4. Knowledge and vision:
This is by far the most important bit of the teaching and what the buddha wanted you to see/experience.....and the most difficult to explain/express and understand.
Whenever one experiences the arising and the passing away of the mental and physical processes, he enjoys bliss and delight. He attains the deathless as attained by the wise.
This
arising and the passing away is what happens when your mind cross the line between the conditioned and unconditioned. The
mental here is the mind arising and the
physical is the body.
The arising is the mental, which is the unborn state of the mind. Notice it says arising, it is arising because you mind in entering the unconditioned and it appears to be arising. remember, under the unconditioned,
"no arising is seen" so how can the mind arise? This is because the mind is always there, hidden within the physical body. Objects cannot enter into the unconditioned state as objects do not have an unborn state. Furthermore, nothing here is being created because you cannot create the unborn mind. While the mind appears to arise, at the same time, the physical appears to fall or passing away as it cannot enter that state. Physical doesn't have the properties of unborn.
This is also where under MN 140:
the sage at peace is not born, does not age, does not die
By entering this dimension, one knows the mind were never born in the first place, it cannot die either.....these are the same characteristics as the "unconditioned".....and it should be.....its unborn.
When we say enlighten, it is the mind that is being freed and not the body. Furthermore, it is the original state, the unborn so the mind here had always been there within the body and within this void. You cannot create this unborn mind, its merely an escape out of samsara....the middle way, avoiding the extremes.
The delusion that one always says I-am this body will fall away because your entire life up to now had been the body, now you will say I am this...now you see with the mind too, yes!! (you cannot put a physical eye in the unborn state can you!!) so this entire attachment with the body falls away.......automatically....disenchantment, dispassion, emancipation, cankers.
"The destruction of the crankers is for one who knows and sees, I say, not for one does not know and does not see". The defilements, epitomized in the "crankers", are only destroyed for one who overcomes ignorance by wisdom which knows and sees things as they are.
Wisdom here is the actual knowledge and vision experience while in the unconditioned state / Nibbana. Ignorance is the mind of not knowing.....so one needs to know.
There is a nice sutra on the I-am.....AN 6.13:
Furthermore, there is the case where a monk might say, 'Although "I am" is gone, and I do not assume that "I am this," still the arrow of uncertainty & perplexity keeps overpowering my mind.' He should be told, 'Don't say that. You shouldn't speak in that way. Don't misrepresent the Blessed One, for it's not right to misrepresent the Blessed One, and the Blessed One wouldn't say that. It's impossible, there is no way that — when "I am" is gone, and "I am this" is not assumed — the arrow of uncertainty & perplexity would keep overpowering the mind. That possibility doesn't exist, for this is the escape from the arrow of uncertainty & perplexity: the uprooting of the conceit, "I am.
Furthermore, this unborn state cannot be called existence because it would mean that it would die....so careful use of word are necessary but we are limited to describe that which is so difficult to express.