It seems that Nibbana and Parinibbana are two completely different concepts in the picture above that do not share the same flavor at all. Seems problematic. 
The difference is that nibbāna with remainder has the dhammakāya as the remainder (and physical body) to witness it. Whereas parinibbāna, even those ceased (and body died).
Yes, like I said it seems the two are completely different concepts that do not share the same flavor at all and that seems problematic to my limited mind. In this picture, you have nibbāna with remainder as completely conditioned and thus subject to cessation. Conceiving of nibbāna as the conditioned seems problematic.
In Dharmakaya, Parinibbana, Nibbana and Samsara — Advanced Vipassana
The key paragraph would be:
So there is the knowing of Nibbāna with kammic formations remaining, which is the case in all enlightened beings. The enlightened being is still an expression of the creative process, and continues to express the enlightened qualities of the three Kayas (Nirmanakaya, Sambhogakaya, Dharmakaya). Then eventually, at the end of the life of the Arahant, Sambhogakaya (kamma) comes to cessation, and its manifest expression, Nirmanakaya, also comes to cessation. At that point, there is Parinibbāna, and there is no cause for renewed becoming. Dharmakaya remains unmanifest, unexpressed as anything. Dharmakaya is the basic ground from which all formations arise. Even the Arahant arises within the basic ground of Dharmakaya until the point of Parinibbāna.
1 Like
Thanks for clarifying what he wrote.
It appears, however, that the “pure Awareness” that he describes “stands alone” , unrelated to feelings and perceptions – which appears to contradict Sariputta’s teachings in MN43.
I’m not debating “right and wrong” here. Just interested in clarifying what’s being expressed.
Thanks.
I see very good point.
I think it’s a feature of those who practise the abiding in pure awareness thing that they tend to see the consciousness as something eternal and the objects (including feeling and perception) arises within awareness.
I found another point of view on this dhammakāya abiding from another source, but I think it’s not labelled the same, but basically based on their similar description, I think they are basically the same.
(Why it’s fine that Vipassana is kinda culty – David Leon)
It’s a bit long, but I just want to highlight this part
But if a mental object does arise, then you will be presented with the same initial perception (e.g. a hoofprint), but you will not go down that particular tributary of the stream of consciousness (horseman –> war; plow –> field…).
You either remain there, in that first moment of perception, without elaboration…
To say that it’s without the profileration of I-making. Thus I map it to what Burgs call the Dhammakāya where he also said it’s temporary cessation of suffering (no sense of self felt).
Also, note that the author (David Leon) who wrote the things below mistakened this state of abiding in pure awareness with nibbāna itself.
The fact of the matter is that there is a place in your mind which is absolutely and completely inviolable. Which cannot be hurt by any factor of experience whatsoever, no matter how traumatic it would be to the other places in your mind. Somewhere even Virginity Vince can’t weasel his little weasel into. A place more illuminated than what we typically think of as our soul; a place more sacred than that which any self-imposed barriers to our awareness could ever defend.
The simplest way to describe it is probably as a retreat backwards, to a higher or more distant vantage point (even if that does come with the unfortunate side-effect of implying coldness or indifference). Being in the snake pit will probably leave you with snake bites. Standing at the edge of it, looking downwards, you can see all the snakes just as well as you could before (better, even), but you’ll be as safe as if you were many miles away.
Basically, you stop identifying so much with the individual contents of your experience, and identify instead as the very field of experience itself.
The classic metaphor here is of a mirror. A mirror is not affected by any of the images which it displays. You could show it the ugliest thing or the most beautiful thing in the world, and it wouldn’t cause a single change in the mirror itself. If you show it something else in the next moment, not a trace of the previous thing would remain. The mirror wouldn’t be relieved that the ugly was replaced by the less ugly, or disappointed that the beautiful was replaced by the less beautiful. It would simply reflect the new view before it.
And it is simply the case that consciousness can be like a mirror, under certain conditions. It is not an innate fact of consciousness that it has to operate as it usually operates — with pre-determined emotional responses to particular inputs, or subdivided in certain ways which we think are necessary or universal, simply because they were previously omnipresent in our experience. You simply have to change the patterns of neural activation in the human brain for experience to be constituted very differently — to say nothing of non-human forms of the process which we might tentatively identify, for want of a better word, as “consciousness”.
And this is another place where Goenka (and the Theravadin Buddhist tradition in general) is confused and, as a result, confusing.
He sticks to the Buddhist nomenclature and classifications, whereby the highest expression of these states is known as nirvana or nibbana. The term more literally means extinguishing, like of a flame. But Goenka’s preferred translation/interpretation is “The Unconditioned; the ultimate reality which is beyond mind and matter”.
