Is enlightenment life itself?
misecmisc1
I am a HinduIndia Veteran
Hi All,
In Dogen's Deigo Great Enlightenment, there is a story which says - there is no unelightened person in whole of China.
Also the way Dogen taught about enlightenment as being great or being boundaryless, does that indicate that being itself or life itself is the great enlightenment which Dogen meant?
Every moment is complete in itself and the great mystery which is there is life itself, and everything inside and outside is included in it. Also Dogen taught that satori or enlightenment is just an experience and the practice needs to be done on a moment by moment basis through out the life, so that which ultimately cannot be known, but the seeking of it continues through out the life, that great enlightenment is being itself or life itself?
So is enlightenment life itself? Please suggest. Thanks in advance.
Comments
I was talking with my Zen teacher's teacher once.
"What do you do for a living?" he asked.
"I'm a painter," I said.
"Oh, that's very good!" he said. "Each stroke of the brush is it!"
Later, since he was a pretty good calligrapher, it occurred to me that he might have thought I meant I was a fine artist instead of the house painter I was. It really worried me and I tried to find an occasion to explain this to him.
Luckily, no such occasion arose.
House painter/fine artist. Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. Still 'each stroke of the brush'....
Sometimes Zen is so subtle! ROFLMTO....
OK - I am composed again.
No one can answer this but your self.
No.
You are life itself, yet what do you experience?
There is an experience of knowing on one level (unaware for them) being awake is part of everyone's wider being. How do I know this? Experience.
What you are asking: 'Is Dogen right?' The answer is yes.
When you are calm and at peace on your cushion (wot no cushion?) you are approaching this insight
what is life? I ask that not to be trite. It is odd some things we take for granted. Like we lie down each night, pass out, and then hallucinate until morning where we wake up. I think asking things like 'what is life' can widen and sharpen our awareness.
Isn't enlightenment(and non enlightenment) part of life? Isn't life a series of conscious experiences?
What you consider as enlightenment is life lived without greed, hatred and delusion.
But you can choose to lead an enlightened life, though...
What have @Cinorjer , @how and @seeker242 have to say about the below question from Zen perspective from Dogen's teachings on Great Enlightenment:
Is enlightenment life itself? Call it life or being itself or our aliveness.
May be it is a stupid question, but I am still asking the above question. So please suggest. Thanks in advance.
I see orange leaves
swirl in the fresh autumn breeze
ducks 'quack' on the pond
To Dogen, life itself with its impermanence was Buddha-Nature. According to his view, we are all born enlightened, so yes according to Dogen everyone in the world is already enlightened and just don't realize it. In realizing it, we manifest what is already there. To Dogen, sitting zazen is an enlightened person manifesting enlightenment.
The hard part to comprehend is the Zen teaching that enlightenment is not something you have. Nor is it something you don't have. It's you. There is nothing but Buddha-nature to begin with. We manifest Buddha-Nature when we quiet the storms of our minds and sit in alert quietness.
Let's put it this way. Your mind is a deep pool of water. Zazen is a calm pond with a clear, reflective surface. Now your thoughts and emotions arrive like a storm, lashing the surface of the pond into waves. But it's still a pond, isn't it? When the storm is gone, the pond remains.
If I ask you to drink from the pond, who is doing the drinking?
Sorry I can't help you more. Keep pondering and asking questions. Dogen spent many years going from one Master to another, trying to find his answers.
The next time you watch Kung Foo Panda and you come to the part where he looks at the Dragon Scroll and realizes something profound? That's the purest expression of Zen I've seen in any movie. I won't tell what he saw because people here might not have seen the movie.
Bodhidharma, one of the greatest Buddhist teachers ever and first Zen master, said:
“Not creating delusions is enlightenment.”
http://buddhismnow.com/2014/08/27/breakthrough-sermon-by-bodhidharma/
Edit: after reading this article in "Buddhism now," I bought the book.
It's called "The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma," translated by Red Pine.
Highly recommended reading to anyone who likes Zen!
Hi all,
I heard about below koan:
Mihu said to a monk to go to Fayang and ask him - do the people of today need enlightenment? So the monk went to Fayang and asked this question to him. Fayang replied - its not that there is no enlightenment, but what can be done about falling into the secondary. The monk went back to Mihu and told Mihu about this reply of Fayang and then Mihu deeply agreed to it.
Can someone explain the above story to me, please? Thanks in advance.
If that isn't it then I'd be at a loss because the answer doesn't really correspond to the question.
