David, allow me to clarify. When I said “I do not see that”, I was referring to this:
Please quote me exactly which sentence you believe the Buddha the mind of the monk being like fire. And please quote me anywhere in that sutta where the Buddha is saying anything about citta going anywhere or not. Because I do not see that in the English, nor in the Pāli.
To be precise, I was actually saying that he said they are “exterminated, and unable to arise in the future.” Form itself might continue in an non-animate way, as the body decomposes, in my personal opinion.
From that sutta - I will highlight the five aggregates for you:
“In the same way, Vaccha, any form by which a Realized One might be described has been cut off at the root, made like a palm stump, exterminated, and unable to arise in the future. A Realized One is freed from reckoning in terms of form. They’re deep, immeasurable, and hard to fathom, like the ocean. ‘They’re reborn’, ‘they’re not reborn’, ‘they’re both reborn and not reborn’, ‘they’re neither reborn nor not reborn’—none of these apply.
Any feeling …
perception …
choices …
consciousness by which a Realized One might be described has been cut off at the root, made like a palm stump, exterminated, and unable to arise in the future.
By the way that is actually the second time he mentions the 5 aggregates in this sutta!
Now you are asking my opinion. It’s good to differentiate that from merely analysing what the Buddha is directly saying in this sutta. So, for my opinion? Perhaps it is pointing to the idea that the root of the khandhas is cut off at awakening, but they continue until death. Hence why death is called ‘nibbāna without remainder’. The fire is no longer given fuel, so when the current fuel is used up, no more fire arises. Because there are no more khandhas to feed the fire. That is to say, the fire was only ever ecisting dependent on its fuel. And the khandhas are the fuel. And this is why enlightenment represents the end of rebirth.
I most certainly did not state that.
Correct. But saying citta is permanent, and ‘not anatta’, and the ‘core’ of a person, is quite another matter!
I was referring to the views of Maha Boowa, which I quoted above. Here is another quote from Maha Boowa:
The citta is conditioned by anicca, dukkha, and anattã only because things that are subject to these laws come spinning in to become involved with the citta and so cause it to spin along with them. However, though it spins in unison with conditioned phenomena, the citta never disintegrates or falls apart.
So we have citta as “the nucleus of existence—the core of the knower”, something “beyond the range of anicca, dukkha, and anattã” which is “deathless”, and “never disintegrates or falls apart”.
And here he seems to directly refer to the citta as atta:
If the Citta has still not seen anything from itself in a time of necessity, it still has not seen the importance of itself, and so it will always take refuge in other people. In the Dhamma that the Lord taught, the saying: “Attahi attano Natho” — “Self is the refuge of self” is still not accepted in the heart.