Did the Buddha say that?
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Of course we can not really confirm it people can still say that buddha is a fictional character for example and even if he is real because we don’t live in that age and hearing directly what he said we can only makes an assumption that the suttas is right
Which suttas? I may miss the information!
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Sn12.61
But an uneducated ordinary person would be better off taking this body made up of the four primary elements to be their self, rather than the mind. Why is that? This body made up of the four primary elements is seen to last for a year, or for two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or a hundred years, or even longer.But that which is called ‘mind’ or ‘sentience’ or ‘consciousness’ arises as one thing and ceases as another all day and all night. It’s like a monkey moving through the forest. It grabs hold of one branch, lets it go, and grabs another; then it lets that go and grabs yet another. In the same way, that which is called ‘mind’ or ‘sentience’ or ‘consciousness’ arises as one thing and ceases as another all day and all night.
SuttaCentral
It seems that buddha implied that there’s no consciousness without object, consciousness always arise due to object grasping, nibbana is where consciousness don’t arise again due to no grasping to anything
I think we find the jhana formula too here that as long as we grasp to sense objects or sense pleasures we can’t grasp jhana pleasures so we need to let go of sense tree in order to grasp the jhana tree
While the nibbana formula is when we don’t grasp any tree forever
Just because something seems trivial does not mean it´s easy to see. Quite the contrary, long-term commitment to seemingly trivial and simple things takes a lot of guts and perseverance. But that is what this practice is mostly about, in my opinion.
Can you please show me where in this discussion I can find this “dogmatic text-adherence”?
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Ask yourself a question like: Where am I now?
The answer would be, I presume: I’m here!
Try to ask the same question every minute through a single day and in any activity or space/place.
The answer will always be: I’m here!
And the sense of being here is always exactly the same. Not a person, not a physical body, and none of the six senses.
Here is all there is. If all of us were to answer this question simultaneously, it would be: I’m here!
Look or dissolve silently into that “here”, and I doubt if you can find any person present, other than presence, - awake and fulfilled.
So, where has everybody gone, when they all said they were here?
This investigation I would also present to the professor. There is no need for Jhana or psychedelics to be here.
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That’s a common neo-advaita practice. Is there a link to the suttas?
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Why do everything need sutta reference ? Can not we admit that even a buddha can do wrong too ?
Because this site is devoted to the idea of the Early Buddhist Texts/Teachings, which implies that anything which claims to be Buddhist must be verified by being found within the Early Buddhist Texts.
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That’s reality as I know it. Maybe it is said somewhere in Lord Buddhas teachings, and maybe not. What is said in many suttas is “know”, and knowing happens only here and now.
There is not much to argue against ‘Dhamma is here and now.’ as Buddha did say so.
While the significance lies on what the heart inclines to when being in the presence (excluding nibbana).
heart inclines inwardly - one will inevitably fall into a deep meditative state.
heart inclines outwardly to sense sphere - it is as if animal in hunting.
Imo, it is a defilement .
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Could you elaborate on the specifics of this defilement?
What might be a defilement of mine is that I have come to understand that aware consciousness is always in a state of meditation …?
Sorry, dbl post …
I found the posts in this thread by @RickRepetti very interesting and thought-provoking. I was originally wondering if the St. Patrick’s Cathedral referred to was the one in Dublin (being from that part of the world) but, seemingly not, and there must be many of these of the same name in the US! 
Anyway, there were some underlying assumptions being made in some of this argumentation that I wonder are actually necessarily implied by the suttas.
I tend in this direction. Anatta is a denial of the atta or atman, but what exactly is being negated is not entirely clear to me. I don’t tend to interpret it as no-self. Some kind of process is implied I think (and at least the process must exist). Denial in the suttas seems to equate (as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread) to saying that it is not permanent, not satisfactory and that one doesn’t have control over it (not that there isn’t such a process per se). Or maybe it is about realizing the dependent nature of this process.
Of course, anatta is a metaphysical assertion (Advaita and other systems would say there is a permanent satisfactory self). I think I’m in a similar boat regarding Buddhism. I am very sympathetic towards it, enamoured with it etc. but at this point I don’t know if its fundamental assertions are true.
Also, IMO the nature of jhana and its exact relationship to and function in the path is not that clear in the suttas (and I’m not going to get into “jhana wars” territory here ). However, perhaps one relevant point is that the association between insight into anatta and jhana is not particularly strong in the suttas.
There are two clearly described moments of insight in the stages of enlightenment, the “opening of the Dhamma eye” at stream-entry and the final realization of the arahant: “Destroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more for this state of being.”
