What is wrong with a positivist interpretation of Nibbana?

Discussion
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Under narcosis there is no perception and no feeling, but is this blissful? Are you in some state of bliss when nothing is felt or sensed? Can you explain why the cessation of perception and feeling is called blissful?

Sorry for this long introduction but i feel it is needed:

I read the sutta’s this way that the Buddha was shocked by the Truth of Suffering and probably more in general about the struggle life is. The conflicts, the violence, it almost like a battlefield. The world seems ruled by conflict and the mind of beings too. It is not very different nowadays and still people are shocked by it and wonder what is the meaning of this all? The meaning of life and when or where is the end of conflict?

A sutta says that Buddha sought a home for himself. I see this as his seach for safety, non-conflict, wholeness.
From the beginning of his search he uderstood that finding home is impossible in constructed reality , bhava. Not in this life and not after this life. Because what home is constructed, like being temporary in jhana (deva-like state) will also disintegrate. So there is no element of stability, safety, protection, home in bhave, meaning in constructed reality. How can one find a home for oneself when this home is build up and desintegrates?

I believe the sutta’s show he understood this principe allready while with his teachers. He did not find any satisfaction, any Truth, any real worth, reliablility in those temporary states of deep jhana. He did not see this as self, Truth, not refuge, safety, not as the home he sought.

I choose to believe he had allready a sense for the unconstructed reality, ultimate emptiness, Nibbana, peace, the deathless as his home. I believe he intuitively understood that this is the escape, the stable, the refuge. He abandoned all those inner forces which lead to building up (new bhava in this and future lifes). He realised the unconditioned, Nibbana, supreme emptiness, unconstructed reality, home.

He started to teach the Path to the Unconditioned, also called the Path to the stable, unailing, not desintegrating, etc.

This is my personal interpretation.

Reading the sutta’s, both EBT and mahayana, i have never got the impression that Buddha teaches that the only safety and protection and home there is, is to cease for ever. Is that a home?
That is, i find, an absurd interpretation of home, safety and protection. But not only that, I cannot see how aiming at a mere cessation can have anything to do with holiness. No vessel in my body, no spiritual gene or whatever, can see this as a holy goal or connect striving for a mere cessation as the goal of a holy life.

Yes, so the final cessation of dukkha, but as in finding home. A real refuge. The unfabricated.

I believe that the idea of being a being is only a conventional truth/idea which arises due to involvement with the khandha’s, due to identification, grasping. But where is this idea of being a being without identifying, conceiving, grasping?

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Well, that’s how nibbāna with residue is described. The khandhas and senes are present for an arahant. Are they not?
As stated in SN43.2 and many other suttas:

“And what is the unconditioned? The ending of greed, hate, and delusion. This is called the unconditioned.”
That is, nibbåna.

So there are no defilements present in nibbāna with residue, yet a “being” remains since the khandhas and senses remain.
They cease utterly with final nibbāna, as in Iti44.

You appear to incline to a view of the unconditioned as a place, (home.) Ok.
Perhaps we may consider it not as a place or home or “thing” but rather as absence.
Absence, empty of:
defilements while alive – and hence deep, stable, equanimity, compassion and bliss.

With final nibbāna and cessation of the senses, khandhas, and rebirth it appears not to be a bliss we experience or conceive about, but the bliss of no dukkha.
After all, during deep dreamless sleep, or narcosis, was there any pain, stress, or agitation?

Of course, this is not to equate these conditional states with nibbāna. But there’s a clue here.
We might say deep dreamless sleep is “blissful” in its sheer emptiness (temporarily) of the senses.
No disturbances at all. No stress. No worries.
A pointer, perhaps, to the final cessation of all dukkha with final nibbāna.

As cited in a prior post, in MN59, the Buddha points to the cessation of all consciousness, feelings, and perceptions as a pleasure [bliss, happiness] higher than all the jhanas and formless attainments:

" Because there is another pleasure that is finer than that.
And what is that pleasure?
It’s when a mendicant, going totally beyond the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception, enters and remains in the cessation of perception and feeling.
This is a pleasure that is finer than that.
It’s possible that wanderers of other religions might say,

‘The ascetic Gotama spoke of the cessation of perception and feeling, and he includes it in happiness.
‘saññāvedayitanirodhaṁ samaṇo gotamo āha; tañca sukhasmiṁ paññapeti.

So it’s a re-framing of our understanding of “bliss” less as a mentally joyful state or way of existence but rather to the utter absence of all dukkha.
imo, this fits into the Buddha’s teachings in the Nikāyas.
Anyway, that’s how I incline to understand it.

:pray:

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It’s important not to force ourselves to assume any views that undermine our inspiration to practice the Dhamma, while at the same time trying to maintain Right View as best we can. Things open up from there.
And there is honest debate about this amongst many dedicated and experienced practitioners. So all this is offered humbly.

Regarding YOLO – this is contrary to the Buddha’s teachings because it denies rebirth. The Buddha was aware of this “materialist” position and called it wrong view.
So, rebirth is a critically important aspect of the Dhamma. Because until we’re fully awakened, it’s death->birth->dukkha->death->birth->dukkha…until greed, anger, and ignorance are eliminated.
Then it’s dukkha->death-> final nibbāna, no rebirth.
The endless cycle of dukkha has been extinguished.

When understood in this way, “without birth” or “freedom from birth” do not point to a transcendental “something” (as “an unborn” can tend to do).
Rather, they point to the cessation and absence of birth and hence of suffering.
When all the khandhas and senses end with no rebirth, how can there be birth, death, dukkha?

Rather: final freedom, final liberation, from all that. :slightly_smiling_face:

Wishing you happiness and peace in your life practice. :pray:

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The other day I had this dream. It was a troublesome dream you could say. During the dream I became lucid – that is, I knew I was dreaming but the dream was still going on. I imagine we have all had these at one time or another. They are really cool because once you are lucid, you don’t have any more fear in the dream and you can fly around and stuff like that. So anyway, I told the other characters in my dream that we were actually in a dream, we weren’t really these dream bodies and dream thoughts – it was just our mind that believed we were, that identified with them.

To make a long story short, last night I went back into that dream to see what was going on. Funny thing but now – though they believe they are not really what they think they are – now they are convinced that when they awaken from the dream and no longer have a dream body that they will simply disintegrate into nothingness – oblivion – poof – lights out. They seem to believe that because the dream world is the only thing they experience – that there couldn’t be anything outside of it. What can I say, I tried my best. Guess I won’t be going back there for a while.

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You have to see this from within. Now i ask you again: if there is no identification with the khandha’s, no attachment to, no involvement in, no Me and mine-making of that five khandha’s, is there still a ground for the idea that one is a being? Please try not to find an answer while reasoning but try to see it in your own mind, from within.

I can describe in words what pain is but ofcourse that is not the pain. What you refer to is also only a description of the unconditioned, Nibbana, but it is not Nibbana ofcourse.

My view is that i see a Buddha who sought a home for himself. I believe this is a sincere heartfelt wish when one sees all the suffering, conflicts, troubles in the world. Personally shocked by all this violence, all this madness, insecurity, instability, unsafety in this world, one seeks something reliable, safe, stable. I think many people still do. How to find this? Your answer is…there is no stable, there is nothing reliable, there is no escape, the only escape is to die and cease for ever.

I do not read this in the sutta’s. To put it very short: Buddha realised that the real home for oneself is being homeless. Not only externally but most of all internally, mentally. Nibbana is like being homeless, and bhava is like occupying a home. So, in short, to find home one has to stop making a home for oneself!

If the mind has not occupied anything, no grasping, and there is really no tanha, see for yourself but you cannot establish that mind is this or that, or here or there. It is at that moment homeless.

Being homeless is being stable. Being homeless is the end of agitation because if one does not make a home due to grapsing there is nothing to desintegrate. There is nothing build up.

Cessation
Regarding that cessation of perception and feeling, i believe it is a mistake to translate sanna as perception and more or less equate it with awareness. I do not believe that when sanna ends all knowing ends too. So i believe it is possible that the cessation of minds abilily to tell apart and make signs and give meaning to what is experienced (sanna) is NOT the same as unawareness. I think it is possible that it refers to a non-dual kind of knowing which is the pure nature of mind.

The usual dual knowing of a me or I who experiences this or that stays present in the sphere of nothingness and is on the border of disappearance at nor perception nor not perception and i believe it disappears at the cessation of sanna and vedana. This is a total break with samsara. I choice to believe that the cessation of sanna and vedana reveals the pure nature of the mind. It reveals itself as a purely knowing, intelligence, and there is no dukkha in this knowing.

I do not think this can be compared to deep sleep, narcosis etc. I also learned that this is impossible in sannavedayitanirodha because there is no bhavanga too at that moment.

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We’re free to believe what we wish. At the same time the Buddha instructed the Sangha to rely on the suttas and vinaya after he passed away.

From MN43:
“Feeling, perception, and consciousness—these things are mixed, not separate. And you can never completely dissect them so as to describe the difference between them.”

I think we’re going around in circles. I believe I understand what you’re expressing about how final nibbāna as final cessation (of all experience and hence all dukkha), is unappealing to you.
As mentioned in prior posts, this is a real debate amongst many Dhamma practitioners and I respect that.

We might agree that the truth of the matter is beyond our personal wishes and opinions. Recognizing this, we might choose to keep our mind open to possibilities, even as we incline to one side or the other, until we directly know and see with full clarity.

Discussions about final nibbāna, in my experience, between adherents of an ineffable “something” or “timeless mind” and those who see cessation as full release from dukkha, usually tend to go round and round
So with all best wishes and respect to you, I’ll be exiting this thread. :slightly_smiling_face: :pray:

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I think bhante sujato has called it “psychologically positive, ontologically negative” in his talk “Real Cool: what nibanna is and isn’t”

An issue with a positivist interpretation or too much conceiving will be MN1 “they know nibanna as nibanna” (ajahn brahm points out it is not “not nibanna” as nibanna but “nibanna as nibanna”) … “but they conceive in it, identify in it, delight in it, why is that? Because they have not understood it I say” Ajahn brahms talk on MN1 on youtube is one of my favourites. Quotes from memory (click link for actual quote)

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I agree but the isse is not that cessation is full release from dukkha. I believe that too.

The issue is: does the Buddha teach that one cannot see and discover or know anything else but five khandha’s? One cannot see and discover an unborn, unailing, stable element…?.. because there is nothing else in life than the conditioned?

But i have never read the sutta’s this way that there is nothing else to see, know or discover then what can be seen arising, ceasing and changing.

Yes, but personal wishes, inclinations, choices dominate any debate, even choices in translations.

But there are also teachers, like Maha Boowa, many mahayana teachers, that teach that mind in its knowing essence, so in its purity, without any me and mine making, without any defilements, is different from vinnana. I think i see that many masters , really great meditation masters, share this knowledge.

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I feel, the whole point of MN1 is that it describes what is the difference between conceiving and direct knowlegde. When one starts to conceive the khandha’s or whatever is sensed, as me or even not me, for example, that remains conceiving not direct knowledge.

MN1 explains why conceiving is also taught as a disease. The habit to conceive is very strong. Conceiving, for example, emptiness as me and mine, is in mahayana seen as even worse then seeing what arises and ceases as me and mine.

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Hi Dan,

Could you give a link to the particular talk you are referring to? Ajahn Brahm’s talks contain multitudes… :rofl:

Mike

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Doesn’t seem to make sense - fits with what exactly? He did not teach cessation. He taught a path to nibbāna, which is described as a freedom from dukkha, not a freedom from non-cessation. The fact that you assume it means cessation (rather what you mean is permanent individual extinction) doesnt mean the Buddha taught such a path to cessation.

So according to you we should conclude that nibbāna is unreal since “the buddha pulled the rug from under it”? So since nibbana has no reality to it, the Buddha didn’t attain nibbāna . So presumably you are implying without saying that since the Buddha didnt attain nibbāna (because it has no positive reality to it), he was not a Buddha.

Making nibbāna a complete null unreal fake concept that means nothing positive at all - would mean the end to suffering becomes a lie. Thus the four noble truths become four noble lies. The Buddha would not pull such a rug from under himself.

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This is what I feel too. Without a positive Nibbana “reality” How much different is this cessation doctrine from a materialist/nihilist doctrine?

