Latest Scientific Knowledge & Sarvastivadins

Yeah, I can’t get onboard with this. Floating pink unicorns could be knowable in principle. The son of a barren woman on the other hand… :joy: :slight_smile:

But this gets into what a non-affirming negation is which requires some substantial (pun intended) knowledge of the structure of logic.

:pray:

Yes, this is one of the “explanations” monastics will often give to people who are skeptical or curious. I would add to the camp you mention people who who do not deny rebirth, but wonder how it is possible for such a thing to happen after death without a kind of self or substance that continues. I have heard even from very learned Buddhist or Pāli scholars at least imply that they think Buddhist texts ultimately deny rebirth with the more advanced teaching of anattā, because such a thing is impossible without a self. It seems they tend to say that all of those teachings on kamma/rebirth are merely for ignorant lay people to get them to be virtuous. I think this is a gross misunderstanding, but it does shed light on the mentality.

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Non biological son, or cloned from the DNA of the women, or the ovum got used but for another woman’s womb. depending on the nature of the barren. Could be that the ovum of other woman used for this woman’s womb.

I meant the kind of floating pink unicorns that vanish from knowability every time you point the mind towards them, but that otherwise exist.

If there is something that has the characteristics not to arise and cease and change in the meantime, like me :blush: what does your reductive analyses tell you about this?

Yeah, that well could have been me. When you insist that there is nothing after parinibbāna I’m afraid you’re making a substantialist argument. You think that something true and substantial ends with the parinibbāna of an enlightened one - the five aggregates.

Ask yourself why is it that your “spidey sense” tingles when you hear this denial of the substantial existence of the aggregates. What error results? I think you’ll find that it makes it much harder to continue to conceive of Nibbana the way you do and that is why you don’t like it.

There was a reason why the Teacher both said we should view the aggregates as completely void, hollow and insubstantial and to try not to cling to concepts of Nibbana. I know you profess to be very very sure or your conception, but maybe just maybe that is clinging? Only you can decide. :pray:

:rofl: I think you get the idea :wink: :pray:

It’s not from this. As you quoted the sutta, there’s no controversy in 5 aggregates are insubstantial, but there’s no justification to apply the 4 fold exist or not exist onto them.

As you readily admit, they are insubstantial because they are conditioned. When something is conditioned, and the conditions are gone, completely without arising again, then that thing also ceases, completely without arising again. This applies to the 5 aggregates at parinibbāna.

I think a good example from this forum is of the stream of water, or a sore knee.

Say that certain conditions are in place for a stream of water to flow from a spout. Then the conditions change, the stream stops flowing. Was it annihilated? Was the water destroyed? Did it cease to exist?

Or a sore knee. When the pain, the dukkha, subsides, was something destroyed, obliterated, annihilated?

I’m not claiming these are perfect analogies, but they seem applicable to a certain degree.

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I do so admit. However, I think this is constantly happening and not just at parinibbāna. Nothing substantial ceases because nothing substantial ever arose. I’d also admit that Shakyamuni is gone, but if I look around I see the appearance of aggregates galore and beings cycling. :joy: :pray:

What if it completely dries up, the banks erode, the country side changes and then the rains come and a stream of water arises again? Is it the same stream? Different? Both the same and different? Neither the same nor different? What are the banks? What are the droplets of water? Is it different drops? The same? And on and on we go… :pray:

I’d call the plumber!

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It is enough that something insubstantially ceased because it insubstantially arose and their insubstantial causes ceased.

Because you haven’t die as an arahant yet.

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Seems to happen quite a lot when I look out my window :joy: :pray:

I can’t find anything that has such characteristics my friend. :pray:

The difference in parinibbāna is, that all conditions (ignorance, craving, clinging etc) that can cause arising again are gone for the arahant, so at death, the 5 aggregates don’t arise again.

Yes, I know you keep saying this, but I get the sense that you still believe those 5 aggregates are substantial. I could be wrong as I don’t know your mind.

The aggregates are merely labeled and dependent phenomenon. The same five aggregates never arise and cease. They are constantly changing as the conditions that cause them constantly change. :pray:

Sorry Venerable I don’t know what you’re trying to say with that one. I don’t perceive that I have any realizations :slight_smile: :pray:

Dunno mind is good. I learn this from Zen.

But you know Buddha talkes about asankhata which has these characteristics and also must be known.

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