SuttaCentral
Hi Jasudho,
The monkeys weren’t meant as a criticism of anyone in particular or even such threads as this in general. The monkeys might very well be the thoughts in my own head if my participation in these threads is any indication. Rather, the image of monkeys in monkey traps debating nibbana just spontaneously appeared in my monkey head and I thought it amusing enough to share 
I know. 
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 .
I don’t think your conclusion follows if you take a “person” to be composed of a series of mind-moments, each of which is causally dependent on the prior one. There is no need to posit anything further in order to account for the individuation and persons and their persistence through time. There doesn’t need to any intrinsic characteristic that the mind-moments all have in common in order for them to compose the same person.
I make no exception for myself. All explanations of Nibbana are flawed to a greater or lesser degree. I was simply expressing my understanding rather than having someone else tell me what my understanding is.
What is clear to me is that my wordcraft is too poor to allow readers to understand what I am saying. This is evidenced by quotes and replies that are at cross purposes to the point that I make. This tells me that the reader has misunderstood, and therefore misrepresented, my understanding. I won’t compound the matter further. I will simply quote Ajahn Char:
The Buddha comprehensively investigated conditioned phenomena and so was able to let it all go. The five Khandhas were let go of, and the knowing carried on merely as a impartial observer of the process. If he experienced something positive, he didn’t become positive along with it. He simply observed and remained aware. If he experienced something negative, he did not become negative. And why was that? Because his mind had been cut free from such causes and conditions. He’d penetrated the Truth. The conditions leading to rebirth no longer existed. This is the knowing that is certain and reliable. This is a mind that is truly at peace. This is what is not born, doesn’t age, doesn’t get sick and doesn’t die. This is neither cause nor effect, nor dependent on cause and effect. It is independent of the process of causal conditioning. The causes then cease with no conditioning remaining. This mind is above and beyond both good and evil. What can I say? It is beyond the limitations of language to describe it. All supporting conditions have ceased and any attempt to describe it will merely lead to attachment. The words used then become the theory of the mind.
Unshakeable Peace by Ajahn Char
It would be interesting to get your thoughts on sannavedayitanirodha.
To be honest, I don’t really have any thoughts on Sannavedayitanirodha, or Nirodha Samapatti. Luang Poo Tate rarely mentioned it and I cannot recall any other teacher even referring to it. When he did refer to it, it was always in the context of an Anāgāmi or an Arahant taking a rest. This state is only available to these levels of Ariya and is not essential for the attainment of Path and Fruit. This being the case, it did not occupy any of Luang Poo’s desana time or conversation.
I think you use words quite effectively in expressing your views. The issue is whether there is a “knowing” that transcends time, space, and conditions as you appear to believe. Or whether this is not so, and final nibbāna is full cessation.
This quote from Ajahn Chah is about nibbāna-while-alive, not final nibbāna, as it specifically mentions conditions leading to rebirth no longer existing and the Buddha’s peace while experiencing positive and negative experiences.
Regarding
This is a state mentioned in a number of suttas in which there is a temporary cessation of consciousness/knowing and all experiences. Since this is so, how can this cessation be if there is a “knowing” that transcends the dissolution or temporary cessation of the senses and aggregates, (even though it is a state not necessary for awakening)?
None of the suttas that mention saññavedayitanirodha speak of the persistence of such a “knowing.”
Namo Buddhaya!
This seeing with discernment is not described as ‘something that transcends the dissolution or temporary cessation of the senses and aggregates’. You didn’t get this from the sutta or you remembered it wrong.
That seeing with wisdom therein is not apart from the cessation that there is.
Seeing with discernment does transcend the aggregates and therefore apprehended as their cessation. One shouldn’t say that seeing with discernment there transcend the cessation as that’d side with eternalism and you get ‘something after cessation’ doctrine.
In more simple words.
If heavens help, you attain cessation samadhi, whatever it is you discern can be said to transcend the feeling states but you wouldn’t say that it transcends cessation of perception & feeling for what you then discern is the cessation of perception & feeling. It’s not like first feelings cease and then a show begins; nirodha is the show.
Remember there are just 2 elements by two fold classification, sankhata and asankhata.
There are no inbetween elements, and so the ‘cessation of sankhata’ has to be ‘asankhata’ and therefore one can’t say that asankhata transcends the cessation of sankhata but one can say that asankhata transcends the sankhata if one wants.
