I think it can. And I also think that you’ve pointed to the inherent value of the attainment. Ie. what it is like to exist without a body and without perceptions.
The nature of such an existence is almost free of suffering. No body = no pain. What remains is the mind. And because the mind is impermanent, this state, like all the previous attainments, leads only to rebirth in that realm. And one can fall from that realm.
If sannavedayitanirodha is a state of total suffering free, non-awareness, then why not end things there?
What’s the mechanism of this knowing itself if it is not via mind contact?
Exactly because there’s no mind contact there’s no knowing.
For the luminous mind, as I understand from ajahn brahm, it’s a nimitta stage before 1st absorption Jhāna.
The way you present it is degrading the high level of cessation of perception and feeling.
As I understand it, from classical Theravada, it’s impossible for a person in that cessation absorption to be harmed. Floods may come and go, the person is unharmed, people may think that person is dead and helped to cremate the body, but the body doesn’t burn.
It could be this reason that it’s not possible to die while in cessation absorption.
Annihilationism is more of the self existed and doesn’t exist in death.
Whereas right view is that there never was a self to begin with and all are just 5 aggregates arising and ceasing.
When there’s arising and ceasing, there is conditionality and emptiness (of self) and dependent origination. And also dependent cessation where all conditionality ends due to no more causes making arising happen.
When there’s no more arising, it’s fair to call parinibbāna as total cessation, nothingness etc.
And you’re confusing it with the realm of nothingness. So who’s really degrading its high level? Me; who asserts the attainment can be experienced, or you: who asserts the attainment is no different from nothingness?
Your view amounts to the speculative doctrine of fortuitous origination. Ie.
"There are, bhikkhus, certain gods called ‘non-percipient beings.’ When perception arises in them, those gods pass away from that plane. Now, bhikkhus, this comes to pass, that a certain being, after passing away from that plane, takes rebirth in this world. Having come to this world, he goes forth from home to homelessness. When he has gone forth, by means of ardor, endeavor, application, diligence, and right reflection, he attains to such a degree of mental concentration that with his mind thus concentrated he recollects the arising of perception, but nothing previous to that. He speaks thus: 'The self and the world originate fortuitously. What is the reason? Because previously I did not exist, but now I am. Not having been, I sprang into being.’
This is exactly what you assert to be the emergence from sannavedayitanirodha.
So you’ve merely inserted “non-existence” into a place where neither existence nor non-existence apply.
Annihilationism is just “non-existence”. Those who believe “non-existence” is the end of suffering are annihilationists.
Right view is just that the idea of the Self must be extinguished. “Existence” and “non-existence” don’t enter into the discussion.
It’s absolutely incorrect to equate “cessation” with nothingness.
Nothingness has been thoroughly inspected, understood, and discarded by the Buddha.
It is not the end of the path. Even though you think you’re using nothingness as a figurative way of defining Nibbāna, you are in fact confusing nothingness with the unconditioned nature of extinguishment.
When “total cessation” is talked about, it is talked about in reference only to suffering and the problems attached to the belief in the Self.
Maha Boowa has experienced it this way, but i have read it also in mahayana and vajrayana texts which describe the knowledge of buddhist yogi’s. They also refer to a state of bare awareness, without sense-object, beyond feeling-states. It is described as an all pervading sensitive intelligent field and at the same time as empty. It is distinguished from endless vinnana.
So, i want to turn this debate around:…there is no Pali sutta that literally says that sannavedayitanirodha would be some absence, unconsciousness, cessation of mind, not known…not perceived…all these ideas are based upon other sutta’s, derived from other sutta’s. I know them all. But i feel it is just irrational to talk about sannavedayitanirdoha as ultimate happeness if it would refer to a total absence of awareness. And it not known in any way.
It also makes no sense at all to even introduce such a state in which sanna and vedana have ceased IF this cessation of vedana and sanna is not even known.
Suppose i would teach:…“People… listen carefully, i will now tell you about a state that is ultimate happiness. All sensing is gone, there is no vedana, no sanna… Yes People i tell you about this state…but People…It cannot be known in any way*. but it is without vedana and sanna and ultimate happiness”.
Apparantly you believe this is very reasonable, rational. Well, i do not. I do think that even more persons then now will start to ignore me totally and declare me death.
There is also no Pali texts that literally says that Buddha teaches beings a Path to a mere cessation without anything remaining. But some people believe this is what the end of rebirth really means.
