CS response to this:
1.) You can mask audible commands with j.A. (Not sure it works with every one of nirvana's moves, as I only care to mask volante.)
2.) -a.Which counter is he timing? With any regular counter, try not to be too close on hit, and you'll be safe. It will just cancel Nirvana's hit. If you're too close, oh well. Every character can be countered, and it does happen. You'll just have to eat that combo.
----b.If he is counter super-ing, wait a second, super jump, double jump, and possibly even allegretto if you think you'll come down too fast.
3.) Hakumen has a terrible back dash. If this beat something, your attack was probably gonna whiff in the first place.
4.) Play smart. If your opponent IB's something you definitely know is unsafe, don't follow it up. Don't need to mash out all of our combos. We don't win like that.
5.) As a Carl player, always assume he has 8 Magatama. Reason for this being, you're rarely going to get in on him safely, so a lot of the match will be zoning back and forth. The longer you wait, the more magatama he's going to have, and you don't have much of a choice but to wait a lot of the time. Treat him as always having meter for everything, so you won't be caught off guard. Basically just stay alert.
6.) Hakumen CAN be pressured, just have to be smart about it. Shit, if your friend is mashing counter all the time and getting you with it, how about leaving a gap in one of your block strings, and letting his counter whiff? Then YOU will have a free CH combo, and HE won't think about mashing that out so much.
The key to this match is to stay patient.
Sometimes it's hard, but Carl has to do it against the top 5, so you're going to have to learn.
Lose your cool and you lose the match, trust me.
QFT.