You may want to check out SN 21.2, SN 35.69 and SN 28.1 for clues as to how the mind of an arahant works.
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Yes, but the Epicureans did not argue that death is happiness, let alone the highest happiness. Being dead, one experiences neither pleasure nor pain. For the Epicureans, pleasure and pain are are the only intrinsically good and bad things. So nothing either good or bad happens to one after death. Thus, the Epicureans said “Death is nothing to us.”
This is one of those places where the doctrines that the suttas teach seem to diverge a bit from the reality that the suttas depict. Despite the doctrinal effort to obscure this fact, the suttas depict several episodes in which the Buddha, post-awakening, seems to be undergoing some suffering. Since experiencing suffering entails having a sense of self, it seems to me that the most plausible way to understand these episodes is to assume that when the Buddha emerges from those deep states in which the sense of self has been extinguished, he was subject to a re-emergence of the sense of self. After all, if the Buddha always experienced complete detachment from the pains occurring in his body, he would have had no need to enter samadhi to relieve his suffering from that pain.
This is consistent with the fact, however, that the Buddha’s everyday experiences were, on the whole, radically different from most people, and his life-experience was exceptionally peaceful, unperturbed, kind and detached.
Yes. They argued that it is irrational to even consider it, because “while we exist, our death is not, and when our death occurs, we do not exist”. It is a total waste of time to even think about death.
But I think that Ajahn @Brahmali is correct in saying that Buddhism is pointless if rebirth is not true, because it is not worth giving up so much. I believe enjoyment of this life does not entail being consumed by greed, anger and delusion. And it does not entail constantly dreading the prospect of death. I simply don’t believe that only arahants are the ones that can ponder death with equanimity and only arahants are free from defilements such as greed, anger, envy ignorance, delusion etc. I just don’t buy it.
But as @Sujith has pointed out, then buddhism must be false. They have painted themselves into an intellectual corner with their dogma.
That intellectual corner is here:
If you read that quote outside of a buddhist context then you will see what absolute tosh it is. Seriously, Imagine saying that in a non-buddhist context. Really. Just stop and think about it. It is absolute rubbish.
But the odd thing is, @Sujith is correct within a strictly sutta-doctrinal context. According to the suttas, all non-arahants (or non-stream entrants etc) are deluded, suffering, ignorant and consumed by greed, lust and envy. They must be, by definition, since they are not arahants!
So of course, I’m sure @Sujith accepts that he is ignorant, deluded and suffering. Unless of course he thinks he is an arahant.
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Exactly where and how is this claim (“eternalism”) evidenced, for instance, in that essay?
Kierkegaard said the same thing too:
What is this life, where the only certainty is the only thing one cannot with any certainty learn anything about: death; for when I am, death is not, and when death is, I am not.
But we have to see his view and the view of all the other philosophers as mired in the thicket of views that arise because of the delusion of self.
Of course I am not an Arahant.
And yes, I don’t see how choosing to ignore the aspect of rebirth that is prevalent almost everywhere in the suttas can be right. I believe that a leap of faith is required - it sounds like religious imposition, but to me, the Dhamma still has the same invitation: come, see and verify. And I have kind of concluded that what we think of as intelligence (which is conditioned by the age we live in) is not what is seen as wisdom and intelligence in the lineage of the Noble Ones.
YMMV, of course.
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Giving up what? One of the Buddha’s greatest insights was that, due to our confusion and delusion, most of the things we think of as pleasurable and enjoyable in everyday, samsaric life are actually painful. As we increase our mindful attention to the true nature of our experience during these everyday activities, we develop deepening insight into their painful nature, and so we naturally begin to let go of those activities and put them aside.
If the Buddha’s path were actually more painful than the path of samsaric existence, and only promised some payoff at the remote end of the path, then it would indeed be questionable whether to take the risk of giving up a more pleasurable way of life for a more grueling and difficult way of life that might or might not culminate in that payoff. But the Buddha’s path is not like chemotherapy, or like some Christian or Jain path of penitence and purgation. It is not a trial that has to be endured for the sake of its goal. It offers a happier way of living than is offered by the worldly way of living. That we don’t all see that is due to our being enmeshed in worldly ignorance.
So a path that leads continuously through less and less suffering, and culminates for a lucky few in the complete cessation of suffering, is something it makes sense for anyone to follow, at any time, no matter how long they think their future existence will be.
