> Max Buddha would mean sitting until death, with no dissatisfaction for lack of nutrients or air or self actualization.
If "Max Buddha" is meant to be "non-reactivity taken it's logical extreme," then that's not a fair representation of what the Buddha taught :) You probably just meant it as a turn-of-phrase of course, but I thought it would useful to comment since this is actually a pretty common view given the popularity of mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR; as described by Jon Kabat-Zinn referenced in the article) which promotes a non-reactive and non-judging awareness of the present as its core principle.
But how is the goal and its effects described in the earliest Buddhist texts? In the religious frame of an orthodox Buddhist cosmology, the Pali Canon [1] offers the best insight on this question in my opinion. Thanissaro Bhikku describes it [2]:
> Thus the image underlying nibbana is one of freedom. The Pali commentaries support this point by tracing the word nibbana to its verbal root, which means "unbinding." What kind of unbinding? The texts describe two levels. One is the unbinding in this lifetime, symbolized by a fire that has gone out but whose embers are still warm. This stands for the enlightened arahant, who is conscious of sights and sounds, sensitive to pleasure and pain, but freed from passion, aversion, and delusion. The second level of unbinding, symbolized by a fire so totally out that its embers have grown cold, is what the arahant experiences after this life. All input from the senses cools away and he/she is totally freed from even the subtlest stresses and limitations of existence in space and time.
> The Buddha insists that this level is indescribable, even in terms of existence or nonexistence, because words work only for things that have limits. All he really says about it — apart from images and metaphors — is that one can have foretastes of the experience in this lifetime, and that it's the ultimate happiness, something truly worth knowing.
Just to add yet another balancing point of view: not everyone accepts mainstream Western translations of the Buddhist canon to be faithful. For instance Stephen Batchelor (see his most recent book After Buddhism) would rather strongly disagree with attributing the "two levels" of The Two Truths to the Buddha, or the orthodox interpretation of The Four Noble Truths as being about truth statements on the nature of reality. Batchelor argues, and I would agree, that such exalted and "indescribable" depictions of nibanna are later editions to the canon for the purposes of normalising Buddhism amongst the milieu of competing spiritual worldviews. What was distinctive about what the Buddha taught, was not how he described nature, but how he advocated a practice - his legacy is verbs, not nouns.
There's a quote in the Dhammapada that I think is more clear than the "four noble truths" (which get too much emphasis):
Avoid all evil, cultivate the good, purify your mind: this sums up the teaching of the Buddhas. (183)
Matching what you said, many religions (and non-religious people) emphasize avoiding evil and cultivating good, but the practice of purifying your mind is quite good.
If "Max Buddha" is meant to be "non-reactivity taken it's logical extreme," then that's not a fair representation of what the Buddha taught :) You probably just meant it as a turn-of-phrase of course, but I thought it would useful to comment since this is actually a pretty common view given the popularity of mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR; as described by Jon Kabat-Zinn referenced in the article) which promotes a non-reactive and non-judging awareness of the present as its core principle.
But how is the goal and its effects described in the earliest Buddhist texts? In the religious frame of an orthodox Buddhist cosmology, the Pali Canon [1] offers the best insight on this question in my opinion. Thanissaro Bhikku describes it [2]:
> Thus the image underlying nibbana is one of freedom. The Pali commentaries support this point by tracing the word nibbana to its verbal root, which means "unbinding." What kind of unbinding? The texts describe two levels. One is the unbinding in this lifetime, symbolized by a fire that has gone out but whose embers are still warm. This stands for the enlightened arahant, who is conscious of sights and sounds, sensitive to pleasure and pain, but freed from passion, aversion, and delusion. The second level of unbinding, symbolized by a fire so totally out that its embers have grown cold, is what the arahant experiences after this life. All input from the senses cools away and he/she is totally freed from even the subtlest stresses and limitations of existence in space and time.
> The Buddha insists that this level is indescribable, even in terms of existence or nonexistence, because words work only for things that have limits. All he really says about it — apart from images and metaphors — is that one can have foretastes of the experience in this lifetime, and that it's the ultimate happiness, something truly worth knowing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%81li_Canon
[2] http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/nibban...