Dear friends,
Some months ago we discussed the “world” in the Kaccānagotta Sutta. The central passage of this text is, in my translation:
To properly understand the following, I recommend reading my previous essay in full. In brief, I suggested that the term “world” in this context refers to the individual being—or, more precisely, to the six senses.
This is not a new idea, nor is my general understanding of the terms atthitā and natthitā. But what may be a novelty is my translations ‘the notion of survival’ and ‘the notion of nonsurvival’, rather than the common ‘existence’ and ‘nonexistence’. This is what I want to focus on here, in this draft essay.
I will give:
- a textual analysis of these two terms,
- a historical context for them,
- an explanation of how right view avoids the two notions,
- a clarification that the two don’t encompass *all* wrong views.
If any of you have any feedback or critique, I’d be very happy to hear. I hope to one day combine these essays in a book, and your comments help me expand or correct them.
(If you are so kind to give feedback, please know I already intend to address certain topics later, in particular how natthikā-vāda is not a doctrine of general nonexistence/nihilism but of the nonexistence of life after death. Also, I’m more concerned with the general ideas than specific typos and such.)
1. Atthitā and natthitā (survival and nonsurvival)
The Buddha starts his answer to Kaccāna with a brief mention of two opposing wrong views. Most of the world, he explains, is stuck in either side of a duality: atthitā and natthitā. In the Sutta Piṭaka these terms are unique to the Kaccānagotta Sutta and are never further explained. We should therefore take special care to not take them at first glance but instead consider their wider context. They are commonly translated quite literally as ‘the notion of existence’ and ‘the notion of nonexistence’, but I think their meaning is more easily understood as ‘the notion of survival’ and ‘the notion of nonsurvival’. This essay explains some of my reasons for this.
Originally I intended to discuss here at length certain interpretations of the Kaccānagotta Sutta which I concluded go beyond its original intent. That discussion would have distracted from my own message, however, so I decided to omit it. But since such interpretations are quite widespread, it may be helpful to at least draw a brief contrast with mine. Readers who desire more details can find them in the notes.
I’m talking about interpretations which take atthitā and natthitā not as views concerning the being (the individual world) but as views concerning things in general (the universal world). Such interpretations vary considerably in their details, but they generally hold that people with right view abandoned, among other things, not only the assumption of a personal self, but also the assumption that things in the external world truly exist, as well as the assumption that they don’t exist.[1] A comment by Jay Garfield is representative:
Peter Fenner adds:
I have no fundamental objections to such ideas, but as interpretations of the Kaccānagotta Sutta I am convinced that they overreach. They miss the pragmatic intent behind the Buddha’s restricting redefinition of the “world”, which specifically aims to exclude the external world from the scope of inquiry. Assumptions about the ontological status of external things have no direct bearing on Dependent Arising, in particular the all-important birth and death.[4] You can believe that the chair you are sitting on exists, you can believe that it doesn’t, or you can believe neither, and it won’t prevent you from understanding rebirth and its causes. (Or less banally, you can believe similar things about fundamental particles making up that chair.)
The interpretations I’m arguing against mostly stem from Madhyamaka philosophy, which arose in large part as a critique of the Abhidharma projects.[5] The critique is well-crafted but, just like the Abhidharma itself, does depart from the early suttas. Many later concepts were adopted and introduced. Most relevant for the current discussion, these interpretations often aim at abandoning views of an impersonal “self” of insentient objects.[6] The Kaccānagotta Sutta, however, is concerned with abandoning the view of “my self” (or ‘I have a self’, me attā, translated by me as ‘the idea that you have a self’). This becomes even clearer when Ānanda quotes the discourse in full when teaching another monk how to stop wondering “what is my self?” with respect to the five khandhas.[7]
The concepts of atthitā and natthitā were likewise refurbished to refer to things in general.[8] So too were sassata and uccheda, which in the early texts are about the eternal existence and annihilation of beings, not insentient objects.[9]
These interpretations also do not address views held by most of the world, certainly not in case of the notion of absolute nonexistence: a remarkable view which isn’t even hinted at in any other sutta.[10] Views about the inherent existence and nonexistence of external things are even absent from discourses which present themselves as comprehensive accounts of wrong views.[11]
The two wrong notions of the Kaccānagotta Sutta are not ontological views about the world but views about the afterlife. They are certain notions of existence and nonexistence indeed, but specifically of the individual (me/my self) after death.[12] Such views actually are commonplace. Most people either believe that after death they will forever exist or that after a single life they will not exist. The early Buddhist texts also discuss these views frequently, as should be expected if most of the world is stuck in them. The texts of the Jains and Hindus mention them prominently too, although unlike Buddhism they don’t take a middle position between the two but align themselves with eternal existence.[13]
G.A. Somaratne sees similar problems with the abstract ‘existence’ and ‘nonexistence’ and translates atthitā and natthitā respectively as ‘the notion of self-continuity’ and ‘the notion of self-discontinuity’.[14] This removes most ambiguity, but I prefer ‘the notion of survival’ and ‘the notion of nonsurvival’, which is more colloquial and also brings out that they specifically concern the continuation of a self after death. By ‘survival’ I mean everlasting existence after death and by ‘nonsurvival’ the end of one’s existence after one life. They are views of eternalism and annihilationism, in other words. The view of nonsurvival is specifically the belief in annihilation after a single lifetime, being the most common annihilationist doctrine in the early texts, since it includes materialism. Doctrines of annihilationism after multiple lifetimes are also avoided by right view, but as I will explain later, they are not held by most of the world and are not subsumed under natthitā.
The Theravāda tradition has an identical understanding. The commentary to the Kaccānagotta Sutta states: “The notion of survival is eternalism. The notion of nonsurvival is annihilationism.” The sub-commentary clarifies that the notion of survival (atthitā) means believing that the khandhas will exist (atthi) eternally. It says this view arises when one perceives a sense of uniformity—that is, an unchanging entity that survives death—in what is actually a stream of dependently arisen phenomena. The notion of nonsurvival (natthitā) it paraphrases as: “Because beings are annihilated and destroyed right here and now [i.e. at the end of this life], there isn’t (natthi) any continuation for any being. […] There are no beings who are reborn.”[15] Many contemporary scholars have arrived at similar conclusions.[16] Y. Karunadasa for example writes: “Dependent arising […] is presented as ‘the middle doctrine’, because it steers clear of the mutual conflict between spiritual eternalism and materialist annihilationism. These two theoretical views [are] the view of existence and the view of nonexistence respectively.”[17]
The early texts themselves also support this. SN12.17 explicitly says that Dependent Arising avoids the two extremes of eternalism and annihilation, concluding, just like the Kaccānagotta Sutta, that the Buddha’s teaching avoids both these extremes. One could object that this doesn’t prove that these two extremes are equivalent to atthitā and natthitā. Just like a blue triangle is neither square nor round but also neither red nor green, the middle teaching may avoid eternalism and annihilationism but also, one could argue, metaphysical views about the existence and nonexistence of the external world. However, since the latter aren’t a matter of concern in the early texts, we should assume equivalence between these sets of extremes. As Eviatar Shulman also concluded: “The extremes atthitā and natthitā [are] usually translated as ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence’. It can be shown that these terms refer to sassata and uccheda [eternalism and annihilationism], and should not be understood to imply abstract notions of existence and non-existence.”[18]
Similarly, in SN12.35 the Buddha says Dependent Arising avoids the views “the soul is separate from the body” and “the soul is identical to the body”. These two views are also forms of eternalism and annihilationism. The Kaccānagotta Sutta just calls the two differently, namely atthitā and natthitā.
