Continuing the discussion from Bhikkhu Bodhi on Nibbāna:
The original topic is getting too dense so I gathered what I understood from the side who presented the imperishable mind/citta and make a summary as below:
About mind/citta that “knows” without using the viññāṇa of the 6 senses.
Why do we want to know about it? Supposedly, without it, there will be not possible to realize the asaṅkhāra/the Deathless/Nibbāna. Also, supposedly, without it, there will be nothing left worthy after all the hardship we endured on the spiritual practice.
What is it? It is supposed to be beyond the conditioned dhamma like the 6 sense fields, the 5 clinging aggregates. It is supposed to be beyond the All, the World, the logic of existence-nonexistence-both-neither, the language of permanent-impermanent which utilizing conditioned dhamma. However, there are still some essential descriptions about it for us to know it as it is: it is supposed to be anatta, to be not a conditioned dhamma and supposedly inherently “know”.
How to individually realize this? Supposedly, by removing the defilements.
What does it know? Supposedly, it knows “the absence of the 6 senses, the absence of the 5 aggregates”, in other words, “the absence of all the saṅkhāra”. So, in other words, such mind/citta supposedly knows “the asaṅkhāra”.
What does it not know? Supposedly, it does not know the saṅkhāra.
How does it know? It does not know using the viññāṇa mechanism of dependent origination of the 6 sense fields. Supposedly, it simply just inherently knows the asaṅkhāra, period. For an unenlightened being, defilements obscured this mind/citta. But when people got enlightened via removing the defilements, this mind/citta “shines/illumines”. Therefore, thanks to this mechanism, enlightened people can “know the asaṅkhāra” and realize for themselves the asaṅkhāra/the Deathless/Nibbāna. Note that: even before removing the defilements, this mind/citta still knows the asaṅkhāra inherently; however, due to the defilements, an unenlightened can’t realize for himself this.
Why is this mind/citta supposedly anatta? It does not belong to us, meaning: we can’t control it to stop the “knowing” or direct it to know something else or “does anything else”. It’s not ourselves, seeing it as ourselves will prevent us from cleansing the defilements.
I hope that I have put in as clear terms as possible to present the mentioned idea. Please also kindly point out which part I have misunderstood.
Below, I will present a problem that I found with the above mentioned idea.
Problem: We can pinpoint each individual with their corresponding citta as: Person A with citta A, person B with citta B, etc. No matter how person A changes within this lifetime or from different lifetimes, we can still directly point at citta A to recognize that specific person even in whatever kind of life form he currently is. Think of the similarity with a kind of DNA that lasts through rebirths. This leads to the situation that each citta must exactly be the same to keep the anatta attribute.
However, if all the cittas are the same, we will have to address unwholesome actions such as: person A kills person B. Before and after such unwholesome action, the kamma are affected but the cittas are not affected whatsoever. How can a supposedly un-affected citta be pitifully dragged along by the kamma that determined future rebirths? This leads to the situation that citta must not be dragged along by kammas and must exactly be the same for each person to keep the anatta attribute.
However, if all the cittas are the same and are not dragged along by kammas, it has no other choice except to associate with the name-form of a specific life form. This leads to the situation that citta can not be defined as beyond the name-form. In other words, we can not keep the requirement at the very beginning that such citta is beyond the 6 sense fields and the 5 clinging aggregates.
Contradiction