Nirvana - Definitions from Dictionary.com

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Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This

nir·va·na

Audio Help [nir-vah-nuh, -van-uh, ner-] Pronunciation Key

–noun

1.	(often initial capital letter) Pali, nibbana. Buddhism. freedom from the endless cycle of personal reincarnations, with their consequent suffering, as a result of the extinction of individual passion, hatred, and delusion: attained by the Arhat as his goal but postponed by the Bodhisattva.

2.	(often initial capital letter) Hinduism. salvation through the union of Atman with Brahma; moksha.

3.	a place or state characterized by freedom from or oblivion to pain, worry, and the external world.

[Origin: 1830–40; < Skt nirvāṇa

]

—Related forms

nir·va·nic, adjective

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Nirvana

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American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

nir·va·na Audio Help (nîr-vä'nə, nər-) Pronunciation Key
n.

often Nirvana
1. Buddhism The ineffable ultimate in which one has attained disinterested wisdom and compassion.
2. Hinduism Emancipation from ignorance and the extinction of all attachment.
An ideal condition of rest, harmony, stability, or joy.

[Sanskrit nirvāṇam, a blowing out, extinction, nirvana : nis-, nir-, out, away + vāti, it blows; see wē- in Indo-European roots.]

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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
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Online Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
nirvana

1836, from Skt. nirvana-s "extinction, disappearance" (of the individual soul into the universal), lit. "to blow out, a blowing out" ("not transitively, but as a fire ceases to draw;" a literal Latinization would be de-spiration), from nis-, nir- "out" + va "to blow" (see wind (n.)).

WordNet - Cite This Source - Share This

nirvana
noun
1.	(Hinduism and Buddhism) the beatitude that transcends the cycle of reincarnation; characterized by the extinction of desire and suffering and individual consciousness
2.	any place of complete bliss and delight and peace [syn: Eden]

American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition - Cite This Source - Share This
nirvana [(neer-vah-nuh, nur-vah-nuh)]

In Buddhism, the highest state of consciousness, in which the soul is freed from all desires and attachments. Nirvana is sometimes inaccurately used as a synonym for heaven or paradise.

[Chapter:] World Literature, Philosophy, and Religion

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This

Nirvana

Nir*va"na\, n. [Skr. nirv[=a][.n]a.] In the Buddhist system of religion, the final emancipation of the soul from transmigration, and consequently a beatific enfrachisement from the evils of wordly existence, as by annihilation or absorption into the divine. See Buddhism.

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