This was very well said to my mind. 
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I think it all comes down to certain ideas of what bhava is and cessation of bhava is.
Bhava describes all defiled and deluded states of existence from the highest to the lowest realms.
The highest are the deva’s of neither perception nor non-perception.
Seeing PS, i do not see why one would even think that without tanha, and upadana there can still be bhava. It is not that difficult i feel. The sutta’s teach that with sense contacts, feelings arise. With feelings arisings, craving arises. With cravings arising, clinging arises.
Now the mind gets involved in her own projections. A certain mindset establishes depedend of what kind of formations are grasped (hate, jalousy, greed). This proces of becoming and, as it were, constructing an existence, leads to birth into a temporary mindset.
When there is no tanha asising based upon feelings, mind just does not develop a mindset, it remains peaceful, unconstructed. Vinnana does not establish and grow, like the sutta describe this.
There is no bhava and birth happening.
Ofcourse this momentairy PS is there. And Buddha teaches that when we in a momentairy way easily take birth in certain mindset, for example animal like, that conditioning pattern will probably also cause rebirth in animal realm after death.
This combines PS-momentairy with PS in more then one life. But the connection between both is seeing PS, i believe.
I believe bhava refers to the proces of how mind constructs a certain existence due to craving and grasping at her own projections.
The cessation of bhava is not the cessation of existence, or all sense-contacts, i believe, but the cessation of this constructing proces. It just means detachment and mind abides in the peace of her own nature.
Yes, i tend to believe that this peace is everlasting, like the sutta’s also say. Mind without clinging is the cessation of existence, Nibbana, the constant unburdened, sublime supreme peace.
The wonder of this peace is that one cannot own it. If one wants to own it, grasp it, that does not work.
Well, i think we must talk about Nibbana like the sutta’s do, as peace. Has anyone seen peace seen coming and going. We always talk about formations coming and going by why never about peace?
"Some time later, while still with pristine black hair, blessed with youth, in the prime of life—though my mother and father wished otherwise, weeping with tearful faces—I shaved off my hair and beard, dressed in ocher robes, and went forth from the lay life to homelessness.
Once I had gone forth I set out to discover what is skillful, seeking the supreme state of sublime peace.
Do you still not feel that it is cynical to talk about a mere cessation after death without anything remaining …as the supreme state of sublime peace?
Yes, six sense contacts exist. For example, I’m using them to write this post. No, six sense contacts do not exist in a way that I can ultimately find them.
Ah, but you don’t mean my measly six sense contacts since I’m just a lowly being, you mean an awakened one’s six sense contacts, right?! Here is the problem - if I try and find a true distinction between this lowly being and an awakened one - I can’t find any such distinction. How would I make such a true distinction when neither this lowly being nor any such awakened one can be found?
Moreover, when an awakened one has gone through all the trouble of dispassion towards the six sense contacts; laid them down as a burden; not wishing to possess any six sense contacts as “I” or “mine”, then how unfair would it be for me - just a lowly being - to appropriate them for her on her behalf? Mighty unfair I would think. So I don’t want to do that.
I know this is a disappointing answer for you so I’m sorry; I offer it only because I think it is the truth of the situation. This thread wishes to focus on the death of awakened ones and what happens to them after death, but this really isn’t the point of the buddhadhamma and focusing in this way on that subject I fear really misses the forest for the trees.
This is very close to, and in someways identical to the liberation described in the Upanishads, for example in the Chandogya.
So are we saying that the Buddha spent decades teaching the Dhamma which essentially leads to the same result as the Brahmanical religion did during his time?
What difference does it make, in essence, whether one calls it the Atman , Brahman, or Nibbana, if the results are essentially the same?
Instead, the Buddha’s teachings on cessation point in a different direction.
Note that these points do not necessarily prove Either side of the eternalism/cessationism discussion. But it’s worthy of consideration with respect to how the Buddha spent decades explaining the differences of his teachings from the other religions at the time, including the Bronica, idea of an ineffable, peaceful, everlasting, kind of liberation, that is different from full cessation.
I believe, the concept of asankhata, -that what is not seen arising and ceasing and changing- is confused with the concept of atta.
But the constant, the stable, the not-desintegrating, the refuge, island, the unborn , the sublime supreme peace etc… is not at all a problem in the Dhamma.
Rather, Buddha teaches a Path to the constant and stable and not-desintegrating . And asankhata must be fully known. Not intellectually ofcourse.
The constant and stable is not at all the same as atta. The quality of the detached mind is constant and stable peace but that peace is no atta.
For me it feels like some people see or know that Dhamma is not about future but here and now.
And for others this is a huge taboe. They think about all as something that lies in the future: detachment, stilling, peace, cessation, Nibbana, purity. That is, i feel, wrong view.
