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Sat Cit Ananda
I am interested in the InterSpirituality movement. Hinduism and Christianity have been united now by their shared belief that Ultimate Unconditioned Reality is Satcitananda (Being/Consciousness/Bliss). Can somebody tell me if any Buddhist traditions also believe that The Unconditioned (Nirvana) can be described as Ultimate Being, Consciounness & Bliss or do all Buddhist traditions maintain that all forms of being, consciousness and bliss are conditioned realities made up of the aggregates?
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It is not that the experience of liberation in Buddhism is devoid of awareness and bliss, on the contrary the Buddha describes the mind of an Arhant (someone liberated) as radiant, endowed with awareness, boundless, and that nirvana is the 'highest bliss'. However this is not in anyway equated with a metaphysical essence.
As one of my friend 'Vajrahridaya' who used to be a Shaivite for decades (and having experienced the Satchitananda you talked about) before realising the profoundity of dependent origination in direct experience:
We as Buddhists don't make real something eternal that stands on it's own, so we don't see the cosmos the same way as monism (one-ism) does. Which is why we don't consider a monist ideation of the liberated state as actually signifying "liberation." We see that a monist is still binding to a concept, a vast ego... an identity even if beyond concept or words, is still a limitation to the liberated experience of a Buddha. We see that even the liberated state is relative, though everlasting due to the everlasting realization of inter-dependent-co-emergence. We don't see any state of consciousness or realization as being one with a source of absolutely everything. We see the liberated consciousness as just the source of our own experience, even though we ourselves are also relative to everything else. The subtle difference is a difference to be considered, because it actually leads to an entirely different realization and thus cannot be equated with a monist (one-ist) view of the cosmos at all which we consider a bound view and not equal to the liberated view.
Also... there is the concept of the creative matrix in Buddhism and this matrix is without limit and is infinite. But it's not an eternal self standing infinite. It's an infinitude of mutually dependent finites... or "infinite finites" that persist eternally without beginning or end and without a source due to mutual, interpersonal causation you could say.
It's not that a Buddhist does not directly experience a unifying field of perception beyond being a perceiver that is perceiving... but, the Buddhist does not equate this even subconsciously, deep within the experiential platform of consciousness, with a source of all being. It's merely a non-substantial unity of interconnectivity, not a vast and infinite oneness that is the subject of all objects. That would not be considered liberation from the perspective of a Buddha. That would merely be a very subtle, but delusional identification with an experience that originates dependent upon seeing through phenomena, where the consciousness expands past perceived limitations. Even this consciousness that experiences this sense of connection with everything, beyond everything is also considered a phenomena and is empty of inherent, independent reality. Yet persists for as long as the realization persists, which for a Buddha is without beginning nor end.
This subtle difference is an important difference that makes Buddhism transcendent of monism, or "there is only" one-ism.
Because of this, it is a philosophy that see's through itself completely without remainder. Thus a Buddha is considered a "thus gone one" or a Tathagata.