Discussions From A Mountain Top #6

T: So I heard you the other day talking the other day about saṃsāra. It not being that ‘round of rebirths’ or that ‘wheel of time’ image. So what do you say it is? You mentioned the translation was something like ‘wandering on’.

N: Yeah, roaming, roaming on. Saṃsarāti, if I remember correctly, it just means roaming, to just keep roaming on and on and on and on, now here, then elsewhere. The whole idea of a ‘round of rebirths’, it’s a notion people develop based on this life, and based on the self-centredness of this life. By that I mean they use this life as a reference point, and then from there you kind of, die and come back in some sort of cycle. But actually, fundamentally, if you look at the experience from the point of view of the five aggregates, there are no ‘rounds’, it’s just arising and passing away of the very same thing. So any rebirth that you might have, it’s within the five aggregates. That’s why it’s not even accurate to say ‘it’s the five aggregates that get reborn’ because that would kind of imply the five aggregates travelling from one birth to another. There is no travel from one birth to the other. Rebirth is within the five aggregates. As in, re-appearance, re-emergence, it’s within the five aggregates that you have and can know right here and now.

That’s why if somebody fully understands the nature of pañcakkhandhā they’ve fully understood the nature of rebirth, the nature of re-appearance. That’s why the Buddha said that if somebody remembers the previous life, one previous life, five previous lives, or five hundred eons ago, those lifetimes, all they’re going to remember is the five aggregates or one among them. So saṃsāra is the five aggregates. Your experience as a whole is the container of the saṃsāra. Within that, your point of view, your immediacy, the content of your senses, that can be different depending on the rebirth. It can be more refined, it can be coarser, it can be pleasant, it can be torturous, but overall, in its nature, the five aggregates are there. That’s it. So in a way there is no coming and going and cycling around the realm of whatever. No, the whole world, all of the realms, all the possible realms of your rebirth, are within the five aggregates that you have right here and now.

The notion of rebirth, it’s more accurately reflected upon from the point of view of, a change of rebirth would be a change of immediacy. A change of the degree of immediacy of your senses, the nature of your senses. But in terms of the nature of things, the nature of phenomena, that nature of things to appear, there’s no difference there. So that’s why, whenever they would talk about rebirth in the Suttas, it would be almost like in the sense of a memory. You remember what you did yesterday, you remember what you did ten days ago, you remember what you did ten years ago, and then yeah, some people might remember what they did ten lifetimes ago. But it’s still that same container of their experience, the same nature of the five aggregates, almost the same point of view, in a way. So the notion of you travelling from one rebirth to the other, it’s a notion based on the projection of the external world, external point of view, independent of your experience as a whole. And that’s a complete fallacy, you can’t even conceive things in such a purely impersonal manner. Because that would require you to step outside of yourself, outside of the container of your five aggregates, outside of your point of view. And thinking something outside of your point of view, it’s inconceivable. Because whatever you can conceive, it’s within your point of view. It’s from your point of view.

T: So the point of view arises and ceases, changes?

N: Well, I suppose. The degree of point of view can change within the container of the five aggregates. Like, for example, with the animals being the ‘lower’ realm, means their point of view, their capacities of reflection, are more forcefully absorbed with the content of the senses. So that’s why they can’t step back and become aware of their situation, or they can do it to a very little degree. Mostly, it’s just absorption with immediacy. Hunger, hunger, fear, fear, play, play, running, chasing, fighting. They can’t just think ‘wait a minute, why am I doing this?’ They don’t have that much space in that reflection, their point of view is too absorbed. But it’s still a point of view. That’s why somebody can remember their previous lifetimes, because it’s through this container of the five aggregates that generates this point of view, you can actually remember more.

T: So a life doesn’t last long, but a point of view can last very long then?

