You can superimpose these verses
There’s no fire like passion,
no loss like anger,
no pain like the aggregates
Natthi khandhasamā dukkhā ,
no ease other than peace.
Hunger: the foremost illness.
Fabrications: the foremost pain.
saṅkhāraparamā dukhā
For one knowing this truth
as it actually is,
Extinguishment
is the foremost ease.
nibbāṇaparamaṃ sukhaṃ.
“Why now do you assume ‘a being’?
Mara, is that your speculative view?
This is a heap of sheer fabrications:
Suddhasaṅkhārapuñjoyaṁ
Here no being is found.
“Just as, with an assemblage of parts,
The word ‘chariot’ is used,
So, when the aggregates exist,
There is the convention ‘a being.’
“It’s only suffering that comes to be,
Suffering that stands and falls away.
Nothing but suffering comes to be,
Nothing but suffering ceases.”
You’d get something like this
“Why now do you assume ‘a being’?
Mara, is that your speculative view?
This is a heap of foremost dukkha:
Here no being is found.
“Just as, with an assemblage of parts,
The word ‘chariot’ is used,
So, when the unparalleled dukkha exist,
There is the convention ‘a being.’
I think it answers your question.
You ought to be phrasing the question differently;
Did the Bodhisatta, on the night of his great awakening, not escape suffering?
The answer is that he did. By turning his mind away from the constructed and towards the unmade, the stilling of all constructions, cessation, nibbana.
This was his awakening based on which he proclaimed the highest bliss and the escape from dukkha
There is the case where a monk, with the complete transcending of the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception, enters & remains in the cessation of perception & feeling. This is another pleasure more extreme & refined than that. Now it’s possible, Ananda, that some wanderers of other persuasions might say, ‘Gotama the contemplative speaks of the cessation of perception & feeling and yet describes it as pleasure. What is this? How can this be?’ When they say that, they are to be told, ‘It’s not the case, friends, that the Blessed One describes only pleasant feeling as included under pleasure. Wherever pleasure is found, in whatever terms, the Blessed One describes it as pleasure.’" Bahuvedaniya Sutta: Many Things to be Experienced
There is, bhikkhus, that base where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no air; no base consisting of the infinity of space, no base consisting of the infinity of consciousness, no base consisting of nothingness, no base consisting of neither-perception-nor-non-perception; neither this world nor another world nor both; neither sun nor moon. Here, bhikkhus, I say there is no coming, no going, no staying, no deceasing, no uprising. Not fixed, not movable, it has no support. Just this is the end of suffering.
Nibbāna Sutta: Parinibbana (1)
*There is, bhikkhus, a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-conditioned. If, bhikkhus, there were no not-born, not-brought-to-being, not-made, not-conditioned, no escape would be discerned from what is born, brought-to-being, made, conditioned. But since there is a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-conditioned, therefore an escape is discerned from what is born, brought-to-being, made, conditioned. Nibbāna Sutta: Parinibbana (3)
The way you speak about things ‘having an essence’ or ‘not having an essence’ is somewhat suspect to me because this is not sutta method of talking about things. I’ve seen it come up in other posts of yours. If i was your teacher id want to correct this.
As to the question
How can literal suffering turn into anything called bliss or happiness or escape?
The constructed element doesn’t become the unconstructed element, dukkha doesn’t become sukkha. Rather dukkha ceases and that cessation is discerned as the unmade & highest pleasure.
Suffering is dependently arisen.
When causes are eliminated dukkha vanishes and this is possible because there is also an unmade truth & reality.
Nothing of this world/reality comes out. One meditates and suddenly the world disappears as if a rug is pulled out from underneath you, darkness disappears.
That which changes disappears and there is ‘discernment’ of what doesn’t change as it persists and it is indescribably beautiful & peaceful because there are no constructs, no threat, no impermanence, no parting, no aging.
It is just unparalleled peace and lack of existence of any kind.
A person might want to think of becoming a god, or a king or a mighty hero or whatnot. But not being anything is supreme to these states. It’s not ‘nothing’ like the atheist conception of non-existence, rather it is closer to an infinite potential for being anything you’d want and this ‘state’ surpasses any existence.
