“In whatever way they imagine,
Thereby it turns otherwise,
That itself is the falsity
Of this puerile deceptive thing.
Nibbāna is unfalsifying in its nature,
That they understood as the truth,
And indeed by the higher understanding of that truth
They have become hungerless and fully appeased.”
The first verse makes it clear that imagining is at the root of aññathābhāva, or otherwiseness, in so far as it creates a thing out of nothing. As soon as a thing is conceived in the mind by imagining, the germ of otherwiseness or change enters into it at its very conception.
So a thing is born only to become another thing, due to the otherwiseness in nature. To grasp a thing tenaciously is to exist with it, and birth, decay and death are the inexorable vicissitudes that go with it.
The second verse says that Nibbāna is known as the truth, because it is of an unfalsifying nature. Those who have understood it are free from the hunger of craving. The word parinibbuta in this context does not mean that those who have realized the truth have passed away. It only conveys the idea of full appeasement or a quenching of that hunger. Why is Nibbāna regarded as unfalsifying? Because there is no ‘thing’ in it. It is so long as there is a thing that all the distress and misery follow. Nibbāna is called animitta, or the signless, precisely because there is no-thing in it.
Because it is signless, it is unestablished, appaihita. Only where there is an establishment can there be a dislodgement. Since it is not liable to dislodgement or disintegration, it is unshakeable. It is called akuppā cetovimutti, unshakeable deliverance of the mind,because of its unshaken and stable nature. Due to the absence of craving there
is no directional apsiration, or paidh.
Similarly suññata, or voidness, is a term implying that there is no essence in Nibbāna in the substantial sense in which the worldlings use that term. As mentioned in the MahāSāropamasutta, deliverance itself is the essence. Apart from that, there is nothing essential or substantial in Nibbāna. In short, there is no thing to become otherwise in Nibbān.
Nibbana The Mind Stilled – Volume III – Bhikkhu K. Nanananda Page 289