But this is also only intellectual understanding, derived from texts and based upon ignoring asankhata, the constant, the stable, that what does not desintegrate (so cannot be any conditioned state!)
You all do believe in the reality of the conditioned, but not in the unconditioned while Buddha really taught the Path to the Unconditioned (SN43) and never ever talked about a Path to a mere cessation.
There is no sutta who teaches this.
I am really not the only person who believes this Path to a Mere Cessation is a deep misunderstanding of Buddha-Dhamma. It just totally ignores the constant, the stable, the not-desintegrating and sees only formations and temporary state. But the constant, the stable, the not-desintegrating, are really part of Buddha-Dhamma…and is totally absurd to talk about a mere cessation without anything remaining, an extinguished fire, as stable, constant, not-deintegrating. Also that is irrational for me.
The orthodox Theravada at least is very clear that there’s no consciousness in cessation.
Also, from the mindfulness of breathing sutta, contemplating cessation I breath in and out. And description of nibbāna seems to have cessation often in that phrase.
Say a totally nothingness, cessation of all, there’s nothing, can there be conditionality there? No, because nothing to be conditioned. But if you’re right, and there is another thing called the unconditioned, which is not the cessation, total nothing, then there’s 2 types of unconditioned. Hmm… sounds strange. What characteristics differentiate one from the other? when we have characteristics, we have signs and therefore conditionality, impermanence, etc all can come into play.
From my point of view, all those, including all the sources you cited are just reifying nibbāna to be something. Proliferating the unproliferated. The delusion of self likes to hide there. So people with those wrong views are not even stream winners, no matter what other kinds of profund wisdom they show.
It’s hard emotionally to see the teacher that we love and trust and follow and are convinced to be infallible, to have attained the goal, falls short of the standards of the sutta, and thus painfully, we have to conclude that they are not yet there. It’s still useful to learn many things from them, so long as one doesn’t get confused about the right view of parinibbāna.
I know the difficult because I have met some of these people and was hooked winked by their wisdom for a while into thinking that they are really at least a stream winner. They are lay, so I am confident to share here. Why I come on so strongly on this particular topic is because I see that it’s a real stumbling block and many people, including those very wise people with wrong view got hookwinked into wrong view and don’t know it.
The emotional tie to the rest of their wisdom as well as the delusion of self liking to find somewhere after parinibbāna to identify as or hide in are very strong combination of forces. All the more if any of you guys actually got some success on the wrong path, which leads to wrong knowledge reinforcing wrong view.
There is no clue in any sutta, at least not for me, that Buddha taught a Path to a Mere Cessation without Anything Remaining. And if certain teachers believe this is, and must be, what the end of rebirth means, well oke, but I do not agree.
There is really, for me, nothing in the sutta’s that convinces me that a Buddha with such a deep wisdom and love, seeking a home for himself, had/has no other goal then to reduce all lifestream to mere nothing. “It is better not to exist then to exist”? I do not believe this is Dhamma.
Like i see it, mere cessationalist teach there is no escape of samsara because there is nothing stable, constant, not-desintegratnng etc. The only escape is…to end it. They do not accept anything beyond the world, beyond samsara, while i believe, this is where Dhamma comes from and starts.
After all this time, it still feels strange for me that people feel really so committed to this goal of becoming non-existent, a mere cessation. And also are **so sure **that Buddha-Dhamma is about mere cessation. Apparantly not even with a spark of doubt?
But i think all is said about this.
In all these endless debates i have not been able to be free of defilements but i have always tried to be honest, fair, upright. I cannot say i always was, but i really tried. I know that others will judge that i have only protected my ego and not Dhamma. So be it. I feel that i have done my best. I stop these debates.
Wish you well, i appreciate it you have not given up on me and have not decided to ignore me totally.
I’m sorry venerable but, politely, after reading a number of your posts on this matter, I can only say that you just don’t get it. Why do I come to this conclusion? Because when you playback your understanding of what posters like @Green write, you change the meaning to suit your argument. For example, as best as I can tell Green makes no claim that there is a “self” in the pure “mind” yet you continue to assert that his argument must mean there is a self. None of the Thai forest teachers would say there is a “self” in the state of a “pure mind”, and I have met and spoken with many of them. @Green’s position is in common with the Ajahn Mun tradition.
A large part of the problem here is language. If we translate Viññāna as consciousness, then we have to use another word for the pure heart because it is not the Viññāna of the Khandha.
