Can you give the sutta.
The sutta’s are very clear Nikolas:
“There is, mendicants, that dimension where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no wind; no dimension of infinite space, no dimension of infinite consciousness, no dimension of nothingness, no dimension of neither perception nor non-perception; no this world, no other world, no moon or sun. There, mendicants, I say there is no coming or going or remaining or passing away or reappearing. It is not established, does not proceed, and has no support. Just this is the end of suffering.”
and
There is, mendicants, an unborn, unproduced, unmade, and unconditioned. If there were no unborn, unproduced, unmade, and unconditioned, then you would find no escape here from the born, produced, made, and conditioned. But since there is an unborn, unproduced, unmade, and unconditioned, an escape is found from the born, produced, made, and conditioned.”
What more needs to be said? Why would one even consider that the Buddha only teaches empty aggregates, or movement of formations or supported reality (Paticca Samuppada)? Or only the born, the become, the produced, while the sutta’s clearly do not teach that.
(No we do not have to do this all over again, if you believe this must all be understood very differently, please do, i do not go along with those reasonings)
There can be the knowledge that defilements are, like the sutta’s teach, adventitious, like clouds in de sky, or salt in water.I t, indeed, truthfully means that purity is about essence.
Pure water is about the essence of water. Pure gold about the essence of gold. Talkin about such an essence is no doctrine of atta but it merely acknowledges that there is an essence. Likewise, purity has always been the essence of mind.
So you didn’t read it?
Why? When the mind becomes more and more refined, subtle, and in a progressive way the mind becomes more and more empty and stilled. Why is the logic it must at one point black-out or enter some absence or unawareness or cease? Why is this logic?
I feel we must also speak about “the mind” becoming empty and never ever 6 sense-consciousness becoming empty. Nor a stream of vinnana’s becoming empty.
Mind becoming empty, stilled, means, i believe, that mind becomes empty of thoughts, ideas, emotions, sounds, tactile sensations, odours, smells, etc. Empty of vinnana moments. Empty of ear vinnana’s, visual vinnana’s, tactile vinnana’s, mental vinnana, smell vinnana, eye vinnana. Such vinnana do not arise and that is called the emptiness of the mind. A descent into emptiness.
But why would the mind that is more and emptied, stilled, suddenly totally cease?
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Pali, as has already been said by many experts, requires the translation: “There is freedom from /empty of/non -birth, -death, etc.” Other suttas say that there is no death because there is no birth (and not because some thing “immortal” does not die).
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There is not a word in these suttas that this is some kind of consciousness. Moreover, many suttas deny the existence of such consciousness. It is denied by logic itself, since if there were a timeless/permanent consciousness, a state of unconsciousness, impurity would be impossible.
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Characteristically, there are no similar suttas in the Chinese canon. Why?
Because having eliminated all objects of awareness, we will get a cessation of the activity of consciousness.
No, but this is a very good sutta that explains that the most subtle states of emptiness,-,the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception & the attainment of the cessation of feeling & perception- are so subtle that insight meditation is impossible. In other jhana’s one can still apply insight because there are still formations that one can see in a different light (change the sanna) but in these 2 last subtle states that is impossible because the mind is to refined and empty.
The sutta also says that in jhana one can turn the mind from formations to the deathless …He turns his mind away from those phenomena, and having done so, inclines his mind to the property of deathlessness: ‘This is peace, this is exquisite—the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; Unbinding.’
Dispassion is seen in those jhana’s in a provisional sense. The point is always that the peace of this dispassion is never absent and reveals itself more and more while the mind becomes more and more stilled. At that moment it becomes more and more clear that formations are a kind of burden.
What the sutta’s says is that one can change the sanna in those jhana’s up to nothingness. For example one can see a certain formations as dart, a suffering, as alien, changing the sanna, but in more subtle ones, ie -,the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception & the attainment of the cessation of feeling & perception, this is impossible. Those states must be known from direct experience and can only be explained by those who enter into them.
Still it makes no sense, i believe that
That is only the immortal element in a provisional sense.
Maha Boowa and other teachers to have explained this very good. Jhana is like one in an immense large empty room. It thinks the room is empty. But ofcourse the observer is in the room.
That is also why the sutta’s teach that Nibbana is known in a provisional sense here. But when the personal perspective collapses, there is not anymore an observer observing emptiness…but…there is only emptiness that knows or sees itself.
It is impossible that the deathless can be an object of the senses. Right?
Why? If you become blind, and there is no way eye vinnana’s can arise, does your knowing ceases? If you become deaf and no ear-vinnana…if you become without smell and taste…if you become without a possibility to tactily feel (in some special bath) do you loose all knowing capacity?
Suppose you are without any thoughts, passion, emotions, ideas, plans and those mental vinnana’s do not arise are you know unknowing? Why can the mind not be empty and knowing?
That cessation of vinnana, that only means, i believe, a cessation of sensing and feeling. Now we must investigate further and look into the question: If there is no sensing and feeling can there be no knowing?
I believe it is really not that farfatched and mythical that there is a kind of knowing that is not connected or related or based upon feeling and sensing. Lets investigate this in our own minds.
That is, you ignored the fact that this sutta deals with the same contemplation (perception) of the immortal element as in the sutta to which you referred; which describes the cessation of all elements and spheres, but still there is perception!
this is where our conversation began and I showed you that this sutta talks about 1. perception; 2. This sutta does not talk about the cessation of perception (nirodha-samapati), but about the contemplation of nibbana after the practice of insight, which can be entered even from the first jhana.
while nirodha is entered exclusively with 4 arupa-ayatana. You ignored it and continued to weave a web of words.
Here the nibbana element is spoken of not in a provisional sense, but in an nonprovisional sense, since contemplation of nibbana dhamma, as stated in the sutta, leads to the fruit of anagami and arahanism. That is, this is the nonprovisional contemplation of nibbana (with the help of the mind factor - sannya; the same one about which mahabua says that it ceases in eternal citta.)
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No, because my awareness has a mental object when there are no 5 bodily senses. In Arupa-ayatana there is a gradual discarding of the mental object and so there is no object left for the consciousness. And when there is no object of awareness, there is no act of awareness, no conscious activity. This is nirodha.
If your so-called non-localized citta ceases to cognize its subtle objects, then it too will enter nirodha and cease.
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If the mind is cognizing, then it cognizes something. There is the content of knowledge, for example, its own refined being, that is, there is a refined mental object. The mind cannot be aware and yet not have objects. If he has no objects at all, then he is not aware, there is no act of awareness a priori
Do not think i ignore things intentionally to deceive you. But sometimes i get tired that we use all those sutta’s as weapens throwing at eachother.
The sutta you have publised here is not that which i meant. There is another sutta that says that senses have ceased but there is still some perception.
The cessation of spheres, i believe, does not happen in jhana.
What Udana 8.1 and 8.3 describe is beyond samsara. There is not this world nor another world. It is also unsupported and jhana is not unsupported and nothing in samsara is.
I read very different things, but suppose we assume that your reading is right: Contemplating Nibbana is not the same as knowing Nibbana, right?
My intention are really not to deceive you or weave a web of words.
So you believe that Nibbana is an object of the 6th mental sense? A Dhamma? Like an emotion, plan, idea etc?
I request you to be careful. Do you really understand how he uses the word ‘citta’. I think it has nothing to do with your understanding of citta. Have you taken the time to read his books?
Now you describe consciousness (vinnana) as sometthing that is always there and ceases when it has no object. It is not like that. Vinnana arises together with the object. What does this mean? Simple: if awareness of a smell arises, then that is the same as the arising of nose-vinnana in the mind. If the awareness of a plan arises, that means that a mental vinnana moment has arisen in the mind.