However, in a sense, it’s totally conditioned. It obviously relies on a great many factors to be possible; otherwise, there would be no point to Buddhist practices and the Eightfold Path. And obviously, if someone is in a state like this, and you split their head in two with a cleaver, they will no longer be in a state like this. Beyond that, it is conditioned by the very nature of space, time, and consciousness; that nature is not subverted by any change in our mindset. These states are just as much a manifestation of reality as anything else. There is no shift in the underlying physical and metaphysical status — no question of a fundamental escape from the laws of Nature.
But there are two related senses in which “unconditioned” is an excellent label for this kind of experience.
Usually, when you focus on a particular kind of mental object or experiential content, your mind immediately and irresistibly embarks on a set sequence of movements.
To illustrate this, let’s take the absolute classic Spinoza example.
And in this way each of us will pass from one thought to another, as each one’s association has ordered the images of things in the body.
For example, a soldier, having seen traces of a horse in the sand, will immediately pass from the thought of a horse to the thought of a horseman, and from that to the thought of war, and so on.
But a farmer will pass from the thought of a horse to the thought of a plow, and then to that of a field, and so on.
And so each one, according as he has been accustomed to join and connect the images of things in this or that way, will pass from one thought to another.
Ethics, Book II, Proposition 18, Scholium.
(Edwin Curley translation)And then, depending on whether these objects help our survival — or, to be more precise, to the extent that they reinforce the currently existing order in our bodies and minds — we feel pleasure or pain. And subsequently, if left unchecked, we feel craving or aversion, and start to instinctively flinch away or get dragged towards these things.
Essentially, our consciousness is like a stream, which is determined to go this way or that way when given a certain input, based on the combination of our innate biological characteristics and how these have been shaped by our past experiences.
This combination is the internal conditioning of our minds. And it is mostly this that the historical Buddha was referring to when he talked about karma. This chain of mental cause and effect — not so much the “external” notion of cause and effect between physical objects. This, actually, was probably his single most important innovation to ancient Indian thought, and kind of the lynchpin of his whole system. (cf. Gombrich, What the Buddha Thought)
And the point is: in this inviolate state of mind I am describing, you won’t really be subject to this kind of past conditioning. Your experience will not be driven around by these pre-existing patterns of association and emotional response, with your awareness being carried helplessly by its current. You will have become untethered from these layers of experiential filtering.
Often, no mental object whatsoever will arise, for an extended period; and in the same stroke, no sense of an observer arises either.
But if a mental object does arise, then you will be presented with the same initial perception (e.g. a hoofprint), but you will not go down that particular tributary of the stream of consciousness (horseman –> war; plow –> field…).
You either remain there, in that first moment of perception, without elaboration…
or you see all the initial steps of the stream of thought you would have taken, as if in a sudden flash, without having to actually go through it…
or you embark on a new stream of thought — one in which it the mental object in question is perceived in an entirely new way.We may say that, in this frame of mind, the object is imbued with absolute, rather than relative, value. It is not good, as opposed to some other thing, which is bad (relative value). It is good simply because it is itself (absolute value). What else could it be, other than exactly itself? A hoofprint is what it is; the image of a hoofprint is what it is… and that is that. And what’s more, as God famously put it on the first six days… we see that it is good. And its goodness doesn’t take away from any other thing; that other thing is also exactly itself, and thus also has exactly the same absolute value.
And, for that matter, when exactly did I become so sure that these were two separate things? The need to distinguish between them seems irrelevant now — because there’s no practical difference between mental contents, some of which will cause me pleasure and help me, and some of which will cause me pain and hurt me, the need to separate objects off from each other does not arise. And so your mind stops making distinctions between them; you start literally perceiving them that way; and you realize that the world of distinctly different things you inhabit was a mental construct which is not actually absolute.
And now I’ve already kind of slipped into the second point: just as our automatic patterns of thought, our conditioning, is suspended… so also is our notion of conditionality itself.
To contemplate something as conditioned, you have to mentally separate it off from this other thing, and then create the concept of their (causal) relation. You understand an event or experience by internally dividing it into at least these three mental constructs, which your mind then juggles in place, simultaneously.
Well, the internal trigger which sets off this process of division and mental construction is not activated in these states, and so your experience will not be filtered through them. Your experience of the logic of conditionality is entirely suspended — you do not perceive things in this way. There are no individual things to be conditioned by other individual things, or by systems which are ontologically distinct from the thing itself. There is just the dharmadhatu — the realm of the dharma — the great web of reality.The resultant experience is typically classified as “unity”, or “oneness” — without necessarily implying any kind of blending of mental contents into a homogeneous soup. These states can maintain themselves even with your eyes open and seeing the exact same arrangement of colors and shapes as normal; it’s just that this arrangement is not being filtered and interpreted through the neural circuitry responsible for notions of separateness, and thus causality, or conditionality.