N: In a way that’s true, but the problem is, when people think about the notion of time, they think about it in this external, scientific, impersonal sense, and that’s inconceivable. As in, things are in time, so they can say ‘the life lasts this much, but the point of view lasts forever’. That’s why any notion of eternity, in the sense of permanence, it’s wrong, because it’s founded in a wrong view. And a wrong view is that which contradicts the nature of the phenomena the way they appear. You can’t step outside of the five aggregates. You assuming the world outside of your five aggregates means you’re basically, having a wrong assumption in regard to the nature of the way that the five aggregates are. So if you want to be accurate, you can’t say that the five aggregates last for long, because that would imply that they’re in time. While in reality, your notion of time is already within that container of the five aggregates, your experience as a whole. So then, more accurately, you would say that the five aggregates are not in time, the five aggregates are of time. As in, your notion of duration is already on the basis of the enduring five aggregates. But yes, not so strictly speaking, you can say it lasts for… well, it lasts infinitely. But not eternally.

T: There’s many different points of view. Like, I have a point of view now, here, and there’s your point of view.

N: Well again, that would assume the external point of view that could then compare all these different points of view. No, you have your point of view.

T: There is this point of view.

N: That’s it, that’s all you can know. Now, you can come close to my point of view, but you can’t have my point of view, because that would require you becoming me as an individual. And that’s inconceivable.

T: There is your point of view.

N: Well, there is internal point of view, the one that you know for yourself, and then you can see other points of view such as external points of view. So you can say that there are points of view. But you can’t see them on the same level, you can’t even compare them on the same level. Because that would require you to step outside of your point of view that you’re inseparable from.

T: What about development, or, not exactly development, but evolution? The theory of evolution. So, I will continually evolve my point of view, so it will get better naturally.

N: Oh no, no, of course not. What evolves is not a point of view, it’s the… well, what can be said to evolve, or proliferate, depending on how you want to call it, is the senses. And the world around the content of your experience. But the point of view is more on the level of how you regard that content, how you see it. How much you allow it to control you, to absorb you, to deprive you of your own acts of reflection. So in that sense, point of view, it’s indirectly affected by proliferation and evolution. As in, it always maintains the potential of stepping back and reflecting upon the immediacy of your current birth.

T: There’s these ‘realms’, the animal realm, the human realm, and the realms in between that. I think maybe ghosts. But there is no stepping, there is no halfway realm.

N: There is no crossing between the realms, sure. Again, any notion of comparison, connection would require an external point of view. A point of view that’s independent of yourself, of your five aggregates, of your experience as a whole. And that’s inconceivable. So all you know, phenomenologically speaking, is what you have. Based on that, you can infer that the immediacy and the senses and the sense engagement can be different, as in, it can exercise a different amount of force over you. Like for animals, the senses exercise way too much force for their reflection to be able to maintain itself as much as a human can do. But there is no crossing, like there is the animal realm that sits here, and there is the human realm that sits here, and then a being goes into the animal realm and then it kind of floats from animal into human or something like that. That’s like an externally projected notion of some sort of cosmology. I mean, if you’re talking about it, there is no other way to talk about it than in these external terms, but those designations should not be misunderstood.

When it comes to your point of view, you can only see it from the inside. And that’s how the Buddha would refer to an arahant or somebody who has fully understood, understood the saṃsāra. Not by travelling in previous lives or waiting for the future lives, no, he understood the container, the basis on account of which any different content can manifest itself. And by saying “different content”, means different birth. Content of an ‘animal realm’, or content of a ‘deva realm’. As in, the refinement of the content, the type of engagement of the content, that’s basically what you can refer to as a birth, a realm.

T: So you don’t necessarily develop each birth? You’re not getting better? You’re getting worse, better, worse, better…

N: Well, based on your actions, they will kind of play the part into what kind of content your point of view will be paired with later on. In the same sense, again, you don’t have to think about previous lives and future lives. It’s a principle that you can extend. You can think within this life, if the actions you’re making now are quite unwholesome, harming a lot of people for example, causing lots of damage for example. You can safely assume that your whole life is heading that direction. So then in five, six years, when the whole world is against you, they’re trying to imprison you, they chase you because of all the crimes you committed, your content has been significantly changed. To more pressing, more enduring, more unpleasant, because of your actions that have been affecting things in that manner.

If your actions in this very life are actually not harming anybody, are helpful to everyone, then yeah, that’s going to be influencing your environment the most. Not one hundred percent, because there are many other factors that can play a part, but to a great deal. If a person doesn’t go around committing crimes, they don’t have to worry about when anybody’s going to get them, catch them, exercise revenge on them. But those who do, that becomes your daily environment. That becomes your daily content, of the phenomena that keeps appearing for your point of view of the further actions you do on account of it. So you could then see, if you carry on that kind of behaviour for years, it’s not a big stretch to assume that yeah, when this life breaks apart, when this body breaks apart, the content that’s going to re-arise is just going to carry on further in the same direction. Because that’s how you’ve been exercising your point of view, and your actions, and your intentions.

