sense bases disappear ?

[cappuccino]

Do they get annihilated?

you must realize there is no answer possible

[Ceisiwr]

Do they get annihilated?

you must realize there is no answer possible

[retrofuturist]

Greetings Ceiwisr,

When there is understanding, it's not that there is then kamma which ceases and then consciousness ceases and so on. Rather it is when there is understanding, all the other links never arise again.

Again, by all means let me know if this is an unfair characterisation, but this sounds like a denial of #3 & #4 in favour of a new conditionality "from the cessation of this comes the non-arising of that"... because you're attributing cessation to parinibbana (i.e. a causality outside paticcasamuppada and idappaccayata) rather than the cessation of preceding nidana.

1. When this is, that is.
2. From the arising of this comes the arising of that.
3. When this isn't, that isn't.
4. From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.

Any comment to make regarding this?

I don't see how. When this isn't (ignorance), that isn't (kamma). When there is no ignorance, there is no kamma. When there is no kamma, none at all, there is no consciousness. With no kamma, consciousness (in the womb) does not arise. The cessation of ignorance is the same as blowing out the āsavā, and so there is freedom from the 2nd dart now and both darts at final death. The cessation mode means those links never arise again, rather than they arise and then cease forever more.

As I understand what you've said, and again, correct me if I'm wrong... you're accepting #3 & #4 for the first nidana, but beyond that you're introducing what you call "the cessation mode means those links never arise again" mode of causality (i.e. "with no kamma, consciousness (in the womb) does not arise"), which sounds a lot like the "from the cessation of this comes the non-arising of that" which I described above as being external to the four-pronged logic of idappaccayata. You explain that they don't arise again, but you're silent on how they actually cease.

So perhaps you "don't see how" it is a different form of conditionality from what is specified in idappaccayata , but likewise, I "don't see how" it isn't. It really does seem, from how I read your words, as if you're putting the cessation of everything from vinnana onwards down to parinibbana, rather than to the cessation of the previous nidana, which is how it is actually described in the suttas.

There is no question put to you here, so feel free not to reply - or alternatively, to clarify your position as you see fit. If any other members who are sympathetic to Ceisiwr's presentation would like to comment, by all means please do.

Metta,
Paul.

[Spiny Norman]

Greetings Ceisiwr,

When there is understanding, it's not that there is then kamma which ceases and then consciousness ceases and so on. Rather it is when there is understanding, all the other links never arise again.

1. When this is, that is.
2. From the arising of this comes the arising of that.
3. When this isn't, that isn't.
4. From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.

Any comment to make regarding this?

Metta,
Paul.

3 and 4 seem to say that when ignorance ceases, then so do all the other nidanas.

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

3 and 4 seem to say that when ignorance ceases, then so do all the other nidanas.

Agreed... not merely this alternative watered down suggestion, disconnected from idappaccayata, that they merely will not arise again.

Metta,
Paul.

[PeterC86]

At some point I started to question this understanding and practice, through which I came to the realisation that such an understanding would mean that consciousness is already there before contact with the sense bases is made. But then the question arises, where is this consciousness coming from, and what is it conscious of without the sense bases? Then also the question arises, where is the intention coming from that is the cause of this consciousness? Then also the question arises as to where is this ignorance coming from that is the cause of this intention preceding consciousness? Then also the question arises as to how can intention precede contact with the sense bases, and what is it intending without any (prior) contact with the sense bases?

Consciousness arises dependent upon the sense bases. One of the sense bases is mental in nature, with mental objects. Intention is an object that a purely mental consciousness cognises. The intention arises due to ignorance, and ignorance is there because of the hindrances.

But then some monk says, "it is a multiple life model", although this is not explained anywhere in the suttapitaka. One might ask, if it is necessary information to understand this interpretation of DO in such a way, would the Buddha had not explained it in at least one sutta?

When suttas are quoted which show you how it does involve more than one life you dismiss them, claiming they are the product of corrupt monks & nuns and whatnot. In other words, when evidence is presented which falsifies your theory you simply dismiss the evidence rather than amend your view.

