Existence after Death, Nihilism, and Anattā

Discussion
39

I believe this is a misconception. It is based on the idea that the the goal of the Buddha’s path is something that is only fully realized at the point of the arahant’s death. But the goal of the Buddha’s path is attained during life. It is the unsurpassed bliss, peace and freedom that are experienced when the asavas are totally destroyed, the burden of attachments is fully released, the I-making and my-making processes are temporarily halted and dukkha is brought completely to an end.

K. R. Norman has a paper in which he clarifies the distinction between nibbana and parinibbana. This is not distinction between nibbana during life and nibbana in death. Similarly it is not a distinction between a “preliminary” nibbana and “final” nibbana. According to Norman, the prefix “pari” is just used to signify the difference between a state and the event of the attainment of that state. Nibbana is the state of being released, and a parinibbana is the attainment or achievement of nibbana.

The Mahaparinibbana sutta is not a sutta which describes how the Buddha, at long last, achieved some exceptional condition of “parinibbana” which can only occur at death. It is a sutta which describes the last time the Buddha attained nibbana, something he had done many times before. It is a “great” sutta because it is very long, and describes events of great significance.

Perhaps one problem in contemporary treatments of nibbana is that they are strongly inflected by the western Protestant conception of the “assurance of salvation”. There are some versions of this notion in some of the early texts as well. The idea here seems to be that the real or total nibbana is both the ultimate goal and something that only happens when the arahant dies. So that then raises the question about what the heck happened under that Bodhi tree. The answer that is sometimes given is that the main point of what happened under the Bodhi tree is that that’s when the Buddha realized that he had finally brought an end to the kammic processes that produce rebirth, and so his happiness consisted mainly in the assurance of the fact that he was bearing his last body. Salvation is construed purely negatively as the ending of everything, and the greatest happiness that occurs during life is nothing but the pessimist’s relief over the fact that he has finally succeeded in bringing it all to an and, and now all he has to do is wait patiently for his long sought-after extinguishment. Apparently he even wants happiness to be extinguished.

This misconception, if I am right, risks turning “Buddhism” into little more than a miserable but pious suicide cult in which people are terrified by the endless stretches of sadness they imagine before them, and desperately try to end it all. Ending it all is itself mistakenly viewed as the goal. They only reason such people don’t “use the knife” is because they think they are trapped and will only be reborn again. Practicing this form of Buddhism actually risks making people more unhappy and depressed.

This completely misses the happiness the Buddha taught people how to achieve, and that is frequently attested in the joyful verses and other recorded words of the arahants. The correct conception of the goal is a much more optimistic picture, because even if one doesn’t attain the summum bonum, the supreme bliss of total release, the path through lesser attainments is an assent through higher and higher forms of happiness. So the path is eminently worth pursuing even if the goal isn’t achieved.

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40

In the words of the Buddha himself:

"When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of recollecting my past lives. I recollected my manifold past lives, i.e., one birth, two…five, ten…fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, many eons of cosmic contraction, many eons of cosmic expansion, many eons of cosmic contraction & expansion: ‘There I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose there. There too I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose here.’ Thus I remembered my manifold past lives in their modes & details.

"This was the first knowledge I attained in the first watch of the night. Ignorance was destroyed; knowledge arose; darkness was destroyed; light arose — as happens in one who is heedful, ardent, & resolute. But the pleasant feeling that arose in this way did not invade my mind or remain.

And he goes on to describe his attainment of the other two knowledges.

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41

Maybe those are the words of the Buddha; maybe they aren’t.

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42

But by that yardstick, we can discard anything in the Canon that doesn’t appeal to our intellect.

I am ambivalent about rebirth and the current age doesn’t really foster such apparently quaint theories, but my view doesn’t matter here at all. As far as the EBTs are concerned, rebirth is thoroughly stitched into its fabric.

And the Buddha made it clear that his Dhamma is patisotagami and an individual needs to shed all pre-conceived notions about the world. Some of the images that the Buddha drew are quite unsettling: food as cannibalistic fodder, sensuality as a pit of flaming hot charcoal, copulation with a snake is the lesser evil etc.

Selective interpretation while disregarding the giant elephant in the room would be a half-hearted inquiry, IMHO.

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43

It’s not just Buddhists who claim to have witnessed (through deep samadhi) rebirth and planes of existence of beings in other dimensions .

Taoists, christian mystics, hindus, pretty anyone who has deep samadhi has the potential to verify for themselves.

Here’s an eminent American scientist who was previously a skeptic, and Atheist if I remember correctly, but through his experiences working with his patients he becomes convinced of reincarnation of souls.
https://www.amazon.com/Many-Lives-Masters-Prominent-Psychiatrist-ebook/dp/B007EDYNAO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496157298&sr=8-1&keywords=many+lives+many+masters

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44

And neither does the public opinion in you’re country foster materialism. Creationism is still the dominant world view in you’re country.