T: There’s no natural end to saṃsāra? Where you just get better, better, evolve in a good way, evolve, evolve?

N: Again, it’s not like you re-enter saṃsāra to be reborn, you are the saṃsāra. The five aggregates affected by ignorance is what saṃsāra is. This, this experience of the five aggregates, of somebody who is not enlightened, that’s already what saṃsāra is. Which means, this experience is just gonna stay. Infinitely. Unless a person frees this very experience from that ignorance, then it will not re-appear. The content will not… well, you won’t be paired with any content, with any form. That point of view will not be paired, it will just go extinct, as the Buddha would describe nibbāna, as extinction.

T: It won’t go anywhere else?

N: It doesn’t go anywhere else. That would require you to jump from a point A in space to a point B in space, which then assumes the external point of view of space. Which can only be based on the five aggregates right here right now. So that’s why your experience is not in space and in time, it’s of space and of time. You get the notion of space based on your perceptions, and notion of time pretty much based on your feelings and their endurance. So it’s secondary to it. So if you stop thinking in terms of ‘I’m in space and time’, then the whole notion of rebirth becomes much more intelligible. And it just fits perfectly with pretty much everything else that you can know right here and right now.

T: Point of view is beyond time?

N: It’s of time, it’s not beyond time, because again, that assumes time, and now there’s something beyond it. Notion of time, it’s basically a result of the point of view. And space, notion of time and space, is a result of a point of view. It’s a result of the five aggregates. So again, you can think of it on the level of this life. So, say today’s a new day, you do certain things and so on, and then you go to sleep. Then you wake up. Then again, it’s a new day, you do things, but OK, you have a memory of yesterday and so on that will affect your choices today. You have an assumption of tomorrow that’s going to affect your choices today and so on. But it’s all within your experience as a whole, within your point of view, within the five aggregates. You wouldn’t be asking yourself ‘was me from yesterday the same one who became the one today, and is going to be the one tomorrow?’ No, it’s just me who went to sleep yesterday. And now I woke up, and in a way it’s a new day from a reference point of view of yesterday, as in from a memory, but all of that is within this experience today.

So you can extend, yesterday, ten years ago, ten lifetimes ago. Just been waking up in different environments, so to speak. So that’s why the question of ‘who gets reborn’ is a wrong question. Because it assumes this external floating from one life to another, and ‘what is it that changes and goes there?’ That’s why the Buddha wouldn’t even answer it, because it’s based on a completely wrong premise, of this external world point of view, that’s kind of independent of you. But you can’t possibly conceive anything like that, because if you’re conceiving something independent of you, you can only do so on account of it depending on your experience of the five aggregates. Which means it’s not truly independent. Hence it’s a completely wrong view, hence any question that would come out of it, as in ‘who gets reborn from life number one to life number two?’ requires this non-existent external world, independent of your experience, independent of your sense of being and your point of view.

So ask yourself, your self that you can remember from ten years ago, who’s that? How did that person from ten years ago become you today? And you realise, well, that’s not really a right question to formulate like that. Because it would assume that something has kind of travelled independent of you, from a point of view in the past to a point of view right here. But no, it’s just, this experience has been enduring for ten years. There have been changes on a particular level, while overall, it was remaining the same container. You’ve been having different perceptions, different intentions, you’ve been performing different actions to ten years ago, because you had different values and different views. But, overall, it was still the same nature of perception, the nature of feeling, the nature of intentions, the nature of the views. And that’s within this, and you realise, you can’t step outside of that. An arahant doesn’t step outside of that. He actually realises that outside is inconceivable, so he stops conceiving it. And by doing so, he removes ignorance in regard to the inside of himself. In regard to the nature of perception, feeling, intention, the nature of the view. And that’s how he extinguishes that container. It ceases to be the fertile ground for this maintenance of the being.