Nevertheless, lets investigate such an interpretation for a minute. How can life be multiple, if consciousness descends into the womb? The womb first had to be there, so before the first womb was created, somehow ignorance and intention were floating around somewhere, and created physical bodies? I could not find a sensible answer to all these questions, and neither are they provided in the suttas. To the contrary, the suttas just plainly state that transmigration has no beginning, and I should just understand, without any way of understanding it, that;

“Mendicants, transmigration has no known beginning. No first point is found of sentient beings roaming and transmigrating, hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving. What do you think? Which is more: the flow of tears you’ve shed while roaming and transmigrating for such a very long time—weeping and wailing from being united with the unloved and separated from the loved—or the water in the four oceans?”

“As we understand the Buddha’s teaching, the flow of tears we’ve shed while roaming and transmigrating is more than the water in the four oceans.”

“Good, good, mendicants! It’s good that you understand my teaching like this. The flow of tears you’ve shed while roaming and transmigrating is indeed more than the water in the four oceans.https://suttacentral.net/sn15.3/en/suja ... ript=latin

There are multiple lives because consciousness descends in the womb. The womb exists as a part of the mother's body. The ignorance and intention was in a prior life, with a period of an in-between state where consciousness is sustained by purely mental dhammas. Consciousness isn't floating around somewhere. Consciousness isn't anywhere, since it has no spatial coordinates. Spatial coordinates are for physical things, not immaterial dhammas. I wouldn't say consciousness created your body as such, but rather your body wouldn't develop fully without consciousness being there. Regarding the sutta you quote, it does not say that Saṃsāra has no beginning. Rather the sutta says it has no known beginning. An ultimate beginning cannot be found. When the Buddha looked back into his past lives, he saw the same pattern repeating without a known starting point.

The problems in understanding DO as being physical, automatically transmits into problems in the practice of such a view. If human life is understood to be based upon ignorance, which is the cause of dukkha, I see my entire life as dukkha. So far, this is the opposite of cessation of suffering. Now, how am I to dissolve ignorance that preceeds consciousness? Well, the teaching says to practice the N8FP. But if we look at the N8FP, it says that we should focus on our intention and practice virtue, but how should I do this if intention precedes consciousness? Besides this unpracticality, if intentions are not-self, the intention is not me or mine, so I cannot be made or make myself responsible for these intentions.

You are supposed to see your whole life as dukkha. You are supposed to see any life, any form of existence, anywhere, as more of the same albeit with differences of intensity. This is the very beginning of the cessation of suffering, for you begin then to understand how futile it all is and start to become disillusioned with the whole world. What we are supposed to do is awaken so that there are no more lustful, averse or deluded intentions. When we do that, then consciousness won't be established anywhere at death. It will finally cease when the body and the senses go out. Now in the present moment there is consciousness arising and ceasing based on contact. With that contact will be various intentions, wholesome and unwholesome. Certain intentions feed the hindrances, and so block vision, and lead to lower realms. Other intentions starve the hindrances. Simply practice virtue, and the hindrances are weakened but not fully abolished. There will be no awakening, but consciousness can later be established in a wholesome place. Practice virtue, sense-restraint and mastery of the mind with Right View at the forefront and our intentions can lead to starving the hindrances completely, instead nourishing the awakening factors through which the āsavā are abolished and one no longer has defiled intention ever again. Until that moment, you are supposed to view the path and practice with a sense of self. You are supposed to rely upon conceit in order to give up conceit.

So this practice is unpractial because intention precedes consciousness, and I cannot make myself responsible or be made responsible for the outcome of this unpractical practice, I can only discipline myself in the effects from the cause that does not lie in my reach, in the mere hope that future intentions might change, meanwhile suffering my entire life while doing so.

In terms of the 12-links intention precedes the consciousness in the womb, but intention always too arises in the present moment with consciousness. The Buddha covers things from different angles, to help people see the truth. You will of course suffer whilst alive, but you could possible reach Arahantship in this life. Then you would be free from all emotional suffering, of grief, fear or anger. You would still experience the mental and physical pain that comes with life, but there would too be a special kind of bliss for you would know that when your life finally ends you will, then, be totally free from all forms of suffering forever.

Besides the unpracticality of doing so, the answer to the question as to how my intentions should be aligned to dissolve ignorance, is to abandon intentions that are not aligned with dissolving ignorance. The question returns as to where is ignorance coming from? From not understanding the 4NT of course. How do I understand the 4NT? Practice the N8FP...

