Nirvana, in the Indian religions (Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism), is the concept of an individual's passions being extinguished as the ultimate state of salvation, release, or liberation from suffering (duḥkha) and from the cycle of birth and rebirth (saṃsāra).

In Indian religions, nirvana is sometimes used as a synonym of moksha and mukti. All Indian religions assert it to be a state of perfect quietude, freedom, and highest happiness; liberation from attachment and worldly suffering; and the ending of samsara, the cycle of existence. However, non-Buddhist and Buddhist traditions describe these terms for liberation differently. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union of or the realization of the identity of Atman with Brahman, depending on the Hindu tradition. In Jainism, nirvana is also the soteriological goal, representing the release of a soul from karmic bondage and samsara. The Buddhist concept of nirvana is the abandonment of the 10 fetters, marking the end of rebirth by stilling the "fires" that keep the process of rebirth going.

The ideas of spiritual liberation, with the concept of soul and Brahman, appear in Vedic texts and Upanishads, such as in verse 4.4.6 of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

The term nirvana in the soteriological sense of "blown out, extinguished" state of liberation appears at many places in the Vedas and even more in the post-Buddhist Bhagavata Purana, however populist opinion does not give credit to either the Vedas or the Upanishads. Collins states, "the Buddhists seem to have been the first to call it nirvana." This may have been deliberate use of words in early Buddhism, suggests Collins, since Atman and Brahman were described in Vedic texts and Upanishads with the imagery of fire, as something good, desirable and liberating. Collins says the word nirvāṇa is from the verbal root vā "blow" in the form of past participle vāna "blown", prefixed with the preverb nis meaning "out". Hence the original meaning of the word is "blown out, extinguished". (Sandhi changes the sounds: the v of vāna causes nis to become nir, and then the r of nir causes retroflexion of the following n: nis+vāna > nirvāṇa). However the Buddhist meaning of nirvana also has other interpretations.

L. S. Cousins said that in popular usage nirvana was "the goal of Buddhist discipline,... the final removal of the disturbing mental elements which obstruct a peaceful and clear state of mind, together with a state of awakening from the mental sleep which they induce."

Nirvāṇa is a term found in the texts of all major Indian religions – Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. It refers to the profound peace of mind that is acquired with moksha, liberation from samsara, or release from a state of suffering, after respective spiritual practice or sādhanā.

The liberation from Saṃsāra developed as an ultimate goal and soteriological value in the Indian culture, and called by different terms such as nirvana, moksha, mukti and kaivalya. This basic scheme underlies Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, where "the ultimate aim is the timeless state of moksa, or, as the Buddhists first seem to have called it, nirvana." Although the term occurs in the literatures of a number of ancient Indian traditions, the concept is most commonly associated with Buddhism. Some writers believe the concept was adopted by other Indian religions after it became established in Buddhism, but with different meanings and description, for instance the use of (Moksha) in the Hindu text Bhagavad Gita of the Mahabharata.

The idea of moksha is connected to the Vedic culture, where it conveyed a notion of amrtam, "immortality", and also a notion of a timeless, "unborn", or "the still point of the turning world of time". It was also its timeless structure, the whole underlying "the spokes of the invariable but incessant wheel of time". The hope for life after death started with notions of going to the worlds of the Fathers or Ancestors and/or the world of the Gods or Heaven.