And What was the witness of “what nibbana is” so those descriptions can arise?
These descriptions sounds impossible if we think the cease of consciousness is a destruction of consciousness.
that translation of Iti44 can be another occasion requesting a comparative with other translations. Because the reading of “where all states of existence cease” doesn’t sounds well. And it doesn’t sounds well because previously we can read:
“Their five sense faculties still remain. So long as their senses have not gone they continue to experience the agreeable and disagreeable, to feel pleasure and pain.”. Therefore, that remainder by itself cannot be the “all states of existence cease”.
The end of the five senses activity alone, it cannot be the cause for “all states of existence cease”. Because the five senses doesn’t include consciousness, and also there are states of existence without the five gross human senses.
The Sutta explain the leaving of the remainder of the five senses activity. This activity is a type of becoming that the arhant should experience, until the decay of the kamma of the gross acquisition of -self that he acquired at his birth.
However, the five-sense activity doesn’t embrace the complete reach of the aggregates.
And then, to say “existence only ceases at death” it sound like a materialist assumption
Just my view
PD: I have read your text , although what you wrote makes more impossible the logics of some extinction of nibbana/parinibbanna into a nothingness.
IMHO it seems there is a wrong assumption, frequently unconscious, which seems to affect translators and authors. And this cause some distorted translations from the Pali words, like the case of nibbana/parinibbana explained in this thread.
That assumption seems to include the belief about the aggregates will be destroyed after the death of the arhant, and this is something that we cannot find inside the Suttas.
Instead, what we find are clear explanations about the cease of the aggregates cannot be the destruction of the aggregates:
“And what is it, bhikkhus, that he neither builds up nor dismantles, but abides having dismantled? He neither builds up nor dismantles form, but abides having dismantled it. He neither builds up nor dismantles feeling … perception … volitional formations … consciousness, but abides having dismantled it.
SuttaCentral
even when we cannot be able to name or isolate what “abides having dismantled”, obviously this affects to all the aggregates, and of course also to nibbana/parinibbana.
I understand it should force to rethink the supposed substantial difference between nibbana and parinibbana. And also about the delusion of live an death, and similar borders to limit the Reality.
It seems that too many people, including translators, are assuming these limits are very real, and legitimate to be applied in Dhamma phrases and explanations which are denying these borders in a quite explicit way.