That makes sense, so maybe we should distinguish two kinds of khandha grasping: 1. the involuntary one, common to animals and non-philosophical humans, giving rise to all kinds of normal phenomena and views 2. an explicit conviction / teaching / agenda that says something like “My spiritual insight tells me that after death my formless essence will merge with the highest deathless realm”…
Coming from the unusual to the exceptional we find in SC 17.1
Seeing in this way they’re not anxious about what doesn’t exist.” (Sujato, very similarly Gethin)
Seeing thus, he is not agitated over what is not present. (Thanissaro)
So evaṃ samanupassanto asati na paritassatī”ti.
which appears only in this text and lays the foundation for all further anatta discussion of the sutta.
Somewhere in the middle would be a translation as “he is not anxious about what is not”
I just had a deja-vu reading to older thread where @Sylvester offers a nice interpretation
Anyhow, I cannot interpret SC 17.1 other than that the educated noble disciple is not afraid of “what is not” - which is that the self is not in the six mentioned before. There is no introduction of an ontological argument here - just before we had the exposition that the khandhas + 6th is not atta. And this is “what is not” - the atta in the khandhas.
Is this at that point agreeable, or is there another good reading?