Does the Tathagata exist before death?

Discussion
21

Sir Here you are mistaking…I believe it is wrong to make distinction between ‘inpermanent’ and ‘khandas’. Both are one and the same… It’s exactly like making distinction between ‘whiteness’ and ‘white’. Whiteness is basically nature of white, just like that, impermanence is very nature of khandas, both are one and the same.
Suppose you take away impermanence from them, there won’t be khandas there. There will be Permanence there…and what kind of permanence that would be, well it is something which I believe should be experienced(with insight) instead of wondered/reasoned. Otherwise we would keep on(trying to) explaining it, debating upon it, questioning and answering over it…this is never ending reasoning…bound to end up in confusion.
[When we have lost our way to our destination, I believe it’s better to first stop instead of going different ways further…this way we have highest chances of finding the lost way.]

It is wrong to indentify Tathagata with khandas, because khandas are impermanent.
It is wrong to indentify Tathagata distinct from khandas because that’s the way we can see him because we are based on khandas.

So key here is to stop trying to identify tathagata(in present context). It’s same as wanting to know exactly what happens to arhat after parinibbana. I believe if we really want to conclude it somehow, we actually need to stop concluding it either this way or that way…in order to not misconclude.

I believe least incorrect statement would be, ‘tathagata is distinct from impermanent khandas’…but this statement is greatly misleading, because it creates distinction between khandas and impermanence (between whiteness and white). In reality there is nothing such as ‘permanent khandas’, as khandas exist because of impermanence in the first place!. Still if we desperately want to choose something, it’s safe to say that, tathagata belongs to that which is not impermanence.

[Sry to engage questions which are not directed for me]

Yes they do exist but only for us who are based on khandas. For us they sure exist. But For those who went beyond khandas, those who don’t base themselves on khandas, these things are dependently originated, hence devoid of inherent existence(self).

You are right here. Essentially what you are implying is ‘dependent origination’. In other words, what we are seeing is not reality, it’s actually dependent on khandas(eye vinnana in this context).

Yes they are only concepts but that is true ultimately, not conventionally. But for us, we don’t have experience/realization of ultimate reality(reality which is not based on khandas), hence we should see them(woman, cars…etc) as existing in material way only, and should carefully deal with them.

I don’t think we are lost in reasoning yet, but we will surely get lost in reasoning if we try to only reason without having experience/realization. This will be unending process because we are using only intellect, instead of insight.

1 Like
22

Do you feel that the word ‘Buddha’ does refer to something different than the word 'Tathagata? in EBT?

Does, for example, the word ‘Buddha’ more refer to the person once born, getting old, dying, a purified body and mind, visible, with pains also, a certain person with certain behaviour, marks on the body, dispassionate, and Tathagata more to Emptiness, or like @faujidoc1 says:

Do you (or others) feel this is supported by EBT?

Maybe there is something that does not have the nature to arise and cease…in a non-esoteric way, i feel this can be seen during daytime. There is a lot noticable arising. Tendencies, emotions, certain feelings, plans, ideas etc. Those arise and cease. But there is also something which is not seen arising and ceasing. Call it emptiness, as spaciousness, peace, stillness, non-movement.
Isn’t there something that does not move, nor change, or do you feel this is not Dhamma?

Does Buddha teach in EBT:

  • there is absolute reality which can be known,
  • or there is absolute reality but it cannot be known
  • or absolute reality is that there is only relative reality, only PS
    -or relative reality happens or takes place or forms in absolute reality, absolute reality is ground of all.

I am still clueless to be honest. But that is nothing new for you.

We are more thinking-to-see things than really seeing. The reality we live in is probably more like a conception. Only I, i am not a conception :grinning:

Yes, i agree. People often tell this to me. I do not know why :innocent:

23

I think the main teaching of sn 22.86 is “stop speculating and focus on the practice” just like so many other suttas. If Buddha wanted to say there is no self, it seems pali must offer simpler more direct ways of saying that. I don’t think he cared if people had or did not have a self.

Maybe we should look at this as a sort of koan meant to trip up the mind?

It is a good thing that the Buddha did not follow this line of thinking that nothing exists. If he had truly felt that way he probably would have just withered away under the non-existent bodhi tree. I think he said something like all phenomena are Such? Maybe the Buddha is Such?

There, that solves it.

24

Yes sir. Tathagata is a term used for Samma-sambuddha only. Buddha implies arhat as well. Word ‘buddha’ is translated as ‘awakened one’. So we can call arhat as buddha but we cannot call arhat as tathagata.

How can we call puthujana as buddha sir? What you have defined above, those characteristics are either of putthujana or gods of some heaven. Only dispassionate is something which can be said about one who is buddha. Buddha is anyone who is above his intellect, not bound by continuously changing mind.

It is said ‘bottomless, like the ocean’ because, it’s not just emptiness. Emptiness can be used for tathagata, but is not enough to describe tathagata, who is empty but everything is contained in him, and still he is not bound by anything! Emptiness is not the ultimate reality I believe. It’s just one of the important steps. That’s why Tathagata is referred as ‘bottomless, like the ocean’ or like a ‘sky without limit’. Because only sky is something which is empty and at the same time contains everything there is!

Offcourse there is. It’s our aim to attain that only. While one may call it esoteric or non-esoteric, but it certainly has characteristics of non-arising and non-ceasing.

Yes, it can be seen during daytime/nightime/anytime, it’s just we need insight into reality, which is definitely a spiritual thing. Our intellect which we use to question, understand and explain things(like right now) cannot show that ‘something that does not have the nature to arise and cease’. We need sadhana, practice like Vipassana-insight or lik marananussati (meditation on death) or aanapanussati (breathing meditation with 16 kinds of attentions) …these are few of many many ways to reach that which does not have nature to arise and cease. But if we only use intellect, we can never ever see it. It will be like wanting to see sun in sky during nightime, or like wanting to fly without wings, or like wanting to something which is impossible, in simple words it is futile… intellect cannot show us that which does not arise and cease. We can only wonder/discuss/reason with this intellect.

To me it seems that What you are asking is pure nature of mind. And it can be seen with insight only. After one witnesses it with insight, then we can be with that during daytime/nightime/anytime. But what do you plan to do with that I wonder!?
And it is essentially dhamma, but all of them are not exactly the same things I believe.

Yes there is absolute reality. But i think ‘ultimate’ is the better word than ‘absolute’. And ultimate reality is nibbana only. Rest all are relatives realities… absolute in our case.

Yes because we are just speculating, not seeing exactly.

You said, “The Reality we live in is probably more like a conception.”…ok that may be true from ultimate pov. But I think it is wrong to use that thinking while not being able to see reality, because it has the potential to drive someone not established insane. That is the reason one gets so many doubts.
I personally believe that’s why abhidhamma(as it explains all these not so easily-understandable things) is considered higher teachings, which cannot be understood the way suttas can be understood. It is said that during time when tathagata taught abhidhamma, only venerable sariputta was able to understand it, not even ananda or any other monk! And we are nowhere near to those monks in terms of development of mind! So from this we can see how hard it is to understand abhidhamma.

Yes and that is the correct way of functioning safely. I believe we should not try to accept or reject these ‘impossible-looking’ concepts…because we lack insight. It’s better to say we all exist, for our saneness, and to avoid confusion it’s better to see it that way. Because if we try to understand those topics without insight, we are bound to get confused. That’s why.

[I personally never believed in ‘nothing exists’ because that is something ultimate reality concept implies to us…I really don’t want to see it like that… moreover that is wrong view, this ultimate reality thing/pure nature and all is confusing so I never overspeculate over it…I just dismiss it as something, ‘not easy to understand’, ‘not in my experience’ and ‘utter waste of time and non-sense’. Otherwise it deeply confuses.]

Maybe because it’s not possible to understand it with just intellect/reasoning! :sweat_smile:

25

It’s important to always stay within the context of the framework you’re discussing. The context of dhamma is to stop suffering caused by craving.

So when you ask what conceptually void means and if being a mother or son concepts are bad, it just means you don’t grasp the teaching.

The issue is suffering and it is caused by craving. We are biological machines programmed to “want to live”. Pain usually means death or leading to death, pleasure usually means leading away from death.

When seeking pleasure, like food when one is starving, there’s always a calculation involved with “is this worth it”. If you’re not starving to death, then going into a hive of aggressive bees to get honey is not worth it.

So “worth” is a calculation based on meaning, and part of that calculation is how much effort is involved. We naturally seek to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, so the most pleasure for the least pain (effort).

If you came to realize all along that in fact you were actually maximizing pain and not pleasure, you would be shocked. E.g. food addiction results in health problem which results in death. This is most evident in drug addiction.

So where does “voidness” come into this all, Pyrrho, who traveled to Ghandara and met ancient buddhists figured this out and invented skepticism. He basically said you can’t really know things fully, so better to not act on things you don’t know and stay on the fence. Applied to craving, that means you don’t really know if consuming that object will result in less suffering, if it’s “worth” pursuing, so better not to.

So the teaching of voidness is designed to alter your “is it worth it” calculator, so that you don’t crave and chase pleasure.

By assuming and not being skeptical, that you are the 5 aggregates, you are implicitly trusting that everything that comes through the senses that is pleasant is good for your survival and therefore happiness. Being skepitcal that you are the 5 aggregates (mind and body) means not trusting thoughts that are arising, telling you to go chase a pleasure. Being skeptical of a self in the aggregates, is no longer blindly trusting whatever papanca the mind throws at you, seeing it as “not mine” and discarding it.

The mind says “I want a cookie”, and then you reprogrammed it to doubt and say “wait a minute, do I really want a cookie? or is that just ignorance tricking me that I want something, when instead it’s just a biological habitual conditioning that is firing off impulses and my mind is tricking itself into believing I’m the one deciding this because I believe I’m the 5 aggregates (mind and body)”.

Voidness teaching is designed to make you see that you are not the 5 aggregates and not the one intending and deciding to chase pleasures that you blindly believe are good for you but actually cause suffering.

Then when you take this deeper you can say “Wait a minute, was it me who really decided to go to school or was it the conditons of living in a society, was it me who decides this job is good, or was that something else”, you start applying voidness meditation to everything and realize nothing inherently has substance and you never really chose anything, in an environment where things are chosen for you but you’re made to believe you chose it. You were never actually free this entire time, only deluded.

How many of your life decisions were based on taking for granted that you are the 5 aggregates, and did these decisions actually reduce suffering or were they no different than rituals like lighting candles or praying to the gods? Because the way I see it, a lot of people are miserable despite achieving everything they believed they set out to achieve, and that’s not working out for them, since they keep having to chase more and more things to stay “happy”.

2 Likes
26

Damn, this answer by sir @Thito ! I am 100 % sure that what you said above, noone can reach that understanding with mere study of suttas or abhidhamma/speculation/reasoning.
Sadhu sir…thanx for clearing many things for me as well!

1 Like
27

I follow you @Thito, thanks for your great reply. The only thing i can say about it is that i am personally not only concerned with ending suffering, to be honest, but also, i hope, concerned with truth, what is truthful?

If something is not truthful, but it would lead to the end of suffering, i would not accept it, because this is not how i want to end suffering.

I hope Buddha’s teachings are based on truth.

I do not say that the concept of mother and son is bad, but is it truthful, that i am not at all born and my mothers son? Or, in other words, is it really deluded to identify with khandha’s, or is it only deluded in as far as one aims at the end of rebirth and suffering?

Is being deluded only a matter of perspective and goal?

I want to believe Dhamma is based on truth.

28

It there something else than intellect that can conclude or establish that something does not arise and cease?

Can one experience or directly know impermanence or will this always be something that one fabricates, imagines to be like that.

Can one see, for example, that what we experience as emptiness, is really empty and is not constructed and a composite? How do we know? This emptiness can be very full but are we not able to see this?

Personally i would not call arahants Buddha’s. I also do not think this is usual.

29

Yes. And every Thing that Exists must necessarily bear the Three Characteristics of Existence viz the Tilakhana

  • It is Anicca (Impermanent/ Not sure/ Uncertain/ In constant flux/ Arising and Ceasing)
  • It is Dukkha (Unsatisfactory/ Suffering/ Angst filled)
  • It is Anatta (Not Self/ Without Essence)

That which Exists is not Real (as in Absolutely existing, Eternal or Permanent). Since it is always in flux, by the time it is cognized, it has already changed.

Yes. What you see is an illusory construct of your Mind, which is not the same as the woman another person sees, even though both are exposed to the same stimulus. The same stimulus can even cause the same Mind to see different things at different times, dependent on conditioning. This is an example.

Then it should not be a problem to see how different things can co exist within each other in a fractal way. It all depends on the framework one is applying. One doesn’t invalidate the other.
Just as a Quantum framework does not invalidate the Newtonian framework, so the Absolute Reality of Emptiness does not invalidate the Relative Reality of mother/ father etc. or vice versa.

