The six senses cease, is there nothing else?

[josephzizys]

@Sunyo

Well, it’s not about the grammar, so I won’t argue into to much depth.

Yes. I think the grammer argument stands or falls on its own, and its not my interest so i will try to be brief.

@Sunyo

But to not ignore you completely:

Ha! Thanks @Sunyo , I really appreciate your patience, and the patience of others like @sujato and @Dhammanando Nd @stephen who have been so forgiving of me and helpful in the face of my Pali ignorance.

@Sunyo

Then you have annihilation of suffering, yes, but not the annihilation of a self or any entity worthy of calling a self.

No.

My claim is that you have the annihilation of the aggregates and that this is the wrong interpretation of the dhamma.

Even suffering, (SN amd AN statements to the contrary notwithstanding) is not annihilated, because to take suffering as “real” “imaginary” “both” or “niether” is a mistake.

Suffering can be brought tonan end, that is there can be a cessation of suffering, by bringing about the ceasing of its neccesary conditions.

@Sunyo

And if we’re going to use logic, although I’m not convinced that is the best approach: After the six senses either something remains to be experienced or nothing.

I dont think this is right.

For example:

Either the person who acts experiences the results or they dont.

But the suttas say if the person who acts is the same as the one who later experiences the results then there is something that continues from person a (actor) and person r (results).

That is “eternalism”

And the suttas say that if the person who experiences the results is a different person to the one who experiences the results then the actor is annihilated.

That is “annihilationism”

If they are both the same and different (perhaps having both differences and identicals) then you have the third abyakata

And if you claim that there is something else, niether the actor nor the experiencer but somehow still relevent, for example some 3rd uncaused substantive “self” that works.

The 4th abyakata.

(The last 2 lack the neat explinations of the forst 2, but I am hopeful that these examples can be brought into understanding by examining all the cases and getting a.comsistant explimat I n.)

There is nothing inherently illogical in any of it as far as i can tell.

@Sunyo

Even it it can’t be described, it remains something.

That is clearly wrong, if you cannot say anything about it you cannot say of it that it is “something” you also cannot say about it that it is “nothing” or both somehow, or niether somehow.

@Sunyo

Though such a view of “neither existence nor non-existence” sounds superficially deep, it’s completely meaningless. It’s refusing to take a stance, which is the view of the equivocators.

This is wrong too.

The buddha shares the abyakata with the skeptics, but (refuses to) answer for completely different reasons, the equivocators claim not to know the amswers, the buddha claims that the questions cant be coherently answered for all the relevent terms for the life of someone seeking freedom.

Terms like beings, agents, actors, actions, motives, joy, sorrow, experiences, acts, consequences, etc

None of these can be real unreal both niether at the same time as being arrangable into a path to freedom or a solution to suffering.

@Sunyo

So unless we want to fall into equivocation, we have to take a position: does some kind of awareness/experience remain or not?

No.

The equivocators equivocate on all 4 abyakata, the dont answer either of the first 2 either.

And niether does the buddha.

The abyakata is not a riddle where you first reject 3 and 4 and then argue you have to pick between 1 amd 2 because of it is simply not what we see in the ebt.

The buddha rejects ALL 4 abyakata limbs.

@Sunyo

I hold there is nothing after the six senses cease.

“Mā hevaṁ, āvuso”.

Shifting the goalposts by bracketing “something else” and then rewriting the 4 abyakata as if they all just resolve to refering to a falsehood is a poor argument.

For one thing it completely collapses for the kammic case, that is the sequence of suttas that ask if the one who acts is the same as the one who has results or different or both or niether.

In that sequence even if you make the person a fiction and bracket them out the sequence compelles you to reject the view that both the actor and the experincer are fictions.

That there are some cases where the revision can be made to work is a poor reason to revise when the other examples then become needlesly inconsistent.

I will try and find time to mine my survey of the abyakata at

TO BE OR NOT TO BE, the undeclared points in the 4 principle Nikayas:

TO BE OR NOT TO BE (or both, or neither) The undeclared points in the 4 principle Nikayas. The undeclared points are a number of questions, typically ten, but sometimes as few as two, as at SN44.10, and sometimes as many as 11, as at AN10.95, and often 4, as at SN12.17. This essay focuses on the standard set of ten, and looks at the differing explanations given for the Buddha’s silence in the different suttas. We first see the undeclared points introduced at DN1 and DN2, where they are used to…

But just to reiterate,

It doesnt matter if the subject of the abyakata is a

Self
World
Being
Act/Consequence
Shoe
Etc

It is always an argument about how these things might be part of our lives without being

Substantial
Insubstantial
Both
Niether

Or

Real
Unreal
Both
niether

Eternal
Mortal
Both
Niether

Etc.