These rules are not realistic. In a realistic scenario the child would budge for something other than the promise of ice cream.
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I don’t think so. Buddha repeatedly tells he has no real stake if people accept his teaching or not. If people follow it, it’s no pleasure to him. If people reject his teaching, it’s no burden on him. He literally says he doesn’t care.
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Imagination is a wonderful thing 
You don’t want to answer the hypothetical because you wish to believe the world is such that no consequence of suffering could ever come from a mendicant with defilements ended not being able to tell a deliberate lie. I understand why you wish to believe this. 
The Teacher does not care and has no compassion for sentient beings?? If everyone suffers indefinitely he literally does not care?? There is no supreme altruistic wish to lead countless others from suffering??
I am once again shocked by this thread 
Having compassion is one thing, feeling pleasure for their success / sadness for their failure is another. Compassion drives him to teach. Whether people accept it or not, he’s beyond satisfaction or remorse over such things. He has no stake in lying or any capacity for it. Whatever he sees, he explains. No more, no less.
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Alright, well thanks for relating your view that doesn’t avoid the hypothetical. The child would die by being burned alive and you believe the Teacher would sit silent and watch. I cannot agree.
Ud 5.5:
when a training rule is laid down for my disciples they wouldn’t break it even for the sake of their own life.
P.S. I consider the hypothetical you presented to be impossible. There are certainly better examples that would be trickier for me to respond to. (Maybe the one with the nazis visiting a house where some are hiding.)
On a different note, the Buddha also doesn’t use his powers to save whoever is about to die a preventable death wherever they are in the world.
Nor for the sake of anyone else’s life even if by breaking it they save others from suffering with zero selfish intention? Sounds an awful lot like hardening of the heart in order to adhere to so-called “right view” to my limited mind.
The reason this simile breaks down is because it goes against the heart of the teaching, that is we’re the heir of our kamma. As long as your only incentive to go out of the fire is because of ice cream, and not recognising the fire, you’ll always be in fire. Buddha would keep telling the child there’s fire, that it burns, he would explain it in similes explaining how the child is going to suffer.
But he did not budge the dhamma, bend the dhamma, that’s not what he did. To suggest otherwise is to make light of the teachings and his attitude, I think. It doesn’t matter being outside, eating ice cream (there is no outside except when one recognises fire for what it is).
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This looks like you are backtracking to call into the question the hypothetical itself rather than your previous straightforward answer. The hypothetical can be amended to meet your objections and still the choice would remain. If the child dies in the fire he is reborn for eons in the lower realms versus if the enlightened one tells them that ice cream is outside, they will have the chance as the child grows into an adult with intellect, to instruct them in the teachings so they they become a once returner. Still you say the enlightened one would be silent and let the child die doomed to eons in hells?
Yes, I understand why you wish to believe this. It makes things neat and tidy and categorical.
Tell me, what do you think is the supreme and perfect motivation for not breaking a training rule? Also, do you think “the sake of their own life” is such a motivation? Is that the zenith?
Thank you I understand why you wish to believe what you believe, and I think both of our opinions are reasonable.
I think the supreme motivation for not breaking a training rule is for monastics to not do any bad kamma. [edit: and whatever positive outcomes come out of that, including getting closer to the realization of Nibbana.]
AN 2.18:
I absolutely (ekaṁsenāhaṁ, categorically) say that you should not do bad things by way of body, speech, and mind.
Again, there are other ways than lying to reach the good outcome.
It seems from your edit that “not to do any bad kamma” is not the motivation in and of itself, so what are “positive outcomes?” In this case we are talking about an enlightened one so “getting closer to the realization of Nibbana” would seemingly not enter into it.
A few side issues or related content to consider:
- If I am not mistaken, Jātaka stories have plenty of examples of bodhisatvā sacrificing his life for the sake of others. But there are no stories, as far as I know, of arahants sacrificing their lives for the sake of others.
- On the other hand, the Buddha did deliberately go to where Angulimāla was and used psychic powers to “out run” him and thereby “save” him.
- Finally, powers of an arahant are not fathomable. Thinking that they will use only logic to get out of a conundrum is not reasonable. The problem persists as long as we only use usual logic to solve the problem. What an arahant does or does not do is not predictable in that sense because we have very limited information compared to an arahant.
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Yes, sorry, I had shifted the subject because of the quote from the Udana referring to training rules for the Buddha’s disciples.
In the case of the arahant, I simply think they are unable to lie, and have no attachments to the world which would compel them to lie.
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If this is true, then either my hypothetical or something like it is impossible or dependent upon this inability as a condition, tremendous suffering of others may arise.
I once read somewhere that in Theravada Buddhism a Bodhisattva is considered someone who wants to attain Buddhahood. Does that make sense?
Yes.
I remember the example of nanda with Buddha.
The Buddha promised nanda heavenly girls if he live the holy life well. Then nanda used it as motivated, got laughed at, then practiced until arahanthood and released buddha from his promise. Buddha said, the moment nanda attained arahanthood, he is already released from the promise.
But in a sense, there’s no lie too as one possible reward of the holy life is indeed heaven.
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Yes, this is usual. When sincere practioners want to give asankhata a place in Dhamma, they are accused of doing something wrong. But Buddha teaches asankhata and the Path is explained in the sutta’s as the Path to asankhata. Many sutta’s teach there is that what does not arise, cease and change in the meantime. And it is exactly this to where the Path leads. It is called the stable, the constant, the unmade, the not-desintegrating etc.
Some still do not believe there is something like this, while the sutta’s teach it. Or they believe that the situation of a mere cessation after a last death, resulting in nothing remaining, can be understood as a state that is stable, not-desintegrating and even as happy…tja…
But if one takes asankhata to heart, how can one be blamed for doing so? It happens all the time but there is no reason for doing so.
And asankhata is not the same as a doctrine of eternal atta nor a doctrine of eternalism.
That is not true. Vinnana was sometimes seen as eternal and like a soul going from life to life.
I do not see why peope who give a real meaning to asankhata are constant to blame and subjected to an ednless stream of critique. There is no reason for doing so but emotionally. I hope this can be taken to heart.