I was drinking beer tonight and watching basketball, and it occurred to me that Nirvana, in the Buddhist tradition, is really like retiring from Samsara. Samsara is the job, and you don’t have to do it anymore. Within the Boddhisattva tradition, of course, you still do periodic contract work, but you don’t have to. Your “time” is your own.
And I feel, without knowing how to explain it, that there are small nirvanas. It is an energy that you first become aware of, but cannot stay with. With time and practice, it stays longer, more purely, and you can expand it. It is not an extinguishing of what matters, but a flourishing.
As the Tao Te Ching puts it, you are fed by a different mother.