The attainment of cessation of perception and feeling means at least non-returner

I’m trying to locate the sutta which explicitly states that the attainment of cessation of perception and feeling means that the person must be at least a non-returner.

I vaguely remember that venerable Sariputta states something in that line and another monk disagrees.

Please help!

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Nirodha Sutta, it could be.

From Suttas we may be certain that anyone who will emerge from the cessation of perception and feeling is at least non-returner ; but there is no Sutta which says that puthujjana cannot attain such cessation. It may be so, but such view cannot be supported by the Suttas.

So are you saying that according to the suttas a worldling may reach cessation of perception and feeling, but if they wake up again (as opposed to being in a permanent coma-like state), they are certain to be a non-returner?
I have the feeling I‘m missing something here :smile:

The suttas also don’t say that Superman Clark Kent isn’t the Buddha, therefore Clark Kent must be the Buddha. This is poor logical thinking, look up the logical fallacy of “proving a negative”. You can’t make a claim of existence because of an absence of evidence, that’s not how things work. It doesn’t matter what the suttas don’t say, only what they do say.

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Yes, you are missing that asankhata datu cannot be the object of consciousness, and it’s realization is synonymous with cessation of perception and feeling.

In other words, sakkayaditthi can survive as long as there is something with which one can self-identity oneself. The hinges object of upadana is the eigh attainment, beyond that avijja cannot survive.

MN43 comes to mind, but it’s not explicit (nor implicit) so might not be what you’re after

“The life forces are not the same things as the phenomena that are felt. For if the life forces and the phenomena that are felt were the same things, a mendicant who had attained the cessation of perception and feeling would not emerge from it. But because the life forces and the phenomena that are felt are different things, a mendicant who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling can emerge from it.”

… “What’s the difference between someone who has passed away and a mendicant who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling?”

“When someone dies, their physical, verbal, and mental processes have ceased and stilled; their vitality is spent; their warmth is dissipated; and their faculties have disintegrated. When a mendicant has attained the cessation of perception and feeling, their physical, verbal, and mental processes have ceased and stilled. But their vitality is not spent; their warmth is not dissipated; and their faculties are very clear. That’s the difference between someone who has passed away and a mendicant who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling.”

Sorry but I fail to understand what you are talking about, except your last sentence, with which I fully agree. So my question to you is: where Suttas say that cessation of perception and feeling is inaccessible for meditators lower than non-returner?

with metta :blush:

You are missing that samsara depends on mutual dependence consciousness and nama-rupa. So you also are missing that withdrawing consciousness from dependence on nama-rupa is synonymous with nibbana.

“ ‘The consciousness that makes no showing
Nor has to do with finiteness,
Claiming no being apart from all:
There it is that water, earth,
Fire and air no footing find,
And likewise the long and short,
Small and big and fair and foul;
There it is that name-and-form
Do without remainder cease.’ ” D.11

In short you are missing vital relationship between dependent arising and the attainment of cessation and feeling: the rupa is removed from the field of consciousness in the first immaterial state, nama ceases in the attainment of cessation perception and feeling.

"I am after " the idea that cessation of perception and feeling is not kind of exclusive club for non-returners and arahats, but very powerful “experience” which brings direct knowledge. Also I don’t say I am necessarily right since obviously there is some ambiguity about the matter, so on level of scholarship things cannot be unequivocally resolve, but I would like to just suggest that such interpretation is possible so one can build one’s understanding of Dhamma, or dependent arising on it.

Hi @knigarian, I haven’t read this thread, I was replying to the OP, which I now realise was posted two years ago. Without studying up on your question, I would hesitate to speculate with my view. But my hot-take is that cessation of perception and feeling is not exclusive to non-returners, but if you happen to experience cessation of feeling and perception …well… you will then be a non-returner. I would add that this kind of experience yields a profound and irreversible insight into impermanence and not-self, resulting in the removal of passion and aversion - again this is just a free form hot-take, so don’t take it too seriously :relaxed:

MN68 might leave you with some clues :v:

Where do the suttas say nibbana is inaccessible to chipmunks? Because if they don’t say that then it means chipmunks can attain Nibbana right? (it obviously doesn’t, hence the fallacy).

Again, trying to prove negatives is still a logical fallacy.

The proper and logical question would be: where do the suttas say a meditator lower than non-returner can attain cessation of perception? Because if they don’t then it means they probably can’t attain cessation of perception.

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Agreed. Realisation of asankhata dhatu simply must have such consequences and insisting that only higher sekha can realize it through that attainment has no any justification in Suttas. The only reasonable argument against the idea that even puthujana can attain cessation of perception and feel would be that Non-identification or atammayat is the attitude which cannot be adopted by the puthujjana, seeing aggregates as “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self” contradicts the basic puthujjana assumption, namely that he exist, but in fact puthujjana can adopt it as “Another’s utterance”.

There are, monks, these two conditions for the arising of right view.
Which are the two? Another’s utter-ance and proper attention. These, monks, are the two conditions for the arising of right view.
Aïguttara II, xi,8&9 <A.i,87>

See Sappurisa Sutta
The True Man
MN 113

But a true man considers thus: ‘Non-identification even with the attainment of the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception has been declared by the Blessed One; for in whatever way they conceive, the fact is ever other than that.’ So, putting non-identification first, he neither lauds himself nor disparages others because of his attainment of the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception. This too is the character of a true man.

Very interesting logical exercises. Thank you! The point is existence transcends logic, and things usually are much more complicated than it seems on verbal level. For example you arrived at the “probably” result. It may be so, but psychology of self-deception teaches us that how probably things are very often depends on predilection of one who calculates probability. If not on direct self bias, how probably things are, depends on assumptions within which one operates.

More, there is always uncertainty whether one arrived to the idea due to logical line of thinking, or one simply finds certain idea emotionally satisfactory and seemingly logical argumentation is merely rationalisation of certain emotional predilection. Now, I do not say it is the case with you, just point out our general tendency to self-deception:

The more I meditate on our capacity for self-deception, the more my certainties crumble, slipping through my fingers as fine sand. Pessoa

Also certain certainties, so to speak, in Dhamma come not from ability to think logically, but rather are based on the ability to suspend thinking. So perhaps not everyone needs such logical exercises in their interpretations of the Dhamma.

But since ideas have consequences, your logic can be reduced to existential confession:

“I am not willing to investigate things and ideas which seem to me improbable.”

Unfortunately for you on different levels and in different subjects, the truth quite often is hidden in very improbable places, so one who rejects certain ideas and doesn’t want to investigate them, because they seem to him probably not true, can be for me only suitable object for compassion.

I have no doubt that you feel the same compassion towards me, because of my lack of logical skills - so obvious to you. Such differences are inevitable, see below ↓. Nevertheless my question: please show me the Sutta which contradicts the idea, or just point out that it is incompatible with Suttas, which you rejected as logical fallacy can be translated on existential terms as follows: “As long as the idea or view doesn’t fall into direct contradiction with Suttas it is for me a suitable object of Dhamma investigation, specially if additionally connected with cessation, dispassion and detachment”. It seems for me quite logical, but it looks like we belongs to different schools of logic.

Also right view doesn’t depend directly on believing who can and who cannot enter the attainment of perception and feeling, but most certainly it depends on understanding of dependent arising. And ideas about the nature of the attainment of perception and feeling, can influence understanding of dependent arising. I don’t know which interpretation is right, but surely seeing cessation of perception and feeling as liberating “experience” clarifies certain misconceptions about sankharas in the context of depended arising. So I don’t say, “it is so”, but rather “what if?” Kind of invitation for Dhamma investigation.

Nanavira Thera:

In his letter he remarks that I explain too inductively, that I tend to look for my ideas in the Canon instead of deducing from the passages what they mean. This criticism, however, supposes that we are, in fact, able to approach the Canon with a perfectly virgin mind, equipped only with a knowledge of Pali and a sound training in logic.

But this is precisely what we cannot do. Each of us, at every moment, has the whole of his past behind him; and it is in the light of his past (or his background or his presuppositions) that he interprets what is now presented to him and gives it its meaning. Without such a background nothing would ever appear to us with any meaning at all—a spoken or written word would remain a pure presentation, a bare sound or mark without significance. But, unfortunately, each of us has a different past; and, in consequence, each of us approaches the Canon with a set of presuppositions that is different in various ways from everybody else’s. And the further consequence is that each of us understands the Canon in a different sense. We try to discover our personal ideas in the Canon because there is nothing else we can do. It is the only way we have, in the first place, of understanding the Canon.

Later, of course, our understanding of the Canon comes to modify our ideas; and thus, by a circular process, our later understanding of the Canon is better than, or at least different from, our earlier understanding, and there is the possibility of eventually arriving at the right understanding of the ariyapuggala. Certainly we can, to some extent, deduce from the Canon its meaning; but unless we first introduced our own ideas we should never find that the Canon had any meaning to be deduced.

For each person, then, the Canon means something different according to his different background. And this applies not only to our understanding of particular passages, but also to what we understand by the Buddhadhamma as a whole.

(i) We may all agree that certain passages were spoken by the Buddha himself and that they represent the true Teaching. But when we come to ask one another what we understand by these passages and by the words they contain we often find a profound disagreement that is by no means settled simply by reference to other Sutta passages. (…)

He may (perhaps) say that he reads and understands the Suttas without any reference to a background, and (if so) I have no wish to argue the point; but I know that, for my part, I never come without a background (in a sense I am my background) when I consider the texts, even though that background is now very different from what it was when I first looked at a Sutta.
And if he disagrees with what I am saying, that disagreement will itself be reflected in the way each of us understands the nature of the Dhamma.) [L 107]