Spiny O'Norman wrote:But DO is describing samsara for a putthujjana, not an arahant. The putthujjana experiences the physical dart as dukkha, the arahant does not.
So DO is describing how both the physical and mental darts create dukkha for a putthujjana - this is why descriptions of dukkha in the suttas include aging, disease and death, pain etc.
Spiny
The physical dart remains unchanged in both cases, yet the mental dart is removed in the case of the arahat; dukkha is removed in the case of the arahat. There can be no dukkha in the physical dart, it is rather the mind which is defiled by incoming defilements - dukkha exists, but as a mental phenomenon. It is not inherent in physicality.
This is why I said that the bodily dart is never attenuated in life:
"But in the case of a well-taught noble disciple, O monks, when he is touched by a painful feeling, he will not worry nor grieve and lament, he will not beat his breast and weep, nor will he be distraught. It is one kind of feeling he experiences, a bodily one, but not a mental feeling. It is as if a man were pierced by a dart, but was not hit by a second dart following the first one.
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Spiny O'Norman wrote:It doesn't matter whether one thinks of this as a current birth or future birth.
Yet it's neither; it's symptomatic of the appropriation of this very lifespan, now, as "mine". Whether one thinks that "this life is the only one
I have", or whether one thinks "
I will have multiple lives (unless...)", the
appropriation is the problem, not the speculative content.