A |Theory::A supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained. Similar: conjecture, hypothesis, speculation, supposition, view [ˈθɪəri]| of Experience

Extending the Buddha’s Fire Simile with What We Now Know About Fire

“Wisdom should be |developed::cultivated [bhāvetabba]|, and consciousness should be |fully understood::completely comprehended [pariññeyya]|.” — Venerable Sāriputta, MN 43 ¶13

Drawing from the early discourses and extending the Buddha’s own fire simile in light of what we now understand about fire and the process of combustion, this essay aims to present a view of experience starting with the texture of a single moment, and then extending to the cascade of proliferation, the geography of rebirth, the architecture of jhāna, and finally the extinguishing that is Nibbāna. One metaphor, one process, one fire.

Prologue: The Buddha’s Own Metaphor

In MN 38, when the Buddha needs a simile for consciousness, he reaches for fire:

“Just as fire is reckoned by the particular condition dependent upon which it burns — when fire burns dependent on logs, it is reckoned as a log fire; when fire burns dependent on woodchips, it is reckoned as a woodchip fire; when fire burns dependent on grass, it is reckoned as a grass fire… So too, consciousness is reckoned by the particular condition dependent upon which it arises.” — MN 38 ¶22

This was not a casual illustration. The word Nibbāna itself derives from the extinguishing of a flame. The word upādāna, usually translated as “clinging,” literally means fuel: the five aggregates of clinging — the pañcupādānakkhandhā — are, etymologically, the five fuel-aggregates, the bundles that sustain the burning. The entire teaching of liberation is framed in the language of fire and its cessation.

Twenty-five centuries later, we understand what fire actually is. It is not a substance. It is not an element. Fire is a process: the visible face of an exothermic reaction. The glow of a flame is excited atoms releasing photons as electrons drop from higher energy states to lower ones. The heat is molecular agitation. The shape of the flame is the geometry of rising gas meeting oxygen.

Fire is a process that arises when conditions converge and ceases when they don’t.

The Buddha already knew this about consciousness. Modern physics, arriving at the same pattern from the other side, gives us a language to appreciate how precise his metaphor was.

What follows is an attempt to extend this simile (the Buddha’s own) into a unified picture of experience.

Part I: The Anatomy of a Flame

What experience is made of (MN 43)

The Inseparable Triad

Venerable Sāriputta was asked whether |felt experience::pleasant, neutral, or painful sensation, feeling, second of the five aggregates [vedanā]|, perception, and consciousness can be separated — whether you can untangle them, lay them out side by side, and point to where one ends and the other begins.

His answer was unequivocal: No.

“What one experiences, that one perceives; and what one perceives, that one distinguishes. That is why these qualities are closely associated, not unassociated. And it is not possible to unpack them, unravel them, and explain their differences.” — MN 43 ¶19

Venerable Sāriputta is pointing to something immediate: the unitary nature of a moment. Fire shows us what that looks like.

Consider a candle flame. It produces light — a glow, the sheer fact of illumination. That light has a color (warm amber). And it has an intensity (bright or dim). These are not three separate things produced in sequence. They are three aspects of a single event: the photon emission from excited atoms.

Every photon carries three inseparable aspects. It has luminosity — the bare fact that it shines, that emission occurred at all. It has a wavelength (distance between peaks), which determines its color: short wavelengths appear blue, long ones red. And it has an amplitude (height of the peaks), which determines its energy: tall peaks carry more force, shallow ones less. These are not three ingredients assembled in sequence. They are three aspects of a single event. You can measure them separately, but they do not arrive separately.

The diagram shows what the flame’s glow actually is: a stream of photons. Each photon is a single event of emission — light radiating from an excited atom. And each one carries three inseparable aspects: the fact that it shines at all (luminosity), the character of that shining (wavelength), and the force with which it lands (amplitude). The flame is the ongoing process. Each photon is a single moment of it.

In this extended simile:

1. Consciousness is the luminosity — the quality of shining, the fact that knowing occurred at all. It is the presence of aware contact, the mind’s distinguishing: “this is pleasant,” “this is painful,” “this is neither.”

2. Perception functions as the wavelength — the character of the experience: what marks it, labels it, gives it identity. “Blue.” “Red.” “The smell of jasmine.” “My mother’s voice.” Without perception, consciousness would be a signal without information — light without color.

