14. The Names of Unbinding

More generally, though, the Buddha pointed out the desirable features of unbinding through the many names he gave to it. In a series of discourses, he listed 33 names in all, and even that list isn’t exhaustive (SN 43).

Linguistically, most of the names fall into three general sorts: those that describe a limitation that doesn’t exist in unbinding, those that describe a positive quality, and those that are metaphorical. Examples of the first sort would include unborn, unmade, deathless, undeceptive. Examples of the second would include truth, permanence, and the ultimate. Examples of the third would include harbor, shelter, and refuge.

In terms of the characteristics of unbinding that these names indicate, they fall into five classes:

1. Unbinding is experienced as a type of consciousness. This consciousness is said to be “unrestricted,” “without surface,” and “unestablished,” meaning that it makes contact with no object at all, not even consciousness itself (MN 49; AN 10:81; Ud 8:1). The Buddha illustrates these terms with a simile: a beam of light that lands on no surface anywhere, causing nothing to reflect it (SN 12:64). That’s why it’s said to be without surface. Still, even this simile is inadequate, because a light beam moves in only one direction, whereas this consciousness lies beyond all directions, in that it exists outside of space and time.

This is why it doesn’t fall under the consciousness aggregate, which is limited to acts of consciousness within the coordinates of near and far, past, present, and future (SN 22:59). As the Buddha says, unestablished consciousness contains no coming nor going nor staying in place, as these activities would assume time; it has no here nor there nor between-the-two, as these concepts assume space (Ud 1:10). Existing outside of space and time, this consciousness is without end.

This consciousness is also unlike the consciousness aggregate, even in the meditative state of the infinitude of consciousness, in that it isn’t known through the six senses. This is why unbinding is said to be subtle and hard-to-see. Yet because this consciousness is a form of knowing, the Buddha states that it’s a mistake to say that fully awakened people do not know or see (DN 15). In other words, awakening is not a blanking out. If it were, the Buddha wouldn’t have called it awakening to begin with (SN 1:7–8). He would have called it the Big Sleep. Actually, people who are fully awakened know and see to such a heightened extent that they’re beyond even the need for conviction in what the Buddha taught (SN 48:44; Dhp 97).

2. The second aspect of unbinding is its truth. Because it’s unfabricated, unborn, unmade, it’s not dependent on conditions, so it can’t change into anything else. Ever. As the Buddha said, whatever is unfabricated has three characteristics: No arising is discernible, no passing away is discernible, no alteration while staying is discernible (AN 3:48). After all, it’s outside of time. This is why he calls unbinding ageless, undecaying, deathless, undeceptive, unwavering, permanence, unbent (i.e., not tending in any direction), and true.

This truth also has a moral dimension: It’s purity.

Because unbinding is a state (pada) rather than a being (satta), it doesn’t have to be defined by attachment, so the Canon doesn’t hesitate to say that it unequivocally exists (Ud 8:1; Ud 8:3). And as I’ve noted, there’s even one passage where the Buddha calls it the highest noble truth (MN 140).

3. The third positive aspect of unbinding is that it’s the ultimate sukha—a term that can be translated as pleasure, happiness, ease, or bliss. Unbinding, as experienced in this lifetime, is invariably described as pleasurable: It’s bliss, the exquisite, and the unafflicted. Just as consciousness without surface is totally apart from the consciousness aggregate, the bliss of unbinding is totally apart from the pleasure that comes under the feeling aggregate (SN 36:19).

Given that unbinding is unfabricated, it has no need for nutriment, which means that its bliss has nothing lacking. So the fully awakened person is said to be hunger-free. And because this bliss is known independently of the six sense media, it’s not affected even by that person’s death (MN 49; Iti 44), which is why the Buddha calls unbinding peace, rest, the secure, security, island, shelter, harbor, and refuge.

4. However, even though unbinding is pleasant, fully awakened people don’t cling to this pleasure, so they’re not limited by it. They’re said to be beyond both pleasure and pain (Ud 1:10), and also free: free from the slightest disturbance or limitation, free from fabrication, free from the fires of passion, aversion, and delusion, free from passion for dispassion (Sn 4:4), and—as we’ve noted many times—free even from the confines of space and time. Because locations come from the desire and passion of craving, and because unbinding is free of craving, it doesn’t count as a “place” at all. For this reason, those who fully attain it are said to be everywhere released and everywhere independent (Dhp 348; Sn 4:6). Like the light beam that doesn’t reflect off of anything, they can’t even be located.

For these reasons, the fourth positive aspect of unbinding—and the one most emphasized in the Canon—is that it’s total freedom.

This freedom is indicated in a general sense by the Buddha’s two most common epithets for unbinding: the term unbinding itself, and release. Because, in line with the underlying metaphor of the extinguishing of fire, freedom comes from letting go, the remaining epithets for this freedom focus on the fact that unbinding is free from all the clinging defilements that cause suffering and stress: It’s attachment-free, free from longing, the ending of craving, and dispassion. And as the Buddha indicates, the freedom of a person whose mind is released is no different from the freedom of the Buddha himself (SN 22:58).

5. In all the above aspects—consciousness, truth, bliss, and freedom—unbinding excels everything that there is, so its fifth aspect is its excellence. There’s nothing to equal it, much less to exceed or surpass it. The Buddha calls it the amazing, the astounding, the ultimate, and the beyond.

Of these five aspects of unbinding, the fourth—total freedom—is the one the Buddha most frequently associates with dispassion. To wean his listeners away from their ordinary infatuation with their desires and passions, he frequently refers to desire and passion as fetters, and to dispassion as being free from fetters or confinement of any sort (SN 35:63). To illustrate this point, Ven. Sāriputta provides a simile: