What Is the Joy of Nirvana?

The extinction of birth and death having ceased, quiescent extinction is bliss. The dharmas of birth and death constitute the mundane dharmas of the five aggregates and eighteen realms, all of which are characterized by arising and ceasing. Sentient beings, through cultivation, sever the view of self and subsequently sever self-attachment, thereby gaining the capacity to eradicate these illusory mundane dharmas of the five aggregates. After all these arising-and-ceasing dharmas are extinguished, only the Dharma Body, the Tathāgatagarbha, remains. The Tathāgatagarbha then abides in a state of quiescent extinction. Since the Tathāgatagarbha experiences no suffering, it is conventionally spoken of as bliss, termed the bliss of quiescent extinction.

The five aggregates are dharmas of suffering; wherever the five aggregates exist, there is suffering. Arhats seek only to extinguish suffering. After cultivating the Four Noble Truths and becoming non-learners (arhats), when their connection with the world is exhausted, they must extinguish both the five aggregates and the seven consciousnesses. Extinguishing the five aggregates equates to extinguishing the experience of suffering. Once suffering is extinguished, there is no suffering. Although there is no suffering, there is also no worldly bliss, because worldly bliss is also suffering and is impure. The bliss of Nirvana differs from worldly bliss; it is the quiescent bliss of extinction, characterized by stillness and non-action, not the clamorous bliss of the mundane world. It is merely difficult to express in worldly language.

This bliss of quiescent extinction is the silent, suffering-free, clamorless bliss of the Dharma Body, the Tathāgatagarbha. Within this bliss, there is no experiencer of bliss, for the Dharma Body itself does not experience bliss, as it is unaware of objects. There is no body of the five aggregates experiencing bliss, nor any person who does not experience bliss but suffers, because there is fundamentally no existence of a person. The Dharma Body itself does not suffer. In this state, there is neither the feeling of suffering nor bliss, nor the feeling of neither suffering nor bliss—only a state of non-active quiescence.