Annihilationism and nuances with 'I' and 'it'

The Watercooler
22

I think all of this is actually pretty promising, there’s a fair amount of agreement between the texts, I am beginning to think it might be possible to sort out the correct attributions here but obviously will need to spend a bit of time with the parallels and chatgpt!

One thing that strikes me about this qoute of yours @yeshe.tenley is that it combines the Pakudha Kaccāyana seven substances with the transmigrations of Gosala (DN2), this is actually quite resonant with the DN1 definition of eternalists:

There are some ascetics and brahmins who are eternalists, who assert that the self and the cosmos are eternal on four grounds.
Santi, bhikkhave, eke samaṇabrāhmaṇā sassatavādā, sassataṁ attānañca lokañca paññapenti catūhi vatthūhi.
And what are the four grounds on which they rely?
Te ca bhonto samaṇabrāhmaṇā kimāgamma kimārabbha sassatavādā sassataṁ attānañca lokañca paññapenti catūhi vatthūhi?

It’s when some ascetic or brahmin—by dint of keen, resolute, committed, and diligent effort, and right application of mind—experiences an immersion of the heart of such a kind that they recollect their many kinds of past lives.
Idha, bhikkhave, ekacco samaṇo vā brāhmaṇo vā ātappamanvāya padhānamanvāya anuyogamanvāya appamādamanvāya sammāmanasikāramanvāya tathārūpaṁ cetosamādhiṁ phusati, yathāsamāhite citte (…) anekavihitaṁ pubbenivāsaṁ anussarati.
That is: one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand rebirths. They remember: ‘There, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn somewhere else. There, too, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn here.’ And so they recollect their many kinds of past lives, with features and details.
Seyyathidaṁ—ekampi jātiṁ dvepi jātiyo tissopi jātiyo catassopi jātiyo pañcapi jātiyo dasapi jātiyo vīsampi jātiyo tiṁsampi jātiyo cattālīsampi jātiyo paññāsampi jātiyo jātisatampi jātisahassampi jātisatasahassampi anekānipi jātisatāni anekānipi jātisahassāni anekānipi jātisatasahassāni: ‘amutrāsiṁ evaṁnāmo evaṅgotto evaṁvaṇṇo evamāhāro evaṁsukhadukkhappaṭisaṁvedī evamāyupariyanto, so tato cuto amutra udapādiṁ; tatrāpāsiṁ evaṁnāmo evaṅgotto evaṁvaṇṇo evamāhāro evaṁsukhadukkhappaṭisaṁvedī evamāyupariyanto, so tato cuto idhūpapanno’ti. Iti sākāraṁ sauddesaṁ anekavihitaṁ pubbenivāsaṁ anussarati.

They say:
So evamāha:
‘The self and the cosmos are eternal, barren, steady as a mountain peak, standing firm like a pillar.
‘sassato attā ca loko ca vañjho kūṭaṭṭho esikaṭṭhāyiṭṭhito;
They remain the same for all eternity, while these sentient beings wander and transmigrate and pass away and rearise.
te ca sattā sandhāvanti saṁsaranti cavanti upapajjanti, atthi tveva sassatisamaṁ.
Why is that?
Taṁ kissa hetu?
Because by dint of keen, resolute, committed, and diligent effort, and right application of mind I experience an immersion of the heart of such a kind that I recollect my many kinds of past lives,
Ahañhi ātappamanvāya padhānamanvāya anuyogamanvāya appamādamanvāya sammāmanasikāramanvāya tathārūpaṁ cetosamādhiṁ phusāmi, yathāsamāhite citte anekavihitaṁ pubbenivāsaṁ anussarāmi.
with features and details.
Seyyathidaṁ—ekampi jātiṁ dvepi jātiyo tissopi jātiyo catassopi jātiyo pañcapi jātiyo dasapi jātiyo vīsampi jātiyo tiṁsampi jātiyo cattālīsampi jātiyo paññāsampi jātiyo jātisatampi jātisahassampi jātisatasahassampi anekānipi jātisatāni anekānipi jātisahassāni anekānipi jātisatasahassāni: “amutrāsiṁ evaṁnāmo evaṅgotto evaṁvaṇṇo evamāhāro evaṁsukhadukkhappaṭisaṁvedī evamāyupariyanto, so tato cuto amutra udapādiṁ; tatrāpāsiṁ evaṁnāmo evaṅgotto evaṁvaṇṇo evamāhāro evaṁsukhadukkhappaṭisaṁvedī evamāyupariyanto, so tato cuto idhūpapanno”ti. Iti sākāraṁ sauddesaṁ anekavihitaṁ pubbenivāsaṁ anussarāmi.