Statements made within one framework are not always logical within another. Can atoms, quarks etc. experience Suffering? Yet both are realities, within the appropriate framework.

SN44.1
The Tathagata, great king, is liberated from reckoning in terms of consciousness; he is deep, immeasurable, hard to fathom like the great ocean.

MN72
A Realized One is freed from reckoning in terms of form. They’re deep, immeasurable, and hard to fathom, 20.3like the ocean.

:slightly_smiling_face: :pray:

1 Like
30

I think dukkha is not correct, at least not translated as unsatisfactory or suffering or angst-filled. Why would dukkha be a characteristic of an atom, a diamant, a cloud, a leaf?
Can dukkha be a charateristic of rupa? Of a corpse?

I think Buddha used dukkha nupassana to install dispassion, but i do not understand why dukkha would be a characteristic of all that exists.

Oke, yes, the mind/brain somehow chooses what to see. But i think, when a woman, a car, and tree would not exist in some material way, sunlight would not be reflected upon it, we would not notice them. World would be empty for us without material things that really exist independend of our perception.

A chicken is not born from my mind but from an egg. My mind does not create a chicken. It exist independend of me perceiving it. That can be prooven.

thanks,

31

Who is “the Tathagata”? Do you know him/her?

32

I would put it like this. We use our intellect to know everything. But insight means seeing clearly with the mind. When we discuss something, we use our intellect, it’s not us experiencing it, we are just understanding it. Not clearly seeing it. In other words we hav conceptual understanding but not insight.
(Insight = direct experience/seeing directly)

Yes it will be something that one fabricates or imagines, only untill one does not have direct experience. Direct experience means once you observe/see impermanence by your ‘self’. When impermanence of body is directly seen, then only one clearly sees 1st noble truth. For that one need to do Vipassana(it is one of the many ways to nibbana)…vi means special, and passnana means seeing. Vipassana means experiencing as it is. Observing all the sensations of our body without reacting in any way, without judging them, just observing whatever it is, just the way it is.

When you close your eyes, you can still be there right?
Now if you experience some sensation, then only you can say, you have direct experience of that sensation, isn’t it? In same way if you continue to observe sensations on/in your body, you(or anyone) will start to get more stable, more established in samatha, raag(desire/craving), dvesha(ill will) and moha(ignorance) will reduce slowly. Now here you are experiencing sensations without using intellect, as during Vipassana-(as described above) our intellect is silent, not functioning, it is there but it is off not on, because we are seeing clearly(experiencing), without defilements of our memory,understanding and judgements and all the disturbing things. Thinking is not there, there is only pure experiencing without judgement. Thus progressing time comes when one’s mind becomes so sharp that it starts to observe all the subtlest sensations(of one’s own body)…then one realises that these sensations mean coming and going, arising and ceasing. One clearly sees that, this is impermanence. Here impermanence is experienced/clearly seen. Now here one is studying one’s own body…so there can be no mistake. Hence naturally one becomes empty slowly as one progresses. One understands that it is useless and futile to grasp at this body which is composed of sensations which are just arising and ceasing, continuously without end,…in other words one understands this is impermanence. Then one becomes empty of oneself by stopping grasping. That is really when one experiences emptiness. Now this is realization of emptiness…one arrived here not based on intellect but based on experience, and one has now clearly seen emptiness. [All of this can be done only with insight and not intellect]
(Emptiness = not arising & not ceasing)

So we can just conceptually understand with intellect, but not experience with it.
I tried to describe above how can one experience or directly know impermanence. And that it cannot be done with intellect.

Simple reason for that is, because everything eventually ends in dissatisfaction. Because we don’t want to die, still we die.

Here Everything does not mean all of the world.
Here Everything means everything in our own world. We all have our world, our families, things we love, care about…and everything like that.

Simply because our body is made up of those atoms, and this body will die, atoms(particles) will lose their structure, they will decay… contrary to what we desire, hence it is dukkha.
Dukkha is a characteristic of a corpse, when that corpse is of someone who is/was close to us.

These 3 mrks of existence are seen everywhere. Again this is in our world, not THE world. (I say it like this to understand easily)
They are marks of our own existence…this way its easier to understand.

It’s same as people are more curious/worry about destruction of world during the end of the world, than their upcoming death which is certainly earlier.

