SuttaCentral
I do not understand what you say. I give an example: you might experience an object as green, with a certain shape, as solid, with a certain hardness. We know that this ofcourse also depends on how our senses work, nerves, brain, mind.
But how do you determine how it actually exist? What does it mean…actually exist?
You investigate and analyze the thing in question and if you discover a discrepancy between how it appears and the results of that analysis, then you conclude it is not real. If on the other hand, you can discover no discrepancy after deep analysis and investigation then we say it is real according to our best understanding. 
Can you give an example.
Sure.
You are walking through the Sahara parched and looking for water desperately. You see a glare or reflection in the distance and water appears to your mind. You walk closer and closer convinced that your parched throat will soon be satiated. As you draw even closer the mirage evaporates and you discover to your horror that the water you saw was not real. They way it appeared and the way it actually is is not concordant.
Or take the case of the older woman who sees holes in the world wherever she looks. The holes that she sees are not real. By investigating further she discovers the way they appear is not in concordance with what they actually are. Cataracts in her eyes.
I think it’s important to define nothingness too.
I would map “the highest level of nothingness, without any possibility of anything arising again” to Parinibbana, or after the death of an arahant.
Hi all 
Well, you replied to me first. So it would seem to me considerable if you engaged my argument, rather than drawing us into a tangent about logic, just because of a little mistake, where through quick and careless typing I called it a logical fallacy instead of an illogical fallacy—just semantics with no bearing on my actual argument. Either way, I did acknowledge the distinction as well as my mistake. I also said why I think your syllogism is inaccurate and, despite that, which premise I disagreed with. So I don’t think I neglected your point. I just don’t want to get bogged down in this, like we indeed are now… With respect, I don’t think this is the place for Logic 101, with the assumption that I and/or others don’t appreciate it. So let’s move on from that?
Again I think that’s not a proper rewording of the premise. His argument is that in a particular text the Buddha doesn’t say such things (and not just clearly but not at all). That is an important difference from the Buddha never saying these things—if anything because it (usefully) limits the scope of what we would be discussing. Also, because that is the actual argument. I read Ven Anālayo’s book and I can’t remember him suggesting the premise that the Buddha never says such things (although, again, he probably thinks so, and concludes as much). And even if Ven Anālayo were to suggest this elsewhere, that is still not what I was replying to, not the argument that was introduced by Pyjter.
To quote Ven Anālayo again:
Since Upasīva’s query concerned either annihilation or an eternal condition, it seems that he should be envisaged as operating under the assumption that there is a self. Hence, there may have been an additional need [for the Buddha] to clarify that there is no self in the first place to be extinguished or perpetuated. But that [doesn’t happen because that is] not beyond the reach of language […]. Thus, the reply to Upasīva does not fit the assumption that Nirvana is a mere nothingness […]
So the syllogism I think should be something like:
I would reject both premises. If accepting the premises, we can logically conclude the Buddha didn’t teach it to Upasīva. However, I think the general conclusion is unwarranted as well—which from the wider context is that he therefore doesn’t teach it at all, to anyone.
To clarify, Ven A. makes an almost identical argument based on MN22, where the Buddha is accused of teaching annihilation of a self. He thinks that in his response the Buddha’s should have clarified that what he teaches is the cessation of self-less suffering. The Buddha doesn’t, is the thinking (although it seems to me he very much does); therefore, he didn’t teach that. Again, even if technically this is logically valid, this is still flawed reasoning; it is still illogical. I could likewise ask why the Buddha didn’t simply respond to the accusation by saying he taught a type of lasting transcendental experience, like Anālayo thinks. The Buddha doesn’t; therefore, he doesn’t teach that, I could argue. But this is an argument from ignorance, going by what is not said.
But let’s put aside MN22 and let’s focus on the Upasiva Sutta first, for we haven’t really gotten much further than my first post. Instead of zoning in on the logic issue, if you can help me realize where my argument is actually wrong or how Ven Anālayo’s is right, I would appreciate that. I am thinking of replying in a more official form to Ven Anālayo and it’s good to get some feedback to remove potential blinders on my side.
I thought as much, but that’s still just falling back on semantics about what “thing” and “existence” and “real” mean to you, which is different from what they mean to most people—including the Buddha, as far as we can tell, because he often affirmatively espoused the existence of things using the verb atthi (like here, specifically in context of the middle teaching). So I think it’s also a misunderstanding of atthitā & natthitā, see a brief explanation here. Anyway, if you don’t want to answer the question, which seems to me to have only two possible answers (yes and no), that is fine.
