A quick aside about a bad argument is in SN22.59

The Watercooler
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So at SN22.59 there is a good argument:

“Mendicants, form is not-self.
“Rūpaṁ, bhikkhave, anattā.

For if form were self, it wouldn’t lead to affliction. And you could compel form:
Rūpañca hidaṁ, bhikkhave, attā abhavissa, nayidaṁ rūpaṁ ābādhāya saṁvatteyya, labbhetha ca rūpe:

‘May my form be like this! May it not be like that!’
‘evaṁ me rūpaṁ hotu, evaṁ me rūpaṁ mā ahosī’ti.

But because form is not-self, it leads to affliction. And you can’t compel form:
Yasmā ca kho, bhikkhave, rūpaṁ anattā, tasmā rūpaṁ ābādhāya saṁvattati, na ca labbhati rūpe:

‘May my form be like this! May it not be like that!’
‘evaṁ me rūpaṁ hotu, evaṁ me rūpaṁ mā ahosī’ti.

Taking rupa here to essentially mean body, and the wishes in question to be things like “may I not have this illness” and “may I not be wrinkled and old” rather than “may I raise my left arm” of “may I get a bit fitter through jogging”, this argument seems to be a reasonable pointing out of the fact that our body is subject to aging and death, and nothing we wish or think can ultimately change that fact, this is a robust argument given the laws of thermodynamics, so despite billionaires still desperately trying to prove it wrong, I think we can accept it as a rational position.

However, this good argument is followed by what seems to be a very bad argument, one that does not match our intuitions anywhere near as well, and which also seems to contradict a great deal of what we are told elsewhere in the early Buddhist texts:

“Mendicants, perception is not-self.
“saññā , bhikkhave, anattā.

For if perception were self, it wouldn’t lead to affliction. And you could compel perception:
saññañca hidaṁ, bhikkhave, attā abhavissa, nayidaṁ saññā ābādhāya saṁvatteyya, labbhetha ca saññā:

‘May my perception be like this! May it not be like that!’
‘evaṁ me saññā hotu, evaṁ me saññā mā ahosī’ti.

But because perception is not-self, it leads to affliction. And you can’t compel perception:
Yasmā ca kho, bhikkhave, saññā anattā, tasmā saññā ābādhāya saṁvattati, na ca labbhati saññā:

‘May my perception be like this! May it not be like that!’
‘evaṁ me saññā hotu, evaṁ me saññā mā ahosī’ti.

Leaving aside the extent to which this argument is less rationally appealing and obvious than the argument about the physical body, let us look at how it contradicts a major statement of doctrine in DN9:

“Regarding this, Poṭṭhapāda, those ascetics and brahmins who say that
“Tatra, poṭṭhapāda, ye te samaṇabrāhmaṇā evamāhaṁsu:
a person’s perceptions arise and cease without cause or reason are wrong from the start.
‘ahetū appaccayā purisassa saññā uppajjantipi nirujjhantipī’ti, āditova tesaṁ aparaddhaṁ.
Why is that?
Taṁ kissa hetu?
Because a person’s perceptions arise and cease with cause and reason.
Sahetū hi, poṭṭhapāda, sappaccayā purisassa saññā uppajjantipi nirujjhantipi.
With training, certain perceptions arise and certain perceptions cease.
Sikkhā ekā saññā uppajjati, sikkhā ekā saññā nirujjhati.

So the Buddha here says that by training our perceptions, it is possible to make perceptions arise and perceptions cease.

I.e exactly: ‘May my perception be like this! May it not be like that!’

The rest of the sutta then goes on to describe the absolute summit of perceptions, and the transcendence by wisdom of that summit, all through intentional action and training of said perception.

This leads us to question exactly why this “aggregate” is pressed into the same exact argument here as the aggregate of (physical) forms.

