Hi piotr and all, 
The anattā teachings are, I think, clearly a refutation of the variety of attā ideas. Take the texts where the Buddha says (paraphrased): “Wanderers of other sects belief this and that to be a self, but I don’t belief this and that to be a self”. (SN44.7 - 8) We can take this at face value; there is no need to see it as a strategy. In DN1, MN102, etc, we see that the wanderers of other sects were not teaching “self strategies”, but were making claims to truth, just as essentially all religions still do now, and have always done before. And so the anattā teachings, being a direct response to those views, are claims to truth too.
I was quite surprised to see people are on the fence about this. It’s not that the suttas are unclear about it, in my opinion. So here’s a few things I think are incorrect in the essay The Limits of Description: Not-self Revisited. I’ll only address its main points.
On the Buddha not answering:
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In SN44.10 the Buddha remained silent when Vaccha asked, “does the self not exist?” (The Pali is n’atth’attā?, usually translated “is there no self?”.) The essay argues the Buddha refused to answer because “questions related to the […] non-existence of the self aren’t worth paying attention to”. (p7) But the Buddha’s own explanation is: “If I would have replied ‘the self doesn’t exist’ (n’atth’attā), that would have confused Vaccha even more, making him think the self he had was no longer there.” So according to the Buddha it’s simply a pragmatic decision to stay silent—one clearly based on the belief that ‘the self’ in fact doesn’t exist, since otherwise he could have said whatever else he believed and Vaccha would not have been so confused. So in light of his own explanation, the Buddha must have been silent because he actually believed there was no self.
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On the same sutta, on p9: “If, in SN 44.10 he had wanted to state such an analytical position [“there is no self”] to Ven. Ānanda, who was present at the conversation and who surely would have understood him, he would have. But he didn’t.” He did, though. He said that his knowledge (knowledge, not strategy—I’ll get back to this) was sabbe dhammā anattā, “everything is without a self”. This is just how the Buddha preferred to say, in effect, “there is no self”. The Pali n’atth’attā sort of assumes “the self” implicitly and also has the connotation “the self won’t exist”, so can be mistaken as an annihilist statement. But sabbe dhammā anattā doesn’t have those problems, and is also more pragmatic, because it forces you to consider sabbe dhammā, ‘every thing’. So that’s what the Buddha used.
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We can wonder why the Buddha didn’t answer Vaccha in another way, but it will never be more than guessing. My own humble guess is that it’s because Vaccha asks these kinds of questions again and again throughout the suttas. The Samyutta Nikāya even contains a specific section on Vacchagotta (assuming it’s the same guy) asking such questions, which alone makes for 55 suttas. (SN33) And then there’s MN72 and such, as well. So that’s why the Buddha anticipated his reaction, and didn’t try to teach anattā to him yet again. I think this guess is much more reasonable than all that the essay infers from mere silence. This unique sutta should be interpreted in light of others, not taken as the “main argument” (p3) for things it doesn’t say, in my humble opinion.
On wrong views:
- Contrary to what the essay makes me belief on p3, p9 and elsewhere, MN2 does not say “there is no self” is a wrong view or a wrong reflection. The closest the sutta gets to that, is “I have no self”. But what is wrong here, is not the “no self” part, but the “I have” part: it is the thought/conceit “I” or “mine”. All wrong ideas in MN2 come down to some sort of view of “I”, “mine”, or self. But the view “there is no self” is never said to be wrong—not just in MN2, but in the entire Canon—which goes to show it is actually quite alright. (“I have no self” is exactly the kind of wrong view Vocchagotta would have ended up having in SN44.10.)
On “existence or non-existence”:
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SN12.15 is about dependent arising & cessation, “the truth (dhamma) that lies in the middle” between an eternal self (“it will exist”) and the annihilation of a self (“it won’t exist”). Dependent arising/cessation is an explanation of how life works. It is not a “mental state” “where there are no thoughts of ‘existence’ or ‘non-existence’” (p1&11). It is not “an advanced stage of right view” (p11) either, but the standard right view of all the noble ones: “One who sees dependent arising sees the truth (dhamma).” (MN28) It’s the right view where you “don’t assume to have a self.” (SN12.15)
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P8: “[I]f you assumed that there was no self […] you’d fall into either of the two extremes listed in Iti 49”. The extremes in Iti49 are actually both views of self: “devas and humans delight in existence”, which implies an eternal self, and “this self […] at death, is annihilated and destroyed”, clearly the annihilation of a self. Neither of these is “there is no self”. They are the opposite.