And to go back a bit (somewhat off topic but anyway):
I think that’s generally a good observation. But moreover, we actually can be sure that there has been editing here, because the manuscripts are inconsistent. None of them actually correctly attributes the quote to the Buddha. The Burmese one sort of does, but does it in a broken way. All others (PTS, Sri Lankan, and Thai) are not broken and attribute the quote to Brahma Baka. So to me it’s quite clear that the editing happened in the Burmese one. Alternatively, the others were edited, or all of them, but either way, because there are differences, there was some editing for sure.
If by the Dharmaguptaka parallel you are referring to DA24, the translation by Patton indeed uses “formless” but the Chinese term is different from the usual symbol for ‘form’ (形 instead of 色), so in that sense it is not clearer than the Pāli.
I understand that, thanks. Your examples were helpful
I am gonna take some time rest and pauze for a few days.
Okay, you are right, this has been my mistake. In my original post I should have been more explicit and added something like, “what I am saying here is not a direct engagement of your argument (yet).” So I apologize for that, because I think that from your point of view that is the most natural assumption to make about my initial reply to you.
I agree you did not neglect my point, but you have so far said:
So what it seems to me that you have done is:
So yes, I don’t think you totally neglect my point, but the attempts in (2)-(6) above to shift the discussion away from my point would neglect my point. As for point(3), I again have to say that this was my mistake to begin with. What I was saying was not supposed to be a refutation or a counterargument to what you had written, but instead was the beginning of an approach to the issue from a different angle.
I do not have the assumption that others do not appreciate what I am saying. As far whether or not you appreciate it, it does not seem to me like you have, because you say
but to me this is not at all the distinction I am trying to make, and I have never heard of the distinction between a logical and an illogical fallacy? I am making the distinction between a “valid” and a “sound” argument. Anyway, I know that you are intelligent, so maybe when you said “logical fallacy vs illogical fallacy” that was your shorthand way of referring to the distinction between a valid and a sound argument? I can’t tell. You know what they say about assumptions 
. Rather than assuming I should just ask if I have been making any sense with regards to this distinction? Yeshe is the only one in this thread who has seemed to appreciate my post, but I know that he has already studied these things, so I doubt I have been a good spokesperson.
Sunyo, you don’t understand this teaching and training. I understand this teaching and training. What, you understand this teaching and training? You’re practicing wrong. I’m practicing right. I stay on topic, you don’t. You said last what you should have said first. You said first what you should have said last. What you’ve thought so much about has been disproved. Your doctrine is refuted. Go on, save your doctrine! You’re trapped; get yourself out of this—if you can!
Okay, I have always thought that was one of funniest passages in the Canon.
Okay, this is a great point! I may have not represented Anālayo’s position accurately. The argument summary of “his” position that I presented was also my brain filling in the gaps based on arguments elsewhere that I have seen made by others on this issue and others in the Canon.
I will address this but first let me say
So one of the end possibilities I envisioned with this conversation would be something like:
In other words, I am on your side (or at least not against you!) and I think that the counterarguments you have presented are strong. Again, I should have been more explicit that this is the framework under which I should have entered the discussion.
Now back to the more interesting stuff…
So I guess when I read Anālayo’s text, here is what I see:
I took the phrase “to clarify”, which made assumptions about what the Buddha was like, and mapped this onto premise 1:
I am, of course, somewhat stretching Analayo’s original statement, but it looks to me like a fair stretch? One that he would agree with? Do you disagree? If Analayo personally did not agree with the above, then do you think it is worth looking at that premise more closely? Because I have seen similar premisese used elsewhere in other writings.
I think the argument Analayo is interested in is more powerful than just, “the Buddha does not say exactly this in this passage.” There are other background assumptions being made by Analayo, namely about the nature of the Buddha as a teacher. Like, obviously:
If a person never explicitly said X in this instance in exactly the way we would have wanted them to, it means they don’t believe X!
is a bad argument. Why not engage with the strongest version possible of Analyo’s argument?
I think this is a clearly bad argument alone. The crucial difference between the strong and the weak argument is that the strong argument introduces assumptiosn about the qualities of the Buddha as a teacher. So, I do not think that the syllogism should be like that, because where would be the fun in that? 
Let us not try do the “Weak Man Fallacy.” The Weak Man Fallacy “chooses the opposition’s weakest (or one of its weakest) arguments or proponents for attack.”
