Have you ascended yet?

[leosmith]

I know some here practice Buddhism, and I was wondering if anyone has reached nirvana. I know it's rare, but this is a serious question and I'm interested in your experiences.

[JonW]

Enlightenment is not a permanent state of mind.
It is simply the realisation that there is nobody to be enlightened.
So how could 'anyone' reach it?
There are no enlightened beings. That is all mythological cobblers.
There are only moments of enlightenment.
Cheers,
Jon

[monkey]

Agree with Jon (again). There are occasional moments where all ego / self / perspective falls away and I am with whatever is happening. But it's a fraction of a second before my brain kicks in and says 'woah, all my prejudgements and filters are gone!' and then that's over, of course.

[Peter]

I tend to believe the same as Jon. But in all fairness, it's something that can't be proven, so there might be enlightened people.

Peter

[Antonio94]

If you put it like that, there is another equally important question: how do you define nirvana state? How do you define enlightened state? This is just my opinion, I hope it's not offending but it seems the question you're putting is too vague. Since there are no factors which will tell us whether we're ascended or not, how can we pursue that goal especially when we don't even know what are we pursuing particularly?
And then there is another important question: why do you seek enlightenment? Why do you seek nirvana state? Unless we realize the purpose of our path, I don't see any chance for us to succeed without a proper realization.

[piedwagtail91]

If you seek it you'll never find it.
It's 'being' not 'doing'.
We're already where we need to be, in a way enlightenment is realising that .

[JonW]

'We're already where we need to be, in a way enlightenment is realising that .'

Exactly this.