A parallel to the Sāmaññaphala Sutta found in the Sanskrit Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya confirms this directly. While in the Pali version King Ajātasattu sums Ajita Kesakambala’s materialist view up by saying he was explained annihilation (uccheda), in this parallel he says he was explained nonsurvival (nāstitā, Sanskrit of natthitā).[19] I won’t quote the text here, but it does show what natthitā refers to: the nonexistence of the afterlife (or ‘world beyond’). King Ajātasattu explains that the view “both the foolish and wise are annihilated when the body breaks down at death” is the view of nonsurvival. The parallel thus uses natthitā as a synonym for uccheda. Notice also that it connects it specifically to the annihilationism of the materialists, not annihilationism in general.
Further down I will discuss how right view avoids the notions of survival and nonsurvival. This is probably the best way to explain what atthitā and natthitā refer to, just like a driving instructor teaches her students how to not swerve off either side of the road by showing them how to stay on it. But first I hope to convince the reader why ‘the notion of survival’ and ‘the notion of nonsurvival’ are acceptable, perhaps even preferable translations of these terms.
First a point on grammar. Although atthitā and natthitā both contain the present tense verb atthi (‘exists’), in Pali the present tense can be used to indicate a certain or inevitable future, whether real or imagined.[20] This is also the case in English, such as when we say: “John’s plane lands tomorrow.” As a simple example, previous translators translated the present tense pajjati as a future in “this venerable has attained or will attain (lit. ‘attains’)”.[21] The verb hoti, literally ‘is’, often is translated as ‘become’ (i.e. ‘will be’) such as in “a small gift becomes great”.[22] The present tense often has such future connotations in statements about post-mortem destinies. This is also the case for hoti and atthi. For instance, the four questions about the tathāgata or ‘truthfinder’ after death ask whether he still exists (hoti, lit. ‘is’), or no longer exists (na hoti, lit. ‘is not’), or both, or neither. In AN4.173 Koṭṭhika likewise asks whether after the cessation of the six senses, something else, such as a self, still exists (atthi), or no longer exists (natthi), or both, or neither.
In such cases I portray the future connotation of natthi (= na atthi) by using ‘no longer’ for na. Other translators also regularly render na as such when the context implies a contrast in time.[23] In natthitā we can also read na as ‘no longer’, so that we literally get ‘the notion that (tā) one exists (or ‘will exist’, atthi) no longer (na)’. This is even more literal than ‘the notion of existence’, because atthi is a verb, not a noun like ‘existence’. But ‘the notion that one will no longer exist’ is a bit dense, so in order to convey the same idea, I opted for ‘the notion of nonsurvival’. The same applies to natthika-vāda, which we can understand quite literally as ‘the doctrine that one will no longer exist’, hence ‘the doctrine of nonsurvival’. Using similar reasoning, atthitā becomes ‘the notion that one will still exist’, i.e., ‘the notion of survival’. Atthika-vāda becomes ‘the doctrine of survival’, which is how Maurice Walshe translates it too.[24] Jayatilleke also calls the eternalist doctrines “survivalist theories”, and Venerable Anālayo describes them as “views that propose a self that survives after death”.[25]
Radhakrishnan likewise interprets hoti as ‘survive’ when he writes: “Does the Tathāgata survive after death or does he not survive?”[26] This is part of his comment on the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, which uses the Sanskrit equivalents of atthi and natthi in a similar context:
The above translation is by Patrick Olivelle. Purohit and Yeats better reflect the future connotations of the verbs by translating: “Some say that when man dies he continues to exist, others that he does not.”[28] The two perspectives about the dead man could also be translated as ‘he still exists’ and ‘he no longer exists’—or as ‘he survives’ and ‘he does not survive’.[29]
The position of the Upaniṣad is that the man survives, since it later says that the wise man knows he is everlasting and will not die when the body dies. This is a doctrine of eternalism. Fools on the other hand think, “there is no other world”, meaning no life after death. This is a doctrine of annihilationism, which is described with identical terms in the Pali canon. And these two beliefs about the dead man are the atthitā and natthitā of the Kaccānagotta Sutta: he either survives, or he does not.
In the Pali canon the verb atthi can also describe eternal survival after death. King Pasenadi once asked the Buddha whether gods will stay forever in their heaven or are reborn as humans again:
The above is not my translation but that of Venerable Sujato, with whom I initially exchanged ideas about atthi and its connotations in contexts such as this. He first suggested the translation ‘survive’, which is appropriate here, because to translate atthi devā literally as ‘do gods exist?’ wouldn’t fit the context. The fact that the Buddha asks for clarification indicates that the question is ambiguous in Pali, but King Pasenadi’s clarification shows he already presumes the existence of gods. He is not asking whether gods exist in general. He uses the present tense with future connotations, asking, “Do gods continue to exist?” That is, “Do gods survive?”
The king’s question seems somewhat unrelated to the preceding discussion in the same discourse. But since he asks about rebirth, there is a relation with Dependent Arising and hence with the Kaccānagotta Sutta. When Pasenadi wonders whether gods continue to exist (atthi), this is a kind of atthitā on his part, a notion of survival.
In a similar passage, the Brahmin student Sangārava also appears to ask about the survival of the gods by using atthi devā. The passage is a bit complex, however, so for sake of brevity I will not discuss it here.[31]
In another discourse the Buddha says that the statement ‘the self survives’ (atthi attā) sides with the eternalists, while ‘the self does not survive’ (natthi attā) sides with the annihilationists. These phrases are similar to the atthitā and natthitā of the Kaccānagotta Sutta, where it is also indicated that both wrong notions assume the existence of a self. The discourse in question has caused some confusion about the Buddha’s teachings on anattā, which may in part be blamed on not considering the future tense connotations of atthi.[32] To convey the ambiguity of the original, in the translation below I render atthi with the dual ‘survive/exist’:
Most translators of this discourse use ‘exists’, but Venerable Sujato again opted for ‘survives’.[35] This is appropriate here too, because if throughout the discourse we read atthi as the former, we create some inconsistencies with the canon at large. First off, the statement ‘the self does not exist’ does not align with the doctrine of annihilationism, because annihilationists always assume the existence a self, be it a temporal soul or just a psychological notion of a self. Peter Harvey realized this. Not aware of the future connotations of atthi, he reads natthi attā as ‘the self does not exist’ and then rightly concludes it is “a curious fact” that the Buddha links annihilationism to the nonexistence of a self.[36] But this curiosity disappears when we read ‘the self does not continue to exist’ (or ‘does not survive’), meaning the self, which existed before death, no longer exists after.
