Viññāṇa anidassana: the state of boundless consciousness

Wooj, many answers again!

Hi again. :slight_smile: For the discussion I think it will be more fruitful to, instead of just supplying more passages, reply to my earlier replies. Otherwise it just turns into a repetition of the same ideas. Inventing your own passages and quoting them as if they were actual suttas also does not help. (I’m talking about “Wherever consciousness is found, in whatever terms, the Blessed One describes it as consciousness”.) (Sorry I misunderstood.)

Anyway, because it is a good example of a wider problem, let’s look at “unrestricted awareness” for vimariyādīkatena cetasā. This translation is clearly bent by the translator’s view (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is when the view is bad). Cetas just doesn’t mean awareness, and “unrestricted” is also very questionable. Compare it with Bhikkhu Bodhi’s “mind free from boundaries” (AN10.81), meaning the mind no longer attached to something, no longer “bound by” that. In MN111 it is used for an unenlightened mind as well, so there has nothing to do with nibbāna, and it is used with reference to the jhanas, so it also has nothing to do with “where name & form are brought to an end”.

As to “unestablished consciousness” (better is “consciousness is not established”). I explained it (here, to which you didn’t respond) to be a metaphor for the cessation of consciousness, opposed to its arising, its “establishing”. These passages are not about some kind of consciousness “being unestablished” while alive, but about it ceasing when an arahant dies. The very passage you quote, on “Mara the Evil One searching for the consciousness of the clansman Vakkali”, clearly illustrates this too, because Vakkali had just died in that sutta.

Here’s how I might translate the parallel passage (in SN4.23):

“That is Evil Death looking for Godhika’s consciousness, thinking: ‘Where is Godhika’s consciousness established?’ But because his consciousness was not established anywhere, Godhika fully went out.”