According to Osho, after nirvana the mind dissolves into emptiness, yet a subtlest trace of being and the living body remain. The enlightened one may still move among people—Buddha, out of compassion—until death. With the body's dissolution comes mahanirvana: sovereign, supreme emptiness beyond perception. In Krishna, nirvana and mahanirvana coincide; in Buddha they are sequential.
Waking up ends the noisy mind, but the body keeps going; some enlightened ones keep helping kindly until death, when everything rests in total peace.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Questioner: how is it that buddha lives for forty years after attaining nirvana or the great emptiness?
It is true Buddha lives for forty to forty-two years after he becomes Buddha. Mahavira also lives about the same period of time. But Buddha makes a difference between nirvana and nirvana. Just before leaving his body he says that what he had attained under the bodhi tree was just nirvana, emptiness, and what he is now going to attain will be mahanirvana or supreme emptiness. In his first nirvana Buddha achieves the emptiness we can see, but his second emptiness, his mahanirvana, is such that we cannot see it. Of course men like Krishna and Buddha can see it. It is true that Buddha lives for forty years after his first nirvana, but this is not a period of supreme emptiness. Buddha finds a little difficulty, a little obstruction in living after nirvana, and it is one of being, still there in its subtlest form. So if Buddha moves…
Osho, even after perfection—that is, the great emptiness—didn’t Buddha still live on for forty to forty-two years?
Buddha lived on. Mahavira also lived on for forty years; Buddha too for forty, forty-two years. But before dying Buddha says: the nirvana that happened to me forty years ago—that was nirvana; what is happening now is mahanirvana. In the first nirvana Buddha found the same emptiness that is visible to us. In the second, the great nirvana, Buddha attains the emptiness that is not visible to us—which could be visible to Krishna. So Buddha lives on for thirty–forty years. Even in that living he is not yet the ultimate void. In that living there remains a small obstruction. In that living there is still some suffering. The process of becoming is still going on. Therefore, if Buddha goes from village to village, he goes out of compassion, not out of bliss. If he explains to others, it is because of compassion: that what has happened to me I should…
Osho, what is the status of death in nirvana?
Nirvana means, first, that one has come to know perfectly that death does not happen at all—one. Second, that what we call life yields nothing—this too has been known. Nirvana means the knowing of two truths: that what we call death is not death, and what we call life is not life. Are you following me? I have just told you one thing: whoever truly knows death will find that death is not death. But coupled with it is a second happening: whoever looks at life with total wakefulness will discover that what the world calls life is not life either. That too is a social delusion, just as death is a social delusion. Nirvana means these two insights are fully realized. If you know only this much—that death is not death—life will still continue. You have known only half. The longing will remain to live again, to grab another…
How do you see death in relation to nirvana?
Nirvana means, firstly, that one has realized totally there is no death at all. Secondly, it means one has also come to know that, in what we call life, nothing is attained. Nirvana means awareness of the reality that what we understand as death is no death at all, and that what we mean by life is not really life. Do you follow what I am saying? One thing: nirvana means that when a person knows death he will find there is no death. There is another phenomenon connected with this, and that is that one who sees life with full awareness will find that what everyone calls life is not life either -- just as death is a social illusion, that is a social illusion too. Nirvana means the total realization of both realities. If you only know there is no such thing as death, then you will continue…
Osho, Buddha has said that those steadfast ones who practice meditation continuously attain the unsurpassable ease and security called nirvana. Are there kinds of nirvana?
It is said of the Zen master Rinzai that he had eighteen hundred satori experiences before samadhi. Eighteen hundred is only symbolic; they could be eighteen thousand. However many glimpses there may be, a glimpse is only a message: “I am coming closer, closer”—but I have not yet arrived. The goal begins to be seen, and then it is lost again, because the moods of the mind keep changing. On some days meditation settles easily—the mind is buoyant, quiet, blissful. On other days it does not settle—there is a miss, and a great distance arises. So there is often a coming near and a moving far. But once the glimpses begin—once the taste comes—you cannot be led astray. One thing is now certain: what you are seeking is. It is not imagination. Whatever the births it may take, it is. Faith arises. And as soon as faith arises, satori slowly…