Anyway. In these moments, you might as well be friggin’ anyone or anything. The process of internal conditioning which constitutes your personality is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent. It is from this experience that the notion of a universal mind, or shared consciousness, comes in. When you strip away all this conditioning, all that remains is the awareness of various mental contents. But just as the awareness feels basically the same for each of us individually, from one moment to the next, even as the objects it is aware of fluctuate or even disappear entirely… just so, awareness must be the same between all of us. There must just be Awareness, which happens to be awareness of this-or-that, depending on which head it’s peaking out of.
As with most every issue, I’m of two minds on this one.What I mean to be saying is: it can be extremely weird when you come back from this “naked” experience, as it were, and put back on the clothes of your particular personality. It can genuinely come as a tremendous shock. Sometimes immediately, sometimes a bit further down the line.
“Oh, Jesus. I’m… me. I… totally forgot that for a second there.”
You can have real trouble re-adjusting. Your previous worldview has generally been shattered, at least as some steady, universal, absolutely reliable bedrock. This is particularly tricky with your notion of value. What am I supposed to do, now that I’ve seen this? What basis have I to prefer one thing to another? The previous basis I thought I had has just been uprooted from their deepest foundations. All the reasons for doing things, which I’d previously had such faith in, have now evaporated. What new guidelines can take their place? Or must I forever fluctuate between mystical bliss and total disorientation?
From this arises the trope of all the 20th Century Westerners who have fallen into this frame of mind suddenly and unexpectedly, and then had to drop out of society and lived on a park bench for a few years, before slowly picking themselves back up again.
That’s what I’ve been struggling with. There are periods of time in which I basically get it. And these periods have become more frequent. And by now, I think I’m beginning to wrap my head around what exactly it is that I “get” when I “get it”, so that it’s easier to remind myself when I slip into old habits, and pull myself back out.
But OK, OK — here’s the kicker.
Now we’re actually getting to the point.
Sure. These mental states can cause a lot of trouble.
But, without them, we are, essentially, fucked.
More specifically: without accessing these frames of mind in some form or another, to some degree of intensity or another, I simply don’t see a way around that old conundrum which Ovid put into the following words.
Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor
I see the good, approve of it, and follow the bad.
In other words:
be me
be there
see good thing
be like “That’s a good thing. I should totally go there.”
go in completely the opposite fucking direction
arrive at bad thing
rub it all over my face
get to hate myself for it tooIt is only such liberated frames of mind — however light, however fleeting — which present us with a way out of this vicious cycle.
This works in two ways.
First, the more “cognitive” side. It allows us to relativise certain aspects of our experience, and thus diminish their force on us, which we could not when we thought of them as absolute. In other words, they give us insight. They allow us to see the world in a new, less miserable way.
And, see, the thing is, not much has changed in my beliefs, on a formal level, before and after these experiences. I’ve always thought that these rather radical points of view were basically correct, through pure logic and reflection. But it’s a bit like knowing that fire is hot because you studied thermodynamics, and knowing it’s hot because you stuck your hand into it and got burned. It’s about how deep-seated the understanding is; how much it gets into your “muscle memory”; how much of your brain and mind is imbued with this understanding. If it’s only at a very high and fragile level of abstraction, then it’s not going to have the force to counter-act all the other parts of your mind that don’t get it; you can’t be rationally explaining it yourself at every second of the day.So, these experiences are both the fruit and seed of a cogntitive shift. They are the result — the actualization — of a process of insight, and also the cause of future insight.
Secondly, there’s the more “affective”, or emotional, or motivational side. By which I mean that these experiences become the only thing motivating us to pursue a lifestyle in a different direction than before, when we exclusively chased particular contents of experience — sense pleasure, esteem, possessions, etc. — rather than pursuing a new relation to the contents of experience.
Of course, this comes with complications — chasing these states at a conscious level causes a stress and pain which prevents you from accessing them. But that is a problem that unravels of itself of its own accord; the more you experience it, the lighter the hand you hold it with. Once you’re going in that direction, you’re basically fine. The only hitch is that you will eventually slide backwards into your old habits of craving for particular contents of sense experience, and then afterwards you’ll crave for the release from the compulsion to pursue these contents. But it really seems that you do get the hang of it all after a while, one cycle at a time, until you reach a place of equipoise.
