Some western academics such as Richard Gombrich have that view that you only realize Nirvana at death. But in the life story of the Buddha it says that he realized Nirvana as a young man and continued to teach for many years after that. When he died he entered paranirvana.

When he taught the Buddhist path he taught in terms of the four truths, as a path to realize cessation of dukkha. This makes it a path that doesn’t require the practitioner to subscribe to any beliefs that they can’t verify for themselves. To follow the Buddhist path you need to

• See the truth of suffering and unsatisfactoriness - and more generally even than that, that there is no “happy ever after” for as long as you rely on temporary changeable things for your happiness. You may be happy for long periods of time - so it’s not saying “Everything is suffering”, or even “Everything is unsatisfactory” in any ordinary sense but - that such happiness is depending on conditions and so “dukkha”
• Be inspired by Buddha’s example that there is some truth to be realized by following the path - he taught that there is a path to cessation of dukkha.
• Be prepared to have an open mind about things you don’t know.

But you don’t have to say “I believe in rebirth”, or “I believe in God realms”, or “I believe in a pure land”, or whatever to follow the path of the Buddha. You might believe such things, and there is no problem in that, we believe many things. But it’s a path of keeping an open mind about the truth, and with the idea that there are truths to be seen that can surprise us.

Buddha did say that when he became enlightened he realized that this was his last rebirth. But when he taught the path, and told his followers how to follow the path, he talked always about dukkha and cessation of dukkha, directly, rather than teaching a method to end rebirth.

He never instituted any kind of creed, and there is no list of things you have to say you believe in to become a Buddhist. He would have had to do this if he’d taught a path to end rebirth.

At least if you go by the Buddhist sutras and treat them as authentic, it seems that the Buddhist path is not based on creeds and that you don’t have to say that you believe something to follow the path. Instead it’s a path along which you may have many beliefs, but it’s important to have an open mind to truths which may surprise you. And your starting point is that you recognize dukkha, and

ACADEMIC VIEW OF RICHARD GOMBRICH ETC

All this is very puzzling for some academics, who think that the only way to realize cessation of dukkha is to end rebirth. So also they think that he can’t have done that while still remaining alive because he would continue to be vulnerable to pain and suffering in all its forms. That kind of makes sense, you can understand why they might think that.

But Buddha never says that in the Pali Canon, so they are left with trying to explain why he didn’t say it. Richard Gombrich wrote a book “What the Buddha Thought” to present his views that this was Buddha’s original teaching and that it got lost in the sutras as we have now.

So, generally if you think that, then you need to have the view that the Pali Canon sutras are inauthentic at least to some degree, or miss out some of the central teachings, for some reason, which is Richard Gombrich’s central thesis. Basically you need to take a revisionist approach, that the sutras are incomplete, that there are things that need to be added and things that may be wrong in them.

OTHER ACADEMICS

Only some of them think like Richard Gombrich.

Rupert Gethin who is one of the western Buddhists not pushing this revisionist approach has a good section on Nirvana in his book "The Foundations of Buddhism" :

"We can, then, understand nirvana from three points of view:

• (I) it is the extinguishing of the defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion;
• (2) it is the final condition of the Buddha and arhats after death consequent upon the extinction of the defilements;
• (3) it is the unconditioned realm known at the moment of awakening. "

So - it’s his (3) that the likes of Richard Gombrich deny - but it’s in all the main sutra traditions of Buddhism - that at the moment of awakening, there is a realization that’s more than just an intellectual understanding that “this is my last rebirth”.

Rupert Gethin puts it like this, again quoting from "The Foundations of Buddhism" :

"So far we have considered nirvana from the perspective of a particular experience which has far-reaching and quite specific effects. This is the more straightforward aspect of the Buddhist tradition's understanding of nirvana . There is, however, a further dimension to the tradition's treatment and understanding of nirvana . What precisely does the mind experience at the moment when the fires of greed, hatred and delusion are finally extinguished? At the close of one of the works of the Pali canoh entitled Udiina there are recorded several often quoted 'inspired utterances' (udiina) said to have been made by the Buddha concerning nirvana . Here is the first:

‘There is, monks, a domain where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no wind, no sphere of infinite space, no sphere of nothingness, no sphere of infinite consciousness, no sphere of neither awareness nor non-awareness; there is not this world, there is not another world, there is no sun or moon. I do not call this coming or going, nor standing; nor dying, nor being reborn; it is without support, without occurrence, without object. Just this is the end of suffering.’

