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Does MN 49 answer your questions?

Hi Element,
Thanks for the tip. I've had a good brood over it and looked at a couple of translations. On balance, I'm not sure if it quite nails it, although parts of the sutta address the question in other ways.

The statement you quoted was from bad boy Baka Brahma who feels that he and his abode are eternal and ever lasting. Obviously Mara's been puddling his mind and he's subsequently way off the mark. During the sutta Buddha is also advised to do homage to Brahma (the cheek of it). This bears all the hallmarks of a deity which demands submission and worship and considers himself to be the top pimp daddy.

Buddha knows that there are even more elevated divine bodies which B.B. can't see.

Is all this the Hindu's ultimate Brahman? Not too sure about that. Certainly Baka is trying to sell his abode as some kind of ultimate patch but it doesn't seem to fit with other sources:
brahman is only one of its kind. Also, It is 'one only' and so is bereft of parts. There is 'no second' to brahman; it is non-dual. Any presence or awareness of duality makes the awareness finite. It does not possess any quality. For, to differentiate between brahman as a bearer of a quality and the quality which is attributed to it, is to introduce a difference in the absoluteness of non-duality. Hence it is impersonal (Sanskrit: nirguNa). http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses...ns/brahman.htm

Obviously Baka is within a state of duality, as he and his retinue have a chat with Buddha. He doesn't fit the bill, even if he claims to.

The mention of Consciousness without surface (viññanam anidassanam) in the sutta does, however, offer food for thought.
"'Consciousness without surface,
endless, radiant all around,
has not been experienced through the earthness of earth ... the liquidity of liquid ... the fieriness of fire ... the windiness of wind ... the allness of the all.'[9] http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipit....049.than.html

namaste
Kris