Actually, I’m not saying this – it was a response to a prior post that claimed this.
Happy to hear. My mistake🙏
I can see that there is still a problem with words and, given the subject matter, this problem won’t go away.
The knowing nature of the heart does not go anywhere. It does not “transcend”. It simply is. Space, time and all conditioning have no relevance to the “knowing”. The use of terminology like “transcends” is therefore meaningless.
This is not the full quote. You have left out the bit where he says,
This is what is not born, doesn’t age, doesn’t get sick and doesn’t die. This is neither cause nor effect, nor dependent on cause and effect. It is independent of the process of causal conditioning. The causes then cease with no conditioning remaining. This mind is above and beyond both good and evil.
If it doesn’t die, how can cessation refer to this? In this part of the quote Ajahn Char is clearly referring to Nibbāna in both forms. This is a mind that is truly at peace. This is what is not born, doesn’t age, doesn’t get sick and doesn’t die. A point that @Green has also been trying to explain with no success.
Again, a problem with words and translations that only look at the words. Here the problem word is “consciousness”. In numerous threads in this forum posters refer to consciousness as it is referred in the fifth of the five Khandha. This is fine in most cases. However, there are times when a better translation would refer to the stream of consciousness, or the process of being conscious, rather than consciousness itself. This is one such occasion. It is also important to understand that both Viññāna and Citta are expressions of the “knowing” but NOT the “knowing” itself (Note: there are slightly deferent descriptions of these terms used by the Thai teachers, but this is not the place to get into that). Just as smiles and frowns are expressions of the face but not the face itself. There are no expressions without the face but the face is not reliant on its expressions.
Having said this, and as I have been asked, I will explain my understanding of Nirodha Samapatti. In Jhana and Samadhi the stream of consciousness continues, moment by moment, albeit in a refined state. In Nirodha Samapatti the flow of consciousness ceases. This does not mean that “knowing” ceases. What it means is that moments of consciousness no longer keep arising. Instead the “knowing” knows only a single moment, which is itself, Dhamma. This is a bit like the Arahant having a peak a Parinibbāna before he/she dies.
I hope this helps as I have no wish to dwell on this further.
If it simply is, as you say, then it transcends.
If conditions have no relevance, as you say, then it transcends.
Others have also asked for this: cite the suttas in which the Buddha clearly and teaches about an ever-present mind that never dies.
The Upanishads did this quite well, making it quite clear. So why not in the suttas?
We might say the awakened mind, no longer attached to anything, knows it is free and knows that after the final death there will be no rebirth, death, etc.
That’s not the same as asserting a metaphysical timeless, everlasting, knowing that remains after the dissolution of the senses and aggregates.
There is not a single sutta in which the Buddha asserts this clearly. Why?
Where does the Buddha say this?
But sure, we’re going around and around so we can agree to disagree.
Another approach to speaking about this is the analogy of moonlight reflected on waves (ocean for example). Vinnana is the reflected light that seems to dance and jump around due to the ever changing waves upon which it lands (or illuminates one could say). Vinnana and the waves represent the aggregates and here there arises a sense of self or identity “I am these waves”.
The moonlight is not transcendent but rather the underlying basis. It was always present.
Another example would be a mirage. The ‘water’ of the mirage is just the reflected sky, an illusion. The sky is not transcendent but the underlying basis that gives rise to the mirage under certain conditions.
But of course if one looks at this model from the perspective of the view that there are only the five aggregates, the sky or moonlight would appear to be transcendent.
Not sure if that helps or hinders.
Except the ayatana are included in the aggregates, so if you know the six ayatana of contact this shouldn’t be a problem. There are suttas in which Buddha says those who don’t know the six ayatana of contact have not completed the schooling and haven’t realized … whatever it is … insight, and all those other words that get listed … for themselves. He’s pretty clear the contact is the without which not of epistemology.
Could you be more specific as to what you mean when you use the term ‘this’ here? I understand the term ayatana. I am just not sure how understanding the ayatana solves the ‘problem’ (I think you are referring to the transcendent nature of the moonlight).
Yes. I don’t personally have a problem with seeing the sky or moon as transcendent, depending on what is meant by transcendent, but the idea that either is “beyond” the ayatana and so the five aggregates and so are transcendent doesn’t make sense.
