Exaltation & Nirvana

An inevitable question in all human pursuits is the question, “What is the point?” The promise of reward—whether it the reward is tangible or not—shapes human action at every level. Salaries justify tedious jobs; knowledge justifies challenging studies. Every parent knows that “Why?” is often a child’s earliest and most persistent question, and posing that question is a childhood trait that is seldom outgrown.
“Religion has been an attempt to find meaning and value in life,” according to religious historian Karen Armstrong. Creation myths and even beliefs about the existence and nature of God explain the world and satiate curiosity, but it is the question of the end goal that most motivates and inspires human behavior. It is the aspiration for a better future, perhaps (too often) coupled with a fear of consequences, that makes religion an ethical lifestyle and not an academic exercise.
Because life is observably unfair, most religions have accepted that a positive outcome to a righteous life may not be immediate. Surely, if there is any point to good living, much of the reward must come after death—at least for most of us. A discussion of the afterlife need not be only abstract theology. It is tempting to always study religious ethics on a macrocosmic scale and in historical perspective. How, for example, did the history of the ancient near East shape Buddhist ethics? How does American history shape the ethics of Mormonism? Such questions can be interesting and important but they do not reflect the way religion is experienced. David Ford says, “One way in which we try to make sense of life is to see ourselves as part of some overarching history or drama.” To understand how religion informs and shapes ethical choices, we should also work backwards. How does the understanding of the eternal future shape an individual’s present choices? Would two religions with strikingly disparate views of the end goal—such as Mormonism and Buddhism—come to any mutual understanding about how one should act today because of what one hopes for tomorrow?

Exaltation
As a practicing Latter-day Saint, or Mormon, my desire for a certain eternal outcome profoundly shapes all my major decisions and the trivialities of my daily lifestyle. Like most Christians, Latter-day Saints have a deep and abiding hope for salvation and atonement. Through the merits of Christ and by his grace, we overcome sin and death and are reconciled to God. “In the Gospel partnership,” explains Brigham Young University religion professor Stephen Robinson, “since we are one with Christ, we receive credit for what Christ has done, and it is his infinite merit rather than our own flawed performance that finally secures a ‘not guilty’ verdict.” Yet, Latter-day Saints have a goal greater an acquittal. They want to use their forgiveness to enter God’s presence so they may know Him, and achieve the greatest spiritual reward exaltation, the reward of becoming like Him.
In the Book of Mormon, a prophet named Lehi said, “Men are that they might have joy.” But the view of this joy is very specific. It comes through eternal life. “This is life eternal,” defined Jesus in the Gospel of John, “that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent.”
For Latter-day Saints, God the Father is addressed intimately and conversationally as “Heavenly Father.” This term is not used lightly or symbolically. Divinity is not an ethereal presence or unknowable supremely. He is a Father, who loves his children and wishes for them to grow to be more like him. Mormon ethics are inseparable from the understanding that all humanity—ourselves and also all those with whom we interact—are children beloved by the shared father of all mankind. He isn’t ethereal, for we will embrace Him; he isn’t unknowable, for it is our obligation to know him. The Sermon on the Mount injunction, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect,” is not taken as poetry or hyperbole, but the ultimate eternal goal.
Joseph Smith taught, “If the veil were rent today, and the Great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make himself visible,—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with him, as one man talks and communes with another.” To the Latter-day Saint, God may be temporarily distant or mysterious, but when we meet Him, we will see some of us in Him. Elder Boyd K. Packer, an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, teaches, “Since every living thing follows the pattern of parentage, are we to suppose that God had some other strange pattern in mind for His offspring? Surely we, His children, are not, in the language of science, a different species than He is?”
Though such a characterization often is assailed as anthropomorphic but Latter-day Saints do not see it that way. Rather, it is we human beings who are theomorphic. We resemble God as any children would resemble their parent. “We use the term Godhood to describe the ultimate destiny of mankind,” explains Elder Packer. “We may now be young in our progression—juvenile, even infantile, compared with Him. Nevertheless if we are worthy, we may be like unto Him… Man may achieve Godhood.”
Thus God is not only tangible and knowable, He is our model. The highest spiritual achievement is to grow to be like our Father. To those who seek it, the reward is grand: “Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then they shall be above all, because all things are subject to them. Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject to them.”
This ambitious view of the afterlife has profound implications on the earthly life. Its grandeur breeds a frenzied urgency to do good and its earthly impossibility instills a desperate dependence upon divine assistance. Such is reiterated young and often. For example, in a manual for teenage boys, the current President of the Church, Gordon B. Hinckley tells the boys, “You have been called to make a difference in the world. As a son of God… you can be a wonderful force for good.” Being a child of God carries heavy responsibilities, but promises divine assistance.
The end goal in Mormonism is to be like God. Such a goal requires radical rethinking of daily ethical choices. One must come to know God, which is an active spiritual quest. Mormonism’s founding prophet, Joseph Smith taught, “Three things are necessary in order that any rational being may exercise faith in God unto life and salvation. First, the idea that he actually exists. Secondly, a correct idea of his character, perfections, and attributes. Thirdly, an actual knowledge that the course of life which he is pursuing is according to his will.” Thus, it is insufficient to accept grace and make no lifestyle changes. Ammon, another Book of Mormon prophet, taught, “He that repententh and exerciseth faith, and bringeth forth good works, and prayeth continually without ceasing—unto such it is given to know the mysteries of God.” Coming to know God is an academic and ethical exercise.
An actively involved Latter-day Saint is expected to live such that he can know “the course of the life which he is pursuing is according to [God’s] will.” An actively practicing Latter-day Saint will view life decisions through the perspective of living up to being a child of God and pleasing a perfect father. The expectations—abstaining from premarital sex, drugs, alcohol, even coffee and tea, serving as a missionary, filling unpaid leadership positions, dressing modestly, avoiding certain entertainment, donating ten percent of income, fasting once a month, among many others—can be a daunting litany of requirements. It is the promise of a glorious future that has the power to motivate. What about “the inability to live up to being the best possible human being?” Fortunately, the Father being emulated is also perfectly forgiving.

