Yeah, this is where we disagree. But to really dig into it and clarify the disagreement I think would require deeper tools: formal constructive logic versus classical logic. In short, I think you’re applying LEM to the self, but not to other phenomena. I think it just shouldn’t be applied at all. I really respect what you are doing right now though and understand you don’t have the time at the moment to dig in. 
I will say this though: although the experience of that which does not arise and does not cease is something that is itself subject to arising and ceasing, that experience acts as a condition for boundless further effects of experience. If we try and analyze and trace “individuals” we’ll get lost pretty quickly I believe and so “individual” I don’t think is the right paradigm to trace those conditioned experiences and further boundless effects. Why? Individual experiences are just conventions we posit upon a valid basis.
Yes, thanks, i am not 100% sure of all this. I
I tend to see it like this: The Buddha points to what is home, or like the sutta’s so poetically and nicely say 'our own territory’. Yes, i like such language.
Seeing anicca, dukkha, anatta sanna in all formations that arise, is a way to guide us into our own territory. To bring us home, in our own territory and not becoming involved and engaged in the khandha’s, which is not our own territory. Asankhata is, i believe is our own territory.
The problem is…now you think…this means i see asankhata as self.
No, as our own terrority. Without mind grasping and clinging we are just in our own territory. That is the signless, undirected, empty, dispassionate dimension. And we are always there in the first place, but still we have to see this.
Nothing has now really changed but that restless building up and desintegrating of states has ceased. Mind does not construct anymore. Home. Buddha sought home, he found it there,
Buddha shows the Path to Asankhata, which i believe means: he guids beings to their own territory.
That there is something like an own territory, i believe, does not imply a doctrine of self.
What matters most is strategies, heuristics, views that lessen the fires of greed, hatred, delusion and the defilements. If your view of asankhata as a home helps you to do this, then more power to you and your view. Only you can evaluate if this is the case or not.
For good order, this were my words
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I know what you say, but i really feel…if i use asankhata in a different way the Buddha meant it, i am to blame. This is really not only about me. I have not some wish to invent my own Dhamma and misinterprete the Buddha. I see it as my task not to do this. So, i am really aiming at using words in the same way Buddha did and every day ask his guidance.
If debating all this brings us closer to understanding Dhamma, then it is useful. But i really do not debate for the love of debating. I sincery believe asakhata is of crucial importanace and i feel it is irration and absurd to talk about nothing after a last death as …what is not arising, ceasing, chaning, the Truth, the not-desintegrating, the stable, the constant etc.
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That is exactly how you’re taking it as self. You cannot take what I propose as parinibbāna to be true. That’s exactly because the sense of self within you don’t let you do it. Because it cannot stay there.
Too many difficult concepts there. Dunno what you’re implying.
We can be sure that the idea of mere cessation is mere an involvement in conceiving. That is also not really oke.
You believe that in me there is a desire to survive death as self. Whatever i say, apparantly you see this desire in me. But practicing Dhamma has made me see that this is attachment to vinnana. I see this as cause of suffering. Seeing that we are not vinnana is helpful, i feel.
About sense of self. I have looked into this and I have seen that mere cessationalist have the most strongest sense of self of all buddhist. For them suffering is something extremely personal. Like it was for the Buddha in the beginning of his search. Because it is all so personal they want to cease without nothing remaining.
Such a thought of finally ceasing…reveals the most intense me and mine making of suffering.
It is really true.
Only people for who suffering is so extremely personal, want to cease. They see that as escape.
The more personal suffering is, the more the longing to cease without anything remaining.
The more personal suffering is, the stronger the longing that feelings and perceptions finally cease without anything remaining. It is true but what i say, apparantly, never makes sense.
But would have impersonal processes have such desires to cease?
You keep saying this, but this is not Buddha teaches either, nor is it the orthodox theravada view.
We can’t talk about what happens or not, as it defies our language, concepts, being, non-being. It is not a state or a non-state. This is not a mind or a not mind. This is where language ends.
For all intends and purposes, we talk about “Everything ending”, “Complete cessation” because this is the end of everything we can explain, everything we can experience. We’re just content to let silence guide on, without needing to talk about or trying to make it into something we can intellectualise, besides calling it a “peaceful resolution”.
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“There is nothing after parinibbana” being one extreme
“There is something after parinibbana” being another extreme
“There’s no measure of speech concerning parinibbana” should be said the middle way.
