What makes to say that? Awareness is also arising and ceasing and belongs to the volition aggregate. It also happens due to causes just like the other aggregates that happen due to causes (and are arising and ceasing). These issues need to be seen within oneself rather than arguing because even the arguments happen in the present moment (due to a vast amount of causes) and are arising and ceasing. In other words, in all of existence there is nothing outside of arising/ceasing phenomena that are constantly manifesting and changing due to causes and conditions.
If you can see the mind ceasing, you must certainly have still a mind that sees the mind ceasing. It is impossible to see the mind ceasing. And people who believe that awareness is seen arising and ceasing, they must certainly be aware while awareness has ceased?
That is your belief. But fact is, the EBT learn that the Buddha teaches the Path to asankhata, what is not seen arising, ceasing and changing, and this is also describes as:
…the Path to the truth …the far shore …the subtle …the very hard to see …the freedom from old age …the constant …the not falling apart …that in which nothing appears …the unproliferated …the peaceful …
the freedom from death …the sublime …the state of grace …the sanctuary …the ending of craving …
the incredible …the amazing …the untroubled …the not liable to trouble …Nibbana …the unafflicted …dispassion …purity …freedom …not clinging …the island …the protection …the shelter …
the refuge …” (SN43.14 -43)
Yes people here believe there is nothing that is constant, and the only thing one can know is formations arising and ceasing but this is not in the sutta’s. One must also know that what does not arise and cease (MN115). That what is constant. Not-desintegrating, the amazing…hard to see.
The mind (yonisomanasikara) sees mind objects ceasing. So, you would be able to see all what you are stating here as arising and ceasing. This awareness (yonisomanasikara) is also arising and ceasing. Let me explain - in case you go on a walk after having this discussion, and meet someone you know on your way, you would be talking to that person and all the thoughts you had prior to that has completely ceased. Only thoughts about those thoughts (new thoughts – perhaps mental proliferations instead of yonisomanasikara) can come up.
These issues require meditation/contemplation to understand. In the abhidhamma, the Buddha talks about how physical matter as well as all what we refer to as ‘mental elements’ are constantly changing. ‘Asankatha’ means to see the world through an ‘unconditioned’ lens. An unenlightened person sees only the conditioned (sankatha), naming things, etc., in conditioned ways. In the unconditioned, there is nothing other than constantly arising and ceasing mental and material phenomena. Total asankatha is nibbana and this is what one strives to find.
Nibbana is asankatha and constant, but it is not a “thing”. By stating that there is something ‘constant’ (called nibbana) to be reached (which I think is your argument here) – you need to see that this is a concept that you have formed in your mind, that is also an arising and ceasing thought. You are clinging to that concept of an ‘unchanging state,’ but this is merely a conditioned concept (i.e., aggregate of perception). One needs to let go of that as well. In other words, thinking that something is constant is also an arising and ceasing thought… Regarding MN 115 – your argument is not clear – please quote what you are referring to.
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You completely fill in for me how i see things, but i do not see it like this. I do not see asankhata as some state or thing. It is described in the suttas as what has no characteristic to arise, cease and change. How can this refer to a thing or state? Do you see the real issue? Conceiving asankhata goes wrong.
I believe it is most likely that asankhata, as what has no characteristics to arise, cease and change, refers to this element or aspect of emptiness or openess in our lifes. Emptiness is not really nothing but also not something. It cannot be grasped and if one starst to conceive this emptiness it immediately is distorted because it immeditately becomes a state or thing or reified.
Conceiving is the domain of Mara.
This refers to:
"There are these two elements: the conditioned element and the unconditioned element. When a mendicant knows and sees these two elements, they’re qualified to be called ‘skilled in the elements’.”
I do not take ‘element’ literally but more in the sense of ‘aspect’. There is an element or aspect of coming and going and change in our lifes. This is very clear. Formations, temporary states that are build up and also desintegrate again. Arise, cease, change.
