No, there is no mind or body in Nibbana. Nibbana is a state where the cycle of rebirth has been stopped. There is nothing left after Nibbana. If Nibbana is something then desire and craving can appear towards it. In jhana state, there is no mental defilements, but because jhana is a type of citta, we can get attached to it.
So what is it that experiences Nibbana? Can’t be nothing!?
Verse 21. Freedom Is Difficult
Heedfulness is the Deathless path,
heedlessness, the path to death.
Those who are heedful do not die,
heedless are like the dead.
Explanation: The path to the Deathless is the perpetual awareness of experience. The deathless does not imply a physical state where the body does not die. When an individual becomes totally aware of the process of experiencing, he is freed from the continuity of existence. Those who do not have that awareness are like the dead, even if they are physically alive.
Verse 23. Freedom Is Difficult
They meditate persistently,
constantly they firmly strive,
the steadfast to Nibbana reach,
the Unexcelled Secure from bonds.
Explanation: Those wise individuals who steadfastly practice meditation, reach a level of understanding that enables them to experience Nibbana. Those wise individuals who unceasingly continue in their meditation, firmly and steadfastly, experience Nibbana, which is the supreme release from all bonds.
http://www.buddhanet.net/dhammapada/d_heed.htm
Amata (immortal): Nibbana, the ultimate goal of the Buddhists. This is a positive term that clearly indicates, nibbana is not annihilation or a state of nothing, as some people tend to believe. It is a permanent, immortal, supramundane state that can not be expressed in worldly words.
http://www.acessoaoinsight.net/dhp/dhp2.php#N1
Of course people say “What’s the point of this if it’s just going to end and you’re going to go ‘poof’ and you’re gone? I don’t want to go”. Why don’t you want to go? Because you think you’re still there. What are you hanging on to that you don’t want to leave? Nibbana? What have you got a vested interest in? What do you think you own? Who is the owner which you’re not willing to recognise as emptiness?
Ajahn Brahmavamso - Using Non-Self to let GO
when I’m a bit depressed, I think nibbana is a very depressing thing.
Nibbana is the denomination for the transcendent and singularly indescribable liberation that is the final objective of the teachings of the Buddha
Acesso ao Insight - Budismo Theravada - nibbana
The argument against annihilation is that annihilation is defined based upon a concept of a being or self, and since there is no being in the first place, Nibbana is not annihilation.
On the other hand, Nibbana is (annihilation) cessation of the formations of physical and mental formations.
Experience is conditioned, Nibbana is unconditioned. Nibbana is elimination of tanha, if it is some kind of happy place then how can tanha be eliminated. Any physical and mental formations are object of tanha. Therefore logically there is no formation of physical and mental after parinibbana.
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It is very clear that Nibbana can be experienced in the here and now under the sutras. So are you saying Nibbana can’t be experienced?
The thing that can experience Nibbana is not Nibbana itself, it is the magga and phala citta of an Arahat. Those cittas are still conditioned and will cease to exist.
I find the suttas treatment of such questions very elusive and hard to pin down. There probably isn’t a clear or consistent ontological answer in them.
I’m not sure though about your assertion about being a wrong premise the statement “The Arahat exists before parinibbana”. MN 2 speaks of a living arahant having, in a sense, become “untraceable”:
“Bhikkhus, when the gods with Indra, with Brahmā and with Pajāpati seek a bhikkhu who is thus liberated in mind, they do not find anything of which they could say: ‘The consciousness of one thus gone is supported by this.’ Why is that? One thus gone, I say, is untraceable here and now.
Up to then, in the terms of the suttas, Brahmā, other devas and the Buddha himself, could trace the new destination after death of a particular person (such questions about destination are often answered in the suttas). That no longer holds for an arahant even in life. Is that non-existence? I’m sure that necessarily holds.
In the SN Nidānavagga (SN 12), there are lots of references to penetrative insight into dependent origination resulting in such questions as:
“is suffering created by oneself?’ or ‘Is it created by another?’ or ‘Is it created by both?’ or ‘Is it created by neither?’”
or
does all exist? … does all not exist?
becoming irrelevant to the person, and of the dhamma itself being a kind of middle way avoiding such extremes of view: “without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma by the middle”. Generally in the suttas, there’s a remarkable, and slightly frustrating, lack of interest in such questions. On a few occasions, they almost get ontological, but not in any really clear or consistent way.