From the āsavā or, another way of looking at it, from the hindrances.

I respect your belief, thank you for sharing and good luck with it! I am not inclined to engage in a discussion with you anymore, as mentioned earlier, as the base of your understanding is (informed) faith, through which you will bend or oversee anything so that it supports your faith, to such an extent that you change the order of DO at your will, by saying "Consciousness arises dependent upon the sense bases.", and insert anything according to your faith. You also gaze over the principal problem that our intentions are not me or mine. Besides this, through your belief, you view life in its entirety as suffering, and liberation from that suffering would be annihilation. Which, to me, doesn't merit discussion, just this response as a friendly gift, without obligation, to reflection.

Then I came to understand DO as a mental process, and all my issues with understanding it dissolved. I came to realize that birth, understood as coming out of the womb, is based upon existence, based upon grasping, based upon craving, based upon feeling, based upon contact, based upon the six sense bases, based upon name and form, based upon consciousness, based upon intentions, based upon ignorance. What ignorance, and where is this ignorance coming from? The ignorance of not realizing that what is understood as birth, is based upon ignorance.

Then you have misunderstood it. The earliest non-schismatic texts are quite clear that rūpa in nāmarūpa is quite literally your physical form, that the body sense sphere is your literally body and that birth, ageing, sickness and death are quite literally being born from the vagina, getting old, growing senile and dying of a stroke. There is no getting away from this. Your presentation then of dependent origination is therefore, I'm sorry to say, your own idiosyncratic distortion of what the Buddha taught simply because you don't really understand it and, apparently, because you don't like what it implies.

I literally described birth as coming out of the womb.

The way I presented DO in my book is done purposely, so that readers are not inclined to understand birth as something which is not cognized, but cognized nonetheless, as it can only be cognized. One might be inclined to think that this doesn't seem necessary, but one might be surprised as to how many people are overseeing the obvious (that is including myself in the past).

[asahi]

If you could elaborate on idappaccayata and paticcasamuppada , then perhaps we can have a workable discussion .

SN12.65
Alas, this world has fallen into trouble. It’s born, grows old, dies, passes away, and is reborn,

‘kicchā vatāyaṁ loko āpanno jāyati ca jīyati ca mīyati ca cavati ca upapajjati ca.

yet it doesn’t understand how to escape from this suffering, from old age and death.

Atha ca panimassa dukkhassa nissaraṇaṁ nappajānāti jarāmaraṇassa.

Oh, when will an escape be found from this suffering, from old age and death?’

Kudāssu nāma imassa dukkhassa nissaraṇaṁ paññāyissati jarāmaraṇassā’ti?

Then it occurred to me:

Tassa mayhaṁ, bhikkhave, etadahosi:

‘When what exists is there old age and death? What is a condition for old age and death?’

‘kimhi nu kho sati jarāmaraṇaṁ hoti, kiṁpaccayā jarāmaraṇan’ti?

Then, through proper attention, I comprehended with wisdom:

Tassa mayhaṁ, bhikkhave, yoniso manasikārā ahu paññāya abhisamayo:

‘When rebirth exists there’s old age and death. Rebirth is a condition for old age and death.’

‘jātiyā kho sati jarāmaraṇaṁ hoti, jātipaccayā jarāmaraṇan’ti.

[PeterC86]

One might be inclined to think that this doesn't seem necessary, but one might be surprised as to how many people are overseeing the obvious (that is including myself in the past).

I mean overlooking instead of overseeing.

[Ceisiwr]

Can people not quote whole chunks of text, thanks.

[Coëmgenu]

3 and 4 seem to say that when ignorance ceases, then so do all the other nidanas.

Why instantaneously? It is via contact and the sense bases that there is cognition of the external at all. If these cease, not only will the biological body be dead or otherwise insensitive (no kāya sense base) but it will also be unable to see, hear, etc.

Imagine a standard store-bought fan. Electricity fuels the motion of the fan. When you turn the switch to "off," inhibiting the flow of electricity, the fan doesn't immediately stop. Instead, it gradually slows to a standstill, because it still has kinetic energy fuelling its movement, a kinetic energy that will dissipate. The remaining kinetic energy in the fan is like the "life substrate" that co-exists with the Nibbānadhātu before Parinibbāna.

