About Attā and The Root of All Things

Discussion
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I was simply pointing out that Buddhism is not philosophical nihilism, and gave several examples of how it indicates that wisdom is critical to the path. So it does not throw out wisdom in letting go, as you stated that it did, because letting go cannot be obtained without wisdom.

In that knowledge and vision they felt there is the Dhamma, there is the Buddha and there Buddhism differs from other religions etc. They forget the goal.

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I have not spoken about buddhism! I believe there are endless buddhisms. I do not pretent i know buddhism. People’s idea that they must tell me or others what buddhism is…

It is really not difficult to see that knowledge and vision is often only about seeking grip and a major cause of suffering and misery in the world. Endless conflicts arise from it. Often it is protected as Truth itself. In stead of making Nibbana the goal, often people make knowledge and vision the goal. Attached to knowledge and vision. Intoxicated by it they defend it as the one and only true Dhamma, pure Dhamma.

If you investigate, even anicca and change cannot be established as real. But in a way one can make use of what in the end is not truthful. Because the mind is so sensitive for perception. Like using conceit to end conceit. There is not really a me or I who turns from a worldling into an arahant, but conceiving such can still be useful. Things do not have to be true and real to have effects, even wholesome ones.

Making use of deception to end deception.

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Hi Green,

I wasn’t trying to engage you in debate. Whatever you think is fine with me. I was just pointing out what I said I was. I didn’t realize what I wrote was going to provoke such a reaction. Don’t take it personally. I am rarely on D&D don’t involve myself much in anything about it. Thanks

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I know was kind of late to the party, but I once had a Dharma friend who was convinced that the Buddha did believe in a mystic atman that was divorced from the aggregates. It’s definitely a conclusion someone can reach. This friend of mine was a Mahayanist who drew a line from Tathagatagarbha texts like the Nirvana Sutra back to Pali suttas that don’t seem to deny atta as much as qualify it as not being associated with anything impermanent.

There are a couple other things I’ve learned since then (30 years ago now!) that make it unlikely to me:

  1. The Pudagalavada controversy: A tradition recreated a Buddhist version of the Vedic Atman using a passage in a sutra in which the Buddha says that the aggregates are a burden that a person sets down. They took that statement and created a concept of a person who is neither the aggregates nor not the aggregates. That person is who attains liberation and abides in Nirvana. (Hopefully, I’m not oversimplifying their theory…) If Buddhists tacitly accepted that an atman enters Nirvana, why would there be a need to create a theory about a person (pudgala) to do the same thing? At the very least, the history of these ideas must be complex, where an idea is discarded and then recreated with a different parallel idea.
  2. The theories of what is reborn: Different traditions claim that aggregates are reborn rather than an atman. Sometimes what’s reborn is vijnana in early sutras. Sometimes it’s a spirit like a gandharva. Abhidharma theorists created special entities like the Theravada’s vibhanga to explain the karmic linkage from one life to another. This raises the same question: If Buddhists accepted a subtle kind of atman, why all of these different ways of explaining rebirth using other ideas, all of which boil down to “an aggregate passes from one life to the next.”

These two pieces of circumstantial evidence along with later exegesis that tell us explicitly what they thought about the issue makes it difficult for me to believe that atman isn’t denied by Buddhists.

This is not to say Buddhist doctrines couldn’t have been different at the very beginning and then changed with the debates and philosophical development by later disciples. The trouble is, how do we prove anything? My pet theory is that Buddhists were relatively unaffected by Vedic ideas until after the Buddha passed, and then his later disciples encountered the Vedic tradition and had to formulate theories and refutations to compete with it. But that could have happened while the Buddha was still alive, too.

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I can see that expression “one who has put down a burden” (ohitabhāro) as a standard definition of an arahant in the Pali canon - the compound occurs 62 times in total in the Pali tipitaka - in all 3 pitakas and all 5 nikāyās of the suttapitaka - and everytime it is used to describe an arahant.

So the pudgalavādins were not mistaken about it, and it is not such a fringe idea even in the Theravāda Pali canon. What does the Kathāvatthu say about it as the theravādin response to the controversy?

The Theravāda abhidharma doctrinal systematization project may have purged or edited suttas that went against the party line to make them all homogeneous. Verses may have escaped heavy editing to respect metrical concerns and may therefore preserve a doctrinal tradition much closer to the historical Buddha.

What the doctrine meant to the Buddha and what it meant to each early-Buddhist sect are different things. Early-Buddhists did not tacitly accept that an atman enters Nirvana.

An atman cannot enter nirvana. That is to treat an atman as a person who, formerly being outside nirvana, steps into it. Nirvana is the atman’s natural state. It however takes human effort to realize that state as being one’s natural state. That effort starts by identifying all that is not the atman (anātmaka), and distancing oneself from them, and focussing one’s attention inwards (on the atman) in meditation.

So an arahant may tacitly accept that that nirvāna is the state of the ātman, but other early buddhists would not have accepted it, they needed another word to avoid using the word atman to make sense of the EBT definition of arahant.

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Hi, @srkris .
If I may, I’d be interested to know your thoughts on whether the Buddha might be considered a kind of crypto-Samkhya? If you believe this to be the case, I’d be curious to understand the reasoning that led you to this perspective.

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No I dont think so. Calling Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, or his teachings by the name crypto-Sāṅkhya would imply there was an early-Sāṅkhya apart from early-Buddhism. That is not what I’ve suggested.

I think Early-Buddhist Texts and doctrine may have been originally called Sāṅkhya (literally means “the enumerating” or “numerically ordering” philosophy) by the non-Buddhist Indian philosophical schools (that are comprised within the umbrella term ‘Hinduism’ - such as Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā, Vedānta, Yoga, Vaiśeṣika, Nyāya etc). I know for sure that the yoga school and the vedanta school recognize early-Sāṅkhya as one of the most important early philosophies. But we dont have any surviving texts of early-Sāṅkhya. It appears that early-Sāṅkhya had texts described as Sāṅkhya-sūtras (not extant today), but they could have very well been describing sūtras/suttas from EBTs

Those other early-philosophies and philosophers may not have seen the founder of Buddhism as a ‘Buddha’ as that would appear to acknowledge/accept his claim to enlightenment which they wouldnt have accepted as the EBTs patently contain a lot of unverifiable (very likely exaggerated) claims. So for these co-eval early philosophers/philosophies describe it as a “bauddha-darśana” (“buddhist philosophy”) would not have been acceptable to them. So they possibly invented the name Sāṅkhya to accurately describe early Buddhist texts and doctrine, as no other Indic philosophy enumerates or numerically orders its philosophical elements like EBTs.

Need to check what the early-Jains and early-Ājīvakas called early-Buddhism.

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Buddhism and Animism