No tension! I agree. It’s best to untie the knot of material existence and soon enter Nibbana!
What follows from this sutta, and many others like it, is that any such questions about existence or Existence or substance or reality are the signs of (i) wrong views, (ii) involvement in unskilful metaphysical speculation beyond the scope of the teaching - it’s not Dhamma and it’s not about Dhamma.
In other words, the fact that a person asks such questions, or tries to answer such questions as valid and correct, is the sign and result of the absence of the right views in that person, the absence of even understanding what dukkha is, the absence of understanding what the aggregates of clinging are and why they are dukkha.
That’s why, after the Buddha has explained the right view to Anuradha, such questions simply don’t arise for him: they are invalid questions - he no longer tries to answer or ask these kinds of questions himself.
Sutta’s that reveal something about the nature of the Tathagata:
-
Tathagata abides/lives with a mind freed from khandha’s, old age, sickness, death, freed from suffering, defilements (AN10.81).
-
Tathagata (freed ) cannot be considered in terms of khandha’s , also not in terms of vinnana. He is deep as the ocean, immeasurable, unfathomable (MN72, SN44.1)
-
While Tathagata cannot be considered in this very life as this or that khandha’s, also after death one cannot say that this or that happens (SN22.85). This all deals with sakkaya ditthi and the impossibility to understand the nature of the Tathagata with conceiving, like christians also say that one cannot conceive the nature of God and that is a wrong method. I just use this as example, not to say the concept of God and Tathagata are the same. But conceiving is a wrong means to understand the nature of Tathataga, but still we wish to conceive it. Logics, reasoning, conceiving does not apply to understand Nibbana nor the nature of the Tathagata
-
When a person is freed, he cannot be defined/described (Snp5.6) in terms of existence or non-existence, non of these apply
-
with the cessation of the All one cannot say there is nothing and all has ceased (AN4.173)
-
Tathagata has special abilites and all Realised Ones are immeasurable. A Realized One could make his voice heard throughout a galactic supercluster, or as far as he wants. (AN3.80)
-
A Tathagata can live for the end of the eaon as he wishes (AN8.70, SN51.10)
-
Tathatagata is dharmakaya, the body of Dhamma (DN27)
I believe in general we cannot stop to try to understands things while using reasoning, logica, conceiving, but that is not the right means. Conceiving always deals with a notion of self, with sakkaya ditthi too. Conceiving one must see as an illness the sutta’s say.
The idea that we can understand Dhamma by conceiving is mistaken. It is like one can understand the taste of a strawberry by reading, thinking, reflecting upon all what is written about strawberries. It will never happen. But one bite and one knows.
The idea that someone understands the nature of Tathagata by reading, reflecting, applying logic, i believe is the same mistake. It will never happen. One can only become more conceited, thinking one knows and has so much knowledge.
For the sake of didactic, it is good to notice that not asking questions about one’s own existence or existence of Tathagata, not necessarily means that one follows the advice of Sutta MN 2, and is practising correctly. Since there are many reasons why certain questions are not asked, for example one is to busy with sensual gratification and such questions aren’t interesting for him.
So gradition is as follows: fool doesn’t ask such questions, intelligent man asks such questions, and by receiving an information that such questions aren’t valid, he starts to be even more interested why according to suttas such questions aren’t valid and finally he sees it for himself.
Every man, at every moment of his life, is engaged in a perfectly definite concrete situation in a world that he normally takes for granted. But it occasionally happens that he starts to think. He becomes aware, obscurely, that he is in perpetual contradiction with himself and with the world in which he exists. 'I am, am I not? – but what am I? What is this elusive self that is always elsewhere whenever I try to grasp it? And this familiar world – why is it silent when I ask the reason for my presence here? ’ These insidious doubts about the assurance of his personal identity and the purpose of his existence in a world that has suddenly become indifferent to him begin to undermine his simple faith in the established order of things (whatever it may happen to be), whose function it is to relieve him of anxiety. And the great service performed by the existential philosophies is to prevent a return to complacency. (…)
Existential philosophies, then, insist upon asking questions about self and the world, taking care at the same time to insist that they are unanswerable.[f] Beyond this point of frustration these philosophies cannot go. The Buddha, too, insists that questions about self and the world are unanswerable, either by refusing to answer them[g] or by indicating that no statement about self and the world can be justified.[h] But – and here is the vital difference – the Buddha can and does go beyond this point: not, to be sure, by answering the unanswerable, but by showing the way leading to the final cessation of all questions about self and the world.[i][j] Let there be no mistake in the matter: the existential philosophies are not a substitute for the Buddha’s Teaching – for which, indeed, there can be no substitute.[k] The questions that they persist in asking are the questions of a puthujjana , of a ‘commoner’,[l] and though they see that they are unanswerable they have no alternative but to go on asking them; for the tacit assumption upon which all these philosophies rest is that the questions are valid. They are faced with an ambiguity that they cannot resolve.[m] The Buddha, on the other hand, sees that the questions are not valid and that to ask them is to make the mistake of assuming that they are. One who has understood the Buddha’s Teaching no longer asks these questions; he is ariya , ‘noble’, and no more a puthujjana , and he is beyond the range of the existential philosophies; but he would never have reached the point of listening to the Buddha’s Teaching had he not first been disquieted by existential questions about himself and the world.
g (‘Being seated at one side, the wanderer Vacchagotta said to the Auspicious One, – How is it, master Gotama, does self exist? When this was said the Auspicious One was silent. – How then, master Gotama, does self not exist? A second time, too, the Auspicious One was silent. Then the wanderer Vacchagotta got up from his seat and went away.’) Avyākata Samy. 10 <S.iv,400> [
h (‘Therein, monks, those recluses and divines whose belief and view is thus, ‘Self and the world are eternal [Self and the world are non-eternal (and so on)], just this is truth and all else foolishness’, – that other merely than faith, other than preference, other than tradition, other than excogitation, other than acquiescent meditation of a (wrong) view, they should have private knowledge, purified and cleansed, such a thing is not possible.’) Majjhima xi,2 <M.ii,234>
‘This is determined and coarse; but there is such a thing as cessation of determinations – that there is. Knowing thus, and seeing the escape, the Tathāgata passes beyond.It is for this reason that the Ariya Dhamma is called lokuttara, ‘beyond the world’.’) [Back to text]
[j] It is all the fashion nowadays to hail modern science as the vindication of the Buddha’s anattā doctrine. Here is an example from a recent book: ‘This voidness of selfhood, which forms the distinguishing feature of the Buddhist analysis of being, is a view that is fully in accord with the conclusions drawn by modern scientific thinkers who have arrived at it independently.’[k] The supposition is that the Buddha solved the question of self and the world simply by anticipating and adopting the impersonal attitude of scientific objectivity. The seasoned thinker is not likely to be delayed by this sort of thing, but the beginner is easily misled.
The problem of the wanderers is not in the reasoning and not in the questions themselves, the problem is in the wrong implications - in the very foundation on which this reasoning and these questions are built. Their reasoning and questions are perfectly valid and correct, it’s only Anurādha who is wrong in his reasoning. What makes these questions invalid is not some mistakes in reasoning or the absence of some mystical experience. Their problem is that they can’t go beyond existence itself in their reasoning without deliberately undermining that reasoning - without falling into mysticism and blind, irrational faith.
From NIBBĀNA by Ven. Nanavira:
(i) Existence or being (bhava) transcends reason (takka, which is the range of the scholar or scientist), and (ii) extinction (nibbāna) transcends existence (which is the range of the puthujjana):
(i) There is no reason why I am, why I exist. My existence cannot be demonstrated by reasoning since it is not necessary, and any attempt to do so simply begs the question. The Cartesian cogito ergo sum is not a logical proposition—logically speaking it is a mere tautology. My existence is beyond reason.
(ii) I can assert my existence or I can deny it, but in order to do either I must exist; for it is I myself who assert it or deny it. Any attempt I may make to abolish my existence tacitly confirms it; for it is my existence that I am seeking to abolish. Ye kho te bhonto samanabrāhmanā sato sattassa ucchedam vināsam vibhavam paññāpenti te sakkāyabhayā sakkāyaparijegucchā sakkāyam yeva anuparidhāvanti anuparivattanti. Seyyathāpi nāma sā gaddūlabaddho dalhe thambhe vā khīle vā upanibaddho tam eva thambham vā khīlam vā anuparidhāvati anuparivattati, evam ev’ime bhonto samanabrāhmanā sakkāyabhayā sakkāyaparijegucchā sakkāyam yeva anuparidhāvanti anuparivattanti. (‘Those recluses and divines who make known the annihilation, perishing, and un-being, of the existing creature,—they, through fear of perssonality, through loathing of personality, are simply running and circling around personality. Just, indeed, as a dog, tied with a leash to a firm post or stake, runs and circles around that same post or stake, so these recluses and divines, through fear of personality, through loathing of personality, are simply running and circling around personality.’) (Majjhima xi,2 <M.ii,232>) Cessation of ‘my existence’ (which is extinction— bhavanirodho nibbānam (‘Extinction is cessation of being.’) [Anguttara X,i,7 <A.v,9>]) is beyond my existence. See ATAKKĀVACARA.
There is nothing mystical or transcendental about the right view.
Any experience alone, no matter how magical or mystical, cannot lead to understanding, to the elimination of ignorance. The elimination of ignorance is the result of understanding - the result of reasoning correctly on the basis of the facts of experience.
"I considered: 'This Dhamma that I have attained is profound, hard to see and hard to understand, peaceful and sublime, unattainable by mere reasoning, subtle, to be experienced by the wise. But this generation delights in worldliness, takes delight in worldliness, rejoices in worldliness. It is hard for such a generation to see this truth, namely, specific conditionality, dependent origination. And it is hard to see this truth, namely, the stilling of all formations, the relinquishing of all attachments, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, Nibbana.
Here is said, i feel: We must know both aspect of reality:1. sankhata, that what conditionally arises; 2. asankhata, the truth of stilling of all formations, that what is not seen arising.
Both must be known to really see and understand Dhamma. Both also support eachother, i believe, because one cannot really see Paticca Samuppada without stilling of all formations.
The sutta fragment also says Unattainable by mere reasoning! Very clear. The idea that Dhamma can be understood and attained by mere reasoning is not true. But some, people who are very much inclined to reasoning, thinking, like Vacchagotta, philosopher-types, always trying to get grip on Dhamma or reality by mere thinking and hammering things out by reasoning, also such as Kant, they do not come to understand Dhamma. I also have this inclination. But i do not see this as good.
Regarding mysticism or that kind of labels: i think some people just resist a deeper meaning.
While the sutta’s really support a deeper meaning, for example, about the Nature of the Tathagata, they resist that. They are very uncomfortable with not having intellectually grip on things.
I believe this describes the noble mundane Path. Correct thinking, regarding things in a wise way.
But this is not the supramundane Path. That is not about reasoning. Anything in the domain of conceiving, and reasoning is, is not supramundane, and the kind of view that can really end suffering.
What if even the Buddha originally perceived and received the Dhamma from a Higher Source 
?
The EBT do not only describe that questions/positions about the Tathagata after death are not conducive to the goal, they also explain a bit more:
-
if one does not understand the khandha’s, does not know their arising, their cessation, and the Path for their cessation, only then one thinks like…Tathagata this and that after death (SN44.4)
-
ideas about Tathgata after death means there is still involvement with the khandha’s (SN44.3)
-
only those not free of all desire for the khandha’s have standpoints about the Tathagata after death. Not those freed from all desire (MN44.5)
-
all those specualive visions about the status of the Tathagata after death arise because one does not know and see the sensed as not me, not mine, not my self (SN44.7)
-
it all depends on still having sakkaya ditthi (SN44.8)
-
In order to describe the Tathagata afte death as ‘possessing form’ or ‘formless’ or ‘percipient’ or ‘non-percipient’ or ‘neither percipient nor non-percipient’, there must be some cause or reason for doing so. But if that cause and reason were to totally and utterly cease without anything left over, how could you describe him in any such terms? (SN44.11)
Why do speculative views arise in general?
-
all speculative views arise du grapsing the khandha’s (SN24)
-
all arise because one has not deeply penetrated the khandha’s, their arising, their ceasing and the path for that cessation (SN33.1-55)
-
due to sakkaya ditthi (SN41.3)
-
careless attention of your own and declarations of others (AN10.93)
-
a noble disciple does not doubt about this. he has no attachment or involvement with views, he/she does no fear and wavering regarding speculative views, is not involved in craving, in perception, in conceiving, in attachment. (AN7.54)
Often these issues are treated as if Buddha left them undeclared but i think this is not realy true. It is decided. It is not that a noble does not know these things.
Personal notes
My feeling is: all comes down to seeing the difference between the realm of conceiving and the realm of non-conceiving. The moment one conceives something that is also the moment that ones understanding distorts. Conceive a tree and that is not the tree. Conceive who we self are, and that is not who we are. Conceive how another person is, and that is not who he is.
Our own territory is non-conceiving. But when we starts conceiving we leave our territory.
Conceiving is like being absorbed in a mental stream, or a cinematic world. In this cinemated world things exist in a certain way that does not correspond to reality. The conceived is not reality. It is a kind of mental abstraction. Images.
I believe the same with the Tathagata. I do not believe that the Tathagata refers to nothing, but his territoy, like ours, is the mind without conceiving. A direct knowing all.
This strikes me as very odd. It was the Teacher who asked the questions in this sutta. It was the Teacher who elicited answers from Anurādha in this sutta.
What do you think, Anurādha?
Do you regard a realized one as form?”
SN 22.86
This leads me to conclude that you either:
- Think that the Teacher himself was engaging in wrong view and involvement in unskillful activity by asking these questions of Anurādha
- You think this sutta itself is not valid Dhamma
I imagine that I’m misunderstanding you and that neither is what you believe so can you clarify? If engaging in the questions themselves - “Do you regard a realized one as form?” - are signs of wrong views, then are you saying that the Teacher was so engaging or that this sutta is not valid? What is going on here?
Yes, the Buddha asks Anuradha the same questions that Anuradha came to him with, and in relation to which Anuradha made two mistakes. But the Buddha asks them only after explaining 1NB, and this time Anuradha answers them correctly, showing that he has understood the Buddha’s explanations: first, he correctly answers “no” to each of the questions, correcting the mistake in reasoning; second, he does not go beyond this “no”, correcting the mistake in understanding the nature of the teaching.
The answer ‘no’ to each of these questions leaves no other way of answering the question about the existence of the Tathagata except by resorting to fallacious reasoning.
The idea of two truths is an example of such fallacious reasoning in an attempt to get around the direct impossibility of answering anything other than just ‘no’, clearly presented in the suttas, but still giving some answer. In other words, those who came up with it made exactly the same two mistakes as Anuradha.
So the questions themselves are not problematic? In fact, you agree they were essential to correct Anurādha’s mistake in reasoning?
Ah! Any elaboration beyond ‘no’ you regard as error?
This is problematic to my limited mind because the Teacher himself seemingly elaborated the proper conclusion that should be reached after answering ‘no’ to his series of questions:
“But, Anuradha, when the Tathagata is not apprehended by you as real and actual here in this very life
Ettha ca te, anurādha, diṭṭheva dhamme saccato thetato tathāgate anupalabbhiyamāne kallaṁ nu te taṁ veyyākaraṇaṁ”
The denial of saccato thetato with regard to the Tathagata is an elaboration beyond ‘no.’
I assume that you don’t find this elaboration by the Teacher to be problematic? If that is so, then why is an explanation for what the Teacher meant by denying saccato thetato problematic? This OP is literally asking for an explanation of what the Teacher meant. Are you protesting that no further explanation can be given appropriately to this question?
Your objection now seems to me a generalized disagreement with the so-called two truths doctrine: the idea that the Teacher spoke in a conventional way - not provoking disagreement with the world - (ie., that persons exist etc), but at the same time that the conventional way of speaking is not in tension with ultimate truths (that if we analyze with penetrative insight no such person can be found). Is that a fair characterization of what you’re objecting to?
If that is a fair characterization, then I have a further question: what would you say to those who would read this sutta with its ‘no’ answers and the subsequent denial of saccato thetato of the Tathagata by the Teacher as equivalent to the idea that the Tathagata never existed? If you say that is an error, then are you not elaborating inappropriately yourself? Is the denial of saccato thetato by the Teacher just never to be spoken of or explained? Is the denial of saccato thetato some kind of sacred cow? 
FWIW, the Phena Sutta itself seems to be an extensive elaboration of what is meant by the denial of saccato thetato:
“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.
…
An energetic mendicant
should examine the aggregates like this,
with situational awareness and mindfulness
whether by day or by night.”SN 22.95
Which is quite similar to what the Teacher famously said in the Vajra Cutter Sutra:
“As a star, a visual aberration, a lamp, an illusion, dew, a
bubble, a dream, lightning, and a cloud – view all the com-
pounded like that.”
All of this is an elaboration beyond ‘no’ to the questions the Teacher asked Anurādha to my limited mind. Since it was the Teacher elaborating we have to conclude that elaboration is possible, appropriate, and necessary, right? Rather than disagreeing with elaboration in general you might object to the elaboration offered here, but that is a different matter.
Can you spell out what is wrong with the elaborations offered here by @faujidoc1 for instance rather than just generalized objections to elaborations in general? Maybe they are wrong, but I don’t think you’ve adequately spelled out why to my limited mind.
What we can know is that there is the realm of conceiving and of not conceiving.
I believe the suttas teach that the realm of not-conceiving, that is our own territory.
I think that if one understands and sees the difference between mind that is lost in conceiving, absorbed in images, in ideas, absorbed in a cinematic world, and mind that is not, that means a lot.
And if one is concentrated in a way that one does not get lost in conceivings, does not become so delusional to believe that the conceived is reality, that is also ones right view and concentration.
Becoming trapped and involved in conceiving happens very easily. Very easily the cinematic world of conceiving, seems very real, ultimate real, truth. But it is also revealing that one at once can break away from it, and where is this socalled reality now?
Conceiving is like mind going astray, a wandering mind, lost in its own projections.
I used to be easily lost in conceivings. Just a small trigger and my mind wandered around in that cinematic reality with a real me as the protagonist, and others.
But i also felt the difference between being in state of conceiving and not.
It is amazing how quickly mind becomes lost in conceivings. Vinnana is really a magician. Vinnana’s are the projections of the mind and somehow it is very easy to get lost in them.
These texts do not mean to say, i believe, that Tathagata refers to nothing at all. But one cannot proliferate upon the realm where there is no conceiving. How to describe this>?
Can you trace the mind that does not conceive?
The error is not in the questions themselves, the error is in asking these questions about existence with the expectation of an ultimate answer, or in answering these questions with the intention of giving an ultimate answer. Both cases imply some view on existence and differ only in the form of that view.
The Buddha, unlike the wanderers or Anuradha, does not ask this question with the expectation of getting an ultimate answer on existence, he asks them to check Anuradha’s understanding, understanding not of existence, but of the 1NT and the scope of the teaching in general.
‘Cannot be found’ or ‘cannot be apprehended’ starting nothing about existence or not existence.
There are different renderings of this phrase:
From PARAMATTHA SACCA by Ven. Nanavira
The words saccato thetato, ‘in truth, actually’, mean ‘in the (right) view of the ariyasāvaka, who sees paticcasamuppāda and its cessation’.[a]
[a] The question discussed here, whether saccato thetato a ‘self’ is to be found, must be kept clearly distinct from another question, discussed in A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPĀDA §22, viz whether saccato thetato the Tathāgata (or an arahat) is to be found (ditth’eva dhamme saccato thetato Tathāgate anupalabbhamāne… (‘since here and now the Tathāgata actually and in truth is not to be found…’) Avyākata Samy. 2 <S.iv,384>). The reason why the Tathāgata is not to be found (even here and now) is that he is rūpa-, vedanā-, saññā-, sankhāra-, and viññāna-sankhāya vimutto (ibid. 1 <S.iv,378-9>), i.e. free from reckoning as matter, feeling, perception, determinations, or consciousness. This is precisely not the case with the puthujjana, who, in this sense, actually and in truth is to be found.
And from A NOTE ON PAṬICCASAMUPPĀDA
Actually and in truth (saccato thetato, which incidentally has nothing to do with paramattha sacca, ‘truth in the highest [or absolute] sense’, a fallacious notion much used in the traditional exegesis—see PARAMATTHA SACCA) there is, even in this very life, no arahat to be found (e.g. Avyākata Samy. 2 <S.iv,384>—see PARAMATTHA SACCA §4 [a]); and though there is certainly consciousness and so on, there is no apparent ‘self’ for whom there is consciousness.
Hi @Sasha_A,
With your latest response I find myself again in the awkward position of agreeing with you even though you disagree with me
The problem I was trying to preempt was the case where people read this sutta and conclude that the Teacher is saying that the Tathāgata does not exist. Several times I have encountered people who have so concluded. It seems we are in agreement that this conclusion is not warranted from reading this sutta. It seems we are in agreement that when this conclusion is arrived at, it is appropriate to point out that the conclusion is in error.
I apologize if my clumsy use of words have otherwise resulted in misunderstanding.
I haven’t read Ven. Nanavira’s thoughts on the meaning of saccato thetato, but if it is the same as what @knigarian seemed to try and convey, that somehow the answers are different if one substitutes the puthujjana for the Tathāgata when asking the questions - “Do you regard a realized one as form? vs Do you regard a puthujjana as form?” - then I will have to respectfully disagree. The answers to those questions are the same regardless if the subject of the questions is the Tathāgata, an Arahant, an Ariya being or a puthujjana.
I am glad that we arrived at very clear understanding about what precisely constitute our two separate visions of Dhamma, because this is exactly my position:
The reason why the Tathāgata is not to be found (even here and now) is that he is rūpa-, vedanā-, saññā-, sankhāra- , and viññāna-sankhāya vimutto (ibid. 1 <S.iv,378-9>), i.e. free from reckoning as matter, feeling, perception, determinations, or consciousness. This is precisely not the case with the puthujjana , who, in this sense , actually and in truth is to be found.
In order that you even more precisely see my mistake (from your point of view) sometimes we encounter in Suttas following phrase:
actually and in truth neither self nor what belongs to self are to be found’ , or “It is, Ānanda, because it is empty of self and of what belongs to self that it is said, ‘Empty is the world.’ SN 35: 85
So this is precisely with what you disagree: Unlike Tathagata, who in the terms of the first noble truth has to be described as 5 aggregates without upadana, puthujjana as a victim of upadana - with upadana as condition - being is to be found.
And so, while according to right view world is empty of self, puthujjana as a victim of ignorance takes his self for granted, and mistakingly interpretes experience in the terms atta ca loko ca, self and the world.
But with the cessation of avijja one cannot find arahat in the world:
M> : All you need to do is to cease taking yourself to be within the field of consciousness.
Q: Within the field of consciousness there is your body …
M: Of course. But the idea “my” body as different from other bodies is not there. To me it is “a body” not “my body”, " a mind", not “my mind”.
*Q: When you say: clear and empty, what do you mean?
M: I mean free of all contents. To myself I am neither perceivable nor conceivable; there is nothing I can point out and say: ‘this I am’. You identify yourself with everything so easily, I find it impossible. The feeling: ‘I am not this or that, nor is anything mine’ is so strong in me that as soon as a thing or a thought appears, there comes at once the sense ‘this I am not’.
Q: Do you mean to say that you spend your time repeating ‘this I am not, that I am not’?
M: Of course not. I am merely verbalizing for your sake.
You are not of the world, you are not even in the world.
Once you realise that there is nothing in this world which you can call your own, you look at it from outside, as you look at play on the stage, or a picture on the screen.
Just look and remember, whatever you perceive is not you, nor yours. It is there in the field of consciousness, but you are not the field and it’s contents, not even knower of the field.
Discover all you are not. Body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, time and space, being and not being, this or that - nothing concrete or abstract you can point out to is you.
Do understand it clearly - whatever you may perceive, you are not what you perceive.
As long as you imagine yourself to be something tangible and solid, a thing among things, actually existing in time and space, short-lived and vulnerable, naturally you will be anxious to survive and increase …
You are nothing that you are conscious of.
Realise yourself as away from all that can be pointed out as “this” or “that”. You are unreachable by any sensory experience or verbal construction. Turn away from them. Refuse to impersonate.
It is your idea that you must be something or other, that binds you.
See that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Fight with all strength at your disposal against the idea that you are namable and describable. You are not. Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that.
All your problems arise because you have defined and therefore limited yourself. When you don’t think yourself to be " this" or “that”, all conflict ceases. Any attempt to do something about your problems is bound to fail, for what is caused be desire and fear can be undone only in freedom from desire. You have enclosed yourself in time and space, squeezed yourself into the span of a life-time and volume of a body and this created the innumerable conflicts of life and death, pleasure and pain, hope and fear. You cannot be rid of problems without abandoning illusions.
M - Nisargadatta Maharaj
**
I sit down in a room, quiet and half dark and watch the act of breathing - the bodily sensation of air touching the tip of the nose: I experience sensing the bodily sensation at an interval of space. I can place the bodily sensation in space as sensed from the direction in which I am. But when I follow that direction back and look for the “I”, then I am no longer there, but in another place, I have no place in space. I see and sense space and the “things” in it from a place where I am not. Space is complete without “I” and there is no room for “I” in space at all. This I call the inner vertigo.
Nanamoli Thera
1 Like
And this disagreement is exactly the mistake of Anuradha that the Buddha corrects in the sutta we’re discussing here - the mistake of understanding what the aggregates of clinging are and why they are dukkha.
Mara in the suttas is very sure of his ability to find everyone, but the only people he can’t find are the Buddha himself and arahats.
I know we can apply this questioning of Anuradha onto almost everything…the status of the Tathagata in this very life, car, a tree, a living being, man, woman, atoms, endless. If we try to find it, the conclusion will always be…we cannot find it in this very life.
I personally feel it just wants to give rise to seeing that there is a way of knowing in which all is still open. We can be present in the world without a mind involved in labeling, recognising, conceptualising, conceiving, ie without grasping. Not conceptualising ourselves, not others, not the world, not objects. But we can also abide very much involved in conceptualising, labeling, name-giving, conceiving, grasping.
And when you are not clearly aware of this, then you also do not see the difference between conceptual knowledge and direct knowledge. Between knowing and conceiving. Between direct knowledge and mental proliferation.
And when one does not see this difference that leads to wrong understanding of how things exist.
Anyway, the sutta’s are very clear that such questions about the Tathagata, but also about the relation between soul and body, or about the stattus of the world … only arise because one sees things in a wrong way. As if one would ask…where is the flame gone?.. when it has ceased. Or…where does a rainbow come from, when it appears at the sky? Such a question just means one has a wrong understanding of the whole situation.
Likewise, the sutta’s say: When such questions arise about the status of the Tathagata after death, or soul and body, or the world, that means one has still a wrong understanding of the whole situation, let alone how one answers. This is the message of the sutta’s. See the sutta’s i earlier refered to.
Thank you for speaking clearly and for being interested in fleshing out in detail our differences in order that we might learn something! Thank you dhamma friend
In the spirit of your generous offering can you clarify a few points.
Question #1
What do you think, Anuradha, do you regard form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness taken together as the puthujjana?
You believe the correct answer to this question is YES?
Question #2
Assuming that you answer Question #1 in the affirmative, then what do you think happens upon realization that turns a puthujjana or ariya being into an arahat? Is it some kind of alchemical process that dissolves the puthujjana and renders them into an arhat?
Question #3
You say that I disagree with “neither self nor what belongs to self are to be found” and “Empty is the world”, but I emphatically do not disagree with these! Which puzzles me. If you answer affirmatively to Question #1, which I suspect you will, then it seems to me that it is you that disagrees with these statements! What is going on here?
Question #4
You say,
And so, while according to right view world is empty of self, puthujjana as a victim of ignorance takes his self for granted, and mistakingly interpretes experience in the terms atta ca loko ca, self and the world.
Again, I agree with this. It is precisely because the world is empty of self that the answer to Question #1 is emphatically NO.
Could it be that the only thing we’re disagreeing with is not the correct answer to Question #1 (which is an emphatic NO), but rather how various beings might answer these questions? If you’re asserting that a puthujjana might mistakenly answer YES to Question #1, then again we’re in agreement
I’m still going with the hypothesis that this is just a disagreement over our preferred usage of words and that once we sort out how we’re using words differently, the underlying disagreements will dissolve and the fault for the arising of the illusion of disagreement will turn out to be my own ineloquence.
Buddha teaches only suffering -pañc’upādānakkhandhā- and cessation of suffering, that is to say removing upadana from experience (experience of arahat is totally without upadana.
So my answer is yes, this is what precisely the definition of puthujjana is: pañc’upādānakkhandhā
See my definitions of suffering and cessation of suffering, or let’s repeat: body, feeling, perception, intentions, and consciousness themselves will not undergone any kind of alchemical or other processes, apart from being freed from upadana.
I don’t see any inconsistencies in my position, so I am not sure why you think I disagree that the world is empty of self. Perhaps you mean that since I am now typing this answer by this very act I fall into existential contradiction. But why? Let’s limit ourselves to visual consciousness. There is in the field of consciousness the body and finger is typing the letter. It is quite objective experience and not necessarily has to involve any subject or person, who is typing. Now, it is good to make disclaimer, my emotional attachment to the body unfortunately hasn’t ceased, but this is different story. But to be honest I don’t understand clearly the nature of your objection.
Well, either the present answer to the first two questions will change your mind, (and I suspect it won’t happen 
) or we are in kind of stalemate.
Perhaps example of my disagreement with Venerable Ajahn Brahmavamso could clarify certain things, at least in this way that you will come to conclusion that you are wasting your precious time with me😏
Ajahn Brahmavamso
Even arahants, enlightened monks and nuns, experience suffering. They are not released from suffering, they are still in the world, in jail.