A few translation contexts for anattā as not self

[Brahmali]

I haven’t properly read Kuan’s article, but here are a few preliminary thoughts.

The idea that anything regarded as an attā must be subject to control is not peculiar to MN 35. In fact it is a core aspect of the Dhamma found in such suttas at the Anattālakkhaṇa Sutta, SN 22.59. The exact relationship of the controller to the controlled is not crucial, and several possibilities are possible. Typically the suttas give four ways of relating the supposed attā to the aggregates: material form (etc.) is the attā, or the attā owns material form, or material form is in the attā, or the attā is in material form (MN 44). Except for the first of these, they all allow for control and the controlled to co-exist as part of the attā.

Kuan relates his critique of MN 35 to Upanishadic and Jain ideas of what an attā is supposed to be. Although the Buddha critiqued the doctrines of others, it would be a mistake to think that the Buddha’s teachings are limited to this. The Buddha’s doctrine is ultimately derived from his own personal insight, and it is this more than anything else that shaped the way he taught. In other words, the Buddha is not necessarily concerned with refuting any particular religious tenet, as Kuan suggests. (P.13: “If so, the idea of ‘self’ refuted in this text is obviously not that of Brahmanism. Then, which religion‘s tenet is the Buddha refuting in this context?”) This argument becomes especially weighty if Saccaka was not Jain at all, as argued by Bhante Sujato.

[sujato]

@Brahmali

the Buddha is not necessarily concerned with refuting any particular religious tenet

Especially given the vast range of self doctrines mentioned in the EBTs. I think it would be a mistake to assume that all doctrines of self required that the self be an agent, a controller. Certainly this is not the case in folk notions of the soul.

Such doctrines would fall solely under the saṅkhārakkhandha, and in fact that is the very purpose of that category. A purely material self has no intentionality at all. That’s why, I presume, the aggregates are depicted as the subject of control rather than the agent.

[DaoYaoTao]

There is a huge difference between modern notions of self and ancient notions of soul. The bottom line, it seems, is that the anatta teaching is actually a no-soul teaching rather than a not-self teaching. The idea that there is not in humans (or anything else) an unchanging, underlying essence. So in this context there is no significant distinction between soul and essence; they are basically synonyms. So @sujato and @Brahmali are both correct. But it is impossible to understand unless you first understand the concept of an unchanging essential soul; even more reason to use the word soul rather than self. If the word soul was used in the first place, I would never have started the whole no-self vs not-self thread, because the Buddha actually allows for the modern notion of self!

It is simple really and not a big deal to any modern atheist who already doesn’t believe in an unchanging essence. Whereas an atheist would certainly be surprised and somewhat puzzled to be told she doesn’t have a self! By the term ‘self’, I mean the modern concept of self. The self that grows and develops and changes. The self that goes to the gym, goes to the temple, meditates, studies, learns, improves and is constantly changing into (hopefully) a better person intellectually, physically and morally. The self that gets old, gets sick and dies. The Buddha allows for such a notion of self, as does the entire western self-help industry!

Put in that way, it is actually misleading and probably sort of dishonest to call it a not-self teaching. No-soul captures it much more honestly than not-self. It also means that Buddha allows for the modern idea of self: a self that is constantly changing both in mind and body

[Mat]

@DaoYaoTao

We may add that it is also important not to cling to views regarding atta and anatta as we watch the five aggregates arise and pass away.

That’s right. The Buddha asks monks to contemplate (apart from meditate on) the Four Noble Truths (SN 56.45) and the Dependant Origination. I think this helps take out the ‘self’ out of the process (that is mistaken for the self -SN 12.35).

Also in the wider Four Noble Truths, the first noble truth unstatisfactoriness (dukkha) is to be comprehensively (deeply) understood. This involves insight into the three characteristics (tilakkhana) of phenomena. Contemplating the moment to moment impermanence of phenomena and unsatisfactoriness of phenomena sets the scene to contemplate the dependently originated nature of phenomena (2nd noble truth).

The causally arisen nature of phenomena (moment to moment) is a good antidote for any Self view which often depends on something solid and persisting. Practitioners can break through into not-self from contemplating the process of perception, which is easily accessible (compared to rebirth).

This seems to set up the right view to progress further into dispassion: SN 12.61

with metta

Mat

[DKervick]

@DaoYaoTao

The bottom line, it seems, is that the anatta teaching is actually a no-soul teaching rather than a not-self teaching. The idea that there is not in humans (or anything else) an unchanging, underlying essence

I don’t think that has been established.

@DaoYaoTao

By the term ‘self’, I mean the modern concept of self. The self that grows and develops and changes. The self that goes to the gym, goes to the temple, meditates, studies, learns, improves and is constantly changing into (hopefully) a better person intellectually, physically and morally. The self that gets old, gets sick and dies.

