Technically, there are two kinds of Nibbana, saupadisesa nibbana and anupadisesa Nibbana (don’t let’s forget nibbana means ‘extinguishment’, and this word meaning was still apparent for speaker of Prakrits in Ancient India). The former means ‘Nibbana with remainder’, refers to experiential states of an arahant during their lifetime, and can be very roughly defined as the cessation of greed, hatred and delusion and resulting experience. The latter is essentially Parinibbana, i.e. total final cessation of the Five Aggregates without any remainder whatsoever, so that it doesn’t even really make sense to talk about experiential states here. Is it terminologically neat? Not exactly, but the Buddhist terminology isn’t always neat and tidy, think about sankharas and dhammas.
So, to sum it all up, saupadisesa nibbana was the start of the Buddha’s teaching career, anupadisesa nibbana was its magnificent finale.
I do not mean to necro-post, but I have given the matter another turnover in my head and I do not think the answer that I gave before makes any sense if one if actually familiar with Alzheimer’s as a disease.
Alzeihmer’s is not just the loss of memory and “cognitive functions”, if it also categorized by pain, terrifying hallucinations, panic and confusion that have no obvious source, among over symptoms.
So earlier when I said “it would theoretically just not cause them suffering”, Alzheimer’s devoid of suffering, devoid of its features aside from memory loss, isn’t really Alzheimer’s at all.
Furthermore, if Alzheimer’s were “just” the loss of self-perception, the cessation of fabrications and suffering, the Buddha would have taught a path that cultivates maximum potentiality to develop Alzheimer’s, not all of this “dharma” business.
