Nirvana literally means blown out, like a flame starved of fuel
The Sanskrit nirvana joins nis, out, to vana, blown, so its root sense is extinguished. Buddhists pictured greed, hatred and delusion as three fires that keep rebirth burning. Put them out and the cycle stops, which is why early texts compare liberation to a fire dying for lack of fuel.
The scholar Collins suggests the Buddhists were probably the first to call the goal nirvana, and possibly on purpose: Vedic texts and the Upanishads had described Atman and Brahman with fire imagery as something good, so speaking of blowing the fire out was pointed. The sounds shifted in the process, with the v of vana turning nis into nir, and the r in turn altering the following n.
In Buddhism nirvana belongs to the third of the Four Noble Truths, the ending of suffering, and is the aim of the Noble Eightfold Path. Scholastic tradition says the Buddha reached it twice: once at his awakening, with a remainder of bodily existence, and again at death as final parinirvana. It is linked to the doctrine of non-self and to emptiness, yet Theravada also treats it as the one unconditioned reality, something actually known by those who complete the path.
The wider idea grew from Vedic thought about the afterlife. Early texts promised heaven or hell according to merit, but sages found permanent reward or punishment disproportionate, since people are only somewhat good or somewhat bad. They proposed a stay in heaven or hell until merit ran out, followed by rebirth, and the resulting endless cycle, samsara, came to be governed by karma. Hindu thought called release moksha, from a root meaning to free, used of unharnessing a horse.
The word nirvana itself turns up in Hindu scripture too, in the Nirvana Upanishad and the Bhagavad Gita, both probably composed after the Buddha, while the oldest Vedas and early Upanishads speak of moksha instead. The meanings diverge sharply. Jeaneane Fowler notes that Buddhist nirvana stills mind, desire and action into emptiness, whereas later Hindu texts describe a stilled mind that is not inactive and not empty, but a realisation of the true Self united with Brahman. Jainism uses the term for a soul freed from karmic bondage.
Source: Nirvana