I am sorry that people are not open to what buddhist teachers share but stumble on the words they use. Pointing to the moon, but people focus on the finger, stumble on the words. And ONLY based upon these words (never on own experience) they judge that this and that cannot happen, cannot be buddhism, cannot be true, cannot…well, based upon words only?
For example…talking a permanent consciousness is like framing this whole debate in a dishonest way.
The Citta Maha Boowa refers to is not a consciousness like Buddha uses the word vinnana. This happens all the time.
Remember to check the assumptions you make about others. How do you know that other people here are basing what they say on words and not experience? Are you basing this on the words of other teachers, excluding the possibility that real people have real experiences that differ from those words? Are words not an experience? Is experience not filtered through words? These are rhetorical questions; not one’s I’ll be following up with you here.
I never mentioned Ajahn Maha Boowa here, nor did I respond to any comments about Ajahn Maha Boowa or his teachings. I was giving an example of a potential view in the context of a discussion on emptiness and substance/attā.
If you find yourself only defending doctrines you subscribe to here, rather than listening to the actual points raised or authentically considering that other people may have other perspectives beyond dogmatism, it’s possible that this discussion isn’t beneficial.
And BTW - The Thai Forest masters, as far as I can tell, never expected people to try and defend that what they said was what the scriptures in the canon say. Quite the contrary, sometimes. Ajahn Maha Boowa occasionally would apologize for any of his terms or ideas that may contradict the scriptures, and would actively encourage his students to take what was useful and set aside or investigate for themself the things that were not in the canon. There is so much context and nuance in how they presented their ideas and what they expected their audience to do with those ideas. They were not claiming to be sutta teachers. They were claiming to be meditators teaching what they knew. So any project to try and dogmatically defend the words and concepts you learn from them and defend it as scripture is, as far as I can see, completely besides the point of what they taught.
All the best.
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Asankhata is an important concept. It refers to what is not seen arising, ceasing and changing. The unconditioned, the stable, the constant, the island, the not-desintegrating. This the Path Buddha teaches (SN43)
This is not the same as atta. I feel it is important to distinguish both. One cannot say, i believe, that any notion of stabilty, no-change, is the same as attachment to a doctrine of atta. It is the asankhata aspect where it points to.
I believe it refers to peace. The peace of nibbana is not some experience or formation that is seen arising and ceasing. It is more like something that underlies all experiences and all states.
I have not seen a person here yet who denies that the khandha’s truly cease at the death of an arahant.
What is denied is that there are only processes, phenomena and only things seen arising, ceasing and changing (only sankhata). This denies asankhata. This attitude is exactly what Ud8.3 adresses, i feel.
I believe, the asankhata refers to the sublime supreme peace of Nibbana. It is said to be everlasting in the sutta’s. But conceiving this peace is of no use. Turning it into an eternal substance is all mere conceiving and philosophy of no real use, i feel. Let us really realise detachment, the sublime supreme peace of Nibbana, and then we know what it is.
Also, I do not feel that if one assumes something that is not an aggregate, that means one is attached to a doctrine of self.
Your writing is clear and nice. Do you think that a lot of people misunderstand Nagarjuna and Mahayana as a whole and posit there’s something after parinibbāna due to that?
I have one person here using Nagarjuna for that: https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/s/RPMTRTPtC6
It’s also us that applies the label “form”. Since its dependently originated, it can’t be disassociated from mind. Dependent origination undermines both substance and essence, of truly exiting things and individual things. Ultimately, we can’t make any distinctions.
Hello Venerable!
Nagarjuna maintained that individuals or beings exist in the same sense as the aggregates exist; to no lesser or greater degree; completely void, hollow and insubstantial. That is, both the individual and the aggregates lack any essence which could be found when looked for with analysis. Further, most readers of Nagarjuna maintain that no such essence can be said to exist even conventionally.
Nagarjuna rather famously said:
Whatever is the limit of nirvana,
That is the limit of cyclic existence.
There is not even the slightest difference between them,
Or even the subtlest thing.
MMK 25.20
I don’t think you’ll find in Nagarjuna an advocate for how you view the aggregates, the six sense contacts, the individual, nibbana or paranibbana.
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The sutta’s say the Buddha teaches the Path to the Uncondioned, to the incredible …the constant …the stable, the not falling apart …that in which nothing appears …etc.
SN 43.14–43: Anāsavādisutta—Bhikkhu Sujato (suttacentral.net)
It is quit clear, for me at least 
the Path to the constant, the stable, the incredible etc. he teaches, does not refer to a mere cessation at last death. Why would one call that the incredible 
Can we call it a Path to an unconditioned reality?
Why not? All those words in the sutta used point in that direction.
But probably conceiving all this, as always, only creates more problems.
Probably the word, reality also only creates problems.
Conceiving is an illness.
