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Why did the Buddha take 7 years to attain Nirvana?

Since he was a pure-hearted person who had never sinned, why not a shorter time?

1 Answer 1

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the nirvana Gotama sought was a permanent nirvana.

being without sin will not stop suffering from hunger, heat & cold, sickness, etc

the only permanent nirvana is the complete eradication of self-view

it is not easy to comprehend the hallucination of self-view, let alone discover self-view is suffering

for example, the self-instinct of gotama was searching for nirvana therefore it appeared illogical or counter-intuitive to find the self searching for nirvana was the actually obstacle to finding nirvana

therefore it took gotama seven years to find nirvana because 'self' is a strong instinct in people

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