But anyway. Point is. At a subconscious level, the bliss experienced in these states, and in the lead-up to and aftermath of these states, is a crucial part in motivating you to take a different course than the pursuit of the less satisfying but much more readily accessible forms of pleasure.
We have discussed these kind of things endlessly. I
I feel that Buddha’s main message is that:
“There is, mendicants, that dimension where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no wind; no dimension of infinite space, no dimension of infinite consciousness, no dimension of nothingness, no dimension of neither perception nor non-perception; no this world, no other world, no moon or sun. There, mendicants, I say there is no coming or going or remaining or passing away or reappearing. It is not established, does not proceed, and has no support. Just this is the end of suffering.”
Maybe you feel this refers to nothing after a last death. I feel that is irrational. Maybe others feel that this translation is wrong. Whatever. I see everywhere in the sutta’s that Buddha does teach a real escape from samsara as in: people know…there is this what has no characteristic to arise, cease and change. It is unsupported by conditions, unborn, undying, stable, constant, imperishable, not-desintegrating…And it is this Path towards this stable, constant, not-desintegrating which is Buddha Dhamma (SN43.12 and further)
And i also see sutta’s really adressing the idea that everything ceases after a last death, as a view one must not hold on to. One must not think so, judge so about parinibbana. I have no doubt this is the message of the sutta’s.
All those sutta’s you refer to can be impretated otherwise and we have done that many times. I am not gonna do this over.
So to you real means know. And nibbāna without remainder is always with eternal knowledge of that blissful nibbāna. And a final death without rebirth is false escape because there’s no knowledge?
I believe the Buddha does not teach that there is only the unstable, only the conditioned, only the desintegrating. Like the sutta’s teach…if there were only the made, formed, only conditioned existence, …there is no escape (Ud8.3 and others). I agree with that. I feel that is indeed true.
If all there is, is a sandcastle at shore, desintegrating, ofcourse there can be nothing that provides stability, peace.
I feel there is something wrong with this idea that Buddha only teaches dependendly arising things.
That is one of the truth we must know (MN26, but also the truth of stilling of all formations.
I feel we must focus on that. Why do people systematically ignore, reject, denie that the Buddha teaches the asankhata element, and even teaches a Path to what is constant, not -desintegrating, stable?
Do you really feel is it rational to talk about a nothing after a last death as the stable, the constant, the Truth, the not-desintegrating? A not-desintegrating nothing?? Can we have an honest talk about this?
Yes. to all the questions there.
Since there’s an end to rebirth, there is an escape. Thus nibbāna exist. Doesn’t have to mean nibbāna is a positive ontological thing. It is just saying that rebirth can end.
I sincery do not understand this. You cleary treat nothing remaining after a last death as something…something stable, not-desintegrating, constant. But that makes no sense. It is senseless to talk about nothing as not-desintegrating, stable because then you conceive as something.
One can escape a treat and go to a different place. One can escape drowning by seeking a high place.
Escape is always about going from here to there. That is the idea of escape.
The escape in buddhism is described as from this shore to the other. But in your view there is not even another shore. There is only this shore. There is no one who ever arrives at the other shore. In fact there is no other shore.
I also feel it is cynical to talk about escape in such a way that there is not really an escape.
I also feel, it remains just weird…that a Buddha comes into this world to make an end to all lifeforms, to all beings, to all humans, animals, deva’s etc. to empty this world of living beings.
While Christians think about God as the Creator, Buddhist think about Buddha as the Deleter 
I feel it is all so absurd. It is so completely alien to me, that idea of mere cessation. Sorry.
1 Like
Analogies are not perfect. Anyway, “the other shore” would be totally different from this shore, no 5 aggregates, no 6 sense bases. No rebirth, no suffering.
We have to go a bit into philosophy here, but I am not an expert in this, I may mess up some terms.
When you say no another shore, it seems like you only recognise that only something can exist, and nothing cannot exist.
Similar to some ancient greek philosophers who just say vacuum cannot exist, space must be filled with atoms, or something, even between the sun and the earth.
Yet, when atoms comes into the picture, there’s empty space between the atoms, which doesn’t bother people. We cannot say the empty space do not exist. Or else there is no way for the atoms to move.
Anyway, this is also a crude analogy. Just to make the point that nothing existing is not ontologically impossible. I am also just using a crude “nothing” to describe parinibbāna, which is actually beyond concepts, because no mind sense base to think of concepts there.
Functionally, one should just see what’s the function of the other shore, it is to cut off rebirth, and end existence in this near shore. In that way, it can be seen as existing.