I fully accept nibbana is the cessation of greed, hatred and delusion and the cessation of acquiring any future aggregates. However what would be the other side of the Buddhas fire blow out simile? The vastness of the ocean. How could a simple cessation be likened to the huge expanse of the ocean? If Nibbāna is something incomprehensible even in terms of language I’m failing to see how cessation wouldn’t just be a good descriptor for that. I feel like there should be more to it.

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Jasudho has represented the Buddha excellently according to the EBT’s.

The Buddha did teach cessation. He taught a path to end suffering. Nibbana means ending, cessation, it’s the word people at the time used for a flame going out. They’d say “Go make that flame nibbana” or something. Obviously, they didn’t mean make that flame have an eternal existence someplace. It meant to make the flame come to an end. It really wasn’t an issue of what Nibbana meant – it was obvious to people at the time.

Our sense of self is the issue… as long as we have that we won’t be able to comprehend fully why the ending of everything is preferable than existing.

If it’s causing doubt and distress, just put this aside for now. Just say okay, the Buddha said this that doesn’t seem to make sense with what I think happiness is, fine. But we can still practice the path, and who knows, maybe this will start to make sense once our meditation deepens. After some time, I’m sure you’ll start to agree more and more with the Buddha that less existence is better, and no existence is best.

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Hmmm…I don’t understand how the points you’re making are derived from what I wrote, and I never wish to force conclusions on anyone. :slightly_smiling_face:

So perhaps I can offer some clarifications:

  • Nibbāna is described in Iti44 as nibbāna with residue while the arahant is still alive. This means the senses and khandhas are still present and operating but that there is complete freedom from all defilements, all greed anger and ignorance. So clearly the Buddha and arahants did realize the freedom of nibbāna, even while the khndhas remained.

But because the khandhas themselves are impermanent and therefore a form of dukkha, there is not yet freedom from all dukkha:
SN12.125: “Whatever arises and ceases is only dukkha arising and ceasing.” And
SN22.15: Yad aniccaṁ taṁ dukkhaṁ; “What is impermanent is suffering.”

One of the most frequent “definitions” of nibbāna in the suttas is:
SN43.2 - “And what is the unconditioned? The ending of greed, hate, and delusion. This is called the unconditioned.”
This can be realized in this life, as the Buddha and arahants did. So let’s call it real in that sense. Never tried to say otherwise.

  • The other description of niibbāna in Iti44 is nibbāna without residue, meaning final nibbāna after the death of an arahant, when the khndhas and senses completely cease. In other words, cessation.
    So one way to view this is that when the Buddha spoke innumerable times about cessation, he meant it.

Snp3.12: ““All the suffering that originates is caused by consciousness.; With the cessation of consciousness, there is no origination of suffering.”

SN22.61: "They understand: ‘Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is no return to any state of existence.’”
In other words…cessation.

SN47.42: "Nāmarūpasamudayā cittassa samudayo; nāmarūpanirodhā cittassa atthaṅgamo.
"The mind originates from name and form. When name and form cease, the mind ends.

In other words, cessation.

In this way, cessation is necessarily final freedom from any birth, becoming, death, etc. and necessarily devoid of dukkha. Hence not so much “an unborn” which can be easily reified, but “without birth” or “freedom from birth” via the cessation of all that.

If you wish to view final nibbāna as some kind of ineffable timeless “something”, that’s of course up to you and anyone else who wishes to take this view.
Clearly, there is respectful debate about this by a number of respected Dhamma practitioners and teachers.

The question then becomes – What sutta teachings clearly and repeatedly state that final nibbāna is a “timeless mind” or an ineffable “something”?

BTW, this topic has been discussed many times on this forum, in case you haven’t read them yet.

Just saying… :pray:

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Yeah, plus in dependent cessation, when ignorance/delusion ends, so do all the rest of the factors… eventually. Delusion is what sustains and fuels the other factors. And in the other factors there is consciousness, name and form, the six sense bases, contact.
From wherever you look in the suttas this is the message.
And seeing dependent origination/cessation has been compared to basically seeing the whole teaching.

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It makes no sense to say “sukhamidaṁ, āvuso, nibbānaṁ" if there was no experiencer (according to your interpretation of nibbāna) because after personal permanent extinction (which you call cessation) there is no experience of sukha or dukkha as there is nobody to talk of their sukha. Before that permanent extinction, there definitely is experience (so “nothing is felt” would not apply). Look at the logic behind your interpretations.

