In the song of Milarepa,’ I Have Forgotten,’ posted here, the Tibetan mystic sings of the beneficial effects of various meditations and practices, by means of which, as he says, he has ‘forgotten all knowledge of ignorance’ in all its forms.  Every line is worthy of serious study and reflection, but the following couplet in particular deserves attention:
Accustomed, as I’ve been, to contemplating both nirvana and samsara as inherent in myself,
I have forgotten to think of hope and fear.

‘Nirvana’ means, literally, ‘blown out,’ as an oil lamp or a candle may be blown out or extinguished.  In different traditions it is applied in slightly different ways, but essentially it refers to the state of supreme enlightenment, when the agitation of the limited self has been completely stilled. The other word, ‘samsara’, means ‘wandering,’ or ‘the world,’ but specifically the cyclical world of causation, the endlessly turing wheel of cause and effect that whirls us through passing states of longing, pleasure, pain, regret, and so on, each one giving rise to another.

Since these two words seem completely opposite in meaning, what can Milarepa mean in saying they are both inherent in oneself?  Can I be enlightened and confused at the same time?  It brings to mind a brief exchange witnessed many years ago between a young seeker who was very eager to ‘achieve,’ and a venerable, highly realised Sufi.  “Please tell me,” the seeker said, “will I be enlightened in this lifetime?”  “But,” said the Sufi smiling broadly “you ARE enlightened!” “I am?  But I don’t feel enlightened.” “Ah, that is something else,” said the Sufi, and tried to change the subject.

In other words, nirvana is not something that can be constructed or created; it is a supreme stillness that is omnipresent and all-pervading – another way of describing the Divine Presence.  We come from that, we live in that, and we can never be separate from it– but we have also been given the gift of life in the world, and with it the inevitable samsara, what the Hindus sometimes call the ‘game of hide-and-seek,’ in which the Divine playfully conceals and then reveals itself to its human playmates.

The hope and fear mentioned in the song are the consequence of living only in the world, without awareness of the infinite; when we feel there are limited resources, we oscillate between the hope that we will get what we want, and the fear that we will not.  But when we know that the line of being stretches from the finite to the infinite, those anxieties then cease to trouble us.

In the Vadan, Hazrat Inayat Khan gives this saying, which perhaps is a Sufi way of uniting our inherent nirvana and samsara:
Let my heart become the spring
of Thine infinite life, rising for ever and ever.