Because of this I know:
Imināmahaṁ etaṁ jānāmi:

“The self and the cosmos are eternal, barren, steady as a mountain peak, standing firm like a pillar.
“yathā sassato attā ca loko ca vañjho kūṭaṭṭho esikaṭṭhāyiṭṭhito;
They remain the same for all eternity, while these sentient beings wander and transmigrate and pass away and rearise.”’
te ca sattā sandhāvanti saṁsaranti cavanti upapajjanti, atthi tveva sassatisaman”’ti.
This is the first ground on which some ascetics and brahmins rely to assert that the self and the cosmos are eternal.
Idaṁ, bhikkhave, paṭhamaṁ ṭhānaṁ, yaṁ āgamma yaṁ ārabbha eke samaṇabrāhmaṇā sassatavādā sassataṁ attānañca lokañca paññapenti.

So in DN1 we have the combination of “a hundred thousand rebirths” etc, very much like the 84000 eons, and we have the “eternal, barren, steady like a mountain peak” very much like the substance theory.

I will need to do a fair bit more work to put this all together, but thanks for the great discussion @yeshe.tenley and @Sunyo !!

1 Like
23

Thanks. At first read it seems primarily to mix up the names, which doctrinally isn’t of much consequence, of course.

1 Like
24

I have investigated some time ago what the sutta’s say about wrong view. I summed this up on a Dutch forum. If you like i will seek for references but for now i only sum it up here:

  1. wrong views always lead to misery in this or next lives. 2. to or birth in hell or in animal realm. 3. No kamma based upon wrong view will lead to results one wishes but suffering. 4. Wrong view opposes Dhamma and are a-Dhamma. 5. Praising wrong view is also a cause for birth in hell realms (i do not say you do).

This is stressed in many sutta’s. If you see this, i feel it is not really tenable that wrong views are not a bad doctrine.

Purity is often associated with becoming impersonal because it goes beyond our common emotional way of living, our likes, dislikes. It is impartial and often people hate this because they do not feel supported. But is purity impersonal? I do not believe this. It is also personal, very personal but in a more stilled, subtle and sensitive way.

25

I’m not saying it isn’t bad. What I’m saying is, I’m not aware of the view of annihilation ever being said to be particularly bad. That is to say, worse than other views. This is in response to yeshe.tenley who said “I know of sutta’s saying Annihilationism is the worst of the extreme views.” They may well exist, but I can’t recall them, at least not Pāli ones.

1 Like
26

SN 22.81

The annihilationist view, regardless of how it is phrased (The Buddha just quotes this view in first person as those who follow the wrong view, hence the ”I” in it).
What if it said: They might not be, and it might not be theirs. They will not be, and it will not be theirs.’

It really doesn’t matter because the result of this view is: ”When someone has such a view, you can expect that they will be repulsed by continued existence, and they will not be repulsed by the cessation of continued existence.”

Please explain why in a sutta about Nibbāna, the Buddha explicity says one should give up all such views that leads to being: ”Repulsed by continued existence and not repulsed by the cessation of continued existence”?

To the Buddha this view is considered bad and wrong.