We also run into problems if we translate atthi attā as ‘the self exists’. Since annihilationists also assume the existence of a self, this translation would not side specifically with the eternalists as the Buddha indicates it does. But ‘the self survives’ does so, when understood as eternal survival. So this is how atthi attā should be understood in this context.
So the Buddha doesn’t answer Vaccha’s question because in both cases he would have been misunderstood to affirm a self: either one that survives after death or one that does not. This also explains why he phrases his own view as, “everything is without a self” (sabbe dhammā anattā). It leaves less room for such misunderstandings.
But what was Vaccha’s own initial intention? Was he asking about the post-mortem existence of the self or just about its existence in general? I think this cannot be determined with certainty, but based on the final line it seems to be the latter. It says that if Vaccha was taught natthi attā, he would think, “the self I had before, now does not survive/exist”. This refers to the present, meaning Vaccha wouldn’t specifically be thinking about the survival of his self after death. On the other hand, if he was indeed asking about the existence of the self in the present, it is difficult to explain why the Buddha says he didn’t reply because his answers would sound like annihilationism or eternalism, which would make more sense if Vaccha was coming to the conversation with such notions already in mind. This is indirectly supported by the other discourses in the same Saṃyutta, the Connected Discourses on the Undeclared, which all raise questions about life after death. In the preceding discourse Vaccha wonders why the Buddha doesn’t describe a post-mortem destination for enlightened beings but instead just says they have ended suffering.[37] The Buddha replies that there is rebirth when there is craving but no rebirth when there is no craving. In this light it would make sense for Vaccha to wonder about the survival of the self after death, as he does in a similar context elsewhere—the well-known Aggivaccha Sutta—asking similar questions about the rebirth of a perceived self.[38]
So, given the ambiguity of natthi attā, I am unsure whether Vaccha would have misunderstood the Buddha’s reply as “my self won’t exist in the future” or as “my self doesn’t exist anymore right now”. In the former case, there is a lot of textual precedence for mistaking the Buddha’s teachings as annihilationism, as hope to show in the future. In the latter case, Vaccha’s mistake would be to think of the nonexistence of a self in personal terms. He would think, “the self I had now doesn’t exist anymore”. This view still assumes an I, so it is still based on a deluded sense of self.[39] But even in this case Vaccha would adopt some kind of annihilationist view, assuming he did have a self beforehand, which also indicates that natthi attā shouldn’t be interpreted as “there is no self at all” but more like “there won’t be a self”.
Whatever the case may be, the Buddha expected Vaccha to misunderstand him, which is probably because throughout the discourses Vaccha is repeatedly unable to understand these aspects of his teachings.[40] The Saṃyutta Nikāya even contains an entire book of discourses with Vaccha that touch upon these matters, and in the Aggivaccha Sutta the Buddha specifically tells him: “It is hard to understand for you, having a different view, belief, practice, and teacher.”[41] Vaccha seems to function as an archetype for obstinate wrong views about non-self and rebirth.
But whatever Vaccha’s exact misunderstanding may have been, the Buddha’s descriptions of eternalism and annihilationism should not be understood as ‘the self exists’ and ‘the self does not exist’ but as ‘the self survives’ (atthi attā) and ‘the self does not survive’ (natthi attā). And these two are, in effect, the wrong notions of survival (atthitā) and nonsurvival (natthitā) of the Kaccānagotta Sutta.
We encounter near-identical statements in the Sabbāsava Sutta: atthi me attā and natthi me attā, which I would translate as ‘my self will survive’ and ‘my self won’t survive’.[42] The commentary explains:
Venerable Bodhi also notes that the two views “represent the simple antinomy of eternalism and annihilationism”,[44] although this is not clear in the translations ‘self exists for me’ and ‘no self exists for me’, which are adopted from Venerable Ñāṇamoli’s manuscripts. Venerable Bodhi clarifies: “The view that ‘no self exists for me’ [natthi me attā] is not the non-self doctrine of the Buddha, but the materialist view that identifies the individual with the body and thus holds that there is no personal continuity beyond death.”
We do not have to take Venerable Bodhi’s word for this, however, nor the commentary’s. Neither do we have to rely purely on the similarity between (n)atthi me attā and (n)atthi attā of Vaccha’s questions. The Sabbāsava Sutta itself also indicates the same ideas. The views about the (non)survival of one’s self are said to arise from unskillful inquiries like: “In the future, will I exist? Will I not exist?” The passage in question is about people with wrong view, people who do not understand suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path. They do not understand rebirth and its ending, improperly reflecting on it in terms of an I or self. As such, the passage covers much of the same ground as the Kaccānagotta Sutta.
2. Atthitā and natthitā in historical context
Some readers may be familiar with the Sanskrit terms āstika and nāstika. The meaning of these terms has shifted over the centuries in Hindu philosophy. It is impossible to trace back their exact development, but scholars have come to some general conclusions.[45] At a relatively early period āstika meant to affirm the Brahmanic Ātman, the Self, and thereby also its continuation after death. Nāstika meant its denial. It initially referred only to the materialists, but at some point the Hindus also included the Buddhists under it. In a similar way āstika got expanded to affirm not only the Self and the afterlife but also the authority of Vedas. In this developed meaning it is usually translated as ‘orthodox’, with nāstika as ‘heterodox’, although it may be more helpful to think of the two as ‘believer’ and ‘nonbeliever’ or as ‘affirmer’ and ‘denier’.[46]
Dasgupta summarizes:
There are no early sources to inform us, but it is likely that the debate between the materialists holding nāstika and the Brahmins holding āstika predated the Buddha. It was probably a wider debate including multiple religions, since Jain commentators also used the term nāstika for the materialists and considered themselves to be āstika too.[48] Considering this, it is unlikely the debate was framed specifically around the existence of the Brahmanic Ātman. People were discussing the belief in an afterlife more generally, whether any kind of soul/self still exists after death or not.
The atthitā and natthitā of the Kaccānagotta Sutta have a very similar etymology and meaning as the Sanskrit āstika and nāstika, so these terms may very well stem from a common ancestor. Granting us this connection, we arrive at a natural conclusion: The debate was stuck in a dilemma, but then the Buddha came along and told Kaccāna: “Those are the views of most of the world. But they’re both wrong!”
The ancient debate appears to be referenced in the earlier Kaṭha Upaniṣad passage on the man who after death either still exists or no longer exists. Jayatilleke points this out as well, concluding that the Buddha avoided “the dialectical opposition between the soul-theorists, who asserted survival, and the various schools of materialists, who denied it”.[49] More than a century ago Stcherbatsky already came to a similar conclusion:
In other words, the Buddha denied the survival of a permanent essence, but he did affirm rebirth as the continuation of an impermanent process.
Since he did teach rebirth, to some extent the Buddha was aligned with the āstika view. The Apaṇṇaka Sutta indeed postulates a doctrine of survival (atthika-vāda) as right view.[51] However, in the Kaccānagotta Sutta the notion of survival (atthitā) is a wrong view, so there must be a relevant difference between atthika-vāda and atthitā.
