DN11, Five Aggregates, Vinanna Anidassana

Essays
61

It’s a dangerous way of talking about consciousness which is constantly explained to be dependently arisen.

There are many instances of fire being lit in dependence on many things in the world, a log-fire here, there a grass-fire, over there an oil-lamp.

To speak of a consciousness jumping around is essential akin to speaking of a fire jumping from one place to another.

Suppose i light & put out a log-fire on a monday and i light a grass-fire on a tuesday. You wouldn’t say that the fire having landed on the logs jumped to the grass.

Why is that? Because clearly it is not the same fire!

The fire that was on monday had ceased by the time i light the grass-fire.

In exactly the same way it is taught that this or that consciousness originates due to conditions. You may discern eye-consciousness
and later discern ear-consciousness but no consciousness jumped from the eye to the ear.

The consciousness that arose in dependence on the ear ceased by the time that ear-consciousness arose. There is no jumping of a thing from one to another.

Suppose i use friction to light a small grass-fire, having lit a grass fire i would light a candle and with this lit candle i would light a grass-torch which would later be extinguished.

You wouldn’t say that i summoned a fiery monster by performing the ritual of rubbing a stick, a monster which then jumped from the grass and onto the candle before jumping onto a light-torch to feed on the grass.

In the same way you shouldn’t make a mental monster which roams around, jumping from here to there out of consciousness.

There are communicable conventions. For example suppose you light a small fire for cooking near a farmers corn field.

Then you would make mediocre effort to extinguish it half-heartedly and walk away, leaving hot coals.

Then a wind would blow and the fire would blaze up again due to your negligence in putting it out. Then somehow the fire would spread to light up the corn-field.

Now here are two ways of thinking about it.

  1. You didn’t set the corn field on fire.
  2. You did set the corn field on fire.

Obviously the farmer would blame you saying that the fire you lit had spread to the field even if it’s obviously not the same fire and you had no intention of setting the field on fire.

Nothing therein actually jumped from one thing to another. The flame that you had put out was extinguished and another flame arose due to the wind’s blowing.

It’s not like you had summoned a fiery monster which hid from you in the coals before jumping out and onto the field.

It is not one and the same fire jumping from one thing to another.

Likewise there is no such thing as a single consciousness-entity roaming & jumping around. Past consciousness ‘was’, has been, and the future consciousness is not yet begotten, these are not the same thing.

62

I was providing a sample to Sunyo showing how consciousness within the context of DO is sometimes spoken of as constantly moving without mentioning that ignorance, grasping, and name-and-form all play a role in this process.

63

OK, yes I see that I was confusing those two:

Bhava: “becoming,” (form of) rebirth, (state of) existence, a “life.” There are 3 states of existence conventionally enumd as kāma-, rūpa-, arūpa- or sensual existence, deva-corporeal, and formless existence… D II.57; III.216; S II.3; IV.258; A II.223; III.444… - Another view is represented by the division of bhava into kamma- and upapatti- (uppatti-), or the active functioning of a life in relation to the fruitional, or resultant way of the next life… - In the “causal chain” (Paṭicca-samuppāda, q. v.) bhava is represented as condition of birth (jāti), or resultant force for new birth…

Āsava: that which flows (out or on to) outflow and influx. 1. spirit, the intoxicating extract or secretion of a tree or flower, O. C. in Vin IV.110 (four kinds); B. on D III.182 (five kinds)… - 2. discharge from a sore, A I.124, 127… - 3. in psychology, t.t. for certain specified ideas which intoxicate the mind (bemuddle it, befoozle it, so that it cannot rise to higher things). Freedom from the “āsavas” constitutes Arahantship, and the fight for the extinction of these āsavas forms one of the main duties of man… - The 4 āsavas are kām-, bhav-, diṭṭh-, avijj-, i. e. sensuality, rebirth (lust of life), speculation and ignorance. - They are mentioned as such at D II.81, 84, 91, 94, 98, 123, 126; A I.165 sq., 196; II.211; III.93, 414; IV.79… - The set of 3, which is probably older (kāma-, bhava-, avijjā-) occurs at M I. 55; A I.165; III.414; S IV.256; V.56, 189…

BTW, is there an easy way to translate these PTS references over to the current style used on Sutta Central and Dhammatalks?

Thanks for showing the difference though I still can’t see how Bhava can act alone as an existence without the support of the rest of DO - or maybe I was misunderstanding you?

64

Hellooo again, :slight_smile:

The “landing” of consciousness with connection to bhava many think refers to being reborn in a particular life. Ven. Bodhi for example notes at SN12.38: “When that kammic consciousness is established [or “landed”] […] through its ability to precipitate rebirth, there is the production of future renewed existence, i.e., production consisting in renewed existence.” If you can read German, Rita Langer’s Das Bewusstsein als Träger des Lebens is the best work I found on this particular topic.

The Thai Forest Ajahns (of the past) weren’t studying or translating suttas all that much, that’s at least one difference. And the whole issue here is how to translate and interpret said sutta. You can be enlightened and translate it wrongly, or be unenlightened and translate it rightly. I don’t think enlightened has much of a bearing on this, although it does of course rule out some wrong ideas.

Not all factors of DO cease at enlightenment right away. Many cease only at parinibbana, the death of an enlightened being. For example death: the Buddha still had to die one more time. Or the six senses, contact, feelings, consciousness: the Buddha still had all of them. Same with bhava.

65

Actually I was changing the subject on you. What I said was:

If I thought I was awakened but it seemed quite different from what the Thai Forest Ajahns seem in general agreement on - I would be there to hang out with them in a heart beat

It was just an add-on thought.
I never met them - I don’t know what they knew of the suttas - probably varies widely among them. I am pretty sure that what they did know was probably left in the raft. But that wasn’t my point: They are describing their experience in contemporary language. I have a rudimentary understanding of ordinary language - if what they describe seemed quite different from my own experience I would want to learn more from them. I would be quite interested rather than dismissing them.

I was musing… I like to muse

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66

Apologies. Didn’t wish to distract you.

I was responding to several posts regarding bhava, including:

All best

67

I am not sure about that - that the Arahat dies. In a sense, they are already dead. I doubt they relate to the death of the physical body in any way similar to how we see it. I doubt they have any sense of existence with regard to the body. If there is pain than that is felt - that seems clear in Buddha’s case - however much of the challenge associated with pain is the mental or second arrow type which I don’t think would be present.

Just from the perspective of here you have a guy (Buddha) that can create a mind made body and travel to different realms, know what his monks are thinking and psychically jump over to teach them, fly through space and such - is that mind really dependent on a physical body? We tend to think that the senses are physical - but we have plenty of evidence from near death experiences of people for example describing things that are going on in the operating room from the perspective of looking down at it while they are ‘dead’. They describe non-physical senses, non-physical communication, and thoughts - these are all described many times. And those are presumably non-awakened people. So what is the death of a body among Arahats? I don’t know.

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68

I guess what you meant in your analogy are below:

  • “the Sun” means: the undefiled mind that is always there and unconditioned, just like Nibbāna

  • “clouds” means: the ignorance, clinging, asavas, sankharas, etc.

  • “climbing mountain” means: clearing the cloud/cessation of ignorance

  • “Why we could see everything down below. Because it was this sun that illuminated the clouds all along.” means “before clearing the cloud, we could still see but we only saw with clinging consciousness. The reason we could still see is due to this undefiled mind, without this undefiled mind, we won’t be able to see at all”

Your analogy is very similar to scenario 1 that I presented in my post previously. However, there are still some subtle differences. I think these subtle differences are best to describe using totally new and different scenario to avoid confusion with scenario 1. We will call it as Scenario 3 below:

A person with pure, precious, brilliant diamond covered under many layers of clothes; he is inside a dark room. Due to the pure, precious, brilliant diamond, he can still see things inside that dark room with his good eyes. However, he almost always sees things incorrectly. By removing these many layers of clothes, with the pure, precious, brilliant diamond, he can see now everything inside that dark room correctly.

Below is the explanation of the terms in scenario 3:

  • The pure, precious, brilliant diamond means the undefiled mind. Due to its presence, that person can see. Without it, that person can NOT see anything even with good eyes. This is similar to your analogy of “the Sun”.

  • The characteristics of diamond such as pure, precious, brilliant and somewhat indestructible means to make a similarity with the inherent characteristics of the undefiled mind.

  • The removing of those many layers of clothes means cessation of ignorance.

  • Just as the pure, precious, brilliant diamond is not conditioned by the process of removing those many layers of clothes: The undefiled mind is not conditioned by the cessation of ignorance.

Note the differences between scenario 3 and scenario 1:

  • The ignorance does not cover this person’s good eyes as in scenario 1. It instead covers the undefiled mind.

  • This person’s good eyes are not required to be unconditioned as in scenario 1. Instead, that requirement now falls onto the diamond in scenario 3. By making a distance with the person (external object vs. eyes), the diamond in scenario 3 seems to has less sense of a personal “atta” than the person’s eyes in scenario 1.

Note the similarities between scenario 3 and scenario 1:

  • The overall result that this person sees things correctly (Nibbāna) is still the same as in scenario 1.

  • The undefiled mind and Nibbāna are two different dhamma. Same as in scenario 1, they are both unconditioned dhamma.

I hope that this scenario 3 fully reflects what you meant.

Until here, are we still on the same page?

69

Yes, I do believe so.

70

I didn’t notice this in my first response to you - not a big deal I think but just to be clear: I don’t see how we could say they are the same or different. I don’t think that kind of language can be applied here. I would say something more like:
There is unconditioned knowing. (vinanna anidassana)
There is unconditioned known. (Nibanna)
They cannot be said to be different nor can we say they are the same as such concepts no longer apply.

Sorry not to have caught that earlier.

71

How about feelings, contact, six senses, consciousness, etc after enlightenment? Don’t these exist anymore either?

72

Not as they do in DO but yes in the sense of The Five Aggregates (faculties of the undefiled mind) from which they arise due to ignorance.

As part of what makes up dependent origination (feelings, contact, six senses, consciousness, etc) these are all conditioned by ignorance. When ignorance ceases these things (in the sense of their role in creating suffering, I am this or that etc.) cease. Another way to say this is that all these factors are part of a ‘shaping process’ that are also themselves ‘shaped’ (by ignorance) that arises because of ignorance. When ignorance ceases this shaping process also ceases.

MN18

Eye consciousness arises dependent on the eye and sights. The meeting of the three is contact. Contact is a condition for feeling. What you feel, you perceive. What you perceive, you think about. What you think about, you proliferate. What you proliferate is the source from which judgments driven by proliferating perceptions beset a person. This occurs with respect to sights known by the eye in the past, future, and present.

If consciousness does not land then there is no contact. This does not mean that Arahats can’t see - it means that they don’t objectify what is seen. In seeing there is just the seen. As worldy people operating under the influence of DO we are inputting a flow of ever changing phenomena and in our DO factory endlessly stamping out distinct ‘things’ making them graspable.

see also SN12.2

This is how I understand this at this point.

73

Arahants still experience contact. SN12.19, which is part of SN12 and therefore is on Dependent Origination, says about the astute (or ‘wise’) person who “has given up that ignorance and finished that craving”:

there [still] is the duality of this body and external name and form. Contact depends on this duality. When contacted through one or other of the six sense fields, the astute person experiences pleasure and pain.

74

This a misuse of the term ‘consciousness not landing’. This is not what it means in the texts.

In as far as the arahant discerns feelings & perceptions, that is due to a landing of consciousness.

In as far as the arahant is alive, consciousness doesn’t land when one has entered & remains in the attainment of the cessation of perception & feeling, otherwise it’s landing is discerned, by which one experiences the various feeling-states.

75

As ignorance is the underlying condition for contact and the astute person has given up that ignorance and finished with craving how can that be the same contact (same meaning/experienced in the same way) as by a foolish person?

For an astute person shrouded by ignorance and fettered by craving, this body has been produced. But the astute person has given up that ignorance and finished that craving.

DO depends on ignorance as a condition. How can it function without it? We already know that consciousness is stilled, freed, no longer lands on name-and-form when one awakens.