Insight into the self/anatta (dependent origination/four nobles truths) is described as coming at the very start when the fetter of sakkāya-diṭṭhi and the other two of the three fetters are overcome. There’s a good argument that this does not necessarily require being in jhana at all. The essence of this argument is that the definition of samma samadhi as the four jhanas is primarily a Pali canon feature, which does not really occur (except perhaps in one or two places IIRC) in the Agamas, and that virtually every case in the suttas where someone realizes stream-entry or where the Dhamma eyes opens is during a Dhamma talk by the Buddha or one of his disciples (where a talk brings a listener to a state of mind free of hindrances that is “ready, malleable, unhindered, uplifted and trusting” and makes the “breakthrough to the Dhamma” from there). Analayo makes a good argument to this effect here: https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/pdf/5-personen/analayo/definitionrightconcentration.pdf
The practice of jhana may well possibly make this leap much more likely, but it’s not clear that this leap itself is actually made from jhana.
For the next stages in the path, once-return and non-return, I don’t recall any accounts of insight/realization experiences associated with these (am not ruling these out but I can’t recount any). These stages seem more defined in functional terms by the permanent overcoming of coarse forms of craving, sensual desire and aversion. There are descriptions of non-returner lay followers as being celibate and clothed in white. These stages don’t seem predominantly defined by experiences/realizations in altered states but by whether such desires have partially (once-return) or fully (non-return) ceased. This probably wouldn’t be hard to mistake (given how powerful sensual/sexual desire is in human nature). If such a thing is possible, it would likely need a very powerful tool to accomplish (jhana?). There certainly seems a strong association with jhana in the suttas with non-return and above.
After the initial insight into the four nobles truths of stream-entry, much of the path seems to be about putting this key realization into practice, and putting in effect the cessation of craving, starting with the coarser forms and leading onto more refined forms.
I have wondered that perhaps rather than as a platform for realization, the role of jhana is 1) to first provide a more wholesome more spiritual alternative to worldly sensual pleasures, and then later 2) to allow the practitioner to see the unsatisfactoriness of even these sublime states and for disenchantment (nibbida) with regard to these to develop and then craving for such states to be abandoned. I guess this applies even more to arahantship, which involves the abandoning of even very subtle remaining cravings. Presumably, these cravings are so subtle that it needs a practitioner to be in a sublime state like jhana to really even experience these. I guess disenchantment involves seeing that impermanence, unsatisfactoriness etc. also apply there (a practical realization of anatta in more and more refined contexts).
I’m not sure that jhana necessarily by itself will lead to non-self realizations. Supposedly, the Buddha’s teachers, Uddaka Rāmaputta and Ālāra Kālāma were able to attain very sublime states all in pursuit of the atman, and had no such non-self realizations either prior to or during such jhana states.
I wonder whether the idea was to take this initial deep non-self realization (possibly not even initially occurring in jhana) and then later successively apply this realization to jhana states to develop dispassion even towards these and cessation of associated craving (rather than jhana as being the primary tool to realize non-self in the first place).
Of course, the next question is what is the nature of this initial non-self “opening of the Dhamma eye” experience? How does one go beyond belief to some kind of experiential knowing (some realization of the dependent nature of what we call the self) and the permanent end of all doubt? Can it be trusted? Does it arise from an elimination of all alternatives (an investigation of all aggregates of being, looking there for evidence of the atta, something permanent and satisfactory and controllable) and not being able to find it? Personally, I’m open to this concept, but, of course, it’s also possible there is some kind of permanent satisfactory core to reality. 
Going looking and not finding does not necessarily mean something does not exist (like being not able to find St. Patrick’s Cathedral I guess ). Or perhaps if one searches every possible place something could be and doesn’t find it, then perhaps it does? I don’t have any real answers here!
I agree to an extent. However, the Buddha in his old age suffered from back pain and other ailments (apparently without being able to eliminate such unpleasant vedana/feelings, though I guess he could still dip into jhana and similar states to set aside such uncomfortable sensations). His body too became old and frail so something similar probably applies to the aggregate of form. Of course, in some spiritual systems this is supposedly possible (immortal Taoist sages and the like) with the self able to control the physical body (that’s not really the Buddhist model though). And if the self is purely mental (and not meant to be able to control the physical) then I guess it’s not really much of a self in the first place.
