But you need to get there first.
Imagine: you have eaten a nice simple vanilla ice-cream. It was good. Really good, rich and creamy.
But! Then you’ve tried a chocolate fudge ice-cream with nuts and honey. And it is amazing, it is godly, it is a blessing, you want to kiss a guy who invented it.
…does this mean that simple vanilla is disgusting?..
No. It just isn’t THAT good. And it’s useful to remember that you don’t have to eat vanilla for all eternity, you can try and get yourself a chocolate fudge.
2 Likes
Yep! I’m really glad if it helps you to look at the bright side even for a bit.
Lots of metta. 
1 Like
I don’t know how this squares with:
It’s not that there’s no pleasure or conventional meaningfulness in conditional experiences.
But when the mind feeds on them, grasping them, craving them, it perpetuates the problem of dukkha.
So we don’t have to enter into despondency contemplating the 1stNT. Nor do we, if we take the lesson seriously, settle into complacency.
We can practice and find our way, with guidance from teachers. It’s a happy, challenging, incredible endeavor!
The decision is up to us.
As mentioned before, we can decide whether we want to continue to invest our attention and energy enjoying the food, chandeliers, and conversations on the repetitively sinking boat – or to liberate ourselves from the sinking ship altogether.
Is there no meaning, motivation, benefit, and purpose in that?
Anyway, those are some reflections I’ll share here.
Thanks for the convo.
Wishing you happiness and all the best! 
1 Like
The first sutta merely says that any phenomena is subject to suffering (impermanence, etc), not that anybphenomena IS suffering, that makes no sense and is nonsense.
The second sutta merely repeats a standard brhaminical hieronomy first presented in MN1 and for the same purpose; to point out how clinging to any of the stages in the hieronomy makes the subject aubject to suffering, because they are attached to an object, and objects, even very abstract and refined ones (like the attainment of niether perception nor non perception) is subject to impermanence, dissolution, change and decay.
All of this is in no way an endorsment of nihilism, rather it merely endorses that we can be freed, even from things that are pretty much perfectly happy except for the fact thay they are impermanent.
Ealry buddhists obviously thought rhat being alive was better than being dead, that being kind was better than being mean, and being happy was better than being sad.
They just thought that there was more to life than that, that above the realm of sadness and happiness was the “realm” of freedom from sadness (and happiness).
The buddha achieved this complete and irevocable freedom from sadness (and happiness) and then taught others the path to same for 40 years.
The idea that the buddha wasnt “really” awakened until they died is bunkum.
The idea that the buddha completely ceased after thier body died is just a confusion of the buddha with thier body, the buddha completely cut off thier attachment to that body the very second they awakend.
1 Like
Basically, read DN1 and DN2 and you will I hope see that;
According to scripture, at the time of the buddha various things where known.
First, a group called “annihilationists” practiced a thing called “jhana”. A process of purifying ones perception of “what is existing” to higher and higher “heavens”.
The annihilationists all agreed that when your body dies your just dead. No rebith, just annihilation.
There was another tradition at the time that believed that the soul journeyed on through rebirth after rebirth until they had done them all, a deterministic system.
There was a third tradition which held that it was impossible to know if annihilationism or eternalism was true, this group was called the skeptics.
The buddha came along and said there was a 4th position, that is, unlike the skeptics, the buddha showed that it was possible to have knowledge about what the skeptics claimed they could never know.
That is that any of the expressed views:
Temporary
Elternal
Both
Niether
Go “beyond the scope of language and reasoning” and are therefore not propositions that should be regarded as true false both or neither.
However is was possible to show how any actually given phenomena, without recourse to temporal distinctions being applied out of scope, could be said to “depend” on other phenomena, which we likewise need not apply our temporal (or spatial) language to.
This is fundamentally the picture we have of early buddhism.
So we have a teacher, taking a technique from nihilists, that of jhana, and taking from the skeptics this logical structure taken in a new light, providing a meditative practice and a philosophical position at the same time.
Buddhism is basically the lovechild of a sensual nihilism and a type theory (dependent logic), and I think its grand.
But I think that it is simply impossible to see Buddhism as a “nihilism” when it is clearly something altogther richer and wierder and frankly, difficult to understand. (for me too I hope I am conveying 
.
Well not really, the sutta says that all existence is to be rejected because of suffering. (Whether the first Noble Truth says that life is suffering or just the platitude that there’s suffering here and there in life is another question. The fact that the 5 khandhas are said to be suffering and the description of arahants life as ‘suffering arising and suffering passing away’ would seem to support the non-trivial interpretation).
