Hi Alex,
I think @Jasudho and @faujidoc1 have pointed you in the right direction. You might wish to consider the Sabbavagga SN 35.23 - SN 35.32 (more than just SN 35.23 Jasudho gave you) and note that experience (in a complete sense) is sometimes referred to as khandhāyatanadhātuyo.
It is interesting that you are apparently attempting to equate the concept of ‘ātman’ with the word ‘soul’
However they are two different concepts. A soul, in the popular Western sense of it, is an embodied spirit that people supposedly have in them (so it makes sense to speak about whether I have a soul, I dont have a soul etc). This implicitly means thay the soul and the person who has them are two different concepts, so it makes sense to argue if the former has (or conceptually can possibly have, or not have) the latter.
Ātman (Pāli attan), on the other hand isn’t what a person can have (or not have), it is not about having at all. It is that which a sentient person cannot not be i.e. themselves.
It is that without which a sentient being wont be able to call themselves “I” or “me” or “my” i.e. the core of their own self-identity i.e. their self-identifiable personhood.
For someone to not be ātman i.e. themselves (observe the word “be”, not “have”) means to not recognize any self-identity, which means the Buddha doesnt view himself as himself i.e. he doesnt consider himself a Buddha or have any other form of identifiableness or characteristics or attribute that would differentiate him from anyone else. In fact that would mean he denies his own identity to himself. That would be a hopeless illogical catch-22 conceptual mess.
So when early Buddhism says the physical body’s skandhas are anātman, it is saying that the body or its skandhas is not who you are… they are not your self.
It is not saying ‘you are not youself’ (i e. ‘you are not ātman’) because that would be meaningless.
What the Buddha was advising - is to not have attadiṭṭhi (Sanskrit: ātmadṛṣṭi) i.e. to theorize about what the ātman is or is not (because practically everyone who theorize are theorizing from their ignorance, and in their ignorance they are superimposing aspects of the external world i.e. anātman - on themselves i.e. ātman - conceptually). So theorizing leads not to knowledge but to the propagation of ignorance and unnecessary mental-stress and pointless fatigue.
He was asking his followers to abandon theorizing about the nature and origin of their core identities, and to cease identifying/equating their-self identity with anything else. So when he says everything that can be grasped with the five senses is anātman, he means that you cannot grasp your self-identity with your senses, and anything which you can so grasp isn’t your self-identity.
He was not asking them to not believe in the idea of themselves (i.e. to disbelieve the concept ātmatva or self-identity).
Just curious, are you familiar with K. N. Jayatilleke of ‘Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge’ fame and student of Ludwig Wittgenstein? Do you agree with his work? The gist of it I mean.
A soul also means a substance in western thought. A Dravyasat which grounds the sense of self. This is similar to what the Buddha’s contemporaries were teaching. The Buddha was essentially critiquing substance metaphysics and Rationalism, the Atman being a type of substance.
I have only glanced through it, it appears to be rigorously researched and I like it. I will read through it and respond.
That is what I am calling a misinterpretation. A soul may be a substance in Western thought, but the ātman is not. There are some interpretations of ātman that interpret it as a substance, but that isn’t (and wasn’t) the mainstream or the most respected position. The Buddha’s contemporaries were not all teaching the same thing, nor were all their conceptions of ātman the same either. What we find in the Pali canon are mostly hagiographical parodies of the other systems (some of which are transparently strawman-ish in character). So by reading the hagiographical parodies of the other systems from the Pali canon, how would one gain a real and historical perspective of the tenets of those other systems (or even of historical early-Buddhism)? My view is there is no shortcut to reading more widely than the Pali canon to get a fair idea of co-eval non-Buddhist traditions.
Perhaps you can share your thoughts on this and the Bahiya sutta on the following thread.
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Interesting. I have been looking at the Aitareya Upaniṣad and this very subject came up in one of the few secondary sources I have been able to find on the Upaniṣad.
I-iii-12: By that door (dvārā) he (ātma) entered, rending this suture of the skull (sīmānam) asunder (vidāryaitayā).
The author produced parallels in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad
In this space within the heart is the immortal, golden person who is made up of the mind. … Bursting through the halves of the skull at the parting of the hair, he establishes himself in the fire by chanting bhūr, in the wind by chanting bhuvas, in the sun by chanting suvar, and in brahman by chanting mahas.
And the Kaṭha Upaniṣad
One hundred and one are the veins of the heart. One of them flows up to the top of the head. Going up by that, one reaches the immortal.
She also noted elsewhere that the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad is “anti Rgvedic” and produced a reference to ātman that shows development in the direction of purva-mimasa orthodoxy. I assume the author means its naive or mimetic realist view of language as ontologically identical to phenomenal (real) existence.
In the beginning, there was just a single ātman in the form of a man (puruṣa). He looked around and saw only himself. The first thing he said was “Here I am,” and therefore the name I (aham) came to be.
