Cfrtjryk

I have read at various places that Nirvana can't be described or reached by logic or reason. ONLY meditation is the way. Why is that so? thanks in advance.

Great question!

It is possible to use logic to arrive at a conviction of the truth of the dhamma, as Nagarjuna demonstrates and others such as Francis Bradley, Spencer Brown and (ahem) me. But this is map-reading. You can read a thousand books about fire and not know what it feels like to be burnt.

So while logic and reason are useful and trustworthy they are not a carriage that will carry us to Heaven. The Old Testament tale of the Tower of Babel is a teaching story.

Reason and logic applied to metaphysical questions must work by abduction, by the elimination of unworkable views. This means that metaphysical analysis can be a valuable guardian against error, as Aurobindo characterises it, but while it can proscribe truth by ruling out false views it cannot reveal truth or give it meaning for us. Revelation requires burning the maps and undertaking the journey.

It is much the same in physics. Most interpretative theories can be ruled out on the basis of analysis but no theory is provably 'true'. Reason and logic produce theories and having a theory of the existence of a holiday resort is not the same as going on holiday.

Meditation is necessary because truth outruns the intellect and cannot be discovered intellectually. For Mahayana the true nature of reality would be beyond conceptual fabrication and the categories of thought, so no amount of thought is able to take us there. As all the teachers say...

“Man can partake of the Perpetual. He does not do this by thinking he can think about it.”

Jan-I-Janan
Sentences of the Khajagan

Well reason, inferences, logic and all that are not knowledge. Only a few puthujjanas claim that there is such a thing as ''intellectual knowledge'' or ''intellectual understanding''.
Those puthujjanas qualify themselves of rationalist. In fact any puthujjana is a rationalist or an intellectual or a philosopher. This is what is natural for a puthujjana.
They claim that truth is reached through debate or truth is reached through inferences of some axioms through some rules of inferences that they themselves invented.
For those people, truth is a quality of a statement: a statement is true, like a banana is ripe or yellow and a true statement means that the statement ''accurately describes'' some event or experience.
All those inferences are fantasies and Those puthujjanas know that they are at sea among all those fantasies that they create.
Those puthujjanas still try to create a way to discriminate among the fantasies that they create: today the most famous discrimination is the one of the scientist where some statement is inferred either form a previous ''proved'' statement or from ''statistical evidence''.
This is for the puhujjana who is a ''secular rationalist''. For the religious puthujjana who is a rationalist, ''reason'' is the way to understand their gods [like the christians] and morality.
Typically, the ''secular rationalists'' claim that the ''inferences'' of the ''religious rationalists'' are fantasies (because ''not grounded in reality'') and that only the ''inferences'' of the ''secular rationalists'' ''make sense''.

Of course those puthujjanas are completely wrong. Truths are not how good a statement describe reality. Truth is at best an event and in terms of event, that's what stops you from ''searching truth'', meaning what appeases you, which precisely means nibanna.
That's called dhammakaya.

So in terms of knowledge, there is only ''direct knowledge'' (in opposition to ''intellectual knowledge'' whose existence that puthujjanas crave so much, but which really does not exist, no matter what logician, philosophers, intellectuals and other ''pragmatic people'' claim) and the task is to know directly dukkha, the origin of dukkha, the cessation of dukkha.

It turns out that knowing directly anicca, anatta, origin of vedana, cessation of sanna and all that requires a calm citta, which is called ''a citta which has samadhi'' and also sati.
THis is why a non-puthujjana can reach the destination of the path while the citta is in samadhi, since non-puthujjanas know already what to look for.

Puthujjanas must memorize the word of the buddha and get their citta into samadhi. And to get the citta into samadhi, what is required is to judge your thoughts as either thoughts of illwill and lust and thoughts of good will and renuncitation and follow only those latter.

Here are plenty of dualities to contemplate and make you an arhant or once returner.

For the sake of knowing qualities of dualities as they actually are.’
Which duality are you speaking about? ‘This is stress. This is the
origination of stress’: This is one contemplation. ‘This is the
cessation of stress. This is the path of practice leading to the
cessation of stress’: This is a second contemplation. For a monk
rightly contemplating this duality in this way—heedful, ardent, &
resolute—one of two fruits can be expected: either gnosis right
here-&-now, or—if there be any remnant of
clinging-sustenance—non-return.”

That is what the Blessed One said. Having said that, the One
Well-Gone, the Teacher, said further:

“Those who don’t discern stress,

what brings stress into play,

& where it totally stops,

without trace;

who don’t know the path,

the way to the stilling of stress:

lowly

in their awareness-release

& discernment-release,

incapable

of making an end,

they’re headed

to birth & aging.

But those who discern stress,

what brings stress into play,

& where it totally stops,

without trace;

who discern the path,

the way to the stilling of stress:

consummate

in their awareness-release

& discernment-release,

capable

of making an end,

they aren’t headed

to birth & aging.1

here is another one

“Now, if there are any who ask, ‘Would there be the right
contemplation of dualities in yet another way?’ they should be told,
‘There would.’ How would that be? ‘Whatever is considered as “This is
bliss” by the world with its devas, Māras, & Brahmās, by this
generation with its contemplatives & brahmans, its royalty &
commonfolk, is rightly seen as it has come to be with right
discernment by the noble ones as “This is stressful”’: This is one
contemplation. ‘Whatever is considered as “This is stressful” by the
world with its devas, Māras, & Brahmās, by this generation with its
contemplatives & brahmans, its royalty & commonfolk, is rightly seen
as it has come to be with right discernment by the noble ones as “This
is bliss”’: This is a second contemplation. For a monk rightly
contemplating this duality in this way—heedful, ardent, & resolute—one
of two fruits can be expected: either gnosis right here-&-now, or—if
there be any remnant of clinging-sustenance—non-return.”

https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/KN/StNp/StNp3_12.html

Nirvana can't be described or reached by logic or reason

Logic and reason are functions of the intellect-mind. Nirvana is beyond the intellect-mind.

What is the intellect-mind? The mind that works on and understands mathematics. The mind constructs the equations, then goes on verifying the left and right sides between the "=" are equal; then designs experiments to prove the equations. In brief, intellect-mind is a self-sustaining system, it goes in a loop of generating hypothesis then re-assumed the hypothesis to evidences, that become facts - which condensed and constructed the world. Say, the stone is solid and heavy. But to generate the stone is solid and heavy - the phenomena, it requires the intellect-mind to recognize the concept of stone, then recalls the attributes of the stone; then the physical body, sensory system and brain, etc., of the human will response to the totality of it, by not able to lift it, or not able to walk pass if it is blocking the road...

ONLY meditation is the way

No. Meditation cannot bring one to Nirvana. Those meditation teachers if telling you Nirvana is by reaching certain grade of Jhana, or certain Vipassana, they are just selling you a consumer product with catchy marketing slogan.

Even Vipaśyanā requires getting beyond the intellect-mind. Don't confuse it with the marketed "Vipassana" of Mr. Goenka's or many meditation "teachers", just like a motel with the sign "Paradise" doesn't mean it is the Paradise. The Buddha's Vipaśyanā is about reaching high level Dhyana, where the sensory inputs are all cut off, the intellect-mind is surpassed, by then insight, the vipaśyanā, can operate.

Therefore intellect-mind is the mind of reason and logic, it is the mind we most familiar with, we use it all the time. No matter how intelligent one owns her/his intellect-mind, how high the IQ score, it doesn't give a slightest edge for this type of person to reach Nirvana. Nirvana is removed from reason and logic.