SuttaCentral
I would also like to add that even if one did try to live the whole duration in one of the formless realms to verify that things really are impermanent; one would still have to struggle just like Sāti did in MN 38! 
With no teaching of Dependent Origination by the Buddha anyone would surely come to the same conclusions as Sāti did.
I see what you say but probably you are also aware that almost all buddhist Sangha do not teach parinibbana as a mere cessation. So, in reality, parinibbana as mere cessation, is indeed a very strong and really personal opinion held by a relative small group of buddhists and teachers.
So lets be clear where the strong personal beliefs are, right?
Anyway, can we agree that those who have arrived at the conclusion that parinibbana is a mere cessation, have come to this idea via intellect, via study, via reasoning, via deduction etc?
It is not that they really know, right?
Yes, that is true, i feel.
Hi,
This is probably true, but doesn’t prove the point. After all, there was a time when most people thought the earth was flat. Like a pancake. 
In part by inference, yes.
But not only so – experiencing the cessation of the senses, of consciousness, of the “self” directly points to the ending of dukkha as the cessation of all that.
Meanwhile, to posit another form of “something” or “consciousness” or “beingness” for parinibbāna can be called just as speculative and metaphysical.
The Upanishads taught a final form of liberation like this – a merging into Brahman, the Absolute, the undying Awareness, Timeless Beingness, etc.
So if one assumes something like this – forgetting the particular names – but as something essentially the same as this for parinibbāna, how does the Dhamma fundamentally differ from the teachings in some of the Upanishads?
Are we saying the Buddha taught some differences like anicca and anatta but in the end, the end of dukkha is the same as in the those Brahmanical teachings?
This doesn’t prove the point, but it may be a useful reflection on how radical the Buddha’s teachings are and whether they lead to the same outcome as the Brahmins. Or not.
All best 
Sorry for stepping in here
but just as I wrote in my post above, the luminous form gods or formless gods do not truly know that they are actually impermanent; so there is a major difference.
We could say that the gods delusion is only based on Time & Duration.
It is not like other religions doesn’t put heavy emphasis on ethics, generousity and development of the mind/feelings just like buddhism does.
So what seems to the gods and where they dwell (which almost ALL other religions are based on) to be Nicca, Sukkha, Atta is not so according to the Buddha’s superior wisdom/insight, and only a Buddha.
So we can’t really blame these gods, now can we?
So that is why the absolute/final liberation in other religions is hardly nibbāna.
And like I also mentioned in my other post: even if one realized by oneself through own experience that rupa-loka is indeed impermanent one would still make the same conclusions as Sāti did in MN38 - with no one teaching Dependent Origination you are pretty much bound to reason in the same way Sāti did.
So the differences are actually immense.
Hi,
Agree.
But the liberation on the Chandogya and Brihadaranyaka Upanishads present a timeless, formless, blissful, beingness as final liberation – as parinibbāna is posited by some Buddhist practitioners.
Compared to viewing parinibbāna as full cessation, the differences, as you said are immense.
But there’s real debate about all this.
Then I would argue that these descriptions from the Upanishads are indeed descriptions of Arupa-Loka.
The way of attaining these were already taught by others.
Who can blame anyone for taking these as permanent abodes with the blissful feelings and the ”true self ” being the one experiencing these?
As to even letting go of the feelings in this state: does it really lead to some kind of ”non-existence”….???
The reasons why I refuse to think nibbāna is some blank unconscious state just like dreamless sleep are numrerous, but here is another reason:
The other day I was listening to some suttas (can’t remember which ones) via Audible and the Buddha said that his path leads one beyond ”being and non-being” . That to me says a great deal. 
I hope I can find the sutta in question and post it here.
”Beyond existence and non-existence”: but what this actually implies I have no clue of 
- but hope to find out - just like all other buddhists!
Take a gander at Jersualem by Alan Moore. Now there’s a different take on dreams that doesn’t sound too dissimilar from yours. Oh yes, it’s a quite lengthy book so it may take a year or so to get through it properly 
.
Whatever they’re descriptions of, the point is that final liberation is depicted as an ineffable “something” – timeless, blissful, etc.
Essentially the same as argued by practitioners who view final nibbāna like this.
Regarding “existence” and “non-existence” in the suttas, they refer to views of eternalism in the sense of something not being impermanent and to the annhilationists who claimed that a self was destroyed at death. It’s important to keep these contexts in mind.
In the Brahmanical teachings at the time, existence meant something eternal and unchanging.
I think the sutta you’re citing from is SN12.15:
" “Kaccāna, this world mostly relies on the dual notions of existence and non-existence.
But when you truly see the origin of the world with right understanding, you won’t have the notion of non-existence regarding the world. And when you truly see the cessation of the world with right understanding, you won’t have the notion of existence regarding the world."
That wasn’t the sutta I heard but many thanks for posting it!
Just to make my point clearer I spontaneously read the quoted sutta instead as follows:
”Kaccāna, this world mostly relies on the dual notions of arising and ceasing.
But when you truly see the arising of the world with right understanding, you won’t have the notion of ceasing regarding the world. And when you truly see the ceasing of the world with right understanding, you won’t have the notion of arising regarding the world.”
In the sutta I listened to the Buddha said his path leads
”beyond existence & non-exstence” ”beyond being and non-being” ”beyond arising and ceasing”.
This is of course Nibbāna.
And if Nibbāna is truly beyond both existence & non-existence, even when using the brahmanical definitions you mentioned, it is impossible that Nibbāna then all of a sudden is anything remotely like what ”the annhilationists who claimed that a self was destroyed at death”. had to say. Don’t you agree?
One can’t even really claim nibbāna is eternal either, it is beyond all concepts.
Does anyone really have a true definition of what is either eternal or annihilation to begin with? I’m not talking about beliefs here but as in realities.
There is no such thing as annihilation to begin with, right? It’s only a belief held by materialists, but far from real.
And eventhough the order of gods that live countless of millions (billions?) of years think they are eternal, the Buddha says this is not the case.
We as faith followers will just have to take his word for it.
So since we follow the Buddha who essentially says that both annihilation and eternalism are both only concepts we can’t and really should not say anything regarding Nibbāna:
SN 44.3
“‘The Tathagata exists after death’: this, friend, is an involvement with form. ‘The Tathagata does not exist after death’: this is an involvement with form. ‘The Tathagata both exists and does not exist after death’: this is an involvement with form. ‘The Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist after death’: this is an involvement with form.
1. The Tathagata exists after death
2. The Tathagata does not exist after death
3. The Tathagata both exists and does not exist after death
4. The Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist after death= this, friend, is an involvement with feeling … an involvement with perception … an involvement with volitional formations … an involvement with consciousness.
I obviously have no clue what Nibbāna is but highly doubt it is ”cessation” ”non-existence” as in meaning 100% annihilated and unconscious.
Honestly, let us say it turns out to be that type of cessation you and others ordained are advocating;
Then I’ll pay homage to the Buddha for sharing the greatest wisdom there ever was BUT make my way back to Arupa-Loka and forever avoid Nibbāna to the best of my ability. I’m serious though.
To be 100% purified from greed/hatred/delusion and on top of that have no feelings - Sounds very nice, can’t even imagine what that is like! 
But to become 100% annihilated? 
No thanks.
Dreamless sleep is only appreciated after it has happened, never during its phase, so regarding question number 3 in my inital post:
”In essence the bliss and insight of nibbāna is only something you find blissful while in samsara?”
You answered me by quoting Iti44, that makes the distinction between those still alive with a body using their senses and those whose body has broken up:
”One element pertains to the present life—
what is left over
What has nothing left over
pertains to what follows this life”
You then quoted AN9.34 as an example of ”After the death of an arahant”
At one time Venerable Sāriputta was staying near Rājagaha, in the Bamboo Grove, the squirrels’ feeding ground. > There he addressed the mendicants: “Reverends, extinguishment is bliss! Extinguishment is bliss!” When he said this, Venerable Udāyī said to him, “But Reverend Sāriputta, what’s blissful about it, since nothing is felt?”
“The fact that nothing is felt is precisely what’s blissful about it.
But in this sutta Sāriputta teaches the meditative stages to Nibbāna and how at the highest plane of Arupa-Loka you need to get rid of feelings. This has nothing to do with how it is ”After the death of an arahant” at all. Sāriputta was very much alive when he taught it. And both types mentioned in Iti44 have already attained everything identically to what Sāriputta taught in AN9.34, the difference only being: one is still alive using the senses, the other one has had the body broken up.
Which leads me back to dreamless sleep and how one can only appreciate it after its phase and never during it: But can the same really be said about Nibbāna?
The arahants who are still alive need to use their senses and their bodies when going on alm rounds etc. so they would still feel both pleasure and pain, but as soon as they have gone for for alms round or finished teaching dhamma they are free to once again follow exactly what Sāriputta taught in AN9.34.
But as soon the bodies finally breaks up there will be no more alms rounds or using the senses, or teaching dhamma etc. - not even any feelings.
Therefore I would argue that SN12.15 that you quoted is an excellent way of training the mind/feelings in preparation for the goal of the practice - which is Nibbāna.