It is clear that even Buddhas are still aware of feelings - I recall one sutta where he says something like “I am most at ease when I am on the road and there is no one in front of me and no one behind me” and earlier in that sutta there are many people who have come to honor him, making lots of noise and he wants them sent away.

But feelings are just feelings - they will not be clung to, consciousness will not land there and proliferate because there is no grasping, no ignorance. This is not the case for a foolish person.

Consider the role of name-and-form in dependent origination. It is clear from DN11 and other suttas that name-and-form cease without remainder for the Arahat. Yet I don’t think anyone would say that the Buddha is not aware of his body, thoughts, feelings, etc. So IMO we have to consider these terms differently depending on their context: a worldly person whose sense existence arises from DO vs that of an Arahat who took on another birth because they were not awakened at the time but now they are and DO has ceased.

76

The landing of consciousness is referring to consciousness landing on name-and-form within the context of DO. It does not refer to the consciousness of the Arahat. I provided a number of sutta references in the essay that point out the difference.

77

I am not going to debate whether you understand what DO means either and can offer only my sincere condolence

78

I appreciate the offer. Thanks. I have not said that Arahats are incapable of seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, etc. and that they are conscious of these. If that is what you are referring to then we probably don’t disagree.
What the suttas do say (to the best of my knowledge) is that for the Arahat there is neither arising nor passing. For the worldly person there is Arising and Passing and this is caused by the ‘landing of consciousness’ on name-and-form such as to become established there creating a sense identity. This is the reason for the answer I gave you.

I am not aware of any suttas saying that name and form only cease for the Arahat when they are practicing formless attainments - if you know of any I would be interested. If there are any then would they not be contradicting SN1.27, Ud1.10, and SN7.6? How would you then understand these?

80

Glad that we are back on the same page again.

The extra details you have just given above actually seems to me that Scenario 3 still does not fully capture what you meant. Especially, when we look again at your given analogy of “climbing mountain to cross the covering cloud then finally discover the shining Sun”, Scenario 3 couldn’t capture the sense of “the Sun” as a single one and unique, common shared object for everyone who is below the cloud and also for everyone who has crossed the cloud.

Your given analogy of “the Sun” has the most distant sense with the “atta” because it does not belong to anyone, does not attach to anyone either. However, because “the Sun” is a single one, unique, common shared object for everyone so “the Sun” seems to be more suitable as a metaphor for “nibbāna” than “the undefiled mind”

So, by combining what you said in your given analogy and also the extra details about inseperable between “unconditioned knowing” and “unconditioned known”, maybe this Scenario 4 below is better to reflect what you meant.

A person who was born with his eyes covered behind many layers of clothes and he is inside a very high ceiling and dark bright room. There is ONE pure, precious, brilliant diamond on the ceiling which shines the whole room. Due to that ONE pure, precious, brilliant diamond, he can see things. However, he almost always sees things incorrectly/blurry because his eyes are covered behind many layers of clothes since birth. By removing these many layers of clothes and with that ONE pure, precious, brilliant diamond, he can see now everything inside that dark room correctly.

Below is the explanation of the terms in scenario 4:

  • The ONE pure, precious, brilliant diamond means the undefiled mind. Due to its presence, that person can see. Without it, that person can NOT see anything even with good eyes. Without it, that person can NOT see anything even after he has already removed these many layers of clothes. This is even more similar to your analogy of “the Sun” than scenario 3.

  • The characteristics of diamond such as pure, precious, brilliant and somewhat indestructible means to make a similarity with the inherent characteristics of the undefiled mind.

  • The removing of those many layers of clothes means cessation of ignorance.

  • Just as the pure, precious, brilliant diamond is not conditioned by the process of removing those many layers of clothes: The undefiled mind is not conditioned by the cessation of ignorance.

Note the differences between scenario 4 and scenario 3:

  • The ignorance does not cover the diamond as in Scenario 3. It instead covers this person’s eye as in Scenario 1.

  • By making a much further distance with the person (very far object vs. very near object), the diamond in Scenario 4 seems to has even MUCH less sense of a personal “atta” than the diamond in Scenario 3.