The key to understand the koan is to know what is meant by "the secondary class". That refers to the memories and thoughts and ideas we have about our experiences, separate from the experience itself, which is the primary.
An enlightened mind is not a blank mind; it is a quiet mind. Enlightenment does not eliminate the secondary processes in our minds. Primary is experiencing the moment, Satori, or a Clear Mind, or a moment of Clarity, or whatever you want to call it. But then secondary part of the mind applies as you try to relive the experience, remember what it's like, and try to figure out what it means and explain it to yourself and other people.
Talking about enlightenment is not the same as enlightenment. Fayang says while he can experience enlightenment, any message or words he can say to you are only going to take us into the same old secondary process of ideas and thoughts about it.
To me, Fayang is saying even asking the question is remaining stuck in the secondary instead of realizing the primary.
I'd love other's thoughts on this interesting koan. Let's "secondary" away!
Enlightenment may not be possible without life but some lives are lived without awakening (most would say most).
I've heard it said that if we think "I" have arrived, we're no longer walking and the walking is the path. If we want to stay on the path, we have to keep walking it until all that remains is the walking and not an individual that walks.
It likely goes without saying that I could be wrong.
But then is not our whole life secondary - whatever we know about it? The parts which involve our bodily activities like breathing, heart-beating, coughing, sneezing etc these can be primary in the moment of their occurrence, but all that we know in our life all that is secondary.
In this sense even awakening will be secondary if we know it - so in a sense if it happens, it will just happen as primary in the moment, but after it happens if we know about it, it will turn into secondary. So in this way the whole life becomes practice. May be it was this idea due to which Dogen taught enlightenment-practice as one word.
Moreover, a thought came to my mind - enlightenment and delusion are one, because delusion cannot be known without enlightenment and enlightenment cannot be expressed without delusion. Any thoughts about this thought, please. thanks in advance.
If all are enlightened, one must remain in the dark.
I like that. I really do. You are so close. You've walked up to the Dharma door and turned the key in the lock. Will you step through? Enlightenment - Delusion; Primary - Secondary; Form - Emptiness....
Zen strives to make the simple observation that it's all about the experience. Reading all the Sutras in the world explaining what Buddha said is not the same as sitting down and experiencing one moment of Clear Mind. Going around asking "What is the meaning to life?" is not the same as reaching inside and discovering what is important in your life.
That's what all this talk about mindfulness is about. It's getting you to stop ignoring the primary experience of the now because you're too busy exercising the secondary process of figuring out what it means. But the secondary working of our minds is not bad or to be avoided. It's our intelligence at work. It's also what makes us human beings. Just realize that talking about enlightenment is not the same as experiencing it, no matter how many words you use. And once you experience something, let it go. Your mind wants to know, What did that mean? It means you experienced something and instead of dwelling on it, focus on what you're experiencing now.
That's zen in a nutshell. So simple it's almost impossible to do.
Let me put it another way. I love everything about our space program. I watch videos of astronauts in their space suits, read their descriptions of what it's like to thunder into space and then float around in their cramped metal capsules. I often imagine what it would be like, to float in space and look down on a blue world.
But that will never be the same as experiencing it. My imagination will never equal the reality. The primary experience is what life is all about.
^^ @Cinorjer: Well, thanks for your above post. i was quite happy to read it, may be my ego got something nice to hear about. But coming back to ground reality, it was just a thought which came to my mind after hearing some zen dharma talks over some koans' explanations. But it is not what I have directly experienced or is realized truely in my heart or mind - whatever that really means. I am the same stupid ignorant person having the defilements of lust, anger, greed, attachment, aversion and ego inside me in huge quantities. But I like zen teachings because it comes down to what is happening in now and leave all that which happened in the past. My meditation is no where near to what can be called even meditation, because the regularity of sitting in morning i have lost during the past few months and my focus is so weak that i almost lose awareness of my breath after say one breath only, but still i sit and try to be aware of my breath. So might be it might take another thousand lifetimes of sitting practice for me to do before i reach any level of calm. Anyways, from some theoretical understanding which I have got it is ok and not a problem because anyways the truth is not that kind of thing which can be got hold of. In a way, truth is nothing and may be because of it, it is able to have everything in it. Just like emptiness can have form because it is empty, so all and any type of form can arise in emptiness because it is empty. Yet since we are human beings and to function in this world, we have to live via the secondary as I understood from the commentary, which I heard on the above koan, so whatever we experience as being humans is a gift which we can experience. Moreover, we should be grateful to our human body existence as even though our body and our mind are not really ours, but still due to them via the secondary we can feel our humanness and also experience the primary. But then also our seeking for the truth shall continue.