In the suttas, getting insight and vision into dependent arising (or similar equivalent insights) is what settles (or perhaps make irrelevant and uninteresting) such questions, e.g. SN 12.20:
"When, bhikkhus, a noble disciple has clearly seen with correct wisdom as it really is this dependent origination and these dependently arisen phenomena, it is impossible that he will run back into the past, thinking: ‘Did I exist in the past? Did I not exist in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what, what did I become in the past?’ Or that he will run forward into the future, thinking: ‘Will I exist in the future? Will I not exist [27] in the future? What will I be in the future? How will I be in the future? Having been what, what will I become in the future?’ Or that he will now be inwardly confused about the present thus: ‘Do I exist? Do I not exist? What am I? How am I? This being – where has it come from, and where will it go?’
“For what reason [is this impossible]? Because, bhikkhus, the noble disciple has clearly seen with correct wisdom as it really is this dependent origination and these dependently arisen phenomena.”
But IMO that’s about as close to an answer as we really get.
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The sutta distinguish between aggregates and aggregates subject to clinging, which suggests that “non-clinging” aggregates continue for an Arahant. So it is the taints that cease for an Arahant, not the aggregates. The aggregates are just a model of experience.
https://suttacentral.net/en/sn22.48
What do you mean by “parinibbana” here?
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Indeed. I still find the suttas quite ambiguous.
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So it is the mind that experiences Nibbana…just as Dhp 154:
O house-builder, you are seen! You will not build this house again. For your rafters are broken and your ridgepole shattered. My mind has reached the Unconditioned; I have attained the destruction of craving.
This is where things gets very interesting. If the mind can reach the unconditioned, how then can it cease to exist? This is not possible because in that dimension it is permanent…suttra calls this as consciousness beyond the ALL.
DN11…
Consciousness without feature,
without end, luminous all around:
Here water, earth, fire, & wind have no footing.
Here long & short
coarse & fine
fair & foul
name & form
are all brought to an end.
With the cessation of [the activity of] consciousness
each is here brought to an end.
This one and the its parallel the Channa sutta are quite helpful:
“This world, Kaccana, for the most part depends upon a duality—upon the notion of existence and the notion of nonexistence. But for one who sees the origin of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of nonexistence in regard to the world. And for one who sees the cessation of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of existence in regard to the world". SN12.15
with metta
I think the Buddha talks about the wrong view of atta here and since the wrong view of atta has been destroyed there is no notion of a permanent atta (existence) or a non-permanent atta that ends after death (non-existence).
Citta is not a permanent thing, it is like a vibration, appears and disappears multiple times per second. They appear caused by a condition: kamma. Nibbana is unconditioned, neither comes from a condition nor a condition for something else. The citta can take Nibbana as an object, but the citta itself will disappear.
Aggregates are not a permanent thing. The aggregates that appears now is not the same aggregates that appear 1 second ago. That is why it is said that the being called the Arahat does not exist since there there is no permanent aggregate that stays the same between the Arahat in the past, present, and future. Nibbana on the other hand, is permanent. It is permanent since it does not depend on a condition.
So something permanent ( Nibbana ) is experienced by something impermanent ( aggregates )?
The unconditioned is experienced by the conditioned?
PS I realise the word “experienced” might be problematic here.
To be more specific Nibbana become the object of the magga & phala cittas. Maybe experienced is better used to refer to nirodha samapatti where the mental formations ceased temporarily. Of course these are the method found in the Visuddhi Magga, not in the Tipitaka, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t agree with it.
"Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them. AN3.65
Nibbāna is unconditioned; it is a state defined by the absence of the defilements/fetters (kilesa/saṃyojana) and most importantly, of dukkha. An existence free of dukkha (i.e., Nibbāna) is an existence of happiness and “bliss”—due to an absence of conditions, not, with how it is commonly misunderstood, as having added conditions (Nibbāna being “an absolute blissful and esoteric state”).
The goals of the teachings (Nibbāna) is solely to put an end to suffering. However, with the defilements (saṃyojana) being conditions for rebirth, rebirth does not take place for one who has reached Nibbāna, being that the uprooting of the defilements were required to put an end to suffering.
Like the Buddha was asked, it can be (wrongly) interpreted as though reaching Nibbāna is “missing out on your rebirth.” However, this an incorrect way to see things, as rebirth is not reincarnation, but it is simply that conditions in this life are needed to give rise to a new birth—like the seed from a fruit growing into a new tree, only 1% of you goes from one life to the next.
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Therefore , it is eternal state that exists after dissolution of the five aggregates , if I understand you said correctly .
It depends whether you interpret “unconditioned” as a noun or an adjective.
Nibbana is not interpretable , indescribable, afaik .
either it’s
1 = a state or 2 = non state .
Or
Neither ?