  • Compared to Scenario 3, the undefiled mind and Nibbāna in Scenario 4 are harder to tell as two different dhamma because this person can see clearly both of them after the cessation of ignorance. (this is to capture the extra details you have given about inseperable between “unconditioned knowing” and “unconditioned known”)

  • There is only ONE diamond in Scenario 4 instead of many many diamonds corresponding to each being as in Scenario 3.

Note the similarities between scenario 4 and scenario 3:

  • This person’s good eyes are not required to be unconditioned as in Scenario 1. Instead, that requirement still falls onto the diamond as in Scenario 3.

  • The overall result that this person sees things correctly (Nibbāna) is still the same as in Scenario 3.

  • Same as in Scenario 3, they are still both unconditioned dhamma.

It seems to me that this Scenario 4 better reflects what you meant than Scenario 3.
However, I don’t know which one you really meant so let me know whether Scenario 3 or Scenario 4 is the one you pick to continue this discussion?

Until here, are we still on the same page?

81

My internet is bad here and i barely managed not to lose the text. The previous post had a section missing.

I’ll try a little to pry you away from the misconceptions. I am anxious to do so foreseeing that this might be fruitless because you will have to scrap a lot of your current understanding and these things are hard to do for most people due to attachment to views.

The thing is that the meaning of what you are trying to explain, in as far as i can tell, is not much problematic.

As i understand it, what you keep trying to explain is just how it is that arahants don’t grasp with wrong view and just how their mind differs from pre-attainment.

The problem is that the scope of this subject is very limited and you are trying to include within the scope the discourses dealing with things not included therein.

This is as if you were studying dogs and having read a book about elephants proceeded to try explaining that the dog’s tail is called a ‘trunk’ and what exactly are a dog’s ‘tusks’.

Now keep in mind that only dukkha arises and only dukkha ceases.

There are three ways in how one might rightly say that for an arahant there is no arising & passing away.

  1. In regards to their undoing of a future birth, they have cancelled all that and are freed of all that would arising & passing away after the break up of the body, freed of future dukkha, for them there is no arising & passing away, in that sense.
  2. In regards to their knowing of the ayatana where there is no dukkha, there is no arising & passing, neither this world nor the next, just this is the end of suffering. This they directly discern in as far as attaining of cessation of perception & feeling.
  3. In regards to unwholesome feeling & perception states that can arise & cease for one who is not an arahant, states such as restlessness, conceit, intentional having intercourse, telling a deliberate lie, intentional killing, etc. These and other unwholesome states that can arise & pass away for a non-arahant do not occur for an arahant. In this sense the arahant is freed from that arising & passing away.

I can’t think of a fourth.

Now as to how they are not freed of arising & passing away. In as far as their life force & faculties remain, by which they experience feelings & perceptions, all that & what is derived from it, all is dukkha and a subject to arising & passing away.

The dependent origination refers to the dependent origination of the arahant’s faculties as well.

It refers to the dependent origination of all feeling whatsoever, past, present & future, arahant or not.

I’ll explain it in brief

The human arahant’s feeling is born of contact, arises due to his birth from a womb which was construed due craving for feeling-states which existed in the past.

It is unusual to speak of the attainment of cessation of perception & feeling as a formless attainment because the formless attainments are usually referring to the four formless feeling states the pinnacle of those being the attainment of neither perception nor non-perception.

You can speak of the attainment of cessation of perception & feeling as a formless attainment but this one is categorically different from the others because it’s not a feeling-state.

The formless feeling states are sankhara, they are intended, thry are felt & perceived, they originate from contact and come into play through attention.

Now what is name? It is just that contact, feeling, perception, intention and attention.

Therefore it should be obvious that these formless perception attainments are not explained to be without name.

Only the cessation of perception & feeling entails an altogether cessation of namarupa, of contact and all.

Now from what i’ve explained thus far you should be able to understand that there is only one truth & reality entailing being divorced from both name & form , namely that which is discerned by attaining cessation of perception & feeling.

Therefore it should be obvious how i interpret this passage;

“From where do streams turn back?Where does the cycle spin no more?Where do name and formcease with nothing left over?”

“Where water and earth,fire and air find no footing—from there the streams turn back;there the cycle spins no more;and there it is that name and formcease with nothing left over

Likewise for D11 and it’s analogs