Nirvana or the many ways to ultimate freedom
William Jones was a versatile Welshman with a gift for languages. After graduating from Oxford he worked as a translator for six years, gaining a reputation as an expert on the Orient. At the same time he took a degree in law, and later served as a judge in Wales and then France. At a Paris court he worked unsuccessfully with Benjamin Franklin to resolve the dispute over the American colonies. He was then appointed a judge to the Supreme Court of Bengal in 1783 and off he went to India, where he would spend the rest of his life.
Almost as soon as he arrived in his new home Jones established the Asiatic Society, aiming to promote the study of the continent among expatriates and natives. These studies produced the journal Asiatic Researches and its 1801 edition includes the first reference in English to nirvana as a place “signifying a hall of glory, where the deceased Buddhas are supposed to be”. In Sanskrit the word literally means extinction, describing a state of being released from the cycle of death and rebirth.
Three decades later, in 1829, Edward Upham’s History and Doctrine of Buddhism describes nirvana as “eternal bliss”. And moving into the 20th century, this concept of perfect happiness found a wider audience in the Western world. Today there are an estimated 1.2 million practicing Buddhists in the United States alone.
However far it spreads across the globe, the concept of nirvana remains particularly relevant in East Asia, where Nirvana Day is an annual festival that commemorates the death of the Buddha. Celebrated by some Buddhists on February 8th and by others on February 15th it marks Buddha reaching the age of 80 and leaving behind physical existence to achieve a state of bliss.
In the early 1990s “nirvana” gained new significance for Americans when Kurt Cobain chose the name for the grunge band that would come to be seen as the voice of the nation’s youth. Cobain spoke eloquently of what the concept meant to him, quoting Webster’s dictionary. “Nirvana means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of punk rock”. Sadly Cobain’s own longevity didn’t come close the definition of nirvana. He took his own life at the age of 27.
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