T: He doesn’t assume outside of experience…

N: No, no. Well, even a sotāpanna stops assuming that. Like, the fundamental, the core of the external assumption of your own experience is attavāda. The external sense of self, pretty much. Independent of this experience and everything. That’s why they would ask, ‘who gets reborn?’ Because they assume the impersonal world, impersonal space and time through which things just flow. From one birth, to the other realm, to this realm. But no matter the realm, the nature of the five aggregates is the same. Which means, if you want to find out how it is in more subtle realms, or coarser realms, you can do so on account of understanding the nature of this experience that you already have. Because it’s within it. That’s why it’s called ‘roaming onwards’, it’s just this experience that keeps perpetuating itself, on, and on, and on.

And the Buddha, again, he did give a simile that illustrates that. He said it’s like a man leaving his home village and then he goes to the next village. And from that village he goes to the next village. And from that village he goes to the next village. And then at the twentieth village, they ask him ‘where did you come from?’ And he says ‘well before this village I was in this village, before that I was in another village, and another village, and another village’. So yeah, if you were to describe it to somebody else, it would sound like you were describing things in an external manner. But from his point of view, he was always in the village he was in. He couldn’t step outside of himself and then explain to himself—he didn’t need to—how he went from one village and crossed to another village. No, he was just ‘I was in this village, then I went on to another village’. But it’s still the same experience. Each time he was in a different village, he had different content of a village. But in terms of the nature of his experience, perception of the village, intentions of the village, feelings in the village were the same. The nature remained the same, the nature of the five aggregates. That’s what the Buddha meant when he said ‘even if you remember five hundred lifetimes or more from before, all you’re remembering is these five aggregates right here right now, or one among them’. It’s within this.

T: You can’t know the five aggregates directly, or, you assume them…

N: Well you cannot take them apart and examine them, again, because that would require the external point of view in regard to them. You can only see the insides of the five aggregates. And when you think ‘this is the inside’ you already start implying the assumption, conceiving of the outside. That’s what the Buddha meant when he said ‘he conceives in matter, from matter, apart from matter, he conceives ‘matter is mine’’, and then he goes on in the Mūlapariyāya Sutta for all the other aggregates and all the other ways. By implicitly perceiving it as ‘ah, this is the inside’ you automatically assume the outside, to an extent. So you have to undo that implicit conceiving, and then the assumption of the outside will fade. And you undo that implicit conceiving not on account of finding out the external view of the five aggregates and then examining them one by one, that’s inconceivable. That’s impossible. You undo it by stopping regarding it as ‘mine’, right here right now. By seeing that it’s independent of you. By seeing that it’s subjected to destruction.

T: Inaccessible.

N: That it’s inaccessible. Because if you were truly able to access it and control it, it would obey you, it would listen to you, it would go with you.

T: There’s being mindful of the body, of form, earth…

N: Well exactly, some people, some minds can go to the subtle level of being mindful of the earth element. But whether you’re mindful of the earth element, whether you’re mindful of the body seated on this chair, it’s the same principle. That’s why you can arrive at the same goal without needing to refine it to the point of the earth element. Being mindful of your experience as a whole, bound up with this body, with this form, without overdoing your thought into assuming the external world point of view. But without becoming negligent in regard to your own absorption with your own senses. So again, if a person wants to reflect along these lines, they can, with the experience and the memories of this life. Same, if I ask you ‘where were you five days ago?’ you can say ‘I was there’. ‘Where were you ten years ago?’ ‘I was there’.

So in a way, yeah, there was some change, but your point of view hasn’t changed. Your views might have changed, but the direction of you having views, the experience as a whole, the nature of body, the form, the nature of feeling, the nature of perception, the nature of intention, the nature of consciousness—that hasn’t changed. That container has remained unchanged since you can remember. And that’s the thing, you remember since you were two years old, and that’s kind of where it stops. But it only stops because your memories stop there, but the principle carries on. Which means that, yeah, some people can then start remembering more. But it’s still within the same principle of the memory that you know. So that’s why in that sense it’s not correct to say that it’s a sense of self that gets reborn, that it was previously in that life, now it’s in this life, then it will go in another life. No, it’s not in space and time.

T: So where does memory sit?