As for current discoveries supporting materialism, that could not be further from the truth. Not only does “the hard problem of consciousness” have never been solved despite so many brilliant minds trying to solve it for centuries, but materialism has been refuted by modern discoveries.

Those that study sociology for example are overwhealmingly postmodernist. They start from the truth that society does have an influence on culture. A child raised in saudi arabia will be different than a child raised in Switzerland. Nobody can deny the importance of society and culture. But they fall into an extreme and go on to say that everything comes from cultural conditioning and end up contradicted by reality. They end up saying gender is just a social construct and other such ideas. They end up saying “everything comes from cultural conditioning” and ignore the importance of matter or other things. As Buddha would say, “they overshoot what can be know though direct observance and end up contradicted by reality”.

In the same way, those who study form end up in an extreme. Nobody can deny the importance of matter and how many things it does determine. But when they say “everything comes from matter, including consciousness, including volition” they overshoot what can be known through direct ovservence, since the hard problem of consciousness is called like that for a reason. And they end up contradicted by reality, such as neuroplasticity, the placebo effect, quantum phisics etc. They fall into an extreme.

Buddha path is the middle way and that is why it can not be contradicted by direct observence from reality. It if would ever get contradicted, then it would be proven false same as materialism or postmodernism for example.

In order to know what happens with consciousness after death, you need to know where it originated from. Unless you know the cause because of witch it originated in the first place, you can never know if it will originate again like it did before or weather it will cease without reminder. You can not know that unless you know the cause because of witch it originated in the first place. And current knowledge does not support the materialist view. As for popular opinion in one country or another, it could not matter less for the truth. Many people believing in an idea in a certain country at a certain point in time does not make an idea right.

A good example of a person falling into an extreme recently is me in this topic: Buddhism and society - What did Buddha really had to say about it? - #16 by dxm_dxm

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45

Not necessarily. But we do have to bring all of our intelligence to bear on figuring out what was actually going on during the events and teaching situations the suttas record. The suttas are not themselves 100% internally consistent. And in some cases, even where competing doctrines might be logically consistent in a strict sense, they seem to point in very different directions with great difference in emphasis. The suttas also contains separate bodies of schematic teachings and systematizations that seem to treat some of the same phenomena from overlapping, but conceptually distinct points of view. I am increasingly of the view that, in addition to containing many, many words of the Buddha himself, the suttas also record teachings from a variety of earlier, contemporaneous and later spiritual teachers, not all clearly distinguished by the tradition from those of the Buddha.

We also have to keep in mind that the more spontaneous, on-the-spot, teachings that were not given in the form of a prepared discourse to be committed to memory, were remembered and passed down not by the Buddha, but by lesser minds and disciples who were struggling to understand teachings that were obscure to them. In some cases, it appears that occasions on which the Buddha was merely describing or reporting the teachings of other teachers and sects were mistakenly construed by someone as the views of the Buddha himself. It is also possible that poetic utterances, stories and parables whose intended meaning was figurative were sometimes mistakenly interpreted by some disciples as literal accounts. And in many cases, what a reciter honestly thinks he heard might have been conditioned by his own predispositions and limits.

We also have to interpret both the words and the deeds recorded in the suttas. Sometimes the deeds speak louder than the words. For example, if there are doctrinal teachings in the suttas that suggest that, following his awakening under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha never again experienced suffering, these have to be balanced against those texts in which the Buddha is depicted a experiencing irritation, weariness or exasperation. One way of harmonizing these conflicts is to assume that what the Buddha learned is how to reach and enter the suffering-free state whenever he wanted to. But when he emerged from that perfectly detached and secluded state into more ordinary states in which he had to interact with people and the material world, although he remained generally quite peaceful and composed, he was somewhat subject to renewed suffering.

In reading the suttas, I am guided by the working assumption that the Buddha was a great spiritual master who achieved something exceptional, and was able to pass on what he achieved, and the means to achieving it, to others. The task is to understand the nature of that achievement and the path to it. How the achievement and path are described, in the tradition that has come down to us, are very helpful and should be referred to again and again. They record how the Buddha, and perhaps others, understood the nature of that attainment. But we have to balance these descriptions against the dhamma as it is directly experienced in practice, and also against everything else we know about the world from other sources.

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46

I’m grateful to read so many different perspectives. And I’m further interested in how you guys interpret the quote from the first post…

47

Maybe those are the words of the Buddha but; the maybe interpretations of those words aren’t of the Buddha. :seedling:

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48

In my opinion, what is meant by “tahagatha” in that quote is a self, not the 5 aggregates. It is because of the same reason that he replyed in that way to a Bhramin when asked weather the tahagatha exists after death. And he explains this in that very sutta at the end.