Luang Poo Tate says that the mind the reaches enlightenment is not the mind of the Bhavanga or Samadhi. To suggest that he is saying this is a “self” is completely mispresenting him.
We can all agree that cessation of the causes of suffering is Nirodha but, if the defilements are defilements of the mind then what is the mind that suffers these defilement?
I am sorry to say too that, it doesn’t matter if a person genuinely believes that they don’t see a self in the mind or whatever, their insight is not deep enough if they don’t see that nibbāna is total cessation.
From observing a friend on facebook, I can really see that they have something which is dropped, an ego complex or whatever, but no self insight seems to be deeper than that. If everything vanishes, then nothing can be self at all. That’s the ultimate. If one cannot admit and actually see that there’s a possibility for all to end, for all to cease, then there’s still something, anything for a very subtle delusion of self to take hold, even if the person is not aware of it.
Ajahn Brahm likes to use an analogy that rising and falling, impermanence is not just tv screen change channels, and we get different pixels. It’s that the whole tv is gone. Vanished. That’s a deeper insight than mere moment to moment rising and falling, or the common non-dual traditions of dropping all concepts, seeing emptiness of self of all things, but still maintain something after parinibbāna. Seeing all vanishes is deeper.
The foundation of the Eternalist view is that there really is something and it exists forever. The foundation of the Annihilationist view is that there really is something and then it’s destroyed. Let’s say consciousness for both here. One views the final goal as an eternal something, the other as an eternal nothing. When you do away with substance based thinking, neither of those apply anymore. Final nibbana can’t be said to be total something or total nothingness. Instead dhammas arise and cease, which means no arising or ceasing, and that’s all that can be said.
Just like the atta, the aggregates and sense spheres can’t be said to exist. Since they can’t be said to exist, what ceases to exist? There not being something which ceases to exist, how is there nothingness?
But anything or everything does not have to vanish in order to realize: ”this is not me, this is not mine” - I think this is the main reason why we differ in views!
The physical body does not have to vanish, one can realize
”this is not me, this is not mine” while still having a physical body.
In short, self, atta is not in the same category as the 5 aggregates or 6 sense bases.
Using Theravada abhidhamma, which speaks of ultimatly existing things, there’s no self in the ultimate language of Abhidhamma, only mentality and materiality. They are conditioned, what is conditioned is empty of self, and can be seen arising and ceasing. They are subject to dependent arising, and thus also dependent cessation. Thus it’s possible to completely cease all 5 aggregates and 6 sense bases with no more arising ever again. Being empty of self doesn’t mean they cannot be found.
Whereas the self is another category. It’s fictional. No such thing exist in reality. I might as well invent a thing called “diiod” and say diiod is “empty”, therefore it cannot be found, and it doesn’t exist, doesn’t arise and cease. Obviously, it’s just an empty concept.
So too with the self, just a concept we impose upon the 5 aggregates or 6 sense bases. It cannot even be said to be empty because there’s no self to be empty of self. Self is what all conditioned things are empty of.
When people asked the Buddha if he exist or not or both or neither, he didn’t reply because the question is using the concept of self, which the buddha guided
at least one of them to see Buddha (self) cannot be found in the 5 aggregates or as or … therefore the Buddha as an empty concept cannot be said to arise or cease, it cannot be found.
But when we drop the concepts and come to the ultimate language of Abhidhamma, we can apply conditionality, dependent origination, empty of self, arising and ceasing.
Not sure if you read chinese, but I just saw a nice exchange between mahayana practitioners on this as well.
Just take note that mahayana ultimate reality is different definition from Theravada abhidhamma. Their version is all are empty. I guess it’s a bad move, very hard for me to copy paste the entire exchange, but hard to make sense without context. Below are all not by me.
The definition: 即否定因果道理，不知緣生無性之理而謬解空義，執著於斷空之見。據成唯識論卷七載，否定真俗二諦，是為惡取空，諸佛說為不可治者。又據大智度論卷一載，佛法中有方廣道人，說一切法不生不滅，空無所有；以其說不契實義，不知即空無性之理，即是惡取空。
Google Translate:
They deny the principle of cause and effect, do not know the principle of the non-nature of dependent origin, misinterpret the meaning of emptiness, and persist in the view of emptiness. According to the Seventh Volume of Consciousness-Only Theory (Wei Shi Lun), they denying the two truths of truth and worldly, hence called E Qu Kong (wrongly interpretating emptiness I think), and the Buddhas say it is incurable. According to the Great Wisdom Treatise Volume 1, there is a E Qu Kong people (who they refer to as Fang Guang Dao Ren) in Buddhism who says that all dharmas are neither born nor destroyed, and are empty. His explanation does not correspond to the actual meaning, and he does not understand the principle of emptiness and has no nature, which is an evil approach to emptiness.