N: Well it sits in that infinity of change on a more particular level. Within the container that stays the same, the container of your experience as a whole, the container of the five aggregates, the container of your point of view. That’s why memory is, in a way, beginningless. Because there was no first beginning before which you didn’t exist, and then you became. As the Buddha said, avijjā has no first point where it manifests. It shouldn’t be there, but it is there, and its being there is beginningless. That’s why once you undo it, it cannot re-arise, it cannot re-appear, it cannot re-emerge. Because it was never meant to be there. The ignorance, the assumption of the external point of view, all of that, was not meant to be there. It doesn’t fit there. The upādāna is not the five aggregates, cannot be the five aggregates, cannot become the five aggregates, cannot enter the five aggregates. But it cannot be found apart from them. So desire-and-lust, which is another way of saying misconceiving the five aggregates, the upādāna, the assumptions, are there in regard to it. You stop misconceiving it, the upādāna fades.

T: So does wandering on.

N: Exactly, there is no more being bound with the content, like this, then like that, then another one, then another one, no.

T: So what generates saṃsāra is ignorance, craving?

N: Well ‘generates’ is maybe not the right word.

T: Keeps it going?

N: Yeah, maintains saṃsāra.

T: So if you don’t have that…

N: If you don’t have ignorance, saṃsāra cannot be maintained.

T: Getting back to memory, where does it sit?

N: Again, ‘where does it sit?’ implies placement in space, like ‘oh, it’s over here’. But that assumes the external point of view, where you can place it like a box on a shelf or something. At most that can just be a figure of speech. But if that figure of speech is taken literally, then you start assuming it’s in space.

T: In the brain.

N: Yeah, in the brain, in a centre, in some molecules there or something. It’s no more in your brain than it’s in your toes. And in the same sense, consciousness is not in your body. It’s paired with the body, it’s in regard to the body. But see, any notions that you have of your body, it’s on the basis of your conscious body. Any notions that you have in regard to consciousness, it’s on the basis of the conscious body. Conscious body is the basis that you cannot step outside of, nor separate and investigate separately. That’s why whenever you look at the body, you’re conscious, and whenever you’re trying to discern consciousness, the necessary living body needs to be there. But the problem is when people look at either body or consciousness, and then develop the view that places them underneath, or rather, as more fundamental than the dyad of ‘conscious body’ that you have right here right now. But you can’t step outside of that, so then you have to realise that it doesn’t matter how pleasing the notions and the theories and views of the body you might develop are, that can only be done in the container of conscious body, you cannot step outside of it.

That’s why the scientific view is inherently wrong. Not wrong in terms of the content, but wrong in terms of the nature. That’s why you cannot use science to arrive at and explain the nature of being, the nature of experience, the nature of feelings for that matter. That’s why whenever the scientists try to talk about feelings and describe feelings, they end up just describing perceptions of sensations in the body. But perception is perception, and feeling is feeling. You can’t feel your perceptions. So perceptions and feelings, in the same sense, are like body and consciousness. They’re paired. They’re independent of each other, but they’re inseparable from each other. And the Buddha said that, perception, feeling, and intentions are conjoined. You cannot take them apart and examine one separately from the other two. Means that’s the basis that you cannot conceive differently, in any other shape or form. And any conceivings you have, they’re within that container of that basis. Hence if your conceivings are contradicting the basis, it’s a wrong view. That’s why it’s a wrong view.

So that’s why if you were to have a scientific view in terms of practising the Dhamma, it’s a wrong view. Because it contradicts the nature of the basis on account of which you developed the scientific view. That external world that you cannot actually conceive. Truly, you cannot access it in that impersonal manner as science leads you to believe. You can’t, you will always have a point of view. And the notion of ‘beyond the point of view’ is within your point of view. ‘This is external to my point of view’—well, you can only see that through your point of view, which means it’s not external. The true external, well see, you can’t even designate it correctly. If you say ‘the true external’, well it’s not external then because you’re talking about it. You’re designating something, and if there is something, even an ambiguous notion of external world, it’s within this container of the five aggregates. Thus it’s not truly external. That’s why there is no ‘real matter’, a ‘real reality behind appearances’ or anything like that. What appears, that’s what’s real.