Hi Bhante 
It’s a straw man fallacy, and by that I don’t mean deliberate misrepresentation, Ven Analāyo’s argument doesn’t have the structure of an argument from ignorance.
In our case, argument from ignorance would be if Analāyo claims that your “proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true" (Wikipedia). Which isn’t the case.
First, he presents an argument that if Upasīvas assumption about self is wrong, there would be a need for an explanation of this false premise, but there is none. Analāyo doesn’t say: therefore, cessationists are wrong. Instead, he simply points out that communication of cessation doesn’t constitute a language problem. We see plenty of such examples in suttas. In the next step, he relies on what actually Buddha said and presents a better explanation why The Teacher speaks about the limits of language. It’s challenging to talk about transcendence.
Transcendence is another name for something beyond empirical reality, logic, and by the same token beyond language. So, maybe he is saying that here and other suttas?
As I posted before, I don’t think Ven Analāyo disagrees with you here and your later remarks. But simply interprets them differently.
Ven Analāyo does consider and discusses other views; for instance, he mentions an explicit Ven @Brahmali paper about Nibbana, so he also knows your stance on this subject. He simply has a different opinion, And just because of it, to suggest that his explanation isn’t informed or careful, is not fair. He uses a cumulative argument to deliver his point, and here we discuss only a fragment of his analysis. Your criticism looks like ad hominem.
If my memory serves me well, the first time I read “Nibbana is psychologically positive, but ontologically negative,” it was in Ven Bodhi essay about Nibbana. For him and Ven Analāyo, being ontologically negative doesn’t mean mere nothingness. In addition, you don’t get psychology without ontology.
Ven Analāyo painstakingly presents the metaphor of the island, warns against the reification of Nibbana, and shows that It isn’t a being or a thing. So I don’t understand who is postulating that Nibbana is “a physical place”? Is this another straw man?
I know! Och, these limits of language! 
In that case, can I say that then the sage is beyond language, logic, like the ocean? Again, expression of cessation in language isn’t problematic.
For Analāyo the natural interpretation is that Nibbana isn’t a thing nor mere nothing. It’s a “middle path position.”
5.1vns102In the same way for the rightly released,
5.2who have crossed the flood of sensual bonds,
5.3and attained unshakable happiness,
5.4where they have gone cannot be found.”
This verse, which has a range of parallels conveying similarly positive connotations, complements the presentation in the previous verse regarding the cessation of the aggregates. When read in conjunction with the present verse, it seems that there is more to it than just the extinction of the five aggregates.
Nibbana is the end of existence. Existence continues because consciousness associated with intentional actions continues. Consciousness arises in dependence on the six types of sense stimuli. So, when existence ends, consciousness too ends.
Therefore, to say that there is something after the passing away of an arahant is to admit that consciousness in some form exists/continues after death. The Buddha is very clear that consciousness ceases just like a fire extinguishes due to lack of fuel.
With Metta
I wouldn’t call it semantics since substantial existence is the 1st fetter to be given up. Once you give that up, you can’t think in terms of truly existing or true non-existence (atthitā & natthitā). So when someone says that nibbāna is pure cessation, they are going to an extreme. Of course we can say things exist or not in a general sense. The dhammas arise and cease in a general sense, but because of the emptiness of substance we can’t say that they truly are or are not.
Then Venerable Ānanda went up to Venerable Mahākoṭṭhita, and exchanged greetings with him. When the greetings and polite conversation were over, Ānanda sat down to one side, and said to Mahākoṭṭhita:
“Reverend, when these six fields of contact have faded away and ceased with nothing left over, does anything else exist?”
“Don’t put it like that, reverend.”
“Does nothing else exist?”
“Don’t put it like that, reverend.”
“Do both something else and nothing else exist?”
“Don’t put it like that, reverend.”
“Do neither something else nor nothing else exist?”
“Don’t put it like that, reverend.”
“Reverend, when asked these questions, you say ‘don’t put it like that’. … How then should we see the meaning of this statement?”
“If you say that ‘when the six fields of contact have faded away and ceased with nothing left over, something else exists’, you’re proliferating the unproliferated. If you say that ‘nothing else exists’, you’re proliferating the unproliferated. If you say that ‘both something else and nothing else exist’, you’re proliferating the unproliferated. If you say that ‘neither something else nor nothing else exist’, you’re proliferating the unproliferated. The scope of proliferation extends as far as the scope of the six fields of contact. The scope of the six fields of contact extends as far as the scope of proliferation. When the six fields of contact fade away and cease with nothing left over, proliferation stops and is stilled.”
