SuttaCentral
Something that never was can’t be said to no longer exist.
Imagine a train with 6 carts. In every station, you replace one of the carts, until all six carts are replaced. Afterwards, you remove each cart one by one, until there are no carts left.
What was the train? Which specific combination or snapshot was it, exactly?
It’s just the process has ceased, not something that is ceased.
The peculiarity of language comes into play when we have to refer to continuum with the momentariness of a word.
Is there also someone who can say, for once…Green is right? 
Makes no sense Dogen and i have also commented on this.
Perhaps you’re inquiring about things that have deep seated argument history in all commentaries, sub commentaries, analyses, etc, and been tackled before.
Perhaps SC is a very fundamentalist EBT fanatics and your ideas would find a house in other philosophies or other buddhist forums.
I think you’re an astute logician with a keen mind for structural analysis. But the suttas are a map to reality, and not the reality itself. We have to use language to express the reality but reality is more than language. These topics are the fruits of deep meditative wisdom finding their way into a specific language.
Long ago, there was a monk in Meditation Master Hōgen’s monastic community named Gensoku who was a subordinate under the Temple’s administrative director.
Master Hōgen asked him, “Director Gensoku, how long have you been in our community?”
Gensoku replied, “Why, I’ve been in the community for three years now.”
The Master asked, “As you are still a junior monk, why have you never asked me about the Buddha Dharma?”
Gensoku replied, “I will not lie to Your Reverence. Previously, when I was with Meditation Master Seihō, I fully reached the place of joyful ease in the Buddha Dharma.”
The Master said, “And what was said that gained you entry to this place?”
Gensoku said, “I once asked Seihō what the True Self of a novice is, and Seihō replied, ‘Here comes the Hearth God looking for The fire.'"
Hōgen responded, “Nicely put. But I’m afraid you may not have understood it.”
Gensoku said, “A Hearth God is associated with fire, so I
understand it to mean that, just as fire is being used to seek for fire, so the True Self is what is used to seek for the True Self.”The Master said, “Just as I suspected! You have not understood. If this is what the Buddha Dharma was like, it is unlikely that It would have continued on, being Transmitted down to the present day.”
Gensoku was so distressed at this that he left the monastery.
While on the road, he thought to himself, “In this country, the Master is known as a fine and learned monastic teacher and as a great spiritual leader and guide for five hundred monks.
Since he has chided me for having gone wrong, he must undoubtedly have a point.” So, he returned to his Master, respectfully bowed in apology, and said, “What is the True Self of a novice?”
The Master replied, “Here comes the Hearth God looking for The Fire.” Upon hearing these words, Gensoku awoke fully to the Buddha Dharma.
From Shobogenzo
I don’t understand. What, you want a non-existent soul to continue out somewhere after the perfect ending? The happily ever after?
There is no self to experience end of suffering, but ending of suffering is.
@Dogen train example is nice.
SN44.2 and several other places has wtte:
“In that case, Anurādha, since you don’t actually find a realized one in the present life, is it appropriate to declare: ‘Reverends, when a realized one is describing a realized one—a supreme person, highest of people, who has reached the highest point—they describe them other than these four ways: After death, a realized one still exists, or no longer exists, or both still exists and no longer exists, or neither still exists nor no longer exists’?”
“No, sir.”
“Good, good, Anurādha! In the past, as today, what I describe is suffering and the cessation of suffering.”
So this is all just beyond words! We can debate when we are one the other shore together 
To be clear, this is referring to arahant while still alive, not to after death.
The last phrase of the first para quote starts “After death…”
How about “There is no Green that is right?” ?
…thats the best I can do sorry
I also study the sutta’s. And early buddhist tradition is not the same as mere cessation.
Not at all. But i see people all time use such structural analyses to defend their understanding, views, ideas.
Mere cessation just means…tathagata, arahant, lifestream, stream of vinnana, 5 khandha’s, mere impersonal material and mental proces that existed before, cease and stop to exist after a last death. Nothing remaining. Point. There is nobody, nothing, that arrives at the other shore. Also not some inexpressible.
A non-existing Green who writes om a non-existing forum with non-existent buddhist, having non-existent feelings, and want to escape a non-existend suffering 
You were doing so well until you got to the last 2 words…there is definitely suffering!
I have discussed this @yeshe.tenley. The fact that it is impossible to pinpoint a tree, a car, a living being, only shows that this are concepts but it does never mean that there is no base for the designation tree, car, living being. It never implies…does not exist.
If a river really does not exist you can also not drown in it, was the example Yeshe gave. Likewise, if a car really does not exist, what is it that brings you from a to b.