This difference comes down to the two types of right view discussed in MN117: mundane right view and ultimate right view. We can derive this from the respective contexts. The purpose of the Apaṇṇaka Sutta is to teach skeptical householders which of two opposing doctrines to follow. Its doctrine of survival (atthika-vāda) is not the ultimate right view of the noble ones, but a mundane, semi-right view. It is indeed just said to lead to proper conduct, not to penetrating the Dhamma. This doctrine of survival is held by the noble ones, since they too acknowledge rebirth, but it is also held by eternalists like the Brahmins and Jains. The purpose of the Kaccānagotta Sutta, on the other hand, is to teach a Buddhist monk about ultimate right view, the deep insights into Dependent Arising and the absence of a self. The notion of survival (atthitā) here refers to the sense of personal survival, the subjective feeling that I or my self will survive after death. This notion is abandoned by noble ones, but without them abandoning the general view that there is life after death. They abandoned only certain specific doctrines of survival, those that assume a soul or self. It is these types of survival that fall under atthitā, not the Buddha’s.
The Apaṇṇaka Sutta later ensures that the householders don’t get stuck in eternalism either by explaining that there is a complete cessation of existence. But by itself the doctrine of survival (atthika-vāda), the doctrine that there is an afterlife, doesn’t necessarily avoid eternalism. It encompasses both right view of self-less rebirth and the wrong notion of eternal survival (atthitā).
Fortunately, the situation is more simple on the side of the nonbelievers: both the doctrine of nonsurvival (natthika-vāda) and the notion of nonsurvival (natthitā) are simply wrong views, because they both deny rebirth in toto.
See the table below for an overview of all these notions and doctrines:
| View | Held by | View is | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Natthika-vāda | Doctrine of no survival | Annihilationists | Wrong |
| Natthitā | Notion of personal nonsurvival | Annihilationists | Wrong |
| Atthika-vāda | Doctrine of survival | Eternalists & nobles | Mundane right |
| Atthitā | Notion of personal survival | Eternalists | Wrong |
| Sammā diṭṭhi | Impersonal survival which ends | Nobles only | Ultimate right |
To summarize this train of thought, I suggest that the two wrong notions of the Kaccānagotta Sutta hark back to the ancient āstika/nāstika debate. It was originally a debate about the existence of an eternal soul or self, which was intrinsically linked to any kind of belief in life after death. Agnostics aside, there were only two options: you either held that such a soul and hence afterlife existed, or you held that no life after death existed at all, which made you respectively an eternalist or an annihilationist. But then Buddha appeared on the scene and introduced a third view: post-mortem survival without a soul, the view of Dependent Arising.
On that note, the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa contains a repeated statement which bears some similarity to the Buddha’s reply to Kaccāna: “This is the duality, there is no third option: truth and falsehood. The gods are truth, humans are falsehood.”[52] Venerable Sujato notes, in line with Eggeling: “The word for ‘truth’ here is satya (Pali sacca), which like atthitā (‘existence’) is an abstract noun from the root as, ‘to exist’. […] The gods are truly real because they are immortal, whereas transient humans are not truly real.”[53] We can compare this to the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad: “Mortality is the unreal (lit. ‘non-existing’, asat), and immortality is the real (lit. ‘existing’, sat).”[54] So in these passages too, we find a connection between the fate of beings after death and the concepts of existence and nonexistence. And if the Buddha was aware of such Brahmanical statements, he might even have purposefully framed his teachings as the third option, as the truth in the middle of the duality.
These connections with other religions are speculative, so more knowledgeable people may have to look further into them. Either way, my interpretation of atthitā and natthitā doesn’t stand or fall with these connections, since their meaning can already be derived from the suttas themselves. But this historical context does help explain why the Kaccānagotta Sutta opposes itself to “most of the world”, which doesn’t make as much sense if the two wrong notions were about some abstract principles of existence and, particularly, nonexistence.
3. The right view in the middle
So far I argued that the two wrong notions of atthitā and natthitā are about survival and nonsurvival after death, respectively being views of eternalism and annihilationism. There are other discourses that more directly show that the Buddha’s middle teaching avoids these two extremes specifically, but I plan to discuss those at a later date. For now, let us get to the heart of the matter and consider how right view avoids the two extremes. (To appreciate this part properly, it will be especially helpful to read my previous essay on “the world”.)
The Kaccānagotta Sutta says:
- “If you see the origin of the ‘world’ [i.e. the six senses] by understanding it in line with reality, you won’t have the notion of nonsurvival with respect to it.”
- “If you see the cessation of the ‘world’ by understanding it in line with reality, you won’t have the notion of survival with respect to it.”
We should compare this to SN12.44:
- “And how does the ‘world’ originate? […] Dependent on craving, there is fuel/taking up. Dependent on fuel/taking up, existence. Dependent on existence, birth. And dependent on birth, old age and death [and all other suffering] come to be. That is how the ‘world’ originates.”
- “And how does the ‘world’ disappear? […] If that craving totally fades away and ceases, fuel/taking up will cease. If fuel/taking up ceases, existence will cease. If existence ceases, birth will cease. And if birth ceases, old age and death [and all other suffering] will cease. […] That is how the ‘world’ ceases.”
I omitted from the above quotes the contextually irrelevant part on the arising of contact and feeling (as explained in the previous essay). This leaves us with the five factors of Dependent Arising that make up what I call ‘the craving sequence’. The Kaccānagotta Sutta has the full twelvefold sequence instead, including the seven factors that start with ignorance, which I accordingly call the ‘ignorance sequence’. This sequence also describes the process of rebirth, with the arising of consciousness along with the individual’s immaterial aspects and body (nāmarūpa) being equivalent to birth, their cessation being equivalent to the cessation of existence. So at its core the full twelvefold sequence is also a description of the arising and cessation of the “world” that is the being. It just describes it in two different ways, once based on ignorance and once based on craving.[55]
With this in mind, the Kaccānagotta Sutta is telling us that:
- If you see the origin of the “world”, you understand the origination sequence of Dependent Arising. You understand that ignorance and craving lead to rebirth, to the arising of the “world” of the six senses in a next life. Since you know for a fact that there is rebirth, you will no longer have the notion of nonsurvival, the belief that there is no existence after death.
- If you see the cessation of the “world”, you understand the cessation sequence of Dependent Arising. You understand that if ignorance and craving cease, rebirth will come to an end. Since you also know that existence will completely cease when rebirth stops, you will no longer have the notion of survival, the belief in any kind of permanent existence after death.
Although the actual insights into these principles are incredibly profound, the basic idea is simple: You know for a fact that there is rebirth but you also know that existence won’t last forever. That is how right view avoids both annihilationism and eternalism. (As a reminder, by ‘annihilationism’ here I specifically mean annihilation after a single lifetime, not annihilationism after multiple lifetimes, even though this notion is also avoided by right view.)