Now, the five aggregates do not occur together in DN except where their occurance is not paralleld in the Chinese, i.e at DN14 (outside the bare mention of them by Sariputta in DN33 and DN34). However, as in the DN9 case with sanna, they all, give or take, occur individually, and it is notable that they all, give or take, serve as foundations for arguments about the attta at various points in that collection as in:

rūpa:

This self has form, made up of the four principal states, and produced by mother and father. Since it’s annihilated and destroyed when the body breaks up, and doesn’t exist after death, that’s how this self becomes rightly annihilated.
’‘yato kho, bho, ayaṁ attā rūpī cātumahābhūtiko mātāpettikasambhavo kāyassa bhedā ucchijjati vinassati, na hoti paraṁ maraṇā, ettāvatā kho, bho, ayaṁ attā sammā samucchinno hotī’ti.
DN1

viññāṇa:

‘That which is called “the eye”, “the ear”, “the nose”, “the tongue”, and also “the body”: that self is impermanent, not lasting, transient, perishable.
That which is called “mind” or “sentience” or “consciousness”: that self is permanent, everlasting, eternal, imperishable, remaining the same for all eternity.
‘yaṁ kho idaṁ vuccati cakkhuṁ itipi sotaṁ itipi ghānaṁ itipi jivhā itipi kāyo itipi, ayaṁ attā anicco addhuvo asassato vipariṇāmadhammo.
’Yañca kho idaṁ vuccati cittanti vā manoti vā viññāṇanti vā ayaṁ attā nicco dhuvo sassato avipariṇāmadhammo sassatisamaṁ tatheva ṭhassatī’ti.
DN1

saññā:

“Sir, is perception a person’s self, or are perception and self different things?”
“Saññā nu kho, bhante, purisassa attā, udāhu aññā saññā añño attā”ti?
DN9

vedanā:

How do those who regard the self regard it?
Kittāvatā ca, ānanda, attānaṁ samanupassamāno samanupassati?

They regard feeling as self:
Vedanaṁ vā hi, ānanda, attānaṁ samanupassamāno samanupassati:

‘Feeling is my self.
’‘vedanā me attā’ti.

Or they regard it like this: ‘Feeling is definitely not my self. My self does not experience feeling.’

‘Na heva kho me vedanā attā, appaṭisaṁvedano me attā’ti iti vā hi, ānanda, attānaṁ samanupassamāno samanupassati.
DN15

saṅkhārā I will leave aside for the moment as the point can be made without her.

So if we actually have quite substantive and detailed examinations of all the aggregates individually, including the question of whether they can be an atta, all discussed in detail in DN, why do we not have any discussion of them as a group (outside the bare mention of them by Sariputta in DN33 and DN34)?

And why does our discussion of them in SN have this logical weakness when each of the terms is critiqued with the same form of argument?

And if SN knew the five aggregates and then DN, coming later, forgot them, why do they suddenly reappear in the abhidhamma projects, that everyone agrees are the beginnings of the sectarian schools and later than the long collection?

Here is a simple suggestion that accounts for all these features:

DN was already relatively fixed, at least including DN1, DN2, DN9 and DN15, before SN was compiled. SN therefore had to connect the various arguments given about atta listed above and “unify” them, which it does in SN22.59.

This “unification” is problematic because perception is actually not exactly like form, as the preceding arguments and sutta passages show.

Therefore the reason SN knew the five aggregates, DN forgot them, then the AB (abhidhamma) remembered them again is simply because in reality

DN was compiled first with individual “attas” based on individual “aggregates” SN was compiled second, unifying the treatment of these wrong views and merging them into the 5 aggregates we know and love today, and AB was composed third and merely continued the project of synthesis and uniformization that SN began.

I am still working on my other post, I just thought that this didn’t quite fit there at this point so I would give it as an “aside”.

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I don’t see a fundamental difference between perception and body with respect to how much we can control them.

Ultimately, they both arises due to causes and conditions. Don’t eat a lot, get thin. Eat unhealthily, get sick.

Turn the head to read chinese words, understand the meaning if one had learned Chinese before. Close eyes, visual perception stopped.

Just so happens that certain causes and conditions are linked to the volition.

And many are out of the control of volition.

As you mentioned, body cannot be stopped from ultimatly dying.

Same with perception. When the supporting condition of a body is gone, perception of that life dies. Depending on whether there is still ignorance, then either rebirth happens, and perception continues or rebirth ends and perception does not arise again.

Our wish to make it otherwise in the case above cannot be fulfilled. We cannot wish for perception to still arise after parinibbāna nor can we wish for perception not to be there for next rebirth (except for that one realm where there’s no mind).

Let say for the next rebirth of being a human, we cannot control that we retain our memories. We cannot control that we have to relearn language or that the perception of language from past life can reappear. Some people can remember past lives learnings, some not.

