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View submission: Is nirvana a permanent state?
**The question sometimes arises:**[1] In teaching an unchanging unbinding, isn’t the Canon itself guilty of engaging in eternalism? Isn’t it espousing a pernicious wrong view? The answer is No, and here again there are both formal and strategic reasons for why not.
1: https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/uncollected/NibbanaDescription.html
The formal reason is that eternity is a function of time—a long, unending time. Unbinding, however, lies outside of the confines of space and time entirely, and so the adjective “eternal” doesn’t apply.
The strategic reason is that there is nothing inherently wrong with the idea that something is unchanging. The problem with the wrong view of eternalism is *what,* precisely, it identifies as unchanging. All of the eternalist views quoted in the Canon—in DN 1[2] and SN 22:81[3]—posit only two things as eternal: an eternal world and/or an eternal self. For the purpose of putting an end to suffering, though, the cosmos and all assumptions of self have to be seen as fabricated, dependently co-arisen phenomena. Only then can any passion for them be abandoned. To say that they are unchanging and eternal would be to say that they are unfabricated. The perceptions of inconstancy and stress would not apply to them, and so there would be no reason to develop dispassion for them. This would stand in the way of getting beyond them to attain the truly unfabricated goal of unbinding. This is another reason why these eternalist views are pernicious. Unbinding, however, is neither a self nor a world. Thus a belief that unbinding is unchanging would not get in the way of the path. In fact, as we have seen, it’s necessary to perceive unbinding as unchanging in order to be motivated to give up changing pleasures for its sake, and to recognize it when it is attained.
2: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/DN/DN01.html
3: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN22_81.html
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