What Is the Bliss of Extinction?

"When arising and ceasing cease, cessation is bliss." The dharmas of arising and ceasing are the worldly dharmas of the five aggregates and the eighteen realms, and all of these dharmas are subject to arising and ceasing. When sentient beings, through cultivation, eliminate the self-view and then eliminate self-grasping, they gain the ability to extinguish these illusory worldly dharmas of the five aggregates. Once all these arising-and-ceasing dharmas have been extinguished, only the Dharmakāya, the tathāgatagarbha, remains, and the tathāgatagarbha abides in a state of cessation (nirvāṇa). Since the tathāgatagarbha has no feeling of suffering, it is expediently said to be bliss—this is called the bliss of cessation (nirvāṇa).

The five aggregates are suffering dharmas; where there are the five aggregates, there is suffering. The arhats only wish to extinguish suffering. Having completed the cultivation of the Four Noble Truths and become beyond training (aśaikṣa), when their karmic affinity with the world is exhausted, they will extinguish both the five aggregates and the seven consciousnesses. Extinguishing the five aggregates is equivalent to extinguishing the feeling of suffering; once the feeling of suffering is extinguished, there is no more suffering. Yet although there is no suffering, there is also no bliss of a worldly nature, because worldly bliss is itself suffering and is impure. The bliss of nirvāṇa is different from worldly bliss: it is the tranquil, unconditioned bliss of cessation, not the kind of noisy worldly pleasure—it is simply difficult to express in worldly language.

This bliss of cessation is the tranquil bliss of the Dharmakāya tathāgatagarbha, free from suffering and free from clamor. In this bliss, there is no one who experiences bliss; the Dharmakāya itself does not experience bliss, because He does not perceive sense objects. There is no five-aggregate body that experiences bliss, and there is no person who, without experiencing bliss, experiences suffering, because there is no person there at all. The Dharmakāya itself also does not experience suffering. In this state, there is no feeling of suffering or bliss, nor any feeling that is neither suffering nor bliss—only a realm of unconditioned tranquility.