   This analogy also clarifies the role of insight. A wave can resolve only details larger than its own wavelength; anything smaller is diffracted around and missed. In the same way, a coarse perception operates like a long wavelength. It glosses over the fine grain of reality, seeing a “person,” a “hand,” or a “pain” as solid and static. It misses the flicker.

   Refined perception, cultivated through practice, operates like a shorter wavelength capable of resolving finer detail. It begins to resolve fine structure. Instead of the blur of “my hand,” it discerns the momentary arising and passing of heat, pressure, and sensation that actually constitute the experience. It sees the process, not merely the product.

3. Felt experience corresponds to the amplitude — the affective charge, how much force the experience carries. A tall wave hits hard (intense pleasure, sharp pain). A shallow wave barely registers (neutral feeling). You cannot have a photon without energy. You cannot have a moment of consciousness that distinguishes but does not feel.

The three arise together because they are together — three aspects of a single event, not three ingredients mixed into a cocktail. This is why venerable Sāriputta says they cannot be “unpacked.” You can measure a photon’s wavelength and amplitude separately, but the photon itself does not arrive in pieces.

Where Wisdom Fits

The same question is posed about wisdom (paññā) and consciousness, and the answer is the same: inseparable. But here venerable Sāriputta makes a crucial distinction:

“Wisdom should be developed, and consciousness should be fully understood.” — MN 43 ¶13

Put in terms of fire: consciousness is the flame. Wisdom is seeing the flame for what it is: a conditioned process, not a self, not a thing that wanders, not something you own. One burns. The other sees the burning clearly. They cannot be pried apart (“what one discerns, that one distinguishes; and what one distinguishes, that one discerns”), but their function is different. One is the event. The other is the clarity with which the event is known. Develop the clarity. Comprehend the event.

This holds whether the experience is coarse or subtle: in ordinary sense contact, in jhāna, in the formless abidings. Wherever consciousness arises, wisdom is what sees it clearly.

The Oil Lamp

Venerable Sāriputta himself reaches for a fire simile when explaining the mutual dependence of vitality (āyu) and body heat:

“Just as in the case of a burning oil lamp, its radiance is seen in dependence on its flame and its flame is seen in dependence on its radiance.” — MN 43 ¶51

Flame requires fuel to produce radiance. Radiance is the proof that a flame burns. Neither precedes the other. They co-arise. This is the structure of all conditioned experience: mutually dependent, mutually defining. From within the process, no first cause can be discerned. You can only see the flame as it burns, sustained by conditions that are themselves conditioned.

Part II: The Fire Triangle

What keeps the flame burning (MN 38)

Three Conditions for Combustion

In fire science, three conditions must converge for combustion to occur, known as the fire triangle:

1. Fuel — something to burn
2. Heat — enough energy to reach ignition temperature
3. Oxygen — a reactive medium that sustains the reaction

Remove any one, and the fire goes out. This is why you smother a grease fire (remove oxygen), why you pour water on a campfire (remove heat), and why a candle on a shelf eventually dies (fuel is exhausted).

Dependent origination describes a strikingly parallel triad:

1. Ignorance (avijjā) — the fuel. Not just absence of knowledge, but a positive misapprehension: the failure to see experience as conditioned, impermanent, and not-self. It is the raw material that makes burning possible. As long as there is something that is not understood, there is something to burn.

2. Intentional constructs (saṅkhāra) — the heat. These are the active arrangements of energy (bodily, verbal, and mental intentions) that bring the system to ignition point. Without intention shaping the fuel of ignorance into something directional, nothing catches fire. Dependent on ignorance, intentional constructs arise.

3. Craving (taṇhā) — the oxygen. The reactive atmosphere in which the whole process sustains itself. Craving is the medium that keeps the flame reaching for more fuel. These four nutriments have craving as their source.

Consciousness (viññāṇa) is the flame — the visible event that emerges when all three converge. Dependent on intentional constructs, consciousness arises.

In Part I, we examined the single photon — the discrete moment of knowing. Here, we see the continuity. A flame is not a static object; it is a rapid succession of emissions, sustained as long as the conditions converge. Consciousness, in this view, is the process of burning. It is the luminosity of the moment, sustained as a stream. It is not a thing traveling through the reaction. It is the reaction expressing itself at each moment.

