Even though the Truths make rational sense, the texts emphasize that they did not come to Gotama by means of discursive reasoning. As he sat meditating under the bodhi tree, they “rose up” in him, as from the depths of his being. He apprehended them within himself by the kind of “direct knowledge” acquired by a yogin who practices the disciplines of yoga with “diligence, ardor and self-control.” Gotama was so absorbed in these Truths, the object of his contemplation, that nothing interposed itself between them and his own mind and heart. He had become their human embodiment. When people observed the way he behaved and responded to events, they could see what the Dhamma was like; they could see Nibbana in human form. In order to share Gotama’s experience, we have to approach the Truths in a spirit of total self-abandonment. We have to be prepared to leave our old unregenerate selves behind. The compassionate morality and yoga devised by Gotama only brought liberation if the aspirant was ready to lay aside all egotism. It is significant that at the moment he achieved Nibbana under the bodhi tree, Gotama did not cry “I am liberated,” but “It is liberated!” He had transcended himself, achieved an exstasis, and discovered an enhanced “immeasurable” dimension of his humanity that he had not known before.

What did the new Buddha mean when he claimed to have reached Nibbana on that spring night? Had he himself, as the word implied, been “snuffed out,” extinguished like a candle flame? During his six-year quest, Gotama had not masochistically courted annihilation but had sought enlightenment. He had wanted to wake up to his full potential as a human person, not to be wiped out. Nibbana did not mean personal extinction: what had been snuffed out was not his personality but the fires of greed, hatred and delusion. As a result, he enjoyed a blessed “coolness” and peace. By tamping out the “unhelpful” states of mind, the Buddha had gained the peace which comes from selflessness; it is a condition that those of us who are still enmeshed in the cravings of egotism, which make us hostile toward others and distort our vision, cannot imagine. That is why the Buddha always refused, in the years following his enlightenment, to define or describe Nibbana: it would, he said, be “improper” to do so, because there are no words to describe such a state to an unenlightened person. The attainment of Nibbana did not mean that the Buddha would never experience any more suffering. He would grow old, get sick and die like everybody else and would experience pain while doing so. Nibbana does not give an awakened person trance-like immunity, but an inner haven which enables a man or woman to live with pain, to take possession of it, affirm it, and experience a profound peace of mind in the midst of suffering. Nibbana, therefore, is found within oneself, in the very heart of each person’s being. It is an entirely natural state; it is not bestowed by grace nor achieved for us by a supernatural savior; it can be reached by anybody who cultivates the path to enlightenment as assiduously as Gotama did. Nibbana is a still center; it gives meaning to life. People who lose touch with this quiet place and do not orient their lives toward it can fall apart. Artists, poets and musicians can only become fully creative if they work from this inner core of peace and integrity. Once a person has learned to access this nucleus of calm, he or she is no longer driven by conflicting fears and desires, and is able to face pain, sorrow and grief with equanimity. An enlightened or awakened human being has discovered a strength within that comes from being correctly centered, beyond the reach of selfishness.

Once he had found this inner realm of calm, which is Nibbana, Gotama had become a Buddha. He was convinced that, once egotism had been snuffed out, there would be no flames or fuel to spark a new existence, because the desire (tanha) which bound him to samsara had been finally quenched. When he died, he would attain his paranibbana, his final rest. Again, this did not mean total extinction, as Westerners sometimes assume. The paranibbana was a mode of existence that; we cannot conceive unless we have become enlightened ourselves. There are no words or concepts for it, because our language is derived from the sense data of our unhappy, mundane existence; we cannot really imagine a life in which there is no egotism of any kind. But that does not mean that such an existence is impossible; it became a Buddhist heresy to maintain that an enlightened person would cease to exist after death. In the same way, monotheists have insisted that there are no words that can adequately describe the reality they call “God.” “He who has gone to his final rest (parinibbana) cannot be defined by any measure,” the Buddha would tell his followers in later life. “There are no words capable of describing him. What thought might comprehend has been canceled out, and so has every mode of speech.” In purely mundane terms, Nibbana was “nothing,” not because it did not exist, but because it corresponded to no thing that we know. But those who had, by dint of the disciplines of yoga and compassionate morality, managed to access this still center within found that they enjoyed an immeasurably richer mode of being, because they had learned to live without the limitations of egotism.

The account of the Buddha’s attainment of enlightenment under the bodhi tree in the Pali texts can leave the modern reader feeling baffled and frustrated. It is one of the places where these Theravadin scriptures become opaque to people who are not expert yogins, since they dwell in such detail on meditative technicalities. More helpful to an outsider is the story told in the later scripture, the Nidana Katha, which makes the notion of enlightenment more accessible to ordinary mortals. As with its version of Gotama’s “Going Forth,” this story explores the psychological and spiritual implications of enlightenment in a way that a lay person or Buddhist beginner can understand, because it has no yogic jargon but gives us a wholly mythological account of the enlightenment. The author is not attempting to write history in our sense, but draws instead on timeless imagery to show what is involved in the discovery of Nibbana. He uses motifs common in mythology, which has been aptly described as a pre-modern form of psychology, tracing the inner paths of the psyche and making clearer the obscure world of the unconscious mind. Buddhism is an essentially psychological religion, so it is not surprising that the early Buddhist authors made such skillful use of mythology. Again, we must recall that none of these texts is concerned with telling us what actually happened, but rather is intended to help the audience gain their own enlightenment.

The Nidana Katha emphasizes the need for courage and determination: it shows Gotama engaged in a heroic struggle against all those forces within himself which militate against the achievement of Nibbana. We read that after Gotama had eaten his dish of junket, he strode as majestically as a lion toward the bodhi tree to make his last bid for liberation, determined to reach his goal that very night. First, he circled the tree, trying to find the place where all the previous Buddhas had sat when they had won through to Nibbana, but wherever he stood, “the broad earth heaved and sunk, as though it was a huge cartwheel lying on its hub, and somebody was treading on its rim.” Eventually, Gotama approached the eastern side of the tree, and when he stood there, the ground remained still. Gotama decided that this must be the “immovable spot” on which all the previous Buddhas had positioned themselves, so he sat down in the asana position facing the east, the region of the dawn, in the firm expectation that he was about to begin a new era in the history of humanity. “Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up, together with all the flesh and blood of my body! I will welcome it!” Gotama vowed. “But I will not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom.”