If whatever above I have written seems incorrect to you, please help me by correcting it. thanks in advance.
That secondary processes sound like papanca(mental proliferation/conceptualizing). Wouldn't enlightenment would free one from secondary processes?
"Dependent on intellect & ideas, intellect-consciousness arises. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as a requisite condition, there is feeling. What one feels, one perceives (labels in the mind). What one perceives, one thinks about. What one thinks about, one objectifies. Based on what a person objectifies, the perceptions & categories of objectification assail him/her with regard to past, present, & future ideas cognizable via the intellect.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.018.than.html
@pegembara I must admit I've never quite wrapped my mind around the technical definitions of papanca. I suspect from what I've read, it's referring at least generally to the same processes in the mind. What I can't figure out from the old Pali sutras is if the Arahants claimed enlightenment came from extinguishing the papanca. If so, then we can't be talking about the same thing that later Zen schools began teaching.
The reason is an obvious one, when you stop to consider it. The secondary is the mind working to assign meaning to the primary experience and decide what to do about it. That is where our conceptualizing and formalizing and labeling and such is performed. It's our intelligence at work trying to make sense out of the world so we can act on it.
But if enlightenment means extinguishing of the secondary processes, then Buddha could have never transmitted or taught the dharma. First was the primary experience, the realizing of his great insight. But he had to use the secondary processes to put into words and logical structure what he experienced, to the extent he could. He couldn't tell us what he experienced, but he could be the pointing finger and tell us how to do it for ourselves.
I think there is a third element involved, perhaps, and that's our illusions. It causes the secondary processes to come into conflict with the primary experience. They block us from focusing on the primary because we're so busy trying to defend our beliefs and desires.
Does this still sound like the papanca as you understand it?
While driving down the road, we hear an unusual sound coming from the motor. That is primary. Our minds ask what does it mean, while searching through memories of other noises and deciding if you should keep driving, pull over now, or find an exit, etc. That is all secondary. It's our mind at work. Life presents us with problems and opportunities, and our mind works to try to avoid the problem and take advantage of opportunity. It's human beings being what they are.
Now, we could convince ourselves that it's nothing important and choose to ignore it, because of our desire not to spend money and fear of having a car that won't run. We can become angry because we just had the car worked on the month before and convince ourselves it's the garage's fault. Those are all conflicts in the mind caused by faulty secondary thinking.
So what does this have to do with enlightenment? You can't say what enlightenment is, because you have to sink to the secondary to do so, but you can say what it is not. It is not a blank mind, because Buddha had to solve problems and make decisions all his life and had no problem doing so.
The man hanging off the cliff could not go up without being killed and he could not go down without being killed. Perhaps a tiger will get tired and leave. Perhaps his grip will weaken or the mice will gnaw the vine through. In the meantime, the strawberry is indeed sweet.
^^ i think the above raises a question on which Therevada and Mahayana (so Zen also) differentiates from one another.
as per my understanding of Buddha's teachings, which majorily formed Therevada Buddhism, as per it, first the five senses come to rest, then the mind comes to rest means eventually the state is reached when there is no thought in the mind, then nimitta arises which is the radiant shining of mind itself, then when nimitta is let go of, then we enter the four form realms of jhana and then the four formless realms of jhana and then when the eighth formless realm is let go of, then since everything ceases, so Nirvana is attained.
But then after Nirvana is attained, what does the sutras tell how an Arahant functions in the world - does he always have the view of non-duality and lives without any thinking and preferences -which is difficult to imagine, otherwise how the Buddha interacted with other human beings without thinking and analyzing things - or they function just as a normal human being by thinking and analyzing things, just that they will not be attached to anything?
@pegembara : please clarify the above question that how Arahants function in the world after Nirvana as per Therevada Buddhism?
A story came to my mind just now, which I heard in a zen dharma talk on the commentary of the koan of Baizhang's fox. The koan as @Cinorjer you and many others would already know is something like this - a zen teacher was asked that is an enlightened person free from the law of causality or law of karma or cause and effect? the zen teacher answered yes. then the zen teacher was reborn for 500 lives as a fox. Then that monk in his 500th life came to Baizhang and told his story and then he asked to Baizhang the same question that is an enlightened person free from cause and effect? then Baizhang replied that an enlightened person is not free from cause and effect. Then the monk on hearing this reply got liberated.