In other sutta’s the Tathagta is called immeasurable, deep as the ocean, as you know.
And i believe in this. The Citta is deep, unfathomable.
But nothing that know suffering, right??
I show that mere cessation is just a Path to become non-existent. Not as soul or self but becoming non-existent as a lifestream, stream of vinnana, as mere impersonal material and mental processes.
You also see this lifestream as something that has existed without discoverable beginning, right? And one is also able to remember what this stream has experienced in endless former lifes, right?
So, this all goes from being existent towards non-existent at a last death, with nothing remaining.
All what was before just ceases and does not re-arise. So this lifestream does not exist anymore.
There is no mysterie in this. Nothing inexpressible.
You see Dhamma as a Path to end the existence of this lifestream. You do not see Dhamma as a Path to the unconditioned, Truth, Grace, not-desintegrating etc. like the EBT do!
Good for you.
It’s when people mix up conventional usage of concepts in ultimate language then it cannot be expressed. Like where does the fire go after it is extinguished? Not to any direction, to ask that question is to misunderstand the nature of fire extinguished.
Now you can understand the nature of extinguishment, at least intellectually.
You will have to show why parinibbāna cannot be considered all of the above.
Is there a sutta which categorically say that parinibbāna must be inexpressible?
Other than that there’s no mind to even say that there’s nothing or something after parinibbāna? Because something or nothing are still concepts within the mind. When mind ceases, all concepts ceases, one cannot describe without using concepts.
Bhante,
I stop these discussion now. I feel, you still cannot see that you treat mere cessation, i.e. nothing remaining after a last death as if there is still …something.
You still think it is appropriate to talk about mere cessation in terms of the stable, the constant, the not-desintegrating, Truth, Grace… That means you do not see it as it is.
It is like you think about an extingusihed flame as something that has now become stable, constant, not-desintegrating…while the flame just does not exist anymore.
Yes, and the same is true when one start to speak of a mere cessation in terms of the stable, the constant, the not-deintegrating. It all makes no sense.
Feel free not to reply.
Nothing can still be described in a sense. There’s no suffering, because of no body, no mind to suffer.
Due to not suffering, it is happy. Due to nothing to change, it is stable. Due to nothing to be conditioned, it is unconditioned. Due to no change it is constant.
The non-existent self is not the same as parinibbāna. The non-existent self cannot be used because it doesn’t exist. nibbāna is one of the ultimate realities, thus it exist and characteristics can be deduced of it.
This train analogy is delightful! It is much like Theseus ship. However, I think it is often overlooked that those carts didn’t just disappear from existence, they simply disappeared from the “train” and also those “carts” themselves exist in the same way as the “train.” Moreover, the cessation of “train” necessarily gives rise to boundless other processes/effects that exist in the same way as the “train” did: utterly dependent, conditioned and merely designated.
With the paranibbana of an enlightened one; conditions continue; processes continue and samsara continues; how can it not? What enlightened one was ever found whose disintegration would make it not so?
A process is also just a dependent designation reliant upon a mind to so designate. A river may dry up and the “process” cease because no minds are so designating it, but the rains come and new minds come along and voila the “river” has arisen. Is it the same river? A new river? Both the same and not the same? Neither the same nor not the same? Did the river arise with the first drop of rain that flowed? How many drops till the river “arose?” The atoms that formed the banks of the “old river” are not the same as the “new river”, but then they never are for even an instance are they? To the ant on the banks of the river is it a “river” or an “ocean” or neither or both? Does it matter if it can drown in it? But what is this “ant” if not just another process? What is “drown?”
It is all so nebulous and ephemeral, what basis can we find for desire or greed for such a nebulous and ephemeral existence to continue? What basis can we find for the desire for this nebulous and ephemeral existence to end?
I do not agree…An extinguished fire cannot be described…yes only as not existent anymore.
You really believe…when 5 khandha’s are ceased and nothing remains that can be described as happy, stable?..see…you treat nothing remaining at a last death as some stable state, which it is not, ofcourse…it just makes no sense, i feel, to think that nothing remaining after a last death is some state.
Let alone a happy state.
Directing awareness to the present moment is meditation. So, what you describe (observing phenomena in daily life) is also meditation. Not all people however can ‘observe phenomena in daily life’ (i.e., practice mindfulness meditation) without first training the mind to stay focused on the present moment – this is why awareness practices (like observing the breath) can be useful in order to cultivate ‘observing phenomena in daily life.’ Sitting meditation practices can also include ‘observing phenomena’ such as the arising and ceasing of all experiences/phenomena.