If one is asking: Does the tahagatha (as a self) exist - then the answer is no.
If one is asking: Does the tahagatha in the sense of the 5 aggregates (body, consciousness etc that make up the tahagatha) exist or not, then yes the 5 do aggregates exist. Check SN 22.94

The person asking the question might understand a tahagatha in any of the 2 ways described above. In the case of that sutta, the Buddha answered like that because the person understood the tahagatha as in the first way of understanding. That is why he explains “If I were to say the tahagatha does not exist, then he would become more confused and understand that the self that used to exist now is no more” - when in reality there was never a self to begin with.

The tahagatha, just like any other being, is just like a machine, like a mountain, like a computer. An amalgam of aggregates that work according to conditions. There is no self to be found in the tahagatha just like there is no self to be found in a computer or in a forest.

One of the contemplations recommanded is about contemplating how both the internal world and the external world are empty of a self. The Buddha too was empty of a self. He was just like a machine, like a computer.

49

I interpret it to mean something like, “Since nothing that either is the Tathāgata or belongs to Tathāgata can be grasped in any way, there can be no basis for affirming either that the Tathāgata exists after the breakup of the body or does not exist after the breakup of the body. We just don’t know, and can’t say. There is nothing we apprehend upon which we could base a judgment either way.”

Everything we can apprehend is constructed, and belongs to the conditioned realm of birth and death. The Tathāgata has gone beyond birth and death.

50

How far away are we here from ‘Buddha-nature’? Because clearly ‘I’ or ‘you’ also neither exist nor don’t exist. Only a fake self continues to exist conditionally - but it has nothing to do with the ‘Tathagata-in-us’. So, if the Tathagata can’t be apprehended, it might follow that the ‘potential-tathagata-in-us’ can’t be apprehended, a disappearance yet to be realized.

I think it’s relatively easy at this point - if we slip away from the dukkha-orientation of the EBT to an ontological philosophy - to say that we’re all already enlightened (or have Buddha-nature) but just have to see it.

51

I think this is missing the point I was trying to make. Let’s say for the sake of argument that materialism was true, but you could still achieve arahantship in this life. The difference between the person who achieves arahantship and the one who does not is still marginal in the big picture. After death they will both partake of the highest happiness. What happens in this life hardly registers by comparison. Whether it is really worthwhile to undertake a very demanding practice, that may or may not give the desired result, when the ultimate prize is just around the corner anyway, is a very open question. In my experience those who do not have any confidence in rebirth do not tend to become monastics, or they end up disrobing. The stakes are just not high enough to enter a demanding monastic path.

The bigger problem, however, is that I do not think it is possible to achieve awakening with a materialist outlook. So far as I am concerned, materialism is a misconception of the nature of the mind and the forces that sustain it. Without seeing this reality - that is, dependent origination - awakening cannot happen at all.

Indeed. But this is the apparent paradox at the heart of the Buddhist path. The path is full of happiness and bliss, and a continuous reduction of suffering. At the same time the ending of everything is an even higher happiness. It is precisely this that makes this teaching so profound and hard to see.

I certainly agree that every step on the path brings its own rewards. But a full a commitment to and perseverance on the path is much more difficult without confidence in the idea of samsāric existence.

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52

Thank you for a brilliant exposition of the origins of Canon’s ambiguity. :anjal:

53

I agree. It seems that a materialist can only approach Dhamma while looking through a very narrow materialist lens. It also seems a thoroughly modern phenomenon. I’ve yet to come across an example of a pre-modern “Buddhist materialist” thinker. This tells me it’s quite likely this view is very much conditioned by the circumstances of these times because absent these circumstances, the view apparently did not arise among any Buddhist thinkers. I think it’s more a result of the hubris of our modern civilzation, thanks in no small apart to our great advances in science and technology, than anything else.

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54

I agree that we can use our intelligence to examine the suttas to some extent, but trying to establish the authenticity of all that has been passed down is a huge enterprise, leaning towards a scholarly path.

From the point of view of a practitioner, however, the main thing is the payoff. Is the continual denial of urges in the mind and complete abstinence from all worldly pleasures worth it ? We can’t just say, yes !! and expect everything else to fall in line. Take for example, the Buddha’s son himself. Ordained at an early age, the task he was given (or took upon himself) was to eradicate craving altogether, without having really experienced anything. The whole world must have seemed like a vast playground filled with numerous temptations for someone so young (we have one recorded instance in which Rahula was vain about his appearance). Yet, the Tathagata’s instruction is the same: view sensuality as a nest of vipers. I’d imagine that faith in the Buddha’s Dhamma is the main bulwark standing between temptations and lust for them in someone who is exhorted to subdue a wayward mind when the passage into adulthood is still happening. Eventually Rahula goes on to declare his attainment of the three knowledges and calls worldly people as fish trapped in a net.