33

Have you ever seen an atom, a diamond, a cloud, or a leaf without using the faculty of perception? If not, then we cannot say that they exist independent of perception can we?

AN 6.63

And what is the source of perceptions? Contact is their source.

And that contact is based on the arising of consciousness as in MN 148

Eye (Ear consciousness … Nose … Tongue … Body … Mind) consciousness arises dependent on the eye and sights. The meeting of the three is contact. Contact is a condition for the arising of what is felt as pleasant, painful, or neutral. When you experience a pleasant feeling, if you approve, welcome, and keep clinging to it, the underlying tendency to greed underlies that. When you experience a painful feeling, if you sorrow and wail and lament, beating your breast and falling into confusion, the underlying tendency to repulsion underlies that. When you experience a neutral feeling, if you don’t truly understand that feeling’s origin, ending, gratification, drawback, and escape, the underlying tendency to ignorance underlies that. Mendicants, without giving up the underlying tendency to greed for pleasant feeling, without dispelling the underlying tendency to repulsion towards painful feeling, without eradicating ignorance in the case of neutral feeling, without giving up ignorance and without giving rise to knowledge, it’s simply impossible to make an end of suffering in the present life.

Greed, hatred and delusion is at play for all perception, that is why there is suffering inherent for all things. When there is no more greed, hatred and delusion at play then presumably suffering (eventually) ceases.

Wow! I’m yet to see any scientific experiment that does not rely on a human perceiving. Do you have any details for this?

1 Like
34

Oke, it is not a scientific experiment…but there we go…

Are you willing to take this step by step?

First of all: Suppose there is a chicken in a closed hutch. It cannot escape. There is nobody but you to take care of it. It is your chicken. You give it water and food everyday. It grows and lives sustained by your food.

Do you agree that when we do not give food and water to the chicken, like us, it will gradually weaken and die?

Now we leave for 3 months. Nobody gives food and water to the poor chicken.

We come back, and see the chicken is death. Do you agree this is because it existed all the time also while we did not see it? Because it existed all the time it died of starvation.

So things exist also when i do not see them. That is very reasonable to assume.

Everything that arises, stars, trees, clouds etc, arises because of their own causes and conditions and not at all because of me and my mind.

For example, a soundwave arises because of friction, for example a train on rails. The soundwave does not need ear-vinnana as condition to arise…but…a sound does. Those are totally different things, soundwaves and sounds, and the same with molecules and smell and taste, and EM-radiation and colours and shape. Very different things.

Maybe in the time of the Buddha they did not really know (?) yet (in detail)? that soundwaves hitting the eardrum instigate the perception of sound, and molecules attached to receptors in nose and mouth the perception of smell and taste, and EM-light on the eye the perception of colour and shapes.

Those happenings instigate perception. When the eardrum is hit by the energy of the soundwaves it starts to vibrate, this causes neurological reactions, and it becomes a condition for hearing a certain sound.

So, if you want a complete picture of how perception arises, i feel, than one must also admit and start with these soundwaves, molecules, EM-waves, which are external to body and physical senses, and which instigate perception, and due to which we also perceive ofcourse.

So i would think that the subjective world has an objective counterpart which is the instigator of perception, our subjective world:

Sound-soundwaves
Colour and shape-EM-waves
Tactile feeling-material structures, air flows etc.
Smell and taste-certain molecules

The subjective arises, exist and ceases within very different conditions than the objective counterpart.
For example: A molecule H2S does not arise because of mind. It arises in a certain chemical process.
But the smell of rotten eggs it gives to us (how we perceive H2S) does not arise without mind.
Molecule H2S and smell are not the same.

35

I’ll agree that there’s perception of a chicken and perception of a closed hutch, perception of water, perception of food, perception of dead chicken …

you get my drift…

Well no, that’s right. For a soundwave, you need either an ear and ear-viññāṇa to detect it or a microphone attached to an oscilloscope and eye-viññāṇa to detect it. It can’t be known without viññāṇa of some sort though.

In any case, I think that according to SN 12.67 the soundwave does indeed arise and cease with one of those two viññāṇa, but you may read this a different way:

“No, Reverend Koṭṭhita, name and form are not made by oneself, nor by another, nor by both oneself and another, nor do they arise by chance, not made by oneself or another. Rather, consciousness is a condition for name and form.”