T: I’d like to speak about god, god is like this inconceivable…

N: Sure, but you’re conceiving it through labelling it, through designating it as ‘oh, it’s inconceivable’. ‘You cannot express the deity, the eternal’—well, you just expressed it, by saying it’s not expressible.

T: No matter what you express, it’s within…

N: So you realise, you can’t step outside of the experience as a whole, and that was never the point. That’s why you stop looking for some hidden, transcendental reality. Which is what usually people think arahantship is. No, you realise, you can’t, all you have to do is stop conceiving there to be an outside to be found. Because conceiving the outside is conceiving independence of this experience as a whole, and that’s the definition of attavāda. An independent sense of self. Independent of the five aggregates. Independent of the form, feeling, perceptions, intentions, and consciousness. Yet, any notion of that independence is based on this form, feeling, perception, intentions, consciousness. Thus, it’s actually secondary to it, thus it cannot be independent. So that’s all a person needs to do, stop assuming the external, stop assuming that master-self. Stop conceiving it as possible. And that’s the Mūlapariyāya Sutta in a nutshell. The very first Sutta in Majjhima Nikāya.

T: The idea that before anything, there was nothing.

N: Well, that’s something, because you’re thinking of it. So if something is truly nothing, then you can’t even designate it as nothing, as absence of something, it’s just inconceivable. Thus, you can’t even think it, let alone designate it as something. If you keep trying to think it, it means you keep trying to contradict yourself, your own experience.

T: So you shouldn’t think it?

N: Well you should realise that it’s unthinkable. And the projection towards thinking it, you realise well that’s already thinkable within this, thus it cannot stand for that which is truly unthinkable. So when the thought of unthinkable stops conceiving something, it’s thinkable. That’s when a thought recognises its own extent.

T: Some philosophers speak about ‘being and nothingness’.

N: Yes, but the ones that do ended up assuming the external world from which they, very plausibly, defined being and nothingness. But that’s already then contradicting the basic phenomenological principle that they used to arrive at it.

T: So from that Sutta, Majjhima Nikāya 1. It says, a person can experience nibbāna, but he assumes nibbāna.

N: Yeah, he can have the experience of absence of greed, aversion, delusion. But he can have it affected by the assumption of external sense of self, external master, external point of view, external scientific order. Thus, that experience of not-self, that experience of freedom from greed, aversion, delusion, is appropriated by that fully gratuitous view. Thus he conceives that nibbāna. He conceives in it, he conceives apart from it, he conceives it as mine, and thus he cannot steady his mind. Well, because of that, that nibbāna cannot become the experience that he develops fully, consistently. But it is the nibbāna. Because there is another Sutta in Majjhima Nikāya later on, when the Buddha gives a similar description of how a person with his conceit thinks ‘I’m attaining this nibbāna, this nibbāna is mine’. And the Buddha said, yeah, what he refers to is the actual nibbāna. But, because of the self-centred point of view, because of those assumptions of self and mastery, he does not enter that nibbāna. He cannot sustain it. It’s not a different nibbāna, that’s a cop out, when people say ‘oh, it’s a different nibbāna’ it’s just an easy way to dismiss it. But the Buddha himself said ‘although he asserts that which is nibbāna, he doesn’t enter it because he can’t steady his experience in it’. He keeps misconceiving it.

T: In terms of death being the end, the ending of things. From what you are saying, it doesn’t seem to be the end.

N: No. Death, it’s the end of the assumptions that you developed based on the familiarity with the current content of your experience. So it’s the end of that. But it’s far from the end of the five aggregates. The true end.

T: The end of being.

N: It’s far from the end of being, yeah. But yeah, most people, the entire life, the sense of self, the views, are based on the content of this present experience. On that assumption of the external world and that whole thing. So then yeah, death ends all that. That’s why it’s so frightening. If you removed all the conceivings and stopped wrongly assuming things in regard to this content of this experience of this life, there is no death. Hence ‘the deathless’. That which is death can only apply where the assumptions in regard to the content of your senses exist. If you remove the assumptions, that is the true deathless. It’s just, the notion of death is inconceivable.

T: That’s almost what a lot of people would think death is. You know, the complete ending, nothingness.

N: Well again, the fact that you can think, you can have a notion of complete nothingness, well that’s something. That notion is real, as such. Which means it’s not the true nothingness. Because if it’s the true nothingness, you couldn’t think it.

