SuttaCentral
Mind arises and ceases every moment.
You’re familiar with special relativity personal time vs coordinate time right? Should have no issues applying it here.
Even subatomic particles would exhibit different behaviours if time dilation is not true, they would have lived shorter and decayed high up in the atmosphere instead of falling as cosmic rays to be detected by us.
Right. But this contradicts the notion that mind stops followed by a finite number of moments with no mind arising nor ceasing, then mind arising again; hence “mind stops” shouldn’t be taken as some sort of literal ontological statement. I don’t see what physics has to do with it, but yes I’m familiar with special relativity.
I don’t claim any special knowledge of the meditative state related in Sn41.6, but perhaps all that is meant is that discursive thought stops; conceptual thinking. The mind can know without engaging in discursive thought aka conceptual thinking.
Mind stops from the point of view of external observer. From the point of view of internal observer, there is no gap, no experience. Time just jumps.
Like for us, light takes time to move from one end of the universe to another. But to the light, it has no time experienced between these 2 events.
Doesn’t mean that we have to interpret things only from our point of view and disregard light’s point of view.
Ah, so like a drunken blackout. No special relativity needed 
Then you will have to accept the notion that corpses have minds.
How does that follow??
Read the sutta, just a few paragraphs above it compares cessation attainment to corpse.
Never been drunk before, so dunno, but it’s not like that certainly. Drunken blackout still have mind there.
Ah, so my guess about what Venerable Kāmabhū was describing was incorrect. He was indeed apparently describing something more akin to a drunken blackout it seems.
No, I said my guess was incorrect about what Venerable Kāmabhū was describing.
I don’t claim any special knowledge of the meditative state related in Sn41.6, but perhaps all that is meant is that discursive thought stops; conceptual thinking.
I’m saying I was wrong in this ^^^ guess. It sounds like what you said - that the “experience” was akin to a corpse with no mind or a drunken blackout.
So, @Green you are saying that the Citta is not defiled, right? So, are you saying there are no such things as the defilements? Or, are you saying that there are defilements, but not in the Citta? If not in the Citta, then where?
This is what Luang Dta said about the Lord Buddha,
He carried on with determination in order to sanitise the Kilesas that dwelt in His Citta until they faded away completely through His diligent effort.*
*Dhamma Comes From the Heart
When I refer to the “impure” Citta, it is in the same context as this quote.
I believe, an angry mind is merely an impression due to grasping and feeding arising anger. A greedy mind is merely an impression due to grasping and feeding greedg. A result of avijja. A delusional impression. Not seeing things as they really are. Meaning, things are now experiences as if they are really mixed up. Like anger and mind are really now become one. I do not believe this possible.
Mind is under any condition clear. It has no colour and it cannot colour. There can be the impression that mind has really become angry, greedy etc, due to grasping.
Where are the defilements? I think my ideas about this tend into a direction that are not buddhist, but my impression is that defilements are mostly related to the coarse body, especially the brain. The brain has that system of agression/fight, fear, flight, rewardsystem (seeking the rewards of sense pleasure), the neurotransmitter that relate to calm, to love, psychosis etc.
The more in the head the more defiled, it seems to me.
But i do not really know if without a coarse body, for example, there is still a support for flee/fight/freeze reactions. I do not see this. I can easily say…EBT teaches there is…but that does not mean i know this. I do not know how likely this all is, especially because there is overwhelming evidence for how the Brain processes relate to emotions, rewarding-feelings, stress, flee/fight/freeze etc. If we loose that brain, is there still a support for all this? I do not exclude that but i also do not know that.
Also, the body of us has a history of ape-like creature. I feel the need to integrate all this knowledge. A lot has happened since Buddha. We also know there are no moist-born beings, but probably at that time they did not understand how beings are born in a environmoment of moist.
I feel, some ideas in buddhism seem to be arisen from a need to declare things, but it feels sometimes a bit forced. A very stron idea, i feel, is that matter, the virtilized egg, must be vitalized otherwise it cannot give birth. What to think of such ideas? The way buddhist reason about this, that can never be falsified. But i cannot help to believe this is a primitive idea. A descent of a lifestream into the womb or egg of animal?
I am to ignorant to see all this
Hi Yeshe,
This is true, but not when all consciousness is absent as in saññāvedayitanrodha.
I mean, without any consciousness one is left to conjure an alternative, extra sort of knowing – which without any consciousness is incoherent.
Setting aside Abhidhammic analyses, in the temporary cessation of consciousness, the aggregates, senses, and “life-force” (ayu) remain (although not perceived in this state), so old kammic conditions are still present by which consciousness can/will resume before parinibbāna.
As in MN43:
“When a mendicant has attained the cessation of perception and feeling, their physical, verbal, and mental processes have ceased and stilled. But their vitality is not spent; …”
What does it mean for you that the mind can be detached from vinnana? How is this possible if mind and vinnana are the same? How do you see this detachment that the Buddha realised from vinnana?
Hi,
Viññāna generally refers to six sense consciousness, but not always. It can refer to the stream of consciousness that combines with nāma-rūpa at rebirth, (DN15).
It can also denote “mind” in general, along with citta and mana. As in AN1.11-20 for mana.
Mind, in the suttas, is not a “thing.” It’s conditional processes that cognize. As in MN43 and SN1.62.
Yes, it seems Venerable Sāriputta gave much the same presentation as Venerable Kāmabhū.
But what is your answer? A Buddha has a mind freed, detached, from vinnana. How would you describe this?
The nature of Mind in the sutta’s is something that has to be discovered, revealed, not assumed as this or that. It has to be discovered while we gradually purify mind. The general idea in the sutta’s is that we do not see and understand mind as it actually is.
Detached points to not attaching to anything conditional, including not identifying with anything at all- including mind-processes and nibbāna.
Or any of the senses or aggregates. “Seeing things as they are or as they come to be”, yathābhūta ñāṇadassanassa, is what happens at awakening.
Yes, and now a perception/feeling/vinnana arises…how do you detach from that?