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.1.
To me the BU sounds closer to what you are talking about, whereas the TU and KU include fragments of what looks like a simple belief in something akin to the soul.
I haven’t got to the third āraṇyaka in the Aitareyāraṇyaka, but apparently it contains a philosophical break down of what is essentially nama-rupa to demonstrate that it is constructed.
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It certainly is in Jainism, Vaiśeṣika and Ājīvikism. I would argue it is for the Upanishads too.
Yes it is differently interpreted in each philosophy (and maybe you could even argue that each Upaniṣad has its own conception of it). But that is not the point.
The point is about which conception of ātman is it that the Buddha means in the word anātman (or Pāli: anattā).
Why is it invariably mentioned in the singular only in the Pāli canon if it is a discrete substance in the Buddha’s conception of the term?
Why isn’t there any discussion in the Pāli canon about different conceptions of ātman and/or anātman and their implications in the understanding of early-Buddhism (not just for our benefit, but even for the characters who were listening to the Buddha preach about it)?
Sorry, I am having trouble understanding what you are asking. A basic problem with substance is the universal (All) and the particular (One). I think it’s fair to say the Aitareyāraṇyaka attempts to solve this problem by creating an immanent particular (One) in the universal (All). Obviously it uses certain devata: Indra, Prajapati, and Brahma (which I think could be vac, prana …) to express the all.
Myself, I am still working on what atma is in this upanisad, because I don’t fully understand its Mahāvākya"prajñānam brahma." It’s been translated as pure consciousness, but it’s clearly in a mode. It’s light and it’s winking. In the most figurative sense, then, it’s a star. In terms of a mode, I would lean toward pure potentiality, but it’s supposed to be unfettered, guiltless or innocent, I guess would be the proper term.
The second question is whether atma’s creation is through perception, which is what most scholars argue, or through divine impulse (love, I think it is). This is one of the reasons why I think the Aitareya Upaniṣad is identified as proto-theistic. Obviously pointing to Isvara.
I covered off some of this in mentioning the Tevijja Sutta (DN 13) in another post. As well, apparently in the AN Book of Threes 3.2.2.1 Buddha calls out Isvara “issaranimmāṇahetu.”
In the West our great philosophers have a profound understanding of their tradition, I have no reason not to give the same type of academic courtesy to Buddha.
OK thanks for your comments but my prior responses were to Ceisiwr and Layman.
The reason I’ve not responded to your comments is because I was talking about the early Buddhist conception of the ātman and not how it was conceptualized in non-Buddhist sources.
You’re rather talking about specific upanishads.
Oh you think Buddha conceptualized an atman do you? Odd. And I was speaking of one Upanisad.
Ātman and anātman (“not-ātman”) are core concepts in early buddhism, as core as nitya/anitya & duḥkha/ duḥkhanirodha.
These are practically what Buddhism is about. Without having a conception of what he meant by ātman and anātman, he could not have explained anything else.
Duḥkha and duḥkhanirodha are for the ātman, which is why the discussion of anātman (i.e. what the ātman is not) is so prominent. Nitya and anitya exemplify the distinction between ātman and anātman respectively, with dukkha being associated with all that is anitya and anātman.
So if you are saying the Buddha didn’t have a conception of ātman or anātman when he was using those words and forming those conceptual associations, I find that incredible. Or am I misunderstanding you totally?
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Duḥkha and duḥkhanirodha are not for the ātman in early Buddhism.
Duḥkha and duḥkhanirodha in early Buddhism are for seeing anātman.
Anātman is literally an-ātman (something other than the ātman). It is a nañ-bahuvrīhi samāsa (exclusionary exocentric compound) that functions as an adjective of something else (for example of the skandhas).
One cannot “see” anātman, as one cannot see an adjective. One can only comprehend that a substantive noun has the properties described by the adjective. As an adjective, it is invariably paired with a substantive, and it qualifies the noun (substantive) it describes. You appear to be misapprehending an adjective by taking it as a substantive in its own right.
Anātman only has a semantic content if the thing it is a mutual exclusive of (ātman) has a-priori semantic content i.e. an original positive conceptual sense to it. Otherwise anātman would have no meaning and adjectives that dont carry any meaning (worth transferring to the noun they refer to) are useless.
The purpose of describing things as anātman in early buddhism is to distinguish those things from the ātman. The knowledge of ātman is sought by studying what is not the ātman. This is a philosophical approach called the via-negativa (for example instead of saying what to do, if one is said what not to do, it is a via-negativa method of indicating what is acceptable to do).
With all respect, I don’t know how deep your study of Buddhism is. How well do you know Pali and/or Sanskrit as that directly impacts your comprehension of these terms.
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He was doing critical philosophy, which doesn’t mean he conceptualized an atman to tear it down. He responded to all sorts of different beliefs. Oh and via negativa is not an appropriate method by which to identify Buddhist philosophy. anatman is not not-atman.