And there is that element or aspect in our lifes that is not coming and going and changing.
I think many people choice to ignore this, reject this, denie this. I do not know why. Maybe because they feel that Buddha does not teach this asankhata element, or maybe because they think that if they do acknowlegde something non-changing, they fall into a belief in atta or eternalism?
Please tell me what this ‘unchanging’ aspect in your life is?!
Just dump first all theories. Let them not lead you. Just observe, be honest, and see if all you see is formations arising and ceasing and only change. Truly?
The constant is that there is no constant. 
. But Love remains.
There is no need for theories to be guiding. If you honestly observe (with a clam mind), you will be able to see that everything is arising and passing. There are no exceptions – not even an unchanging observer.
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Are there certain aspects of reality that remain the same? Certain Laws, for example? A simple one: a Buddha is a Buddha. This, according to some, may seem unchanging. Or, “Nibbana is as it is, Nibbana.” These are basic statements. And the most powerful one: There is a Way to Achieve Enlightenment. These are a certain type of constant Law. They may even be Eternal. Where do they come from and whom or what maintains them?
Or you could veer off into the Higher Dimension and say “There is no Buddha or Highest Enlightenment, these are merely conventions, therefore it may be said that there is a Buddha and a Highest Enlightenment.” But this also may be a constant of some sort, for some, if you can perceive a Law at work there. If there is a constant in the Law of the Dhamma, that may be some constant!
In the practice, we are talking about our experiences in the ‘present moment’ - we experience the world moment-to-moment. The things you mention (descriptions about things) belong to conventional reality. Conventional reality is about information about the world (e.g. science operates within conventional reality), about food, climate, descriptions about Buddhas, etc. For liberation, we just need to see the moment by moment manifestation of our own experience - then we can see that conventional truths are also concepts that arise and cease in our mind. In AN 4.45, the Buddha says, “….it is just within this fathom-long body, with its perception & intellect, that I declare that there is the cosmos, the origination of the cosmos, the cessation of the cosmos, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of the cosmos."
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Technically by Buddhist standards we don’t have an experience, that’s just an illusion. Yes, much like this world. No self to be found, no basis for an individual. The Skandhas are defilements, but they are illusory ones that point to Emptiness. In Nibbana all of this is Cessated. You bring up a good point. All phenomena hold the marks of tranquil extinction. But what is the true extinction, Nibbana, or a Higher Buddhahood?
Sn12.68 basically says stream winner sees Nibbāna. If you have seen nibbāna, then you’re basically claiming attainments and wondering why other people don’t see the unchanging is to wonder why other people are not stream winners like you.
More likely explanation is that you haven’t developed the deep Jhānas to look deep enough to see arising falling of all conditioned phenomena. What is regarded as constant currently is just concepts we put onto reality, conventional reality which can seem constant.
So yes, people who are not stream winners or once returners reborn or haven’t attained to at least stream winner yet, generally do put layers of concepts onto ultimate reality and see conventional reality, thus mistaken somethings as constant. The danger is to create a notion of that constant concept as Nibbāna itself.
It takes a lot of time meditating to get deep Jhānas to be able to see arising and falling down to the moment by moment mind moments, of which trillions and trillions of them happen in a fingersnap. Just like a movie is just a series of still frames, when it goes too fast, we don’t see the individual pictures, so too when the mind is undeveloped, it cannot see the moment-to-moment arising and falling described in the Abhidhamma.
Before one can understand ‘illusions,’ one needs to understand what one’s experiences are in the here-and-now, were we only experience one thought at a time in the present moment. Many suttas explain how our sensory experiences and thoughts operate in the present moment, and mindfulness enables us to observe and understand their ‘three characteristics,’ etc. Realization can happen in this very life, as explained in the suttas. I am familiar with the Theravada tradition – I think ‘Higher Buddhahood’ is a Mahayana concept where people aspire to become a future Buddha.
