In the Hinayana interpretation of Buddhism, nirvana appears to be something akin to the Western concept of entropy. In nirvana, being, so to speak, has gone to coolness or in the parlance of science, thermal death (zero is also mentioned). As long as the Hinayana adept doesn't add fuel, by way of desire, to the Five Aggregates (which is a closed system), the Hinayanist will eventually reach entropy (nirvana). A strikingly similar view of this is given by the late Theravada monk, Walpola Rahula.
“An Arahant after his death is often compared to a fire gone out when the supply of wood is over, or to the flame of a lamp gone out when the wick and oil are finished. Here it should be clearly and distinctly understood, without any confusion, that what is compared to a flame or a fire gone out is not Nirvana, but the ‘being’ composed of the Five Aggregates who realized Nirvana” (Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 41–42).
One of the apparent problems with such a view is that if there is a maximum entropy, there was prior to entropy its very opposite this being negative entropy or the same, syntropy, which implies an open system. To be sure, something doesn't arise from utter absence. And before something can become zero, it must exist.
From a spiritual perspective, that is, Mahayana, an open, self-creating and sustaining system is prior to and higher than the closed (hina) system which ends in entropy. More importantly, the closed, entropic system falls within the frame of the greater (maha) open system which is the very fount of life. What, in fact, transmigrates from one life to another, in the context of rebirth, is life inherently free of entropy but still inadequate inasmuch as it wrongly identifies with closed or contained systems (alaya).
Using the physicist Schrodinger’s belief that life feeds off of negative entropy so that it truly never enters into entropy or dissipates, Mahayana seeks to reveal to us, not the entropic but, instead, the eternal negentropic (negative entropy). Indeed, the Buddha of Mahayana will show sentient beings that on the great ocean of Mind only the waves are entropic.
What Mahayana argues against the Hinayana position, is that the flames of the world are created by the mind that self-limits and containerizes itself (âlaya) into an entropic system (this is like an ocean that can only see itself as waves). This inversion can never lead us to true nirvana. Furthermore, to believe that nirvana is entropy is annihilationism which the Buddha abhorred. It can also be characterized as a false nirvana (this is explained in the Lotus Sutra).
Nirvana is not, in any sense, entropic but, instead, is the exiting process from the closed system (i.e., the temporal body) and the subsequent knowing and seeing of negentropy in which one feeds on bliss (sukha).
"Let us dwell feeding on bliss (sukha) like the shinning gods" (Dhammapada, 200).
Such a higher world can only be described as being in the possession of a spiritual heart that shines forth with a radiant love which nothing can limit. It is as if one tapped into an unlimited power supply which, as it is compassionately deployed, grows even more. In essence, it is realized freedom in which spirit (tathata) has disentangled itself from its limiting phenomena.
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