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According to this answer:

Nirvana is the ground layer ("dhatu") underneath them all. ...

Nirvana is this most fundamental law (the formula, the rule, the
program) according to which the Universe develops.

This comment also seems to support that idea:

... the expression "the unmade is a foundation for phenomena" is
probably an agreeable thing to say given than it occurs in the pali
discourses "amatogadha" meaning deathless as foundation or deathless
as ground. There is also a reasonable way to defend it, which makes it
not a real point of controversy imo but a rather reasonable assumption
in that the pali wording is to be taken at facevalue and read
literally.

This sounds very similar to Advaita which describes Brahman as the substratum or foundation of all phenomena, just as different kinds of pots and plates made of clay, all have clay as their foundation.

Questions:

1. Does the notion "Nirvana is the ground layer" come from Mahayana? From which Mahayana subschool or text?


2. Does the Pali Canon support the notion that "Nirvana is the ground layer"? Does this relate to "amatogadha" some how? What's that?


3. The ground layer concept sounds similar to luminous mind. However, we know that Nirvana is unconditioned, while the luminous mind is conditioned. Does this "Nirvana is the ground layer" concept connect to the luminous mind in any way?

I have never seen this discussed before but it is something i've been interested in as far as expression and meaning goes. There are several meanings which can be arrived at;
1. There is ultimate mind of all beings, we are all one.
2. There is a state of mind which is impetruble, immovable, unaffected, such that is the ultimate goal ultimate security.
3. There is that which is mind and that is mind-made. With the cessation of mind which is mind made there is discernment of not mind, whereas that which can be taken to be a mind of a being would be extinct and not in play.

The #3 is the one that can be further is explained that mind of a being exists in as far as the aggregates exist, if there are no aggregates, in a context where they are not in play "have no footing" there can be no talk about the world let alone a person or a person soul.

If there is with the cessation of the mind made a discernment of a discernable reality which isn't included in the aggregates then the question can not be posed; 'Isn't this discernment then a consciousness of some sort?'

• The answer would be that consciosness per definition is associated with contact and three types of fabrication. With the cessation of mind-made phenomena, the context presumes that it isn't consciousness but a discernment of it's cessation that is being talked about.


• That which is discerned is cognized!


• What is cognized there is the cessation, extinguishment; Nibbana, resolution of all fabrication..

Thus the perspective of the observer or the one who experiences is contained to context where existence of the aggregates is affirmed for this or that person who sees for that is in as far as his existence is affirmed.

Nibbana as ground quite interesting because the curious thing is why are the Dhamma amatogadha if, how and when vinnanam anidassanam is also taken to have the unconditioned as it's referent.

Which is of course extremely interesting because in the context of vinnanam anidassanam the elements are said not to be said to be ceased but are as not gaining footing, which also can be taken to be a way to navigate the context between existence of aggregates being in and out of play, affirmed or not-affirmed.

That is the gist of it, further i think there is a good explaination because the paraphrasing of Kevatta's question reflects very well the need to contain the narrative of a person and associated aggregates and their cessation and arising to one side and that which is discerned as highest pleasure as another.

The fact is that the notion of an Arahants discernment exists only in as far as his life force faculty persists, when it is extinguished the discernment faculty ceases. So if ie Arahant's last perception is that of extinguishment, then even that is ceased with his death because dead people don't meditate.

As for this controversy there is the AN10.58 which literally says that sabbe dhamme amatogadha. Thanissaro translates it as footing and so does Piya Tan. Sujato and Bodhi translate it as 'culminating'. Sujato acknowledges that the literal translation is like Thanissaro pins it but according to his own conjecture he thinks it is an idiom and should not be translated as is expressed.

Bodhi is also inconsistent because he translates one place that discernment does gain a footing in the deathless but not all phenomena do that basically. It is inconsistent.

Sujato considers the matter solved as far as i know and nobody really discusses this.

I've written some posts on this if you are interested.

1. Does the notion "Nirvana is the ground layer" come from Mahayana? From which Mahayana subschool or text?

Yes. Well, they don't call it "Nirvana" - because they think this word got spoiled by abuse and acquired a dualistic meaning (as the opposite of Samsara). Instead, they simply call it "The Ground of All", "The Absolute", "The Unity of Relative and Absolute" etc.

