While Brahminism drew a distinction between man and man, and with hierarchical pride took no thought of the Sudra or lower class of the people, and limited wisdom to the priestly caste, ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten

... moreover, what one may call a discarnate status—an order, that is, of relationships and activities in which discarnate personality realizes and expresses itself. Our racial curiosities about the state of the dead are quenchless. Every religion has its creeds, its dreams, its assurances. From the Nirvana of the Buddhist to the ardent paradise of the Mohammedan, faith and longing have built their structure and peopled it with their dead. Great ranges of literature are coloured by such speculations. Christian hymnology is instinct with them and not a little of our noblest ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... you take the Christian or the Buddhist point of view. He's found his Nirvana in checker problems and collecting literature about insignia. Write? I don't suppose he'd want to if he could. 'There but for the grace of God goes'—you or I. I think the facilis descensus to the gutter is ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... The Nirvana of age is now beginning. In the morning, when Jeanne brushes my hair, I feel a kind of soothing titillation which lasts all day. I do not trouble about dressing; I wear no jewellery and never ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... Out of the blankness, out of the silence Emerges on soundless wings! The long sweet-sloping Rise and fall of far viol notes,— The mad Nirvana, The faint and spectral ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke

... pre-existence of souls, and the old pagan doctrines of the reincarnation of souls, and the final absorption of all into Nirvana. A spirit having answered that all had been asserted in some other form, questions and answers followed from ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith

... Colonel, rousing himself from a brief nirvana of digestion, "I hope that you will not be dull." He said it with the confidence of a man who has just laid before you a pretty convincing sample of ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... history. The world has thrown me back upon myself and made me at times what is called mad. After being down-hearted for some time, I grow superstitious and imagine that some strange and fatal spell is hanging over us all. Even my own acts and thoughts take on the futility of nightmare, and Nirvana is very welcome, if I could be sure of it, but I had rather stay what I am than start life all over again in some other shape, with a possible creeping recollection of my former existence. I have at times startled intimations that I lived in vain in some former unhappy time; ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... NIRVANA, n. In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... say?" Harriet answered. "Our meeting was entirely accidental. He had no idea of finding me; was as surprised as I was." She stopped abruptly, musing on some unpalatable thought. "You wouldn't know him, Linda. He is a perfect freak," she said, presently, "talks about Karma and Nirvana and I don't know what all! Whether he's a Theosophist or a Brahmin ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... sets out on its wanderings and passes into the body of a boy. When the boy is found he becomes the Dalai Lama of Lhasa. Lamaists believe, then, in the transmigration of souls, and the end, the fullest perfection, is peace in Nirvana. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... little more than six inches. On the sole-part of each footprint there is the impression of a wheel; and upon each of the prints of the ten toes there is a flower-like design, which sometimes radiates light. When the Buddha felt that the time of his Nirvana was approaching, he went to Kushina [Kusinara], and there stood upon that stone. He stood with his face to the south. Then he said to his disciple Anan [Ananda]: 'In this place I leave the impression of my feet, to remain for a last token. Although ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... shooting is relaxed—oppressed with a benumbing, sodden silence—the silence of a primordial world. Such a silence as must have brooded over the Face of the Waters on the Eve of Creation—desolate, desolate, as though a colossal, invisible pillar—a pillar of the Infinitely Still, the pillar of Nirvana—rose forever into the empty blue, human life an atom of microscopic dust crushed under its basis, and at the summit God Himself. And I find time to ask myself why, at this of all moments of my tiny life-span, I am able to ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... or metal doors once swung. Above the square terraces are three circular terraces, where seventy-two latticed dagabas (reliquaries in the shape of the calyx or bud of the lotus) inclose each a seated image, seventy-two more Buddhas sitting in those inner, upper circles, of Nirvana, facing a great dagaba, or final cupola, the exact function or purpose of which as key to the whole structure is still the puzzle of archaeologists. This final shrine is fifty feet in diameter, and either covered a relic of ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid

... it, in consequence of the presence of the Rajah Moussa, that I only rarely got a glimpse of the magnificent diamond solitaires in her ears. Our conversation was not brilliant, and the Sultana looked to me as if she had attained nirvana, and had "neither ideas nor the consciousness of the absence of ideas." We returned and took leave of the Sultan, and after we left I caught a glimpse of him lounging at ease in a white shirt and red sarong, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... accused me. He jerked down a section of white curtain and whirled it over the stiffening body. "If you must grieve, grieve for Miss Nefer! Exiled, imprisoned, locked forever in the past, her mind pulsing faintly in the black hole of the dead and gone, yearning for Nirvana yet nursing one lone painful patch of consciousness. And only to hold a fort! Only to make sure Mary Stuart is executed, the Armada licked, and that all the other consequences flow on. The Snakes' Elizabeth let Mary live ... and England die ... and the Spaniard hold North America to the Great ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... bunks were ranged and all of them occupied. Most of the occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were squatting in their bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes. These had not yet attained to the opium-smoker's Nirvana. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... suggests (2e. serie, t. ii. p. 62) that the ultimate result was almost the nirvana of Budhism. It will be observed, that the view taken in the text concerning the Neo-Platonic philosophy, for which I am largely indebted to Pressense, is different from that which regards it as monotheism, and which has been made popular by Mr. Kingsley's novel, Hypatia, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... than the poor. After a term of years the Tagbanua dies again and goes at once to a heaven in a deeper cave without danger from fire. Seven times he dies, each time going deeper and becoming happier, and probably gains Nirvana in the end. Occasionally a good spirit returns as a dove, and a bad one comes as a goat; indeed, a few of the bad ones are doomed to wander ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... name for religious charity, the first of the six paramitas, or means of attaining to nirvana; and a danapati is "one who practises dana and thereby ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... herald-shadow of herself and her horse rushing away before them, ever more distort as it fled:—like some ghastly monster, in horror at itself, it hurried to the infinite, seeking blessed annihilation, and ever gathering speed as the sun of its being sank, till at last it gained the goal of its nirvana, not by its well run race, but in the darkness of its vanished creator. Then with a sigh would Barbara come to herself, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... being in no position to settle the rival claims of the physical delights of the Mohammedan paradise, the comparatively insipid ideal of the Apocalypse, and "the nameless quiet" of the Buddhist Nirvana, feels compelled to pass them all by and to hold that of the invisible universe we are painfully ignorant, and that the only deathless reality is the will of man conformed to the great obedience of the moral law. It believes that the test of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... and the sorrows in a divine peace—a peace that became the reward of all disciples of the religion that he founded. This peace was called by him Nirvana and his disciples say he is the only man who attained it in his lifetime, for Nirvana is supposed to come only to the spirits of the dead, who have purified themselves not in one life, but in many. In Buddha's belief ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... Perfection. It is still the goal to the color-blind and normal alike, whatever they call it, however, they visualize it. That is its only importance; it is The Goal..... In things spiritual the same obtains—whether one's vision embraces Nirvana, or the Algonquin Ocean of Light, or a pallid Christ half hidden in floating clouds—Drene, it is all one, all one. It is not the Goal that changes; only our intelligence concerning its existence ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers

... in a future life? Surely 'tis not the priest of Reigan who speaks; nor Iemon." She could only see his lips move as he stood at the amado. "Evil was the connection between O'Iwa and this Iemon. Wander not as one unburied, but becoming a Buddha at once enter Nirvana. Namu Myo[u]ho[u] Renge Kyo[u]! Namu Myo[u]ho[u] Renge Kyo[u]! Wonderful the Law, wondrous the Scripture of the Lotus!" With the invocation he cast the stunned reptile far out into the garden. Returning, he said—"The aodaisho[u] ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... (1) that existence is always attended with misery; (2) that all modes of misery result from passion, or desire unsatisfied; (3) that desire must be quenched; (4) that there are four steps in doing this, and thus of arriving at NIRVANA, which is the state in which self is lost and absorbed, and vanishes from being. These four ways are (1) the awakening to a perception of the nature and cause of evil, as thus defined; (2) the consequent quenching of impure and revengeful feelings; (3) the stifling of all ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... went back again to the long chair; limbs and brain weighted with a luxury of weariness. Shattered hope; a life-and-death struggle ahead:—the words held no meaning for him now. His lids fell. The balm of Nirvana shrouded his senses, blotting out thought, as sea mists, rolling landward, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... as well have swept the rising tide with a broom. He talked with magnificent vehemence for twenty minutes, his theme being some theory of his own that the individuality of a soul is immortal, and that even in perfection, the soul cannot possibly merge into any Nirvana. Meantime, I wondered how Mr. Percy was employing his time, but after one or two ineffectual attempts to interrupt, I gave myself to silence until the oration ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... ambition, and he placed no faith in the sincerity of the great official's Buddhist propaganda. Meanwhile, the fortunes of the new faith prospered. When the dying Emperor, Yomei, asked to be qualified for Nirvana, priests were summoned from Kudara. They came in 588, the first year of Sushun's reign, carrying relics (sarira), and they were accompanied by ascetics, temple-architects, metal-founders, potters, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... liquids so as to make it evident that he was entirely a man. "There wasn't in the whole world a drink that could do him any harm...." And after a second "refresco" from Uncle Caragol, he became submersed in a placid nirvana, seeing everything rose-colored and considerably enlarged,—the sea, the nearby boats, the docks, and Montjuich ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... and terrifying proof of the futility of human effort, that there is neither bad work nor good work to do, nothing but to await the coming of the Nirvana. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... and driving and music-loving Mr. Pike. Many a haler remnant than he had gone down on a last voyage. As for Captain West, he did not count. He was too neutral a being, too far away, a sort of favoured passenger who had nothing to do but serenely and passively exist in some Nirvana ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... away into the furthest stars, even as our minuet of the Hessian bathing places must be stepping itself still. Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves? Isn't there any Nirvana pervaded by the faint thrilling of instruments that have fallen into the dust of wormwood but that yet had frail, ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... foundation of that teaching. Therefore he certainly received at that time the true meaning of the Divine Promise of universal salvation, and attained unto the imperishable faith by which alone the ignorant can enter into Nirvana without condition or price. ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin

... greater than the present race of men, as that is greater than the lowest brutes. Above all these elements of man, controlling all, and preserving its individuality throughout, is "spirit." Yet even this, when absorbed into Nirvana, is lost in that great whole which includes all things and is Nature herself. Lost, do I say?—yes, lost for inconceivable ages upon ages, yet destined to come forth again at some moment in eternity, and to begin its round through ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... passing into the different kingdoms; "Amwn" is the state through which beings pass only once, which means that the "I," when once gained, continues for ever. "Gwynvyd" is the world of perfect and liberated souls, eternal Heaven, great Nirvana. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... to the western sky still bright with noon, I feel well spurred and booted for the strife That ends not till Nirvana ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... he sat with his hands clasped about his knees, and contemplated space with the abstract look of a Buddha gazing into Nirvana. ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice

... of the Norseman, the Nirvana of the Hindu, the Heaven of the Christian are natural hopes of beings whose cares and disappointments here are softened by belief that somewhere, Thor, ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... holds out as the ultimate of hope the state of Nirvana, in which existence is not, where the soul is "blown out" like the flame ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... we shall attain, unto the Promised Land, which is that Nirvana past all understanding, there shall we labour abundantly for the salvation of all living things. For so the Sutra teaches us in these words: "A heart that inclineth to the succour ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin

... bells grow harsh and strident, as they hint of a dark fate. I clasp my hands appealingly to the heavens; I moan and struggle with the unknown grasp; then there is peace and the sweet content of the infinite Nirvana. ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... comes to deal with what is beyond him, how little able he is to devise anything that he desires to do when he has escaped from life. The unsubstantial heaven of a Buddhist, with its unthinkable Nirvana, is merely the depriving life of all its attributes; the dull sensuality of the Mohammedan paradise, with its ugly multiplication of gross delights; the tedious outcries of the saints in light which make the ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... These are right, justice, truth, morality, an honest mind, a pure heart—all words meaning: a balance must be struck. The strong must not be too strong; the weak not too weak. But without variation how could the balance be maintained? Nirvana! Nirvana! ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... his horn spectacles, "she made me worship her! For first she asked me of my faith and listened eagerly as I expounded it, hoping that the light would come into her heart; then, after I had finished she said—"'So your Path is Renunciation and your Nirvana a most excellent Nothingness which some would think it scarce worth while to strive so hard to reach. Now I will show you a more joyous way and a goddess more worthy ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... suppleness to take his Highness's orders. Then, receiving a card and bowing low, he entered the porch with the wooden Ionic pillars, and disappeared within, while the Maharajah folded his hands and seemed to resign himself to a temporary Nirvana. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... of his exquisite faculty of minute sight—with a feeling of great peace; and thought prayerfully; lost himself in a kind of formless prayer without words—lost himself completely. It was as if the wished-for dissolution were coming of its own accord; Nirvana—an ecstasy of conscious annihilation—the blessed end, the end of all! as ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... Wagner's Tristan is supposed to set forth is that of Schopenhauer. But Schopenhauer's doctrine of Negation of Will or Nirvana—for it is identical with that of Buddhism—is a negation of existence itself absolutely. The man who puts an end to his own life does not attain Nirvana; he is not dissatisfied with life in itself, but only with its conditions, and he passes through the endless cycle of Samsara until the ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... appeared to be occupied. Most of the occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were noisily sucking at the opium-pipes. These had not yet attained to the opium-smokers Nirvana. So much did Gaston Max, a trained observer, gather in one swift glance. Then Ah-Fang-Fu, leaving the lantern in the shop, descended the four steps and crossing the room began to arrange two mats with round head-cushions near to the empty ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... she watches the faces of the monks, and at one moment longs to attain to their peace by renunciation, longs for Nirvana; 'then, when one comes out again into the hot sunshine that warms one's blood, and sees the eager hurrying faces of men and women in the street, dramatic faces over which the disturbing experiences of life have passed and left their symbols, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... be more correct to look upon the German State as a Teutonic Nirvana—with this distinction, that it is a negation of personal individuality, but at the same time a huge, collective positive. The individual German fulfils his life's mission by absorption into Nirvana and by having all his activities transformed in the collective whole for the benefit ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... man La Fleur took out a small phial and poured some few drops of a dark liquid on the girl's tongue. Half consciously swallowing it, she sank back again—this time, into a deeper nirvana. ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... two centuries on this continent has made over the lowest and wildest forms of human brotherhood. That's my idea, Ranny. I'm an optimist. I believe that every invention we make, that every step we take in the advancement of science, of mental and physical uplift, brings us just so much nearer to the Nirvana of universal love. This trip of mine among your wild people of the North will give me a good picture of what ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... foot. But such is not the suggestion of Hampstead itself upon a tranquil summer day to the pensive observer. It seems a peaceful, a sleepy hollow, an amiable elevated lubber-land, affording to London the example of a kind of suburban Nirvana. ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... Him, and the sooner we see this and yield ourselves in obedience, not like "dumb driven cattle" but as self-respecting, self-asserting mortals—within the law of accord with the highest—the sooner shall we enter into that "Nirvana" which ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... of expression and gesture. These were surely the very first auxiliaries of uttered speech, and in the same way we find that they constitute the first sign of advance in primitive melody. Savages utter the same thought over and over again, evidently groping after that semblance of Nirvana (or perhaps it may be better described as "hypnotic exaltation") which the incessant repetition of that one thought, accompanied by its vibrating shadow, sound, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... pessimism,[12] which rests on a recognition of the inevitable taint of this world, of the implication of evil in life. To avoid this taint, the all-real-and-all-good must be freed even from existence. It can be conceived and attained only by denial. Nirvana is at once the all-real, the all-good, and—in terms ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... Madame Guyon. The theme of all the pieces which Cowper has translated is the same—Divine Love and the raptures of the heart that enjoys it—the blissful union of the drop with the Ocean—the Evangelical Nirvana. If this line of thought was not altogether healthy, or conducive to the vigorous performance of practical duty, it was at all events better than the dark fancy of Reprobation. In his admiration of Madame Guyon, her translator ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... do or to see, then he became master of himself and conducted himself accordingly. Contemplation, accompanied by a cigarette, was now his chief good. What his meditations were no one knew, but they sufficed unto himself. He had attained Nirvana. He lived in a region ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... were shamed at having allowed herself to be caught in open admiration of him. "Look! The last effulgence of rose!" she went on hurriedly about the sunset. "Why shouldn't we think of the sky as heaven, as Nirvana? What better immortality than to be ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... the universe, set itself solely to the work of salvation, the end of which was the merging of the individual in the unity of being, and the "way" to which was the mortification of all private passion and desire which mortification, when finished, was the Buddhist Nirvana. This is the primary doctrine of the Buddhist faith, which erelong became a formality, as all faiths of the kind, or of this high order, ever tend to do. Buddha is not answerable for this, but his followers, who in three successive ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... beau monde of modern paganism, with its hundred gospels of La Nuance; no one, assuredly, were more blase than he, with his languors of pose, and face of so wan a flame. The Oscar Wilde of modern legend were not more as a dweller in Nirvana. But Narcissus maintained that all this was but a disguise which the conditions of his life compelled him to wear, and in wearing which he enjoyed much subtle subterranean merriment; while underneath the real man lived, fresh as morning, vigorous as a young sycamore, wild-hearted as an eagle, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... of their lamentation over them, and the heathenish doubt whether they shall know them again. Verily it were a wonder if they did! After a year or two of such a fate, they might well be unrecognizable! One is almost ashamed of writing about such follies. The nirvana is grandeur contrasted with their heaven. The early Christians might now and then plague Paul with a foolish question, the answer to which plagues us to this day; but was there ever one of them doubted he was going to find his friends again? It is a mere form of Protean unbelief. They believe, they ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... his mind, but then stole away unanswered and unwelcome, and for that hour, while Mrs. Falbe finished with Lady Ursula, while Hermann smoked and sighed like a sentimental German, and while he and Sylvia sat, speaking occasionally, but more often silent, he was in some kind of Nirvana for which its own existence was everything. Movement had ceased: he held his breath ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... were out. There was enough light now for them to see Maya's tomb not far away. It seemed to be fashioned of moonbeams. It was such a perfect copy of the Taj Mahal that here both death and sleep were brothers—and a nirvana of peace hung over it in an aura ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... asleep, but fought against it for the sake of decorum. To my surprise, when I glanced at my right-hand neighbour I saw that she was fast asleep, and when I glanced at the one on my left I saw that she was asleep too. I looked about at other people, and saw more than one sunk in a pious Nirvana. As we left the church I asked the Englishwoman, who had a strong sense of humour, whether she had slept well. 'Yes,' she said, laughing, 'it did me a lot of good.' 'But why do you go?' I said. 'Oh, my dear,' said she, 'what can one do? It ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... of earthly life spring, through adaptation, the varied powers and varied sensibilities, susceptibilities to joy and pain as well as the rest. The greater the sensitiveness the greater the capacity for suffering. Hence the "quenching of desire," the "turning toward Nirvana, the desire to escape from the hideous bustle of a world in which we are able to take no part, is a natural impulse with the soul which feels but cannot ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan

... and far higher aims. In Burmah, however, the idea of the eternity of the Deity had evidently been lost, and Gautama had practically usurped the place that the higher Buddhists gave to Brahma. Indeed, though the true Buddhist system looks to the absorption in the Deity,—Nirvana, as it is called,—the popular notion, as received in Burmah and corrupted by less refined minds, made it into what was either absolute nonentity or could not be distinguished from it, so that the ordinary Burman's best hope for the future was ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... of withdrawal his sense of Self-reality becomes keener, not less keen. It is important to remember that, because often Western readers, dealing with Eastern ideas, in consequence of misunderstanding the meaning of the state of liberation, or the condition of Nirvana, identify it with nothingness or unconsciousness—an entirely mistaken idea which is apt to colour the whole of their thought when dealing with Yogic processes. Imagine the condition of a man who ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant

... to consummate the solemn purchase. Coming away with our treasure, we read aloud from the orange coloured volume, in turns, as we strolled along, until at last we sat down on the bulging root of an elm tree in a secluded lane. Here we stayed, in a sort of poetical nirvana, reading, reading, forgetting the passage of time, until the hour of our neglected mid-day meal was a long while past, and we had to hurry home to bread and ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... If man honestly aspires to higher things and tortures his flesh, it may go better with him in another life. For he must be born again many times, and must torture his body until it shrivels up, is freed from sin, and is without desires. Then the soul is released and is not born again, for Nirvana, the last goal, is reached. Only bad men continue to live. The nations of India had been demoralised by that doctrine for centuries. But it did not satisfy wise men. Balthasar thought: If a man starves through a few dozen lives, then something good must come out of it. Or is evil good ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... imminence to all. The buoy, with its flaming torch, had drifted far to leeward, and the lookout could do no more than follow its fainting light as the dark of the tropics closed in. An hour the Noa-Noa lay gently heaving upon the mysterious waters in which the despairing pundit had sought Nirvana, until the boat returned with a report that it had picked up the buoy, but had seen no sign of the man. Doubtless he had been swept into the propellers, but if not quickly given release in their cyclopean strokes, he may have watched for a few minutes our vain ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... from the Tangs even as their notion of life differed. They sought to actualize what their predecessors tried to symbolise. To the Neo-Confucian mind the cosmic law was not reflected in the phenomenal world, but the phenomenal world was the cosmic law itself. Aeons were but moments—Nirvana always within grasp. The Taoist conception that immortality lay in the eternal change permeated all their modes of thought. It was the process, not the deed, which was interesting. It was the completing, not the completion, which was really vital. Man came thus at once face ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura

... egotism. Body is repudiated as a garment, position is an accident, the past that made us exists not since it is past, the future exists not for we shall never see it; at last nothing but the abstracted ego remains,—a sort of complimentary Nirvana. One citation will serve to show the colour of all his thought. "A man," he remarks, "is very devout to prevent the loss of his son. But I would have you pray rather against the fear of losing him. Let this be ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... his kingdom henceforth, until, at last, we are altogether taken up into his being" (p. 68)—one does not quite see the reason for this long campaign against death. Surely the logical consummation would be an ultimate racial euthanasia, an absorption of humanity into God, a vast apotheosis-nirvana, after which the earth and sun could go ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... getting on in years, or who are stricken with a mortal disease, are compelled by rule to move into a certain part of their monastery, known as the Abode of a Long Old Age, in which they are required—not to die, for death does not come to a good priest, but—to enter into Nirvana, which is a sublime state of conscious freedom from all mental and physical disturbance, not to be adequately described in words. At death, the priest is placed in a chair, his chin supported by a crutch, and then put into a wooden box, which on the appointed day is carried ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... nonexistence, nonsubsistence; nonentity, nil; negativeness &c adj.; nullity; nihility^, nihilism; tabula rasa [Lat.], blank; abeyance; absence &c 187; no such thing &c 4; nonbeing, nothingness, oblivion. annihilation; extinction &c (destruction) 162; extinguishment, extirpation, Nirvana, obliteration. V. not exist &c 1; have no existence &c 1; be null and void; cease to exist &c 1; pass away, perish; be extinct, become extinct &c adj.; die out; disappear &c 449; melt away, dissolve, leave not a rack behind; go, be no more; die &c 360. annihilate, render null, nullify; abrogate ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... believers came to Japan, one of them, climbing Fuji, noticed that around its sunken crater were eight peaks, like the petals of their sacred lotus flower. Thus, it seemed to them, Great Buddha had honored Japan, by bestowing the sacred symbol of Nirvana, or Heaven, on the proudest and highest part of Japan. So they also named it Fuji, "the sacred mountain"; and to this day all the world calls this sacred mountain Fuji, or Fusi Yama, while the Japanese people believe that the earth which sunk in Omi is the same which, piled to ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... were not planned for flight, but that flight has produced wings', hence that Haeckel's gospel of 'Dysteleology' or purposelessness in Nature satisfactorily explained creation—a great wave of oriental theosophy overflowed us; and a revival of Buddhism invited me to seek Nirvana as ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... couldn't afford to lose now; and, what puzzled me, he stopped drinking. The man simply looked tired, always hopelessly tired; and I could believe him sincere in all his foolish talk about his blessed Nirvana: which was the peace he craved, which was end ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.



Words linked to "Nirvana" :   heaven, promised land, region, Buddhism, Hindooism, Shangri-la, beatification, blessedness, part



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