In chinese agama did buddha enter and remain in cessation of perception and feeling during paribbana?

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No problem! I think that happens when the server that runs the forum is being worked on. They leave it online while they work but stop people from posting for a bit.

I’m thinking it’s an odd translation for the abode of neither perception nor non-perception. A search for 不想入 in T5 discovers that it’s used three times, and the other two passages identify it as the highest of the heavens. At T5.167a4, there’s a list of heavens starting with the form realm, and 不想入 is the 28th, at the end of what looks like the four formless heavens (translated non-standardly):

第二十五名空慧天，第二十六天名識慧入，第二十七天名無所念慧入，第二十八天名不想入。

So, it really looks like a pre-nine-samadhis passage that was replaced later by everybody. Then, again, ~300 AD is fairly late in history. It may have been a minority version from one of the many obscure schools of Buddhism we know little about today. :man_shrugging:

That could be a fun dive into the Abhidharma ocean for a few days.

I haven’t looked at the alternate versions closely yet, nor tried to research academic opinions about what schools they belong to. I’m planning on taking a few months off from the translation project to do some of these types of really-interesting-and-really-time-intensive things. Right now, I’m knee deep in Buddhist cosmology (slogging through the hells – ugh!).

Right. The traditional story that developed, in which the Parinirvana Sutra plays a major role, Ananda didn’t become an arhat until after Mahakasyapa gives him a major upbraiding for being foolish at the end of the Buddha’s life (not getting the hint to ask for the Buddha to not choose Nirvana, failing to fetch him water, etc.). Crestfallen, Ananda retires to seclusion while Kasyapa convenes the first council to compile the tripitaka. Applying himself, Ananda becomes an arhat and returns to the council to recite the canon for them.

In that context, it makes sense that Ananda doesn’t know what is happening and needs to be told by an arhat like Aniruddha. Aniruddha plays an interesting role (to me, a bit humorous) in the sutra, telling people about hidden things he can see with his deva eye, like stopping the laypeople from holding the funeral right away because the gods have other plans.

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不想入 for the nevasaññānāsaññāyatana ? Have you seen that before? 不想, 無想, 無相, etc. are pretty standard variations on (a conflation already apparent in Indic sources between animittā cetovimutti and) saññāvedayitanirodha. I would say “odd” is being very diplomatic: if it’s a translation for nevasaññānāsaññāyatana, then it’s flat-out a bad one: it leaves out half the term.

Also, 無所念 is strange in any case as a rendering for ākiñcaññā: we should expect 無所有 (“absolute non-existence”) rather than 無所念 (“absolutely no thought”). It makes me wonder if something from what we would expect to follow (nevasaññānāsaññāyatana) slipped into the text: i.e., a scribal error combining previous and subsequent abodes. But who knows?

(Alternatively, there are places here and there–albeit not many–both in the Theravādin canon and others where meditative path/cosmology schemes appear which include saññāvedayitanirodha, but which leave out nevasaññānāsaññāyatana. Could this be one of those?)

Also, looking at the sentence you cited…

…when we examine the entire passage…

「我復上梵天、梵眾天、梵輔天、大梵天、水行天、水微天、無量水天、水音天、約淨天、遍淨天、淨明天、守妙天、近際天、快見天、無結愛天，諸天皆來視我，我悉問：『若寧知經不？』中有知經者，有不知經者，我皆為說生死之道，說斷生死根本之道，子曹所樂經者，我皆為說之。我效作天上衣服語言，餘四天，其天皆不能語，我欲上者，其天不能應答我；第二十五名空慧天，第二十六天名識慧入，第二十七天名無所念慧入，第二十八天名不想入。」

…we see that, where (according to a Theravādin cosmology, anyways) we would expect to find the abode of impercipient beings, asaññasattāyatana (i.e., the fourth jhāna; in bold in the block quote above)–that is, the abode of beings associated with saññāvedayitanirodha–there is no mention of any such abode. So where should those beings go?

