You’re treating continuum as it unfolds in our observations. From the inner sense-base of the Buddha, the rebirth-wandering ceased. This is probably the reason in places like SA233 where “The World” is explained as the inner sense media (perhaps @Sunyo would be interested in this discussion). For the purposes of namarupa continuum that went through rebirths and ended up as Buddha, there’s no more contact or rebirth.
I’m not wholly opposed to this discussion honestly, because it’s tangentially relevant. Buddha’s message in suttas are about personal extinguishment and freedom from suffering, not the complete cessation of suffering everywhere. This assuming, of course, that there are different individual processes conventionally called “persons” with separate streams of consciousnesses, each one in relationship with but not completely dependent on others, who can even achieve complete independence and cessation.
So there’s no difference between suffering and not suffering?
There are quite violent Zen Kōans that ridicule this notion. Just because you think the dhamma that arises and ceases is real/unreal, substantial/empty, doesn’t make a bed of nails any less painful. Reality is irrelevant; suffering is.
You keep treating what goes on “there” from the perspective of a mind that is “here”. That’ll never work. You wield a consciousness. You have senses. For mom and dad, I die. For me, it’s just the dissolution of the senses and the mind. The end of the world as “I” know it for without an “I” there is no longer a “world.” I will never “be” a describable “being” again. I will never have particular characteristics. No matter how I refer to that future state, it can only be fathomed by me on my end and by you on your end, but it will not look like a me nor like a not me for I already know how these two look like. It’s something else. It’s not nothing. It’s no thing. Neither existence nor non existence. The end of objectivity and subjectivity. Ultimately, you must first truly see and truly hear and truly feel the limit of words. The raft has boundaries. That’s what should push you to sit down and meditate. To swim without a raft.
Poor Venerable Sunyo! Too many threads on arising and ceasing! I don’t have much more to add.
Right. That’s all we can talk about.
Sure, I agree that the Buddha’s senses ceased.
But the Buddha’s inner senses can’t actually attain the cessation of themselves. Because the cessation of something is the arising of a separate condition. Just like a three year-old cannot have a four year-old’s birthday party. Only a four year old can have a four year-old’s birthday part. The Buddha’s senses cannot attain a cessation of the sense bases. The cessation of the sense bases would be a different event than the arising or presence of the sense bases. I assume you would agree with this.
So the Buddha can’t actually attain awakening. We just say that because we have to use words. There’s no such thing as a literal “extinguished fire.” Burning is the opposite of not burning.
So to relate it to this thread more directly: this means striving for “my personal liberation” has to be let go of. Even a “non-self continuum” cannot attain liberation. Thinking it can would be relying on annihilationism. And I’ve already discussed how that is incoherent here. We can’t actually attain liberation. And I don’t just mean non-self. I mean literally, experience cannot attain non-experience. Only certain conditions can arise/cease. But that’s happening every moment anyway! So thinking it’s somehow special in the future would be mistaken. Though, again, obviously the Buddha’s senses ceased when their conditions were no longer present. I’m not denying that.
If you want a sutta reference for this, you can reference e.g. the end of DN 9 with the discussion of the past, present, and future.
Well it is actually possible to become Enlightened at every moment of your life, even forever. Take that in meditation. Such things are not unheard of.
I already explained my reasoning in the prior comments!
Though I should rephrase. The Buddha can attain awakening. What I meant to say is the Buddha cannot attain the extinguishment of the aggregates. Because “the Buddha” refers to the aggregates. The extinguishing of the aggregates would not be the Buddha. The aggregates can only experience the aggregates. It would be something other than the Buddha.
I cannot experience myself 10 years from now in this moment. It’s simply impossible. Present conditions cannot be future conditions.
It is also possible to experience such multiple points in time at the same time, but it would be have to be done morally, with full morality in mind, as a Buddhist Siddhi and Advanced Practice.
But you can “experience” no conditions here. That’s the whole deal. You can. You definitely can. That’s what meditation is for. If you can’t get a taste of the possibility of no possibilities, there would be no escaping dear old sammy. In this lifetime you can taste Nibbana.
Here I disagree with @Dogen . If there is no inclusion and permeability of samsara / nibbana, there would be no path, no raft, no bridge. Only inescapable suffering. They cannot be entirely autonomous, disconnected, disjointed separate systems. Hence, there is no division.
Yes, and I realise the distinction is not relevant to the topic then. Since the basis of our soteriology, that is, Buddha’s freedom from suffering, cessation of aggregates, is still valid, as is our chances of following such example.
Of course experience can’t experience not-experience. But experience can end, and that’s all that matters for this discussion.
Yeah. If samsāra truly existed there would be no possibility of escape. If nibbāna was true non-existence there would be no pathway to follow.
But the point is that trying to “personally attain” something which you personally cannot would be self-grasping. It’s just a figure of speech. We shouldn’t take it literally.
People want to carry over their “individual continuum” to the far shore too, it seems. As for the brahmavihāras, this seems like a straw man to me. I don’t know of any Buddhist tradition who claims the Buddha did not have mettā and so on after his awakening. And I know of no Buddhist tradition that says mettā or compassion is the same as awakening.
