SuttaCentral
My thinking in creating this thread was that given the intelligence and character in the atmosphere here that I would get a few “Yes, I can see where he is coming from too. That is what the choices looked like when I started looking for a belief system”.
Well, I didn’t get what I was looking for by posting this thread. Oh well, that is the Internet.
Our dreams and hopes turn out to be something else- that’s simply craving for ‘becoming’ which leads to dukkha when that which is craved for is not realised.
I think the main reason is the title of this thread, it sorta makes me want to compare and point out differences, probably due the to “why” word. But hey, it’s not too late to steer the course of this thread 
I think this and the sutta quote you provided later is a great way of describing the saupadisesa-nibbana. Refusing to acknowledge the existence of rebirth automatically grants anyone the anupadisesa-nibbana, and it is where the problems arise, since anupadisesa nibbana literally means the exitinguishment of five khandhas without any remainder, much like how the annihilationists imagine the our post-mortal state 
From that point on, we have to either say that everyone attains the anupadisesa-nibbana at death or postulate that it doesn’t exist, there is only saupadisesa-nibbana.
If everything just comes to an end at death, it is hard to regard that as the attainment of anything. Its not the attainment of peace because there is no experience of peace. It’s not the attainment of liberation since there is no experience of freedom. It’s not the attainment of wisdom or gnosis, because those require some psychological functioning. It’s just the end of everything.
If there is any real attainment at all, and it is something worth attaining, whatever it is has to occur when the prerequisites for experience are present. I think these considerations apply whether or not one believes in literal rebirth. If one believes that one goes through a cycle of multiple rebirths, where each of the deaths is not the attainment of nibbana, but just the launching of another life, culminating finally in a death which is the complete end of everything, then it doesn’t seem to me any exalted state worth having ever occurs, and the so-called “attainment” of nibbana, which is supposed to be the goal of Buddhist life, is a bit of a sham.
Even if enlightenment involved ‘only’ the end of rebirth, that would be absolutely fantastic!
There’s a sutta which says if a man is struck by a 100 spears morning, noon and night and that meant he could attain stream entry it would still be worth it (SN 56.35), if so how much more to practice and to end the arduous journey then?
With metta
Why? Is your life really so horrible?
Several people over the last several months have tried to persuade me that they look forward to nothing more wonderful than pulling the plug on their awful existences. But I have to tell you that after going around in circles on this several times, I have grown very skeptical that they are always telling the truth.
I strongly suspect most of the rebirth believers are actually looking forward to future lives, and that’s why they care so much about that part of the teaching. This business about wanting to achieve ultimate, final, total, complete extinction is a bit of orthodox Buddhist catechism about what that they think they ought to want, but not an honest expression of what they are striving for.
I also think that most of the monks I have met who are in the business of seriously striving for nibbana don’t think nibbana is just the final dismantling of the kammic engine, or some kind of suicide-by-samadhi. They think attaining nibbana is some kind of amazing and positive experience, an experience that can occur in this very life.
And well they might think that, since there are many texts scattered throughout the suttas that lend themselves to that interpretation, despite all the efforts of the gloomsters to ignore them or explain them away.
“gloomsters”… lol i guess i am one. But i reserve the right to change my mind once i lose it. Agony does not depend on the horribleness of one’s own experiences.
Sure thing, but it doesn’t adress the fact that this is literally what the Suttas say about the anupadisesa nibbana:
These two Nibbāna-elements were made known
By the Seeing One, stable and unattached:
One is the element seen here and now
With residue, but with the cord of being destroyed;
The other, having no residue for the future,
Is that wherein all modes of being utterly cease.
Iti 44Just that is the pleasure here, my friend: where there is nothing felt
AN 9.35
If we accept that striving for the cessation of all modes of being is a bit of a sham, then, well, we should disagree with the Buddha and Ven. Sariputta on that point that they repeated on numerous occasions. If monks think or hope there is something else on the other shore while they still have not attained Nibbana, great, it may be a great strategyof boosting your practice up to a certain limit. If you think this is nothing worth looking forward to, great, I myself have had difficulties with coming to terms with this idea, but then we are both puthujjanas.