Hi Dogen,
Maybe you can discuss this with others. Maybe @NgXinZhao? I am not in a position to comment on the orthodox theravada view.
I also do not comment on that. Here is the view of mere cessation which i comment upon.
This view is literally what it says…mere cessation. Bodily remains decay after a final death and the mental khandha’s just cease and will not re-arise. Parinibbana is not some dimension state or not state, or inexpressible, it is just a word that is used to point to the remainderless cessation after the death of the arahant. . This lifestream has taken rebirth in samsara since times without discoverable beginning and now is finally released from this horror. In this last existence all conditions for a new rebirth have ceases. Like a flame without fuel, the khandha’s just cease. Extinguishment. There is no need in this view to talk about the inexpressible, a state or non- stat, mind or no mind, after last death. Ceased is ceased. Point 
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“The one who has come to rest, is he then nothing?” said venerable Upasīva,
“or is he actually eternally healthy?
Please explain this to me, O Sage,
for this Teaching has been understood by you.”
“There is no measure of the one who has come to rest, Upasīva,” said the Gracious One,
“there is nothing by which they can speak of him,
when everything has been completely removed,
all the pathways for speech are also completely removed.”
SNP5.7
If you’re an arhat, your death is parinibbana.
Bhagavan clearly remarks this as everything being removed including all pathways for speech are also removed.
There’s literally nothing to talk about parinibbana (except by through removal of everything that can be talked about). All speech patterns are irrelevant.
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@Dogen, i request you please do not cite me the way you do. You make me say things i have never said.
Don’t you understand this is not correct?
Please, if you want to comment on something i said, comment on what i said. Now it looks as I have said that parinibbana is according me no state or non state of inexpressible, while i only gave a summary of the view of mere cessation. This is the second time you do this and i request you to cite correctly .
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I am not saying you’re saying it, I’m just quoting a part of the thing you say where I’m responding such that anyone reading the thread in full can understand that I’m answering the point you rose. Sorry if that offended you, that wasn’t my intention, I thought my approach was obvious.
Anyway, suttas make it clear that “mere cessation” = removal of everything = end of linguistic analysis. We talk about what we can talk about and stop talking when the concepts themselves with which we can discuss things, as well as the experiences that they are used to express as well as the flow of time all are eradicated.
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The way you quote it looks like that and i ask you not to do this.
I do not understand…
There is according some buddhist a lifestream, a stream of vinnana’s that has no discoverable beginning. Some moment it was created, or arose for the first time is not discerned. But this lifestream has for long taken rebirth in many different realms, especially lower ones. This lifestream experiences a lot of suffering, misery, and maybe sometimes what happiness.
Mere cessation is the idea that the only way to make an end to this suffering inherent to wandering on in samsara, inherent to all existences, inherent to the khandha’s, inherent to being able to feel and perceive, is that this stream completely ceases. In other words, there is no possibility for this lifestream to experience an end to suffering. It can only cease to exist and THAT is the end of suffering.
And what ceases, that can be spoken of ofcourse…it has…ceased. There is nothing inexpressible about this situation. And there is also no vagueness about something still remaining. There is nothing remaining.
Cessation also is not a removal of things, but the ending. One can say that lobha, dosa and moha are removed from mind permanently at arahat stage, but this is not the same as the cessation of mind. In the view of mere cessationalist this happens at the death of the arahant. Then all ceases.
If a flame relies for its existence upon cause and conditions, and those cease, then there is not some end of linguistic analyses. We just say …now it does not exist anymore. The same with the lifestream that has wandered along in samsara for long.
These are beyond the scope of intellectual inference. Suttas are a map, experience is the path. Words are not realities, only a crude approximation.
Buddha talks about cessation of everything (repeatedly), removal of all, considers this a sublime peace, and describes the arahat as beyond linguistics upon death. Rest is up to the meditation experience to decide.
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I agree
Never does he do this. I believe, a Buddha never talks about peace, happiness, bliss when such is not known in any way. Because that is some metaphysical idea of peace, happiness and bliss. Unreal.
In a mere cessation there is also no peace, ofcourse. It is irrational to think this way.
But i am not gonno do this debates all over again.
an9.34
There he addressed the mendicants:
Tatra kho āyasmā sāriputto bhikkhū āmantesi:
“Reverends, extinguishment is bliss!
“sukhamidaṁ, āvuso, nibbānaṁ.
