Although Nibbāna is beyond all description and can not possibly comprehended by the thinking mind through language and concepts, the Buddha still used various similes to convey some idea to us what Nirvāṇa is all about.

In particular, many times he compared the eperience of Nibbāna to a fire gone out.

However, there's a big problem with that simile nowadays:
Our current understanding how fire functions is very different from the theory of fire in ancient India. In our time, after a fire has gone out, we simply regard it as non-existant.

But that would be a serious misunderstanding regarding the experience of Nibbāna. The statement that an enlightened person after death doesn't exist anymore has been explicitely rejected by the Buddha as not applicable (of course, to state that he exists is just as inapplicable).

In ancient India, fire was regarded as 'clinging' to the fuel dependent on which it burns. When the fire goes out (e.g. through exhaustion of its fuel), the fire is released and enters a non-manifest state. Indian's at the time of the Buddha would not see an extinguished fire as non-existant.

Instead, they believed an extinguished fire is simply freed from its entrapment to the fuel, and has entered a state in which it can't be defined or described.


As Ajahn Geoff Thanissaro will visit Dhammagiri end of November, Ajahn Dhammasiha uses the opportunity to introduce us to an excellent essay of Ajaan Ṭhānissaro on exactly this subject:

"The Mind Like Fire unbound"

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