Many thanks for even taking the time to read this long reply!
I’ll try to keep it shorter in future discussions we might have.
SN12.15 also says:
‘All exists’: this is one extreme.
‘All does not exist’: this is the second extreme.
Avoiding these two extremes, the Realized One teaches by the middle way.
Hi,
Except the words in this portion of the sutta are not arising and ceasing:
"“Kaccāna, this world mostly relies on the dual notions of existence and non-existence.
“Dvayanissito khvāyaṁ, kaccāna, loko yebhuyyena—atthitañceva natthitañca.
But when you truly see the origin of the world with right understanding, you won’t have the notion of non-existence regarding the world.
Lokasamudayaṁ kho, kaccāna, yathābhūtaṁ sammappaññāya passato yā loke natthitā sā na hoti.
And when you truly see the cessation of the world with right understanding, you won’t have the notion of existence regarding the world.
Lokanirodhaṁ kho, kaccāna, yathābhūtaṁ sammappaññāya passato yā loke atthitā sā na hoti."
Atthi and its negation natthi mean existence and non-existence, not arising and ceasing.
The definitions of existence and annhilationsm/non-existence are not limited to Brahmanical sources. They point to the Buddha’s refutation of any permanent form of existence and to the refutation of the ceasing/annihilation of any kind of self.
This also applies to the Tetralemma you cited in your post.
See:
The six senses cease, is there nothing else?
But what’s extinguished, or annihilated as you wrote, is not what we deludedly take to be ourself – it’s the selfless khandhas and dukkha that are annihilated.
This is the crux of the matter.
As long as we identify with the khandhas/senses/consciousness there will be fear of full cessation.
But when all conditions are understood as fundamentally dukkha, then the ending of all that is the ultimate relief.
SN12.125:
“What arises and ceases is only suffering arising and ceasing.”
Dukkhameva uppajjamānaṁ uppajjati, dukkhaṁ nirujjhamānaṁ nirujjhatī
This is how right view is defined.
Ettāvatā kho, kaccāna, sammādiṭṭhi hoti.
And so
AN9.34:
“Reverends, extinguishment is bliss!
“sukhamidaṁ, āvuso, nibbānaṁ.
Extinguishment is bliss!”
Sukhamidaṁ, āvuso, nibbānan”ti.
Santi
Thanks for pointing that out for me 
But I only changed the context to arising/ceasing since that and being/non-being is in the same vein as existence & non-existence. It was only done to clarify my point.
So based on our delusion of a ”self” the only real way to be truly annihilated for good as an self is not to identify with khandhas/senses/consciousness via an unconscious state called nibbāna? A state that you can can never experience but only ponder about once you’ve regained conscioussness from it, right?
So in essence you are saying that Nibbāna is only bliss in Saṃsāra but not in Nibbāna.
Just because your physical body is dead and you hardly use your senses, how can you be sure that you will not somehow regain conscioussness from this Nibbāna state where you are 100% unconscious?
Saying, ”I gave up feelings/perception” doesn’t do the trick and is not some guarantee at all. I would love it if the ordained you follow who teach this could answer how they emerge from Nibbāna, they obviously can’t do it consciously since they have ceased to exist altogether, so how do they come out of this state of bliss? I already know the answer: Because of the physical body.
So the guarantee that you will remain unconscious in Nibbāna without regaining conscioussness only comes when the physical body has died? That is the impression I get from your previous quotes about ”after the death of an arahant” eventhough the sutta in question has nothing to do with ”after the death of a arahant” - both the living and the dead have exactly the same attainments mentioned in the sutta. Please explain more regarding this.
So in essence you also claim that the Buddha realized that the higher realms cease, after maybe hundreds of millions of years, based on he himself going into a state if complete unconscioussness? Sorry but that makes no sense at all.
Regardless of what happens during dreamless sleep it is only after it you can know you had the experience of not being conscious. Sure, if one experiences a lot of pain and suffering in life I can understand why such a unconscious state would be sought for - but then again you can only find it blissful while conscious again, not during its phase, so maybe not. Unless you go all-in when it comes to ”Nibbāna is only bliss in Saṃsāra but never in Nibbāna. 
The formless realms are blissful, just like the Buddha says the sensual heavens are very pleasant BUT they are according to his unique insights impermanent, which makes them unsatisfactory since they will come to an end (that’s the painful bit) and the experiencer ”self” of these will eventually die and have to take rebirth in a new form that he/she will of course identify with - how could one not identify with a new form and senses?
The insight regarding these three characteristics did obviously not come about from the Buddha attaining a state of complete unconsciousses. Do you really think so? Please explain why.
