I remember Buddha praising food, voice of chanting etc
Is the bliss of mindful enjoyment what left after Awakening? Ever present
Can a Buddha or Arahant truly feel the high joy in all or are they just acting in good service to others?
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Arahanths including the Buddha still experience pleasant sensations and unpleasant sensations (vedana). The Buddha said the Licchavi kings were a pleasant sight to behold because of their colourful garments. He equally got headaches. So he experiences pleasantness and joy but perhaps without the addition of craving (tanha) and gladness (nandi) that worldlings would experience. However he experiences more of the pleasantness of the present moment as suffering has been eradicated.
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Perhaps not quite.
As you implied, the khandhas are still present while an arahant is alive and the khandhas, being conditions that arise and cease are themselves a form of dukkha:
SN22.15: “What’s impermanent is suffering. Yad aniccaṁ taṁ dukkhaṁ”
SN12.125: "Whatever arises and ceases is only dukkha arising and ceasing. Dukkhameva uppajjamānaṁ uppajjati, dukkhaṁ nirujjhamānaṁ nirujjhatī "
SN36.6: When a learned noble disciple experiences painful physical feelings they don’t sorrow or wail or lament, beating their breast and falling into confusion. They experience one feeling: physical, not mental.
It’s like a person who is struck with an arrow, but was not struck with a second arrow. That person would experience the feeling of one arrow.
SN36.11: "Suffering includes whatever is felt.’ ‘yaṁ kiñci vedayitaṁ, taṁ dukkhasmin’
The final eradication or extinguishment of dukkha occurs with the death of arahant, when the khandhas permanently cease, (no rebirth).
Arahants experience pleasure & pain as usual but disjoined from it, that is the key point (Samyutta Nikaya 36.6).
“This is the difference, this the distinction, this the distinguishing factor between the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones and the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person.”
Agree.
My point was that one of the three general forms of dukkha, dukkha-dukkha, the sheer presence of pain while the khandhas remain, is still experienced by an arahant-- though without “mental” distress, self-sense, or identification with it.
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