In this short video Thay discusses nirvana. Here is a transcription of some of his key points:

“Nirvana is the extinction of all suffering. Our suffering comes from our wrong perceptions, our misunderstandings. The purpose of meditation is removing wrong perceptions from us. You have wrong perceptions of yourself and of the other and the other has wrong perceptions of himself and of you. This is the cause of fear, hatred and violence.

“Trying to remove wrong perceptions is the only way to peace.
To meditate deeply, you find that even ideas like being and non-being, birth and death, coming and going are wrong ideas. Ultimate reality is free from all of these ideas.

“That is why Nirvana is the removal of ideas that are the base of suffering. If you are afraid of nothingness, death and non-being, it is because you have misconceptions about these ideas.

“When you look at a cloud, you think of the cloud as a being. And later on when the cloud becomes the rain you don’t see the cloud anymore and you say that the cloud is not there, and you describe it as non-being.

“If you look deeply, you will see the cloud in the rain. And that is why it is impossible for a cloud to die. A cloud can become rain, snow, ice, but a cloud cannot become nothing. And that is why the notion of death cannot be applied to reality.

“There is a transformation, there is a continuation.

“But you cannot say there is death. Because in your mind, to die, from something you suddenly become nothing. From someone you suddenly become no one. And so the notion of death cannot apply to reality, whether to a cloud or a human being.”