then it might as well not exist.
with metta
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But this is not what I quoted - and you truncated my quote, out of context.
What I have quoted is the following:
Note that SN 22.85 says “in this very life”.
Which means it cannot be gotten at anywhere, in this very life (in the here and now).
You are adding this “global anywhere” interpretation of yours.
This is not what the texts say.
And Sariputta adds how can you say that the arahant “does not exist anywhere after the body breaks up at the end of life”.
And in this case, anywhere means “other than in this life”
That is the real context. When it is not truncated.
So are you saying the Buddha said atta doesn’t exist in this life, but then suddenly exists after death?
Then I also thought, if atta-braham existed after death, there would be something, someone to cling to- so suffering wouldn’t come to an end, right?
with metta
I am not saying anything.
I just quote Texts with parallels.
But I don’t truncate contexts.
What the Texts say, is that you cannot find a spiritual atta, impermanent and blissful, in the khandhas.
And there is something that exists (hoti, ) somewhere else, after the body breaks up.
That is what the Texts say.
I could care less about that atta-Brahma speculation.
These kinds of speculations are insane endeavours, says the Buddha.
No khandhas, no dukkha.
@greenTara It means Samyukta Agama (T.99) Discourse No. 104.
There are three main versions of Samyukta Agama: T.99 (SA), T.100 (SA2, BZA), and T.101 (SA3). Others are individual translations.
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No.
It refutes the idea that the death of a realized being means the annihilation of the realized one. The reason why it does not mean annihilation is that there is no truly existent referent for the term “realized being”. It is as empty of self as any other label we use for convenience. In other words, a search for “realized being” will come up empty. Since it doesn’t exist in a substantial way, but only as a conceptual convenience based on distinguishing between pre- and post-realization and imputing terms on this basis, it cannot be annihilated when death occurs.
This is much like the futile discussion of whether or not the universe is eternal. Searching for a substantial, truly existing referent for the term “universe” will turn up nothing. Consequently it is pointless to debate whether an it that cannot be found has a beginning or not.
The idea of a big spiritual self comes from misinterpreting the khanda consciousness as being truly existent. This can often result from deep meditative states, in conjunction with the lack of realization of the emptiness of consciousness, or simply from listening too much to advaita vedanta teachings.
There is no separate, unchanging, truly existing experiencer called consciousness. Consciousness is an abstraction, much like the word weather. The word weather refers to any kind of weather. Rainy, snowy, sunny, etc. While the term is abstract and can mean any kind of weather, actual weather will always be of a particular kind. The same is true of consciousness:
While consciousness refers to any kind of consciousness experienced in dependence on the six sense bases, the consciousness will always be of a particular kind. Pure consciousness is as meaningless as “pure weather”.
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I am going to use conventional, normal, everyday language to communicate with people. There is no alternative. What you say about the driver in the driver seat could also be said about the seat, and indeed about any noun whatsoever.
If you insist that I should stop referring to “we”, “me”, “I”, “you”, although I am fully aware of how I am using the terms, then I insist you stop using nouns altogether and refrain from speaking. Obviously this will be quite impractical for you.
If I draw a line across a sheet of paper, dividing it into two halves, I may call the first half A and the second half B. How do I know what A is? It is not B. How do I know what B is? It is not A. This is how language works, extremely simplified. We make distinctions and impute words on the basis of such distinctions, and this distinction making is part of the khanda called perception. In everyday discourse, it is practical to distinguish the physical form typing these words from the rest of subjective experience, and so I do.
This does not imply belief in a self any more than the term “it is raining” implies belief in a substantial “it” that does the raining.
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I’m not sure you can base this on the suttas entirely. Yes, there is a sixfold vinnana - but who says that in Pali ‘vinnana’ comprises everything we mean today with the multi-faceted ‘consciousness’ in all its abstractions?
jhanas for example are not well categorized by the suttas. The (unenlightened) experiencer of jhanas is not yet in arupa-ayatanas. Does it mean that jhana is a sal-ayatana experience? Or is an intermediate jhana-ayatana implied but not spelled out?
If it’s beyond the six sense faculties then there are more ‘consciousnesses’ than six (there are anyway as the arupas show - unless you squeeze any paranormal experience into manas). If jhana is within the salayatana then manas has a capacity that is not explicitly covered by the suttas we have.
And when the process of cessation is experienced, again: which ‘consciousness’ is experiencing it?
I’m afraid that only Abhidhamma covers these questions - because the suttas don’t (or at least not consistently). Which means we cannot easily say which ‘consciousnesses’ the suttas know and which not.
