@y not: First, what I see is what you see at the forum. I can delete existing posts, but if a post cannot be seen I cannot do anything about it. I have deleted those other posts you made about a missing post. They clutter the board. Please make sure to type the post in a word processor so that you can re-post if it does not get posted for some reason. That has never happened to me, so I don’t know why it happened to you.
You said: “For myself, the hard bit, not so much to understand, but to accept, is that even doing good is in the long run a hindrance and must be abandoned.”
Who said that “doing good is in the long run a hindrance and must be abandoned“? Did I say that or did the Buddha say that? I cannot imagine ANYONE sane saying something like that.
You said: “As I read Siebe, what I think he means is that when a Buddha or Arahant or even anyone else with the gati to do good and distributes Metta all around, he does that automatically, meaning HE HAS NO CHOICE. If you do something because you have no choice, then where is the merit?”
If you do good things automatically ALL THE TIME, you have attained Nibbana. There is no need to accrue any more merits at that stage. However, Arahants keep on doing punna kamma or such such deeds, simply because that is the right thing to do.
One needs free will to choose between acts that lead to suffering and those lead to happiness. Once one attains Arahanthood, one has attained permanent happiness. Why would one need to have choice at that stage?
This is a problem with philosophers. They are not focused on the real issue, but on nonsense like choice, free will etc. That is because they don’t have any idea about Nibbana or ultimate happiness. There is a difference between NEED for free will (which a normal human ALWAYS has), and NOT NEEDING free choice when one gets to the pinnacle (one has reached there by MAKING the right choices); one will NEVER do the wrong thing at that stage.