AN 4.174
This is the view of substantial aggregates and identifies the person with the aggregates. What ceases is a self - selfish thoughts, self cherishing attitudes, views of self vs other, view of the self as the aggregates, views of the self in the aggregates, views of self outside or distinct from the aggregates, ignorance imposing a view of a personal self, continued individual existence - all this mass of suffering ceases. The aggregates are not the self. The aggregates never were the self. The view of substantial aggregates as a personal individual must be put down and this burden let go of.
This is what I mean when I say Nibbana is the end of existence.
With Metta
That may be so, but the aggregates are not the self. The body and mind are not the self. The self is not in the body and mind nor is it distinct from them. The extinguishment of continued individual existence is not the same thing as the extinguishment of the continued existence of the aggregates; which are again not the self. Mistaking the extinguishment of continued individual existence for the extinguishment of the continued existence of the aggregates is to view the aggregates as the self. To bring it back to the topic; that is a part of the point I believe Bhikkhu Bodhi may be making.
I do not understand. Can you please explain.
Here again I do not get it. What is the difference between existence and the aggregates.
With Metta
You cannot find a self in the body no matter how hard you look. You cannot find a self in the mind now matter how hard you look. You cannot find a self in the body + mind no matter how hard you look. You cannot find a self somewhere separate or distinct from the body + mind no matter how hard you look. The body + mind is not a self nor does it contain a self.
Individual existence is dependent upon the ignorance believing one can find a self in the body; in the mind; in the body+mind; somewhere somehow separate from the body+mind; as the body; as the mind; as the body+mind; as something other than the body+mind. When this ignorance is extinguished so is individual existence. Individual existence is dependent upon this ignorance.
Believing that individual existence is somehow tied up or equal to the existence of the aggregates is grasping at the aggregates as the individual. It is the view of the self as somehow found or embodied by the aggregates. This is a burden that should be given up. Without giving up this burden and letting go of identification with or possession of the aggregates it is not possible to cease individual existence.
So when ignorance is replaced by wisdom or when ignorance totally fades away, there is no existence or anything that can be viewed as self either in the aggregates or in the mind. Correct me if I am wrong.
Then what do you think is left after Nibbana? Is it (if any) not related to consciousness?
With Metta
Have you found the mind? How does it look like?
I believe EBT make clear that such a thing as individual existence is a very strong impression that arises because the senses, body and mind together process sense-info locally. The senses are local, the brain is, the nerves are. And like a huge antenna they pick up signals, process it. And all this comes with a strong impression that the nature of the mind itself is also local. It makes us feel we are individual, limited to a certain place and time. We do not see and know mind without limits (AN10.81)
It makes us feel we are here, and reality is there. It makes us feel this seperation is real.
This is like forming a whirlpool in water. Khandha’s form a kind of mental whirlpool that blind us from seeing we are never really seperated from the oneness of the mind and reality. A whirlpool has not really boundaries. They do not form a reality that is ever separated from a much larger reality of water.
But still, the whirlpool is trapped in her own movement, blinded by it, and only when it cools down, calms, it can notice the truth that it never really existed as some seperated individual reality.
All beings experience themself as whirlpools because this is merely the effect of sense-info being locally processed. It comes with a coming and going of vinnana’s. All being are completely obsessed with this coming and going. And that cause the impression of living an individual existence. That is why vinnana is called a magician.
In the end this is also our belief in self. There is no real difference between believing to exist as individual in some fixed way, and a belief in self. It is because we are so sure about our individual existence, that we also are so protective and have become full of anger, greed, delusion, violence to protect this individual existence. But what do we protect? The Buddha saw…mere suffering. We do not really protect ourselves.
Seeing all things as they really are, one does not denie individual existence but knows how it arises and ceases any moment. And one does also not denie the oneness.
Nice 
Oops. I meant formal versus informal fallacy. Sorry, English is not my first language. I was taught formal logic (mathematical) in Dutch.
Anyway, I have to say, this meta discussion is starting to feel tedious to me, I hope you understand.
But now you are kind of asking me to reply to the entire book, where there are many background assumptions. Why not just address a single specific argument, for the sake of discussion? Anyway, I can’t remember Anālayo discussing the Buddha’s qualities as a teacher at all, so you are steel manning his argument with your additional thinking, and it’s close to completely changing the essential argument altogether. So I disagree: You’re still not presenting him accurately, as you claimed your intent was.
