“‘Where do water, earth, fire, & wind
have no footing?
Where are long & short,
coarse & fine,
fair & foul,
name & form
brought to a stop without trace?
“‘Consciousness without surface,2
without end,
luminous all around:
Here water, earth, fire, & wind
have no footing.
Here long & short,
coarse & fine,
fair & foul,
here name & form
are all brought to a stop without trace.
With the cessation of (the aggregate of) consciousness
each is here brought to a stop.’”
Notes
1. See AN 3:61.
2. Viññāṇaṁ anidassanaṁ. This term is nowhere explained in the Canon. Anidassanaṁ is listed in SN 43 as an epithet for unbinding. This is apparently related to the image in SN 12:64 of a beam of light that doesn’t land (or: “become established”) on any surface anywhere, corresponding to consciousness that takes no food anywhere. MN 49 mentions that viññāṇaṁ anidassanaṁ “is not experienced through the allness of the All”—the “All” meaning the six internal and six external sense media (see SN 35:23). In this it differs from the consciousness factor in dependent co-arising, which is defined in terms of the six sense media. Because name and form are brought to an end, this consciousness also lies beyond the consciousness of the jhānas and the formless attainments, inasmuch as the four jhānas are composed of both name and form, and the formless attainments are composed of various aspects of name: feeling, perception, and fabrication. The formless jhānas are also experienced through the sixth sense medium, the intellect.
Lying outside of time and space, consciousness without surface would also not come under the consciousness-aggregate, which covers all consciousness near and far; past, present, and future. However, the fact that it is outside of time and space—in a dimension where there is no here, there, or in between (Ud 1:10), no coming, no going, or staying (Ud 8:1)—means that it cannot be described as eternal or omnipresent, terms that have meaning only within space and time.
The standard description of nibbāna after death is, “All that is sensed, not being relished, will grow cold right here.” (See MN 140 and Iti 44.) Again, as “all” is defined as the sense media, this raises the question as to whether consciousness without feature is not covered by this “all.” However, AN 4:173 warns that any speculation as to whether anything does or doesn’t remain after the remainderless stopping of the six sense media is to “objectify the non-objectified,” which gets in the way of attaining the non-objectified. Thus this is a question that is best put aside.
Origin URL: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/DN/DN11.html