My post was about the Buddha’s standpoint that existence is to be rejected because of suffering. This is the same argument Mephistopheles uses. Is it the right standpoint to adopt? Nietzsche for example would say that this is a mark of décadence and that life should be affirmed in spite of suffering (if you have a good enough why, every what is bearable). The ‘why’ in Buddhism is to end suffering; as such it strikes me as not providing any transcendent meaning to life.
Lets go to our lives. Suppose you walk trough the city and the smell of fresly bakened bread arises. You become aware of that smell (smell vinnana). *How * is it possible that you experience this as dukkha? Why would you experience this as dukkha? What tells/informs you that this is really dukkha, this smell?
What is the principle that one really would experience or know that this smell is really dukkha?
There is probably almost no person in the world who experiences this smell as dukkha but what is the reason that a Buddha would experience/see/know this smell as dukkha?
No, it doesnt.
The aggregates doctrine is late and scholastic (while still being more or less presectarian), and to read it the way you are is wrong.
I will try to guve this the attention it deserves when i have some time at a proper computer.
Yes, but that is not the buddhas standpont, its clearly in conflict with niether rejecting nor welcoming “existence”, its NOT a nihilism!!
Yes I really see what you mean. I have thought about this. The message is not to reject existence which could lead to actually terrible outcomes. It is to say ‘that’s not my business’. To stop willing anything. So neither celebrate existence, nor direct your will against it.
It’s like in Thomas Mann play Savonarola, where the author outlines the difference between willing nothingness (which could be a description of nihilism) and stopping to will. Yes this stopping of the will can be therapeutic, can give you some rest, but does not provide a meaning for existence. It’s still a question of ; like a kind of cosmhaving nothing to do with the world, which implies it is worthless.
1 Like
No it doesnt! but i promise i will elaborate soon!
I mean I think basically you are framing the question in a way that simply does not work for the buddhas teaching, and in fact might not even work in general, what does it mean to ask what is the meaning of existence? now the annihilatiionists clearly answered it the way you are suggesting, that is that any kind of existence is worse in some sense than non-existence.
On this view, existence is “worthless”, something to be gotten rid of, and annihilation, or nothingness, is seen as the ultimate good, so existence is hell, non existence is liberation from hell.
However the Buddha unequivocally rejects that position in DN1 and DN2.
I really think that there is a real difficulty for people studying the ebt in the anglosphere because of the way we get the pali off the therevadans, who frankly have many apologists who are simple nihilists in the sense you are indicating;
"selves aren’t real, only their aggregates are, and the aggregates are pure suffering is something like their gloss of the ebt, which is palpably false and wrong headed when one actually reads the bulk of the prose nikayas, and only defendable by an almost exclusive concentration on SN out of the context of DN and MN, and which collapses under any sustained philosophical OR textual scrutiny.
I am going to write up a separate post to really summarize the the arguments here, but I think it is important to give this attention, as I think your post shows very clearly how a reliance on a particular privilaging of SN in ways that are very hard to justify, underwrites a lot of the confusion amongst enlgish language speakers about buddhism and the ebt, for example, as far as I can tell, there is basically NO western scholarship on the abayakata in the EBT, literally EVERY paper I have ever seen on the subject says somethign like,
"while the fourfold negation is mentioned in the ebt, we will focus on Nagarjuna because blah blah blah…’
just habitually skipping the first 500 years of Buddhism.
anyway, I will tag you in the new post when it’s ready
Statements like that, IMO, are deliberately meant to be provocative. If you take a non-negativist view of Nibbana, then they are there to give you motivation.
Why would such strong motivation be needed? Because our attachments are really deep. Try developing a recommended perception like the loathsomeness-of-food. It is very difficult to do because it is so deeply ingrained to be attached to tasty food. Only an extremely strong image, like comparing eating food to eating your own newborn child, can be strong enough to break this attachment.
So if you think of samsara as being composed of states of finite pleasure and finite pain, where humans and the heavenly realms have a positive value, the animal realm has a value close to zero, and the realms lower than that have a negative value, then Nibbana has an infinitely positive value. The finite states of positive value, which are still “good,” do contain a drawback though: there will still always be at least some suffering in them (even if it is quite small), and they will not last forever.
In comparison to infinity, everything is infinitely small - hence in comparison is worth as much as feces. But the Buddha did not deny that the higher realms were good, and he encouraged his listeners to do the things which would lead there.
This is if you do not take a negativist view towards Nibbana.
Sorry what is this view?
