Snp 5.7: the questions of Upasīva

[Sunyo]

@dhamma012

To make the analogy more precise, we can think of the blade not as being melted (because the blade can be re-formed), but turned into photons via a quantum or nuclear reaction. The blade and all its distinguishing characteristics are gone, and the photons that are left can’t turned back into a blade again. But the photons are still there. The photons are neither the source of the blade nor the material it is made of. But they are not nothingness.

Well, that may be true scientifically, but the point of the fire analogy is not this. The point is not that the fire (and whatever it metaphorically represents) somehow still exist. When a fire goes out the idea is that it totally ceases. Otherwise the Buddha would not use this famous metaphor for the cessation of craving. Craving totally stops existing at nibbana, I think you’ll agree.

Likewise, in the Upasiva verses the going out of the flame also means cessation, although here it refers to parinibbana, the cessation of the aggregates at death.

@dhamma012

There is no sutta that I know of where the Buddha speaks of Nibbana as the absence of experience.

There are quite a few, though, most notably AN9.34.

Venerable Sariputta addressed the mendicants: “Reverends, this extinguishment (nibbana) is ease!”

Then Reverend Udayi asked him: “But, reverend Sariputta, what ease is there when nothing is experienced?”

“Then exactly that, reverend, is the ease: that nothing is experienced.”

I know you will probably argue that “feeling” and “experiencing” mean something different, but the dictionaries suggest “experience” for the verb forms, including vedayita which we have here.

Vedayita and veditabba are two forms of the same verb, vedeti, which means to feel, experience, know, or understand.
(source)

So when you don’t feel anything, you don’t experience anything. You can translate the verb either way. Some translate even the noun vedana as ‘experience’, including Warder (of the famous Pali grammar book) in his Indian Buddhism.

Anyway, our discussion is getting a bit beyond the scope of the essay, so I’ll probably leave it at this.

[Jasudho]

Hello Bhante,

@Sunyo

The aggregates themselves, which are conventionally ‘a being’ (SN5.10), cease at death.

May I ask: what about the consciousness agggregate? Doesn’t viññāna-sota continue, and at some point “descend” into the womb combining with nāma-rūpa , (so to speak).

If so, since viññāna, sañña, and vedanā are interdependent (MN43), in some way even these aggregates must not entirely cease after death, (as they do in parinibbāna).

But, could you please offer corrections if this is not so?

[Sunyo]

By “parinibbana … at death” I meant the death of an enlightened being, not of anyone.

[Jasudho]

Oh, ok, thank you, Bhante.
I hadn’t picked up that you were referring to parinibbana.

[dhamma012]

@Sunyo

When a fire goes out the idea is that it totally ceases. Otherwise the Buddha would not use this famous metaphor for the cessation of craving. Craving totally stops existing at nibbana, I think you’ll agree.

Yes, I agree that the fire ceases and that its ceasing points to the cessation of craving. But it cannot be said that the cessation of the fire also represents the cessation of experience.

@Sunyo

There are quite a few, though, most notably AN9.34.

Venerable Sariputta addressed the mendicants: “Reverends, this extinguishment (nibbana) is ease!”

Then Reverend Udayi asked him: “But, reverend Sariputta, what ease is there when nothing is experienced?”

“Then exactly that, reverend, is the ease: that nothing is experienced.”

This seems to be different from this rendering (Assuming that you’ve swapped out feeling for experience due to taking them as equivalent, this angle is addressed later):

When he said this, Venerable Udāyī said to him, “But Reverend Sāriputta, what’s blissful about it, since nothing is felt?”

“The fact that nothing is felt is precisely what’s blissful about it.

@Sunyo

I know you will probably argue that “feeling” and “experiencing” mean something different, but the dictionaries suggest “experience” for the verb forms, including vedayita which we have here.

Vedayita and veditabba are two forms of the same verb, vedeti, which means to feel, experience, know, or understand.
(source)

So when you don’t feel anything, you don’t experience anything.

Yes, I see feeling and experience as different. However, supposing we say that experience and feeling are the same, we still don’t arrive at the complete absence of feeling.

Feeling, in the canon, is classed as one of the following:

• Pleasant
• Neutral
• Unpleasant

Feeling regarding the presence or absence of suffering is separate to this (put another way, the experience of the presence or absence of suffering is separate to this). If it were not separate to the above, there could not be a feeling of blissful, because the absence of all feeling would lead to the absence of blissful feeling as a consequence.

Regarding Nibbana as the absence of all feeling results in a contradiction of terms where a feeling, blissful, is used to describe the absence of all feeling. However, such a contradiction does not occur when:

• The scope of feeling that ceases is limited to that which by the feeling aggregate may be known, namely, pleasant, neutral or unpleasant feeling; and
• Feeling regarding the absence of suffering is allowed to persist.

I.e. The absence of pleasant, neutral or unpleasant feeling results in a blissful feeling.

@Sunyo

Anyway, our discussion is getting a bit beyond the scope of the essay, so I’ll probably leave it at this.

Thank you for the discussion on this

[Raftafarian]

There are a few interesting twists pertaining to these quotes in the Chinese parallel translated by Bapat.

@sujato

Echoing the Kalahavivādasutta (Snp 4.11 ), Upasīva pushes the Buddha to explain more about the state of nothingness, here described as “the ultimate liberation of perception”.

The ending of the Chinese does not have the question about higher attainments in it. There is no mention of a time when there is nothing.

@sujato

However, the question in Snp 4.11 is, “how does form disappear”, to which the answer must be, “with the attaining of the formless meditations”.

In the Chinese it is not form that must cease, but “good form”, literally beautiful or attractive form that must cease.

I saw below @cdpatton translation, but Bapat has the phrase “nor with the consciousness of the formless” implying that the state reached to cease good/beautful/attractive form was not formless.