The commentary to the Kaccānagotta Sutta is of the same opinion. It states that not having the notion of nonsurvival with respect to the world means not having the view of annihilation. Not having the notion of survival with respect to the world means not having the view of eternalism. The sub-commentary expands upon this. It explains that if you see the cessation of dependently arisen phenomena by understanding how their causes cease, you won’t have the view of eternalism; and if you see the continuation of dependently arisen phenomena by understanding how their causes continue, you won’t have the view of annihilation. The latter it also understands specifically as the belief that beings only have a single life. Many modern authors arrived at a this understanding as well.[56] Peter Harvey writes: “Conditioned Arising here provides a middle way of understanding which avoids the extremes of eternalism and annihilationism: the survival of an eternal Self, or the total annihilation of a person at death.”[57]
I’m pleased that Harvey also uses the term ‘survival’ to describe the extreme of eternalism. He also points out the important concept of self, which is intrinsically connected to both eternalism and annihilationism. The two wrong notions of the Kaccānagotta Sutta both also involve a self, which is perhaps somewhat obscured by the translations ‘notion of survival’ and ‘notion of nonsurvival’. But atthitā and natthitā both contain the verb atthi, which in Pali always implies a subject, in this case a they to whom it applies. This is why earlier I translated the two terms quite literally as ‘the notion that one will still exist’ and ‘the notion that one will no longer exist’.
However, it would be bad linguistics to derive this much from literal translations. That the two wrong notions involve a self can be more directly derived from the right view which avoids both. It says that those with right view do not assume to have a self. This implies that the wrong notions of survival and nonsurvival do assume a self.
In brief, eternalism is the belief that some essence of your being, called a self, will continue forever after death. This essence can be comparatively coarse, like the soul proposed by most of Christianity, but it can also be more subtle, like the transcendent, nondual awareness of Advaita Vedanta. Annihilationism is the belief that some essence of your being is destroyed at death. This essence can be a soul which you perceive to be destroyed at death, but it can also be a more subtle sense of identification with the body, which would also be considered a view of a self. The Buddha’s middle teaching avoids both eternalism and annihilationism by posing the absence of a self in any way.
Since this principle is what the entire Kaccānagotta Sutta essentially boils down to, it may be helpful to also have it explained in the words of others. Richard Gombrich summarizes:
Venerable Ñāṇatiloka:
Venerable Bodhi:
Notice that Venerable Ñāṇatiloka also describes the extreme of annihilation as a “materialistic belief” and that Venerable Bodhi explains natthitā as “no personal survival of any sort”, meaning there is no post-mortem existence for any being. This supports my interpretation of the term as annihilation after one lifetime, as well as the translation ‘the notion of nonsurvival’, the advantages of which over ‘nonexistence’ I hope are now becoming more apparent.
On the flipside, translating atthitā as ‘the notion of survival’ has certain disadvantages. As explained in the previous section, since the Buddha taught rebirth, he also taught a form of survival. In the Apaṇṇaka Sutta he indeed encourages people to hold a doctrine of survival (atthika-vāda). But it is also held by those with right view and therefore is not equal to atthitā, which is a wrong view. The main difference between the two is that the Buddha’s concept of survival does not involve any essence or self. As such it differs from all other theories of post-mortem survival. Jayatilleke writes: “The Buddhist theory of survival […] is a novel theory which is not to be found in the pre-Buddhist literature. It was a doctrine of survival without the concept of a self-identical substance or soul. […] Though there was no self-identical substance, there was a continuity of individuality, sometimes referred to as a stream of consciousness”.[61] Put differently, rebirth is a process of continuous flux. There is no essence (or ‘self’) that survives, no substantial thing or inherently existing being that continues from one life to the next life.
This might be hard to truly grasp, because as long as we don’t have right view, our intuition will tells us that if there is rebirth, there must be some essence that continues, some core inside our being that proceeds from one life to the next.[62] It must be this same I who will be reborn, something of me that survives. I’ve even heard of Buddhists who disregard the idea of rebirth just because they find it irreconcilable with the absence of a self. But with right view you understand that what proceeds are just impersonal, ever-changing khandhas, which are only conventionally called ‘me’ or ‘a being’. No self is present in them.
The process of rebirth is referred to as a stream, as Jayatilleke points out, because a stream of water is ever-changing. The water inside of it is never the same, yet conventionally speaking it is still the same stream. The Milindapañha compares rebirth to a flame of an oil lamp that burns throughout the night.[63] Enlightened ones know that this cessation will happen at the end of their current life, but stream enterers already know that it will happen after a few more lives at most. That is how the notion of survival is truly abandoned by them, not merely by positing that there is no self.
In sum, since noble ones know they were reborn in the past, they don’t have a notion of nonsurvival. But since they also understand that their existence won’t last, they don’t have a notion of survival either. That is what is meant by: “If you see the origin of the ‘world’ by understanding it in line with reality, you won’t have the notion of nonsurvival with respect to it. And if you see the cessation of the ‘world’ by understanding it in line with reality, you won’t have the notion of survival with respect to it.”
4. Annihilation after multiple lifetimes & nonsurvival
In our previous discussion on the world, some objected to my interpretation of atthitā and natthitā as respectively the belief that there is eternal life after death (survival) and the belief that there is no life after death at all (nonsurvival): these two beliefs don’t include annihilationists who believe in some form of rebirth. This objection is true. If people believe in a self that gets reborn for a number of lives and then gets completely annihilated, they would also reject both these extremes. They would also say that there is rebirth but that existence won’t last forever, just like those with right view. But still, they have wrong view. So how do they fit into the Kaccānagotta Sutta?
Initially I struggled with the same objection myself. Yet all evidence indicated that natthitā just means the nonexistence of an afterlife in any way or form, not a wider concept of annihilationism that also allows for rebirth. I then realized this is only a problem when we expect the two extreme notions to encompass all wrong views about the afterlife. But the Buddha never says they do! He says the two are wrong views of most of the world, which indicates they are commonly held, not that they are exhaustive. As Kalupahana explains, with his middle teaching the Buddha was primarily responding to the traditional Indian schools of eternalism and materialism.[64] But multiple-lifetime annihilationism wasn’t traditional. It was in all likelihood a rare doctrine, one which doesn’t neatly fit into the two opposing notions. It could arguably be regarded as a combination of both: the survival of a self for a number of lives, followed by its nonsurvival after the final life. But more likely the view of annihilation after multiple lifetimes just falls outside the two extremes altogether.
That in itself doesn’t make the view right, however. It just means that the Buddha’s right view avoids more than the two extremes of survival and nonsurvival. It’s comparable to how the middle way of practice, the noble eightfold path, avoids the two extreme practices of sensual indulgence and self-mortification.[65] This doesn’t mean that if you don’t engage in those two extremes, you are necessarily on the path. Many people avoid both practices without even having right view, which is at the very start of the noble eightfold path.[66] Likewise, you may not hold either of the two wrong notions of survival or nonsurvival yet still not have the right view in the middle. It’s like driving a car off the side of the road doesn’t mean you necessarily end up all the way in the ditch. You can still be on the verge between the road and the ditch.