Ven. Nāgārjuna likely belonged to the Sammatīya, a sub-school of the Pudgalavādins. Pudgalavāda also accepted the theory that the dhammas exist in the three times, like the group we know as Sarvāstivāda proper today.
Causality exists conventionally, just not ultimately. Causality is in the mind. Its how the mind constructs experience. In realising nibbāna one realises the emptiness of cause, arising, ceasing and any dhamma. Nibbāna is empty of all of those. Science does accept causality, yes (although you will find its all probabilistic). As scientists we assume matter to do science. Matter is a substance though, and Buddhadhamma teaches the emptiness of all substances. There being no substances to be found, what could be the cause of what?
Let’s use this as a starting point, arahants while alive still see, hear using 6 sense contacts, after death, since you deny cessation, do they still see, hear, have 6 sense contacts?
I know there’s a number of ways you can avoid answering this, so just use the illusion of seeing appear if you like and does it still appear? If you don’t like the word exist etc.
Don’t go out by denying personhood just because I used conventional speech to refer to Arahant. Don’t avoid by questioning the concept of death, by which I would refer to the break up of the aggregates, or the event which happened to buddha in dn16.
Just answer yes, there’s still 6 sense contacts or no, no more.
Conventionally we say Arahants and Buddhas ate, slept, meditated, awakened and taught Dhamma. Ultimately we can’t speak of Arahants or Buddhas doing those things, because nouns cannot be found. Nouns not being found, neither can adjectives or verbs. Neither can aggregates or sense bases be found, ultimately.
sabbanāmāni sabhāvena suññāni
All names are empty of own-being
“When there are words, there is the fetter of birth and death. When words do not exist, there is nirvāṇa. Those who have words have birth, death, arising and cessation; those who have no words have no birth, no death, no arising and no cessation.”
EĀ 30:1
“The is nothing to understand, nothing at all to understand. For nothing in particular has been indicated, nothing in particular has been explained.” - Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra
"24. The pacification of all objectification
And the pacification of illusion:
No Dharma was taught by the Buddha
At any time, in any place, to any person."
Ven. Nāgārjuna
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Since we’re bringing Nagarjuna into this we might as well state what he said about Nibbana 
25.17
Having passed into nirvana, the Transcendent Lord
Is neither perceived to be existent
Nor perceived to be nonexistent.
He is neither perceived to be both nor to be neither.25.18
So, when the Transcendent Lord was alive, he
Was neither perceived to be existent
Nor perceived to be nonexistent.
He was neither perceived to be both nor to be neither.25.19
Cyclic existence is not the slightest bit
Different from nirvana.
Nirvana is not the slightest bit
Different from cyclic existence.25.20
Whatever is the limit of nirvana,
That is the limit of cyclic existence.
There is not even the slightest difference between them,
Or even the subtlest thing.25.21
Views regarding his status after his passing; extremes, etc.,
And views regarding the permanent, etc.,
Are grounded upon nirvana, the final limit,
And the prior limit.25.22
Since all existents are empty,
What is finite or infinite?
What is finite and infinite?
What is neither finite nor infinite?25.23
What is identical and what is different?
What is permanent and what is impermanent?
What is both permanent and impermanent?
What is neither?25.24
The pacification of all objectification
And the pacification of all fabrication is peace.
No Dharma was taught by the Buddha
At any time, in any place, to any person.
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And to give the cessationists something from Nagarjuna:
26.8
This existence is also the five aggregates.
From existence comes birth,
Old age, and death and misery and
Suffering and lamentation and …26.9
Unhappiness and agitation.
All these arise as a consequence of birth.
Thus what comes into being
Is only a mass of suffering.26.10
The root of cyclic existence is action.
Therefore, the wise one does not act.
Therefore the unwise is the agent.
The wise one is not, because he sees reality.26.11
With the cessation of ignorance,
Action will not arise.
The cessation of ignorance occurs through
Exercising wisdom in meditating on this.26.12
Through the cessation of this and that,
This and that will not be manifest.
That which is only a mass of suffering
Will thus completely cease.
Emphasis my own.
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For example, if i hit on a pole and the soundwaves that are caused by this action of me, hit your eardrum and this gives rise to impulses on the ear-nerve which are transported to the auditive center of the brain, you might hear at some moment the sound of hitting a pole.
Can we now see that causality is in the mind? is there no relation at all between me hitting a pole and you hearing a sound?
All you can say is there a conjunction of events. You will never find something called “causality”. You will never find something causing something else. If you do manage to prove that, the Nobel Prize for Philosophy is yours. By this I mean no one has been able to do it to date, not even Kant. Causality is assumed in the everyday world and in science, like matter or the self is assumed. An assumption though it remains. You never experience sound waves either really. They too are a concept used to explain experiences.