Perhaps we can misuse a bit of the analogy above too, on empty space, ignoring general relativity for now. Space without being affected by matter (assume GR is not true) is stable, not disintegrating, constant, yet not matter, not time, not light, etc… Nothing, level 4 nothing from the video below.
But anyway, this No rebirth - what happens next? - #152 by NgXinZhao already gave the sutta’s indication of how nothing can be called happiness.
See this: "Level 9th of Nothing" - Does this sound like Nibbana to you? - #24 by NgXinZhao for a good mapping of the various nothing I have used here. Parinibbāna is the level 9 nothing. A nothing so nothing that to use nothing to describe it is an insult to it. So it’s beyond concept.
2 Likes
Buddhist teachings are to be understood through meditation and contemplation – not through arguments because arguments represent ‘sanskaras’ or conditioned perceptions. Through meditation (calming the mind and observing the mind), it is possible to see that all conditioned states constantly arise and cease and these types of understandings enable one to get an idea of what enlightenment is. Without meditating, arguing about concepts or about the teachings using our conditioned words and concepts is useless to say the least. 
1 Like
You don’t need meditation for that though.
What do you mean? Meditation is needed to understand one’s own mind.
Why would you have to focus on the sensation of breath in order to see that things come and go? You can observe this phenomenon in your daily life without gluing your attention to a meditation object.
I do not follow your line of reasoning. You assume Buddha taught that all there is to know is formations, and temporary states, because that is all there is. I feel this is the first wrong assumptions because Buddha also teaches asankhata, that what has no characteristic to arise, cease and change.
But based upon your assumption that Buddha taught merely sankhata as real and not asankhata, you also assume there is really nothing constant, stable, not-desintegrating to be known.
Mind, body, cetasika, Nibbana, everything is impermanent. All this is liable to arise and cease.
What is refered to as an arahant also is impermanent and ceases at a last death, without re-arising.
Well, if is like this, and we are like a burning flame, that arises, exist, and ceases upon causes and conditions. And all those causes and conditions cease, why making things so complex? The burning flame does just not exist anymore. Non-existent…that is the correct description now. The same with your position. If an arahant is not more then just a label/name for material and mental processes that cease without anything remaining at a last death, then it is quit clear…arahant does not exist anymore after death…point. There is no need to make it more complex.
I do still not understand why you just do not admit that what was once refered to as the arahant, mere impersonal processes, has now ceased and those processes do not exist anymore. This lifestream has just stopped to exist. Arahant does not exist anymore is here correct.
Or, we must accept that the label/name arahant does not refer to anything, which is absurd. Then all our talking about all the fruits is mere empty chatter. Expressions of huge delusion. I do not believe that. So arahant refers to something and in your view to something that stops to exist…well…the only correct way to express this is…arahant does not exist anymore after a final death.
There is no way out of this. Or, let me see how.
If one can do this, there must be something stable and constant
Not totally, i think, but i know what you say, and i also meditate
Yes. Conventionally, arahant is a concept which uses the self, so it’s conventional reality we are speaking of when talking about arahant. Conventionally, arahant dies a final death and is no longer reborn. Thus doesn’t exist.
Ultimately, there’s no self, no arahant, any self concept is invalid. Only 5 aggregates which ceases completely at the break up of the aggregates with the ending of clinging, ignorance etc.
The Buddha switched between these 2 languages in his famous discourse when he said Buddha exist or not exist or both or neither after death does not apply. He was analysing here with respect to the ultimate truth of self concept is invalid.
He used the conventional concept of Buddha, but then applied the ultimate analysis to help people not to get into annihilationism thinking. Annihilationism thinking here refers to thinking that there’s an ultimate thing called a self which is annihilated.
The 5 aggregates, 6 sense bases, etc all are not self, thus their cessation at parinibbāna doesn’t constitute annihilation of self. Because there’s no self in the first place.
1 Like
I understand all that. But, what remains is…all what constitutes an arahant is impermanent…5 khandha’s…they cease at death…so the only correct conclusion is…arahant does not exist anymore after death.
Or, if you like to speak of lifestream…an without discoverable beginning existent lifestream ceases at death and then does not exist anymore.
Or, if you like to speak of a stream of vinnana’s…
Or, if you like to speak of 5 impersonal processes…
It does not matter how you think about this…
“does not exist anymore after death”…that is always the outcome.
It has nothing to do with self. Nothing. Even if you see and know all living beings, including yourself, as merely a unique combination of material and mental impersonal processes…all that ends at last death…
Does not exist anymore is always the one and only outcome of mere cessation.
You fail until now to make me see a way out of this.
1 Like