And just as fire is named by its fuel (log fire, grass fire, rubbish fire), so consciousness is named by its condition: eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, mind-consciousness. There is no “fire in general” lurking behind all the specific fires. There is no consciousness in general wandering between conditions. This was precisely the wrong view the Buddha corrected in Bhikkhu Sāti.

The Sāti Error

Sāti believed “it is this same consciousness that runs and wanders through the round of rebirths, not another.” He was imagining something like an eternal pilot light: a single flame that moves from stove to stove, lamp to lamp, body to body.

The Buddha’s correction is devastating in its simplicity: fire does not “go” anywhere. A log fire ends. A grass fire arises. There is continuity of process, conditions giving rise to further conditions, but no entity traveling. The grass fire is not the log fire, but it is not unrelated to it either. It arose because conditions (heat, embers, wind) carried the process forward.

This is consciousness. This is rebirth. Not an entity migrating, but a process perpetuating, condition to condition, fuel to fuel, until the conditions for burning are no longer present.

Part III: The Cascade — From Spark to Wildfire

How a moment of experience unfolds (SN 14.9)

The Chain of Combustion

SN 14.9 describes a sequence that operates at both the micro-level (a single thought) and the macro-level (a lifetime). The process the Buddha describes is essentially the spread of fire through a medium:

1. Diversity of Elements (dhātu-nānatta) — The Fuel Bed

Raw sensory data. Forms, sounds, odors, tastes, tangibles, mental objects. These are not yet “experience” — they are the kindling lying on the ground. In fire terms: the diverse materials available to burn. Dry leaves, green wood, oily rags, paper. The composition of the fuel bed determines everything that follows.

2. Diversity of Perceptions (saññā-nānatta) — The Tinder

Not everything catches fire. Perception is the moment of recognition, the system “tuning” to a particular fuel. The dry leaf, not the stone. The attractive face, not the blank wall. What you perceive (what you recognize, label, mark) is determined by past conditioning. An arsonist and a firefighter see the same pile of wood differently. Past kamma has primed the system to resonate with certain elements and ignore others.

3. Diversity of Intentions (saṅkappa-nānatta) — The Kindling

Once the perception catches, intention arranges the conditions for full combustion. You lean toward it. You formulate a plan. You direct energy. This is the kindling being stacked: the alignment of fuel and airflow that will determine whether the spark becomes a flame or dies.

4. Diversity of Contacts (phassa-nānatta) — The Moment of Ignition

Contact is where consciousness, sense base, and object converge. This is the match striking the fuel. The three conditions of the fire triangle meet, and combustion begins. The flame appears.

5. Diversity of Felt Experiences (vedanā-nānatta) — The Heat

The immediate product of combustion is heat. Every fire produces warmth or burn. Every contact produces feeling — pleasant, painful, or neutral. This is not optional. Where there is flame, there is heat. Where there is contact, there is feeling.

6. Diversity of Desires (chanda-nānatta) — The Flame Reaching

Watch a flame. It leans toward its fuel. It reaches. This is desire, not yet the fever of full craving, but the initial inclination. The flame extends toward what will sustain it. The mind extends toward what the feeling promises.

7. Diversity of Fevers (pariḷāha-nānatta) — The Flare-Up

Now the fire intensifies. The heat feeds back into the system, raising the temperature, accelerating the reaction. The fever of wanting: restlessness, obsession, the body heating up. In fire terms: the reaction has become self-reinforcing. The fire is generating enough heat to ignite new fuel.

8. Diversity of Quests (pariyesanā-nānatta) — The Fire Spreading

The flame, having consumed the immediate fuel, now searches for more. It sends embers into the air, heats adjacent materials, extends its reach. The being, having been inflamed, now seeks — pursuits, plans, searches for the next source of satisfaction.

9. Diversity of Acquisitions (lābha-nānatta) — The New Fuel Catching

The fire finds new fuel and the cycle resets. New material is consumed. New heat is generated. New flames arise. This acquisition (of objects, of status, of a new existence itself) is the fire spreading to the next log. The process continues.

This entire sequence, from raw element to acquisition, is fire spreading through a landscape. Each step depends on the last. Remove a link, and the chain breaks.

