Remembering the cessation of perception and feeling?

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Hi

Some say that “during the ‘cessation of perception and feeling’, there is no longer any consciousness and mental processes, so after emerging from it we can’t remember what’s going on”. (This would imply that MN 111 is apocryphal, as within Sariputta emerges from this achievement and discerns its past phenomena.)

But if this is true, how did the Buddha and his disciples manage to remember and describe such a state (“without perception, without feelings, without physical/verbal/mental formation…”): they should have forgotten everything, no?

I’m curious about what the orthodox Theravada says.

Thank you in advance

May all beings put an end to physical and mental pain

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yes they can remember the pleasure. The Buddha taught a wider notion of pleasure beyond the acquisition of a -self.

"Now, if someone were to say: ‘This is the highest pleasure and joy that can be experienced,’ I would not concede that. And why not? Because there is another kind of pleasure which surpasses that pleasure and is more sublime. And what is this pleasure? Here, quite secluded from sensual desires, secluded from unwholesome states of mind, a monk enters upon and abides in the first meditative absorption (jhana), which is accompanied by thought conception and discursive thinking and has in it joy and pleasure born of seclusion. This is the other kind of pleasure which surpasses that (sense) pleasure and is more sublime.
"If someone were to say: ‘This is the highest pleasure that can be experienced,’ I would not concede that. And why not? Because there is another kind of pleasure which surpasses that pleasure and is more sublime. And what is that pleasure? Here, with the stilling of thought conception and discursive thinking… a monk enters upon and abides in the second meditative absorption… in the sphere of the infinity of space… of the infinity of consciousness… of no-thingness… of neither-perception-nor-non-perception.

"If someone were to say: ‘This is the highest pleasure that can be experienced,’ I would not concede that. And why not? Because there is another kind of pleasure which surpasses that pleasure and is more sublime. And what is this pleasure? Here, by completely surmounting the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, a monk enters upon and abides in the cessation of perception and feeling. This is the other kind of pleasure which surpasses that pleasure and is more sublime.[2]
"It may happen, Ananda, that Wanderers of other sects will be saying this: ‘The recluse Gotama speaks of the Cessation of Perception and Feeling and describes it as pleasure. What is this (pleasure) and how is this (a pleasure)?’

“Those who say so, should be told: ‘The Blessed One describes as pleasure not only the feeling of pleasure. But a Tathagata describes as pleasure whenever and whereinsoever it is obtained.’”

Bahuvedaniya Sutta: The Many Kinds of Feeling

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for the same reason nibbana also is pleasurable. You can read at the end of that same page:

"In AN 9.34, the venerable Sariputta exclaims: “Nibbana is happiness, friend; Nibbana is happiness, indeed!” The monk Udayi then asked: “How can there be happiness when there is no feeling?” The venerable Sariputta replied: “Just this is happiness, friend, that therein there is no feeling.” The continuation of that Sutta may also be compared with our text. "

Anatta and nibbana are not annihilation. Happiness exists in nibbana, sustained by itself. This is inherent to anatta.

In fact, note how the highest experiences of worldly happiness all are characterized by the vanishing of oneself, be the sexual ecstasy, artistic or whatever.

What everybody in the world name the “highest happiness” are the people attempts to disappear themselves into those objects. It is strange thinking that everybody pursues anatta using failed agendas, and without being aware of. Although the world never was a coherent place.

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