He saw the door, opened the door, and built the doorstop. That’s all the compassion that is ever and will be needed. Our job is to learn, meditate, check that the door is still open and that the doorstop is still sound, and get out. Everything else would be disrespectful (or still fearful and ignorant.)
This is going the opposite direction to the Truly exist post, what is posted there should be here what’s posted here should be there. Haha.
Anyway, this is surprising coming from you. The whole individual continuum does end in parinibbāna. Only the corpse is left. And there’s no serious way to map, oh I am not breathing in some Oxygen which used to be a body of an arahant. So somehow the arahant’s individual continuum continues in me. No more mind that’s the point.
You got close, but still mistaken what I clarified before. We don’t need to posit any substance to a thing which is extinguished for it to no longer be there. Just experience of fire vs no experience of fire. Experince is directly known, no need for concepts, thinking. Truly Exist, dependently exist, dependently ceased, truly not existing In this language, 2 can become 3 by no more experiencing of 2. You seem to imply that there’s no 3.
Causal chain in the world doesn’t end, as there’s still dhamma in the world and eventually there will be no dhamma known, and the condition for next Buddha is fulfilled. But to use the label: “individual” would be wrong as there’s no more neatly bound set of things we can trace. As explained here: Self vs Individual - #5 by NgXinZhao There’s no more mind to trace the individual. As for physical things, they are able to be divided and no individual can be stamped upon atoms. They are able to be swapped. Of course, there can be psychic energies accompanying the relics. The dhamma is also replicable, and we cannot say of 2 same books on the dhamma, which is the real individual continuum of the Buddha. Here, individual has the specific meaning of one, unique, not 2 or more.
I see your reasoning, I am not sure what classification of philosophy it is in. I understand now. Not sure if it is helpful or not for liberation, but as long as people can understand properly, shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
Lay Non-returners in the suttas, already gave up sex and money, 2 of the important things of lay life. Arahants have to be ordained or else they die soon. It is impossible for arahants to accumulate stuffs like lay person. There can be a continuum of some people who realized the meaninglessness of lay life early and become monastics, but still not enlightened, and other ariya lay persons who still live the lay life despite having higher attaiments than some monks.
To truly understand impermanence is a lot of levels and certainly is different for each person.
Before enlightenment, the Brahmavihāras would really sound like being superheroes. It can become a trap for mara to say delay enlightenment, help others. After enlightenment, even after stream winning, I would certainly encourage more Brahmavihāras, so that the ariyas can enlighten others as many as possible as soon as possible to the other shore. Teaching is a vihesā (trouble) for the Buddha as well, for it takes time away from meditation and some people are difficult to teach. But that dukkha is mainly physical dukkha, not so much mental dukkha. Just wasted energy if someone is unresponsive.
But just to address the title. If we take seriously that all conditioned things are dukkha, then Brahmavihāra being part of conditioned things is automatically dukkha. Anyone has an issue with that just have to re-examine their own projections of the meaning of dukkha, are they mapping dukkha must always include mental suffering? No way to refute this simple thing. Cut and dry.
There’s quite a bit of teachings that go around, that explain nibbāna as Pure heart, or explaining nibbāna as something other than end of all dhammas - not just in Mahayānā schools, even Thai Forest teachings, other teachers in that tradition. So it’s a pan-sectarian matter. I could name names, but I’m not sure that’s a show of good faith. Buddha often criticizes behaviours instead of spelling out monks’ names, and we should follow that example as well.
Of course, Buddha had metta after his enlightenment; same can’t be said after his parinibbāna.
The main argument is that all kusala cetasikas are useful for the explicit purpose of aiding a mendicant’s cessation. Everything else is superfluous, and to argue otherwise is actively hurtful for those on the path, who’re probably already struggling to cultivate these good qualities enough to combat their anger, greed and delusion as is.
Example: A person with a hateful heart, unable to get over his anger, is told that “Compassion is good”. Why? “To help others” Why? People need to understand how cultivating brahmavihārā isn’t good in an abstract, theistic or substantial sense of the word, or that it’s good for the world; cultivating these qualities will make life easier for them, for the practitioner. If the mind doesn’t see the personal benefit in something, it’s not attracted to it, plain and simple.
Neither in love with passion nor besotted by dispassion,
there is nothing here they adopt as the ultimate.
Snp 4.4
Also:
The sage is independent everywhere, they don’t form likes or dislikes. Lamentation and stinginess slip off them like water from a leaf.
…
For the one who is cleansed does not conceive in terms of things seen, heard, or thought. They do not wish to be purified by another; they are neither passionate nor growing dispassioned.
Snp 4.6
Not swept up in pleasures,
or given to arrogance,
they’re gentle and articulate, neither hungering nor growing dispassionate.
Snp 4.10
Just because you think the dhamma that arises and ceases is real/unreal, substantial/empty, doesn’t make a bed of nails any less painful. Reality is irrelevant; suffering is.
Too many threads on arising and ceasing! I don’t have much more to add.