If that self exists, then it would seem that at the death of an arahant, following the attainment of Nibbana, that self must either, (i) cease to exist, or (ii) continue to exist in some other way. If it ceases to exist, then the Buddha is an annihilationist. If it continues to exist in some other way, then what way is that, and why did the Buddha decline to say?

It seems more consistent with the Buddha’s teachings overall to say that a self doesn’t cease to exist at the death of the arahant, because the arahant’s self always had only a tenuously real, somewhat illusory and constructed nature to begin with, and so there was never any real existent to cease - at least given the Buddha’s understanding of existence.

The practitioner can eventually come to a full grasp of this process, and a transformed relationship to it, by understanding directly the causal processes that make it up, and by gradually ceasing to conceptualize, feel or regard anything that falls within one’s experience as being oneself or pertaining to oneself.

[suci1]

Definitely Visvakarman is defined as the creator from the outside, and the controller of the worldly outcomes. (R.V.10.82)
Again Hiranyagarbha creates and controls by determined ordinances, the earth, heavens, etc. (R.V. 1. 121)
Sure that Prajapati is the Lord controlling the creatures it has produced.

But what about this Upaniṣadic Atman = Brahman?

Note that in the Ṛg Veda, soul is called manas, atman and asu.
Atman became (the ubiquitous & pervasive) “vital breath” in later Indian philosophy. And (the ubiquitous & pervasive) Manas was, in satta, viewed as the seat of thought and emotion in the brain/heart locus.

How this atman as vital breath, did become the ultimate essence or reality in man and the cosmos, would have remained a mystery, if there had not been some passages in the Vedic litterature to clarify the matter.
First, in the Ṛg Veda, there is this excerpt where the Ṛsi (sage), discriminating deeper and deeper, moves from the vital breath (asu) to the blood, and thus to atman, as the inner self of the cosmos.
Then in TaittĀr. 1.23, Prajapati after having produced his self (as the cosmos) with his self, moved into it. And in TBr., this atman is defined as being ubiquitous (pervasive).
Thus we have a pre-Upaniṣadic Vedic literature with an atman defined first as the “vital breath” in man, then as the “self of the world”, and then as the “self in man”.

But what is this inner reality of man, of the Upaniṣads?
There is quite an equivocalness attached to its nature; as it is defined in a diversity of senses.

• essence of food (physical part/body) - annamaya atman.
• vital breath - pranamaya atman - behind the scabbard of the body.
• will - manomaya atman - behind the vital breath. [control?]
• consciousness - vijñanamaya atman - within the will.
• self as pure bliss - anandamaya atman - behind the consciousness. (TUp.)

Therefore, was “control” the primary concern of Buddha; or was it “bliss”, when it comes to “self”? - like in:

I dwell contemplating impermanence in all formations, perceiving suffering in what is impermanent, perceiving nonself in what is suffering, perceiving abandonment, perceiving fading away, perceiving cessation.
SN 55.3
or
If, bhikkhus, form were self, this form would not lead to affliction.
SN 22.59

We have already seen above that “control” is the prerogative of mano, and is more related to the “I” (as will) than the “self” (as bliss).
Again, mano is, for the first time in Indian philosophy, located solely in satta in Buddhism. (maybe a relevant remark here - or maybe another insane statement from a troll ?).

To resume: "It is not self, because it is dukkha - and dukkha is not “bliss”.
And where dukkha comes from? -Impermanence.
Simple!
I really can’t understand why some people have to go over such lengthy, abysmal and pseudo-intellectual logorrhean knowledges, to dilute such a simple understanding - (or maybe I do )

[cjmacie]

Not claiming any expertise in breadth of understanding or philology of the suttas, but having waded through so much of it that my current sense of clarity stems from the following considerations (aka a two-cents worth, possibly in need of correction):

1: The additional problem to consider of “dhamma” as “Things”, i.e. something that’s there, implying an ontological entity – – better phenomena, i.e. appearances

2: And then the whole (above) no self / not self issue, whether with or without hyphen…

Better “void of” , “without”, … in the direction of the notion I’ve found most clear in this situation: “free of/from”

‘A-/an-’ as the so-called “alpha-privitive” (in the context of classical Greek) as in deprived of, or “free of/from”, meaning just does not pertain, not to be bothered with at all.

E.g. the example “aletheia” (“truth”) i.e. a-letheia where letheia denotes “forgetfulness” (as in the river “Lethe” which, in Greek mythology, the dead cross through to cleanse memories (attachments?)). “Not- / no- forgetfulness” implies the sort of Aristotelian either-or logic (logic of non-contradiction), whereas “free from forgetfulness” implies not being limited, not trapped in the dualisms – is/is not, isn’t/not isn’t, …

3: The two perspectives re-enforce each other, in that linguistic preoccupation with “thing-ness” (nouns) goes back to Aristotelian ontology so deeply embedded in Western culture and language, as well as the Aristotelian logic of non-contradiction – either “is” or “is not”.