With this principle in mind, there no longer is a problem with interpreting natthitā as the annihilationist belief that there is no life after death at all.
The situation is similar in other discourses. In SN12.35 Dependent Arising is portrayed as the middle view between the notion that the soul is separate from the body and the notion that the soul is identical to the body. These two extremes—respectively a form of eternalism attributed to the Jains and a form of materialism—do not encompass all wrong views about the afterlife. Some Brahmins for instance believed in a universal Self, which is very different from the individual soul of the Jains. This Self was thought to encompass the entire universe, so presumably it was considered neither separate from the body nor identical to it. Yet this Brahmanical view is also avoided by the middle teaching, even if it doesn’t fall under either extreme. But more relevantly, because the body only lasts for one life, the notion that the soul is identical to the body does not encompass annihilation after multiple lifetimes but only annihilation after a single lifetime.
The same pertains to the Kaccānagotta Sutta: right view also avoids wrong notions other than just eternalism and single-lifetime annihilationism, other than survival and nonsurvival.
And right view has to avoid more than these two extreme notions, because there is one group of people that definitely does not fall under either: the so-called equivocators, who are quoted to say: “Suppose you would ask me […] whether there is an afterlife. If I thought there was, I would say so. But I don’t say it is like this. I also don’t say it is like that. I don’t say it is otherwise. I don’t say it is not so. I don’t deny it is not so.”[67] So these equivocators (or perhaps we should call them agnostics) don’t commit to either survival or nonsurvival, and hence they fall outside the two extremes. But that alone doesn’t make their view right!
In the Kaccānagotta Sutta the equivocators are not refuted by right view avoiding the two extreme notions, but by right view being “without question or doubt”. So too, the annihilationist who believe in multiple lifetimes aren’t refuted simply by right view avoiding the two extremes. The Buddha didn’t just say: “If you see the origin of the ‘world’ in line with reality, you won’t have the notion of nonsurvival, and if you see the cessation of the ‘world’ in line with reality, you won’t have the notion of survival: that is what constitutes right view.” There is more to right view: namely, the knowledge that it is only suffering which arises and ceases, the knowledge that you don’t have a self. It is this particular aspect of right view which specifically refutes annihilation after multiple lifetimes. Of course, you can only truly see origination and cessation in line with reality if you also truly understand suffering and non-self, so these principles are not completely separate insights. Yet the addition of the latter in the Kaccānagotta Sutta specifically ensures that its description of right view also avoids annihilationism after multiple lifetimes. When the Buddha himself was accused of such annihilationism, he similarly said: “In the past and also now, I declare only suffering and the cessation of suffering.”[68]
See also the following overview on how wrong views are avoided in the Kaccānasutta:
| Wrong view | Avoided by |
|---|---|
| Survival (eternalism) | Seeing cessation of the world |
| Nonsurvival (single-lifetime annihilationism) | Seeing origination of the world |
| Equivocation / agnosticism | Knowing without question or doubt |
| Multiple-lifetime annihilationism | Only suffering ceasing, not a self |
Conclusion
I hope this explains my translations ‘notion of survival’ and ‘notion of nonsurvival’.
But I have other reasons for them as well. Sometimes I translate terms differently from prior translators not because I fundamentally disagree with their choices but because I think alternatives can provide a fresh perspective for practitioners. When doing so, I try to ensure my translations are just as valid, both linguistically and historically, hence the above defense. The standard translations ‘notion of existence’ and ‘notion of nonexistence’ are not necessarily wrong, since they can be taken to be about the existence of a self after death. They are abstract, however, and consequently have been interpreted in various other ways, many of which miss the Buddha’s intentions.
My translations may have their own downsides, but they do pose some helpful questions. Do you have the feeling that you will survive after death? Or do you have the feeling that you will not? In either case, it would show that you are not yet fully aligned with the right view in the middle. It can be beneficial to investigate where these feelings stem from. And if your answer to both questions is, “I don’t know”, this applies all the same, since in that case you don’t yet have the confirmed knowledge independent of others mentioned in the Kaccānagotta Sutta.
These are the kinds of question the sutta is indirectly posing, which is good to keep in mind during a textual analysis such as this. It helps keep the bigger picture.
Presenting this or comparable views are for example Murti p.50–51, Warder 1970 p.127, Johansson p.27–29, Garfield p.223, Ñāṇananda p.85, and Brasington p.111. Compare also Jones p.4: “Nāgārjuna sees [in the Kaccānagotta Sutta] a ‘middle path’ between ‘exist’, i.e., ‘real’ in the sense of being eternal and unchanging—and total nonexistence like, to use the Indian examples, a son of a barren woman or the horns of a rabbit.” ↩︎
Garfield p.223, also see p.343 and Edelglass & Garfield p.10. ↩︎
Fenner p.85 ↩︎
See Hamilton p.79: “The paṭiccasamuppāda formula applies to the way a human being arises and not to the way […] the objective world arises.” Siderits & Katsura p.14 & 162: “The Buddha’s claim [is] that dependent origination represents the correct middle path between the extremes of eternalism and annihilationism. This is discussed [by Nāgārjuna] though in ways that go considerably beyond what had been the orthodox understanding. […] The two extreme views the Buddha refers to in ‘The Instructing of Katyāyana’ are also called eternalism and annihilationism. Nāgārjuna here interprets these to refer respectively to the view that things exist having intrinsic nature and the view that the lack of intrinsic nature means that things are utterly unreal. The argument is that the first leads to the conclusion that ultimately real things are eternal, while the second leads to the conclusion that ultimately nothing whatsoever exists. So even if the Buddha did not explicitly claim that his was a middle path between the existence and the nonexistence of entities in general and was instead only discussing the existence or nonexistence of the person [i.e. the eternal existence and annihilation of a personal self], Nāgārjuna takes this to be a plausible extension of the Buddha’s remarks to Katyāyana.” See Burton p.x for a more critical discussion of Nāgārjuna’s reinterpretation and Shulman 2007 for a more general reply to the view that Dependent Arising concerns all that exists. ↩︎
See Siderits & Katsura p.4: “In MMK Nāgārjuna is addressing an audience of fellow Buddhists. […] Of particular importance is the fact that his audience holds views that are based on the fundamental presuppositions behind the Abhidharma enterprise.” Walser p.225: “The view of Nāgārjuna’s strategies is incomplete without an untangling of the abhidharma references in his works.” Also considering Madhyamaka philosophy to be a critical response to Abhidharma are for example Murti p.55, Warder 1970 p.421, Gombrich 1980 p.36–37, Lindtner p.22–24, Burton p.8, Vélez de Cea 2004 p.518–519, Shulman 2009 p.153, and Mishra p.52. ↩︎
See Gombrich 2006 p.64: “All such terms as soul, self, individual, etc., are mere conventional terms […] In due course this doctrine of essence-lessness came to be applied to everything, not just living beings.” Mishra p.52: “One can say that Nāgārjuna extended this no-soul theory to all entities.” Vélez de Cea 2005 p.518: “In the Pali suttas the concept of self refers to the personal identity of someone […] In the MMK the concept of self can refer either to the personal identity of someone [or] to the impersonal philosophical identity of something.” Siderits & Katsura p.1 (emphasis mine): “The claim that all things are empty first appears in the Buddhist tradition in the early Mahāyāna sūtras known collectively as Prajñāparamitā, beginning roughly in the first century BCE. Earlier Buddhist thought was built around the more specific claim that the person is empty: that there is no separately existing, enduring self, and that the person is a conceptual construction. Realization of the emptiness of the person was thought to be crucial to liberation from saṃsāra. The earliest Mahāyāna texts go considerably beyond this claim, asserting that not just the person […] but everything is devoid of [any] intrinsic nature.” Further see Shì Hùifēng p.215.
