This is not a satisfactory answer to me since SN 12.70 describe here-&-now Nibbana, as follows:
Seeing thus, Susīma, the instructed noble disciple experiences revulsion towards form, revulsion towards feeling, revulsion towards perception, revulsion towards volitional formations, revulsion towards consciousness. Experiencing revulsion, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion his mind is liberated. When it is liberated there comes the knowledge: ‘It’s liberated. ’
I let this go (deleted it) hours ago but you decided to cling to it.
I have no personal trajectory. I was just pointing there is nothing to deny or renunciate. As for family, there are monks that actually disrobe to look after their aging parents if there are no other family members do to this.
This is not a satisfactory answer to me.
Ok. You have declared, to quote, you “have no idea”. This is a satisfactory answer to me. Thank you.
My work is done for the day, both financially & here. Time for some peace & quiet.
As you well know, I find none of these arguments convincing in the slightest.
The belief in self is implicit in the materialist view. It needn’t be explicitly verbalized or thought out in exactly the same way the sutta says for it to be a materialist view.
~
Jeez you edit your posts before I’ve even finished typing out my response. Oh well I’m leaving my quotes as is.
[quote=“Mkoll, post:84, topic:5468”]
As you well know, I find none of these arguments convincing in the slightest.[/quote]
So you find what is literally stated in MN 117 and MN 60 as unconvincing. To quote:
And what, bhikkhus, is right view that is affected by the taints, partaking of merit, ripening in the acquisitions? … MN 117
they will undertake and practise these three wholesome states, namely, good bodily conduct, good verbal conduct, and good mental conduct…He has rightly accepted and undertaken this incontrovertible teaching in such a way that it extends to both sides and excludes the unwholesome alternative.’ MN 60
Correct. But impermanence is not implicit in the materialist view.
As for how elimination of desire actually results in the destruction of birth, I have no idea - the mundane mechanics of this is not present in the EBTs, to my knowledge.
What exactly are you trying to do ? Score points with some dart board ? The thread was going reasonably well earlier.
Correct. This may show your personal views about ‘birth’ may possibly not be in accordance with the Dhamma, which the Lord defined as ‘visible here-&-now’.
[quote=“Sujith, post:89, topic:5468”]
What exactly are you trying to do ? Score points with some dart board ? [/quote]
Of course not. I was following the principles of discussion laid out by the Buddha. You were questioned in relation to the Dhamma, as the Buddha often questioned people, and you were found, like many of those people, to not be able to justify or prove your point of view. This method of discussion is found in many EBTs.
I can only suggest to examine the mind about this statement. Imo, the thread right now is the best as it has ever been.
Its a “quote” and not a strawman or argument or interpretation.
And what, bhikkhus, is right view that is affected by the taints (ASAVA), partaking of merit (PUNNA), ripening in the acquisitions (UPADHI)? … MN 117
The only way out is probably to claim the Buddha did not speak it.
Bye
Good Lord.
Now, monks, knowing thus and seeing thus, would you run after the past, thinking, ‘Were we in the past? Were we not in the past? What were we in the past? How were we in the past? Having been what, what were we in the past’?"
“No, lord.”
“Knowing thus and seeing thus, would you run after the future, thinking, ‘Shall we be in the future? Shall we not be in the future? What shall we be in the future? How shall we be in the future? Having been what, what shall we be in the future’?”
“No, lord.”
“Knowing thus and seeing thus, would you be inwardly perplexed about the immediate present, thinking, ‘Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where is it bound’?”
“No, lord.”
“Knowing thus and seeing thus, would you say, ‘The Teacher is our respected mentor. We speak thus out of respect for the Teacher’?”
“No, lord.”
“Knowing thus and seeing thus, would you say, ‘The Contemplative says this. We speak thus in line with the Contemplative’s words’?”
“No, lord”
“Knowing thus and seeing thus, would you dedicate yourselves to another teacher?”
“No, lord.”
“Knowing thus and seeing thus, would you return to the observances, grand ceremonies, & auspicious rites of common contemplatives & brahmans as having any essence?”
“No, lord.”
“Is it the case that you speak simply in line with what you have known, seen, & understood for yourselves?”
“Yes, lord.”
"Good, monks. You have been guided by me in this Dhamma which is to be seen here & now, timeless, inviting verification, pertinent, to be realized by the observant for themselves. For it has been said, ‘This Dhamma is to be seen here & now, timeless, inviting verification, pertinent, to be by the observant for themselves,’ and it was in reference to this that it was said.
I stated at the very outset that I was ambivalent about rebirth.
But, the more I explore, the more I find that I am being challenged to reverse and change my views - the posts by Ven. Brahmali clarified some confusion (especially his reference to stream-entry). I honestly don’t see why you are pulling out one sutta after another trying to score brownie points…
I already honestly answered you I was not here to score any points. Questions were asked of you and you failed to deliver the answers. I honestly suggest this is how to view our interaction today.
MN 117 & AN 10.176 state it is worldly right view to have faith in monks. It is good to have faith in monks however this does not mean others will have faith in what you present as Dhamma because AN 10.176 states to have faith in monks rather than to have faith in their lay disciples.
Maybe some pieces can still be picked up from the ruins.
No, I wouldn’t.
I am really not sure what to make of this. The goal of the Path is laid out in simple terms in the Four Noble Truths - and cessation of suffering is all that it says. Cessation seems so empty and possibly frightening to us because our minds are still enveloped in delusion and we take annihilation as real, when we should see it rightly as wrong-view.