I understand that people have a craving for being unconscious when the pain/suffering is too much to put up with = Vibhava-taṇhā.
I also understand that some enjoy something so much that they never want it to stop = Bhava-taṇhā & Kāma-taṇhā.
So are you also saying that Vibhava-taṇhā will lead to Nibbāna?
Vibhava-taṇhā is the sole reason that all these views where Nibbāna equals annihilation even exist in the first place.
Ofcourse one can not function normally when there is no sense of self at all. For example, if one has no sense at all that one is the same person as yesterday, one is sick and not enlightend.
People with dementia start to get this kind of problems because their memory fails.
It is also totally absurd to see the body, for example, as totally not me at all. What does it even mean when someone has no sense of me regarding the body. Probably he is in hospital all his life.
And if one really has no clue that the deeds done yesterday were your own deeds, that introduces a major issue and problem.
So, i believe one will always have a conventional sense of self. Buddha had too. He imagined for example that he would experience the weariness of not being understood when he would start teaching. Aboslute impossible if he would not have any sense of self at all.
It also becomes deeply confused if one believes that one will not experience results of deeds but someone different or no one. Buddha all the time suggests that we must see it this way that we ourselves will reapen the fruits. And i believe this is true. If you decide to run for 40 km you also will feel the pain and thinking…“aha there is no me, there is no self, another me will feel the pain so i do not have to worry”…that makes one very unwise. That leads to all kinds of unwise behaviour.
That made me smile! Very happy to bring some joy into your life, friend.
I don’t mean this idea of subtle wrongness to come across like there’s anything subtly less than blissful about nibbana. But rather that it’s better than you can currently imagine.
Take for a second some of the lesser states the Buddha describes, like the Brahma realm. Spending a whole eon with pure friendliness pervading a wide realm of creation. Do you think that would be how you’re imagining it? I think my mind struggles to imagine large numbers in distance or duration accurately. I picture a million years pretty much the same as a billion years, even though of course they’re as different as a day is from a year, which feel more different.
Or from your own experience of maturing, think about when parents or friends introduced the concept of wonderful experiences to you, e.g. perhaps romantic love. There’s nothing grossly wrong about, for example, thinking of romantic love as like a very special friendship. But there are subtle differences you realize when you actually experience it.
I sense (perhaps wrongly) a fear that maybe there’s some sort of bait-and-switch. You want to rule out the possibility that you’ve been lured in with the promise of bliss, but what you get isn’t actually blissful at all! Well, I’m not enlightened, so I can’t say for sure, but I’ve read the suttas (4 Pali Nikayas), and I think you can rest assured that’s not the case. There’s no “catch” to nibbana, it’s just better than you can imagine, precisely because it lacks the drawbacks of great-but-imperfect states.
If you just took the suttas which describe nibbana, printed them out, and put them in a stack, it’d make for a very impressive tome. And even that is said to not capture all of the subtleties. But among the points made quite clearly is that “extinguishment is bliss!”
So if you want bliss, and freedom from suffering, follow the Buddhist path. Just be careful to do so with an open and curious mind, so you don’t get sidetracked before you reach the ferry.
Not what I said.
Not what I said.
Instead: The ending of all the khandhas, including consciousness, with the death of an arahant is the bliss of the final cessation of dukkha, as in AN9.34.
“Furthermore, take a mendicant who, going totally beyond the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception, enters and remains in the cessation of perception and feeling” (AN9.34)
At least there is someone who enters and remains in the cessation of perception and feeling.
That does not taste like…all ceases, all ends.
I personally believe that this is probably the most direct way to see the pure knowing nature of the mind. One directly knows and sees this is not ego, not an I.
…" And, having seen with wisdom, their defilements come to an end".
If there would only be some kind of black-out happening in this state, how can this state be a base for the end of defilements. Surely we blackout every day and that is not a cause for the end of defilements.
How does this work?
You left out the last part in AN9.34:
"And, having seen with wisdom, their defilements come to an end.
That too is a way to understand how extinguishment is bliss.”
After coming out of the cessation of perceptions and feelings one knows there was the temporary cessation of consciousness, (since, as posted previously, perceptions, feelings, and consciousness are fully interdependent).
Knowing that consciousness had ceased, and the peace and “bliss” of extinguishment of that , one has a foretaste of final nibbana.
In a similar way, earlier in the sutta:
" When he said this, Venerable Udāyī said to him, “But Reverend Sāriputta, what’s blissful about it, since nothing is felt?”
“The fact that nothing is felt is precisely what’s blissful about it.
We agree that there is no I, me, mine in the khandhas or self-sense in nibbāna with residue. At least I think we do. 