How is one capable of any knowing in the dimension of nothingness? How can consciousness persist in the dimension of nothingness? Especially when, we are told, the dimension of infinite consciousness has just been surpassed?
I agree with what you’ve said up to the peek of parinibbbana. There’s a sutta which states that beings who achieve saññāvedayitanirodha but don’t become enlightened are reborn among mind made gods. And there, they reach enlightenment.
So, I would surmise that saññāvedayitanirodha is just another destination along the dimensions of samsara. And, factually speaking, saññāvedayitanirodha is referred to as a dimension.
It’s also an escape. Sariputta saw that saññāvedayitanirodha was an escape. And, having ended the fermentations after emerging mindfully from that attainment, he saw that there was no further escape.
The attainments are the levels which exist in the realms of samsara. saññāvedayitanirodha is just one of those realms.
Hi,
That’s my point. There is no knowing in saññāvedayitnorodha.
MN43:
" “What’s the difference between someone who has passed away and a mendicant who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling?” “Yvāyaṁ, āvuso, mato kālaṅkato, yo cāyaṁ bhikkhu saññāvedayitanirodhaṁ samāpanno—imesaṁ kiṁnānākaraṇan”ti?
“When someone dies, their physical, verbal, and mental processes have ceased and stilled; their vitality is spent; their warmth is dissipated; and their faculties have disintegrated.
“Yvāyaṁ, āvuso, mato kālaṅkato tassa kāyasaṅkhārā niruddhā paṭippassaddhā, vacīsaṅkhārā niruddhāpaṭippassaddhā, cittasaṅkhārā niruddhā paṭippassaddhā, āyu parikkhīṇo, usmā vūpasantā, indriyāniparibhinnāni.
When a mendicant has attained the cessation of perception and feeling, their physical, verbal, and mental processes have ceased and stilled.
Yo cāyaṁ bhikkhu saññāvedayitanirodhaṁ samāpanno tassapi kāyasaṅkhārā niruddhā paṭippassaddhā, vacīsaṅkhārā niruddhā paṭippassaddhā, cittasaṅkhārā niruddhā paṭippassaddhā,…
However, this state is different that the formless attainment of nothingness, in which a subtle consciousness is aware of the “nothingness.”
As in SN28.7:
““Reverend, going totally beyond the dimension of infinite consciousness, aware that ‘there is nothing at all’, I entered and remained in the dimension of nothingness. …” …
“idhāhaṁ, āvuso, sabbaso viññāṇañcāyatanaṁ samatikkamma, natthi kiñcīti ākiñcaññāyatanaṁ upasampajja viharāmi …pe…”
Well. I’ll politely counter with DN 9
Furthermore, a mendicant, going totally beyond the dimension of infinite consciousness, aware that ‘there is nothing at all’, enters and remains in the dimension of nothingness. The subtle and true perception of the dimension of infinite consciousness that they had previously ceases. At that time they have a subtle and true perception of the dimension of nothingness. That’s how, with training, certain perceptions arise and certain perceptions cease. And this is that training,” said the Buddha.
Clearly “nothingness” is a type of perception which goes beyond consciousness. Consciousness has already “ceased” with the perception of nothingness. How can consciousness exist with nothingness? It’s an absurdity. And yet nothingness can be known.
More importantly, there is:
But, lord, does the Blessed One describe one peak of perception or many peaks of perception?"
“Potthapada, I describe one peak of perception and many peaks of perception.”
“And how does the Blessed One describe one peak of perception and many peaks of perception?”
“In whatever way one touches cessation, Potthapada, that’s the way I describe the peak of perception(Potthapada Sutta: About Potthapada)That’s how I describe one peak of perception and many peaks of perception.”
“Now, lord, does perception arise first, and knowledge after; or does knowledge arise first, and perception after; or do perception & knowledge arise simultaneously?”
“Potthapada, perception arises first, and knowledge after. And the arising of knowledge comes from the arising of perception. One discerns, ‘It’s in dependence on this [7] that my knowledge has arisen.’ Through this line of reasoning one can realize how perception arises first, and knowledge after, and how the arising of knowledge comes from the arising of perception.”
Cessation is the “peak of perception” and perception precedes knowledge. The peak of perception is, also, the peak of knowledge.