T: But the non-conceiving that, the deathless…

N: Not conceiving that means, stop assuming wrong things in regard to the nature of death. That’s what not conceiving death means.

T: Nibbāna.

N: Yeah, exactly.

T: So, you could have an understanding of what nibbāna is, develop it, without assuming it.

N: Well that’s what development is, undoing the assumptions.

T: You can’t see, can you see nibbāna?

N: Well no, you can enter it. You can step into it, so to speak. You can’t see it and externally examine it, because if you are seeing it like that, you’re misconceiving it. So, you can enter nibbāna by removing all the assumptions that misconceive what nibbāna is. Then your experience automatically becomes the experience of nibbāna. But it’s not like, you do the work of removing the assumptions, and then the gates open, and then you walk in to the nibbāna. No, doing the work, removing all the conceivings, is what nibbāna is.

T: So in a way, you are striving to bring about the ending of being, of existence?

N: Yeah. You’re not striving to find, as I said, some kind of external, transcendental entity that you merge with, or that saves you. No, you’re striving to stop misconceiving this very experience. To stop appropriating it as ‘mine’, stop entertaining mistaken, gratuitous assumptions in regard to it. And that will undo the being. Because that’s what being is. It’s a mistake in regard to things that appear. Mistake of ownership, mistake of the sense of self, mistake of permanence.

T: Because some people would say that it sounds like you’re kind of trying to kill yourself. Like an ultimate suicide.

N: Well it’s the suicide of ignorance, sure. It’s the suicide of the self-view. But it’s not the suicide of the content on account of which you develop the sense of self. That’s like people trying to kill the five aggregates, because they can’t get rid of upādāna in regard to the pañcakkhandhā. So, not knowing where the problem is, you’re attacking it at the wrong place. That’s usually what suicide is. Attacking the body, trying to kill the body, so it will kind of kill you. But if you had undone your sense of self, then you don’t care about living, or killing your body, because it’s not suicide any more. It’s suicide when you’re trying to get rid of that sense of self by destroying the environment that supports it. But if you look at it in the way I described, you can’t destroy the five aggregates. You just keep changing the content of it through getting a different birth, different rebirth. Which then means, you don’t do anything about the underlying problem of misconceiving the content that resulted in you having that self-view in the first place. So you might have annihilated the particular content, but overall, your mistake in regard to the nature of that content stays the same. Hence, you keep getting born on, and on, and on again, and keep re-appropriating things, misappropriating, misconceiving, and keep being bound by saṃsāra.

So the true suicide, the one that can truly kill that sense of self, is the one that doesn’t kill the body, doesn’t aim at the body, but actually undoes the ignorance in regard to the body, in regard to the phenomenon of the body and the experience as a whole. That removes the basis completely, uproots the sense of self. Truly annihilates it. That’s why nibbāna is annihilation, of greed, aversion, delusion, of conceivings, of appropriation, of the sense of self. But not annihilation of the content and of the environment and of the five aggregates.

T: Because obviously suicide is seen to be quite a bad thing…

N: Yeah, because it’s just a further proliferation of the original mistake. You misconceive the content of your experience, you’re not seeing the nature of it, you develop this sense of ownership and sense of self. The external self that’s in charge of this whole thing. And then despite being paired with unpleasant feelings and so on, you still can’t see that you’re not in control of those things. And instead of taking that as a way of liberating yourself from that gratuitous assumption of ownership, of control, you then try to destroy the whole thing, while actually aiming at destroying that ownership, and that sense of self. But, as I said before, as the Suttas say, the upādāna, the assumption of self, or any other assumption, it’s not the five aggregates. But it’s not to be found apart from them. So you need to discern the nature of the five aggregates so you stop having desire-and-lust in regard to the five aggregates, as a result of that, the sense of self that’s being simultaneously generated by it ceases. But people don’t know that, so then they just try to destroy the problem. Just, dismiss the problem, and that’s how you solve the problem. So that’s why suicide is bad. Because on account of the problem, you just perpetuated the problem, but then removed the possibility of understanding the problem in any foreseeable future.

T: So what about people who have understood the problem?