"This passage refers to the four elements that constitute the physical world and also what the Buddhist tradition sees as the most subtle forms of consciousness possible, and suggests that there is a 'domain' or 'sphere' (iiyatana) of experience of which these form no part. This 'domain' or 'sphere' of experience is nirvana. It may also be referred to as the 'unconditioned' (asmrzskrta/ asar(lkhata) or 'unconditioned realm' (asar(lskrta-/asar(lkhatadhiitu) in contrast to the shifting, unstable, conditioned realms of the round of rebirth. For certain Abhidharma traditions, at the moment of awakening, at the moment of the extinguishing of the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion, the mind knows this unconditioned realm directly. In the technical terminology of the Abhidharma, nirvana can be said to be the object of consciousness at the moment of awakening when it sees the four truths. Thus in the moment of awakening when all craving and attachments are relinquished, one experiences the profoundest and ultimate truth about the world, and that experience is not of 'a nothing' -the mere absence of greed, hatred, and delusion-but of what can be termed the 'unconditioned'. "

Once more, quoting from Rupert Gethin's "The Foundations of Buddhism" :

"The second truth suggests that we must recognize that the mind has deep-rooted tendencies to crave the particular experiences it likes, and that this craving is related to a fundamental misapprehension of 'the way things are': the idea that lasting happiness is related to our ability to have, to possess and take hold of, these experiences we like. In a world where everything is constantly changing beyond our control, such an outlook brings us not the happiness we seek, but discontent. Thus the third truth suggests that lasting happiness lies in the stopping of craving and grasping, in the rooting-out of greed, aversion, and delusion."

WHAT HAPPENED TO BUDDHA WHEN HE DIED?

Buddha when asked what would happen when he died just wouldn’t answer the question, leaving it as one of the unanswerable questions. In Therevadhan Buddhism - then bodhisattvas continue to take rebirth until eventually they become Buddha, while arhats may realize Nirvana and then just enter paranirvana on death. But - if I understand right, they don’t have the idea of Buddhas who continue to manifest after they die. There’s one puzzle in the Therevadhan Pali Canon - that just before he died, Buddha hinted that he could remain until the end of this world system. Ananda didn’t get the hint and when he finally asked him to remain, it was too late. So , what did he mean by that?

I’m not sure what the Therevadhan interpretation is and would be interested to know.

MISCONCEPTION THAT THE AIM IS TO BALANCE BAD KARMA WITH GOOD

Another misconception is the idea that the aim of a Buddhist is to balance good and bad karma and that if you can generate enough good karma to counterbalance all your bad karma you will cease to exist when you die and that this is the aim of the Buddhist.

But actually, any karma, good or bad, keeps you trapped in Samsara according to the Buddhist ideas. That’s because the results of karma are the results of causes and conditioned. So, Buddha taught that we can come to see that anything conditioned is subject to change and so impermanent. So therefore dukkha. There “dukkha” is often translated as suffering or unsatisfactoriness. But neither of those is quite far enough. It’s possible to have conditions in Samsara that are highly satisfactory, that are blissful even, lasting for long periods of time without a cloud on the horizon. That also would be dukkha though it’s not in any ordinary sense “unsatisfactory”. Dukkha is perhaps more like, “not 100% satisfaction guaranteed happy ever after”.

BEING KIND TO OURSELVES - HAPPINESS IS GOOD

Buddhism isn’t really about trying to get a good life through karmic cause and effect. Well it is up to a point. Buddha encouraged us to be kind to ourselves :). If we can find a way to be happy in this world for a while, there’s nothing wrong with that so long as it’s not harming others. It’s good. Good to be happy, good to help others to be happy. And Karma is just a general way of thinking about cause and effect, at least it’s one way of thinking about it. When you climb a flight of stairs and see a nice view from the top - that’s one of the effects of climbing that flight of stairs - so that is karma. In that sense we are all involved in karmic cause and effect. When you are hungry and go to the shop to buy some food - that’s you involved in karmic cause and effect too.

My example of a stair there is from Prayudh Payutto, who is amongst the most brilliant scholars in the Thai Buddhist tradition (and winner of the 1994 UNESCO prize for Peace Education), with a thorough understanding of the Therevadhan Pali Canon, who has also devoted himself to educating the public on this topic.