I think of the Buddha perspective as 1) the ontological bias liberated by the phenomenological perspective – experience of “object” involves most immediately just “appearance” (phano), from which (mundane) conditioning infers contact with some “thing” out there; and 2) the “self” as enduring substance (ontology, again) is simply something to get free of, released from, as it is not experientially verified by deeply reflective experience (sati, vipassana,…).

4: This topic comes up again and again (ad nauseum, IMO) across all the on-line English-language “Buddhist” discussion groups. As, I suspect, Western mind (or any mind that can discourse in English) just can’t seem to get over, get beyond “itself”.

Perhaps the Buddha’s message had to simply with radically re-framing of, release from the issue of the Vedic “Self”, as the be-all and end-all of religious endeavor; rather than having to do with the modern, more highly developed, e.g. in the sense of Romanticism, “autobiographical self” (to use Antonio Damasio’s term*); this modern elaboration of “self” being the one so prone to disintegration (psychosis, etc.) when confronted with deep meditation. The mundane “self” the Buddha addresses may be more on the level of Damasio’s “core self”, the level having to do with agency, ownership, control. That being built on the level prior to that, the “protoself” that has to do with any organism’s sense of its own boundaries, its individuality and concern for survival; in any case, all these hypothetical constructs of “self”, in Damasio’s scheme, remain, by implication, transient and expedient (mundane) rather than in any way either ontological or metaphysical.)

Not to reduce the Buddha’s teaching to this aspect (as also noted above (DKervick 2017-04-16 04:12:49 UTC #22), but as an important kicking-off point, frame of reference for the religious mind of that time, to clear the deck for the rest of, the soteriological gist of his Dhamma.

Btw: “soul”, I think, goes back to “spiritus”, “pneuma”, or the breath-of-life notion; the po or corporeal spirit in classical Chinese (the white wandering ghost at times). Very difficult term due to the deep ontological overtones of the Christian usage in European languages and culture. And probably “ghost” notions across other cultures.

*Antonio Damasio, “Self Comes to Mind – Constructing the Conscious Brain”, 2010.

[Mat]

“Yaṃ panāniccaṃ dukkhaṃ vipari­ṇāma­dhammaṃ, kallaṃ nu taṃ samanupassituṃ: ‘etaṃ mama, esohamasmi, eso me attā’”ti? “No

.”—“Is what is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change fit to be regarded thus: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my Self’?”—“No
SN 22.59

I don’t think there is an issue of whether in the suttas self (in the modern concept of it) differs from the Soul in how the absence of it is applied. I would really doubt whether there is a difference between the modern concept of the self (albeit, with some additional psychological descriptions) to that of the ancient descriptions of the ‘autobiographical’ self, though it would be again largely incidental.

When the aggregates are seen all of that is captured, as the above sutta suggests.

Any psychological explanation of the self must be understood in the light that psychological structures maybe mislabelled as self as the labellers may themselves still believe there is a self and haven’t seen deeply enough. Imagine a person always believed that they were driving a BMW only to see one day for the first time under the hood that they were driving a . Nothing has essentially changed in the machine they were driving. But it might be a different way to view the world. That might be a shock but one can be prepared for it with good guidance. This is where a ‘balanced approach’ is good. It doesn’t have to be a shock- it can be a happy experience- to be able to finally see through to anatta! To be rid of the view of a self can open the door to dismantling mental health problems like depression, which depend on the belief of the existence of a self -to be sad for, about, feel unloved, worthless etc.

with metta

Mat

[DaoYaoTao]

Hi @DKervick

I agree with you

My only real point is that there is a huge difference between the notion of a constantly changing self that is made of mind and body whose components are constantly changing (CS) and the notion of an unchanging Essential Soul (ES). I think that is a valid point .

Imagine you are reading a sutta where the Buddha is definitely arguing against the idea of ES , but instead the translator makes it read as if the Buddha is arguing against CS. I’m sure you’d agree that the translator is misrepresenting the teachings .

Keeping in mind the distinction above, I’m sure then that you would accept that no-self (no-cs) and no-soul (no-es) take on radically different meanings. So we really need to be careful about which word we use when referring to anatta doctrine. Granted the meaning of anatta in the suttas might change depending on context. But it is certainly a step in the right direct to be acutely aware of the said distinction.

[DaoYaoTao]

@sujato

The more I look at these passages with “not-self” in them, the less sense they make. I wonder if we have just been conditioned by so much Buddhism to see them as meaningful?

