From DN 21: 2.4.26 translator’s note
What does it mean “continued experience” in the context of the EBt? Your answers are really appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
From DN 21: 2.4.26 translator’s note
What does it mean “continued experience” in the context of the EBt? Your answers are really appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
[Tip: if you jam the ref number to the citation, it creates a link to the exact segment, e.g. DN 21:2.4.26]
Hi, did you mean to ask about the search for ‘continued existence’?
I think this term corresponds to ‘Bhava Tanha’ in Pali which can also be translated as desire for becoming. By and large beings are attached to and find pleasure in whatever forms of existence they are born into. For instance an old person often wishes they could return to their youth and live it all over again usually even forgetting all the troubles they had to bear throughout their life. Or it could also be a human who has practised morality and generosity and wishes to be reborn in the heavenly realms ignoring the fact that heavenly existence is also temporary and that beings can fall from heaven back into the human realm or worse into the four realms of misery.
Hi,
Continued existence is the opposite of cessation (nirodha), something the Buddha taught over and over again. As in SN46.76: ““Mendicants, when the perception of cessation is developed and cultivated it’s very fruitful and beneficial. “Nirodhasaññā, bhikkhave, bhāvitā bahulīkatā mahapphalā hoti mahānisaṁsā.”
Nibbāna literally means extinguishment, i.e. cessation, the opposite of any kind of continued existence.
From another angle, the cessation of rebirth is the opposite of continued existence.
DN16: “Because of not truly seeing the four noble truths, we have transmigrated for a long time from one rebirth to the next.But now that these truths have been seen, the leash to existence is eradicated.The root of suffering is cut off, now there’ll be no more future lives.”
The three kinds of bhava, kinds of continued existences, are in AN6.105.
Hope this is helpful. ![]()
Below is a brief explanation of continued existence by Venerable Sujato.
Also note that bhava doesn’t mean becoming.