Ceisiwr wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:21 pm
Cause_and_Effect wrote: ↑Thu Sep 22, 2022 3:03 pm
You find liberation terrifyingly, preferring to conceptualize the goal as no different than any atheist materialist conceptualized death. Your view is a varient of annihilationism.
A materialist atheist thinks there is a self who dies. That "their" existence will come to an end. That isn't my view at all. My view is that there is no eternalism or annihilationism, existence or non-existence, when it comes to death because there isn't any self here at all. What doesn't really exist cannot live forever or perish. Saṃsāra is an empty process, in the non-Madhyamaka Sthavira sense.
There are variations of materialist atheism and yours is one. Many of them believe there is no fundamental self, soul or mind aside from the processes of the brain and body, and that when these cease at death that is the end of it all. Your views whether you realize or not, are heavily shaped by this and are essentially no different, aside from the view that you have to work extremely hard and contemplate the dhamma to achieve the same result that the materialist atheist thinks will happen to everyone anyway.
It's a corruption of the reading of the dhamma.
Ceisiwr wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:21 pm
Cause_and_Effect wrote: ↑Thu Sep 22, 2022 3:03 pm
The Buddha taught all that is subject to arising is subject to cessation.
I would agree. That which arises will cease. That which is dependent can never be independent. That which is impermanent never permanent. Citta is impermanent. Being impermanent it is dukkha and void. You are supposed to develop revulsion towards citta, not become enamoured with it.
You are supposed to develop revulsion towards all formations, all dependently arisen and thus inconstant phenomena of sensory experience. You develop revulsion using awareness, that knowingness is liberated. Your views of revulsion towards all including pure awareness free from sense contacts seem to be an offshoot of some kind of self-revulsion.
Ceisiwr wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:21 pm
Cause_and_Effect wrote: ↑Thu Sep 22, 2022 3:03 pm
This is the only way to avoid intellectual annihilationists from corrupting the reading of the suttas due to their fear of the boundless infinite Island.
It might be worth bearing in mind that the highest meditative attainment in the Dhamma is the cessation of perception & feeling, which is comparable with being a corpse, rather than infinite conciousness. This gives a clue as to what the Buddha considered the goal to be. It is to calm down all activities of body, speech and mind so as to be unaffected by anything. The highest being total cessation. Total freedom from disturbance of any kind. Freedom from feeling. Freedom from conciousness. Freedom from citta.
Your corruption of the teaching here and comparing the attainment to a corpse is telling.
“Very good, venerable sir.” And, delighting in and approving of Ven. Kāmabhū’s answer, Citta asked him a further question: “What is the difference between a monk who has died and passed away and a monk who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling?”
“In the case of a monk who has died and passed away, his bodily fabrication has ceased & subsided, verbal fabrication has ceased and subsided, mental fabrication has ceased and subsided, his life force is totally ended, his heat is dissipated, and his faculties are shut down. But in the case of a monk who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling, his bodily fabrication has ceased and subsided, verbal fabrication has ceased and subsided, mental fabrication has ceased & subsided, his life force is not ended, his heat is not dissipated, and his faculties are exceptionally bright and clear. This is the difference between a monk who has died and passed away and a monk who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling.”
SN 41:6
That the ultimate attainment is not, as you claim, associated with the shutting down of consciousness like a corpse, but rather associated with an exceptionally bright and clear consciousness that no longer feels or perceives (i.e is beyond sense contacts and is thus
surfaceless) is telling.
Ceisiwr wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:21 pm
Two quotes here. The first quote, in full
“When that consciousness is unestablished, not coming to growth, nongenerative, it is liberated. By being liberated, it is steady; by being steady, it is content; by being content, he is not agitated. Being unagitated, he personally attains Nibbāna. He understands: ‘Destroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more for this state of being.’” - SN 22.53
This is something realised whilst alive.
Yes, but that's your very large assumption and speculation on limiting it to not include the after death implications. The imagery given in the Canon doesn't support your position.
A quote from Bhikkhu Bodi is apt here and applies exactly to your wrong views on the after death state of the Arahant.
Bhikkhu Bodhi wrote:
"It might seem logical to suppose that since the five aggregates that constitute experience completely cease with the attainment of the Nibbāna element without residue, this element must itself be a state of complete nonexistence, a state of nothingness. Yet no text in the Nikāyas ever states this. To the contrary, the Nikāyas consistently refer to Nibbāna by terms that refer to actualities. It is an element (dhātu), a base (āyatana), a reality (dhamma), a state (pada), and so on. However, though so designated, it is qualified in ways that indicate this state ultimately lies beyond all familiar categories and concepts."
- Bodhi, Ch.9 - In the Buddha's words
Contemplate this deeply and put aside your materialistic inspired assumptions about what cessation of the defilements and true liberation means according to the Canon.