The Pleasure of Not Experiencing Anything: Some Reflections on Consciousness in the Context of the Early Buddhist Nikāyas
Religions October 25, 2023 Grzegorz Polak 1 citation
The pleasure of nibbāna, according to the Nibbānasukha-sutta, lies in experiencing nothing. This paper reconstructs the philosophical background of this counterintuitive claim by re-examining Nikāya passages and drawing on cognitive science and philosophy of mind. It argues that the five khandhas, especially viññāṇa, refer to consciousness with phenomenal, introspectable, reportable content that can be integrated into memory. Such consciousness is not constant; its low frequency in absorption or flow states contributes to their pleasurable nature and altered sense of time and self. The paper hypothesizes that the presence or absence of this consciousness relates to dukkha or sukha, with saṅkhāra playing a key role. It also discusses limits of introspection and non-introspectable pleasure, concluding that early Buddhist transformation involves no longer identifying with one's own consciousness.