Intending to base such later ideas on the Pali suttas, some argue that the reflection on anattā also encompasses “external form” (bahiddhā rūpaṃ). In SN22.95 it is further said that external form is without essence (asāra). Putting the two together, the suggested conclusion is that all matter in the universe is without any essence whatsoever and that this is what anattā ultimately describes. I wonder how anybody could have empirical knowledge of such a fact and how it would be relevant to ending suffering, but a more pertinent question is: what was originally meant by “external form”? Some scholars explain that in the context of the six senses this refers not to external matter as such but to the way material objects appears to us through the sense of sight, for example as shapes and colors (i.e. “forms”). It is these experiences which should be understood to have no essence, not the underlying objects. Similarly, in context of the five khandhas we can understand external form by analogy to the other khandhas, where external sensation, perception, will, and consciousness are usually understood to be those of other beings. By analogy, external form is then the form (or the body in certain contexts) of other beings, not all matter in the entire universe. See for instance Gethin p.36–40, who argues against understanding rūpa as matter and concludes: “Inanimate rūpa is left unaccounted for [which] further illustrates the way in which the analysis of rūpa centres around the sentient being.” Also see Hamilton p.1–13. ↩︎
SN22.90 ↩︎
See Shulman 2007 p.310 n.31. Bodhi 2000 notes at the Kaccānagotta Sutta: “It would be misleading to translate the two terms, atthitā and natthitā, simply as ‘existence’ and ‘nonexistence’ and then to maintain (as is sometimes done) that the Buddha rejects all ontological notions as inherently invalid. The Buddha’s utterances […] show that he did not hesitate to make pronouncements with a clear ontological import when they were called for.”
Moreover, when pronouncing that certain things exist or not exists, the Buddha uses the very same verb atthi that is part of atthitā. He says people with insight will know of what exists that it exists (atthi) and of what does not exist that it does not exist (natthi) (AN10.22). He agrees with the wise that the temporary khandhas exist, while permanent khandhas don’t exist (SN22.94; compare SN22.150–158, SN24.1–96). The wise also agree that the term ‘exists’ applies to present khandhas (SN22.62). One practice of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta is to recollect that the body exists, and similarly for the mind (MN10). Those who strive for extinguishment are abandoning what exists, which means they are abandoning suffering, which is also said to exist, even in specific context of the middle teaching (AN7.55; SN12.17). The six senses are also said to exist (SN35.66–68, SN12.10, SN35.105–108, SN35.114–115), and after the death of an enlightened being they no longer exist (SN35.66–68, SN35.83, SN4.19, SN35.65).
One might object that none of these passages are about inherent existence but all about impermanent existence, but that is exactly my point. The term atthi in the Pali canon never has connotations of inherent existence like it does in later works such as the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK). I am unaware of a single sutta where the unqualified word by itself carries such a meaning. Discussions about permanent, inherent existence always use nicca and synonyms, never just atthi. The division between so-called conventional and inherent existence is simply never made, and therefore it is very unlikely atthitā would imply the latter. See also Ṭhānissaro 2020 p.12: “Sometimes it’s believed that the word ‘exist’ in Pali applies only to permanent existence. Actually, though, there are many instances in the Canon where temporary things and processes are said to exist.” ↩︎
See Shulman 2009 p.145: “Nāgārjuna is extending the meaning of the traditional Buddhist definition of the middle as the path that avoids eternalism and annihilation (śāśvata and uccheda). These terms, which originally referred primarily to the nature of the [personal] self, now make an ontological statement about the nature of reality [in general].” Not realizing this, Stcherbatsky p.17 sees sassata and uccheda as taught by the Buddha as “absolute affirmation” and “absolute negation” instead of eternalism and annihilationism. Wynne p.217 likewise thinks “in a number of discourses the Buddha is accused of being a nihilist (uccheda-vādo)”. But this imports a later meaning of the term into the early texts. Translations of the MMK and other Madhyamaka works indeed often render uccheda or its equivalents in other manuscript languages as ‘nihilism’ (e.g. Garfield p.224, McCagney p.90, Fenner p.85, Cronk p.163, and Tola p.27). But this is thought to reflect Nāgārjuna’s specific interpretation of this term. Cronk p.163 n.3 explains: “By nihilism [uccheda] in this context, Nāgārjuna means the view that only essences or things with essences can exist and, if there are no essences or things with essences, then nothing exists.” Arguing similar are Garfield p.224, Tola n.89, and Jones n.5. See also James p.1116: “In opposition to nihilism (ucchedavāda), Mādhyamikas deny that nothing exists. But against eternalism (sāsvatavāda) they deny that anything [and not just beings] enjoys the kind and degree of ontological independence [i.e. permanence] that is signaled by the Sanskrit term svabhāva.” ↩︎
Siderits & Katsura p.160 and Garfield p.220 suggest Nāgārjuna introduced the concept of ontological nonexistence as a response to charges of nihilism raised against his own teachings on emptiness. ↩︎
For example DN1 and MN102. ↩︎
See Burns p.23 (emphasis mine): “The Buddha himself rejected and cautioned against the two extremes of philosophical dualism, one extreme being eternalism or existence and the other being annihilationism or non-existence. [T]his was usually taught with reference to the existence or non-existence of the personality after death”. Sangiacomo p.942 (emphasis mine): “Consider the notion of non-existence first. What does not exist? The most precious thing of all, ‘myself’, when the body breaks apart at death. The assumption here is that if one holds on to the view of ‘non-existing’ after death, then one might be convinced that […] there will be just sheer annihilation. [T]he alternative notion of existence, which again concerns the existence of the self after death […] is connected with an eternalist assumption associated with the sense of being a self, and its alleged ability to survive”. Shulman 2009 p.145 n.19: “The extremes, attithā and natthitā, do not relate to abstract notions of existence but to particular ways of understanding the nature of the Self. In fact, for the Kaccānagottasutta, attithā and natthitā represent sassata and uccheda (eternalism and annihilation).” Compare Siderits & Katsura p.159. ↩︎
