"a liberating relationship"

Rather than a remote transcendent state, nirvana is a liberating relationship with all things. For Nagarjuna, it is simply "the letting go of what rises and passes" and, as such, is neither something nor nothing. It suggests a freedom that cannot be pinned down in either time or space, prompting Nagarjuna to ask:


What do you think

Of a freedom that never happened?

What do you make

Of a life that won't go away?


---"Verses from the Center" by Stephen Batchelor