So let us just drop everything that has to do with ”the self” for a moment and only focus on why the Buddha rejects annihilationism in a sutta about Nibbāna? :pray:

27

Hmm, could it be that we have a discrepancy in how we’re defining ‘wrong view’ or ‘view’? When I say ‘annihilationism’ I mean that view held by Ajita of the hair blanket in DN 2. In relation to that view the Buddha defines non-supramundane right view as its opposite in MN 117. This is the view of eternalism which he labels “right view.” In sutta after sutta the Buddha uses the view held by Ajita of the hair blanket as a contrapositive to non-supramundane right view.

These are the two extreme views of eternalism and annihilationism whereby the Buddha defines the supramundane as existing in the middle. Of those two extreme views, the Buddha considers eternalism to be a factor of the path and says it is “right” in contraposition to the “wrong” annihilationist view. SA 300 and SN 12.46

It is this relative ranking of annihiliationism as “wrong” and eternalism as “right” upon which I said, “I know of sutta’s saying Annihilationism is the worst of the extreme views”, but I admit that I’m unaware of a sutta where the Buddha directly says this.

:pray:

28

Oke, that’s clear. Thanks.

1 Like
29

I think this probably resolves the difficulty for me, annihilationism refers to several different pericopes, with the “it might not be…” pericope being occasuonally praised, and the “there is no mother and father…” pericope being condemned.

If we accept that these are both “annihilationist” then we can simply observe that niether implies the other, so one might be “good” if interpreted corrwctly while the other remains bad.

The formless attainments are described as annihilationist practices in DN1 also, but are also highly praised and practiced throughout the suttas.

So my current thought is that, as is often the case, the buddha has “repurposed” docteinal material from the other schools to elucidate the path.

Still researching though :slight_smile:

30

In this case, it wouldn’t have been difficult to express it either way in Chinese. Often Chinese omits subjects that are people, which can be confusing, but in the passage in MA 6, it’s pretty clear. They use the first person pronoun 我, which doubles as both “I” and the concept of “self”:

我者無我，亦無我所，當來無我，亦無我所，

The interesting thing about the Chinese is that 我者 strictly speaking would be topicalization or nominalization of “I,” but 者 may be serving to make it clear that there’s a subject and predicate; otherwise, a reader might think it’s a series of three nouns “Self, no self, and nothing belonging to self.” So, I’ve translated it reading it in the latter way, and made “I” a straightforward subject.

The literal reading would be something like, “As for myself, there’s no self, and nothing belonging to self.”

I think probably the original in Prakrit was a little different than the Pali. It must have had the word atta there as the subject. The Pali looks to my non-expert eye to lack a subject at all, so English translators are forced to add one to conform to the English insistence that there must be one even if it doesn’t matter. “It” serves that placeholder purpose.

2 Likes
31

Good, with annihilationism we mean the same thing. :slight_smile:

I think I see how you conclude eternalism is part of the path, but I think it’s wrong to think the inverted phrasing of the annihilation doctrine (“there is an afterlife”, and so on) is a statement on eternalism. The way I read it, it is just a confirmation of rebirth and all that comes with it, not of eternal existence. The path avoids both eternalism and annihilation equally; see SN12.17, which should be compared to SN12.46 you quoted.

There is not much ranking of wrong views going on on the suttas, it seems. But the little there is, indicates annihilism is best (AN10.29), the inefficacy of actions (of Makkhali Gosala) the worst (AN3.137). Would be interesting if anybody knows any more.

Thanks, I think this is the crux of it. :+1: Annihilationism is only praised for one particular aspect of it—namely, leading to less attachment to existence. That, after all, is the effect of the annihilationist statement “I will not be”. Elsewhere, like in MN60, the view of annihilation (without mentioning “I will not be”) is said to lead to immoral behavior, so it can be wrong in other ways, like the refusal of the results of kamma.

That’s why the “there is no mother etc” is inverted into a positive statement, “there is mother etc”, while the “I will not be” is not inverted but made impersonal, as “it will not be”.

