<P> In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Buddha speak of four attributes which make up nirvana . Writing on this Mahayana understanding of nirvana, William Edward Soothill and Lewis Hodous state: </P> <P>' The Nirvana Sutra claims for nirvana the ancient ideas of permanence, bliss, personality, purity in the transcendental realm . Mahayana declares that Hinayana, by denying personality in the transcendental realm, denies the existence of the Buddha . In Mahayana, final nirvana is both mundane and transcendental, and is also used as a term for the Absolute . </P> <P> The early Buddhist texts and Nagarjuna exegesis of canonical texts, states Lindtner, suggest that there were competing views throughout the history of Buddhism, on what nirvana is, and how one attains it . All these views were partly similar and likely influenced by various theories of soteriological liberation that are found in the oldest Upanishads of Hinduism and in Shramana movements such as Jainism . The difference, adds Lindtner, is that Buddhism abandoned the concept of Brahman, and coined the term nirvana instead, a concept whose scope and meaning developed over time . </P> <P> According to Lindtner, the original and early Buddhist concepts of nirvana was similar to those found in competing Sramana traditions such as Jainism and Vedic . It was not a psychological idea or purely related to a being's inner world, but a concept described in terms of the world surrounding the being, cosmology and consciousness . All Indian religions, over time, states Lindtner evolved these ideas, internalizing the state but in different ways because early and later Vedanta continued with the metaphysical idea of Brahman and soul, but Buddhism did not . The canonical Buddhism views on Nirvana was a reaction against early (precanonical) Buddhism, along with the assumptions of Jainism and the Upanishadic thought on the idea of personal liberation . </P>

During the 100s ce chinese tended to equate the buddhist concept of nirvana with