The critical intervention point is between feeling and desire: the moment heat appears but has not yet fanned into wanting. This is where the practitioner can act. In the Fire Sermon (SN 35.28), the Buddha describes the instructed noble disciple seeing that “whatever feeling arises with contact as condition, whether pleasant, painful, or neutral” is burning. Seeing this clearly, the practitioner becomes disenchanted, and “through dispassion, is released.” The fever never arises. The quest never begins. Cut the draft that feeds heat into wanting, and the fire cannot spread. Develop wisdom (wet the fuel), and perception does not ignite intention in the first place.

Part IV: Where the Next Fire Catches

The geography of rebirth (AN 3.76)

Two Scales of the Same Process

Parts II and III described the chemistry of a single fire: what makes it burn moment to moment (the fire triangle of ignorance, saṅkhāra, and craving) and how it spreads through a single landscape (the cascade of SN 14.9).

AN 3.76 addresses a different question, at a different scale: when one fire dies and another ignites, what determines the character of the next fire? The question is no longer “what sustains the flame?” but “what kind of terrain does the fire encounter next?”

The fire model itself addresses the mechanism of this transition. In SN 44.9, the Buddha tells Vacchagotta: “I declare rebirth for one with fuel, not for one without fuel.” When Vacchagotta asks what fuels the flame that is flung by the wind across a gap, the Buddha answers: the wind itself. And when a being has laid down this body but has not yet been reborn in another, craving is its fuel. Craving is the wind that carries the flame forward. Without it, the fire simply goes out. With it, the process catches again wherever conditions allow.

This fire-to-fire image captures the continuity of the process: craving acts as the wind carrying the heat forward. But to understand the landing — how consciousness takes root in a new existence and what determines the character of that existence — the Buddha shifts to agriculture.

The Field, The Seed, The Moisture

“For beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving, kamma is the field, consciousness the seed, and craving the moisture for their consciousness to be established in an inferior realm… a middling realm… a sublime realm.” — AN 3.76 ¶5–¶11

Take each element on its own terms:

• Kamma is the field. Every intentional act, over a lifetime, shapes the terrain. Generous acts prepare clean, structured ground. Harmful acts leave behind dense, volatile undergrowth. The field is not a storehouse of points. It is the accumulated conditioning of the landscape itself, the invisible topography that determines what can grow here and what cannot.

  In Part III, we saw a glimpse of this: “Past kamma has primed the system to resonate with certain elements and ignore others.” That was kamma shaping perception within a single life. Here, the scale expands. Kamma shapes not just what you notice but the entire terrain of your next existence.

• Consciousness is the seed. At the moment of death, the last moment of consciousness in one life conditions the first moment of consciousness in the next. The seed does not choose its field. It falls where the wind carries it. But what it becomes is entirely determined by the soil it lands in.

• Craving is the moisture. Without moisture, even viable seed in rich soil will not germinate. Craving is what allows the seed to take root, to bind to the field, to draw nutrients and begin growing. It is not the seed and not the soil. It is the condition that makes establishment possible. Remove the moisture, and nothing takes hold, no matter how rich the field or viable the seed.

How This Connects to the Fire Model

Notice that these three factors operate at a different level than the fire triangle of Part II:

Craving appears in both, because craving operates at every scale. Moment to moment, it sustains the flame like oxygen. At the scale of rebirth, it enables establishment like moisture. The role is the same: without it, the process cannot continue. But the texture differs. Oxygen feeds an active fire. Moisture enables a dormant seed to take hold. The Buddha uses both images because both are true.

The critical difference: the fire triangle describes what keeps a fire alive. The agricultural model describes what determines where the next fire catches and what kind of fire it becomes.

The Three Terrains

The quality of the field shapes the character of what grows:

• Inferior realm (sensual/lower): dense, volatile terrain. The fire that catches here burns chaotically, producing high heat and choking smoke. Think of a wildfire tearing through tangled undergrowth: intense, noxious, hard to control.

• Middling realm (rūpadhātu — realm of form): cleaner, more structured terrain. The fire burns more evenly, producing reasonable warmth, visible light, sustainable conditions. A well-laid campfire in managed woodland: useful, pleasant, but still requiring tending and still consuming.

• Sublime realm (formless): the terrain is so refined it is almost not material at all. Think of a hydrogen flame, nearly invisible, extremely clean, producing enormous energy with barely any physical residue.

This is not a poetic decoration. The quality of the fuel literally determines the character of the flame. A candle and a forest fire differ not in some mystical essence but in their conditions. So too, a hell-realm existence and a brahma-realm existence differ not in the type of “soul” involved but in the field of accumulated kamma into which consciousness is established.