But thanks for the discussion, there’s a fair amount of ideas to ponder on now…
Bhante, the sutta says that this pleasure, although not a pleasurable feeling, is still experienced. The monk abides in that state of cessation and experiences the pleasure of being in that state. This kind of experience of pleasure is is not a feeling, because feeling is a lower order of experience conditioned by consciousness and contact. And these have ceased.
Also notable is that the highest form of happiness is here depicted as a meditative attainment. It is something that occurs during the bhikkhu’s lifetime. Sariputta’s body (to take one instance) has not broken up, and yet Sariputta is abiding in the highest happiness. So the highest happiness cannot be something that requires the breakup of the body.
The pleasurable state that is experienced with the perception of feeling evidently involves a highly refined and removed mental stillness, and so there would be no cognition occurring during this state. The one who has attained it is not surveying times and worlds, or thinking such thoughts as “This is my last body.” Not even thoughts like “I am happy” or “I have attained the goal”. I emphasize this only to remove the suggestion that some might make that the highest happiness during life consists in part of the knowledge one has that one has escaped from rebirth. Instead, it appears that the highest happiness is an experiential state that is beyond conscious contact with any mind objects, and is thus beyond both cognition and feeling. Later, after one emerges from this state and reestablishes contact and feeling with the world, one can have thoughts of that kind. But when those thoughts occur, one is abiding in the sense spheres and is no longer experiencing the highest happiness.
It is not even clear that, if the one abiding in the highest happiness could at the same time contemplate the possibility of rebirth, they would necessarily regard all forms of rebirth as a bad thing. After all, if being in this state is the highest happiness, then wouldn’t it be good to be reborn as a being abiding perpetually in the highest happiness? But the Buddha was unwilling to say that the arahant survives and exists in any way after death. If we cannot say whether the arahant abides beyond death, then we cannot say that the arahant abides in an experience of the highest happiness after death. So I think it is a mistake to think that the highest happiness is something that occurs only following death.
It is also clear from this passage that it is a mistake to confuse the experience of the highest happiness itself with the cessation of painful states that brings about that experince. The total cessation of painful states is a necessary condition for the experience of the highest happiness to occur, but it is not a sufficient condition. So, if the same cessation of all painful dhammas occurs at the point of death of the arahant, but the arahant doesn’t abide beyond death, then on that occasion, the cessation does not result in the continuing happiness of the arahant, since there is then no longer an arahant experiencing either suffering or happiness.
Of course, the arahant might abide in some way beyond death. Perhaps the Buddha’s point was only that, if such post-mortem continuance is possible, it cannot be discerned, known or described by anyone but the one who experiences it.
Perhaps. But they are high enough for the path to still make sense. After all, the path itself is pleasurable and an assent through higher and higher levels of happiness. It is not a Christian-style purgatorial travail through fields of glass, lakes of fire and experiences of hell on earth, that only makes sense if one arrives at the promised land. In the Buddhist picture, the path itself is full of increasing happiness, even if one never gets to the promised land. It’s a happier way of life than a life of worldly strivings without the path.
Yes, I agree with that. But that still leaves open questions about the ultimate nature of those phenomena. If I penetrate deeply in meditation into an examination of my experiences of a phenomenon like anger, for example, I will see that it is unstable and impermanent, that it is painful and of no benefit to me, that it contains nothing that is truly me or mine, and that there is nothing about it worthy of attachment. But I can’t tell from looking at the experience itself and its psychic pre-conditions, from my first-person perspective, whether it is a physical phenomenon, constituted by or dependent in some way on my brain, or on some physical system that we do not yet grasp, or on some non-physical system that we do not yet grasp. All I can tell is that when such-and-such experienced mental phenomena arise, anger arises; and when those phenomena cease, the anger ceases.
Here we need to infer the exact meaning of “experience,” paṭisaṃvedeti. At MN 43 it is specifically stated that feeling, perception, and consciousness always arise together, and that these three cannot exist independently of each other. Elsewhere, such as MN 22, it is said that consciousness arises dependent on one of the six senses, not independent of them. This means that when perception and feeling are said to have ceased, then so has consciousness. And if there is no consciousness, there is no experience.
The only way to understand how this attainment can be experienced as the highest happiness, I think, is to see it as a realisation the meditator has when they emerge. They realise, again by inference, that something truly exceptional has happened, even though they did not directly experience it. They “abide” in the attainment only in the sense that it had a certain duration, in the sense that they entered and emerged from it, and in the sense that they can feel the effects of the attainment as they emerge. We need to keep in mind that the Buddha is restricted to using language that was not created to express this sort of exceptional “experience.”
Here is the passage I referred to earlier without quoting it:
“Happiness, friends, is this nibbāna. Happiness, friends, is this nibbāna.”
When this was said, the Venerable Udāyī said to the Venerable Sāriputta: “But, friend Sāriputta, what happiness could there be here when nothing is felt here?”
“Just this, friend, is the happiness here, that nothing is felt here.
AN 9.34.
Yes, this attainment of cessation of perception and feeling would be equivalent to what happens to the arahant after death - extinguishment here and now, if you like.
One is always conscious of something; consciousness entirely devoid of attributes is impossible. You could certainly say that the higher consciousnesses are non-dual, that is, there is no sense of subject/object differentiation. But the experience still has content, in the sense of perception and feeling of some kind being present. So far as I can see, this is abundantly attested in the suttas.
Well, precisely. This is exactly how the idea of merger with the absolute/God/Brahmā comes about. The problem, from the Buddhist perspective, is that although such a wonderful existence might last long, it has an end. To become an arahant you need to go beyond that.
