The term Nirvana was often mistakably translated as “the great extinguishing” by linguists. Its meaning can only be understood in connection with its antonym Samsara (cycle of conditioned and painful states of being).
In Theravada Buddhism, Nirvana is experienced as a state of absolute peace, resp. freedom from all suffering. According to this view, you have to cut loose all ties to Samsara, the world of conditioned existence, in order to experience Nirvana. Therefore all meditations of this school aim at avoiding causes for further rebirths.

Followers of Great Way Buddhism, though, only see this as a lesser realization. For they judge the mere experience of undisturbed mental peace only as an intermediate step or even as a dead end. With the great Nirvana they strive for the flourishing of all enlightened qualities through adequate meditations. Besides peaceful equanimity they include joy, love, and compassion as unlimited and unchangeable qualities of all beings' minds. To realize this highest Buddha nature they open themselves for all sentient beings within the cycle of existence (Samsara). The so-called Bodhisattva promise includes the wish to be reborn, until all sentient beings are liberated from suffering.
And practitioners of Diamondway Buddhism concentrate in their meditations on the state of the Buddha as a mirror of their own nature. Identifying with his enlightened qualities gives them the power, to manage all steps on the way to liberation and enlightenment within one lifetime. Thus, in the after-meditation phase, which means in everyday life, they try to discover the Buddha potential in all beings, as well. For on the highest philosophical level, Buddha Shakyamuni explained the inseparable union of Samsara and Nirvana. From a psychological point of view, before being enlightened all beings experience their own dream of the conditioned world based on wrong suppositions (cf. The Three Kinds of Suffering).

If instead you recognize mind’s unchangeable state of truth as limitless openness, its impressions become a joyful experience of the free play of its energies and the very same world, we live in now, becomes the deeply meaningful experience of a “pure land”.
Both Great Way and Diamondway describe lesser Nirvana as a state of joy, which is accompanied by liberation from the compulsive clinging to an idea of a truly existing “self”. Together with this illusion you overcome the mental veil of disturbing emotions. Only after this experience, you gain the courage and confidence, to overcome all preconceived opinions and further conceptual veils of the mind. After all veils of emotions and concepts have been removed through meditation practice, the wisdom of a Buddha manifests as the timeless nature of mind, without beginning or end, center or limit. In this huge and unsurpassable Nirvana, mind shows its full power in the spontaneous expression of its enlightened activity.