N: The arahants? Well their ‘suicide’, like in the Suttas when arahants committed suicide, it’s not a suicide. Because they were not aiming or trying to get rid of that sense of self, they were obviously not distraught or anything. They, as the Buddha would say, he wouldn’t use the word ‘death’ as in like they killed themselves. The ones that were sick, physically sick, the body was just in this horrible falling apart state with dysentery and whatnot, beyond repair, beyond medicine. And they had already uprooted everything in regard to that experience. So then they just literally sped up, quickened that which was already coming to its end. By freeing the assumption of the external world, removing the notion of appropriation, the body which has still remained for an arahant, the five aggregates, are the last. Because there is no desire-and-lust in regard to it, there is no re-appearance of the content any more. Once this body breaks apart, it will not carry on. That’s it. This is the true ending. So, for an arahant, like Venerable Channa in Majjhima Nikāya, who was so ill and so sick, in constant discomfort, he had no reason to wait, whether the body would break apart in five years or five days, because he did the work of uprooting everything. There was nothing more to be done. So then because the circumstances of that body were so disagreeable, he had no reason to endure it. Why would he endure it? Nothing to prove, nothing to do any more. So then he just decided to kill that body, as in, instead of waiting five years for it to disintegrate, he did it in five days.

But that’s a valid thing to do only after you become an arahant. Otherwise, if there is still desire-and-lust in regard to that body that you’re trying to kill, means you are committing a suicide. To a varying degree obviously, depending on how much desire-and-lust is a motivator for that action. But for an arahant, there can’t be any. So for him it’s truly just speeding up the process of the disintegration of the five aggregates. But if there is desire-and-lust in regard to it, they are not disintegrating. Means, you do remain bound within the nature of that, which means you will keep re-appearing. So the reason why suicide is very unwholesome, it’s because by doing it you end up binding yourself most likely with even less fortunate content of your five aggregates. Which will then prevent the possibility of reflection necessary for removing the assumption and developing wisdom and understanding. For example, the animal realm. So, through your own ignorance, greed, aversion, delusion, and wrong assumptions of the sense of self, you commit an act then that removes even further the possibility for you understanding that problem in the first place. Which means then you have to keep enduring saṃsāra much longer, because of your own ignorant actions. So that’s why somebody who is not an arahant, it’s actually better not to kill themselves, not commit suicide, and endure it.

T: Obviously, there are a lot of people who are not even practising who’ve got a heavy disease, painful disease, cancer of some kind. And there is no cure, they’re in a lot of pain. Then they choose euthanasia, to kill themselves.

N: Well it’s true that the time will come when there is no hope, but what is not true is that that pain is the greatest pain that you can experience. Because for the mind that’s still affected by ignorance… Like, the worst pain of the human realm might not be anything in comparison to the pains of being paired with lower types of content in your future re-appearances. Again, any reference you can make, it’s based on this life, and it seems unbearable, but you have actually no idea where you’re heading. So that’s why it’s better to try and make the absolute most of it while you can. Because you will die eventually. Try to endure it. And the developed mind can endure it. If the mind has been undermining that order for a long time, so it couldn’t develop to the same extent… But even then, there is a serious amount of responsibility if a person commits suicide and they still have the wrong view, they’re still a puthujjana, they still haven’t understood even what the nature of nibbāna is. Because they might be removing that possibility of understanding it for a long, long time. Because if their next rebirths, re-appearances, whatever you want to call it, are lower than the human realm—or even if they are higher, if it’s just infused with divine pleasures—you won’t be thinking and reflecting much. So that’s why you really want to make the most of this opportunity that you have, where you can reflect with that right balance, which is what the human realm is. But if you’ve done that work, if you’ve fully freed the whole experience of the five aggregates, there’s no external assumptions, no conceivings, there is no suicide, there is no murder, there is no death.

T: But it is something that everyone should be training towards, because everyone’s going in some way or another.

N: Yeah, ultimately, that’s pretty much the sole… The aim of any being, in any realm, should be freeing themselves from being bound with the content of their experience, with saṃsāra.

T: Just in terms of enduring pain, painful feeling.

N: Yeah, that’s the beginning of restraint as well. While you’re healthy, you start practising that. Because when the senses start falling apart, if you haven’t practised restraint and enduring, you won’t be able to.