The other main problem with one-life materialism is the old problem of suicide - but it’s a taboo subject here…

Regarding the bleak, joyless version of Buddhism which you mentioned, I think we have to make a distinction. The Buddha’s description of the Path which an ascetic follows is mostly that of a joyous one, aside from a few discourses where he asks us to crush lustful thoughts if they get increasingly persistent. But his description of the world that the ascetic leaves behind - that is mostly a dire picture. Like SN 35.238.

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55

I don’t see how Buddha nature comes in at this point. If there is no basis for asserting whether the Tathagata, or any arahant, exists after death, then by the same token there doesn’t seem to be any ground for asserting that each of us possesses a pure, incorruptible, underlying Buddha nature that exists after death.

I think the effect of all of these skeptical teachings about our inability to grasp the nature of a fully liberated being - or even know whether it has a “nature” or not - is to discourage ontological speculation and theorizing and focus on following the path to the end of suffering.

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56

Of course, this is the whole point I think! To understand the Dhamma not as an ontology. As soon as we enter ontology, we get into a terrible conceptual mess, regarding liberation, but in general as well.

Yet, for whatever reasons, the EBT are undermining themselves in that respect and are offering tons of ontology. Take the countless suttas that include “There are two kinds of people” “…four kinds of people” etc. There, the arahant and the tathagata as a person are contrasted against regular blokes.

The Tathagata has ten powers…
The Tathagata understands…
A Tathagata appears in this world…

In these contexts we have by most sane definitions a subject acting, not a black hole. So in the clear majority of cases the EBT invite us to take the Tathagata as a person, a subject. And then - in a few contexts - they freak us out again with “he neither exists nor non-exists here in this very life”.

How is a simple dude following the Dhamma, supposed to craft a workable ditthi out of this?

57

I don’t understand this, Bhante. If materialism is true but arahantship is achievable, then after death the arahant does not partake in any happiness at all, let alone the highest happiness. It is true that neither the arahant, nor anyone else, will experience pain after death. But it is also true that they won’t experience happiness.

So suppose someone is a 45 year old materialist and estimates they probably have about 30 years of life left. They believe that at the end of that time their mental life will come to an end, their conscious experiences will flicker out and they will no longer experience either happiness or suffering. They have a choice: either make a serious effort to relieve the psychic pain of everyday life, gradually reducing that suffering and possibly culminating in the total cessation of suffering, or else just endure their current level of psychic pain for another 30 years. It seem to me that the first is likely the more rational course. And the shorter one thinks one’s life will be, the greater the urgency about what to do with the finite time we have.

I don’t see how these are connected. Materialism might not be the correct conception of the nature of the mind, but it is hard to know one way or another from the nature of meditative experience. In meditation, we develop a deeper and deeper understanding into how our various states of mind, awareness, intentions and emotions arise and cease, and how they condition one another and what their arising depends on. But nothing about the meditative awareness we cultivate can tell us what the ultimate nature of those mental phenomena are. If I see an intention or desire arise in my mind, there is nothing about the nature of that experience itself that can tell me whether that intention or desire is a physical phenomenon or a non-physical phenomenon.

Perhaps, then, the question of materialism is beside the point. The issue isn’t whether mental phenomena are, in their nature, material or non-material, physical or non-physical. The issue is whether one has any basis for thinking that the continuity of one’s mental life will extend beyond the death of one’s organic body. Nobody can say for sure, but we have a lot of evidence for thinking that most of our mental lives depends for their continuity on things that happen in our body and brain, since we know that bodily injury, and especially brain injury, causes all kinds of mental changes and impairments.

Indeed it is hard to see! It is hard to see how the non-existence of mental life altogether could be any kind of happiness. To my mind, this is simply a confusion. It is a confusion that comes from a mistaken projection of the bliss and joy of the arahant when his burden is finally put down and he is fully liberated in life onto the mere blank future space in which the arahant’s mental life is no longer transpiring. In that future, there will be other people and beings, experiencing various degrees of happiness and unhappiness, but the arahant won’t be one of them. The arahant won’t be around somewhere experiencing the highest happiness. If the arahant ever did experience the highest happiness, that is something that happened earlier, when the arahant was still alive but experiencing the bliss of nibbana.

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58

Yes, I agree with you. That’s why I think it is important to emphasize that what the Buddha taught is a path to the truest and most complete happiness. It wasn’t just some recipe book for a poison that will finally end your miserable and perpetual existence. The Buddhist tradition is cloyed with the thinking of people who don’t really believe in the possibility of nibbanic bliss and freedom, and who have projected their miserable, suicidal pessimism onto the Buddha.

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