Sure is effective counter to grasping or craving for continued existence isn’t it! 
With respect to our sense experiences it is literally true, and that’s what the teachings are about and pointing to for the sake of Dhamma practice in the suttas previously cited.
The “outside” world, whatever it may be, is not directly experienced and cannot be truly known –
but this is not necessary for practicing the Path to liberation.
It helps to differentiate these.
In deep dreamless sleep there is a reduction of suffering as there is a temporary suspension of consciousness of the five senses. The sixth sense, the mind sense, is also less active and that, too, is associated with less dukkha in deep sleep. But because this is not liberation it is impermanent, so it ends and there is the re-arising of the dukkha of the wakeful states. In this way, even deep sleep remains a form of dukkha, due to its impermanence and conditionality and because the underlying defilements have not been extinguished.
Uh oh, you mean millions of Buddhists have been basing their practices on falsehoods and oversimplifications for 2500 years!?
Should the suttas and teachings say what we want them to say?
Well, we agree that the Buddha was not concerned with clinging to views and endless philosophizing. Do you have any views/perspectives about self, “me” and the validity of the teachings in the suttas that you’re clinging to?
As non-arahants we all do, to some extent, and that’s for each of us to work on, to see through them and let them go. Yes?
Regarding the various forms of “me/self” you may wish to read and contemplate DN1 in which many and various views of “me/self” are shown to be based on speculation, none of which are conducive to liberation.
Instead, the 4NTs and DO represent core aspects to be comprehended for the sake of letting go of all greed, anger, and ignorance → nibbāna, the cessation of all dukkha.
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The Teacher would agree that the khandas are not you! Neither in whole or in part can you find the self in the khandas. That self can’t be found in the khandas, not distinct from the khandas, nor can it be found by taking the khandas as a combination. The khandas are void, hollow, insubstantial just like the self. How can you find any true thing in such a mass of insubstantial voidness? If you can’t find a self in the khandas where in the world can you find a self?
Should be noted that @Green is not a Buddhist by own admission and has a strong sense of self. In this regard, it probably should not surprise that some suttas would present problematic readings for them. May kindness and good will prevail.
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Thanks, Yeshe. I didn’t know that.
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You say that with respect to our sense experience it is literally true that all what is impermanent is suffering, but, i personally do not feel this. Do you? Why does the Buddha teach this while people do not feel it this way that the impermanence of pain is suffering, or the impermanence of illness and ignorance. Why does the Buddha teach things? What is the reason?
Now you begin to contradict yourself. Now you suggest that suffering does not rely on our sense experience but one can even suffer while being totally unconscious and having no sense experience?
I believe it is also not true that in deep dreamless sleep there is an awareness of mental objects (sixth vinnana’s). There are no active vinnana.
I gave reasons for what i say. You ignore them.
But, yes, i feel that when people really reduce their lives, or who or what they are, to 5 khandha’s or some stream of vinnana’s, conscious moments, that is, for sure, a simplification, a choice, a perspective.
Also, our behaviour also does not solely rely on vinnana. Such as breathing, heartbeat, all kinds of molecular processes, reflexes, eye movements, other movements, etc etc.
For some behaviour vinnana is secundairy and is behind the facts.
I tend to believe vinnana only creates stories about why we do this and that, given a sense of control and wisdom, but cannot penetrate the real causes which lie hidden for vinnana.
If the teachings say that the moon shines, are you now firm to believe the moon shines?
If the teachings say that there is something like being born of moisture, do you really believe there is something like that? If the teachings say that humans came on Earth due to formless beings liking some surface substance on the Earth which they start licking, do you feel this must be true and make all ideas about evolution mere phantasies? The Buddhist know the real cause?
As I wrote the mind has not ceased in deep sleep, and being conditional and impermanent, dukkha is not extinguished.
Even if true, the mind is still active and present, as detected on EEGs in deep sleep. So, see above.
No, I just don’t agree with them.
But they don’t. They are fundamentally teachings about skillful ways for beings to be liberated from all dukkha.
As we practice and test them out, we confirm their truth and efficacy.
I’ve been informed you don’t practice Buddhism, which is of course up to you.
If this is true, what are the bases for these discussions from your standpoint?
I’m not accusing, just asking.
This is the brain that is being measured not the mind and I thought you said the Teacher only cares about what can be experienced? Do you have personal experience or knowledge of actual experience during deep sleep? If not, why assume it anymore than assuming rocks and such?
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Hello Venerable!
Yes, that is a very different usage but it also elaborates quite extensively on what you say should be taken literally. Your contention is that if we add a lot of unstated context that you insist should be added, then we can take the sentence “form is suffering” literally in your preferred manner. Your argument thus boils down to “the context that I prefer to add” is the correct one while “the context you prefer to add” is the incorrect one. Furthermore, you seem to imply “the context that I prefer to add” should be straightforwardly assumed so that you may say that your contention is a literal reading. I think it more straightforward to admit that neither of us take a literal reading and would add our own preferred context.
