Can you find that in non-Mahāyānika sources, though?
I recommend The Essential Shinran by Alfred Bloom as a source.
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So I suppose the answer to the above is no, then?
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I am not able to quote Shinran from my phone. Maybe later.
Oh no, I meant in reference to the request it be found in non-Mahāyānika sources.
MN64 tends to support what @kensho posted, provided that one understands doubt to be something which obscures Nibbana:
The Buddha said this:
"Ānanda, take an uneducated ordinary person who has not seen the noble ones, and is neither skilled nor trained in the teaching of the noble ones. They’ve not seen good persons, and are neither skilled nor trained in the teaching of the good persons.
Their heart is overcome and mired in identity view,
and they don’t truly understand the escape from identity view that has arisen.
That identity view is reinforced in them, not eliminated: it is a lower fetter.
Their heart is overcome and mired in doubt,
And MN121 is similarly suggestive in its post-enlightenment practice:
Whatever ascetics and brahmins enter and remain in the pure, ultimate, supreme emptiness—whether in the past, future, or present—all of them enter and remain in this same pure, ultimate, supreme emptiness.
So, Ānanda, you should train like this: ‘We will enter and remain in the pure, ultimate, supreme emptiness.’
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Thanks @karl_lew for getting us back on the track of EBT’s
It’s a good time for a reminder that the focus of this forum is EBT’s, and also that it is not a place to try to convince people or to argue about relative merit of views.
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In the EBTs, Nirvana is presented as sort of an abstract concept, not easily relatable to everyday life. What if one could, as a skillful device, relate with the reality of Nirvana in personal terms?
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I relate to Nibbana in terms of the experience of deep stillness, and sometimes in terms of the experience of space.
I find it helpful to think of Nibbana as continuously present, but usually obscured by taints and defilements. Hence the idea that it might be closer than we generally assume.
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This is pretty close to the way I usually like to consider Nibbana, since I come from a mathematical background: as the ultimate empty set, ∅={}. Everything conditioned can be thought of as sets of elements (I mean “elements” here as in the “member of the set” mathematical meaning) with subsets. For instance, there’s the set of elements that make up “Acalaa”, and some subsets of that include the hair of the head, hair of the body, nails,…
Over and over we hear how the experience of Nibbana is that state where we just don’t perceive any conditioned things and perceive only the unconditioned. This is the similar to taking a set and removing all of its elements. Eventually you get a set with no elements; that’s the empty set, Nibbana. The thing is, the empty set is a subset of all sets. It’s always there, hidden deep in any set. No matter how you union, intersect, or disjoin sets, it’s always there as a subset.
Training myself to perceive and appreciate this empty subset is what the training is all about to me. One by one, I’m learning to relinquish elements on a mundane level, but it takes some rather intensive meditation practice to actually perceive things falling away or just not being. I may not get to that point in my lifetime, but I know it is possible.
To answer the OP, though. The null set has no intention, it can’t reach out for you (although it is already in you) but I think it could be entirely possible that a even a puthujana could experience Nibbana unexpectedly. The problem is that in the context of a puthujana’s mind, it would most likely provoke a psychotic break. At least half of Buddhist training is trying to groom the mind to appreciate the end of all suffering and cope with the absence of the khandhas there; if one is still attached to suffering and the khandhas as many puthujana are, such an experience could be utterly traumatic, much like how a drowning person fights the water.
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Actually, the suttas do in fact promote this. Consider MN1, with the famous:
Relishing is the root of suffering
This is an advanced sutta, but even here one can and should apply personal experience to verify the Buddha’s statement. For example, when I look back at my life experience and all my attempts to relish without suffering, I see that they have all failed and ended in suffering. The suffering may not be tremendous or sharp or dramatic, but it is always there. Relishing ice cream and gorging on an entire carton clearly leads to suffering. And although this ice cream example is quite contrived in its simplicity, the truth it embodies echoes with all my engagements with relishing.
To know the reality of Nibbana requires an understanding of suffering, not just the experience of suffering. And that understanding has to be personal. It has to be personal, because “tasting Nibbana” actually requires relinquishing identity view (i.e., the personal). Clearly that would be distressing personally.
Therefore, tasting Nibbana has to be approached in a bit of a roundabout manner, first proving to ourselves that lessening identity view lessens suffering.
So as you study the EBT’s, practice and relate them to your personal experience, you should experience the “Nibbana trailer”…“coming soon! the end of suffering!”. You should experience less suffering.
In other words, by studying the EBT’s and practicing, one’s suffering would lessen. I certainly have found so. Therefore I keep studying and practicing. And the reality of Nibbana in exact equal measure reaches out to support that study and practice.
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By relating to Nirvana in personal terms, I meant conceptualizing and depicting the reality of Nirvana anthropomorphically.
You are making nibbana out in your own form, so to speak.
then they identify with extinguishment, they identify regarding extinguishment, they identify as extinguishment, they identify that ‘extinguishment is mine’, they take pleasure in extinguishment.
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The statue of a Buddha symbolizes the reality of enlightenment that he embodies and exemplifies. By taking refuge in the Buddha, we take refuge in his enlightenment. This has always been the case, whether we are speaking of the historical Buddha or Amida Buddha.
Why not use the Buddha for that? I mean, you could use a statue of the Buddha, nothing wrong with that. Mind you, that has considerably more earth element and less water, etc, than the Buddha’s human body did but still.
The ascetic Gautama is about as present in the here-and-now as Amitāyur, what’s a parinirvāna between them really, anyways?
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Because Sakyamuni passed away 2,500 years ago, he might not symbolize the ever-present reality of enlightenment as well as Amida Buddha, whose name means eternal life and boundless light.
Yes, I can see how the reduction of suffering is a useful pointer towards the goal, ie Nibbana.
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Śākuamuni and Amitāyur share the same dharmakāya. What is it that draws you to Amitāyur particularly more than Śākyamuni?
In the teaching of Shinran, Amida Buddha is the Dharmakaya itself, and all other buddhas are manifestations of Amida Buddha. Also, in the teaching of Shinran, Buddha-nature, Nirvana, and the Dharmakaya are aspects of the same Ultimate Truth.