Yet to claim that desire is illusion is to say that it has no
support, prospect, or aim, that it is not something ultimate, or in
Buddhist formulations "empty", devoid of self identity or essence.
Illusion is related to ordinary experience of duality, whilst the truth is
realised in the experience of non-duality. The experience of non-
duality implies also the ordinary experience of duality, otherwise there
could be no such experience of non-duality as a truth beyond the

illusions of duality. The experience of non-duality is also described as
that of "emptiness" such that: "The emptiness of emptiness is the fact
that not even emptiness exists ultimately, that it is also dependent,
conventional, nominal, and, in the end, that it is just the everydayness
of the everyday" (Garfield & Priest, 2003: 15).
Freud who was perhaps (mis)informed on Buddhism through a
reading of Schopenhauer, used the term nirvana in Beyond the
Pleasure Principle (Freud, 1920g) and even established a distinct
principle with the name of nirvana principle (and related this to the
death drive). Freud likened the goal of Buddhism to the move towards
zero energy or force, and the death drive is connected with
immortality (cf Laplanche, 1976). Lacan argues that Buddhist nirvāṇa
should not be viewed as reduction to nothingness, the kind of negation
involved being very particular: a not to have, a certain freedom from
the cycle of suffering, correlated with the experience of non-duality.
What is involved in the Buddhist practitioner's relation to nirvāṇa as
the desired state of being, is articulated in "every formulation of
Buddhist truth" (Lacan, 2014 [1962-1963]: 223), in terms of non-
dualism, or the One. For Lacan nirvāṇa is not negation and is
misinterpreted as nihilistic, as a pure reduction to nothingness, but a
not to have, in which we can hear a response to desire. A desire to
extinguish desire is in itself still a desire and "if there is an object of
your desire, it is nothing other than yourself" (Lacan, 1962-1963:
08.05.63, 10). If Lacan introduces the objet a as essential to desire,
indeed its cause, he claims "the business of dualism and non-dualism
take on a completely different relief" (Lacan, 2014 [1962-1963]: 223).
If it is a question not of an imaginary projection of an inside onto an
outside in relation to the object of desire, that which is "myself" on the
outside is not projected there but cut off from me. In order to illustrate
the meaning of non-dualism Lacan provides two examples taken from
his experience of Buddhism. The first is the reference to the mirror
within Buddhism especially with the enigmatic "mirror without
surface in which nothing is reflected" (Ibid.:223). Buddhist experience
for those who practice and live it, Lacan suggests, "presupposes a
striking reference to the function of the mirror in our relationship to
the object" (Lacan, 1962-1963: 08.05.63, 10). Lacan had made he
claims an allusive reference to this surfaceless mirror long ago in his
paper on psychical causality (Lacan, 2006 [1946]: 123-158). It is with
regard to the sense that can be given to the function of the mirror in
this dialectic concerning the recognition of what we contribute or not