Just because perception can be trained to be very fine tuned control in this lifetime, doesn’t mean it violates the second discourse that it cannot ultimately be controlled. Just the same for body, one can theorectically get the supernormal powers and possibly transform the body in extreme ways that seems to indicate complete control of body. But even mutants who can shapeshift will die too. Same with perception.

ps. even arahants who never learned chinese before but has mastered control of perception, cannot possibly magically perceive meaning when they look at chinese words.

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Incorrect. The SN sutta was collected not for any arguments. It was recorded in a practical sense and experience for Buddhist monks, rather than on idealistic and systematic theory.

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But I don’t take what you say seriously anymore @thomaslaw , because you never give any actual reasoned arguments for you claims, you merely endlessly cite the same exact books from Choong Mun Keat and appeal to the authority of Yin Shun as if he where an infallible guru who “solved” Buddhism.

So I no longer accept it when you say “correct” or “incorrect”, as if you where some sort of teacher or authority or guru yourself, because I know that there are no reasons that you will give, of your own arguments and evidence and thoughts, beyond yet another pdf page from Choong Mun Keat explaining that Yin Shun said such and such or so and so.

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I also do not consider you have given any actual reasoned arguments for your claims regarding the text SN 22. 59. It seems you do not really know what is textual criticism in comparative studies in EBTs (in both structure and content).

The text is clearly short, simple prose work, and also centers mainly on practice and experience for Buddhist monks.

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I give the fundamental difference in the example:

Because a person’s perceptions arise and cease with cause and reason.
Sahetū hi, poṭṭhapāda, sappaccayā purisassa saññā uppajjantipi nirujjhantipi.
With training, certain perceptions arise and certain perceptions cease.
Sikkhā ekā saññā uppajjati, sikkhā ekā saññā nirujjhati.

…

“Poṭṭhapāda, from the time a mendicant here takes charge of their own perception, they proceed from one stage to the next, progressively reaching the peak of perception.
“Yato kho, poṭṭhapāda, bhikkhu idha sakasaññī hoti, so tato amutra tato amutra anupubbena saññaggaṁ phusati.

Standing on the peak of perception they think,
Tassa saññagge ṭhitassa evaṁ hoti:

‘Intentionality is bad for me, it’s better to be free of it.
‘cetayamānassa me pāpiyo, acetayamānassa me seyyo.

For if I were to intend and choose, these perceptions would cease in me, and other coarser perceptions would arise.
Ahañceva kho pana ceteyyaṁ, abhisaṅkhareyyaṁ, imā ca me saññā nirujjheyyuṁ, aññā ca oḷārikā saññā uppajjeyyuṁ;

Why don’t I neither make a choice nor form an intention?’
yannūnāhaṁ na ceva ceteyyaṁ na ca abhisaṅkhareyyan’ti.

They neither make a choice nor form an intention.
So na ceva ceteti, na ca abhisaṅkharoti.

Those perceptions cease in them, and other coarser perceptions don’t arise.
Tassa acetayato anabhisaṅkharoto tā ceva saññā nirujjhanti, aññā ca oḷārikā saññā na uppajjanti.

They touch cessation.
So nirodhaṁ phusati.

And that, Poṭṭhapāda, is how the progressive cessation of perception is attained with awareness.
Evaṁ kho, poṭṭhapāda, anupubbābhisaññānirodhasampajānasamāpatti hoti.

So unlike the body it is possible to, with awareness, completely cease or surmount perception.

Just to be clear, that is not what Anattalakkhaṇasutta says, it never says “ultimately”, and it is out of charitability that we take the argument about rupam to be about things like immortality etc.

All it says is:

For if form were self, it wouldn’t lead to affliction.

And

For if form were self: you could compel form: May my form be like this! May it not be like that!’

Now the first argument is true, in the sense that having a body leads to the affliction of sickness, old age and death.

But the second argument is clearly NOT TRUE, in that we can compel our body to sit, stand, raise it’s left arm etc. It requires a charitable reading to make it reasonable, a reading you give, and I agree with.

The problem arises with the first argument when applied to perception:

For if perception were self, it wouldn’t lead to affliction.

But the Buddha teaches

"from the time a mendicant here takes charge of their own perception, they proceed from one stage to the next, progressively reaching the peak of perception, They touch cessation..

this is not affliction. so the training of the perception leads not to affliction but to cessation,

Therefore the argument for perception, as given at SN22.59, fails.