Some degree of desire, lust, anger, hatred, resentment and the other defilements are present throughout the experience of everyone but a fully liberated saint. They are the psychic energies that drive ordinary biological life forward. If you see a tasty looking piece of pie, you will crave it. If a mosquito bites you, you will feel a momentary surge of anger and hatred, and a desire to strike. If somebody laughs at you, you will resent them. If you are engrossed in a wide-ranging conversation with someone, your mind will be full of a swirling tempest of habitual ideas, memories, passions and reactions that cloud your perception of things as they are. If you are engaged in the execution of a complicated worldly life plan filled with complex interpersonal relationships and tasks, you will experience and ongoing stream of frustrations, unfulfilled longings, time anxieties, regrets, shames and exultations.
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Well, what would you say he means in that passage by “The Deathless”? It seems like he regards it as a level of reality that can be sought and found, and that is timeless.
Nope. The Buddha’s insight is that ALL conditioned existence is dukkha. Not just some it. All of it.
until there is nothing left to enjoy, because it is all anicca, anatta and dukkha.
Exactly. According to buddhist doctrine, we are all ignorant and all existence is dukkha as Ajahn @Brahmali states below.
( Personally, my life has improved greatly in recent years. Most of the time my life is peaceful and happy now. A sunny day, viewing my garden. Or being on silent retreat and meditating in a state of bliss. I don’t see that as ignorance or suffering. But, by buddhist doctrine, I am in the conditioned world, so it is anicca, anatta, dukkha and delusion.)
You, on the other hand, seem to be suggesting that there is a way to view the world that is not conditioned by greed, anger, hatred and delusion. I totally agree with you, but that is not the emphasis in Buddhist doctrine. Gotama says it is all dukkha. As pointed out here:
All conditioned existence. But there is the unconditioned.
By following the path, you can make things continually better. You can let go of more and more defiling sources of pain, and life becomes happier. You can enter deep states of meditation which a relatively blissful, and where only the most subtle forms of clinging and pain remain. But some pain is always left, until the realization of complete liberation.
Not according to the doctrine that all conditioned phenomena is dukkha.
“Joy at last to know there is no happiness in the world” (Ajahn Chah)
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I really don’t think it does. Detachment just means you don’t crave or attach: there is no corresponding mental aspect to the physical problem. The body still experiences pain, and this is going to be unpleasant, whether you are an arahant or not. The fact that you don’t identify with it does not eradicate the feeling. An important point, however, is that the mental involvement is by far the most significant part of physical pain. Once the mental part is dealt with, the physical part is relatively easy to bear.
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There are many cases reported in neuropsychological literature of people experiencing dissociation from bodily pain, and also from other forms of normal bodily identification. They somehow experience the pain that is present, and know it it be pain, but it doesn’t “hurt them” because it is - in some way that is hard for the subjects themselves to describe - not experienced as theirs. It is experienced as separate from and outside themselves, just as my visual image of a tree is experienced, but not experienced as mine or me. but as an experience of a tree that is external to me. I think this complete externalization (or at last non-identification with) all sensed forms would be included in the disappearance of the sense of self. Pain arises, and it is known as pain, but it is also understood a non-self, an thus not known as my pain.
That proves nothing.
So a description of mentally ill dysfunctional dissociation becomes an example of spirituality and peace of mind. What nonsense.
It can be good to remember that the actual practice of Buddhism is transforming oneself into a genuinely kind and compassionate person. For example, radiating loving-kindness towards all living beings, how depressing and negative can that really be?
If one were to extrapolate the effects of generosity, kindness, compassion etc (what the Buddha says we should actually do), at least for me that tells me that the results of Buddhism cannot be bad, whatever they are.
If you take what I wrote above into account; imagine being so content and fulfilled that you don’t need conditioned phenomena to be happy.
Or imagine having so much kindness that whatever conditioned phenomena arise, you can accept and embrace it.
There are many ways to perceive this which aren’t negative or pessimistic 
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That is what I tried to argue, but no one accepts it. It is closer to an ancient Greek view apparently, and not real Buddhism which aims at total non existence and the end of rebirth.
Well, with a 100 people you have a 100 different understandings of Buddhism, no one can do better than their own perceptions!
You and I will probably not even accept our present views a few years from now, because our understanding will have evolved 
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Indeed. And I’m glad you used the word “perceive.” The Buddha instructed us to cultivate the perception of anicca, of dukkha in what is anicca, of anatta in what is dukkha, etc (e.g. AN 7.49, AN 10.60). This is not the same thing as coming to a view like “everything is dukkha” and clinging to that. That would just condition the mind to be depressed and aversive. Insight is developed via a dynamic process fueled by wise effort, not via an arrival and sticking to a view. Developing the perception of impermanence is very helpful in moving toward seeing the nature of views, IME.
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