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Yes, i have met this a long time ago. I felt no connection with Nagarjuna. I remember i wanted to study it but it did not at all touch my heart. I admit it has never had any real effect on my mind nor life. For me it feels only as a kind of intellectual smartness. 
I feel the real life teacher is real life suffering. Seeing how the mind again and again looses peace, becomes burdened. If one can say that this has come to end, one can say one has understood something. But i also feel that one must really want it. That is the first step, because it is very easy to see in suffering something good. Something to hold on to. I am such a fool.
The most difficult point of Dhamma is to really let go of all these patterns that only cause suffering.
Really practicing it. Really going for the peace of Nibbana.
I am now gonna stop. he, he…Green becomes wiser 
(not possible)
Yes.
I’m not an expert in Ven. Nagarjuna’s thought or history. But it’s important to know what we mean when we say someone belongs to a Buddhist school. Monastic sects, or Buddhist schools, are fundamentally by Vinaya. They are not primarily ideological. It’s a Western concept imputed on Buddhist sectarianism to think that schools are fundamentally split by doctrinal disagreements, and it’s been mostly corrected in modern Western academia on Buddhism. I’m a monastic, and so I have gone through certain vinaya-based rituals to be initiated into a monastic community. The vinaya-pitakas are sectarian, school-specific documents. So, in the future, someone may say I belonged to the Theravāda school. But that doesn’t mean I accept the doctrines and ideas in traditional Mahāvihāra exegesis and subsequent developments. Nor that I even study that tradition, or am particularly learned in it. I could hold Pudgalavadin views or practice Tantra and still be a Theravadin monastic.
Of course, doctrines will tend to evolve within those Vinaya-based schools and it’s very easy for ideological pockets to develop and group differences to arise. But that’s all secondary, and it’s still individual.
So the idea that it’s “likely” that Ven. Nāgārjuna belonged to a certain school is extremely thin evidence for understanding his views. Do you mean to say that scholars of Nagarjuna’s treatises think they display certain ideas held by a sub-set of Pudgalavadin doctrine? If so I’d be curious to learn a bit about it.
Mettā
Hello, venerable
The first thing I’d say is that if people on Reddit are using Nagarjuna to defend their views, we should hardly be surprised or take that as evidence that ‘most people’ use Ven. Nagarjuna’s writings to expound wrong views. Internet forums (like this one) are filled with all kinds of views.
Also, ‘Mahayana’ is not a single thing or doctrine. There is a huge variety of views and disagreements over both subtle and coarse subjects, and this has been going on for literally millenia. Just as Theravada monks could disagree on just about anything, so too practitioners who take on bodhisattva vows and aspirations can disagree on almost anything, and in fact they have as documented in texts and other media.
I also don’t think we can equate ‘Nagarjuna’ and ‘Mahayana doctrine,’ not just because of what I said above, but also because Nagarjuna was just arguing against certain views that arose in the Abhidharma project and other wrong views using mostly ideas from the early suttas. Also, Nagarjuna’s writings are earlier than all the extant Mahayana schools, which are developments. So what he understood and practiced as ‘Mahayana’ could simply be taking vows to become awakened in a future life for the sake of sentient beings, or something similar, and admiring certain divine beings who have the same aspiration and develop the path. A lot of earlier Mahayana thought is not in contradiction to the early sutta material, but merely takes an alternative route within that main doctrine, as I understand it. Over the millenia, more and more differences and animosity arose.
Again, I’m not an expert in his thought or the MMK, but from what I do and have read, I don’t see anything in there that would contradict the view of the suttas on the four noble truths. That said, I do know that Nagarjuna’s logic is used as a starting point in Mahayana schools (like Gelugpa, for instance) to arrive at certain ideas around Buddhas and non-abiding nirvāna which I understand to be presenting a different doctrine from the early texts. So you’d have to talk to someone more knowledgable on how all that is arrived at.
As I see it, the MMK is simply pointing out that ‘nirvana’ is only a concept that makes sense in relationship to ‘samsāra.’ That is, we can’t talk of ‘the cessation of suffering’ without referring to suffering (samsara), and nirvana would be impossible to attain and meaningless if there were no samsara / suffering to cease. It ceases by the ending of avijjā and tanhā-upādāna, so it is by understanding the nature of samsāra that one attains nirvāna. Once this duality collapses, we cannot use concepts or language accurately anymore, because we can only refer to things in samsāra and the cessation or nature of those things, nothing else. This ties into the idea that “we” cannot attain or abide in nirvana, and the idea that “we” get nirvana as a rest from samsara is just conventional speak — because nirvana is not an experience for a self or sense of self to ‘have’. Because nirvana is simply a term denoting the cessation of suffering.
None of this is in agreement with the continuation of sense activity after the death of an awakened one nor the idea that Buddhas continue to exert influence in samsara from the perspective of sentient beings. But it’s possible that some schools end up going there. Maybe @yeshe.tenley knows
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