You may be correct that the context you wish to add is correct and the context I wish to add is incorrect, but I fail to see why adding craving and grasping to the context is invalid.
It seems you are committed to seeing the aggregates as suffering in the absence of craving. This may work wonders in the short term on giving up craving for existence, but it will also lead to aversion towards continued existence and thus craving for non-existence. The Teacher said many times that both need to be given up.
Alternatively, seeing that craving for the aggregates leads to suffering, dispassion for the aggregates can arise. Not aversion. With dispassion comes neither craving for continued existence nor craving for non-existence. The Teacher taught many times for dispassion towards the aggregates not craving or aversion.
Seeing the aggregates as substantially existent polluted things that need to utterly cease is incorrect. No such utter cessation of substantially existent polluted things is possible. Dependent upon the belief that it is possible for substantially existent polluted things to cease, the craving for the utter cessation of substantially existent polluted things will arise. This necessarily leads to continued suffering.
No, form is impermanent; form is not-self; form is completely insubstantial, void and hollow. The form aggregate - like all the aggregates - are completely insubstantial, void and hollow. Suffering is likewise impermanent, not-self, and completely insubstantial, void and hollow. What benefit can come from grasping and craving after such frivolous, trifling, hollow things? It is the craving after and grasping at such frivolous, trifling, hollow things that leads to suffering.
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What you said is:
Do you now claim that while deep asleep you still have conscious experiences belonging to the mental sense, such as the awareness of arising ideas, plans, thoughts?
Just admit…there is no conscious experience, no vinnana.
The way you approach it implies that even while under full narcosis there is suffering. I think this makes no sense.
By the way, i read that 1 up 1000 person remain conscious while showing all physical signs of being under narcosis. The prof says that those people can also give reliable testimonies of what happened during narcosis. I do not know always, but they can. A Nightmare like situation.
Mind and vinnana just cannot be the same. Maybe i may live the day that you are happily to admit:-) Then i spontaneously start levitating and enlighten all world-systems
I read it somewhere
Trying to find what makes sense
Ain’t we all though?! 
Again I am struck by the similarities between Buddhism and ancient Gnosticism.
The Gnostics held that conditioned reality was basically an accident or flawed creation by an ignorant God (which in Buddhism could easily be paralleled to the figure of Mara). They then taught that the strategy was not escaping from, but indifference to the conditioned reality, while keeping to strong ethics (again the Silas make complete sense when looking at them in this way).
They believed in an unconditioned part within us, a divine spark trapped in the conditioned reality. This can be equalled to Buddha nature or some of the more liberal interpretions on Nibbana.
The way I see it, the only hinderance to interpreting Buddhism as a Gnostic system is the rigid intepretation of Not-Self. Which makes one think if that modern interpretation of this doctrine is correct? Because with a more liberal interpretation, all the well known philosophical contradictions between the doctrines dissolve to thin air … 
Not advocating this view here. I am not a teacher
You lost me here. The Teacher did not teach that conditioned reality originated or was created by Mara. Glossing some suttas in such a way strikes me as inappropriate and not beneficial.
I’m just not aware of any suttas in the Pali canon that would in any way warrant this kind of interpretation or reading.
I don’t know what this means. The fact that we can find no self when analysed is one of the defining seals of Buddhism. Any kind of ‘ism’ which purports to identify a self that can be found under analysis or one that equates a “true self” as some kind of greater being or nibbana would seem to fail that defining seal. It just isn’t Buddhism or what the Teacher taught to my mind.
Maybe even more important to my personal practice - I’ve looked and have so verified what the Teacher has said - I too cannot find any self under such analysis. I can’t find any “true self” whatsoever which gives me confidence that the Teacher was right in what he said. I’ll keep looking and hopefully one day know for myself with certain knowledge.
I wasn’t assuming that this was your view.
But I am not completely concinvinced that such a line of thinking does not appear in the Suttas. Take, per example, the appearance of Brahma in MN26. His begging the Buddha to keep teaching would make very much sense in a Gnostic context.
The divine spark would not be a “true self”, rather something impersonal.
I know very little about Gnosticism so I can’t say much about it. What purpose or benefit do Gnostics gain from believing or assuming like this? Does it help in aiding dispassion for what the Gnostics call ‘conditioned reality’? Is it possible to find such a ‘divine spark’ when it is looked for and analysed? If not, then what benefit comes from assuming it?
Yes, assuming it and only tending to it served as their justification for the dispassion towards created things.
They believed that when they died they would eventually be united with this unconditioned element.
Views varied on how much effort should still be invested in worldly or “conditioned” goals. Some held that this was most important, while others were even complete ethical libertinists.
It was not taken to be identical with the mind, and it can not be completely extrapolated from mind and spirit. It’s a “soft voice from within”.
Good point. I was too loose with the word mind.
Let me try to summarize:
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In the suttas the Buddha taught that the All and the World were what we experience through the senses and the aggregates and also as the very existence of these conditional processes.