Anyway, after 4 or 5 exchanges you haven’t made any real inroads into addressing my actual argument and are still wanting me to phrase it differently before you’ll address it. Thanks for asking, but no, I’m not interested in discussing that rephrased argument. It’s too broad. We’ll end up discussing about the entire canon to show how and what we think the Buddha taught. So I think we should end it here.
Hi
Perhaps it is. But accusing someone of a strawman argument can imply that they deliberately misrepresents the argument. I’m not doing that. I may be misunderstanding it, or I may be unskillfully representing my view so you just think I am misrepresenting it (and thank you for trying to show me how either may be the case), but I’m not deliberately straw manning it. Just FYI, in case you call something a straw man again in the future, some people may misunderstand you. (Not all people understand it this way but many will.)
A “straw man” refers to an intentionally misrepresented proposition or argument that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent’s real argument. (Straw Man - Political Dictionary)
Sorry, I don’t understand your clarification of the argument. I still think it does have that general structure. You say “there is none [such explanation]”, which means it is not said (by the Buddha) to be true. Anālayo then says this “does not fit the assumption that Nirvana is a mere nothingness”, which does imply that, therefore, cessationists are wrong.
There are some surrounding arguments about the nature of language, to which I’ll reply in a moment, but this seems to be the general thrust of the argument to me. The same is more clear in his preceding analysis of MN22, in which Ven Analayo says “the same reasoning would also be relevant”. I explained his general argument to Soren before: the Buddha doesn’t respond to the accusation of annihilationism that he teaches mere cessation; ergo, he doesn’t. I am of course abbreviating it, but this is, it seems, the essence of the argument here: that something is false because it isn’t said to be true.
Anyway, I regret taking this route of argumentation now 
, because it just turned into tangents about logic and what kind of argument is what. Can we let it go?
I should just have presented my understanding of the sutta so we could have discussed that instead. In short, I think Anālayo is wrong thinking the limits of definition show the sage after death is in a stage that can’t be described. Rather, you can’t define them because there is nothing left to define. To quote the sutta, “when everything is eradicated, all ways of description are eradicated as well”.
Nobody postulates it as a physical place. That was just me trying to show, in an obvious way, how we have to take such descriptions of nibbāna very metaphorically, and by that I particularly meant, not ontological.
Anālayo may say he doesn’t reify nibbāna because of it being called an island, but in my view, in that quote you provided he still does. He says it implies nibbāna to be “something more than just a nothing”, which means it is something. He’s taking it as an ontological positive qualifier, in other words, which in my view it is not. Ven Anālayo is taking psychologically positive connotations of islands and turning them into something ontologically positive. But we just can’t conclude such things from these metaphors. It’s giving them a burden they were never meant to carry.
Also, mere cessation can be called an island just the same. I don’t know why Anālayo apparently rules that out, because it’s just as much an escape from old age and death, which the island is said to be the liberation from. “For those overwhelmed by old age and death […] I shall tell you an island, Kappa.” (Snp5.11) So if there are any ontological connotation to the term, then they are about the absence of things (old age and death), not about the presence of things.
Arguments like this rely on our own (or the reader’s) emotional response to such metaphors. Ven Anālayo may think mere cessation of existence can’t reasonably be called an island. But to be objective about the texts, he has to show how the Buddha or other noble ones would never think this, which is something I don’t think he attempts, if it would even be possible to do. The acceptance of the argument therefore depends on the reader’s own reaction to such metaphors. To some, it seems like a good argument because nibbāna as a state of existence is agreeable to them, just like an island. But others will respond very differently to these metaphors. To me, mere cessation is the only island, and it is perfectly fine to call it such. Everything else falls within the flood of suffering. I am completely unconvinced that the appellation ‘the island’ implies nibbāna to be something more than the cessation of suffering, and I would suggest that anyone who is able to look at this term objectively will probably find the same, regardless of their views about nibbāna.
Language is subjective. What one person finds inexpressible, another will not. I think Ven Anālayo has a very selective view of what he thinks can be expressed in language and what not. I would say the perception/experience that Ven Anālayo says nibbāna is, can be described—I just did! On the contrary, the mere absence of things can never be described in ontologically positive terms. All we can say is what it is not, what has ceased. Even saying “it is nothing”, as said before, can be mistaken as a something, definitely at the time of the Buddha, namely as the formless state of nothingness (even just mere natthi, “there isn’t”, refers to this state in Snp5.7). You can’t even say (pari)nibbāna is to be experienced, because it isn’t even an experience. So the cessationist nibbāna is just as much beyond language as Anālayo’s, if not even more. Hence this whole argument based on language goes both ways and has no objective strength at all.