“Well, Reverend Sāriputta, is consciousness made by oneself? Or by another? Or by both oneself and another? Or does it arise by chance, not made by oneself or another?”

“No, Reverend Koṭṭhita, consciousness is not made by oneself, nor by another, nor by both oneself and another, nor does it arise by chance, not made by oneself or another. Rather, name and form are conditions for consciousness.”

“Just now I understood you to say: ‘No, Reverend Koṭṭhita, name and form are not made by oneself, nor by another, nor by both oneself and another, nor do they arise by chance, not made by oneself or another. Rather, consciousness is a condition for name and form.’

But I also understood you to say: ‘No, Reverend Koṭṭhita, consciousness is not made by oneself, nor by another, nor by both oneself and another, nor does it arise by chance, not made by oneself or another. Rather, name and form are conditions for consciousness.’

How then should we see the meaning of this statement?”

“Well then, reverend, I shall give you a simile. For by means of a simile some sensible people understand the meaning of what is said. Suppose there were two bundles of reeds leaning up against each other.

In the same way, name and form are conditions for consciousness. Consciousness is a condition for name and form. Name and form are conditions for the six sense fields. The six sense fields are conditions for contact. … That is how this entire mass of suffering originates. If the first of those bundles of reeds were to be pulled away, the other would collapse. And if the other were to be pulled away, the first would collapse.

In the same way, when name and form cease, consciousness ceases. When consciousness ceases, name and form cease. When name and form cease, the six sense fields cease. When the six sense fields cease, contact ceases. … That is how this entire mass of suffering ceases.”

I would say that there is a perception of soundwaves, a perception of molecules, a perception of EM-waves. All you’ve done is pushed the perception back one level.

There is a point to this, I think. Can we ever know a thing without the arising of viññāṇa? I would say that it is plain that we can’t. And if you can never know something, then how can it be of use to us on the path? In the EBTs I think that the Buddha only teaches things that can be known, not The Unknown (mystical things).

3 Likes
36

If a farmer sows grass-seeds, and he does not look at it anymore, do you now believe that nothing happens without perceiving the sprouting and growth? Yes you do @stu . You are a realist.
It is not like you believe that the mind does make those seeds germinate or that the perception creates the grass to exist and grow right? You, like everybody, knows that this grass exist totally independend of your perception of it. Right?

I feel the Buddha is right that the object of ear-vinnana is sound and not soundwave.

No sounds are on a cd, or lp. There are certainly riflings on an lp, but if we call those riflings sounds then we can call everything sounds!

There is only a soundwave the moment it hits the eardrum. There is no soundwave in the nerves, not in the brain, certainly not in the mind.

Do you perceive molecules? Have you ever perceived the molecule O2, oxigen? Do you perceive the proteins in your cells? Do you perceive the molecules which your hair consist of?
Do you perceive gamma-radiation? Do you perceive rontgen radiation?

But not all that exist will trigger vinnana to arise, right?
There are very small particles called neutrino. Now, those do not lead vinnana to arise.
Radation also not. There are so many things that do not lead vinnana to arise.

And what is knowing in this case? I know that science learns there are planetory systems, black holes, stars i do not perceive. Can i say i know them? I think not. If thinking about something, or imagening something, is the same as knowing something, it all becomes very weird. Then i can also say i know unicorns or Enlightment :innocent:

37

But when it comes to meaning, these concepts are born in your mind.

Simple question, what would make a person feel worse, reading in the newspaper obituaries that some random woman died, or that their own mother or wife died?

So despite both being women in reality, the loss of a wife or mother is tragic but the loss of a random woman has no effect. So the subjective experience is what causes suffering moreso than the objective experience. Metaphysically they’re both equally women and are the same thing, phenomologically / subjectively one means the entire world to you because they are your mother or wife, so they orbit the self. The closer a concept is connected to the self, the more emotions and suffering arise.

So the dhamma is about concepts like son and mother because those are subjective concepts that only have meaning to you.

"Long have you (repeatedly) experienced the death of a mother. The tears you have shed over the death of a mother while transmigrating & wandering this long, long time — crying & weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing — are greater than the water in the four great oceans.

  • Assu sutta

It doesn’t say death of a woman made of hormones, fats, proteins, muscles, skin, tendons, etc… it says “mother” which is a relational concept tied to the self.