When the Fire Catches Again

(MN 43 ¶33 – ¶35)

Venerable Sāriputta describes the mechanism with economy:

“Through thorough enjoyment of this and that on the part of beings obstructed by ignorance and bound by craving, the production of renewed existence occurs in the future.” — MN 43 ¶33

And its cessation:

“Through the fading away of ignorance, through the arising of wisdom, and the ending of craving — thus, the production of renewed existence does not occur in the future.” — MN 43 ¶35

The pieces are now all in place. Part II gave us the fire triangle: ignorance is the fuel, craving is the oxygen, intentional constructs are the heat. Part III showed how the fire spreads moment to moment through the cascade of contact, feeling, desire, and acquisition. Here, the agricultural model completes the picture: kamma is the field, consciousness the seed, craving the moisture.

At the moment of death, these scales converge. The being has cultivated a field through a lifetime of intentional action. The seed — the last moment of consciousness, shaped by that accumulated kamma — is released. And craving, that “thorough enjoyment of this and that,” is the moisture that allows the seed to take root. If there is moisture, the seed germinates in whatever field lies prepared. Not the nearest field, not a random field, but the specific terrain that prior action has shaped. The fire catches again — not by jumping to whatever is closest, but by falling into the ground that kamma has readied.

And the inverse: when ignorance fades, when wisdom arises, when craving ends — there is no moisture. However rich or poor the field, without moisture no seed germinates. The production of renewed existence does not occur.

Part V: The Spectrum of Flames

Jhāna, the formless abidings, and cessation

Everyday Experience: The Campfire

Ordinary sensory experience is akin to an open campfire. Multiple fuels burn simultaneously. Wind blows the flame this way and that. Sparks fly. Smoke obscures. The fire is useful, it warms, it lights, but it is turbulent, unpredictable, always needing more wood.

The Buddha describes five specific winds that disturb the flame. In the first jhāna, all five are blocked:

“Sensual desire is abandoned, ill will is abandoned, dullness and drowsiness are abandoned, restlessness and worry are abandoned, and doubt is abandoned.” — MN 43 ¶41

First Jhāna: The Sheltered Flame

A wind-guard goes up around the campfire. The flame, no longer battered by the five winds, becomes steady. It burns clean fuel — seclusion from the unwholesome. The fire produces reliable warmth and bright, visible light. The process still involves active tending. Reflection arranges the fuel. Examination adjusts the draft. The turbulence is gone, but the fire is not yet self-sustaining. Five factors of disturbance have been replaced by five factors of stability: reflection, examination, uplifting joy, pleasure, and unification of mind.

Second Jhāna: Self-Sustaining Combustion

The fire reaches a temperature where tending falls away. In chemistry, this is a self-sustaining reaction: the heat of combustion alone is enough to vaporize the fuel. Reflection and examination settle. The reaction drives itself. Internal tranquility replaces deliberate effort. The flame is unified, imbued with uplifting joy.

Third Jhāna: The Settled Flame

The visible flare of uplifting joy subsides. The tall, bright flame settles to a low, steady burn — less spectacle, but the warmth deepens and pervades. A well-established fire no longer needs to leap and flicker to produce heat. Equanimity appears — the stability of a flame that has stopped reaching. Mindful, clearly aware, the process settles into what the Noble Ones describe as dwelling “equanimous, mindful, and at ease.”

Fourth Jhāna: The Perfect Flame

The fire reaches perfect balance — fuel, heat, and oxygen in exact proportion — producing neither excess nor deficiency. No smoke. No flicker. No reaching. The felt experience is neither painful nor pleasant: equanimity purified by mindfulness. Fire science calls this stoichiometric combustion: the theoretically perfect ratio where fuel and oxygen react completely, with nothing left over. Not a diminished fire. A complete one — nothing wasted, nothing wanting.

MN 43 describes this as: “purification of mindfulness through equanimity.”

On Earth, gravity distorts a flame — hot gas rises, pulling the fire into a teardrop, creating turbulence and flicker. In microgravity, with that distortion removed, a candle flame forms a perfect sphere ↗. No convection currents. No asymmetry. Just a quiet, even orb of light radiating uniformly in all directions.