Buddhist sects have a wide variety of ideas as to what the stilled fan, the dead or dying bodymind with exhausted fuel, gets up to once its "stopped." Groups like the Sautrāntikas posit this as a sort of "noble death." True death is reserved for the Ārhats and Buddhas. What happens to worldlings and certain imperfect Āryans is rebirth.

Theravāda is very close to this, but not quite so extreme. They like to leave a bit more mystery to it, but pretty much spell out the exact same situation. It's bleak, but supposedly only bleak to those still clinging to the possibility of future sense experiences.

In contrast, certain other Buddhists, generally but not always Mahāyānika, frame Nibbāna as a sort of "Siddhaloka," or "realm of the Saints," where there resides denizens such as "the Buddhas of the Ten Directions." This is partial or full eternalism by other Buddhist metrics, just as the old Śrāvaka understanding is called annihilation by its detractors.

Either way, just because the life faculty (jīvitendriya) is gradually exhausting itself, that does not mean that bodily and mental experience is no longer dependently originated. "Originated" is a past participle, meaning that anything that arose of the conditions listed in DO is still a product of dependent origination. In fact, even the jīvitendriya itself is a product of dependent origination. It doesn't get its own nidāna, but that doesn't mean that it is unconditioned by way of omission.

To say that bodily and mental experience is no longer a product of DO is actually tantamount to saying that the bodymind has become unconditioned, and should therefore be unchanging and immortal, just like Nibbāna.

[Spiny Norman]

I used to think of it as a gradual winding down of the nidanas, but I'm not sure the DO suttas actually support that.
An immediate cessation of all the nidanas is what the DO suttas appear to describe, ie when this ceases, that ceases, right through the sequence of nidanas.
This view does depend on a valid distinction between indriya and ayatana, and the assumption that the DO aggregates which cease are specifically clinging aggregates.

[Coëmgenu]

I used to think of it as a gradual winding down of the nidanas, but I'm not sure the DO suttas actually support that.
An immediate cessation of all the nidanas is what the DO suttas appear to describe, ie when this ceases, that ceases, right through the sequence of nidanas.

Why does the cessation have to be instantaneous though? Why can't there be a "process" of cessation, such as a "whirling down" of activity? When one things starts "whirling down," then the next thing starts "whirling down" until, in the end, birth and death are impossible future events. The latent possibility for subsequent embodiment and mentality has "whirled down" before it could get (re-)started. Why not this instead of instantaneous and complete cessation?

The narrative that they immediately all cease in sequence is further complicated by the fact that Āryaśrāvakas and the Buddha himself, in the Pāli Canon, are described as experiencing vedanā.

[Ceisiwr]

The narrative that they immediately all cease in sequence is further complicated by the fact that Āryaśrāvakas and the Buddha himself, in the Pāli Canon, are described as experiencing vedanā.

I think upon awakening all the links will never arise again is what is meant, when we look at the cessation mode of dependent origination. What’s left is old kamma, which is winding down.

[Spiny Norman]

I used to think of it as a gradual winding down of the nidanas, but I'm not sure the DO suttas actually support that.
An immediate cessation of all the nidanas is what the DO suttas appear to describe, ie when this ceases, that ceases, right through the sequence of nidanas.

Why does the cessation have to be instantaneous though? Why can't there be a "process" of cessation, such as a "whirling down" of activity?

The narrative that they immediately all cease is further complicated by the fact that Āryaśrāvakas and the Buddha himself, in the Pāli Canon, are described as experiencing vedanā.

The distinction in the Aggregates Sutta suggests it is only clinging aggregates which cease for the Arahant, not aggregates per se.

[Coëmgenu]

The narrative that they immediately all cease in sequence is further complicated by the fact that Āryaśrāvakas and the Buddha himself, in the Pāli Canon, are described as experiencing vedanā.

I think upon awakening all the links will never arise again is what is meant, when we look at the cessation mode of dependent origination. What’s left is old kamma, which is winding down.

Certain processes are still ongoing, no? "Contact" isn't once-in-a-lifetime like birth and death are, and aging is similar. There is still eye-consciousness, the eye, and vedanā for an Āryaśrāvaka. There isn't clinging, grasping, etc., if he is perfected.