Siebe:
It is as if I myself posted this. Some days ago I had it, in my own words of course, as a draft on my e-mail compose folder. But I never posted it. The reason is that Reality will remain as it is whether we understand the nature of Nibbana or whether we don’t. We cannot change Reality. What we CAN change is the nature of our existence in that Reality in the future,namely the elimination or reduction, at least, of the suffering that awaits us if we do nothing about it NOW…..and getting an answer to this question will not help in that direction at all. The Self-Perfected One emphasized this over and over again, much as Lal is doing now …’ it does not lead to unbinding, it does to lead to release’ etc,to quote some conventional English translations of the words.Personally,since when I was a boy I tend to lose myself in philosphical speculation and hard reasoning, especially when it has to do with Infinity and Eternity, but now I realize that I must guard against this tendency of mine, because that will be of no consequence to the IMPERATIVE task at hand – the elimination of DukKHA, or its gradual reduction. It is in fact a hindrance. Try to get a bit deeper into this. I myself am no one to offer advice – there are those who are prepared to do this,because they have been preparing themselves for it.It is clear, however,that Nibbana cannot be utter non-existence. One does not suffer in so many exsistences and strive hard to attain – non-existence! It cannot be so. And Dhamma cannot contain anything that does not make sense.
You write: ‘ in what way is this not the view of eternalism and atta or the idea of an eternal soul’ I share your question here. See my post on ‘The Infinity Problem’ Feb 6th 8:11 am for my view on atta and anatta. I suggest you do it at once Sybe: I suspect that whole topic will be deleted soon, and understandbly too…as may this one as well.