In the Sutta Nipata (1092–94) a youth named Kappa asks: “Tell me about an island where all this suffering will be no more.” And the Buddha replies: Kappa, for those struggling in midstream, in great fear of the flood, of growing old and of dying – for all those I say, an island exists where there is no place for impediments, no place for clinging: the island of no going beyond. I call it nirvana, the complete destruction of old age and dying.