All in all, to my mind the evidence…

  • the translation itself being a pretty common rendering of saññāvedayitanirodha (sort of!),
  • the fact that it comes last in the scheme,
  • the ill-fit of 無所念 as a translation for nevasaññānāsaññāyatana,
  • the fact that, other than here, I don’t see where asaññasattā would dwell, and
  • the fact that all other parallels support such a reading…

leans pretty heavily toward understanding 不想入as referring to saññāvedayitanirodha.

That being said, I agree that “the highest heaven” would indeed suggest nevasaññā-nāsaññāyatana, though we do have to keep in mind that we are quite possibly dealing with an alternative scheme which may have all or most of the same players, though perhaps characterized differently: meaning, they may have considered asaññasattāyatana to be the highest heaven. Why not?! Saññāvedayitanirodha is the highest meditative attainment! (It’s relegation to a role as a sort of fourth jhāna cul-de-sac by the Theravāda is, to me, a travesty.)

Yeah, at this point, I think assigning this text (this doctrine?) a place on the historical timeline is somewhat ill-advised. (I think you sensed that, too.) I’m sure you are already aware, but I did want to mention that 慧 for āyatana in the names of heavens is attested in very early
texts; meaning that these translations are perhaps not as non-standard as they may appear on first glance. (All the more reason to take 不想入 on face value, I think.)

Yes, in the end, all of this speculation, while perhaps valuable as an intellectual exercise, means next to nothing without knowing the school affiliation.

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Well, this is becoming a tangle of replies, so I’ll simplify with a general response, and hopefully I can be a little clearer.

The basic problem with trying to read the nine samadhis into the passage in T5 is that 1) it includes all the heavens, not just the form and formless heavens, and 2) T5 translates the fourth formless heaven with 不想入 in two other passages, making it clear that the passage we’re interested in is listing all the heavens from the four god kings on up and doesn’t mention a extra something that would parallel the samadhi of cessation.

I’ll briefly go over the two other passages T5, including the one I already cited.

The first one is near 164c14:

佛語阿難：「今佛年已尊，且八十，如故車無堅強，我身體如此無堅強，我本不為若曹說，無有墮地不死者，最上有天，名不想入，壽八十億四千萬劫，會當復死，用是故起經於天下，斷生死之根本。

不想入 is the “highest heaven that exists” (最上有天) where “beings live for 840 million? eons” (壽八十億四千萬劫). So, unless we believe there’s a fifth formless heaven, I would take this to be the same as the abode of neither perception nor non-perception.

The second one is near 167a4:

我效作天上衣服語言，餘四天，其天皆不能語，我欲上者，其天不能應答我；第二十五名空慧天，第二十六天名識慧入，第二十七天名無所念慧[1]入，第二十八天名不想入。」

Here, the Buddha refers to the “remaining four heavens” (餘四天) before listing them out as numbers 25-28. 25. is the abode of emptiness, 26. is the abode of consciousness, 27. is the abode of nothingness, and 28. is the abode of neither perception nor no perception.

Now, I should note a couple things. The passage hasn’t been preserved well, which often happens with these old Agama texts (and which makes them nearly unreadable sometimes). Notice how ayatana is “translated” as 慧天, 慧入, and 入? More than likely, this is the result of copyist errors building up over time. The Taisho note on the third abode is the Taisho editors deleting an extra 慧 from the passage found in several older editions.

So, it’s a damaged text.

Another thing to point out is that the third of the formless heavens gave Chinese translators difficulty. In DA, the abode of nothingness is translated as 不用處, which is equally awkward. I think the problem was they were trying to communicate the lack of mental activity, so they ended up with these translations like 不用 and 無所念. In T6, it’s translated as 無所用. So, it’s the abode of nothingness, translated in different ways. The context of the passages makes it clear, being in the third position of four and coming after space and consciousness.

