What is Nirvana?

Also see:

Great Resource of Buddha's Teachings
The Deathless in Buddhadharma?
The Meaning of Nirvana




Wrote this in Reddit three years ago:


https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/2xuq7b/is_nirvana_basically_nonexistence/cp3k7c2/

Nirvana is simply the cessation of craving, aggression, and delusion. Delusion includes the construct of self, that I exist, that I am the perceiver or controller of experiences and actions. Nirvana is not annihilation because what ends is simply a process of delusional I-making and mine-making and other related mental afflictions, it is not the annihilation of some actual self (which never existed).
Nirvana is when, in seeing the seen, it's realized and experienced that there is simply that scenery, and no seer. No you in terms of that. In hearing sound, there's simply (always already) only sound, no hearer. In thinking... only thought, no thinker. When this is realized, not merely intellectualized, and directly experienced as being so, and all sense of self are being released, then that is Nirvana. This is peace, bliss, freedom from suffering. It is not boring: in fact, boredom only exist when there is a sense of self, and a sense of dissatisfaction with what is present, therefore a craving for something to be 'better than what is'. There is a subject and object here: 'I' want 'something better out there'. But when anatta is realized and actualized, there is no sense of self, there is no subject and object, no dichotomy of perceiver and perceived, and everything is just lucid and luminous and blissful and perfect as it is. Nirvana is also the cessation of craving.
(For more information check out Bahiya Sutta)
Also Buddha teaches that we have past lives and future lifetimes, but if you attain Nirvana, you are no longer stuck in this cycle of samsaric rebirth and suffering.