@Brahmali

Perhaps it is time to dust off “soul” as a translation for attā.

@Brahmali

An important question is whether “self” properly conveys the meaning of attā as a permanent essence of a being. I am not convinced it does. If it doesn’t, we are making it very hard for readers of the suttas to grasps what is going on. And if it is hard to grasp what “self” refers to, good luck with “not-self.”

Yep, that is exactly what happened to me. It was a revelation to eventually discover that ‘unchanging essence’ was being argued against.

@sujato

to be clear, in the core doctrinal passages where anattā is taught, the primary target is metaphysical doctrines of a soul.

A very significant statement.

@sujato

It is, in my view, not only misleading, but extremely harmful and dangerous, to teach these as if they referred to the self or personality in an empirical psychological sense.

Totally agree. The confusion and frustration I experienced was disquieting. I’m over it now though.

@sujato

Until you know what the Buddha was referring to when he talked about attā, how can you understand the negation of it?

Can’t argue with that.

[AniOrgyen]

Bhante, I was taught from the Vajrayana that sentient beings and things lack an inherent self because every one and thing arises from prior connected causes and conditions. For me this is how I interpret ‘non-self’. But in english, self usually refers to the self of a sentient being. I haven’t tested this but could the word ‘entity’ be a better fit? For example the ‘non-entity’ of all beings and things because both rely on their parts which arise and decay depending on internal and external causes and conditions.

[SarathW1]

In Sri Lanka we used to go to Sunday school and they taught us only Jataka.
(Now days children do not go to Sunday schools as they are burden with their school work)
In GCE (ordinary level) or year 9 we were taught Buddha’s life and few phrases from Suttas (Singalovada, Parabhava and Dhammapada)
Many Sri Lankan’s even do not know the meaning of the five precepts. Anicca, Dukkha and Anatta are written in death notices and nobody knows the meaning of this.

[sujato]

@SarathW1

Many Sri Lankan’s even do not know the meaning of the five precepts. Anicca, Dukkha and Anatta are written in death notices and nobody knows the meaning of this.

Sad to hear. I have seen a similar situation in Thailand, but I always thought Sri Lankans had a better education, at least in the textual knowledge.

[SarathW1]

@sujato

Sad to hear. I have seen a similar situation in Thailand, but I always thought Sri Lankans had a better education, at least in the textual knowledge.

Sutta knowledge was limited to monks. With the development of the internet and the information technology, things are changing. However, only the old people are attracted to learning. Please see some of the videos I have provided in other links.
I learned Buddhism mainly from Westerners.

[Mat]

I don’t think it was that bleak! When I was in school there 30 years ago Buddhism was an O’level topic and it was covered fairly well, if only theoretically. Sil days were there when students took the 8 precepts. The sutta pitaka was had recent translations into Sinhalese but still isn’t widely used by people, though the concept of having to verify something in the suttas has become popular in the last 10 years or so (Where it was earlier just the word of monks who knew pali). There has been a media explosion of dhamma, without the corresponding explosion in general levels of practice, I would say. Meditation is becoming more mainstream. The state run sunday school curriculum has introduced meditation as something Buddhist do, into their primary school books in the last 5 years or so! Overall the last 50 years there has been growth in theory (translations-accessibility) and practice (meditation teachers, centers and it becoming acceptable as mainstream practice). Of course the charms and worshiping Hindu gods still persist, but that is now not the only option available.

[Mat]

I might add the recent proliferation of ‘alternative’ interpretations in Sri Lanka are actually a sign of people exploring the teachings…-and getting it wrong!

[SarathW1]

@Mat

I don’t think it was that bleak!

I am pleased that you are optimistic about it. I can count the people who do not consume alcohol with my fingers.
Maybe I got the wrong friends.

[sujato]

@Mat

exploring the teachings…-and getting it wrong!

Better than not exploring at all.

@SarathW1

I don’t think it was that bleak!

I am pleased that you are optimistic about it.

I wonder how it has changed over the years. It’s hard to pick up something like this, especially if the teachers’ generation is not well versed. Once the knowledge is lost, it is a lot of work to build up again.

[SarathW1]

@sujato

Once the knowledge is lost, it is a lot of work to build up again.

I do not think the knowledge was lost. But it was concealed.

[sujato]

Oh, I don’t mean lost completely, just among the people. Perhaps it hasn’t!

I was thinking my time in Malaysisa, where the government had promoted local language education at the expense of English for several decades. They eventually realized that having a workforce skilled in English was a major bonus in international markets—who’d have thought?

Anyway, so they started promoting English education at the schools again, but it was hard to find qualified teachers. When I was there, around 1999, there was a controversy because they wanted to re-introduce Shakespeare into the school curriculum.