But why does you look for true arising or true cessation ? That is not the goal of the path .
I’m confused as you ask again what I just answered. I looked because it is what appears to ignorance. So I investigated just like someone who sees a mirage but has an inkling that the mirage might be deceptive. I looked to confirm my hunch that the mirage was deceptive.
I looked because the Teacher instructed us in the Phena sutta to contemplate and to see the aggregates as void and hollow and to do so with the same urgency as one whose hair is on fire looks for something or some way to douse the flames. 
Probably you didnt get what i conveyed . Buddha taught us to contemplate the arising and ceasing of the aggregates without biases . Look at it “as it is” and not look at it “as true arising or true cessation” . He didnt say find out which is true arising or true cessation .
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It is true that I didn’t get what you said. That’s why I asked for clarification.
The Teacher taught to see the aggregates as a lump of foam, a mirage, an illusion, a magic trick. As empty, void, insubstantial. The teacher said to do this with the same urgency as if our head was on fire.
Seeing it as void and hollow is accomplished by peeling back the layers as one would a banana tree or so the Teacher said. If you don’t peel back the layers and look for the essence you cannot see the emptiness or voidness of the core of a banana tree.
Do you not recognize the Phena Sutta as authentic teaching of the Buddha?
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Ah ha , it seems if you are trying to peel the layers and " look for the essence " which i would say is not what the Buddha actually conveyed . Instead in my understanding it just suppose to be looking at it without searching or interpreting it . Sometimes the Buddha speaks in a way to present it as a metaphor in order for the audience to easily grasp it such as described in the Phena sutta .
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The Teacher used the same simile as I used about the banana tree and contemplating like this. If you find what I said in error do you similarly find the Phena sutta in error? If not, then what do you think the Phena sutta conveys and how does if differ from what I conveyed?
“Form is like a lump of foam; feeling is like a bubble; perception seems like a mirage; choices like a banana tree; and consciousness like a magic trick: so taught the kinsman of the Sun.
However you contemplate them, examining them carefully, they’re void and hollow when you look at them closely.
SN 22.95
If you examine the sutta carefully and contemplate it you’ll find the sutta advises to examine the aggregates carefully and to contemplate them and to metaphorically peel back the layers of the banana tree to see that they are hollow.
Again, do you think the aggregates should not be contemplated and examined carefully and metaphorically peeled back to see the essence lessness as the Teacher described? Was the Phena Sutta in error or not the authentic teaching of the Buddha?
Perhaps you think this is a provisional training only and you are advising to give this up for some other more definitive training?
It really isn’t clear to me what error you find in what I said or what the Phena sutta says so I do hope you will explain in more detail.
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Here are the differences . You seems to be searching for the essences whereas the sutta said you dont have to look for it . Once insight occur it would appear to you as such .
“Inspects it, ponders it, and carefully investigates it” and upon doing so ”it would appear to him to be void, hollow, insubstantial” to me is explained in that very sutta as metaphorically peeling back the layers of the aggregates - like a banana tree - to find the coreless emptiness or lack of essence.
You say that you don’t have to search but the very thing you highlight seems to contradict what you say! If ”inspects it, ponders it, and carefully investigates it” has a different meaning than searching for the metaphorical core of the banana tree - as the sutta says - then please explain what these quotes mean to you.
It is far from clear what error you are finding or whether you are finding an error in the Phena sutta or what I wrote. Perhaps you think the part of the Phena sutta about the banana tree was a late redaction?
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The sutta doesnt mentioned looking for the essence or do you understand it as such ?
Doesnt sutta statement appear to you that meditation on the aggregates arising and ceasing are not the same as what you said to look for essences in the aggregates ? What you inspect , ponders and investigates are merely or solely on aggregates and not looking for some core essence in it ? Isnt this is something simple to grasp ?
Yes, it does mention it. It mentions it in the very part you quote:
So too, bhikkhus, whatever kind of form there is, whether past, future, or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, inferior or superior, far or near: a bhikkhu inspects it, ponders it, and carefully investigates it, and it would appear to him to be void, hollow, insubstantial. For what substance could there be in form?
And then in another part of the sutta it explains with the metaphor of the banana tree:
“Suppose, bhikkhus, that a man needing heartwood, seeking heartwood, wandering in search of heartwood, would take a sharp axe and enter a forest. There he would see the trunk of a large plantain tree, straight, fresh, without a fruit-bud core. He would cut it down at the root, cut off the crown, and unroll the coil. As he unrolls the coil, he would not find even softwood, let alone heartwood. A man with good sight would inspect it, ponder it, and carefully investigate it, and it would appear to him to be void, hollow, insubstantial. For what substance could there be in the trunk of a plantain tree?
This is all right there in SN 22.95
Again, I’ve just quoted the sutta above that seems to contradict what you are saying and you haven’t explained what you think, ”inspects it, ponders it, and carefully investigates it” means if not looking for the “substance” in the aggregates like the sutta says. Nor have you explained if you think the part about the Banana tree is a late redaction. I don’t understand what you think is in error or why you think it is in error.
I apologize if I’m too obtuse to understand what you’re trying to convey no matter how simple it is. I confess it isn’t simple to understand for me and at this point I despair that you’ll be able to explain it to me.
May you be well friend.
1stly i didnt say it is late and i dont take it as a late text . 2ndly i pointed out that you have said the meditation itself is to search for the essence in the aggregates as per your understanding of the sutta described which i said is not or am i miscomprehended you ?
Lets put it this way , say you look at a tree but without any agenda ie searching for essence , instead the phena sutta already said after through the process of meditation , it naturally would “Appear” to you as empty of essence , that is even without you searching for it whether it is empty without essence or otherwise . I hope this brings better clarity to you .
Thanks for answering whether you think the sutta is late. I acknowledge you have so answered.
The man in the metaphor goes searching for the heartwood of the banana tree. He cuts it down, unrolls it and looks for the essence of the banana tree. Upon not finding it, it appears empty and void and lacking a core. This is explained as what is meant by “inspects it, ponders it, carefully investigates it.”
What you say about not having an agenda or not searching for an essence is in contradiction to what the sutta says to my mind. At this point I fear you wont be able to explain away that contradiction to my obtuse mind and for that I apologize. May you be well.
So , are you saying the Buddha taught us to look at the aggregates as empty of essence starting from the beginning of meditation ?
I don’t know what you mean by “start of meditation” or what you are trying to ask. The aggregates do not appear empty to sentient beings. Only after inspecting, pondering and carefully examining them can sentient beings see that they lack essence.
Hello again yeshe! 
I was thinking about what you said about Conditioned vs Dependent. For example, Small depends on something Large for us to make it point so.
In this fashion, I’m wondering: Doesn’t the concept of “Not Truly Arising” depend on something “Truly Arising”? That is, we need to see something “Truly Arising” before we can compare something else to it to say “Oh that isn’t truly arising!”.
If nothing is truly arising, then this property is said to be truly arising? (Because, if not truly arising is also not truly arising, then this fakeness is fake, making it all too real). So there’s at least one thing that’s truly arising? Perhaps that’s your definition of sunyata / nirvana?
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So , i guess the beginning of my question is , why you said looking for “true arising or true cessation” isnt it ?! I said the path isnt searching for any kind of true arising or true cessation but to just to look at it as it is . Thereafter you introduced the phena sutta which then is another matter . Anyway , nvm if you dont get it . Thanks for the exchanges ! 
Excellent question! To this my instinct is to answer from the framework of constructive logic. In that logic we say every truth must be constructed. There is a deep equivalence between this and computer science and math. It is called the Curry-Howard correspondence and if/when you have some time I think you might find it interesting!
But on to the topic and the question… it turns out that if you adopt this framework it is possible to posit “not truly arising” without positing that something “truly arising” must exist. It is the Law of the Excluded Middle which seems to force us to think otherwise. The truth must be constructed or demonstrated if you will. It must be embodied. At a deep level a mathematical proof is just such a construction of a computer algorithm so demonstrating it or embodying it. If you adopt a given formal system of mathematics it is possible to arrive at proofs by refutation; that is a computer algorithm (a constructed truth) that demonstrates the refutation of a hypothesis. “Truly arising” could be just such a hypothesis.
This I’m much less clear about. In logical terms what you’re describing by “nothing is” I think is an existential quantifier and it would translate in the framework above to the hypothesis that we could build a computer algorithm that would output that “truly arising” can be refuted for all X. I don’t know how to build such an algorithm and somehow I doubt it can be built. I just don’t know.
I tend to think that this framework can only go so far and what the Teacher arrived at was beyond logic but I confess I don’t understand nor have I arrived at any such thing.
PS: The framework I’m talking about is also called intuitionistic logic which is the same as constructive logic.
PSS: I also am on the record as believing the universe does not follow the physical Church-Turing thesis - which briefly says it is possible to model the physical laws of our universe (whatever they ultimately turn out to be) on a Turing machine to arbitrary precision given enough time. In other words, I don’t think it possible that our world is a simulation. I hypothesize that there are physical observations that cannot be modeled by a Turing machine in principal.
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This seems to be another logical dilemma in your exposition. What fundamental property does loka have that is so transcendental as to be not expressable in a Turing machine?
Fundamentally, if nothing is truly arising, everything is empty, I don’t even need a Turing machine, I just need a blank paper (not even that, but just for the sake of our discussion) to build complete analog machine that thanslates all the world, entire buddha dhamma, and everything Nagarjuna explains; it is just an unenlightened mind that would fail to see the entire universe explained on such blankness.
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It is the lack of a fundamental property that leads me to believe that it cannot be expressed in a Turing machine 
There is… the inexpressible
So, Turing machine has a fundamental property? 
Why does a Turing machine not suffice to explain sunyata, if even a blank paper is a perfect analogy? What fundamental difference is there between a paper, a turing machine and entire world?
Expression is the mirage; translation is the perfection of wisdom.
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