Hi Lal,
What really matters to me is that an arahant in this very life is immeasurable, unfathomable like the ocean. That’s the way a fully enlightend one talks about his real nature (MN72 and others). Arahants know this too.
What the Buddha discovered is that the khandha’s (or conditioned arising phenomena) are only the waves off that unfathomable ocean. Mind immersed in ignorance does not know or see its own immeasurable and unfathomable nature because it is obsessed by the waves.
Because no arahant or Tathagata is the khandha’s, the Buddha resisted to say that after death an arahant or Tathagata does not exist anymore. But because the unfathomable nature of the Tathagata does not arise, it cannot be said to exist too. It cannot be described in terms of the world. This makes sense to me.
Siebe