I don’t think we disagree about as much as it might at first have appeared, Bhante. But there are some disagreements.
I don’t know is we can draw this conclusion, Bhante. In the suttas, consciousness (viññāṇa) always seems to be used in the sense of the cognition of objects of some kind - either the visual, auditory, somatic, olfactory, gustatory objects of the senses, or internal mental objects to which we can direct our attention. Consciousness is the awareness of something. Being aware of some object means that we are in some kind of mental contact with it, and when we are in contact with it, we have a feeling response to it: the objects is experienced as pleasurable, painful, or some combination of the two.
But this leaves open the possibility that there are other kinds of state one can experience that are objectless. These states are unified, undifferentiated and complete in themselves, and are not directed upon an object. They are blissfully and perfectly pleasurable - though not the kind of pleasure that comes from contemplating and feeling the effects of some object, and are without any tincture pain or suffering. The one undergoing this experience is thus perfectly happy, although, since viññāṇa, ahamkara have mamamkara have ceased during the experience, there is no thought at that time of the kind “I am happy” or “I am experiencing pleasure.” There is only the experience and not the conscious reflection on it.
I pretty much agree with all of this, although I would put it slightly differently: Although they had the experience, and thus abided in it for however long they occurred, they did not also have the concurrent experience of reflecting on or thinking about the experience they were having. All reflective, conscious and discursive mental experience had ceased during the experience. They were extremely happy during the experience, in fact happy in the highest possible way, but it is only after they begin to emerge from the experience that they recover the mental tools to think “Wow, that supreme bliss” or something of the sort.
Yes, I think this is it. I would say it means that there is a self-contained experience that is perfect happiness, but it does not consist in taking pleasure in any objects of either the senses or the mind.
That could be. But we don’t really know whether the arahant abides in perfect happiness after death. What seems clear from the descriptions above is that when the arahant attains nibbana in this very life, in addition to everything negative being extinguished, there is something positive that remains, something that makes that attainment a state of perfect happiness, and not just a blank spot in the flow of the arahant’s experience that is neither happy nor unhappy. But we don’t know what happens to the arahant after death. It could be nothing. The arahant’s mental processes might come to a complete end, including the ability to abide in the state of supreme happiness.
We have to disagree partly here. Yes, consciousness (viññāṇa) always has some object. It is always the cognition of some metal object, the awareness of something, even if that something is very attenuated, such as the base of the sphere of infinite space or the base of nothingness. And feeling arises from consciousness. But that doesn’t entail that there are no mental states that are not states of consciousness. Certainly if such states exist, they have attributes in the sense that there is something that is true of them. But the state itself does not involve the consciousness of its own attributes.
What if you could be reborn into a perfectly happy state that was truly perpetual, endless? Buddhist doctrine says that such a state cannot exist, because everything that is born ultimately dies. Everything that has a beginning has an end. But I wonder what argument or insight could actually prove this to be true? After all, there doesn’t seem to be any conceptual or logical absurdity in the idea of a thing or state that has a beginning but no end.
But in any case, these are matters I try not to worry too much about. It has always seemed to me that part of the point of the path is to let go of the anxiety about what I might be in the future, which includes worries about whether or not there is something beyond death. This is unwise attention.