Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:...Since Arahants are entirely free from dosa, why would they take their own life? The accounts clearly show that these men were not free from dejection and disappointment (which are aspects of dosa) prior to taking up a knife.
Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:This is not suicide, of course. Dabba foresaw his own imminent demise, and paid his final respects to the Blessed One before performing his self-cremation.
Interesting distinction: "
suicide" vs "
self-cremation".
further
Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:...Venerable Ānanda did a similar thing to prevent anyone fighting over his remains.
Good point -- again, the circumstances …
Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:...if an Arahant is unable to bear severe pain, how can he be free from aversion? I see no way that this interpretation is possible...
Isn’t
arahant consciousness
kiriya – purely functional? Another interpretation would be that "bearing severe pain" is not the issue; aversion, as well as "dejection", "disappointment" would be mundane; rather that mind-body functionality is so degraded as to be useless to try to continue it. "What needed to be done is done" fulfilled path; nothing more to do, except maybe teach. But if anything productive (for others) becomes impossible? What's there to cling to?
(Similar to the idea in
Postby Nicolas » Sat Oct 01, 2016 12:21 pm.)
"Suicide" is Latin for self-killing. What's the "self" here that gets terminated? Five piles of phenomena: material, feeling-tone, percepts, fabrications and consciousness? What's to blame dropping that?
As well as
justindesilva wrote:"Sui cide" is a wrong word to be used in this thread considering the literal translation.
It clearly carries Western religious and modernist cultural baggage, as amply evidence in this discussion.
Facit:
Listening to Bante Jaganātha's talk, and then re-reading this whole thread, and his post (which I hadn't seen until just now), I'm impressed with his understanding and teaching. Rhetorically, he's a bit free-wheeling, and occasionally uses phrasing, which, taken literally and out of context, can be quibbled with – as some here took advantage of.