This is the shape fire takes when nothing disturbs it — the visual culmination of what the jhānas accomplish. The campfire battered by five winds, the sheltered flame, the self-sustaining reaction, the settled burn: each stage removes a distortion. By the fourth jhāna, all that remains is a sphere of perfectly even luminosity. The mind in this state is described as “bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability.”

The Formless Abidings: Beyond Visible Fire

With the fourth jhāna, the mind is described as “purified mind-consciousness, released from the five faculties”. The five sense faculties (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body) are set aside. The fire has moved past ordinary combustion into something more fundamental.

What changes here is not the fire but what the fire illuminates. In the jhānas, the flame was burning fuel — refined, clean fuel, but still fuel. Now the flame turns its light on the conditions of burning itself:

• Boundless space: The flame becomes aware of the infinite space it illuminates. No object remains in focus — only the openness in which all objects would appear. Like turning off every light source and attending only to the darkness itself, finding it boundless.

• Boundless consciousness: The awareness turns upon itself. The light becomes conscious of being light. Not illuminating any object, but recognizing the illumination itself as unbounded.

• Nothingness: Attention shifts from the presence of consciousness to the absence of any thing to be conscious of. The flame attends to the empty space where fuel would be, finding nothing there. “There is nothing.”

  In MN 106, the Buddha describes three ways to strip the fire of its final reliance on “things.” You can see the fuel as merely fuel — all perceptions are just perceptions, and where they cease is peaceful. You can see that the fire has no owner — empty of a self or what belongs to a self. Or you can relinquish all claim on the burning — “I do not belong to anyone anywhere, nor does anything belong to me anywhere.” Each approach starves the fire of its object, leaving it burning dependent on nothing.

• Neither-perception-nor-non-perception: The flame becomes so subtle it can barely be called burning. Is there still combustion? The reaction is so refined, so faint, that it exists at the threshold of existence and non-existence. Perception has not fully ceased, but it has nearly done so.

Cessation of Perception and What Is Felt

In MN 43, venerable Sāriputta draws a sharp distinction between this attainment and death:

“In the case of one who is dead, his vitality is exhausted, his heat has been dissipated, and his faculties are broken. In the case of a bhikkhu who has entered upon the cessation of perception and what is felt, his vitality is not exhausted, his heat has not been dissipated, and his faculties become tranquil.” — MN 43 ¶57

The fire has gone out. The flame has ceased. But the embers remain hot and the fuel is unspent. This is not a dead fire — the hearth still holds its heat, and the conditions for re-combustion are preserved. Vitality and heat continue. What has temporarily ceased is the reaction, the active process of perception and felt experience. The bhikkhu emerges from cessation because the embers are still glowing, still warm. The dead person does not emerge because the embers have gone cold and the fuel has disintegrated.

The vital formations (āyusaṅkhāra) are specifically said to not be things that are felt. If they were, cessation would be impossible — you would need to eliminate the conditions for life in order to eliminate felt experience, and what you’d have is death, not an attainment. Instead, the life-sustaining conditions persist, unseen and unfelt, like residual heat in the coals, holding open the possibility of the flame’s return.

Part VI: Nibbāna — The Extinguishing

The fire goes out (MN 72)

Not Destruction, but Release

The word Nibbāna (Skt. Nirvāṇa) means the extinguishing or “blowing out” of a flame. This etymology is not decorative. It is the teaching.

When a candle flame goes out, we do not ask “Where did the fire go?” The question does not apply. The fire did not go anywhere. The conditions for burning (fuel, heat, oxygen) ceased to converge. The process stopped. Not because it was destroyed, but because it was unbound: released from the conditions that sustained it.

The dependent origination chain in MN 38 makes this explicit:

“With the complete fading away and ending of ignorance comes the ending of intentional constructs; with the ending of intentional constructs comes the ending of consciousness.” — MN 38 ¶91

Remove the fuel (ignorance ends). The heat dissipates (intentions cease). The flame goes out (consciousness fades). No more contact. No more feeling. No more craving.

This is not annihilation. Annihilation would require a thing that is destroyed. But the fire was never a thing. It was a process. When the process ceases, what is there to annihilate?

The Tathāgata After Death

This is why the Buddha says the Tathāgata after death cannot be described as existing, not existing, both, or neither. Ask someone: “When the campfire went out last night, where is it now?” In conventional language, we can say it “went out” or “doesn’t exist anymore.” That much is fine. But push the question further: where is the fire now? Has it relocated? Is it hiding? The question breaks down, because fire was never a thing located in space. It was an event sustained by conditions. Events do not relocate when they end. They simply cease. The categories of “existing somewhere” and “not existing somewhere” apply to things. A process that has run its course is not a thing that has gone missing.