1 Like
32

It is eternalism to me simply because it is not the supramundane right view so thus still includes notions about "I’ and “mine” and “being” and therefore hasn’t achieved the supramundane understanding? It seems a refined form of eternalism that is starting to doubt the efficacy or usefulness of these notions, but it has not yet arrived at the middle way between eternalism and annihilationism. Similarly, the “annihilationism” that seems to be praised is very different from Ajita’s of the hair blanket in being a refined form that is much less bound up with “I” and “mine” and “being”, but nevertheless has not yet arrived at the middle way?

I guess the lesson for me in all of this is I should be careful of reifying “annihilationism” and “eternalism” into some sort of singular definitions. Notions of “I” and “mine” and “being” are generally based around this polarity, but at different stages those notions can be more refined or more coarse. On this I think we’re in agreement? :slight_smile: :pray:

PS: Found this which seems to accord with how I think about things:

"Thus have I heard: At one time, the Buddha was dwelling in the deep forest near the village of Nāḷi, in the Abode of Vaiśālī.

At that time, the venerable Śāṇḍilya approached the Buddha, paid homage to his feet, and then sat down to one side. He asked the Buddha, ‘World-Honored One! As the World-Honored One speaks of right view, what is right view? How does the World-Honored One establish right view?’

The Buddha said to Śāṇḍilya: ‘In the world, there are two dependencies: existence and non-existence, which are grasped and clung to. Because of grasping these, one depends either on existence or non-existence. If this grasping did not exist, then the mind would not be attached, would not cling, would not consider the self to be involved in the arising of suffering or in the cessation of suffering. Without doubt or delusion, not relying on others, but knowing for oneself, this is called right view, this is called the right view established by the Tathāgata (Buddha). Why is that? Because in the world, the aggregation (origin) is correctly known and seen as it really is, where there is no ‘non-existence’ in the world without ‘existence’, and the cessation (extinction) is correctly known and seen as it really is, where there is no ‘existence’ in the world without ‘non-existence’. This is called speaking of the middle way, free from both extremes, which says: ‘This exists, therefore that exists; this arises, therefore that arises’, namely, dependent on ignorance are formations, up to the entire aggregation of great suffering; with the cessation of ignorance, formations cease, up to the entire cessation of great suffering.’"

“After the Buddha spoke this sutra, the venerable Śāṇḍilya heard the Buddha’s words, did not arouse any defilements, his mind was liberated, and he attained the state of an Arhat.”

SA 301

Machine translation with ChatGPT-4 :pray:

33

SA 301 has its Pali counterpart, SN 12.15. I like these two texts very much. See the comparative study:

Pages 192-5 from The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism Choong Mun-keat 2000.pdf (274.5 KB)

2 Likes
34

Venerable Yeshe. SN 12.17 & SN 12.46 refer to doctrines of eternalism and annihilationism (doctrines about self). MN 117 refers to the doctrine of nihilism (disbelief in benefaction, merit & karma). DN 2 refers to both nihilism & annihilationism but it is the nihilism aspect of DN 2 that warrants severe censure.

An example of the annihilationism in SN 12.17 & SN 12.46 is blaming another self for what you view as your personal self’s suffering. When you believe in external selves who wrong you, this is annihilationism, because it is denial of one’s own creation of suffering. Differently, in DN 1, annihilationism refers to the belief a self is annihilated at death.

An example of the nihilism in MN 117 and DN 2 is if rudeness & ingratitude is shown towards Holy Teachers who have the rare gift of explaining the Buddha’s Teaching. If we do not thank a Teacher with deep genuine gratitude when they help us when we ask, even for the smallest assistance, this is nihilism. Nihilism leads to rebirth in hell or particularly as an animal. Annihilationism does not necessarily lead to animal or hell rebirth because, as was posted, annihilationism can lead to dispassion, even though the dispassionate annihilationist may still believe in self.

