OK. I must’ve misinterpreted what you were saying when you were talking of ‘home’. If what you call ‘home’ does not exist (has no continued existence) then, we’re good. You call it ‘home’, I’ll call it ‘cessation’. For me ‘home’ sounds like a continued existence, it sounds more like ‘Heaven’, so ‘cessation’ is clearer for me.
Oke. I do not accept a mere cessation is really possible. Our lifes cannot be reduced to nothing, i believe.
Even when all cools down or becomes cool at the death of arahant, that does not imply a mere cessation, a reduction to nothing. Become cool is not the same as ceased, i believe. The sutta’s for a reason do not never say that all ceases. They also seem to avoid this idea. There is, i think, no sutta’s that literally says that all ceases at the death of an arahant, or??
I believe…down to earth and rational as i am… when all grows cool or becomes cool in parinibbana that means that one is home in the intelligent ground one always was in deepest sense.
I believe Christians call this home with God. It is not really a union of a me with God nor a merging with the absolute. It is more like this that the natural result of all becoming cool, reveals to be this unborn intelligence. It shows, i believe, that all life is based upon and routed in the deathless. It cannot end.
I do not believe that Buddha really meant that since time without beginning we have been individual unique lifestreams flying from here to there. More like currents, streams, in a universal field of intelligence. And when these currents become cool that field does not cease.
Now you are also all-knowingly wise 
I’m a bit confused by your double negative here, but the suttas sure do say that all ceases. For example
This is the all: sn35.23
This is it ceasing: sn12.1
And Iti44
What has nothing left over
pertains to what follows this life,
where all states of existence cease.
That was indeed a wrong typo of me. I meant…the sutta’s do not say all ceases at the death of an arahant or Tathagata. This is invented.
Our experience of the world seems to be totally dependend on how many senses we have, the make up of our senses, the speed in which the nerves carry signals and the brain which processes them. Neurological science has all made this very clear. We know that our-world is merely a perspective, a certain representation that arises through the combined workings of senses, nerves, brain and mind.
(some believe mind plays no role at all)
I believe the Buddha only means with the All sutta: The world is always our-world like Kant also said.
When i first realised this, I was really shocked. This had such a deep effect on me. In some naive sense i always believed that what I see is just what there is, one on one. I was so shocked to know this is not really true.
The world is always a thing-for us, a world-for-me, for how my senses, brain, nerves, mind, constructs it to be. And we do not know the thing-an-sich. But ofcourse, when you become blind it does not mean that the world is suddenly without the trees you saw, the people, the clouds etc.
And if people were in the past not able to even think about Higgs particles or black holes that does not mean that it does not exist.
So, Buddha defines the All as the phenomenological world, i feel. The world-for-us.
This is merely taking a perspective that is helpful in this goal of ending suffering. Like @Jasudho also says. The causes of suffering and the cessation is in our-world, in how we perceive it, how we understand it.
Although this is not really true because there are also external conditions leading to suffering, the goal of buddhism is not really to change the world. The disadvantages to identify all causes for suffering internally are also great. Because then one tends to become passive and also does not develop right knowledge about the real causes for disasters, illnesses, death, misharvest etc. and one tends to see this all as kamma-vipaka, as fate, as will of God, etc. Humanity does not become wiser to see it like that. Suffering does not end.
I appreciate the ideas your share with us, Bhante.
Have you noticed that you’re holding an empiricist position about knowledge?
What is your ground to hold that we only know things that are available to our six senses, and that everything else is just speculation?
Isn’t just as speculative to hold that our senses tell us absolutely nothing about the world?
On what ground can be hold that our knowledge build from the data of our six senses and the world (as it actually is) have little relationship between them, if you hold that what lies beyond our senses cannot be known?
My problem with empiricist positions is that they level all constructs to mere mental constructions, making unicorns just as valid as rock and tables.
Basically, everything is speculation unless it was said by the Buddha or compatible with or inferred from those statements; every other position beyond those need justification, but not the Buddhas.
Why is this set of statements and positions free from the status of mere mental constructions? Is it because they work for what they seek to acheive (liberation from suffering)? If we’re taking that position, then we should be available to affirm that scientific ideas should also be considered outside the category of mere mental constructions, because they work amazingly in predicting facts and in manipulating the world.
I’m not attacking the faith in the Buddha: I also have faith. However, sometimes it seems kind of convenient to me to not hold our view unaccountable just because we have faith in them. I’m just trying to say that if everything is a mental construct, then our buddhist ideas also are; and if they are deemed more than mere constructs, then there could be other sets of ideas that also possess the same features.
And, in a final note, I think that empiricism is not compatible with a view that interprets the Buddha as holding metaphysical positions, and not just pragmatic views (as I interpret Ven. Thanissaro’s views).
Kind regards.
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But the suttas say that everything ceases (so the six spheres cease, and they are all that exists.) Let’s say you assume some kind of higher citta. Can you think about it? can it be realized? that means it is the object of perception of the mind, the sixth door. And so with everything else that is conceivable, cognizable and imaginable. Whatever you imagine, whatever subtle form of being you imagine, it must somehow be realized through the mind (how else?), and therefore enters the category of the six spheres as an object of the mind.
There is no sutta that says that the cessation of the six sense sphere is non-existence or some absence, or that there is no mind or knowing at all. At this moment i do not have the references but there is also a sutta’s that clearly says one must not think about the cessation of six senses as some black out or some state of unconsciousness, non-existence of mind or knowing.
By the way, vinnana’s arise in mind. So, the end of vinnana’s, like in deep sleep, under narcosis does not mean that mind is ceased too.
I am quit sure the sutta’s always talk about 6 sense-vinnana as a knowing via the six senses which always relies on engagement (MN28) from anusaya with sense-object. Sense objects just trigger certain drifts, inclinations, tendencies to arise in the mind. Attenttion directs towards that sense object and contact happens. These 6 sense vinnana that arise this way, are always a knowing that is directed upon a sense object. It cannot be seen as otherwise then being a directed knowing, or a knowing with a direction.
Did the body teach this is all knowing there is? No. He teaches the undirected, the uninclined. The real nature of mind when all engagement due to asava, anusaya is gone. That moment mind or knowing becomes without direction. It never jumps from this to that sense-object. There are no eye-ear…mind catching moments anymore now.
Sensing in a defiled mind always describe an eye-, ear-,…mind caught moment. At a certain moment mind becomes fixed upon something particular and that is called a sense-vinnana and sense contact and perception and feelings arise too.
In fact is it also not mind that really grasps or inclines towards something that causes a stirr in the mind (sense-object). Also this is merely conventional expression. Mind cannot really grasp. Mind is always only empty and cannot do anything else then to know.