On the arahant after death:
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SN22.86 explains that the Buddha did not take any of the four positions on what happens to an Tathāgata after death (he still exists, no longer exists, both, or neither), because there is no self, no essence that is the Tathāgata even before death. It’s not that (p8) “you can’t even define [a Tathāgata] in the present life”, that there is a Tathāgata who is beyond the limits of language—it’s that “Tathāgata” is just an empty name, a label, it’s nothing real. So you can not say that it lives on or that it ceases to be. It’s like asking, “where does the wind go when it stops blowing?” or “where does a flame go when it goes out?” (“Just as you can not point at a flame which disappears, blown out by a gust of wind, so you can not point at ‘a sage’, liberated from body and mind, who disappears.” — Snp5.7.)
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On p7: “When [the Buddha was] presented with the fourfold question […] he refused to agree to any of the alternatives. If he held the unspoken assumption that there really is no self, then he wouldn’t have had to take such pains to avoid taking a stand on the issue.” The reason the Buddha himself gave for his refusal is the exact opposite of this. In SN44.8, when explicitly asked why he didn’t take any of the four positions, he responded it was because he saw no self in, among, outside, or as the owner of the five aggregates. (Cf. SN22.79.) Again, the problem with all four statements is that they all assume the Tathāgata, i.e., a self. It’s not about something existing beyond the limits of description.
There are also some issues with translation:
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According to the PTS dictionary yathābhūta means “in reality, in truth, really, definitely, absolutely; as ought to be, truthfully, in its real essence”, but p12 translates it as “in the course of actually happening”. That this is wrong is evident from SN22.55, for example, which says: “According to reality (yathābhūta) he understands that consciousness will cease to be.” You obviously can’t understand that consciousness is going to cease one day “in the course of actually happening”. Other things to be understood, not as they happen, but according to reality, are birth and death, what is wholesome and what is not, what the eightfold path is, the fact of impermanence, et cetera. This wrong translation skews the interpretation of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta (SN22.59) quite a bit. (p7) (In old translations Venerable Thanissaro had yathābhūta correctly as “as it actually is”. The new translations—three different ones in the essay, p7,11,12—are all incorrect.)
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SN22.55 also says: “According to reality he understands consciousness, which has no self, to have no self.” This is not a perception to lessen suffering “as it is happening”, but an actual understanding, an insight into reality. As you may have noticed, it says, “he understands” (pajānāti). Similarly, you often find yathābhūta and anattā together with words like pañña (understanding or wisdom), ñāna (knowledge), vijjā (“true knowledge”, the opposite of avijjā, “ignorance/delusion”), and such. Understanding and insight: that’s what the Buddha had, not mere techniques. I’m pointing this out because the word “discernment” (p7) has many connotations that the Pali pañña doesn’t. Pañña means actually understanding something.
Part of the essay discusses the suttas where anattā is said to be practiced as a perception. These suttas do not refute the standard interpretation of anattā, but are complementary to it, as Bhikkhu Bodhi has pointed out at length. To put it briefly: the truth of anattā is not just to be taken as truth, as a simple fact, but also to be realized, to be practiced towards. This requires changing deeply ingrained wrong perceptions into perceptions that accord with the truth, so we can get to see according to reality (yathābhūta). So the perception of anattā is a strategy of sorts indeed. But anattā itself is not.
So is there a self? Sure, it’s a “metaphysical/ontological question” (p3). But not one that is beyond answering, and certainly not beyond the Buddha’s reach, or anybody’s reach. It’s not impossible to see the aggregates/six senses can stop and infer from that that there isn’t a self.
When, friend, a bhikkhu understands as they really are the origin and the passing away of the six bases for contact, in this way his vision is well purified. (SN35.245)
This is an inference. Obviously whoever said this still had six senses. But he knew that they will forever cease in the future, probably also that particularly the mind arises and cease all the time, (like day and night - SN12.61) and that they therefore aren’t self.
And to know whether there is a self or not is not just a metaphysical question. If we are to fully understand rebirth, karma, and samsara it’s actually very pragmatic. It’s actually just a start in understanding these things. (That’s why it constitutes stream entry, not arahantship.)
“The world is empty of a self.” – SN35.85
My two cents !
Thanks for reading.
I wouldn’t have gone to these lengths if Bhikkhu Bodhi hasn’t gone to much greater. 
Apparently the ideas that anatta is a strategy is not as marginal as I thought. Sorry if I misrepresented the idea.