It’s not that things don’t arise and cease, it’s that they’re illusory if they do arise and cease.
Because conventional reality is real onto its own level
The entire premise above ignores conventional reality
I was showing how emptiness only makes sense because of conventional reality and compounded things not despite it
You can’t make a good honest argument just talking about ultimate reality because everything is ultimate reality
And it also ignores the suffering of beings which actually does exist
What the traditional view is saying that conditions things when out of its conditioned causes cease because the aggregates are also conditioned they also cease as well
Emptiness is already implying things don’t have essence but emptiness itself is dependent on conditioned things so it’s not the ultimate
Take note that sign is different from name and form.
I take sign to mean the concept we put onto ultimate reality as Theravada abhidhamma, that is name and form. Name and form are conditioned, sign is the gateway for self delusion to happen.
Sign of self to truly exist is to have self delusion.
Mixing them up makes one think that sign cannot be found, therefore name and form also cannot be found, ignoring direct experience.
agreed, not everyone goes through cessation of perception and feeling, also one needs to be non returner to get there but stream winner already have the view.
Just the view is important. Seeing that all can vanish totally. That’s what’s required and that’s what the wrong view of something after parinibbāna is preventing.
In order to establish “ultimately exiting things” the Abhidhamma has to give the dhammas an independent existence of their own. In fact there is even as sub-commentary which states that the dhammas have a self. If the dhammas are conditioned and so dependent, you can’t say they are independent of mind at the same time. A thing cannot have two contradictory natures. Being dependent then, and not being found to exist objectively, the aggregates, like the atta, are concepts only. Conventionally we speak of them like we conventionally speak of you and I, but ultimately no such things can be found. Its also interesting that you take up the Abhidhamma, yet argue that nibbāna is total nothingness. For the Abhidhamma nibbāna isn’t nothingness. Its something. It really exists.
Furthermore the Phenomenal Realism of the Abhidhamma doesn’t make much sense. The Abhidhamma correctly argues that dhammas are without substance, and so reduces say the earth element to “hardness” but then it says this “hardness” exists independent of mind. Not only that, but that “hardness” can give rise to “heat”. Now hardness is a quality experienced in mind. It makes little sense to say it exists independently, and even less sense to say that “hardness” causes “heat” which are the building blocks of “trees”. In short the Abhidhamma got rid of substance (very good) but wanted to keep essence, which doesn’t make sense at all. Without substance you can’t speak of essence, and so you can’t speak of real things or even individual things.
It’s not that things don’t arise and cease, it’s that they’re illusory if they do arise and cease.
If they are illusionary then arising and ceasing are also illusionary. Causality is imputed by the mind. It doesn’t exist independently.
You can’t make a good honest argument just talking about ultimate reality because everything is ultimate reality
And it also ignores the suffering of beings which actually does exist
Houses are ultimate reality? Not according the Abhidhamma. I’m not ignoring dukkha. I’m saying that ultimately, there never was dukkha to speak of. No different to the Buddha realising there was no one really who suffered.
Take note that sign is different from name and form.
I take sign to mean the concept we put onto ultimate reality as Theravada abhidhamma, that is name and form. Name and form are conditioned, sign is the gateway for self delusion to happen.
Sign of self to truly exist is to have self delusion.
Mixing them up makes one think that sign cannot be found, therefore name and form also cannot be found, ignoring direct experience.
It says that sense experience is empty of substance or essence, contrary to the Abhidhamma.
I do not see why. The concept of self/atta is just not the same as the concept of asankhata in Buddha Dhamma. The concept of atta deals with a self and the concept of asankhata deals with that what is not seen arising and ceasing and changing in the meantime.
Buddha-Dhamma really teaches asankhata (DN34, AN3.47, MN115). Those sutta’s say that one must know both aspects, both elements, both dimensions (no need to reify this ).
We must not only have knowledge of what is seen arising and ceasing and changing BUT ALSO of what is NOT seen arising, ceasing and changing. That is what the sutta’s clearly say.