Whatever experience Anālayo thinks is nibbāna, from my pov is probably one of the jhānas/arūpas or something akin to them. The Buddha had no trouble describing these very sublime states, even if, in the most ultimate case, all one can say that it is “neither perception nor nonperception”. Which reminds me of Anālayo’s statement that the experience of nibbāna is “a form of meditation that is almost nonmeditation, […] It would involve a type of perception that is beyond all known types of perception”. Sounds extremely similar to neither perception nor nonperception.
And note that Venerable Anālayo is being quite descriptive here as well. Throughout his book he describes “his” nibbāna in much more definite terms than cessationists tend to describe theirs, yet he argues that his is beyond language while the other isn’t… That doesn’t seem right or fair. The real difference here, if I can be blunt, seems to be that his view is portrayed as a paradox, while the others don’t feel a need to resort to such arguments. The difference does not lie in some (subjectively defined) fundamental limits of language.
People with similar views tend to do the same: saying nibbāna is ineffable on one page and describing it quite affirmatively on the next. With due respect, it sometimes seems to me it’s ineffable when it suits the argument. But when they need the discourses to show nibbāna is a something (like an experience or consciousness), suddenly it isn’t all that ineffable anymore.
Anyway, even if I were to go along with such arguments about the ineffability of nibbāna, I can’t really describe the taste of a mango either, especially not to someone who never tasted it. That doesn’t make a mango deep and profound. All it does is show that language is a crude and subjective tool. Same for nibbāna.
Also, in the suttas most passages about the limits of language, like the Upasiva Sutta, focus on the problem of using terms like ‘sage’ to describe an empty process. Such terms tend to reify it into a being/self that gets annihilated or exists for eternity. I don’t know a single place where nibbāna itself is said to be beyond language. The closest may be DN15, but see here. But if you (or others) reply to anything in my post, please tell me where nibbāna is said to be beyond language, for I’d like to learn of other such passages.
The passage on the ocean is also about not reifying the aggregates into a self, about not identifying with them. The Buddha being liberated from such identification is compared to an ocean because it is “hard to fathom, hard to get to the bottom of”. It’s hard to understand, like the ocean was in the time of the Buddha. It seems far-fetched to take this metaphor as a confirmation that the sage somehow exists in some state beyond language, let alone after death, which the metaphor isn’t even referring to. See also here.
Sometimes, but not in this particular case of the Upasīva sutta. Various other times throughout the book he leaves very obvious and widespread alternatives unaddressed, in particular his repeated quote that the cessation of the six senses “should be experienced” (veditabba) which according to the commentary and other translators means “should be understood”. I realize this doesn’t really take anything away from his argument, and I know one can only fit so much into a book. Also, he already announces in the introduction that he minimizes critical observations. So why did I point this out? Not sure. I guess I just expected something different from him, based on most of his previous works, which often discuss multiple possible interpretations of passages. This is definitely his most one-sided work I’m aware of. Take from that what you will. But I didn’t mean it as an ad-hominem. 
Urgh, translations… 
“where they have gone cannot be found” (paññāpetuṁ gati natthi) literally is, “there is no destination to declare [for them]”. In other words, after they pass away, enlightened beings “have no destination” (Snp3.5), because they “broke apart transmigration, destroyed all destinations, and won’t have a next life”. (Thag2.48). In other words, there is no existence anymore. This is again an ontologically negative description taken for a positive one.
About “unshakable happiness”, in AN9.34 Sāriputta explains that to him it is “happiness” (or ease/bliss, sukha) to not experience anything (which is implied to be the lasting escape from saṃsāra, not just being unconscious for a while). This is because noble ones have a completely different view about what counts as sukha, which contradicts the world.
This reflects the psychological attitude of the noble ones towards cessation. Yet, Anālayo takes the qualification of sukha applied to nibbāna ontologically again, thinking it implies the cessation of the six senses to have some inherent “quality of happiness” that “should be experienced”. That can’t be right, because if it were so, then it couldn’t possibly considered dukkha by the world at large.
And I think this is where the real crux in the whole disagreement lies: What we consider desirable or not either distorts, or sheds light on, the way we read the suttas. If mere cessation isn’t seen as sukha, the suttas will be read differently. The ‘island’ free from old age and death will seem to imply an experience, for example. Of course, that goes the other way as well.