The Many Names of Nirvāṇa

T1606 explains the logic linking exhaustion and freedom-from-desire specifically to the two stages of the path already established in this treatise: "exhaustion" names release attained through the path of seeing's own antidote, since it is the very act of seeing directly that thins the mass of remaining affliction down almost to nothing; "freedom from desire" names release attained through the path of cultivation's own antidote, since cultivation is what gradually, level by level, removes whatever desire for each successive realm still remains after the initial breakthrough of seeing. Together, these two stages account for cessation's entire release from bondage — which is why the treatise can then say "because of this joint release from bondage, future suffering no longer arises," moving directly from these two technical terms into "extinction" itself as the natural next name in the sequence.

T1606 elaborates a few of the more evocative names with extra precision. "Ambrosia" (甘露) marks freedom specifically from the "māra of the aggregates" — the way one's own five grasped aggregates function as a constant, built-in vulnerability to death, since nirvāṇa permanently sets this vulnerability aside. "The isle" describes cessation as a promontory rising clear above the ocean of birth and death, standing apart from all three realms the way solid ground stands apart from open water. "The supreme resort" is distinguished specifically as what an arhat's own realization actually relies on and points toward — the object that direct spiritual attainment itself takes as its own genuine reference point. And "unmoved" names freedom specifically from the endless agitation of conceptual proliferation about sense objects, the same "戲論" (needless elaboration) already flagged as cessation's core defining absence back at the start of this section on profundity.

T1606 explicitly frames this final cluster of five names as a deliberate mirror-image of the truth of suffering's own defining marks, already established across Parts 26–31: suffering's own mark is that it continues arising, life after life, within each of countless sentient beings — cessation's "unborn" directly negates precisely this. Suffering's mark is that a being's own aggregates, once born, gradually reach their own full completion — "unarisen" negates this gradual completing. Suffering's mark is that present suffering is itself produced by prior karma and affliction's own force — "uncreated" negates this backward-looking dependency. And present suffering itself, in turn, serves as the basis for further karma and affliction yet to come — "unmade" negates this forward-looking role. Reading this entire long list of names as a systematic, point-by-point negation of the truth of suffering, rather than as merely accumulated poetic praise, is exactly the interpretive key T1606 offers for making sense of why the treatise felt the need to give nirvāṇa so many distinct names at all: each one targets a specific, corresponding feature of the very suffering it brings to an end.

These four closing marks give the truth of cessation the same tightly compressed final summary already given for the truth of origination in Part 49: cessation, considered as freedom from affliction, is the mark of cessation proper; considered as freedom from the suffering that affliction produces, it is the mark of stillness; considered as its own positive, blissful character rather than merely an absence, it is the mark of excellence; and considered as a permanent, never-lost condition rather than a temporary reprieve, it is the mark of release. Taken together with the roughly two dozen names just given, these four marks close the truth of cessation on the same note that has run through this entire section: nirvāṇa is not a single simple idea but something rich and multi-faceted enough to require dozens of different, precisely justified names — and yet, for all that richness, still reducible, at its very core, to these four essential aspects.