riceandcashews wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 7:21 pm
mikenz66 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 9:49 pm
Sorry if I wasn't clear. In models such as Classical Theravada or Ven Nananada's Nibbana sermons, there is a cessation "experience" at nibbana, which frees the (now) arahant. This cessation can also be accessed at will.
After that, the arahant still has feelings, etc. until the breakup of the body.
So, if in your view cessation/signlessness (do you take those to be the same?) is then not identical with nirvana, what is its function/purpose on the path? Is it necessary or optional? If optional, is it helpful? Whether necessary, or optionally helpful, how so?
Cessation is what happens at nibbana. But after that liberating cessation, the arahant functions in the world, with aggregates, feelings, likes and dislikes, until the breakup of the body.
As Ven Nananada quotes at the start of each Nibbana Sermon:
"This is peaceful, this is excellent, namely the stilling of all preparations, the
relinquishment of all assets, the destruction of craving, detachment, cessation,
extinction".
Link to a sutta where this occurs:
This is peaceful; this is sublime—that is, the stilling of all activities, the letting go of all attachments, the ending of craving, cessation, extinguishment.’
‘etaṁ santaṁ etaṁ paṇītaṁ yadidaṁ sabbasaṅkhārasamatho sabbūpadhippaṭinissaggo taṇhākkhayo nirodho nibbānan’ti.
https://suttacentral.net/an10.60/en/suj ... ript=latin
I do agree it's tricky, as Ven Nananda says in Sermon 18:
The idea behind this riddle is that the influx-free arahant, the such-
like-one, gone to the farther shore, which is supramundane, does not come
back to the mundane. Nevertheless, he apparently comes back to the world
and is seen to experience likes and dislikes, pleasures and pains, through
the objects of the five senses. From the point of view of the worldling, the
arahant has come back to the world. This is the crux of the problem.
...
Here, then, we have an extremely subtle problem. When the arahant
comes back to the world and is seen experiencing the objects of the five
senses, one might of course conclude that he is actually `in the world'. This
problematic situation, namely the question how the influx-free arahant,
gone to the farther shore, comes back and takes in objects through the
senses, the Buddha resolves with the help of a simple simile, drawn from
nature. For instance, we read in the Jaràsutta of the Sutta Nipàta the
following scintillating lines.
"Like a drop of water on a lotus leaf,
Or water that taints not the lotus petal,
So the sage unattached remains,
In regard to what is seen, heard and sensed."
So the extremely deep problem concerning the relation between the
supramundane and the mundane levels of experience, is resolved by the
Buddha by bringing in the simile of the lotus petal and the lotus leaf.
...
So here we have the ideal of the emancipated mind. Generally, a person
unfamiliar with the nature of a lotus leaf or a lotus petal, on seeing a drop
of water on a lotus leaf or a lotus petal would think that the water drop
smears them.
Earlier we happened to mention that there is a wide gap between the
mundane and the supramundane. Some might think that this refers to a gap
in time or in space. In fact it is such a conception that often led to various
misinterpretations concerning Nibbàna. The supramundane seems so far
away from the mundane, so it must be something attainable after death in
point of time. Or else it should be far far away in outer space. Such is the
impression made in general.
But if we go by the simile of the drop of water on the lotus leaf, the
distance between the mundane and the supramundane is the same as that
between the lotus leaf and the drop of water on it.
Mike