Eternalism vs. Timelessness 5: Conclusions

Buddha’s teaching includes both arising and cessation, avoiding both eternalist and nihilist extremes. This is idappaccayatā, the insight that illuminates the Middle Way: “Thus: This being—this comes to be; with the arising of this—this arises. This not being—this does not come to be; with the cessation of this—this ceases.” — Udāna 1, the Bodhisuttas Because Nibbāna is sometimes called sabbasaṅkhārāsamatha—the stilling of all saṅkhārā—some prematurely conclude that the attainment of cessation of perceptions and feeling, saññā-vedayitanirodha, is itself Nibbāna. But no: it is upon emerging from that attainment, which is like stasis or a deep freeze, that one contacts the three deliverances: the signless (animitta), the desireless (appanihita), and the void (suññata). This is full attainment of Nibbāna: “Friend Visākha, when a monk has emerged from the attainment of the cessation of perceptions and feelings, three kinds of contact touch him: voidness contact, signless contact, desireless contact.” —Cūlavedalla Sutta Therefore, the Buddha’s view is that not just tranquillity, but tranquillity with insight and wisdom leads to Nibbāna. After cessation, saṅkhārā cease because the tendency to grasp the false sign of eternality in the saṅkhārā is done away with. The ‘sign’ in the saṅkhārā is the illusion of permanence: eternalism or sanātana-dharma. The term saṅkhārā suggests a pretense sustained by an effort of imagination. The illusion of a future facilitates the deceptive nature of saṅkhārā, just like a magician’s costume, stagecraft and prestidigitation enable him to fool the audience. The false promise of permanence and continuation supports desire, expectations and aspirations for objects. So for the Desireless Deliverance to come about, that false sign of eternalism has to cease together with desire. Saṅkhārā cease when signlessness is experienced, and viññāna nirodha, cessation of conditioned consciousness, follows immediately. Then duality ceases, one sees conditioned phenomenal existence as essenseless and void, and one’s consciousness becomes objectless. This is the Great Void recommenced by Śiva as the best object of meditation. The same result is attained when one sees the Dhamma as akāliko, timeless. There is no past to remember, therefore no vāsanas (mental tendencies or inertia) arise. There is no future to desire, therefore no scope for saṅkhārā: ontic commitments, expectations and aspirations based on a false promise of continuity. The perception of impermanence arising from timelessness-view automatically leads to realization of voidness. “Monks, the perception of impermanence, when developed and intensively practised, exhausts all attachments to sensuality, exhausts all attachments to form, exhausts all attachments to existence, exhausts all ignorance, exhausts all conceits of an ‘am’, and eradicates them completely.” — Aniccasaññāsutta Although great Vedic sages in recent times like Śankarācārya, Rāmana Mahārshi and Chandrasekharendra Sarasvatī were certainly enlightened, they had no alternative than to express their insights in eternalist Vedic terminology. Consequently their disciples had difficulty making the leap from phenomenal time to the timeless, from saṅkhārā to cessation, from phenomenal existence to the Void. Therefore after the disappearance of these sages, their dispensations very quickly decayed into various forms of dogmatic dualism. But it is a well-known historical fact that the Buddha’s dispensation maintained full potency, giving rise to an abundance of fully-realized Arahants for over a thousand years after his parinibbāna. This is because the Buddha’s Dhamma is established in timelessness from the very beginning.