However, our feelings about the anupadisesa nibbana doesn’t explain why the Buddha and Ven. Sariputta talked about it. Maybe they were plain wrong about it, but if we accept that they weren’t it becomes difficult to discard it from our practice.
It does, it’s called sopadisesa-nibbana, and it is experienced in this very life. It’s described as the highest bliss and happiness available to any living being.
My personal position is that when I am reborn, I will have no memories of my past lives, no memories of my loved ones, my positive or negative experiences, so there will be little or almost no difference from me actually dying for good after this lifetime is over. What I will get instead will be the whole nine yards of earthly existence again and again. Working hard, trying to survive in a cruel and uncaring universe, pursuing fleeting pleasures and rare minutes of calm. All this just to find yourself dying of brain cancer or starving to death in some God-forgotten village in Africa. Watching your stepfather you dearly love being reduced to a sorry state by a massive meningitis infection. Watching your children burn in a car after a car crash and not being able to do anything because the door is jammed. Watching your grandmother scalding herself with 12 litres of hot soup, developing a gangrene and losing her leg and sanity afterwards in a matter of months. Slowly dying of a glioblastoma, feeling the life seeping out from your body, organs and brains areas shutting down one after another. Shooting Germans in a snow-covered field somewhere near Leningrad at 30 below zero with nothing in your stomach since days, your legs broken, nose and fingers both frost-bitten and burnt, and your eardrums gone after a shell bomb went off nearby. And then you die and forget all of this, and it starts again, and again, and again. Not exactly my definition of great time.
Thanks for posting that sutta.
IMHO, just becoming aware of the gruesome reality of existence is a major revelation - a big chunk of delusion in one’s mind disappears when that happens. Even then, the progress from that unnerving realization to reach the Buddha’s teaching of sabbam dukkam is not that easy. Life and the little pleasures that it offers still manage to have a stranglehold on the mind. I can personally identify with Vstakan’s post above - staggering around with a dead organ inside me for years has managed to wash away pretty much all energy. And yet, I can see how my mind is in the grip of the oldest and the most common of all delusions: maybe I can still steer the wordly course of this life…
I don’t remember clearly, but I think it was in Dostoevsky’s writings that I read that a single tear on a child’s face is enough to reject God’s heavenly bliss. Maybe he was more spiritually advanced than most people. And this is where the Stoics fail, they don’t really offer any explanation for the world.
Yes, of course. The removal of causes of rebirth (ie craving, ignorance etc) happens in this life, while alive and it is amazing- its the end of all emotional dukkha, and some degree of lessening of physical dukkha, with a lot of the divine abodes and other positive mind states included. The remnant physical suffering (from old age, etc) ends as does the dukkha of perception, or fabrications (sankhara dukkha) upon the death of the enlightened being, which is why it is called ‘Full Nibbana’ (parinibbana). Conventional attitude towards death is negative- in the case of the arahanth it is fully positive- it is the complete escape from suffering. But suttas claim this isn’t the death (annihilation) of the materialistic world view, or those with that world view projects on to Buddhism as they do not comprehend it fully.
Not really…at least not in a Buddhist context, and certainly not me. It is more a sign of those who delight in this life, that they want more of it. Attachment leads to becoming.
My life is ok. Look at it like this- say your job is ok, but do you want to keep doing it after your retirement age? One life is fine, I don’t want to keep repeating this over, and over and over again. It would like trying to talk sense into some people on this forum. Not to be repeated… I don’t want to go through imperfect parenting, the entire schooling experience, relationships, ilness, aging, etc -one life is enough, you know? I’m tired of it. Be it a lay person or a monk, life is hard, and with my practice I dont see a benefit in becoming ordained as it will affect my wife and children, and my practice is well established enough to take me as far as I want to go, where I am now, in life.
with metta
For what it is worth, there is a paper by K. R. Norman that argues, if I recall the argument correctly, it is a mistake to translate “parinibbana” as either “full nibbana” or “final nibbana”. He says it just means “attainment of nibbana.”
