i was wondering if someone can experiemce the same Nibbana while one is alive as what happens to an arahant after death. would it be nirodha samapadi?
Yeah, the nearest “experience” in this very life to nibbāna without remainder is the saññāvedayitanirodha or, if you like, nirodha-samāpatti, but this last term is less attested in the Pāli Canon. Also, the nirodha is the nearest state to death, but there’s differences explained by Sāriputta in the Mahāvedalla-sutta.
whats the difference? so is it exactly the same? so if someone touches Nirodha Samapati then they know what happens to an arahant after they die?
In the Mahāvedallasutta the differences between saññāvedayitanirodha and death state are explained in these terms (english translation by Bhikkhu Sujato):
“What’s the difference between someone who has passed away and a mendicant who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling?”
“When someone dies, their physical, verbal, and mental processes have ceased and stilled; their vitality is spent; their warmth is dissipated; and their faculties have disintegrated. When a mendicant has attained the cessation of perception and feeling, their physical, verbal, and mental processes have ceased and stilled. But their vitality is not spent; their warmth is not dissipated; and their faculties are very clear. That’s the difference between someone who has passed away and a mendicant who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling.”
The saññāvedayitanirodha is similar but not exactly the same of nibbāna without remainder, for in this all khandas cut off, without the possibility of rearising in future, while in the nirodha are “desactived” only the mental khandhas, but the rūpakkhandha still works, even if with a slowing of vital processes. There are texts, indeed, that speak even of the suspensions of breathing.
About the “state” of an arahant after death the Buddha refused to answer, rejecting all the logical possibilities of the tetralemma: after death an arahant exists, doesn’t exists, both exists and not exists, neither exists nor not exists. However, because the nirodha is very similar to the nibbāna after death, I think that a practioner reaching it knows well what attends him after his death.
1 Like
thank you for the detailed answer. that is very kind to share it. i appreciate it
May I ask, I have a question which is hars to put into words. I have in mind the Buddha’s simile of the far shore. The stream enterer who hasn’t reached nirodha, but had a taste of freedom after jhana lets say and knows where freedom lies. Buddha called it happiness of Nibbana? that had a taste of nibbana? Knows where Nibbana lies? I wonder if the one who knows where Nibbana lies but hasn’t reached it, how it actually differs. if that makes sense? The stream enterer doesn’t know what Nibbana is experientally (hard to find a word as obviously no experience with regards to Nibbana…) YET they had a taste and Know . The simile of far shore.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure of understanding properly your question. According to Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga, the nirodha is reachable only by anāgāmi and arahant fully skillful in jhānas. A sotāpanna, following this restrictive interpretation of Buddhaghosa (who, as far I know, hasn’t a foundation in Pāli Canon), could never attain nirodha, but is in the stream leading to nibbāna at most in seven lifes and so, if in future he becames an anāgāmi or arahant, and developes the full maestery of jhānas, can surely aspire to reaching the nirodha.
About the relationship between jhānas freedom and that of nibbāna, I think that this last it’s totally other from the first one: the nibbāna is not a jhānic state, for this is in any case a conditioned state, a compunded state, while the nibbāna is defined as unconditioned: the only unconditioned recognized by Theravāda tradition. In the Paṭhamanibbānapaṭisaṃyuttasutta the Buddha alludes to nibbāna, refering to it as tadāyatanaṃ (that sphere or dimension), in which there aren’t - among other things - the four superior jhānas and so, presumibly, also that inferiors. This mean exactly that nibbāna isn’t a state of concentration, as far sublime, as the case of jhānas. Consequently, the happiness too of nibbāna is totally different from that mundane, as which of jhānas is.
2 Likes
Really? Where does it say that?
Visuddhimagga, XXIII, 18 (english translation by Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli):
(ii) Who attains it? (iii) Who do not attain it? No ordinary m en, no stream- enterers or once-returners, and no non-returners and Arahants who are bare- insight workers attain it. But both non-returners and those with cankers destroyed (Arahants) who are obtainers of the eight attainments attain it. For it is said: “u nd erstand ing that is mastery, owing to possession of two powers, to the tranquilization of three formations, to sixteen kinds of exercise of knowledge, and to nine kinds of exercise of concentration, is knowledge of the attainment of cessation" (Patis I 97). And these qualifications are not to be found together in any persons other than non-returners and those whose cankers are destroyed, who are obtainers of the eight attainments. That is why only they and no others attain it.
2 Likes
Oh okay thanks, I was thinking of “fruition attainment” in paragraph 6 which is (apparently) a different attainment.
1 Like
which is (apparently) a different attainment.
Yes, that is different: phala-samapatti (fruition attainment with (pre-determined) duration) vs. nirodha-samapatti (attainment of cessation). To make it confusing, fruition (phala-ñana) is sometimes also referred to as “cessation”.
1 Like