It is common words get mixed up when they travel over long distances over time from one place to another place (such as travelling over many centuries from 5th century BC northern India to 12th century CE Tibet or China). Annihilationism does not mean nihilism and nihilism does not mean annihilationism. This is what I learned from a dear precious Holy Teacher. :love_letter: :pray:

35

This is dangerous and ignorant nonsense that has absolutely no basis in the ebt, and encourages the blind obedience that has led to so many of the absolutely appaling abuses that so many a “Holy Teacher” TM has inflicted on so many gullible victims for so many years.

Furthermore

Completely misreads SN12.17 which has nothing to do with other people but is about the question if the person you where in the past is identical to or different from the person you are now (i.e the one who acts and tge one who experiences the results of action)

Furthermore

If you do not beleive there is such a thing as a self it is incoherant to hold that suffering is created by ones self.

Furthermore

The words we are talking about are all in the Pali canon, none of the examples have been from 12th century tibet, and most of the chinese parallels qouted are from the 4th century.

I understand that many of the regular contributers here have faith commitments that more or less require them to interpret the ebts in a particular way, however those contributers should respect the fact that the ebts belong to ALL students of Buddhism, including those who have a secular, academic interest in them.

Implying that not believing, and indeed thanking unnamed and uncited “Holy Teachers” will lead “straight ro hell!” Is frankly purile and offensive.

Good luck with your journey!

1 Like
36

Hi. Your interpretation is not related to my intention. My example was to the Venerable Yeshe, whom I assumed comes from a tradition of highly respecting Holy Gurus. In suttas I read, the Buddha is also called “Holy”. Since the Holy Buddha did not preach blind obedience, again, blind obedience is not related to what I wrote. I posted about gratitude. I did not post about blind obedience.

The doctrine of nihilism does lead to animal rebirth and hell in the sutta teachings. The doctrine of nihilism includes not having gratitude. Having gratitude is part of the suttas I have read & also learned about.

SN 12.17 reads: Then for one who has existed since the beginning, suffering is made by oneself. This statement leans toward eternalism. Suppose that one person does the deed and another experiences the result. Then for one stricken by feeling, suffering is made by another. This statement leans toward annihilationism.

In SN 12.17, both the eternalist view suffering is made by oneself and the annhiliationist view suffering is made by another rest on the belief in self. This is why they are both wrong views.

Its throughout the suttas I read. The nihilist wrong view leads to hell. He has wrong view, is warped in the way he sees things: ‘There is nothing given, nothing offered, nothing sacrificed. There is no fruit or result of good or bad actions. There is no this world, no next world, no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings; no brahmans or contemplatives who, faring rightly & practicing rightly, proclaim this world & the next after having directly known & realized it for themselves.’ Furthermore, as a result of being endowed with these ten courses of unskillful action, [rebirth in] hell is declared, [rebirth in] an animal womb is declared, [rebirth in] the realm of hungry shades is declared — that or any other bad destination. Cunda Kammaraputta Sutta

The Venerable Yeshe posted about the wrong view in MN 117. This wrong view is nihilism. This wrong nihilistic view does not believe in the next world or the other world. This wrong nihilistic view does not believe there is rebirth in hell or animal realm for not honoring mother & father and other benefactors.

1 Like
37

I’m not sure how this became a topic in this thread, but for what it is worth I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha just like other practitioners. While I have respect and genuine gratitude for my teachers I do not regard them as my guru as I do not practice vajrayana at this time. I am a follower of the sutra vehicle with a particular inclination to ground Mahayana teachings in the EBTs. :pray:

1 Like
38

My apologies @Dunlop , the issue of guru devotion in the tibeten tradition, especially in the west since the 60’s is one I have strong feelings about and your post struck nerve.

I am grateful to you for your contributions and thankful every day iget the opportunity to speak with earnest practitioners on this forum.

Keep up the good work and forgive a middle aged man his off days :slight_smile:

Much metta