Future lives, as they are represented in Buddhist literature, don’t seem to me analogous to having to work into retirement. It’s not as though you will be more tired or more bored in the future life because you are worn down. The reborn being basically starts from scratch with a new body, and new mental life and new experiences. If your current life is on the whole pretty good, and not dominated by boredom and weariness, and you are reborn as a human of roughly the same kind, then that future life would also be on the whole pretty good, and not dominated by boredom and weariness. Even to describe these futures as a rebirth of “me” is a puzzling matter, about which Buddhist thinkers don’t seem to provide unequivocal answers.
I do not to dwell on these possibilities about literal future states of existence, whether Buddhist future lives or Christian eternal heavens and hells, either to be either beguiled by them or to dread them, since there is very little in the way of serious evidence for them. I focus on those texts which explicitly recommend a lack of concern with future states of existence.
Sure. Those Suttas are applicable. Old age, illness and repeated dying are good reasons to not planning to be reborn. It’s a bit like doing a not so great job and planning to get a better job than that, in the future. It is possible to ignore it doggedly keep you nose on the grinding wheel. It does take some ability to reflect and look at one’s life with the bigger picture in mind. Some people might not want to entertain such thoughts for the fear of one’s life might then become unbearable (or make a mockery out of one’s current life choices). Groundhog Day is considered bad, and an anomaly, however good that day is. But of course throw in enough delusion and it is possible to intentionally or unintentionally ignore this problem entirely, every lifetime.
The Buddha said more people are born in worse places than better places. Chances of being born an animal become greater; the chances of being eaten alive and dying of starvation or heat/cold much greater. The chance of not having a choice any more to do anything positive but be driven by instincts to kill becomes greater. This further promotes the degradation of one’s samsaric position. Seeing my own past lives through meditation made this very real to me. These images don’t make much sense to me, in that they are not what I am - I am a scientifically trained person. I can’t make sense of the graphic reality presented to me. It’s unlike me to create such images as I didn’t believe in rebirth for a very long time. I appreciate that such stories aren’t relevant to everyone’s journey which is why I didn’t bring it up before. I thought there were about 2500-3000 rebirth cases as well as near death experiences recorded. I wouldn’t rule it out therefore, but rather stay open about it.
With metta
Without carefully paying attention to future states of existence, we will not be able to correctly understand them. Without understanding them, we will not be able to fully see their disadvantages and dangers. Without seeing their disadvantages and dangers, we will not develop dispassion to them. Without dispassion, we will easily fall back into them especially when we have no concern of their existences.
Lack of concern with future states of existence does not mean that we will be free from them.
Well, I have seen little evidence that Buddhist practitioners, including very advanced ones, have much actual understanding of future states of existence. They sometimes have beliefs about such states, but the beliefs appear to be faith-based interpretations of, or constructions from, their imaginative experiences.
For me personally it is easy to have dispassion toward such future states, since I have no reason to believe they will occur.
If you could get whatever you want at anytime without any trouble, will you take that opportunity?
Assume that you do not own any house now, if you could get a beautiful one without any trouble, will you take it?
I suppose. But I don’t know what you are talking about, in connection with this topic.
Those are your possible future states …
If you could get whatever you want at anytime without any trouble, you are/will be in a heavenly state.
If you could get a beautiful house without any trouble, you are/will be in a heavenly state on earth.
Just some simple examples to show that you may not have any dispassion toward future states because you do not see any disadvantages/dangers from them.
What I said is that I do have dispassion about future states because I don’t belive in them. If there are no post-death states, what is there to be passionate about? If one doesn’t believe in post-death states, then no dangerous cravings for the power to get whatever I want in such a state would arise.