This is certainly a well-known feature of Tibetan Buddhist lineages in Karma Kagyu and Nyungma schools that adhere to the so-called Shentong interpretation of Emptiness:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_(Dzogchen)


• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangtong-Shentong

Shentong was systematized and articulated under that name by Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292–1361), who identified absolute reality with the Buddha-nature.

...

The earliest shentong views are usually asserted to have been presented in a group of treatises variously attributed jointly to Asanga and Maitreyanātha, especially in the treatise known as the Unsurpassed Continuum (Uttaratantraśāstra, also called the Ratnagotravibhāga),[22] and in a body of Mādhyamaka treatises attributed to Nāgārjuna (e.g., the Dharmadhātustava, "In praise of the Dharmadhatu").

...

Rigpa has two aspects, namely kadag and lhun grub. Kadag means "purity" or specifically "primordial purity". Lhun grub in Tibetan normally implies automatic, self-caused or spontaneous actions or processes. As quality of rigpa it means "spontaneous presence". It may also mean "having a self-contained origin", being primordially Existent, without an origin, self-existent.

...

Buddha-nature is immaculate. It is profound, serene, unfabricated suchness, an uncompounded expanse of luminosity; nonarising, unceasing, primordial peace, spontaneously present nirvana.

...

The practical training of the Dzogchen path is traditionally, and most simply, described [as:] To see directly the Absolute state, the Ground of our being is the View; the way of stabilising that view, and making it an unbroken experience is Meditation; and integrating the View into our entire reality, and life, is what is meant by Action.

In Chan and Zen schools this is generally discussed under the heading of Buddha Nature and "One's True Nature":

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha-nature

... the ultimate universal ground also has always been with the Buddha-Essence (Tathagatagarbha), and this essence in terms of the universal ground has been taught by the Tathagata. The fools who do not know it, because of their habits, see even the universal ground as (having) various happiness and suffering and actions and emotional defilements. Its nature is pure and immaculate, its qualities are as wishing-jewels; there are neither changes nor cessations. Whoever realizes it attains Liberation

...

This "dharma of the one mind", which is the "original tathagatagarbha", is said to be "calm and motionless" [...] The tathagatagarbha is equated with the "original edge of reality" (bhutakoti) that is beyond all distinctions - the equivalent of original enlightenment, or the essence.

2. Does the Pali Canon support the notion that "Nirvana is the ground layer"? Does this relate to "amatogadha" some how? What's that?

I believe it does. There are many pointers spread around Dependent Origination teachings, and all the descriptions of Nibbana, with references like amatogadha and amata-dhatu, the Buddha's story about him getting "to the end of the world" etc.

3. The ground layer concept sounds similar to luminous mind. However, we know that Nirvana is unconditioned, while the luminous mind is conditioned. Does this "Nirvana is the ground layer" concept connect to the luminous mind in any way?

I don't know why you say "we know" that luminous mind is conditioned. In Mahayana, the fundamental luminosity of mind is considered unconditioned (see Rigpa, Clear Light).

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigpa


• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_mind#Vajrayana

In Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen literature, luminosity ('od gsal) is associated with an aspect of the Ground termed "spontaneous presence" (Lhun grub), meaning a presence that is uncreated and not based on anything causally extraneous to itself. This term is often paired with 'original-purity' (ka dag), which is associated with emptiness (shunyata), and are both seen as inseparable aspects of the Ground.

A way to think about it is considering the two elements Conditioned and the Unconditioned as a whole system, this occurs in the context of the conditioned which is subjected to past present and future phenomena and thinking about them.

Some people hold to the Idea that the Unconditioned has no Cosmological function and this is correct imo but even tho the Unconditioned is not a part of the Cosmology it is still an Integral part of the system as a whole, it is fundamental at that and if it wasn’t a part of the system then it would simply be a different system altogether and an imaginary one at that.

It is part of our language and it is among the discernable, if a person can think about how reality works he might ask prompt the questions;
* does reality exist in some sort of unreality, does it float somehow;) ?
* if unreality then unrelated to reality, thus is this reality like a dream, a self-sustained dream, a persistent self-sustaining ecosystem of a dream with lack of development as a supporting condition?

All these questions can be asked in the context of the world and aggregates, our referable reality can be said to give rise to these questions based on the assumption that there is an unmade unreality to be discerned.