This is interpretation, right? I feel, there is no clue at all that ‘having seen with wisdom’ does not refer to what one sees while one enters and remains in the cessation of sanna and vedana.
You interprete that the end of sanna is the end of all knowing, i do not do this. For me this seems unlikely and it does not seem to align with what great teachers teach.
Sanna is that aspect of the mind that is able to distinguish the qualities of an object, its characteristics, and is able to makes a sign of it. Sanna, for example, can distinguish different kind of wood based on specific characteristics.
But if formations progressively cease in the descent into emptiness, sanna starts to loose its function, as it were, because there is no object to characterise, no object with cetain features, not even ‘there is nothing’. An also all sense vinnana’s, even the mental vinnana’s cease. But at this moment when no objects of the eye, ear…and also no mental objects are discerned, has now all knowing ended, or is it like this that one has entered and abides in a pure empty stilness which is not seperate from a pure knowing, which is the nature of mind?
I think this is how it may work but i cannot say i know this. At least its seems to align with what great meditation masters describe. So this makes also an end to the idea that this only my personal strong belief. It is described everywhere in the buddhist sangha’s.
It may not align with what great scholars have figuered out by studying the texst, but it aligns with what great yogi’s, meditation masters like Maha Boowa and what others describe. I have more trust in this, than all that reasoning, figuering things out, scholarship etc. I feel this is legitimate. It is not wise to put so much faith in what one has figuered out by reasoning. Especially not in Dhamma.
Your reasoning is strange because the cessation of vinnana happens every day while deep asleep or for those under narcosis. And if we look back on this, oke, we can agree that we somehow like it, but we can never ever conclude that this daily wordly knowledge of the cesssation of vinnana leads to the end of defilements. Not all, not at all. Often it instigates defilements, such as vibhava tanha, not wishing to experience anything anymore, wishing no future for oneself or wishing to sleep all the time etc. If one starts to long for the end of all feeling and sensing that has, i feel, nothing to do with purity, the Noble Path, a wish to attain Nibbana. Not for me!
How does it work that your daily wordly knowledge of the cessation of vinnana leads to the end of defilements, please explain.
Yes, i interpretate this as: if there is only knowing left, the pure knowing essence of mind (which is no sense-vinnana), which for example Maha Boowa called citta and other teachers give it other names, that is a totally unburdened ‘state’. Than there is nothing felt but a mere knowing is left, and that is blissful.
Based upon the sutta’s which clearly show Buddha had still a self-sense, i interprete that there will always be a self-sense. But… self-sense differs from having self-views, attachment to self-doctrines, and self-conceit or self-conceivings. I choose to believe that even the pure mind has still a self-sense but this is not based upon any attachment or identification. So, even when asmi mana is gone, the notion I am, or ego-conceit, there is still some sense of self but not as a believe in atta, not a self sense as being a mental entity, an ego, but just as the natural expression of the pure mind.
If there is no self who attains Nirvana? If there is no one to attain nirvana, why can’t Lord Buddha program everything in existence to be nirvana?
Or
Did Buddha ever say to just do nothing because there is no self and nothing to do?
@Green Although I mostly agree with your interpretation, it is my opinion that there is no inherent pure mind but we built it through wisdom and meditation. Ultimately there will be a pure mind that attains Nirvana.
I think of all there are two kinds. There is the kind of wisdom that one can develop and is part of conceiving. The same for love, compassion, friendliness etc. Buddha refers to this as the mundane noble Path. It is meritorious but still not connected with what is totally pure.
For example, you give yourself the task to be friendly towards someone. That friendeliness is not really pure. It is not really a natural unfabricated friendliness. It is not bad but also a bit forced, fabricated.
If you would make a habit of this, it is not like this habit becomes real friendliness. Can you feel this?
This is not meant to judge.
And there is also the wisdom, the compassion, friendliness etc. that is just the natural expression of the pure mind, i.e. the mind that is freed from anusaya, asava, kilesa, tanha, which are all adventitious defilement (AN1.51). The relation between defilements and the mind is like clouds and the sky. The sky can exist without clouds. Clouds are adventitious to the sky.
Pure mind has a natural light of wisdom. This light becomes clouded by arising adventitious defilements which are grasped at. And when this happens the natural light of wisdom is clouded and the light of personal understanding, conceiving, takes over. This is the light of the head. The brain light.
I am quit sure that purification (whatever one purifies) is always based upon the principe that:
Ofcourse there is the aspect of removing defilments, and this takes an effort, skillful means, but in the end that is also the only effort because the natural result is pure mind. If this would not be present, it can never become the natural result of removing adventitious defilements.
Does this make sense?