You’re saying the use of the string of negatives (adjectives of nibbāna) means that nibbāna itself has no underlying positive reality. If nibbāna isn’t real then the Buddha couldnt have attained it, and without attaining it he wouldnt be a Buddha, and that wouldn’t be a rug the Buddha would be willing pull from under himself, would he? How is your interpretation logically sound?

So in your interpretation, that nibbāna-with-residue is pre-extinguishment nibbāna, and the final nibbāna is post-extinguishment nibbāna?

So according to your interpretation, extinguishment is in reality, just physical death, and there is a nibbāna both before and after extinguishment?

Where is the logic behind this interpretation? How can nibbāna mean extinguishment when the nibbāna-with-residue exists before extinguishment?

If we take both the nibbānas as positive states of existence, it makes sense, not if nibbāna by itself means permanent personal extinction. To call something after a permanent personal extinction as “sukha” would be totally weird.

If you want to rely on etymology behind the word nibbāna (and translate it as personal extinguishment throughout), it would not apply to nibbāna-with-residue (and therefore such a nibbāna is no nibbāna at all). The etymological meaning of nibbāna is here misleading, the EBT use of the term is not the meaning that the literal etymology suggests.

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This is addressed in Linked Discourses 36.19 with "It’s possible that wanderers of other religions might say: ‘The ascetic Gotama spoke of the cessation of perception and feeling, and he includes it in happiness. What’s up with that?’

When wanderers of other religions say this, you should say to them: ‘Reverends, when the Buddha describes what’s included in happiness, he’s not just referring to pleasant feeling. The Realized One describes pleasure as included in happiness wherever it is found, and in whatever context.’”
So yes, there is nothing felt. That’s why it is preferable or “happiness”. It’s quite a statement indeed, and very profound and counter to how we think given a sense of self that wants to exists and feel happy feelings.

You can think of what the Buddha gave up instead. The Buddha gave up greed hatred and delusion, and that’s what we would define as " pre-extinguishment nibbāna".
When he died it was like a flame going out, his life, consciousness, existence ended, which is referred to “post-extinguishment nibbāna” as you mentioned with those terms.

Because we are talking about how much has ended, or how much has “nibbana’d” if you will. We are talking about levels of extinguishment.

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I am afraid I don’t see the logic - it doesnt work like that. If you want to adopt a theory of multiple nibbānas and give each one a different definition, that is up to you, but that is not Buddhism. There are no degrees to nibbāna in early-buddhism - one can’t say “I’ve achieved 6% nibbāna”. To call nibbāna as sukha, the experiencer needs to exist. That does not fit with the total-extinguishment interpretation. If nibbāna means total extinguishment, it cannot then also exist before that total-extinguishment. If it exists before total extinguishment, the word nibbāna cannot have meant total-extinguishment. So there are multiple logical fallacies here, and even circular logic.

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Not in my interpretation. The citation about nibbāna with and without residue is from Iti44.
The other sutta quotes that were offered were also not my interpretations.

Perhaps reading these previous posts will be informative and interesting to you:

I prefer discussions without judgmental words like “weird” and without mistaken attributions and assumptions like:

Which I never said or implied, as far as I can see.
I just quoted the Buddha in Iti44 and specifically said that nibbāna was realized by the Buddha and arahants. :slightly_smiling_face:

We might say that nibbāna while alive is kilesanirodha, extinction of the defilements, while final nibbāna is khandhanirodha – hence the final cessation of the khandhas and all dukkha without rebirth.

In either case, āvuso, I do wish you well on your Dhamma journey.
Wishing safety, happiness, and peace to you and to us all. :pray: :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi Mike,

Ajahn Brahms excellent talk on MN1 is here https://youtu.be/0-Mpvly5_fQ?si=1AEPYwGud7Dl4Pgp it is quite funny as well

It might be they did not delight because they were affected correctly by the teachings, it seems to me the point of the cloud deva suttas is to say how delight can give rise to being and worlds (conditionality), this is just my patthujana pet theory though lol I don’t think the word there is “Nandi” like in the dhammacakkhapavatthana sutta. Also MN 1 is titled “The Root of All Things”

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