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attaining enlightenment and death
Hi
What's going on with a person who attains enlightenment and dies?
For Christians the answer is pretty easy, because the dead go either to hell, purgatory or heaven.
How about Buddhism?
If someone attains enlightenment, dies and doesn't get reborn again where then he/she goes to? To some distant climes, they dissolve into thin air, they just vanish and that's it?
What does Buddhism say about it?
What's going on with a person who attains enlightenment and dies?
For Christians the answer is pretty easy, because the dead go either to hell, purgatory or heaven.
How about Buddhism?
If someone attains enlightenment, dies and doesn't get reborn again where then he/she goes to? To some distant climes, they dissolve into thin air, they just vanish and that's it?
What does Buddhism say about it?
0
Comments
"But, Master Gotama, the monk whose mind is thus released: Where does he reappear?"
"'Reappear,' Vaccha, doesn't apply."
"In that case, Master Gotama, he does not reappear."
"'Does not reappear,' Vaccha, doesn't apply."
"...both does & does not reappear."
"...doesn't apply."
"...neither does nor does not reappear."
"...doesn't apply."
"If the fire burning in front of you were to go out, would you know that, 'This fire burning in front of me has gone out'?"
"...yes..."
"And suppose someone were to ask you, 'This fire that has gone out in front of you, in which direction from here has it gone? East? West? North? Or south?' Thus asked, how would you reply?"
"That doesn't apply, Master Gotama. Any fire burning dependent on a sustenance of grass and timber, being unnourished — from having consumed that sustenance and not being offered any other — is classified simply as 'out' (unbound)."
"Even so, Vaccha, any physical form by which one describing the Tathagata (Buddha) would describe him: That the Tathagata has abandoned, its root destroyed, made like a palmyra stump, deprived of the conditions of development, not destined for future arising. Freed from the classification of form, Vaccha, the Tathagata is deep, boundless, hard to fathom, like the sea.
'Reappears' doesn't apply. 'Does not reappear' doesn't apply. 'Both does & does not reappear' doesn't apply. 'Neither reappears nor does not reappear' doesn't apply.
I don't know, what is Nirvana? And could it even be called a "concept"?
He speaks of one who has attained nirvana. So it disproves reincarnation for enlightened people, but that's not the claim anyways.
The only thing I have to say about that is doesn't it almost make you afraid to be enlightened? It almost sounds like you're just gone after you die if you've been enlightened. A life in the heavenly realms sounds more appealing than just being gone, but i'm sure that's not the case.
The answer has everything to do with who we think we are and what we are grasping onto as "I" and "mine."
As long as I grasp onto this body, I am going to die.
As long as I grasp onto my ego, my personality, my personal history, my knowledge, and other things I have acquired, I will die.
However, my Buddha nature, which is pure consciousness, is unborn. It doesn't arise in dependence upon cause and conditions. As such it is not subject to death and decay.
You can learn, in this life time, to let go of more and more levels of grasping - releasing your mind, your body, personal history. By coming to rest in pristine awareness, you come to know that unborn consciousness is actually who you are. You are re born moment by moment.
"Consciousness" is one of Skandhas. "Unborn consciousness" is a reified notion . In Zen we are taught only "Don't know" , in Therevada we are taught "cessation of suffering", because these teachings are skillful.
When Bankei spoke of the "unborn" he was not referring to the Skandha of consciousness. "Don't know" what he was talking about.
Either:
They die, enlightened, that is the end.
Or:
They die and in some sense move to exist in some other space of possibility that we cannot conceive of.
Or:
Something else.
I think its the 4th one;)
namaste
I agree with you. The idea that after my death I will just disappear doesn't sound appealing to me
Yup, I'm struggling with this too, but the explanation I've read makes an intuitive if not yet an intellectual sense.
About Xianity, it has been said that it promises pie in the sky by and by. I don't mean to offend by saying that. But perhaps accepting reality is better for this life than the promise of the sky in another life if that life doesn't exist.
Someone cited a conversation with Vaccha. As I understand it, this conversation was the Buddha's way of protecting Vaccha because he wasn't advanced enough to understand the concept.