This may be a follow-up.
Oftentimes we talk about experiencing Nibbana directly, but how is this possible if consciousness ceases during Nibbana?
Well, that is an experience, isn't it?
It's an experience to have consciousness suddenly cease on you.
It's all just words.
It doesn't mean much.
Consciousness ceases.
It's like
Suppose you have a machine.
Think of the body or the being as a machine that's running 24-7.
And so it's got a lot of problems because of that.
It's heating up, it's melting, it's fraying or it's wearing away or so on.
Let's not say fraying and wearing away.
We can say that, but let's say in general it's overheating, right?
And it's much more, the human being is much more complicated and Nibbana is a little bit more subtle than that.
But take it in general the idea of just turning the machine off for just a short time.
and how that feels when you come back online again.
How it feels to have just gone offline for a bit.
That's how Nibbāna is.
During the time that the machine is off, there's no activity.
But you'd certainly feel it after you come back.
When the mind returns, there is something different.
And you know that you've quote-unquote experienced something that is beyond explanation.
Unless you just want to explain consciousness ceases, which is kind of spoiling the fun.
See, the problem with saying consciousness ceases, nibbana consciousness ceases, is that it's true, but it's so dull.
You can explain nibbana, but you can't describe it.
There's no words that you could use to do justice to it, let's put it that way.
So no matter you might be able to technically say it's this or it's that, you can't do justice to it.
And so that's the danger of trying to put it into words.
Not that it's difficult to understand or so on.
It's an experience.
So, whether that's accurate or not, because obviously there's no consciousness, or the consciousness that is experiencing it has ceased, which is the experience itself, the cessation of consciousness.
But, you know, technically it's not described as the cessation of consciousness.
the technical aspects of it are difficult they say that consciousness is still there but it's taking Nibbana as an object
And I don't want to go into those technical aspects.
I like my explanation better.
But it's wrong, no?
The dogma, the canonical explanation is that consciousness is still there, but it's taking nibbana as an object.
And that just means it's ceased.
Would it be almost like the idea that true nibbana
is a lack of any, it's total presence.
In other words, there's no past whatsoever and there's no future.
You're dwelling exactly just as it were right in the middle of that split nanosecond.
In fact, there is no such thing as time in that respect.
The future is just simply, or the present is just the future.
going on its journey to the past, that split moment.
I kind of like to think of Nibbana in that term that it is the present, but since it is true presence with no past and no future, it's almost like there is no consciousness.
I may be totally off track with that.
Well, the problem is that
Nibbāna, the accurate definition of Nibbāna is the cessation of suffering.
And if you're totally in the present moment contemplating an object, a conventional object, if there's an experience where you're thinking, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, then there's suffering.
Because those things are by definition dukkha.
So Nibbāna has no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no feeling and no thinking.
And because of that there is no memory of it and there is no recognition in it.
All of those things cease.
So it's poetically accurate to say it's true present moment.
I think you have to be careful because there are ways of describing a truly present state, which you might in fact use to describe the moment before Nibbāna.
where one is truly present and truly sees the truth of suffering, really sees things as they are, because the next moment is cessation.
Here's a personal question.
Wait, wait, wait, let me stop.
I'm sorry.