SN 12.64 offers a complementary image. The Buddha asks: when a sunbeam enters a peaked house through a window, where does it become established? On the western wall. Remove the wall — it lands on the ground. Remove the ground — on the water. Remove the water — it does not become established. The sunbeam has not changed. It is not a different kind of light. But without a surface, it has nowhere to land. So too with consciousness: when there is no lust, no delight, no craving, consciousness does not become established and does not come to growth. This is not a special kind of consciousness — it is what happens when one side of the fire triangle is removed. Without craving to act as the reactive medium, the process simply does not sustain. No establishment, no growth, no renewed existence.

The Unshakeable Release

In MN 43, venerable Sāriputta describes the |unshakeable release of the mind::unassailable, unwavering and indisputable liberation of the mind [akuppa + cetovimutti]| as the best among all releases — empty of passion, empty of aversion, empty of delusion. His explanation is striking:

“Passion is a maker of limitation, aversion is a maker of limitation, and delusion is a maker of limitation.” — MN 43 ¶75

Sāriputta calls these three makers of limitation. Every fire you have ever seen was limited — by its fuel, its container, its airflow. A candle flame is confined to the wick. A furnace fire is shaped by its chamber. Even a wildfire follows terrain and wind. The shape, reach, and character of the fire are not intrinsic to the fire itself — they are the limits imposed on it.

These three defilements are the limits imposed on consciousness. They constrain every moment of burning to a particular shape, a particular reach. When they are abandoned (“cut off at the root, made like a palm stump, obliterated, no more subject to future arising”), the constraints are gone. The flame is unbound — no longer confined, no longer shaped by any condition, no longer reaching for any fuel.

The Great Relief

Passion, aversion, and delusion do not just limit the mind. They agitate it. They force it to move.

In Part I, we saw that the glow of a flame comes from excited electrons emitting photons as they drop between energy levels. This is not a choice the electron makes. An electron that has been kicked above its stable configuration is holding surplus energy it cannot keep. It must discharge, jumping from level to level, emitting light at each drop. The excited state is not freedom — it is compulsion. The electron leaps because it is out of place, taut with energy it has no choice but to release.

This is precisely the situation of a being caught in the cycle. Ignorance creates the instability: a fundamental misapprehension that kicks the system into an excited state. That instability compels action (saṅkhāra). Action produces consciousness-events — photons, in our analogy. Those events generate feeling, craving, more action, more instability. The system vibrates, emits, leaps, binds — not because it wants to, but because it must. The excited state is a cage made of energy.

But the fire simile does not end with a stable flame. It ends with no flame. When the conditions for combustion — fuel, heat, oxygen; ignorance, constructs, craving — cease to converge, there is no excited state, no photon emitted, no glow, no fire. Not because something was destroyed, but because there is nothing left to sustain the process.

That is the great relief. Cool. Unbound. Ceased.

Epilogue: The Limits of the Simile

A simile is a raft, not a shore.

Fire is a physical process operating in the domain of matter and energy. Consciousness is not physical. The fire simile does not claim that consciousness is fire, or that perception is merely a wavelength of light. It claims that the pattern is the same. Both are conditioned processes that arise when factors converge. Both exhibit qualities (light/wavelength/amplitude, consciousness/perception/felt experience) that cannot be separated from the event itself. Both perpetuate through self-reinforcing feedback loops. And both cease completely when their conditions are removed.

The match is not metaphysical; it is structural. And that structural correspondence — a process, not a thing; named by its condition, not possessing an essence; sustaining through feedback, not through self; ceasing through removal of conditions, not through destruction — is itself the insight.

The Buddha chose fire because fire makes this pattern visible. Twenty-five centuries later, we understand the physics of fire well enough to see how precisely the pattern holds. That is not a coincidence. It is the kind of thing that happens when someone sees the structure of reality clearly and reaches for the most faithful simile available.

The fire does not explain consciousness. But if you have ever watched a flame and understood that it is not a thing but a happening — arising, persisting, and ceasing, moment to moment, never the same twice, yet recognizably continuous — then you have seen dependent origination with your own eyes.

That is the beginning of wisdom.

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