Moksha and nirvana both name the end of suffering and the end of rebirth, and they are routinely treated as synonyms. They are not, and the difference is instructive rather than merely technical. Moksha is a Vedantic term and literally means release. Nirvana is a Buddhist term and literally means blowing out, as a lamp is extinguished. The metaphors point in opposite directions, and each was chosen deliberately.
Moksha implies something that was bound and is now free. That grammar presupposes a subject: an atman which was always present, always unchanged, and merely misidentified with a body and mind. Release does not create the free thing, it removes the mistake. Nirvana, by contrast, is the extinguishing of the fires of craving, aversion and delusion, and the Buddhist analysis rejects the permanent self that Vedanta is releasing. There is no one who becomes free; there is the ending of the process that generated the appearance of someone.
Both traditions guard against the same misreading, which is that this amounts to annihilation. Vedanta answers that what ends is only the misidentification, and what remains is what was always the case, sat-chit-ananda undiminished. Buddhism answers that nirvana is not the destruction of a self, since no such self was ever found, but the cessation of a fire that was never a thing to begin with. The disagreement is real and worth respecting rather than dissolving, and it turns on whether the residue of karma is carried by a continuous self or by a stream of conditioned moments.
Two traditions looked at the same bondage and described the exit differently, and the difference is not a translation problem. To see how the Vedantic side of the account fits together, explore more of The Living Sanatan Timeline.
Part 25 of 100 — Series II: To the Eternal
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