So @Cinorjer would you please throw some light on the above koan? Is an enlightened person free from law of karma or he is still under the law of karma?
In the dharma talk which I heard over the above koan, I heard a story that once Kalu Rinpoche, the Tibetian master, went to Japan and had some meeting with a Zen teacher and his disciples there. Then one of the disciple asked this question to Kalu Rinpoche that is an enlightened person free from law of karma or law of causality? and then Kalu Rinpoche said that of course an enlightened person is free from law of causality. But the Zen disciples were not much impressed with this answer
. I do not know whether this story is true or not, but I heard it and found it interesting, so wrote here.
Hi All,
My this post can be an idiotic post as I am a stupid ignorant person. So wherever my understanding is incorrect, please help me by correcting my understanding. Thanks in advance.
Not at all.
You are asking in a very logical way. In a sense this might help:
Cause and effect are always around. In time we may not be so effected but we may set in effect causes . . . for example the Buddha caused the turning of the wheel of dharma.
In other words we can never be free of karma but we can be independent of karma to the degree of a Buddha.
Everything is 'just so' . . . except us . . . but we too are 'just so' . . .
Is an enlightened person free from cause and effect?
If I say yes, then Buddha's entire ministry and life had no effect after his great Enlightenment. If I say no, then I disagree with what the sutras say Buddha taught.
I don't want to end up a Fox, do I?
Nondualism points us to the problem with the question. Cause and effect are not two separate things. Every cause is also an effect, and every effect is also a cause. The present gives birth to the future, but the future becomes the present in the act of being born.
Yes, I'm tapdancing as fast as my feet will go while hoping you don't notice I'm actually not going anywhere. My own answer is, find an Enlightened master and ask him or her, and see if their answer makes a difference. Then you'll know for certain.
I'm late for work, but the boss is on Christmas vacation so I don't care for once.
Hi All,
A story came to my mind just now - which I think can clarify this matter of Is an enlightened person free from cause and effect? The story of Angulimala the robber in one of the suttas (i do not remember which sutta it was) - the story was of a robber who robbed persons going in a forest and after robbing them killed them and cut their index finger and made a mala of those index fingers and thereby he got the name of Angulimala. Finally he was searching for his 1000th or 1001th victim to reach some level in this deadly activity. Then he saw his mother coming towards him and Buddha saw this thing and he saw some goodness in Angulimala and so Buddha came between them. So Angulimala tried to make Buddha as his victim. Of course he was not able to do that - instead when he was exhausted then Buddha gave him some dharma teachings and he meditated on his breath and became an Arahant. Then the story says after becoming an Arahant or an enlightened person, Angulimala died in a few months because the bad karma he had done of killing the people before becoming enlightened, the bad effect started showing up on him as when Angulimala went on alms round, people who were relatives of those killed by Angulimala started throwing stones on him, which wounded him severely and finally lead him to his death.
So what I get from the above story is that an enlightened person is not free from the effects of the karma he has done before becoming enlightened, as before becoming enlightened, there would be an 'I' inside the person doing the actions, so accordingly that person becomes the heir to his actions' effects. But after becoming enlightened, since there will be no 'I' in the person doing the karma, so that person will be performing the actions then not as an 'I' in them doing something, but just going with the flow of things and acting as a medium, via which the work would get done, so the effects of those actions will not fall on the enlightened person.
So for the question Is an enlightened person free from cause and effect? , the answer is - the enlightened person is not free from cause and effect because he still feels the effects of his actions done before awakening and also since after awakening law of karma holds for him as a theoretical law, but practically after awakening the actions do not have an 'I' in them, so their effects do not fall on him, but still the law of karma still holds for him, just that it does not have any effect on him, because of ending of 'I' and consequently ending of ignorance in him.
Above is based on my thinking, so I can be completely wrong above. So if I am incorrect here, so please help me by correcting me in above statements. Thanks in advance.
Before enlightenment, rivers were rivers and mountains were mountains. During enlightenment, rivers are no longer rivers and mountains are no longer mountains. After enlightenment rivers are once again rivers and mountains are once again mountains.
This is not to say that once enlightened we go back to being deluded but that when stuck in the secondary, we cannot see the primary and once we reach the primary, we see the secondary as a very handy tool indeed.
It let's us share between different perspectives. Isn't that wonderful?