Bhante, Reaching Jhana states is not essential for realization. If you check Yuganaddha Sutta (AN 4.170) it describes four different ways of reaching final liberation. Regardless of the method, the ultimate goal is to experientially understand the three characteristics of existence.
But there comes a time when their mind is stilled internally; it settles, unifies, and becomes immersed in samādhi.
Hoti so, āvuso, samayo yaṁ taṁ cittaṁ ajjhattameva santiṭṭhati sannisīdati ekodi hoti samādhiyati.
This is code for Jhāna. AN 4.170
MN64
There is a path and a practice for giving up the five lower fetters. It’s not possible to know or see or give up the five lower fetters without relying on that path and that practice. Suppose there was a large tree standing with heartwood. It’s not possible to cut out the heartwood without having cut through the bark and the softwood. In the same way, there is a path and a practice for giving up the five lower fetters. It’s not possible to know or see or give up the five lower fetters without relying on that path and that practice.
And what, Ānanda, is the path and the practice for giving up the five lower fetters? It’s when a mendicant—due to the seclusion from attachments, the giving up of unskillful qualities, and the complete settling of physical discomforts—quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters and remains in the first absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected. They contemplate the phenomena there—included in form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness—as impermanent, as suffering, as diseased, as a boil, as a dart, as misery, as an affliction, as alien, as falling apart, as empty, as not-self. They turn their mind away from those things, and apply it to the element free of death: ‘This is peaceful; this is sublime—that is, the stilling of all activities, the letting go of all attachments, the ending of craving, fading away, cessation, extinguishment.’ Abiding in that they attain the ending of defilements. If they don’t attain the ending of defilements, with the ending of the five lower fetters they’re reborn spontaneously, because of their passion and love for that meditation. They are extinguished there, and are not liable to return from that world. This is the path and the practice for giving up the five lower fetters.
If we perceive the body to arise and cease what does it even mean? If we take this to heart as the truth about the body, are we not 100% deluded? Because we can become beyond any doubt that the body does not really cease while we do not experience it. We can just film it and see it does not really cease to exist at all.
To rely on such perceptions of arising and ceasing is like trusting the magician vinnana. Trusting his trickery. If i do not perceive a heartbeat has it ceased? Ofcourse not. There is nothing wise in relying on such perceptions.
Mind is also never being perceived as ceased.
That one relies so much on the experience of coming and going, i believe, only shows full identification with the nature of vinnana. It is as if one sees the nature vinnana as the nature of reality.
All Jhana do not reveal the cessation of mind but are based upon its presence.
The sutta’s see the constant, the stable, the not-desintegrating as synonyms for Nibbana
Why can we see the moment to moment arisng of movie-frames? Because there is something stable, the empty movie-screen. There is no way out of this. The same with mind. You will never be able to see trillions of citta moments if there is not a constant present empty screen of the mind
This is an imperfect analogy. Those who still think of mind as the backdrop being constant, and lasting even after the death of arahant is just putting the concept of permance onto what is impermanent.
It’s hard to get all this when you’re just delighting in conceptual construction of Nibbāna.
There’s thought mind door processes which actually register an object, then analyse it and so on, and it can analyse past mind door process to see how it worked, and thus know that even the act of observation of the mind itself is constantly arising and ceasing.
The function of Jhāna is to train the mind to be super sharp and fast to be able to see arising and ceasing.
You just do equate mind with vinnana moments and that is, i feel wrong.
Mind is like the sea and vinnana’s are like the waves. When the waves cease, the mind does not cease. But one must not think about this mind as something, like a formation or state.
This is all mere sensing. This is all mere connected to the 6th sense. Mano-vinnana’s arising and ceasing. We are not talking about the sea here but waves.
The nature of Tathagata is compared to the depth of the ocean, immeasurable, butt you keep thinking about the nature of the Tathagata in terms of waves and as measurable.
Impossible, if this mind at the same time arises and ceases.