Christian,
Which sutta is this?
Siebe,
This is in Christian’s words what I have been saying in the Sakkaya Ditthi topic in the General Forum (May 13 +14).
Let me simplify,even at the risk now of being crude (but NOT harsh, mind you!).
I do not know, I cannot know at the stage I am at, how it is possible for an Arahant to be free of the khandhas and yet is not annihilated although He now ‘has no mind’ (Lal); how it can be that He ‘neither exists, nor does not exist….etc’. But we have the word of the Buddha, NO LESS A ONE than the Buddha, that it is the Ultimate state, and that it is nicca, sukkha and atta. He Himself went through many lives throughout many aeons to realize It. So had all the countless Buddhas before Him. Surely, They are not stu— !!
Whose word instead do you want? Lal’s? Christian’s? Mine? It is enough to have aveccappasada in the Buddha. The road ahead is long and hard enough without having to worry about concepts which are inconceivable to us at the moment. Get on the Path if you are not already on It and in time, IN TIME, those concepts will become not only conceivable but realisable. It is guaranteed. We have the Buddha’s word for it.
Alright Christian. AN 4.102