The destruction of lobha, dosa and moha is called the unconditioned, i.e. that what is not seen arising, ceasing and changing (SN43.1)
This can be understood as in: If one removes defilement from water, one does not create the water.
It is not that the water is seen arising nor being made or produced. Likewise, if defilements are removed from mind, one does not see mind arising or being produced. No, one finally start to see what is the real nature of water without defilemtent. So, also what the nature of mind really is! One finally sees it as it is.
It is also very clear for me that he searched for this Stable, Constant. Because he knew that nothing that is liable to cease can really protect or be that island that he sought. That is also why he saw no end goal in any jhana, which are not stable. So he sought for the Stable, that what does not desintegrate.
Or like in Snp1.11…Buddha talks about a peace free of death, the imperishable state.
That is what he sought, something that is reliable, that does not perish, that is not liable to arise and cease.
Mind that has abandoned lobha, dosa and moha shows to be extremely subtle, pliant, free, without limits (AN10.81) It is detached from vinnana, birth and death etc.
Ofcourse also the famous Udana sutta speak for themselves: there is the unborn, the not produced etc.
Also Iti43 describes the everlasting peace, beyond the scope of logic, the bliss of the stilling of all conditions. Isn’t it cynical to talk about the everlasting peace and bliss of a mere cessation without anything remaining? I feel that is cynical. This is not meant.
How does one abandon all future becoming?
Those who have fully understood the unconditioned state— their minds freed, the conduit to rebirth ended— attained to the heart of the Dhamma, they delight in ending, the poised ones have given up all states of existence.” (it44)
So, it arises due to fully understanding asankhata, i.e. what is not seen arising, ceasing and changing.
It does not arise contemplating the suffering in samsara or seeing the dangers in rebirth etc.
No that might help to purify the mind but the real condition is that one fully understands the mind freed from lobha, dosa and moha, only then rebirth will end.
Ofcourse this does not refer to some intellectual understanding but really have a direct knowledge of this as in AN10.81.
Accepting, seeing, knowing asankhata is also not the same as having some eternalist view.
Buddha does not describe it that way.
It is because of having fully understood the unconditioned state— that one knows there is no self in formations nor in what is not experienced as an arising and ceasing formation. Full knowledge of both sankhata and asankhata is the end of all belief in self.
Like many strategies to posit something after parinibbāna, you’re ignoring the death of an arahant. There’s a big difference before and after death.
Nothingness, total cessation. No arising, ceasing, change is seen in total nothingness, not even perception of nothingness, which is the attainment of formless nothingness realm. No seeing, no thinking, no knowing etc.
I hope you wouldn’t disagree that when a candle is deprived of oxygen, it goes out. Not just that the causality is imputed by the mind, therefore by letting go of this concept, the candle can still burn without oxygen.
Because this is what I see your argument against nothing after parinibbāna is. That the 5 aggregates, 6 sense bases still goes on after death of arahant, because the concept of rebirth, death, etc has been destroyed by arahant, therefore they are not conceptually bounded by these concepts, so whatever happens to the 5 aggregates, 6 sense bases doesn’t count as real rebirth, death etc.
@Green This quote of Ajahn Char underpins some of the points that you have made.
About this mind… in truth there is nothing really wrong with it. It is intrinsically pure. Within itself it’s already peaceful. That the mind is not peaceful these days is because it follows moods. The real mind doesn’t have anything to it, it is simply [an aspect of] Nature. It becomes peaceful or agitated because moods deceive it. The untrained mind is stupid. Sense impressions come and trick it into happiness, suffering, gladness, and sorrow, but the mind’s true nature is none of those things. That gladness or sadness is not the mind, but only a mood coming to deceive us. The untrained mind gets lost and follows these things, it forgets itself. Then we think that it is we who are upset or at ease or whatever.
But really this mind of ours is already unmoving and peaceful… really peaceful! Just like a leaf which is still as long as no wind blows. If a wind comes up the leaf flutters. The fluttering is due to the wind—the “fluttering” is due to those sense impressions; the mind follows them. If it doesn’t follow them, it doesn’t “flutter.” If we know fully the true nature of sense impressions we will be unmoved.
Our practice is simply to see the Original Mind. We must train the mind to know those sense impressions, and not get lost in them; to make it peaceful. Just this is the aim of all this difficult practice we put ourselves through.