Extinguishment is bliss!”
Sukhamidaṁ, āvuso, nibbānan”ti.When he said this, Venerable Udāyī said to him,
Evaṁ vutte, āyasmā udāyī āyasmantaṁ sāriputtaṁ etadavoca:
“But Reverend Sāriputta, what’s blissful about it, since nothing is felt?”
“kiṁ panettha, āvuso sāriputta, sukhaṁ yadettha natthi vedayitan”ti?“The fact that nothing is felt is precisely what’s blissful about it.
“Etadeva khvettha, āvuso, sukhaṁ yadettha natthi vedayitaṁ.
an9.41
Then my mind became secure in the cessation of perception and feeling; it was confident, settled, and decided about it. I saw it as peaceful.
Tassa mayhaṁ, ānanda, saññāvedayitanirodhe cittaṁ pakkhandati pasīdati santiṭṭhati vimuccati etaṁ santanti passato.
Mn59
It’s possible that wanderers of other religions might say,
Ṭhānaṁ kho panetaṁ, ānanda, vijjati yaṁ aññatitthiyā paribbājakā evaṁ vadeyyuṁ:
‘The ascetic Gotama spoke of the cessation of perception and feeling, and he includes it in happiness.
‘saññāvedayitanirodhaṁ samaṇo gotamo āha; tañca sukhasmiṁ paññapeti.
What’s up with that?’
Tayidaṁ kiṁsu, tayidaṁ kathaṁsū’ti?When wanderers of other religions say this, you should say to them,
Evaṁvādino, ānanda, aññatitthiyā paribbājakā evamassu vacanīyā:
‘Reverends, when the Buddha describes what’s included in happiness, he’s not just referring to pleasant feeling.
‘na kho, āvuso, bhagavā sukhaṁyeva vedanaṁ sandhāya sukhasmiṁ paññapeti;
The Realized One describes pleasure as included in happiness wherever it is found, and in whatever context.’”
api ca, āvuso, yattha yattha sukhaṁ upalabbhati yahiṁ yahiṁ taṁ taṁ tathāgato sukhasmiṁ paññapetī’”ti.
Sn41.6
“What’s the difference between someone who has passed away and a mendicant who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling?”
“yvāyaṁ, bhante, mato kālaṅkato, yo cāyaṁ bhikkhu saññāvedayitanirodhaṁ samāpanno, imesaṁ kiṁ nānākaraṇan”ti?“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.
“Yvāyaṁ, gahapati, mato kālaṅkato tassa kāyasaṅkhāro niruddho paṭippassaddho, vacīsaṅkhāro niruddho paṭippassaddho, cittasaṅkhāro niruddho paṭippassaddho, āyu parikkhīṇo, usmā vūpasantā, indriyāni viparibhinnāni.
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.
Yo ca khvāyaṁ, gahapati, bhikkhu saññāvedayitanirodhaṁ samāpanno, tassapi kāyasaṅkhāro niruddho paṭippassaddho, vacīsaṅkhāro niruddho paṭippassaddho, cittasaṅkhāro niruddho paṭippassaddho, āyu aparikkhīṇo, usmā avūpasantā, indriyāni vippasannāni.
That’s the difference between someone who has passed away and a mendicant who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling.”
Yvāyaṁ, gahapati, mato kālaṅkato, yo cāyaṁ bhikkhu saññāvedayitanirodhaṁ samāpanno, idaṁ nesaṁ nānākaraṇan”ti.
No mind in cessation of perception and feeling, yet described as happy, peaceful.
Having read a short excerpt from Burgs, he says: “But if everything has come to cessation what is left to witness this event? Awareness remains as the witness.”
What he doesn’t declare, at least in the section I read, is whether this awareness also ceases after parinibbāna.
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I initially thought that he was referring to parinibbāna still have this awareness left when I first read his chapter on Dhammakāya, Nibbāna, saṁsāra and parinibbāna. Then I asked one meditation teacher at Na Uyana, and he said it is still within the right view as according to othordox Theravada.
Especially there’s a picture at the back of his volume 3 book.
Generated by ChatGPT 4o
Based on this prompt.
Draw a circle, label it as Dhammakāya, then 2 smaller circles in it, one labeled as saṁsāra, the other as Nibbāna. Then at the bottom of the big circle, draw an arrow down and label it as parinibbāna.
It seems clear that dhammakāya (awareness) ceases at parinibbāna.