In other words, conditional existence as a conditional being, (as in DO, DN15). -
Whatever the world or reality outside of the six sense fields may be, it cannot be directly experienced or known, so it remains speculative and so this aspect is of no concern with respect to understanding the 4NTs, DO, and other aspects of the practice that leads to liberation, which is what the teachings are for.
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When the six senses temporarily cease, as in saññavedayitanirodha (and less likely in deep dreamless sleep), there is temporary absence of one kind of dukkha, as in SN45.165:
"The suffering inherent in painful feeling; Dukkhadukkhatā.
However, when the āsavas and defilements have not yet been extinguished, the other two types of dukkha remain:
"…the suffering inherent in conditions; and the suffering inherent in perishing; saṅkhāradukkhatā, vipariṇāmadukkhatā.
So we can’t limit dukkha to just the six senses in the human realm – I mean the Buddha taught about formless realms in which beings are pure awareness. But it’s still conditional and impermanent so: dukkha.
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Another way to look at it is existence in any form is fundamentally dukkha. So whatever impermanent state one may be in, even one temporarily free of the senses and pain, is still at least the second and third kinds of dukkha. BTW, the last type has also been translated as “dukkha of impermanence.”
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So, the six sense fields for humans are the All, the world, the being in the human realm, so to speak. And they are fundamentally forms of dukkha. But that doesn’t mean all dukkha has fundamentally ceased, as for beings without five senses, as above, or when they are temporarily in abeyance.
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Also, the Buddha taught that the ending of rebirth was the final ending of dukkha after an arahant’s last death. I think we agree on this. So, whatever state one may be in, even with the temporary ending of one kind of dukkha, if there hasn’t been full awakening, then there will be rebirth and the continuation of saṃsāra. Dukkha.
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In the suttas, all we can know and work with to end dukkha are the six senses and the aggregates. It’s amazing that processes that are fundamentally dukkha can use processes that are skillful to ultimately lead to their extinguishment!
Ramana Maharshi said it was like the stick that stirred the fire until it was itself consumed.
More could be said, but that’s a brief summary.
Happy to have feedback, (although I’m not so interested in getting into various details about pinning down exact philosophical meanings of “existence” and “beings”, etc. I’m using the functional ways these terms are used in the suttas. Or, at least trying to! 
).
First you say this:
Then you say this:
Sounds like dukkha.
But, also see my reply below to @yeshe.tenley
Thanks for sharing.
The main feedback I can give is that believing:
Sounds like a recipe leading to the craving for non-existence. This craving for non-existence leads to dukkha. The non-existence of what? The aggregates which we’re taught again and again to generate dispassion for - not aversion. Striving after the non-existence of the aggregates is to strive after the cessation of what is already completely insubstantial, void and hollow.
In this thread it isn’t even clear what people mean by the aggregates. The form aggregate is at various times alluded to in this thread as matter and energy, the physical body, the experience of the physical body, the experience of other forms that are not the physical body, etc. Defining rupa as experience seems to conflate it with feeling/contact/perception/consciousness and is not stated in the suttas from what I can tell. So what substantial thing exactly ends?
The experience of the physical corpse does not end with paranibbana even if you define it as physical form that is experienced: the physical corpse is carried to the grave and sentient beings use it for food which again is experienced. So what truly ceases?
Yes, I know we agree to disagree, but then you said you wanted yet more of my worthless feedback! But in seriousness, apart from any philosophical debate about “existence” or “beings” and so on I do fear that craving for true non-existence will lead to suffering as it is not possible to accomplish.
Moreover, why should I even care that the aggregates cease? They are not myself. They are not mine. What business do I have worrying about the future of these completely insubstantial, void and hollow aggregates? Why should I generate any passion for whether they continue or cease at all?
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But it isn’t and doesn’t have to be.
Reversing it, believing that the senses and aggregates are free of dukkha can easily lead to craving for existence and desire and/or a lack of motivation to be utterly free of them.
As I mentioned earlier, in the suttas aversion is a hindrance based on ignorance. It is not the same as nibbidā, saṃvega, and virāga , which arise through seeing into the three characteristics and other forms of wisdom.
See SN for the Khandhavagga.
Not by the viññānasota (DN15) or the new being that arises with rebirth. This sounds like you’re projecting from your current wakeful being-state.
If you accept rebirth are you aware of the body that died 100 years ago in the last life?
Sure. Thanks. The convos on this forum can be interesting and sometimes clarifying. I know I’ve learned from some of them and I’m grateful.
Because the Buddha says they’re dukkha – as cited in many suttas.
Because if we’re not arahants we cling to them and perpetuate rebirth and saṃsāra, says the Buddha.
This question wouldn’t come if they’re understood as dukkha. Kinda the point I was making above.
In SN22.31 the Buddha says the aggregates are misery and doesn’t qualify it as requiring desire.
Same in SN22.19.
Same in SN22.15: "What arises and ceases is only suffering; Dukkhameva uppajjamānaṁ uppajjati, dukkhaṁ nirujjhamānaṁ nirujjhatī.
And others.
Just saying…
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