Astral Codex Ten

Nirvana

4 min read

Nirvana

Article

Nirvana is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between May 04, 2022 and November 07, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Then, when you die, your consciousness won’t continue at all. It’ll just stay nothing. Nirvana!”; “I translate nirvana as ‘freedom’”; “nirvana is just a peaceful state beyond joy or suffering”. It most often appears alongside Buddhism, Bob, Elon Musk.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: May 04, 2022
  • Last seen: November 07, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Every Bay Area House Party
May 04, 2022 · Original source
“Of course it can, that’s the whole point of Buddhism. You need to become nothing, gradually, naturally, in a way where each step is causally linked to the step before. Then, when you die, your consciousness won’t continue at all. It’ll just stay nothing. Nirvana! Seems pretty straightforward to me. I don’t know why everyone else keeps saying that Buddhism has ‘supernatural elements’ or parts that are ‘hard to square with modern science’.”
Even More Bay Area House Party
January 04, 2023 · Original source
“Glad you asked! I’m working on a new translation of the Pali Canon. I translate nirvana as ‘freedom’, maya as ‘fake news’, and Mahayana as ‘monster truck’. Gādhrakūta is ‘Mt. Eagle’. Some parts don’t even have to be retranslated! The sutras say that you attain the formless jhanas by ‘passing beyond bodily sensations and paying no attention to perceptions of diversity’. See, it’s perfect! Red state conservatives already hate paying attention to diversity!”
In What Sense Is Life Suffering?
November 07, 2025 · Original source
This is the starting point of many people’s objection to Buddhism. They continue: if nirvana is just a peaceful state beyond joy or suffering, it sounds like a letdown. An endless gray mist of bare okayness, like death or Britain. If your life was previously good, it’s a step down. Even if your life sucked, maybe you would still prefer the heroism of high highs and low lows to eternal blah.
Against all this, many Buddhists claim to be able to reach jhana, a state described as better than sex or heroin - and they say nirvana is even better than that. Partly it’s better because jhana is temporary and nirvana permanent, but it’s also better on a moment-to-moment basis. So nirvana must mean something beyond bare okayness. But then why the endless insistence that life is suffering and the best you can do is make it stop?
Inline links: jhana
But scientifically (according to the Buddhists) there’s only one kind of emotion: suffering. Apparent neutral is a fact about human perception with no objective significance. If you start at “very bad” and take away suffering, at some point your perception switches from “less suffering” to “more joyful”, but you’ve just been taking away suffering the whole time. The real “zero suffering” isn’t neutral / blah / just okay. It’s nirvana, which feels more blissful than we can possibly imagine.