I think that is the middle way between the two truths of subjective and absolute.
What is there that karma gets ahold of?
Akase padam natthi, samano natthi bahire,
Papancabhirata paja, nippapanca tathagata.
There are no footprints in the sky;
You won’t find the sage out there.
The world delights in conceptual proliferation (papanca).
Buddhas delight in the ending of that (nippapanca).
Akase padam natthi, samano natthi bahire,
Sankhara sassatta natthi, natthi buddhanam injitam.
There are no footprints in the sky;
You won’t find the sage out there.
There are no eternal conditioned things.
Buddhas never waver.
prapanca hasa grasping to it. Concepts are fine. The only problem with concepts is grasping.
Concepts are fine only if one recognize that they are concepts only, not ultimately real.
Birth and death are concepts. I, me, mine are too.
I think the problem is muddling concepts with the way things really are, which means letting go of concepts or at least putting them in a more spacious context. It's actually very simple but people seem to proliferate around proliferation quite a bit!
"First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is."
Heh. Too many words. I've just looked at the posts I've written in this one thread and realize I'm worded out. I must have spit out a thousand words. I've emptied my word bag, shook the crumbs out, and that's it.
I think I'll spend the last couple weeks of the year simply meditating on this marvelous thing called humanity.
I love you guys. And gals.
That is the same thing @pegembara @SpinyNorman to non-grasping.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence
Maybe they would just disappear in a flash of rainbows and no one would remember their existence . . . after all for karma to be spent, no causes, no effects . . .
Sounds almost godlike . . .
So are we all enlightened? For sure. We just have to shed some useless baggage.
Karma has more to do with volition or intention right? Cause and effect doesn't.
If there is no intention there is no karma. So I'd say Buddha was free from karma.
l haven't read all the posts but want to say this 'for I forget:
"Papanca" arises from the secondary process, wouldn't it? as an excess of proliferation that gets overwhelming and can cause the whole secondary process to grind to a halt.
My fairly new (one year old) car was having problems shifting, and I have a job now but didn't when the transmission began acting up. So I 'heard' the unusual sound, and my secondary processes went absolutely NUTS deciding, planning, expecting, catastrophizing. When that happens, I can't think my way out of a paper bag. Being a nurse doesn't help as I'm conditioned to 'diagnose'. Turns out I needed to reset the ECU (a computer chip thingy) by unplugging the battery ($0), discharging the left over charge ($0), letting it set and then drive it around for a while ($0.76 in gas). Car runs great. I had myself ready to go to my MOTHER for a loan, which I haven't done for thirty years. I was gutted -- by papanca. At least that's my current 'understanding' of what papanca is.
Well, lets keep things simple. Cause and effect - just to make it clear - i was referring to the causal action done by a person and its effect on that person and not on others, so in a way this is the law of karma - good actions lead to good results and bad actions to bad results, but these results are on that person may be immediately or may be some time later - which can be minutes, hours, days, months,years, decades, centuries, many lifetimes etc , in a way the time of ripening of the action's result, which cannot be calculated as the working of law of karma is complex.
So the question is - Is an enlightened person free from the law of karma?
My understanding says - an enlightened person is not free from the law of karma, just that it does not apply to the actions done by the person after awakening, as it does not has 'I' in him - but the actions done before awakening since they had an 'I', so their effects the person still has to bear.
Hi All,
I would like to hear from you all, as what do you think about this question - Is an enlightened person free from the law of karma? Please tell. Thanks in advance.
Hi All,
What does this non-duality actually mean? I can understand inter-connectedness of things, so does oneness of all things refers to inter-connectedness of things? Does non-duality and oneness of all things - are these the same thing? Every sentient being who is alive is having its own set of consciousness, as he experiences through his sense-organs, is specific to that individual, so what does this non-duality or oneness refers to? Please suggest.
I read the below koan:
Dongshan and his uncle went to Master Beyan. Beyan asked Dongshan - where are you two monastics from? Dongshan answered HwangWey. Beyan asked - what is the family name of the imperial inspector there? Dongshan replied - i do not know his family name. Beyan then asked - what is his given name? Dongshan replied - i do not know his given name. Beyan asked - do you understand the great matter? Dongshan replied - there is a curtain in the hall way. Beyan asked - do you go in and out of that? Dongshan said - no, i don't. Beyan said - you certainly don't. Dongshan flapped his sleeves and walked away. Next day morning, Beyan said - the discussion we had yesterday did not satisfy me, so please say another turning word. Dongshan said - master please ask. Beyan asked - do you go in and out? Dongshan said - awesome.
