Truly Exist, dependently exist, dependently ceased, truly not existing

In context, after parinibbāna. While still alive, there’s body and mind, mind made body is nothing unusual.

I stop at here.

No experience to speak of, there’s no sense to speak of nothing or something else exist. No 7th sense to speak of.

In the framework in the OP above, what’s your conception of parinibbāna then? Would you add a 5th thing?

But the sutta in question doesn’t say 5 aggregates, it says:

Here a bhikkhu is an arahant, one whose taints are destroyed, the holy life fulfilled, who has done what had to be done, laid down the burden, attained the goal, destroyed the fetters of being, completely released through final knowledge. However, his five sense faculties remain - Their five sense faculties still remain. So long as their senses have not gone they continue to experience the agreeable and disagreeable, to feel pleasure and pain.

Why doesn’t it say the six bases for contact Āyatana or the 5 aggregates?

It says the ”five sense faculties still remain” -

  • The mind/citta is liberated, maybe that is why it it not included?

You know, the mind as the 6th sense:

Exactly, that is why it says five sense faculties still remain and not 5 aggregates or six bases of contact, since the mind/citta is liberated.

If arahants do not have mind, it would be impossible for them to enter the Jhānas. But since they do enter Jhānas as pleasant abiding here and now, that means that they have mind base. Thus mind base is also present for the arahants at Nibbāna with remainder, not just the 5 physical senses. With the mind, consciousness, comes also perception, feeling, volitional formations. Buddha can produce compassion, which is a volition formations. Form needless to say is present as well. Thus all 5 aggregates are seen to be present for the arahant.

A body without mind, is basically zombie? Cannot move actually.

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No, it is rather like this:

At one time Venerable Sāriputta was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery. Then Venerable Sāriputta robed up in the morning and, taking his bowl and robe, entered Sāvatthī for alms. He wandered for alms in Sāvatthī. After the meal, on his return from almsround, he went to the Dark Forest, plunged deep into it, and sat at the root of a tree for the day’s meditation.

Then in the late afternoon, Sāriputta came out of retreat and went to Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery. Venerable Ānanda saw him coming off in the distance, and said to him:

“Reverend Sāriputta, your faculties are so very clear, and your complexion is pure and bright. What meditation were you practicing today?”

“Reverend, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, I entered and remained in the first absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected. But it didn’t occur to me: ‘I am entering the first absorption’ or ‘I have entered the first absorption’ or ‘I am emerging from the first absorption’.”

“That must be because Venerable Sāriputta has long ago totally eradicated I-making, mine-making, and the underlying tendency to conceit. That’s why it didn’t occur to you: ‘I am entering the first absorption’ or ‘I have entered the first absorption’ or ‘I am emerging from the first absorption’.” - SN 28.1

At Sāvatthī.

Venerable Ānanda saw Venerable Sāriputta …

“Reverend, going totally beyond the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception, I entered and remained in the cessation of perception and feeling. But it didn’t occur to me: ‘I am entering the cessation of perception and feeling’ or ‘I have entered the cessation of perception and feeling’ or ‘I am emerging from the cessation of perception and feeling’.”

“That must be because Venerable Sāriputta has long ago totally eradicated I-making, mine-making, and the underlying tendency to conceit. That’s why it didn’t occur to you: ‘I am entering the cessation of perception and feeling’ or ‘I have entered the cessation of perception and feeling’ or ‘I am emerging from the cessation of perception and feeling’.” SN 28.9

mind is not only made of conceit.

  • Citta is liberated
  • ”five sense faculties still remain” -

Problem solved :+1:

If there is complete emptiness in nibbana (asankhata-dhamma), who then is the self? What is meant by the self seeing the dhamma?

There is no self.

It’s supramundane consciousness which sees Nibbāna. Dissolution and Cessation – How to See Nibbāna — Advanced Vipassana

Asankhata is described as ‘what has no characteristic to arise, cease and change’.

It was this what the Buddha sought, after realising that nothing that has the opposite features (sankhata) is reliable. For me this is also the meaning of: all that is liable to arise, is also liable to cease. There is just no safety, protection, refuge in such. The whole domain of the conditioned cannot fulfill our heartwish for the end of suffering because it is all fundamentally not stable, unreliable.
It will always desintegrate some time, sooner or later.

Many sutta’s make perfectly clear that Buddha sought what is reliable, in other words: that what is stable, constant, not-desintegrating. Because, anything else cannot really be a refuge, safety, protect.
I believe it is universal that we all seek what is constant, reliable, what can protect in this unsafe world.

Buddha brings this light in the world, that this is not a hopeless mission to seek for the stable, constant, not desintegrating. He teaches he found it. He called it asankhata, Nibbana. It is not affected by arising, ceasing, decaying, change, aging, the unailing, the deathless. That is what he found and in that his search came to an end. His heart was now at ease. Not at ease with the prospect to finally cease at a last death, but at ease because his heartwish to find the stable, the not-desintegrating was fulfilled.

I believe, people come to the wrong conclusion that seeing asankhata as real, seeing Nibbana as real, is the same as introducing eternalism and self in Dhamma. This is not the case. One cannot talk about asankhata as something that eternally exist. And seeing it as atta, a kind of personal core, eternal entity-like, is surely not appropriate.

So, back to your citation: i believe we can very well think of parinibbana without a self and still also as not a mere cessation. It just says that there is more to life then khandha’s. There is also Nibbana.

Asankhata , i feel, transcends all such designations as exist, truly exist etc. So, i also do not think this line of reasoning brings us anything closer to realising Nibbana.

That still doesn’t explicitly mean that “self” does not exist, does it?
The Buddha would have chosen to remain silent on many existential and ontological issues that we bring up here and there.

That is a sign of misunderstanding Buddhism in this day and age.

So where is this self which you think still exist somehow?

Anatta/Sunyata mean(s) there is no existence.

The Path to Enlightenment signifies that there is something Higher than such empirical understanding, and that our perceptions actually can have deep meaning.

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“Hey heart, be silent like a corpse,
because of language we exist.”
Rumi

This world, arising as nothing from nothing and ceasing to nothing has nothing to cling on to. There is nothing to Love, hate, suffer, or establish ourselves with regards to in this world. It is an illusion we should not take part in. Provisionally we may say things like “there is a God” or “Buddha is Enlightened”, but this is a form of grasping in the End. Things only have meaning when we give them meaning. Religion is a form of attempting to permanently cling to a world that doesn’t exist and never will because having reality is not a tenant of such a mirage. Though I personally accept all religions as true, I can also say that they are just some of the Dharma Gateways we have to go through to get to Supreme Perfect Enlightenment. Even mere Buddhism is. There is no ultimate ‘essence’ we can find anywhere in any Teaching, even if we look for it, but it can certainly seem real to us that our perceptions are telling us the truth. A theist can think of the Supreme Divine as it’s own creation too, but it sustains itself based on that principle of Metta that it is given. It takes one person to believe in God for there to be a God. Such is the power of true belief and true Love. We have such Love for the Buddha, and that’s why Buddhism has the Dhamma as such a powerful pillar, forever.

I mean that translating “Atta” (which means specifically “Taken” or “Seized”) as an abstract concept of “Self” rather than “Avatar” or “Soul”, specifically in the context of Brahma-Atman relationship.

Buddha rejects this abstract relationship to begin with, that is, Brahma “taking up” the namarupa; as a non-entity, it can’t be said to be annihilated.

Various schools explain if this taken-up Atman is eternal within Samsara or destroyed when merging with the divinity. So, annihilationist views here are not just abstract “materialist” concepts, they’re in the context of “This avatar” rather than “This body”.

Eternalists believe that this Atman will transmigrate forever without end; Annihilationists claim that upon death, there’s no more rebirth for that Atman.

Buddha, obviously, explains how a puggalo goes through rebirths (unlike annihilationism) but doesn’t believe in an endless transmigration (like eternalists).

Furthermore:

‘I might not be, and it might not be mine. I will not be, and it will not be mine.’ But that annihilationist view is just a conditioned phenomenon. SN22.81

This annihilationist view is born of the conceit “I am” and/or “I have”, that is: “I have this form” or “This form is me”.

“But sir, how does substantialist view come about? They regard form as self, self as having form, form in self, or self in form. (Repeat with other aggregates) That’s how substantialist view comes about.” MN109

(That is to say, the “substantialist” view takes the aggregates, or one of them, to be a “substantial reality” that is identified with the self. Such views are created each time we think or attach to the aggregates as a self. - Ven. Sujato notes)

Annihilationist view is wrong not because processes can’t end without remainder, but because annihilationism implies a substantialist view.

“From the destruction of all craving
fading away without remainder, cessation, and extinguishment." Ud3.10

Heart, mind, body all are not self.

You truly are the life of a party, Bhante. :laughing:

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You’re mixing up two different words. ‘Self’ is Ātman (‘Attā’), ‘Taken’ is Atta. In Pāli, they can look the same. But ‘anattā’ is undoubtedly ‘anātman.’ One is a past participle of a verb, the other is a simple noun.

We don’t base our interpretations of Buddhism from obscure linguistic puns and assumptions about how people thousands of years ago might have taken them. We base our interpretations on clear statements, surrounding internal context, inference from other tangential doctrines, and we can supplement with context from non-Buddhist explanations.

Ātman actually meant ‘body’ originally! :slight_smile: And it is sometimes used in that sense in Pāli, in the sense of a body or self that is a being. “Avatar” is a later idea that I don’t believe is ever mentioned in the suttas. And I quoted you a case of the most famous annihiltionist in the suttas who clearly thought it was just the body that was destroyed. He was not in the Vedic tradition nor did he believe in a spiritual annihiltion.

Except that this is called puggalavāda and it was rejected by every other school of Buddhism. So it’s not at all obvious that this is what the Buddha teaches. As we’ve already discussed, this is just annihilationism. To believe there is a temporary self (called a ‘puggala’) that is destroyed eventually at some point in time. Eternalism and annihilationism aren’t resolved by positing a puggala. They’re resolved by dependent arising, which mentions no puggala. Conventionally, it’s fine to talk about an individual going through the round of rebirths. But philosophically, puggalavāda is not the answer the Buddha gave.

Mettā

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What is it that gives you the power to meditate?

Btw, you took heart as its literal meaning.
But it aligns more with tathagata-garbha.

Mind.

This can be replied with in many ways.

Let’s go from generous first. The potential to become enlightened is also not self.

The meaning of Buddha nature as more than the potential to become enlightened is not in Theravada, but even in Mahāyāna, it’s just a positive expression of emptiness. Empty of what? Of self.