What you seem to say is: mind can not become empty of sounds, smells, tactile sensations, ideas, etc. But why not? How do you know this?
I feel it is mistake to think about mind as those moments in our lives which are conscious moments, vinnana’s. Like we are mindless in between those moments or under narcosis or in deep sleep.
One cannot really think about mind as equal to feeling, sensing, perceiving things. It is more refined then that, i believe.
In some traditions they have a practice of being locked up into a space where it is totally dark. Maybe you have noticed it sometimes but then you can get the feeling you get lost. It is like you feel gone.
I also think that one can experience this when nothing is felt.
I also believe that there is something like an unconscious knowing. Like being informed in a way but not in a conscious way
Everything is correct. This is why there is only viññana (which is also called citta). Exactly.
Without an object there is no consciousness. If your imaginary mind is aware of something, then it has awareness content.
The mind may become empty of all these objects. Then this emptiness becomes its object. If you remove it too, what remains is the awareness of awareness itself, which was aware of this emptiness from all objects - this is 4 arupa, neither perception nor non-perception. If this object is also removed, there will be a complete break in contact and a cessation of conscious activity.
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sorry, the citta that cognises the deathless can only cognize the deathless.
If she ceases to be aware of the deathless, she will cease to be aware. This is what I’m talking about - throwing away all objects stops consciousness.
Well, lots of “uneducated worldlings” having a go here … so I thought I would add my wrong views to this debate as well 
There appear to be a few assumptions here, so it might be worth stating them so we can reflect on whether we are actually making them, and then whether they are justified:
1. The Universe is singular
(ie there is one universe and when it contracts and vanishes there are no “form beings” in existence only formless beings)
2. Time is a very specific absolute reality that doesn’t change
(i.e., we have 80 years of mixed happiness and unhappiness on Earth but might go to 80 trillion years in the formless realms and the latter “seems” a trillion times longer in our minds)
3. Bliss is the goal
(i.e., rather than not wanting)
4. There are good beings (i.e., us 
) and bad beings (i.e., the insects)
… and so an insect would never be reborn in a deva loka and you wouldn’t go straight from a deva loka to a lower realm
I might not be correct, but it just seems the discussion includes these (and other) assumptions
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I know, that is what you think happens. I know that from our earlier meeting. But great teachers i trust say that in this last stage the personal perspective will collapse. In jhana there is always a perspective. From this perspective is seen…there is endless space, there is endless vinnana, there is nothing, cognition has almost ceased. It is all seen from a personal perspective.
It is said that sannavedayitanirodha is very different. it is a total break away from this personal perspective. And in stead of seeing emptiness from a perspective, one becomes it. One becomes an empty intelligent stillness.
In other words, sannavedayitanirodha is according them not a mere cessation, but an ultimate happiness but not the happiness of a feeling or a perception or a jhana. The deathless is seen.
You think this describes endless vinnana. Nope.
I think there are different conditions:
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the senses, brain, nerves, mind functions normally and sense info is being processed. Things are heard, seen, smelled, thought of etc. Then one experiences the citta as something personal, local. One is very much convinced of this. It totally dictates at those moment the sense of me, mine, my self.
One knows for sure that there is no other reality then this personal one, this local, personal private perspective on the world. One believes, this is me, this is my life. One does never ever doubt about it. It is felt as fixed, not conditionally arising, absolute. -
people have seen nothing is fixed, also this personal private perspective has been seen and known as arising and ceasing. It is not absolute true. Those people know the cessation of the world in this very life. Not as black-out or absence
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some people get some glimpses, they become open for the idea that this body and mind and senses create a perspective that we experience as our lives. But they have soms feeling there is more going on because they have glimpses that this is not final truth. It is not really who we are or what our life is.
Now i stop some time because i am to tired and i feel it becomes only a burden.
Thanks to all participants for your patience.
Wish you all well.