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Doesn’t manas simply contact dhammas? How is jhana not a dhamma? How is the field of infinite space not a dhamma?
I don’t think we can infer that just because the experience of infinite space is referred to as an ayatana/field that we can’t say that it is contained within the manayatanam/mind-field. I think the word ayatana is a bit messier in its use.
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I’m afraid there is nothing simple about it. Attempts so far have failed to show that there is a consistent logic behind the usage of manas, citta, and vinnana in the suttas - sometimes they mean similar phenonema, sometimes different, whereas citta and vinnana seem closer to each other than manas.
Somaratne writes here (p.185) that manas and vinnana are being “perfumed by citta” - as maddeningly poetic this is where we’d hope for clarity I’m afraid this really gets as concrete as the suttas are.
I don’t pretend to have a solution for that (because the suttas don’t), but understanding ayatana as locus of experience we cannot assume either that ayatanas are like babushkas: an ayatana within an ayatana within an ayatana. Nowhere do the suttas say that the endless-space-ayatana is within manayatana. A more simple reading (to me at least) is that leaving the salayatana results in reaching the ākāsānañcāyatana.
I don’t even want to go into the meaning of dhamma in this context. I am offended that the suttas use this word for the object of manas and don’t choose any other word from the rich Indian vocabulary 
- the upanishads for example use the much clearer saṃkalpa, i.e. saṅkappa (e.g. in BU 1.5.3, BU 2.4.11, BU 4.5.12) …
By coincidence I just happened to watch this the other day. I love the perspective it offers on dhamma. Dhamma as a tool to understanding things the way they truly are 
This is addressed in the first few minutes of the talk.
SN35.160-1 Samadhi and Solitude for Self-awakening: talk by Piya Tan
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I’m afraid there is nothing simple about it. Attempts so far have failed to show that there is a consistent logic behind the usage of manas, citta, and vinnana in the suttas - sometimes they mean similar phenonema, sometimes different, whereas citta and vinnana seem closer to each other than manas.
I think there is a similar ambiguity in the usage of the English words/concepts mind and consciousness except that we have the advantage of modern philosophy, linguistics, etc to hone in on more defined usable meanings. With Pali we are dealing with a dead thought world.
But all I’m doing is playing at apologetics by showing that there is leeway to chuck pretty much anything I want into the range of manayatana since dhamma is such a potentially broad category. In other words, it is perfectly conceivable that anything that can be experienced that does not partake of the first 5 sensory-fields would have been included under the sensory-field of the mind by the Buddha. It isn’t necessarily the case that this is so but it might still be the case.
Besides, there is one sutta I can cite which suggests that if the discourses on the 6 sense spheres and those on the arupas are not coming from two different schools of thought or one muddled thinker then the arupas must fall under the domain of manayatana.
At Savatthi. “Bhikkhus, I will teach you the all. Listen to that….
“And what, bhikkhus, is the all? The eye and forms, the ear and sounds, the nose and odours, the tongue and tastes, the body and tactile objects, the mind and mental phenomena. This is called the all.
“If anyone, bhikkhus, should speak thus: ‘Having rejected this all, I shall make known another all’—that would be a mere empty boast on his part. If he were questioned he would not be able to reply and, further, he would meet with vexation. For what reason? Because, bhikkhus, that would not be within his domain.” - SN 35.23
Somaratne writes here (p.185) that manas and vinnana are being “perfumed by citta” - as maddeningly poetic this is where we’d hope for clarity I’m afraid this really gets as concrete as the suttas are.
I tend to see the suttas as being at times pretty loosey-goosey with terminology. Presumably because that terminology was already being used in a rough, perhaps semi-nebulous, manner, or because the Buddha or the compilers didn’t see any need to be too analytical or rigorous in defining their terms, or both.
I don’t pretend to have a solution for that (because the suttas don’t), but understanding ayatana as locus of experience we cannot assume either that ayatanas are like babushkas: an ayatana within an ayatana within an ayatana. Nowhere do the suttas say that the endless-space-ayatana is within manayatana. A more simple reading (to me at least) is that leaving the salayatana results in reaching the ākāsānañcāyatana.
I’m not saying their is some babushka hierarchy of ayatanas going on, just that words can be used in different ways. If I said that a football field was in my field of vision that would make perfect sense but I wouldn’t usually speak that way. Instead I’d say I was at a football field and it would be implied that the football field was in my visual field, assuming the person I was talking to knew I wasn’t blind. I can imagine that it is similarly implied that if someone says they had been dwelling in ākāsānañcāyatana that they were having a kind of purely mental experience, that they were in contact with some dhamma via manayatana.