Thus self-directing the ecosystem is set for development of discernment which leads to right intention for self-termination with pre-determined arising. It's termination and abscence; that very discernment of highest good.

If one then agrees that unconditioned element is a fundamental part of the system of language referring to things to be discerned as a truth somehow, part of such language system as a whole it is then natural to infer that what is fundamental could be spoken of as the fundament, a foundation or the basis of something; a ground.

i am saying is that the root of phenomena is desire and foremost supporting condition for their manifestation is Ignorance, so by removing the supporting condition, the phenomena are uprooted and do no manifest. If phenomena do not manifest there is only that which is ground, the unmade state. In this way ground is not brought into being nor is it conditioned but with cessation of suffering[the constructed] it is the primary happiness, unobstructed by any world, the beyond.

the first sentence declares cessation of the constructed, the second sentence declares the beyond as unmade dimension which is if the constructed is not. The most sublime constructed state is the state of neither perception nor non-perception with the cessation of the the phenomena present in that state there is no remaining constructions and thus;

There is that dimension, monks, where there is neither earth, nor
water, nor fire, nor wind; neither dimension of the infinitude of
space, nor dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, nor dimension
of nothingness, nor dimension of neither perception nor
non-perception; neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor
moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor
staying; neither passing away nor arising: unestablished,[1]
unevolving, without support [mental object].[2] This, just this, is
the end of stress.

It can be explained to be the ground because it is the most sublime and underlying reality to the beginningless cycle of constructs and an everpresent alternative [of escape].

There is, monks, an unborn[1] — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If
there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there
would not be the case that escape from the born — become — made —
fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an
unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, escape from the born —
become — made — fabricated is discerned.[2]

A being is and is of the world, a being exists entirely in the world and both the world and the being are constructed and subject to change [evolving]. Thus a being is a construct which experiences the constructed. The constructed states occur in a system which facilitates the occurence of the constructed states, fascilitates existence of the world and experienced states. The constructed [dependently arisen by means of evolving] states that arise are to that extent states of the system. The system which fascilitates the manifestation of various states is in itself unchanging, being the same system all along the system is merely going from one state to another.

One can thus point out an unchanging constant of change.

In this way the system itself can be understood to be unchanging while the states of the system are changing, therefore one can say that the changing gains a footing in the unchanging. With the cessation of dependently arisen states of the system, the system is in the unmade state and the unmade state and the system are thus one and the same because Unmade state is not a state like the made state, it is the system itself without a state per se.

When the created is, only then and to that extent is it said to be gaining a footing. When the created is not, then there are no phenomena to talk about and even the word "created" is created and the word is certainly not 'it' nor is the word 'it' really it, 'it' is just another word for something uncognizable by the senses and mind.

Thus when created is not, there is essentially nothing to talk about because it is beyond the range of objects, elements and entities.

Therefore when one talks about unconditioned as something where what is existence gains no footing, one can only do so from the perspective of non-existence of the world and it's cessation because outside of that is beyond range and there the world gains no footing.

the problem with the matrix movie is that therein the supposed ‘real world’ could well be generated by matrix still, so neo actually has no way of knowing that the whole action movie playing out isn’t a simulation and that he isn’t still in the matrix thinking he has been unplugged.
if one was to remake the movie to adress that problem the ‘real world’ therein would have to be ‘unmade’ without any ‘things/phenomena/information/entities/beings’ and no self or any part of the not-real world would be ‘coming out’ of the simulation after it’s cessation. One could never rightly express on film the ‘unmade’ because one can not express that which is beyond senses by media of the senses.
Furthermore that which is ‘simulation’ and ‘that which simulates’ would have to be conjoined to the extent that both are subject to cessation, as it would turn out the simulation therein would have to be self-sustained, self-simulated and self-directing due to internal causes and conditions, this is because only the made can be a cause for what is made, the unmade is uncaused and does not cause anything for therein there are no causes or conditions, thus no past, present or future either, therefore therein occur no acts of creating, directing, no eventuality at all.

So basically existence of beings is a delusional nightmare self sustained by lack of development, it is like a mirrage

afaik i should be able to give substantially consistent pali canon support for most of this reasoning so that it is more or less irrefutable by the canon itself but full list of references would be 20-30 discourses and excerpts alone 50+ pages. ask if want more details, also the way i express it isn't particularly good i think and can well contain philosophical mistakes.