Nibbana

I have been reading "The Heart of Buddhist Meditation", a classic in Theravada mediation that describes the Burmese meditation leading to the stream-entry to the River of Nibbana,  the Dharma eye.   As the Buddha said in one of his speeches - when you have arrived at the stream-entry then you have already passed many lifetimes of struggle to get this far.   What remains is compared to the dirt under a fingernail as compared to the whole Earth.  In other words,   you should be encouraged if you have the aspiration for Mindfulness Mediation as this shows that you are on the "last leg" to Nibbana [Nirvana].    As I have studied this, I was curious about Mahayana Buddhism and from WIKI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahayana,   it becomes apparent that there is not an opposition between Theravada and Mahayana, but that Mahayana is an expansion of Theravada giving instructions for the Bodhisattva and it also seems more conducive to the body and Nature which fits the post-modern sensibility.   The sutra common to most Mahayana is the Lotus Sutra and so I plan to read that after I finish "The Heart of Buddhist Meditation".   This can be obtained free by Googling "Lotus Sutra PDF" as the Heart of Buddhist Mediation was free PDF also.  I will explain in subsequent posts how this fits into my holistic and integral view.   And how the I-Thou is activated at the Heart Chakra [anahata] and how the Wisdom Chakra [ajna] sits in the middle of the mystical realm of Being [vertical] and the holonic and systemic realm [horizontal] of process Becoming.  I am also eagerly awaiting the interlibrary loan book request of "Convergence and Divergence" by Mario Bunge,  the ontological thinker that seems most fitting to my systemic view.