This is what he wrote:

There are three philosophies which are considered by Buddhism to be wrong view and which must be carefully distinguished from the teaching of kamma:

1. Pubbekatahetuvada: The belief that all happiness and suffering arise from previous kamma (Past-action determinism).
2. Issaranimmanahetuvada: The belief that all happiness and suffering are caused by the directives of a Supreme Being (Theistic determinism).
3. Ahetu-apaccayavada: The belief that all happiness and suffering are random, having no cause (Indeterminism or Accidentalism)
   
   See Misunderstandings of the Law of Kamma

There one of the biggest western urban myths about karma in Buddhism is that first one: “The belief that all happiness and suffering arise from previous kamma (Past-action determinism).” which as he says is a wrong view in Buddhism. For more on this my Karma in the Buddha's teachings

So, karma is like this ordinary cause and effect we can all see, when we walk up stairs, or go to the shops or put on a kettle for a cup of tea etc. Buddhists just take a rather broader view on it than most of us. Some of the Buddhist schools pay more attention to that broader view of karma, while others, such as Zen Buddhists, hardly pay much attention to it at all. But even with the Buddhist schools and teachers that put a fair bit of emphasis on teachings about karma, it’s not really the central teaching of Buddhism. The central teaching is much more to do with opening to others and - basically not having such a closed in claustrophobic approach to everything.

Buddha taught that you can never escape from the closed in situation we are in by this process of finding causal conditions to create nice peaceful and happy conditions for yourself. Anything that is conditioned like that is also something that can cease when the conditions for it go away. So - basically his central teaching is that the process of working with karma like that can never free you from this claustrophobic world we get caught up in, this wheel of Samsara. It can help you to have a “holiday” - a time that is somewhat more happy, relaxed, where you are not so beset with troubles that you can take a good look at what’s going on and maybe do something about it.

He gives this list of four types of worldly happiness when asked by a wealthy banker Anathapindika,:

“The first happiness is to enjoy economic security or sufficient wealth acquired by just and righteous means (attki-sukha); the second is spending that wealth liberally on himself, his family, his friends and relatives, and on meritorious deeds (bhoga-sukha); the third to be free from debts (anana-sukha); the fourth happiness is to live a faultless, and a pure life without committing evil in thought, word or deed (anavajja-sukha). “

But your “holiday” will eventually end, even if somehow you could get it to last for billions of years, some ET with immensely long lives. We might meet extraterrestrials that have happy lives that will last even for a trillion years. We might feel they have everything made, that they have achieved what we are struggling to find. But according to the teaching of the Buddha, they have still not found a way out of this cycle of Samsara.

He taught that you can even have long periods of time with not a trace of sadness or an unhappy thought, nothing but pure happiness, or even more refined states than that, for immense periods of time, and he praised this worldly happiness.

"The Buddha does not deny happiness in life when he says there is suffering. On the contrary he admits different forms of happiness, both material and spiritual, for laymen as well as for monks. In the Anguttara-nikaya, one of the five original Collections in Pali containing the Buddha's discourses, there is a list of happinesses (sukhdni), such as the happiness of family life and the happiness of the life of a recluse, the happiness of sense pleasures and the happiness of renunciation, the happiness of attachment and the happiness of detachment, physical happiness and mental happiness etc.

“But all these are included in dukkha. Even the very pure spiritual states of dhyana (recueillement or trance) attained by the practice of higher meditation, free from even a shadow of suffering in the accepted sense of the word, states which may be described as unmixed happiness, as well as the state of dhjana which is free from sensations both pleasant (sukha) and unpleasant' (dukkha) and is only pure equanimity and awareness—even these very high spiritual states are included in dukkha. In one of the suttas of the Majjhima-nikdya, (again one of the five original Collections), after praising the spiritual happiness of these dhyanas, the Buddha says that they are 'impermanent, dukkha, and subject to change' (anicca dukkha viparinamadbamma). Notice that the word dukkha is explicitly used. It is dukkha, not because there is 'suffering' in the ordinary sense of the word, but because 'whatever is impermanent is dukkha' (yad aniccam tam dukkham). "

So - working with karma does not give us a “way out”. But opening out to others and compassion and loving kindness - that’s part of the path and is a way that we can transcend all that. That’s in all the main schools of Buddhism. Along with humour and not taking ourselves too seriously, and the help of friends to bring a perspective we can’t see easily for ourselves.

