Awakening & Rotting Away

Hi, just a friendly reminder, if you refer to the sutta’s “address” in its shortened format - AN4.95 - people will be able to click it and read it either in the Pali original or a translation in. :wink:

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I am starting to think that this is a later commentarial addition- is it found anywhere in the EBTs?

If you think about it a monastic would have even less reason to keep continuing than a lay person. If a monk who is an arahanth would look for requisites, a lay arahanth should be able to do the same thing I assume- as long as it doesn’t involve craving, aversion and delusion.

with metta

I don’t know that, I think I got to know about this from discussions here on SC. I can try to search for it in the evening.

I’ve heard it too growing up. But I don’t think there is any EBTs to ‘prove it’. :slight_smile:

with metta

Imagine you going home in the heavy rain. It is freezing, it’s raining cats and dogs, it’s dark and spooky. So nice you are wearing warm clothes and carrying an umbrella! It’s even a bit cozy, you know: it is always comforting to feel safe and protected when everything around you is falling into pieces. Then you hear some odd noise and realize it is a small kitten sitting in the bush. She is starving, she is trembling with cold, and she is alone and frightened with no-one in the entire world to help her in her misery.

Would your desire to help her, your metta be a sign of you craving something? There are three kinds of taṇhā, i.e. craving in the technical Buddhist sense of the word:

  • kamataṇhā, i.e. craving for sensual pleasures, incl. wealth and power, possibly clinging to heories, opinions, views, etc.
  • bhavataṇhā, i.e. good old craving for being, for having experience, being born
  • vibhavataṇhā, which is a bit more complicated since there is currently no unified opinion what this is supposed to mean. The most wide-spread interpretation is ‘craving for non-existence’, and I personally like it quite a bit as it fits so nicely the Freudian paradigm of Eros and Thanatos, but there are all kinds of theories to choose among.

Metta and compassion do not really fit into these three categories, do they? If you sympathize with someone, if you are compassionate, you do not really crave, you do not wish to quench some deep inner ‘thirst’ - and if you do wish to do it, then you are soing it wrong. Instead, you want to give and share, you want to let go. Taṇhā is all about me and mine, it is about grasping at things and ripping them apart to stuff the bottomless hole right in the centre of our existence. The Brahmaviharas are all about giving yourself away to those who can accept your gift.

I do not really know what is the reason for your difficulties with the Buddha and arahants practicing the Brahmaviharas through their teaching and keeping themselves alive for that reason. However, I’d venture a guess that you have possibly conflated craving (taṇhā) and volitional activities (saṅkhārā). Any being wants something in the sense that any being, incl. arahants, has will, and having will requires having purposes. However, these purposes may be wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral. If the purpose of your volitional activity fits into the three categories of taṇhā, you are not an arahant. I would even say that if a Buddha or arahant knows or sees that there are being who are ready to accept the Dhamma and be helped out of the Sansara, they will inevitably help them out of compassion as a volitional factor diametrically opposed to taṇhā. If there will be no Brahma Sahampati to convince them there are other people who can be helped, well, then maybe they will really peacefully die of starvation.

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Looks like Paccekhabddhas went on alms-rounds (Pindapata). So probably they must have had similar behaviour to arahants.

Once in the past that money-lending householder provided alms for the Private Buddha named Tagarasikhi. SN3.20

with metta

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I am starting to see that it must be this way. Honestly I had always thought it was pure craving that was uprooted, but it seems it’s only the unwholesome roots wrapped up in the delusion of self. That certainly makes things clearer for me. So that means if you can still want happiness for someone, and act out of that “desire,” as long as your completely unaffected by whether it actually happens. It’s like that question about whether there can really be true altruism, because you’re always doing it in some way for yourself, but if you completed uprooted “self,” then I see how compassion could be truly acted out of pure compassion. This discussion has also helped me better understand emptiness and compassion. True emptiness is actually a requirement for true compassion, otherwise you’ll always be acting out of some sense of self, however small.

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What about those arahant whom terminated their lives due to sickness ?

They seem to be exceptions to the general rule. When physical pain is excessively unbearable, they reach for the knife simply because the body is no longer of any aid whatsoever. When Channa killed himself and Sariputta mentioned to the Buddha that he had various relatives and acquaintances (who would be subjected to grief), the Buddha gave an explanation that was in line with his Dhamma:

The Venerable Channa did indeed have these friendly families, Sāriputta, intimate families, hospitable families; but I do not say that to this extent one is blameworthy. Sāriputta, when one lays down this body and takes up another body, then I say one is blameworthy. This did not happen in the case of the bhikkhu Channa. The bhikkhu Channa used the knife blamelessly. Thus, Sāriputta, should you remember it.

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