So ownership / subjectivity (aka phenomology) is more important than objectivity / metaphysics, this is why the dhamma is not about metaphysics, it’s soteriological and phenomological. It’s why the Buddha tells you to see a woman/man as your sister/brother and not as romantic/sexual. It’s not about objectivity, it’s about changing subjectivity by changing perception.

This is why in Satipatthana sutta the exercise depersonalizes your own body:

"Furthermore…just as if a sack with openings at both ends were full of various kinds of grain — wheat, rice, mung beans, kidney beans, sesame seeds, husked rice — and a man with good eyesight, pouring it out, were to reflect, ‘This is wheat. This is rice. These are mung beans. These are kidney beans. These are sesame seeds. This is husked rice,’ in the same way, monks, a monk reflects on this very body from the soles of the feet on up, from the crown of the head on down, surrounded by skin and full of various kinds of unclean things: 'In this body there are head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, tendons, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, pleura, spleen, lungs, large intestines, small intestines, gorge, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin-oil, saliva, mucus, fluid in the joints, urine

Once attachment to the body and mind is given up, then all relations to it crumble, and a mother simply becomes a woman, which becomes a series of organs and parts, which become the 4 elements. This is depersonalization and the removal of self.

This is why Gotama ceased to exist once the Tathagatha came to be, and why the Tathagatha doesn’t exist as a being, but as the dhamma.

“Why now do you assume ‘a being’?
Mara, is that your speculative view?
This is a heap of sheer formations:
Here no being is found.

“Just as, with an assemblage of parts,
The word ‘chariot’ is used,
So, when the aggregates exist,
There is the convention ‘a being.’

“It’s only suffering that comes to be,
Suffering that stands and falls away.
Nothing but suffering comes to be,
Nothing but suffering ceases.”

…

“Mendicants, suppose a mendicant were to hold the corner of my cloak and follow behind me step by step. Yet they covet sensual pleasures; they’re infatuated, full of ill will and malicious intent. They are unmindful, lacking situational awareness and immersion, with straying mind and undisciplined faculties. Then they are far from me, and I from them. Why is that? Because that mendicant does not see the teaching. Not seeing the teaching, they do not see me.

Suppose a mendicant were to live a hundred leagues away. Yet they do not covet sensual pleasures; they’re not infatuated, or full of ill will and malicious intent. They have established mindfulness, situational awareness and immersion, with unified mind and restrained faculties. Then they are close to me, and I to them. Why is that? Because that mendicant sees the teaching. Seeing the teaching, they see me.”

2 Likes
38

Yes, thanks @Thito . I now see it is all just a matter of perspective. Ofcourse, if one totally stops identifying with body and mind, one is never born and has no mother and is no son. Ofcourse.
But i feel that is also just a perspective. I understand that this perspective is detached and connected to reducing and end of suffering but is it true?

I think one can only say: there is an attached perspective and a detached perspective. One cannot really say that this or that perspective contains the truth. It all remains just a matter of perspective.
Buddha says in fact…just choose for that perspective that leads to the end of suffering.

Yes, Dhamma is really only about suffering and end of suffering, like Buddha says.

Personally i do not feel comfortable not to see myself as son and my mother as just any woman. I do not feel this is sincere, upright nor truthful. I do not think i will ever embrace such a detached perspective, only to aim at the end of suffering, but who knows.

39

But the trait that makes you love your mother is her kindness, caringness and love, and that can be found everywhere. The trait that would make you hate your mother is narcissim, greediness, hatefulness, etc…

So really, it’s the lack of 3 poisons resulting in wholesomeness, that you love, and it’s the manifestation of the 3 poisons that result in unwholesomeness that you hate.

A little girl giving Gotama a bowl of rice when he was on the brink of starvation, is the same universal quality that a caring good mother has.

40

I practice like this but i cannot admit this it some kind of direct seeing. I think that ‘seeing’ the arising and ceasing of formations , seeing there impermancence, is not really momentary but many moments of cognition after eachother which one experiences as momentary, as 1 moment. I do not think that one can establish impermanence without active memory. But for the use of meditation this is probably not so important.

I agree, but @faujidoc1 said:

I think that is not true. I think it is better to say that everything we perceive has those characteristics. Like you say…our subjective world.

I do not see why a neutrino which we do not experience would have the characteristic of dukkha.
That’s why i do not think that all that exist has the characteristic of dukkha.