PATH OF GROUNDING IN WHATEVER IS AUTHENTIC AND TRUE

It’s a path of connecting to whatever is authentic and true. Down to Earth and straightforward, and the aim is not to enter into a mystical state or a trance or anything like that.

Walpola Rahula

As Walpola Rahula put it:

"It is incorrect to think that Nirvana is the natural result of the extinction of craving. Nirvana is not the result of anything. If it would be a result, then it would be an effect produced by a cause. It would be sankhata ‘produced’ and ‘conditioned’. Nirvana is neither cause nor effect. It is beyond cause and effect. Truth is not a result nor an effect. It is not produced like a mystic, spiritual, mental state, such as dhyana or samadhi. TRUTH IS. NIRVANA IS. The only thing you can do is to see it, to realize it. There is a path leading to the realization of Nirvana. But Nirvana is not the result of this path.You may get to the mountain along a path, but the mountain is not the result, not an effect of the path. You may see a light, but the light is not the result of your eyesight."

...

In almost all religions the summum bonum can be attained only after death. But Nirvana can be realized in this very life; it is not necessary to wait till you die to ‘attain’ it."

So, if you don’t need to wait until you die to realize Nirvana - what happens when you die? Do you have to enter paranirvana?

First, there’s another misconception that paranirvana is like “going somewhere else” - escaping from Samsara to some other happy place where you are no longer caught up in anything and can enjoy your “well deserved rest”. Well Buddha when asked would not answer questions about whether

1. The Tathagata (a perfectly enlightened being) exists after death.
2. The Tathagata does not exist after death.
3. The Tathagata both exists and does not exist after death.
4. The Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist after death.

As a practicing Buddhists, then there this idea that there is some truth to discover, and that one is following a path that leads to the possibility of realizing that truth, and helping others to realize that truth, in whatever form it might manifest for them, to be able to connect to the ground truth of their situation.

But as to what that truth is, I think best to take any ideas one has about that as just hints, and to recognize that if one understood it truly, one would already be enlightened.

MAHAYANA BUDDHIST IDEA THAT FULLY ENLIGHTENED BUDDHAS CAN CONTINUE TO MANIFEST IN SAMSARA

So, we need to take everything like that, as just hints. But in Mahayana Buddhism you have many new ideas not “spelt out” in Therevadhan Buddhism. And amongst other things, there’s also the idea that Buddhas can continue to manifest in new forms as new beings after they die (and some would say, in other forms also, even apparently inanimate forms like rocks or streams). So you could have a continuing stream of lives connected by rebirth, who are all actually Buddhas, manifestations or inspired by Buddhas.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE DALAI LAMA

So, with the Dalai Lama - he could be any of these. He could be an ordinary being like ourselves, who has a connection with enlightenment (according to Tibetan Buddhists anyway) and carries that blessing with all his rebirths. Or he could be a bodhisattva, on a similar path to Buddha in his previous rebirths before he became Buddha. Or he could be Buddha already. You can see any being as a Buddha, according to some mahayana teachings - this is the idea of our Buddha nature - it’s a bit like the Quaker idea of “that of God in everyone” - that we have the awakened heart, the compassion, the wisdom, boundless like the Buddha, if we could only see it. So close, but we miss this because it is so close. Everyone, even terrorists, we all have this. So - how could that be, how could a terrorist be Buddha? Well I think it’s almost impossible to see that if not Buddha, but maybe a hint - that it’s something to do with not being caught up in the linear time stream we use to pattern everything. They are perhaps connecting to their future enlightenment, maybe countless lifetimes into the future, and seeing that in the present. But I think that’s a rather crude way of looking at it.

But anyway that’s an idea some Christians have too, and probably in other religions. That you never give up on anyone. So then - how you see someone else, it’s to do with your heart, how you open out to them. So you may see someone as bodhisattva or Buddha. And someone else might not be able to see that in them at all. So in that way it’s a kind of unanswerable question whether the Dalai Lama “really” is an ordinary being, or a bodhisattva, or already Buddha.

He himself will say that he is just an ordinary monk following the Buddhist path.