And again I’d refer to the sutta above to suggest that the simpler reading is to include ākāsānañcāyatana within manayatana unless we assume that the suttas on the arupas and those on the six sense spheres come from different authors or one muddle-minded author.
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When it comes to the ayatanas and manas-citta-vinnana there is indeed a lot we don’t know, either because of loose ancient concepts, lacking transmission or different interpretations on the way.
At least for ayatana it’s safe to say that it’s more specific than just ‘field’. Please see Gonda’s detailed treatment of the pre-Buddhist ayatana here. Unfortunately the Buddhist understanding of it is very crude. ‘Field’ is already better than the meaningless ‘base’. What is missing is that ayatana is a home-field, the center of my experience, where I rest and eat (in Buddhism of course metaphorically). The place I return to after a venture (to the objects).
That would mean that I don’t observe an ayatana (like I could observe a field). Rather from an ayatana I observe the respective object.
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Where did I say that ?
And the rest ?
My simple question to your cryptic answer is:
“Do you believe in existence after death” ?
And please, don’t give me that annihilationism vs. eternalism stuff as a counterproff. I have already covered that. And we are not talking about the “world” (SN 35.82) here, anymore.
I don’t know about “pure consciousness” ; but consciousness does take a lot of different substances, while “travelling” paticcasamuppada. And it has very little to do with a spiritual atta.
And consciousness is not circumbscribed to the “world”. Buddhism is not anglo sensationalistic empiricism. Might you want it desperately to be so.
Consciousness is ‘I’; I am conscious (it could be nothing else). My stream of consciousness seems permanent, but actually upon close inspection and greater samadhi, cracks appear, and arising and passing away is discerned; there is no stream of consciousness and nor any other kind of ‘stream’. Heraclitus the greek philosopher said ‘you cannot get into the same rive twice’, and he was hinting at not-self here, but of rivers!
with metta
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That’s great to point out to deepen our understanding of āyatana.
I think Bhikkhu Sujato has been translating āyatana as ‘dimension’, at least in the samāpatti’s. While that’s probably better than ‘field’; it doesn’t quite capture this other aspect you’ve highlighted (maybe ‘base’ is more to your point). Of course, translation is hard, and I personally can’t think of any word or phrase that would clearly bring all this meaning together.
Why would it be better,?
Field is closer to the oecumenical philosophical concept of “ground”, which seems to apply to ayatana.
And people will understand better “field”, than “ground”.
Really ?
There has never been an accurate translation of the fifth jhana in MN 59.
It looks like taboo among the empiricists.
Better to have these uncomprehensible translations.
While it should be the following (see the lexical notes at the end of the latter link) :
- sabbaso rūpasaññānaṃ samatikkamā,
- paṭighasaññānaṃ atthaṅgamā,
- nānattasaññānaṃ amanasikārā
- ‘ananto ākāso’ti
ākāsānañcāyatanaṃ upasampajja viharati.
- with the complete overstepping of perceptions of form (matter),
- with the vanishing of perceptions (based) upon the organs of senses (viz. ajjhattikāni āyatanāni [including mano]),
- not striving with the mind (manasa/mano) to perceptions of manifoldness (lit. (what is) differently than one),
- aware that ‘space is boundless,’
he attains and seizes distinctively, the field of boundless space.
The latter shows experiences out of matter and the sensory world.
With no Buddhist “I” (asmi’ti); but still with Buddhist consciousness (viññāṇa).
Right view is the “Four Noble Truths”: the only line of thought compatible with the most refined states of phenomenal cognition. Aj Thanissaro’s rendering of ‘Stress’ is useful in this third definition.
With the successive development of Right View, the path successively unfolds: to attain it’s successive development, the path has to develop as support. In one instance either one is the result of the other, in another instance it is the cause of the other. Hence clarity and skillfulness go hand in hand, ie. samadhi and punna need to develop as occasions present: either one sharpening-up the other.
Trying to see no-self begs the question of who or what is looking. In the perception of endless transience and stress, the complete absence of any unchanging eternal identity may be noted: simply a fresh identity corresponding to each successive observation. In D.O., contact with, or cognition of, an object results in the arising of a feeling. If attention turns to this feeling, it is understood to be a bodily sensation. Thus identity with the initial object won’t arise, though identity with the body may well do so: in which case Stress continues, and the whole tangle of Samsara ensues.
Since this happens unknowingly, the ‘unbinding’ is simply making this very unknowing fully knowable.
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