Can somebody please explain the above koan. Thanks in advance.
Non duality is not differentiating experience from thunking.
It is what it is. So are you.
You are not the question, thunk thinking and assanine answer. You are the space in between thunk 1 and more thunk.
There is only oneness and that includes thunk 1 to infinity and beyond.
Does that connect the dots?
Short version: We are each a part of the Universe and contain within each of us the essence of the universe. Our consciousness perceives a separateness (Duality) which does not really exist (Non-duality). Enlightenment (Buddha) is the state of being awakened to this reality in it's totality while Fundamental Darkness (Ordinary beings) is the state of not being awakened to this reality.
One might say we pursue the reality of the non-duality.
I see your point by the effect still taking place even after the person has woken up. It makes sense.
All new actions will be karma free because there is no personal intention anymore. Just life.
As for old karma it shouldn't bother the enlightened person anyway.
Say guilt arises... No one to bear the guilt means no suffering. Same could be said for any old karma.
If there is nobody to claim the karma, good or bad how can it effect the being?
This is just my understanding anyway. I could easily be wrong. Haha. I guess we will hopefully find out right.
They may not "be" to collect karma but they change the karma of others.
No one, not even a Buddha, is free from karma. Since Karma is the sum effect of all causes made and as we continue to make causes, good or bad, our karma remains subject to our causes. Don't get paranoid about this as it is a "law" of life to which all beings are bound. The actions of a Buddha and of a Bodhisattva are to enable others to make better causes to rise themselves to the state of Bodhisattva and, ultimately, to Buddha. The Historic Buddha is said to have made a great vow to make all people equal to himself. It has been said that Buddhas do not make common mortals but common mortals make Buddhas. We must give ourselves permission to strive for and to become Buddhas. It is that simple and that hard.
I've read it's karma that sends beings into rebirth. Not sure where from. Sorry! Something to do with intention. As in clinging to something.
But someone fully awakened would have no intentions, so how can there be karma?
That would mean samsara continues right? Even for Buddha.
For me cause and effect is not the same as Karma.
Especially if we are talking in the realms of Good and Bad karma. The Buddha is beyond good and bad. How can he be bound by duality?
Maybe I'm completely off track. From my limited understanding. An example of Karma is if I kill a mouse. On purpose(intention)
I've just created a seed in the mind. This bears later in the form of guilt or sorrow or anger in some shape. This is karma right? In a basic sense. This ripens on it's own accord. But because I'm not awake, I'm still poor person so I take the consequences. Good or bad.
If the Buddha stepped on a mouse(accidental) well he doesn't see himself as a person. No sufferer.
If the Buddha helped someone. Still he doesn't see himself as just a person. No one to take the good karma. Yes maybe compassion arises but no I or me behind it.
My understanding is Karma is personal, cause and effect is not.
The answer depends on whether you consider Samsara / Nirvana to be psychological planes or actual realms of existence.
Karma, volitional action, is a link in the chain of dependent origination, which perpetually binds us to the ceaseless cycle of birth and rebirth.
More specifically, it is actions tainted by Tanha (Craving) what keep us stuck in the rounds of Samsara.
In the Anguttara Nikaya we read:
Rhys-Davids said that Nirvana meant not the extinction of being, but "the extinction, the absence, of the three fires of passion (lust, hatred and delusion)"
As long as an enlightened being is bound to the physical plane by his physical skandha, I can only surmise that he keeps generating karma, except that his actions are stemmed in right view, therefore, he only acts in skillful ways that do not generate negative karma.
The scriptures state that an Enlightened being won't be reborn, etc., but that belongs in the realm of speculation.
Nyanatiloka Thera said:
@misecmisc1 I will respond by asking you (and whomever else wants to respond) a few questions to ponder and answer from the koan. I think pondering these three points might help more than an analysis of yet another display of Suchness:
What does Beyan mean by the "Great Matter" that Dongshan is asked if he understands or not?
What is a "turning word"? Beyan said he was unsatisfied with the one Dongshan gave him the day before. What was the turning word that proved unsatisfying for Beyan?
There is no detail in a koan that is meaningless. Why does the koan point out that Dongshan flapped his sleeves?
According to the Buddha's discourses life, meaning what transpires between our birth and our eventual death, is not enlightenment.
What else is there but life?