Were others of his time not doing critical philosophy? Were others not responding to all sorts of beliefs?
So I don’t see what the crux and basis of your arguments are. He was not unique in those respects.
The Buddha most definitely had to have a conception of ātman (and therefore anātman) to explain his own philosophy of life, and worldview, to his followers. Without such a conception, the core tenets of early buddhism would be vacuous nonsense, and he wouldnt have made sense to call himself a Buddha or as someone who had achieved the cessation of duḥkha, because things he was describing wouldnt connect/cohere into a logical whole.
That was no different from what his contemporary philosophical opponents and teachers were also doing, each in their own way. They all had points of disagreements (and partial agreement) with one another, it was not as if the Buddha alone made sense in everything he was saying and everyone else were intellectually complete bonkers.
It would be helpful if you say how/why/in what way it is inappropriate so I can gain an idea of what I’ve missed to consider.
I’ve told you what it means and how it is used in early-Buddhism, and I have said how it makes sense to treat the Buddhist teaching of ātman through anātman as a via-negativa approach.
So please reason it out.
No I’ll just leave you to go around telling people that anatman is not atman and see how that works for you. You’ve been told Buddha was doing critical philosophy and via negativa is not an appropriate method.
I have no interest in converting people to my understanding, I just put the reasons and resulting inferences out there, and would prefer to be countered with equally compelling reasons if any, as that would be the best way of advancing everyone’s understanding.
Whether you take my analysis or leave them is up to you. But I’d suggest you understand completely what I am saying and the primary textual basis that I am relying on before discarding them.
Better yet, I’d be pleased if you come up with a reasoned rebuttal (if you want to) rather than a statement of an (entrenched) belief or a mere conclusion.
Since you appear to be reading Sanskrit texts, let me share this with you. In the Sanskrit commentarial tradition, there are two types of anvaya (explanation) styles described. Some commentators use one style and others use the other style based on their preference.
The first style is called Khaṇḍa-anvaya which means analysing the source statement threadbare and explaining why/how each part of the the source text means what it is said to mean.
The second style is called Daṇḍa-anvaya which literally means “explaining with a cane in hand”, like a old-school teacher or authority-figure, meaning “this is my conclusion about its meaning and you dare not ask any questions or raise objections, take it on my word”.
So our approaches are different. I prefer the first approach, and that requires a knowledge of the source language the ability to analyze the grammar and extract appropriate sense out of it. I’d prefer to hear the nitty-gritties of how and why your suggestions are preferable rather than the mere statement of a conclusion.
Anatta-lakkhaṇa Sutta (an-ātma-lakṣaṇa-sūkta)
The characteristics of things that are not the ātman.
Evam-me sutaṁ, Ekaṁ samayaṁ Bhagavā Bārāṇasiyaṁ viharati isipatane migadāye.
Tatra kho Bhagavā pañca-vaggiye bhikkhū āmantesi.
I have heard that on one occasion Bhagavān was staying in Vārāṇasi (a city within the realm of the Kāśi kings) within the sanctuary of the ‘ṛśya’ deer (ṛśya-vṛjana mṛga-dāva). There he addressed the group of five (pañca-vargīya) bhikṣus:
“Rūpaṁ bhikkhave anattā.
Rūpañ-ca h’idaṁ bhikkhave attā abhavissa,
Nayidaṁ rūpaṁ ābādhāya saṁvatteyya,
Labbhetha ca rūpe,
Evaṁ me rūpaṁ hotu evaṁ me rūpaṁ mā ahosīti.
“Your physical form (rūpam), monks, is anātman ("not who you are). If your physical form were ātman (“who you are”), this physical form would not get afflicted with disease (i.e. it would not be beyond your complete control) - and it would be possible to effortlessly materialize your will with regard to your form, by saying - ‘Let my form (i.e. I myself) be thus. Let my form (i.e. I myself) not be thus.’ (i.e. your bodily form will totally be under your control and thus you could will away your aging and diseases).
So the ātman (i.e. you yourself) are not the physical body that you normally identify with, the body is anātman. What is anātman (i.e. what you are not) is also anitya (non-permanent), and whatever is anitya tends to give rise to duḥkha. The implicit idea here is that the ātman (you yourself) cannot be anitya or the source of duḥkha, for if you were, it would be impossible for you to accomplish or even perceive duḥkha-nirodha (cessation of duḥkha) as long as you exist (for your duḥkha would be an inseparable part of your core identity, which therefore you cannot get away from), and with you being impermanent and hence having your body annihilated at physical death would be your irredeemable end for all intents and purposes. No more rebirth would be possible and no buddhahood would be possible either. Therefore your body (which is anātman) is not you (ātman).
This is how via-negativa method is used by the Buddha to explain the ātman through the description of what is not the ātman.