For Jain sources opposed to materialism see for example Bolleé, Joshi p.394, and Bronkhorst p.249. For Brahmin/Hindu sources see for example Chattopadhaya and Dasgupta vol.3 p.528–530. ↩︎
Somaratne p.135 ↩︎
The commentaries take sattā opapātikā to refer to any reborn being, so I assumed this interpretation for the sub-commentary also, as does Bodhi 2000 n.30 at SN12.15. ↩︎
For example Nyanaponika p.12, Nyanatiloka p.6–7, Karunadasa p.18, Walshe 1984 n.58-59, Kalupahana p.78, Shulman 2007 p.310, Harvey 2013 p.69, and Somaratne p.135. ↩︎
Karunadasa p.26 ↩︎
Shulman 2007 p.310 n.31 ↩︎
San-mu-kd17. The text ascribes the annihilationist view to Pūraṇa Kassapa instead of Ajita Kesakambala, but otherwise is very similar to the Pali. To mix up two otherwise meaningless names is an innocent mistake—if it even is one. Other parallels also ascribe a similar view to Pūraṇa Kassapa; see Dhammadinnā p.64 n.4. ↩︎
See Duroiselle §611, Perniola §271, Warder 2010 p.12, and Māgadhabhāsā p.91. ↩︎
AN8.4 by Bodhi 2012 and Sujato 2024d. ↩︎
MN118 ↩︎
For example, Bodhi 2012 AN8.5 has “they are […] no longer present” (i.e. “no longer exist”) for na santi; santi being the plural form of atthi. Sujato 2024d AN4.173 also translates natthi using ‘no longer exists’. As to atthi, Bodhi 2000 SN35.231 also translates it as ‘still exists’. ↩︎
Walshe 1995 p.96 ↩︎
Jayatilleke 1963 p.240; Anālayo p.171 ↩︎
Radhakrishnan p.604 ↩︎
KaṭU 1.10, translation Olivelle ↩︎
Purohit & Yeats KaṭU 1.10, emphasis mine ↩︎
See also Jayatilleke 1975 p.17 and Sujato 2024a, who refer to the same phrases of the Kaṭha Upaniṣad using ‘survival’ and ‘nonsurvival’. ↩︎
MN90, translation Sujato 2024c ↩︎
MN100. See explanatory footnotes in Sujato 2024c, which also gloss natthitā as ‘survival’. ↩︎
For example Ṭhānissaro 1993, who argues that anattā is a pragmatic strategy only, not an ontological statement. Likewise see Albahari. For a response see Bodhi 1993, Smith, and Sujato 2024a. ↩︎
Vacchagotto paribbājako literally means ‘a wanderer whose clan is Vaccha’, with vaccagotta being an attributive compound (bahubbīhi). It only occurs in the narrative portion of the texts: when the Buddha addresses the wanderer directly, he never calls him ‘Vaccagotta’ but always by his clan name ‘Vaccha’. A similar situation occurs in SN12.15 with the monk kaccānagotta, addressed as ‘Kaccāna’. There are also a wanderer bhaggavagotta addressed as ‘Bhaggava’ and a brahmin bhāradvājagotta addressed as ‘Bhāradvāja’. (DN24; MN75) In the latter case Ñāṇamoli & Bodhi and Sujato 2024c translated bhāradvājagotto brāhmaṇo as “a brahmin belonging to the Bhāradvāja clan”. I followed this example in the other cases. ↩︎
SN44.10 ↩︎
Sujato 2024b at SN44.10. For a further explanation see Sujato 2024a. ↩︎
Harvey 1995 p.39. Compare Ṭhānissaro 2018 p.100, who first mistakenly states, “the annihilationists […] also taught that there is no self”, yet later correctly, “annihilationists […] believe in an impermanent self”. ↩︎
SN44.9 ↩︎
MN72 ↩︎
Compare Harvey 1995 p.39: “Preoccupation with ‘I’ even leads to the idea that ‘I’ do not exist. Thus, if the Buddha had said ‘s/Self does not exist’, he would have been legitimizing such preoccupation.” ↩︎
As also argued by Smith p.2. ↩︎
SN33; MN72 ↩︎
MN2. Even if ignoring the future tense connotations of atthi, note that natthi me attā would not mean ‘there is no self (at all)’ but because of the inclusion of me would mean ‘I don’t have a self’ (lit. ‘there is no self of me’). This is still a view of “I” and therefore an indirect view of self. ↩︎
MN-A 1.70, commentary to MN2 ↩︎
Ñāṇamoli & Bodhi n.39 ↩︎
See Dasgupta vol.2 p.519, Shastri p.40, Bhattacharya p.229, Nicholson p.166–184, Doniger p.45–48, and Tilakaratne p.243. ↩︎
See Nicholson p.176–179 and Gokhale p.14. ↩︎
Dasgupta vol.3 p.518–519, some Sanskrit terms removed ↩︎
See Nicholson p.173: “The Jainas Maṇibhadra and Haribhadra consider themselves representatives of an āstika philosophy and apply the epithet nāstika exclusively to the materialist Lokāyata school.” Also Jayatilleke 1963 p.107: “Guṇaratna says that there were some yogis who were nāstikas, where the context shows beyond doubt that he is using the term nāstika to refer to the Materialist schools.” Compare Sharma p.54: “If nāstika means one who denies the spirit, the ethical conduct and the life beyond, the Chārvāka [i.e. materialist] is the only system in Indian Philosophy which can be called nāstika.” ↩︎
Jayatilleke 1975 p.17 ↩︎
Stcherbatsky p.1 ↩︎
MN60 ↩︎
ŚB 1.1.1.4, ŚB 3.3.2.2, ŚB 3.9.4.1 ↩︎
Sujato 2024b at SN12.15. The same connection between truth and mortality is made by Eggeling n.1 to ŚB 1.1.1.4. ↩︎
BU 1.3.28. Compare ŚB 7.4.1.15. ↩︎
For more detail Seeds, Paintings, and a Beam of Light. ↩︎
See note 12 and further Siderits p.13, Cintita p.49, Gombrich 2009 p.168, Bodhi 2005 Ch.9, and Mahasi p.23. ↩︎
Harvey 2013 p.69 ↩︎
Gombrich 2009 p.168. See also Sujato 2024b Introduction: “[In the Kaccānagotta Sutta] the Buddha rejects these opposing views as forms of eternalism and annihilationism, the ideas that the self will last forever, and that the self will be destroyed.” ↩︎
Nyanatiloka p.6–7 ↩︎
Bodhi 2005 Ch.9 ↩︎
Jayatilleke 1969 Ch.3, Pali terms removed ↩︎
See also Welbon p.94–95 and Cintita p.49. ↩︎
SN12.51 (Sunyo §141) ↩︎
Kalupahana p.19, 27 ↩︎
See MN139, SN42.12, and SN56.11. ↩︎
See SN45.1, AN10.103, AN10.105, AN10.121, and MN117. In context of the noble path, right view is defined as ultimate right view of the noble one, not mundane right view; see SN45.8 and MN117. The latter states that only noble ones truly “possess the noble path and develop the noble path”. ↩︎
DN1 ↩︎
MN22 ↩︎
So happy to see this posted in here finally. It should be of great benefit to many discussion being able to refer to it.
If it is the latter, I would suggest it is better to word it as follows: