My points here are:
- You don’t directly know this, you infer it. Check your sense experiences and see.
This doesn’t mean the inferences are necessarily wrong – just not based on direct experience through the senses. - I agree with you in a common sense way, that external things and reality exist when we’re not looking. This aligns with other teachings of the Buddha as in a sutta in DN.
My prior post about the rocks was to point to what can be experienced through the senses, not to reality from an ontological perspective.
But all we can work with on the Path is what we experience via the six senses – which does not mean they’re “mine” in terms of the I-making delusion. They are what they are as selfless processes which are grasped due to ignorance.
In this sense, what we’re not aware of cannot be practiced and let go of. That’s my point, and it aligns with the teachings in the suttas I cited.
You continue to make points from a common-sense realist viewpoint, which is fine, but not what the suttas regarding this topic are pointing to. Unless I’m misunderstanding you.
No. See above and prior posts.
However, the teachings in the suttas I offered do come close to Idealism and some forms of Phenomenology.
A discussion regarding this with several Venerables can be found here:
With more here:
Agree. But whatever the world may be and how it goes on in spite of us is not what we can directly experience, see into, and let go of. That’s my point here, which I take from the suttas I cited.
How do you see this and the other suttas cited in terms of Dhamma practice? You’re not addressing these points.
These are issues I’m not addressing and neither are the suttas cited.
What can you directly experience – anything beyond the experiences via the six senses? (This includes your thoughts and analyses).
If you answer yes, how with respect to the Buddha’s teachings in the cited suttas?
If you answer no, then that’s my point here. Because that’s all we can work with for liberation.
In this sense, it doesn’t matter whether a body “out there” continues to exist or not or in-between, or whatever.
What matters is how we practice with the six senses/aggregates in our direct experience through the six senses.
I’m not and hope this has been clarified.
But it’s not clear you’ve taken the teachings in that sutta and the others as foundational for practice.
After all, did all war and greed in the outside world end when the Buddha fully awakened or at final nibbāna?
If we all needed to do this, there would be no chance for liberation from dukkha.
What can be extinguished are the six senses and aggregates, hence all experiences , with the ending of rebirth.
Hope the distinction is clear, even if we still disagree.
In support of this, regarding AN4.23:
"The origin of the world has been understood by the Realized One; and he has given up the origin of the world. The cessation of the world has been understood by the Realized One; and he has realized the cessation of the world. "
How could this be if we have to practice with the “real world” as you keep pointing to? How could the origin of that and its cessation possibly be known?
Rather, it’s the world as the Buddha defines it in terms of Dhamma practice: what we experience and know through the six senses. That is what the Buddha says is kusala, skillful, for leading to the ending of rebirth.
Also, the sutta is not poetical except for the ending verses.
With regard to this point, see SA404.
They perceived it in their sense experience. Although, Sariputta passed away before the Buddha so there was nothing to sense or talk about.
Hope this helps to clarify our discussion. 