The deathless

Jeroen

Just as a short tribute to Bhikkhu Samahita Thera’s view of a documentary on the deathless, I did a little research.

In Buddhism, to be deathless means you have realised Nirvana and are liberated from samsara and will have no more rebirths and thus no more deaths. So in a way the first step is understanding what it means to have realised nirvana.

Nirvana is quite a complex concept in Buddhism, in short it means the “blowing out” of the passions of greed, aversion and ignorance. But Nirvana is not a place like paradise or a state like bliss, instead it is characterised by inner peace and clarity of understanding. It is an end to suffering and the cycle of rebirth that perpetuates it. To achieve this, one can follow the Noble Eightfold Path.

It is interesting though, to see if this truly feels like the spiritual path that you personally are meant to follow. My feeling is that one can meditate on these things, to see if they ring true. It may take days or weeks before an answer arrives, for me it is often a very slow process. Your mileage may vary.

how

Isn't Deathlessness, Nirvana or the goal of goallessness, just words to express a transcendence of our conditioned responses to any phenomena?
Considering that the very search for such states needs to be let go of before they are likely to visit, it's a marvel that anybody experiences any of them at all.

pegembara

All objects of experiences are subject to arising/birth and ceasing/death without exceptions. The body is also an object of experience. So is the world "out there" and "in here".

When all those experiences come to an end at least temporarily during meditation through the process of letting go, what is left is the "deathless" or "birthless" or unconditioned. It is a permanent state for the arahant after cessation aka "death" for those who do not yet understand.

“There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, made, and conditioned. But because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore you do know an escape from the born, become, made, and conditioned.

_“The born, become, produced,
made, fabricated, impermanent,
composed of aging & death,
a nest of illnesses, perishing,
come from nourishment
and the guide [that is craving] —
is unfit for delight”.

“The escape from that
is
calm, permanent,
beyond inference,
unborn, unproduced,
the sorrowless, stainless state,
the cessation of stressful qualities,
the stilling of fabrications,
bliss”_

Heart Sutra

Shariputra, all dharmas are empty of characteristics. They are not produced. Not destroyed, not defiled, not pure, and they neither increase nor diminish.

Therefore, in emptiness there is no form, feeling, cognition, formation, or consciousness; no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind; no sights, sounds, smells, tastes, objects of touch, or dharmas; no field of the eyes, up to and including no field of mind-consciousness; and no ignorance or ending of ignorance, up to and including no old age and death or ending of old age and death. There is no suffering, no accumulating, no extinction, no way, and no understanding and no attaining.

Because nothing is attained, the Bodhisattva, through reliance on prajna paramita, is unimpeded in his mind. Because there is no impediment, he is not afraid, and he leaves distorted dream-thinking far behind. Ultimately Nirvana!

Waked

@pegembara said:
All objects of experiences are subject to arising/birth and ceasing/death without exceptions. The body is also an object of experience. So is the world "out there" and "in here".

Are you sure birth & arising and ceasing & death are synonyms?

@pegembara said:
When all those experiences come to an end at least temporarily during meditation through the process of letting go, what is left is the "deathless" or "birthless" or unconditioned. It is a permanent state for the arahant after cessation aka "death" for those who do not yet understand.

I doubt the experience of impermanence comes to an end for an arahant.

lobster

I doubt the experience of impermanence comes to an end for an arahant

Sure it does.
It does during developed meditation. Doubt, uncertainty, experiences all fall away...

Kind of the point really.

1. concentration, yep the hard stuff for beginners
2. the mind and sense gates begin to quieten
3. arahant arises and re-enters the stream

David

No birth, no death;
No permanence, no annihilation;
No sameness, no difference;
No coming, no going.

Just this