Well, I hesitate to make any claims. I am uncertain what the correct view to have towards Nibbana is. I have seem the arguments for the negativist view, and they can be quite persuasive. (Really, I mean a negativist view of paranibbana.)
On the other hand, there are those who do not hold a negativist view. Bhikkhu Bodhi has a paper:
1 Like
sorry @Soren but I am not really clear on what a “negativist” position of nibanna is?
I guess the OP who has the idea that existence is meaningless and nibbana is in some sense non-existence might be something like that?
basically nibanna, where it is early, means the extinguishment of the fires of lust, hatred and delusion.
where it means something else, or where there are distinctions drawn between it and parinibanna, I take it to be good evidence for the lateness of said texts.
At death, the 5 aggregates of an arahant cease; that is all there is to it, nothing remains, and there is nothing else afterwards (with the caveat that what has ceased was not a self to begin with).
1 Like
Is wrong.
Just like
“There is something else”
Is wrong.
See
For a pretty comprehensive list of examples where the “is/isnt/both/niether something else” is rejected and the reasons why.
It seems to me that with the focus on stinks in both AN 1:328 and AN 1:329, they can be fruitfully related to SN 22.89
Suppose there was a cloth that was dirty and soiled, so the owners give it to a launderer. Seyyathāpi, āvuso, vatthaṁ saṅkiliṭṭhaṁ malaggahitaṁ. Tamenaṁ sāmikā rajakassa anupadajjuṁ.
The launderer kneads it thoroughly with salt, lye, and cow dung, and rinses it in clear water. Tamenaṁ rajako ūse vā khāre vā gomaye vā sammadditvā acche udake vikkhāleti.
Although that cloth is clean and bright, it still has a lingering scent of salt, lye, or cow dung that had not been eradicated. Kiñcāpi taṁ hoti vatthaṁ parisuddhaṁ pariyodātaṁ, atha khvassa hoti yeva anusahagato ūsagandho vā khāragandho vā gomayagandho vā asamūhato.
The launderer returns it to its owners, who store it in a fragrant casket. Tamenaṁ rajako sāmikānaṁ deti. Tamenaṁ sāmikā gandhaparibhāvite karaṇḍake nikkhipanti.
And that lingering scent would be eradicated. Yopissa hoti anusahagato ūsagandho vā khāragandho vā gomayagandho vā asamūhato, sopi samugghātaṁ gacchati.
In the same way, although a noble disciple has given up the five lower fetters, they still have a lingering residue of the conceit ‘I am’, the desire ‘I am’, and the underlying tendency ‘I am’ which has not been eradicated. Evameva kho, āvuso, kiñcāpi ariyasāvakassa pañcorambhāgiyāni saṁyojanāni pahīnāni bhavanti, atha khvassa hoti yeva pañcasu upādānakkhandhesu anusahagato ‘asmī’ti, māno ‘asmī’ti, chando ‘asmī’ti anusayo asamūhato.
After some time they meditate observing rise and fall in the five grasping aggregates. So aparena samayena pañcasu upādānakkhandhesu udayabbayānupassī viharati.
‘Such is form, such is the origin of form, such is the ending of form. ‘Iti rūpaṁ, iti rūpassa samudayo, iti rūpassa atthaṅgamo;Such is feeling … iti vedanā … Such is perception … iti saññā … Such are choices … iti saṅkhārā … Such is consciousness, such is the origin of consciousness, such is the ending of consciousness.’ iti viññāṇaṁ, iti viññāṇassa samudayo, iti viññāṇassa atthaṅgamo’ti.
As they do so, that lingering residue is eradicated.” Tassa imesu pañcasu upādānakkhandhesu udayabbayānupassino viharato yopissa hoti pañcasu upādānakkhandhesu anusahagato ‘asmī’ti, māno ‘asmī’ti, chando ‘asmī’ti anusayo asamūhato, sopi samugghātaṁ gacchatī”ti.
I think Nibbana is not just ending of suffering and extinguishment. Nibbana is also cetovimutti(freedom of mind) and pannavimutti(freedom of wisdom).
What is cetovimutti?
Mind is freed from body and can travel anywhere. Mind can view past lives and lives of others. etc.
What is pannavimutti?
Wisdom is freed from mind and existence. Wisdom doesn’t depend on body/mind or any existence and cause and effect.
Ex: A character in a book suffers due to existence and plot. If he jumps out of the book and see the book as just a book, he is freed from the plot and story. He can be anyone or anything and it doesn’t cause any suffering to him.