Another thing I notice while searching for these terms is that T6 also uses 不想入 to translate the fourth formless heaven. At 188b19, the Buddha goes through the eight samadhis, and 不想入 is the last formless samadhi, not the samadhi of cessation. That’s translated instead as 想知滅之思惟, which is quite in line with the Pali and DA (思惟 here being equivalent to samadhi).

Anyway, this is the difficulty with Chinese Agamas when we wade out from the relative consistency of the four Agama collections themselves. The early translators were all over the place in how they translate different terms, and texts are badly corrupted on top of that. Which is why I try to be careful and find all the occurrences in a text to get a better idea of what was intended by a term. We’re lucky in the case of T5 that there are a couple other passages with good context to help us understand it.

Aside from all of that, though: It is interesting that there are these loose ends of non-perception abodes and heavens like the extra one added to the dhyana heavens in some sources or that extra ayatana in DN 15. It does make me wonder whether the fourth formless heaven wasn’t sometimes called the “abode of no perception,” but then it was changed. In DA, the fourth heaven is throughout called “abode with and without perception,” giving us yet another possible variation on the name. It’s just difficult for me to tell if it’s translators or in the originals. I wonder if some of the old fragments that exist might have variant names in them? Otherwise, I would assume it was Chinese translators struggling with difficult Indian concepts.

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Indeed. That may be at least partially my fault; I detest the internet as a medium of communication and will be the first to admit that I am right poor at communicating through it. I prefer the back-and-forth of natural dialogue, which I find difficult to reproduce online. We have to type for an hour to be fully explicit, send it off, and wait for a response to attain any level of clarity; whereas, in a conversation, a simple, “Wait. Do you mean… ?”, “No, I mean…”, “Okay. Got it. Continue, please.” would suffice. This can be irksome, especially when the issues of contention revolve around minutiae.

Also, this doctrinal point is connected to my dissertation, so I am really focused on it.

Yes sir. Got it. I’m with you.

It certainly appears that way.

I think this is a legitimate point.

Thank you for pointing that out; as I said, I had never seen it translated like that before. So, as you pointed out above concerning 不用處 and the rest: this term, too, gave Chinese translators difficulty–not just within the conflation of animitta cetovimutti and saññāvedayitanirodha, but it seems also in distinguishing the latter from nevasaññānāsaññāyatana. I did not know that. Thank you.

No, sir; the asaññasattāyatana being located in the fourth jhāna heaven is not limited to DN 15, this is standard Theravāda doctrine here, there, and everywhere. This is why this passage excites me so: it’s the first (possibly) alternative cosmology I’ve seen.

This is my original point, stated in reverse, which may not be applicable to this particular passage, but is still something worthy of consideration.

Thinking_About_Cessation_The_Phapalas.pdf (1.9 MB)

Starting on about p. 27, Daniel Stuart gives some cross-traditional evidence of just this sort of conflation between these two adjacent levels in the early traditions. I believe this passage is an example of just such a conflation.

So, then, based on your evidence, please allow me to refine my stance: this is neither cessation nor is it the fourth formless heaven; strictly speaking, it is a conflation of the two, which may indeed be due to…

…but which the paper I attached above causes me to think was perhaps a doctrinal ambiguity imported wholesale from India.

Thank you, @cdpatton . In Japan, I would say, “ありがとうございました、ぎょうさん話してくれたた、お疲れさまでした,” which basically means, “Thank you for speaking so long and in-depth with me: I received much from it, and I apologize for having exhausted you.”

Hey, fun fact: “Thank you!” or “Arigatou” actually is a Buddhist term. It means, “I express gratitude for this good fortune because I realize there was a great difficulty (ありがとう(有り難う)) in this service you’ve done me coming to fruition.” It’s a reference to the difficulty of the blind turtle in the sea and the life preserver metaphor. (Or at least so I was told.)

In any case, “Thanks!”