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Samsara and Nirvana

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Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion
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On Buddha’s birthday a spotted fawn is born – just like that (Bashō 1999, p. 70).

Introduction

The structure of this double entry, i.e., the combination of the entries Samsara and Nirvana, moves from an analysis of samsara and nirvana as religious concepts to the question of the relation between nirvana’s revelation and the perceptual shift which results from performing a phenomenological reduction (cf. Heidegger, 1962; cf. Heidegger, 2008). In other words, if the practice of meditation, for example, zazen (cf. Suzuki 1993, p. 29) or koan (cf. Suzuki 1971, pp. 18–200), produces what is tantamount to a phenomenological reduction and if meditation is a practice toward the revelation of nirvana, then to what extent is the accomplishing of a phenomenological reduction a practice toward revealing or realizing nirvana?

Next, a brief conceptual analysis of nirvana in relation to different conceptualizations of time follows the examination of the above question. On the one hand, it seems as...

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Scalambrino, F. (2014). Samsara and Nirvana. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6086-2_612

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