Sybe,
What you are saying is this:
Nibbana exists ,though NOT inherent in us until we ATTAIN It at Arahanthood,(my annotation), It is nicca,sukkha and atta; and the way to attain is by going beyond the 5 pancakkhandhas, beyond even the positive or wholesome in these( putting aside for the moment the assertion that ‘all vinnana is defiled’).
Now, in the absence of any connection to the pancakkhandhas, negative and positive, WHICH MAKE UP THE BEING,who or what experiences Nibbana? This is how ‘your’ being comes to be: though the pancakkhandhas are no more, still Nibbana is experienced; so, by whom is it experienced? For surely, if Nibbana is nicca, sukkha and atta, it must be EXPERIENCED as such, and if experienced, then ‘someone’ must be there to do the experiencing.
I will admit that no answer to this question, by anybody, has been to my complete satisfaction. Yet, I am not bothered by that in the least. Because the Buddha says that a Buddha (or an Arahant) neither exists,nor does not exist, both exists and does not exist, and neither exists nor does not exist. Has anyone ever been able to make anything of that? – except that, ‘it must be some state of which we have no conception of”? Now I have gone for Refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha; I have complete aveccappasada in the Buddha, I observe the Precepts to the best of my ability and order my life according to sila, again, to the best of my ability. That will do perfectly for me. The answer to that question ,then, must be one for which I am not yet ready, or, to put it bluntly, one which I do not deserve an answer to because I have not reached the stage which would enable me to comprehend the answer.
An analogy is this: I here am in the human realm, in kamaloka. To me the ultimate happiness is that which involves connection, ‘the other’, sense pleasures, if not gross, subtle. I cannot conceive how jhanic absorption, meditating alone, alone-ness in a brahma realm could be preferable to a deva realm. Yet a brahma existence is deemed higher than one in the kamaloka. So it must be that I can start to have a vague idea of that only after I am nearly done with the Sakadagami stage. Not before – as the song goes, the only way out is through.It is no use trying to figure out what it is to be an Anagami, an Arahant, a Buddha , just like it is of no use trying to explain all about sex to a four-year-old; 10, 11 years, and he or she will be ready.
This reminds me of when someone asks for help in resolving some problem about ethical conduct or some question necessary to clear up in order to progress, and is told, even if ‘with compassion’, ‘What you are doing is nowhere near Nibbana. Leave all that. Strive for Nibbana.’ It is like a maths professor telling a first-grader: ‘Look. Your difficulties with multiplication and division are not the real deal. The integral calculus, theoretical physics are the real deal. Set your mind on those.’ To which the student rightly replies: ‘Yes Sir. But to get to those, I must have basic arithmetic mastered first’. Now if the professor is unwilling to stoop to the level of an ordinary maths teacher, for the sake of that student, he’d better leave the student to an ordinary maths teacher – out of compassion, it is understood.