Many people in the West believe there's nothing after death because there's no memory of what's before life.
Is there a difference between the idea of nibbana and this assumed nothingness after death?
It's really two subjects here.
I've never actually heard that I can think of someone who believes there's nothing after death simply because there's no memory of what's before life.
But it's a curious logic there.
You can see the logic in it.
If it were true that consciousness starts at conception or birth or whatever you want to believe, then doesn't it make sense that it would end at death?
I mean, there's still not much logic to that because
Well, I guess it would necessitate the question of if there were something after, where would all the consciousnesses that were created at birth go?
Anyway, that's not your question.
It's an interesting logic.
I didn't realize that many people had that belief.
But the question is whether there's a difference between the idea of nibbana and a nothingness which is assumed to occur at physical death.
Interesting.
It's an interesting question that you catch me in because you want to right away say, no, there's nothing different, but it's not true.
It is and it isn't, but you're dealing with two different views of reality.
Nibbana is based on experience and physical death is based on materialism.
So we don't believe in physical death because we don't subscribe to materialism.
We believe in experience that is arising and ceasing from moment to moment.
Nibbana is the cessation of that experience.
Yeah, the cessation of the five aggregates or the arising of the five aggregates.
There's no more, when there's no more arising of that.
So it sounds a lot like death.
It sounds a lot like what you would expect if you were a materialist to occur when you die.
But I don't know.
I mean, maybe it's just a semantic difference or maybe it's a trivial difference.
But
there's a different supposition there because you're thinking of something having died so the idea that at death there is nothing is the idea that there was a being that has ceased which is why I thought of sort of there being a distinction but conceptually there's not much difference but
By making the distinction, the idea was to force you to look at it a little differently and stop thinking in terms of it's the cessation of me, like Nibbāna is the death of me, the death of my experience or something like that.
Nibbāna is an experience that can be realized for a single moment, can be realized for five minutes, for ten minutes, up to seven days and still come back.
still be followed by experience of the five aggregates.
So nibbana is not just an experience that causes the cessation of a stream of consciousness, or the permanent cessation of a stream of consciousness.
It's an experience of cessation.
That's what nibbana is.
So it's what people understand right away is what you talk about, there's death.
But it's
it's inaccurate because it's that's dealing with a different set of beliefs and views from Buddhist beliefs and views or Buddhist theory and doctrine which is experience and the cessation of experience and so just want to say that it's a little bit more
a little bit deeper than just being some kind of death.