Nirvana
Operating under vastly different assumptions, Buddhism has come to a vastly different understanding of the end goal. Where Mormonism seems to emphasize the future in positive terms, that is in terms of what it is—Buddhism emphasizes what it is not. “Early sources describe nirvana in predominately negative terms such as ‘the absence of desire’, ‘the extinction of thirst,’ ‘blowing out,’ and ‘cessation.’” Sin and death are not the enemies in Buddhism. Suffering and desire are. So the ultimate goal is not redemption, but escape or “cessation.”
In the First Noble Truth, Buddha teaches, “Birth is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering. Pain, grief, sorrow, lamentation, and despair are suffering. Association with what is unpleasant is suffering, disassociation from what is pleasant is suffering. Not to get what one wants is suffering.” Scholar Damien Keown explains that the far worse problem is “the inevitability of repeated birth, sickness, ageing, and death in lifetime after lifetime.” He adds, “Individuals are powerless in the face of these realities.” While a religious reminder that life is suffering is hardly uplifting, Buddhism is surely just expressing a fundamental truth commonly recognized.
Suffering is a universal human experience, but it desire that is at the root. In the Second Noble Truth, Buddha teaches, “It is this thirst or craving (tanha) which gives rise to rebirth, which is bound up with passionate delight and which seeks fresh pleasure now here.” Here Buddhism offers a radical insight. It is not circumstance itself that makes situations painful; it is our desires being disappointed, our cravings not being fulfilled.
Having established the problem of humanity and its cause, Buddhism offers its hope in the Third Noble Truth, “the Truth of the Cessation of Suffering. It is the utter cessation of that craving (tanha), the withdrawal from it, the rejection of it, liberation from it, non-attachment to it.” Such an achievement, perfectly attained, brings nirvana. It is not a heavenly reward as much as a relief from earth. Keown defines it as “quenching” or “blowing out” as in a candle flame.
Nirvana is not attained through divine assistance. It is done by discipline and inner transformation. “What is extinguished,” explains Keown, “is the triple fire of greed, hatred, and delusion.” Perhaps recognizing suffering is not revolutionary. It is also not revolutionary to hope for an end to suffering, but Buddha did not hope for suffering to end. What was bold was that he proclaimed that there is, in fact, an escape. There is an end.
Buddha goes on in the Fourth Noble Truth to describe the path to ending suffering. There is something profoundly telling in the order of the Noble Truths, though, which speaks to human experience beyond Buddhism. The reality that there is a solution is presented before the instructions on how to achieve it. People need a vision of the goal, in this case the cessation of suffering, and a promise of its possibility.
The achievement of nirvana is a process requiring a dedication to the Eightfold Path. As in Mormonism’s quest to become more like God, Buddhists have an example. “The Eightfold path is a kind of modelling process: the eight factors reveal how a Buddha would live, and by living like a Buddha one gradually becomes one.”
Buddhists’ pursuit of this final liberty and attainment requires a lifestyle committed to ethical principles. The “Five Precepts” are a starting point. They forbid killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, dishonesty, and intoxicants. “On becoming a Buddhist one formally ‘takes’ (or accepts) the precepts in a ritual context, and the form of the words used acknowledges the free and voluntary assumption of the duty assumed.”
The attainment of nirvana cannot be separated from the ethical precepts. Outside of these behavioral standards, one cannot achieve the pure meditation or the renunciation of desires necessary. By obedience to them, the mind is clearer and the desires are controlled.
The theology of nirvana is abstract and difficult to grasp, but it is deeply motivational and practical. In the story The Journey of One Buddhist Nun, Sid Brown presents the struggle of Maechi Wabi, a Thai woman who overcame and fought against great social pressures to pursue her spiritual life. As a young person she tasted a bit of nirvana on a vacation, a rare cessation of suffering for her. She said, “I had never before felt the feelings I felt during those seven days: peace, contentment, joy, coolness in my heart.”

Perhaps she could endure what she did because on her quest, she had a taste for her goal. “Obstacles,” after all, “are extinguished in the realization of nirvana.”
Even in the absence of a God, Buddhism does not lack a sense of the sacred or a sense of divine potential in human beings.

Arising thousands of years apart in vastly different cultures, both Mormonism and Buddhism offer an answer to the hard question of life, What is the point? Both offer glorious solutions beyond what is experienced on earth, which give deeper meaning and purpose to this mortal life.

Former dean of Harvard Divinity School, Krister Stendahl said that when we compared religions, we should leave room for “holy envy.” Without undermining my own devotion to my faith, I can say that I have much holy envy for Buddhism. While my faith fills me with hope and purpose, there is much to admire in a religion that teaches overcoming greed and hate. There is much to admire in a religion that teaches calm moderation. There is something there I can integrate into my own holy frenzy.

Understanding a religion’s vision of the afterlife is essential to understanding how we are to live today. Armstrong says, “Western liberal humanism is not something that comes naturally to us.” For many of us, it not only doesn’t come naturally, it does not and cannot come. Where liberal humanism often seeks to reason life into neatly defined compartments—clean dichotomies between faith and reason, or between spirit and matter are held up as the ideal—such distinctions are not universal. Neither Mormonism nor Buddhism sees a chasm between eternal destiny and earthly ethics. In both cases, becoming better forever means trying hard to be better now.