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Anatta is an anti-metaphysical statement. If there is nothing that has the properties of permanence, happiness or selfness, then any self/soul-theories that posit something permanent, happy or selfy, are wrong
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Excellent observation. The Buddha clearly implied that these two yogis taught him how to attain two different jhana states and that their (this) approach was insufficiently transformative for attaining enlightenment (as if analogous to transient intoxications that leave you as is when they fade). The tradition suggests his addition of sati (smrti) to these forms of samadhi constituted the Buddha’s meditative innovation over that of the yogis, the combination of which seemingly led to his enlightenment. Whereas samadhi slows or stops the mind, sati allows it to move, with attention—a middle way between stopping thought and being lost in it.
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Excellent points. I agree wholeheartedly. I have nothing to add.
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Sure, I think that what you say would hold for a simple denial of self/atta/soul, and Buddhism definitely does have significant anti-metaphysical tendencies.
If one dismantles St. Patrick’s Cathedral brick by brick, then what is left? However, this strikes me as the kind of denial that an atheist might equally as well make if denying a soul or metaphysical self. “What is this nonsense about a soul? When all the atoms of my body have been dismantled, well, where is this supposed soul?”
However, in Buddhism, this denial does come with strings, e.g., presupposes some kind of very persistent multi-life process, kamma etc. So what’s the difference between an atheist’s denial of self/soul, which I will concede is clearly anti-metaphysical, and a Buddhist’s? I think the key difference is dependent origination. Buddhism is both denying self/soul while at the same time still assuming the presence of a certain number of more traditional self/soul-like characteristics. Yes, it is a denial, but one with qualifications. If there is metaphysics, then IMO it comes attached to these qualifications. To go back to the metaphor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, when this is dismantled, in the context of dependent origination, then that’s not the end of the matter (there is a process that may lead to the arising of another cathedral).
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Could you tell me what this cathedral thing or simile is all about ?
I keep hearing people referring to cathedral but I don’t know what they are talking about
It just makes me more confuse
It was something mentioned in the OP that I took up and ran with a bit. I guess the metaphor represents a certain type of argument or thought experiment where one looks at reducing something to its basic constituent components. One can try to apply it to notions of self and draw a parallel between St. Patrick’s Cathedral (and its bricks and mortar) and the self. Does St. Patrick’s Cathedral have a permanent immortal essence? Where is it when one removes all its bricks? Does the same apply to the self? Or what happens if one gradually replaces all of its bricks and other components over time with similar but different ones? Will it still be the same cathedral?
This is the basically the Ship of Theseus. Though, a more modern and funnier version of this comes to mind. There’s a British sitcom called Only Fools & Horses, which has a character called Trigger. This character had a broom, which he amazingly kept in continuous use for 20 years (of course, the reasons for this are funny and much the same as this Ship of Theseus conundrum ):
Some ideas like this do crop up in the suttas. The following from SN35.246 comes to mind:
"Suppose, bhikkhus, there was a king or a royal minister who had never before heard the sound of a lute. He might hear the sound of a lute and say: ‘Good man, what is making this sound – so tantalizing, so lovely, so intoxicating, so entrancing, so enthralling?’ They would say to him: ‘Sire, it is a lute that is making this sound – so tantalizing, so lovely, so intoxicating, so entrancing, so enthralling.’ He would reply: ‘Go, man, bring me that lute.’
"They would bring him the lute and tell him: ‘Sire, this is that lute, the sound of which was so tantalizing, so lovely, so intoxicating, so entrancing, so enthralling.’ The king would say: ‘I’ve had enough with this lute, man. Bring me just that sound.’ The men would reply: ‘This lute, sire, consists of numerous components, of a great many components, and it gives off a sound when it is played upon with its numerous components; that is, in dependence on the parchment sounding board, the belly, the arm, the head, the strings, the plectrum, and the appropriate effort of the musician. So it is, sire, that this lute consisting of numerous components, of a great many components, gives off a sound when it is played upon with its numerous components.’
"The king would split the lute into ten or a hundred pieces, then he would reduce these to splinters. Having reduced them to splinters, he would burn them in a fire and reduce them to ashes, and he would winnow the ashes in a strong wind or let them be carried away by the swift current of a river. Then he would say: ‘A poor thing, indeed sir, is this so-called lute, as well as anything else called a lute. How the multitude are utterly heedless about it, utterly taken in by it!’
Though, in Buddism, while the atta is being denied, this is being done in a context where, I think, some other things are being positively asserted, i.e., the cathedral/being can be dismantled/dies but, by cause and effect (unless the causes are cut off), that will lead to the later reassembling of a new cathedral, which is somehow linked to the old (that makes a rather awkward metaphor but that’s more or less what’s being implied I think).
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