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
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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.
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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 
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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.
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When analyzed it appears void, hollow and completely insubstantial like a bubble, a mirage, a banana tree, a magic trick. The more you investigate the mind, looking at it closer and closer, it appears void and hollow and completely insubstantial. If you use the definition of ‘real’ I proposed, then it could blamelessly be said that the mind is not real. Being not real and not found when looked for how can it ever be said to truly cease?
Yes, it is very clear that Buddha’s view on happiness is different from that of the world.
Because it not a happiness and pleasure of the senses. It cannot be felt nor perceived. It is never an object of any sense vinnana.
But is still known because it is that mere knowing itself. That knowing is happiness and happiness is that knowing. It has an enlightening quality. It is abundant, complete. It is not burdened.
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There is no perception of a self or identification with any self in the aggregates or in the mind. The individual existence tied up with a self has ceased.
Whatever is not self? Consciousness is surely not fit to be described as a self. Consciousness, when looked for cannot actually be found. If it can’t be found and it appears void, hollow, and completely insubstantial the closer and closer one looks, how can it be said to truly cease?
Let’s be clear - I don’t know anything at all about nibbana - all I have are hazy and feeble hypothesis but no real knowledge. If I ever do discover what is left I promise to try and let you know though to the best of my ability 
Okay!
I originally started the discussion by saying:
In hindsight, “it can be made into” is too ambiguous of a phrase. The starting point here was my mistake. What I should have written is something like:
Analayo’s argument is interesting, and I have seen similar arguments get made by other writers on this (and other topics). Going strictly by what Analyo says in this passage of the book,
Hence, there may have been an additional need to clarify
Or, as you (Sunyo) have put it,
I think we can agree that this type of argument, in general, is not sound. In other words, the argument that:
If person X did not clarify position Y in the specific instance Z, then person X did not believe position Y.
is a bad argument. But it is not clear to me if this is a fair representation of Analayo’s argument. I can’t claim to speak for Analayo. So the interesting question, to me, is: can we steel-man Analayo’s argument?
First, let’s try to put his argument into a valid (in the technical sense) structure. Then, with this valid structure, we can zoom in on the premises to see whether or not the argument is sound (in the technical sense). It strikes me that a difference between the generalized bad argument I gave above and Analayo’s argument is that there are all sorts of background assumptions being made about who the Buddha was, his motivations, his competencies, etc. Introducing these background assumptions, though, might be straying outside the reach of what Analayo had in mind. On the other hand, the generalized bad argument, while perhaps being a literal transcription of what Analayo says in that particular passage, also might be straying away from what Analayo had in mind in the other direction.
Okay, with that in mind, here is one potential steel-manned argument:
…
…
…
The above might be too broad to address at the moment, so feel free not to reply if you think so.
If I had started with the above, then I think we could have avoided some of our tedious exchanges. Regardless, I do not regret the conversation we have had, and I personally have learned from it! So thank you! And by the way, I think the rest of your post in which you replied to Pyjter was very well spoken.
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With respect to your modesty, …i must still intervene …this is a wrong view Yeshe.
Everybody knows about Nibbana but only Nobles have recognised it, see it, had this aha-moment.
There is always the asankhata element in our lives, the unconditioned, that what is not seen arising and ceasing and changing in the meantime. That what is surely not experienced nor known as a formation. It is allready dispassionate, signless, empty, burdenfree, stilled, peaceful. It is unmade and uncreated like the sutta’s teach. Why? It is not that when formations cease one has made or created that stillness, that emptiness that is now present.
There is no person in the world who has direct experience or knowledge of the cessation of stillness and emptiness. Even black-out, narcosis, deep sleep is not at all ‘prooving’ that one knows that the stilled emptiness has really ceased. No person in the world has knowledge of the cessation of the nature of the mind.
Stilling is called a foretaste of Nibbana in the sutta’s, or knowing Nibbana in a provisional sense like Bodhi translated that. I feel, we must not ignore this, neglect this stillness, this emptiness that is there already and which we really do not see as a formation that is arising and ceasing.
Asankhata is defined in the sutta’s as not seen arising and ceasing nor changing. So it clearly cannot be involved in bhava, it cannot be a fruit. It cannot be a result. It cannot be made. It cannot be produced, it cannot decay. It cannot end. In this way it is distinguished from sankhata.
Why would one see sankhata as real and asankhata not or as mere some designation for something that is still liable to cease?
Yes, i believe we must stop ignoring our own direct understanding, direct knowledge, that we really do not see stillness, peace, emptiness arising. Our world really does not consist only of seeing formations arising and ceasing.
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Eh? It is wrong for me to admit that I don’t really know when in fact I perceive that I don’t really know nibbana? How can this be wrong? Should I say that I do know when I don’t perceive that I do?
“How…?”
Perhaps Green is suggesting that the unconditioned is ever-present. He might just be taking time for “rousing, encouraging, and exhortation” in a tiresome environment. Regardless, I have a proposal…
By -
Taking nirvana as “unbinding” (a verb),
Considering the gradual path,
Recalling that there are unbindings as fruits along the way (to views, rituals)…
perhaps you are “nirvana-ing.”
In any case, humility and a commitment to speaking honestly might be (paradoxically?) indications of higher attainments. Perhaps you should hide your humility. 
You would say phenomena appears because of causes, and when the causes are not there, there’s no phenomena, even for the 6 sense contacts for arahants after enlightenment, before death.
It then allows for the possibility of all the causes ceases and the 6 sense contacts are no more after the death of an arahant.
Or else you will have to assume either there are other causes and conditions other than from dependent origination to make the 6 sense contacts continue after the death of an arahant or posit that the 6 sense contacts are uncaused, unborn, etc which contradicts dependent origination.
I don’t have much to add in the way of this Nibbana debate. However, how nice would it be if a bunch of living Arahants got together and solved this saying, “The cessationists are right” or “the transcendentalists are right”. I believe there would be some vinaya issues with this right? As well as having ti figure out if they are actual noble ones. Ah, well, I hope I’m able to talk to an Arahant one day.
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