Metta.

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Thats my point though @thomaslaw what you “consider” or think “correct” or “incorrect” is no longer of any interest to me, If I want your opinion I will simply email Choong Mun Keat and ask for it.

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This is not important for me at all. I am only interested in Buddha Dhamma based on SN/SA suttas.

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Yes, I think that is a true and admirable fact about you @thomaslaw and I commend you for your commitment. It’s just that I am no longer convinced you have anything to say to me that i can’t just read in Choong Mun Keat.

Of course your tireless advocacy and defense of your position in my threads need not concern me or even be about me, you are presenting the counter position so that others who might read my work are under no illusion that Yin Shun, and Choong Mun Keat, hold a different position. Good.

But your “correct” and “incorrect” literally just means “agrees with Yin Shun/Choong Mun Keat” and “disagrees with Yin Shun/Choong Mun Keat”. So it’s not all that useful beyond a certain point, even for others.

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Incorrect.

As stated about,
" It seems you do not really know what is textual criticism in comparative studies in EBTs (in both structure and content).
The text is clearly short, simple prose work, and also centers mainly on practice and experience for Buddhist monks."

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incorrect.

The text is clearly anthologizing from previously existing prose work and fails to center on the fundamental training experience of Buddhist monks, the 8th step in the path, sammsamadhi, which is the four jhana.

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Therefore, as I stated above, “The SN sutta was collected not for any arguments. It was recorded in a practical sense and experience for Buddhist monks, rather than on idealistic and systematic theory.”

Also, “The text is clearly short, simple prose work, and also centers mainly on practice and experience for Buddhist monks.”

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I think at this point we are going round in circles @thomaslaw and so I will leave it at that, as always, appreciate your tirelessness.

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This is because I am interested in Buddha Dhamma based on SN/SA suttas.

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This is sort of similar to saying when the body is sleeping or in spa or in deep meditation, it doesn’t seems to suffer, thus no affliction. Whereas in some other times, it does gives affliction. Same with perception. Just because it’s possible to attain to the state of cessation of perception and feeling, doesn’t mean that perception doesn’t cause affliction at some other times. Eg. when people bully us, perceiving them as enemy causes hatred to arise so easily and thus causes affliction.

Also, ultimately speaking, since the cessation of perception and feeling itself is impermanent, that too is a way which we can perceive no total control over perception.

Even if the practitioner wishes to remain in there, they will have to come out and the normal rules for perception comes back again. If want to get into there, still have to follow the procedure to get there. Just like if we want fit body, we have to do gym.

If we want no more body, someone can theoretically attain and get reborn to the formless realms. In that sense, just because one could choose to cease the body or perception, doesn’t imply that SN22.59 fails. There’s no fundamental difference between them. Other than the laws of physics applies to body.

Metta.

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I think that we are also going round in circles now, I have pointed out how the argument at DN9 is fundamentally different with regards to perception, and suggests that a person can in fact say “may my perception be like this or that” and can in fact train their perception in such a way that it does not lead to affliction but rather to cessation.

That there is a Theravada reading of these arguments that saves the day for someone who wants to maintain the SN text as valid is not in dispute.

My claim is that textually there are problems between what is actually stated in DN and SN that need resolution.

My thoughts regarding the Theravadin method of resolving them are a separate discussion, but suffice it to say that I think they fail, mostly around the incoherence they seem to arrive at with regards to real aggregates and unreal selves.

More or less my entire focus on the EBT since joining this forum has been a multi year project in overcoming this incoherence and discovering what the EBT actually unequivocally say on the subject.

Doing so it has become more and more apparent that the anthologies and indexes (thematic and numeric agamas) depend on the actual prose agamas and not the other way round.

Hence my examination of this case in a way that takes DN9 (more) seriously when compared to SN22.59

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To some extend, we can control the aggregates.

Another way to make sense of it is that there’s no immediate control. Like we are not able to wish for perception to be this and then without training it becomes like that. With training of course we can trace the conditioning to the training, not to the self.

As one progress on the path, there’s more control over the mind, as perceived by others. Yet, internally, there could actually be less control, as the finer states of stillness involves a lot of letting go including letting go of the volition, control, etc.

