Nirvana is at once a critical part of the Buddhist path and a concept difficult to fully understand for Buddhist practitioners. Canonical texts broach this mysterious and essential idea in a variety of ways, whether in the form of metaphor or literary description. In The Signless and the Deathless: On the Realization of Nirvana, scholar-monk Bhikkhu Analayo sheds light on two key aspects of Nirvana that have gone underappreciated: signlessness and deathlessness.

Commanding an extraordinary mastery of canonical Buddhist languages, Venerable Analayo breaks new ground, or rediscovers old ground, by presenting a new way of approaching Nirvana, based on the Buddha's teachings on how our minds construct experience. This novel treatment, backed up by meticulous academic expertise, is valuable for scholars and practitioners alike. Through practicing bare awareness...realizing Nirvana entails "a complete stepping out of the way the mind usually constructs experience."

The Signless and the Deathless: On the Realization of Nirvana, Bhikkhu Analayo, Wisdom Publications, Hardcover, 256 pages, $34.95

Bhikkhu Analayo is a scholar of early Buddhism and a meditation teacher. He completed his PhD research on the Satipatthanasutta at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, in 2000 and his habilitation research with a comparative study of the Majjhima Nikaya in the light of its Chinese, Sanskrit, and Tibetan parallels at the University of Marburg, Germany, in 2007. His over five hundred publications are for the most part based on comparative studies, with a special interest in topics related to meditation and the role of women in Buddhism.