Let’s say you’re right in that there’s a fundamental conflict and that we can fully control perception. Then one might as well identify with perception as the self.

It gels with a danger of falling into the trap that one thinks the mind is the true self when one has liberation of the mind via the Jhānas (almost or entirely full control of mind), but not yet liberation by wisdom. It’s wisdom that we need to cultivate to eradicate the possibilities of all defilements from ever arising again.

And that possibility plays into the role of we are unable to control aggregates via Jhānas forever. Sooner or later, something changes, we fall from it and then the uneradicated defilements becomes the dominant force, and vice versa going up the realms of saṁsara.

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I don’t think you can just select one sutta from SN and draw all sorts of unwarranted conclusions from it. It’s called linked for a reason.

SN 1.25

“When a mendicant is perfected, proficient, “Yo hoti bhikkhu arahaṁ katāvī, with defilements ended, bearing the final body: Khīṇāsavo antimadehadhārī; would they say, ‘I speak’, Ahaṁ vadāmītipi so vadeyya, or even ‘they speak to me’?” Mamaṁ vadantītipi so vadeyyā”ti.

“When a mendicant is perfected, proficient, “Yo hoti bhikkhu arahaṁ katāvī, with defilements ended, bearing the final body: Khīṇāsavo antimadehadhārī; they would say, ‘I speak’, Ahaṁ vadāmītipi so vadeyya, and also ‘they speak to me’. Mamaṁ vadantītipi so vadeyya; Skillful, understanding the world’s labels, Loke samaññaṁ kusalo viditvā, they’d use these terms as no more than expressions.” Vohāramattena so vohareyyā”ti.

“When a mendicant is perfected, proficient, “Yo hoti bhikkhu arahaṁ katāvī, with defilements ended, bearing the final body: Khīṇāsavo antimadehadhārī; is such a mendicant drawing close to conceit Mānaṁ nu kho so upagamma bhikkhu, if they’d say, ‘I speak’, Ahaṁ vadāmītipi so vadeyya; or even ‘they speak to me’?” Mamaṁ vadantītipi so vadeyyā”ti.

“Someone who has given up conceit has no ties, “Pahīnamānassa na santi ganthā, the ties of conceit are all dissipated. Vidhūpitā mānaganthassa sabbe; Though that intelligent person has transcended conceiving, Sa vītivatto maññataṁ sumedho, they’d still say, ‘I speak’, Ahaṁ vadāmītipi so vadeyya. and also ‘they speak to me’. Mamaṁ vadantītipi so vadeyya, Skillful, understanding the world’s labels, Loke samaññaṁ kusalo viditvā; they’d use these terms as no more than expressions.” Vohāramattena so vohareyyā”ti.

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I’ve commented on an analysed literally hundreds of these suttas across dozens of threads. In this particular case, since I was using SN22.59 as a starting point to analyse the technical terms in the teaching as i had done for DN1 and DN2 in my thread

https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/buddhism-at-the-beginning-of-the-prose-suttas/

I thought I would remark on some aspects of it that did not necessarily fit there.

i cite 6 suttas in the post at the head of this thread.

My conclusion is that there is a textual tension between saying

“a mendicant here takes charge of their own perception , they proceed from one stage to the next, progressively reaching the peak of perception .”
which is explicitly said at DN9

and saying that it is impossible to say ‘May my perception be like this! May it not be like that!’
which is explicitly said at SN22.59

This conclusion is not just warranted, it is also a manifest fact.

What your qoute from SN1.25 has to do with saññā, which is what my post was about, and which is a word not used in SN1.25, is presently beyond me, so perhaps you can elaborate a bit, instead of just

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Actually Joseph, on this one, I think you are wrong. You don’t like the SN and have been clear that you prefer the prose narratives of MN and DN to the classical sutta form that SN presents. You haven’t presented any scholarship that informs your belief that prose narrative predates the sutta form, either within the larger tradition of Indian literature itself, or even within the Buddhist tradition, so I am sorry to say this, but it makes you look like you are cherry picking a sutta here or there out of over 2000 suttas in the SN that conforms to your bias.

What your qoute from SN1.25 has to do with saññā, which is what my post was about, and which is a word not used in SN1.25, is presently beyond me, so perhaps you can elaborate a bit,

It has to do with “I” and “my” and how it can be used conventionally by people with the appropriate grasp.

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