Is 'clinging' to the Aggregates a sufficient condition for Self-view?

Discussion
21

Whether it is mentioned so specifically or not in the sutta, everything unwholesome is certainly born of clinging!

Dhammarakkhita does not have any positions! So I don’t know exactly about this. But I guess it’s possible that a sotapanna may self-unconsciously retain a trace of self beliefs, due to the profound force of habit, or also due to the lingering confusion about Dhamma. Sakkayaditthi however is not that, it is a firm and non negotiable belief in the actual existence of self. And that is irreconcilable with a sotapanna.

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22

Thank you this, Bhante.

This I agree. I would also agree with your point about intuitive fitness and malleability from your other thread.

However, in the case of the conceit “I am”, I am of the view that such pathway to malleability is closed. It cannot be a form of clinging.

When it is said in SN 22.89 that the conceit “I am” is an anusaya, I take this sutta as showing the place of “I am” in Dependant Origination -

At Savatthī. “Bhikkhus, what one intends, and what one plans, and whatever one has a tendency towards: this becomes a basis for the maintenance of consciousness. When there is a basis there is a support for the establishing of consciousness. When consciousness is established and has come to growth, there is the production of future renewed existence. When there is the production of future renewed existence, future birth, aging-and-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair come to be. Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering.

“If, bhikkhus, one does not intend, and one does not plan, but one still has a tendency towards something, this becomes a basis for the maintenance of consciousness. When there is a basis, there is a support for the establishing of consciousness…. Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering.
SN 12.38

This is describing an anusaya anuseti-ing in the link between volitions and consciousness. Since rebirth is only the outcome when one abhisaṅkharoti through greed, hatred or ignorance, it should be clear that the conceit “I am” is a form of craving, rather than a form of clinging.

Between the craving “I am” and rebirth, there must surely be appropriation and its sequel Existence. What would be interesting would be whether it is possible for the specific type of appropriation of the Aggregates as Self can again recur in a Stream Winner. Which brings us back to SN 12.20 - why is it impossible for the Stream Winner never be agitated? Is it possible to have Self-views and still not be agitated? Is it possible to appropriate the Aggregates as self, and still not have Self-views?

I will cover the impossiblity of these 2 latter scenarios later using the 2nd and 3rd Noble Realities. But even without that analysis, it should be apparent that if this type of Appropriation here is not a sufficient condition for Self-view in a Stream Winner, it should also not be a sufficient condition for Existence and rebirth.

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23

I think you and I think about Dhamma in very different ways. But, friend @Sylvester, wishing you the great fruits of Dhamma which ever way you take. :smiley:

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24

It takes a really long time to observe people, to get to know their character and motivations. There’s this cognitive bias, an evolutionary survival skill, a shortcut almost everyone takes (to their great detriment): we assume if someone is highly educated, intelligent, communicates in an eloquent manner, they must also be an expert in many areas where they express their opinion (in matters outside their area of expertise) so eloquently. Intellectual honesty and integrity matters, so buyer beware.

Collectively, genuine experts have a moral duty to expose fraudulence, even though it may be time consuming and frustrating to do so. So thanks to the genuine experts who invest their time and energy to help make this community a worthwhile destination.

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25

Do you think that a baby or a young child who never expose to any religion ever think and believe that he/she is a self, stable, fixed person, with body, mind, thoughts,…?

Do you think that atheists believe in a permanent, fixed, stable self?

There are people who made big mistakes, have tremendous remorse and always want to be different persons or even want to be non existence. Some of them even changed their names, try to erase all the past and never want to refer to their old “selves” or even try to kill themselves. Do you think they believe that they and others are “selves”, permanent, stable, fixed persons? If so, why do they want to change or kill themselves?

I never recall that I believe in a permanent, stable self, fixed person with body, mind, feelings, memories, cognition… I always know that I will someday die. I understand that I am changing everyday. I can see clearly that I am not the same person as I was when I was 2 year old in both body and mind. I can see clearly the changing in my feelings. Sometimes I am happy, sometimes I am sad. Am I free from sakkayaditthi ?

Many people who do not believe in atman (stable, fixed persons). If you tell them that there is a self, they will fight with you to death. Are they free from sakkayaditthi?

26

A monk can take a place to live without ever thinking that it is “my place or it is me”. He took that place for other purposes (practices…)

27

I am no expert in pali. Indeed “clinging” is generally used when dealing with clinging to views. Or we have the explanations about why do certain views exist, and how it is because of clinging to consciousness or form or etc. But, in general, when we hear about clinging, we think of it as a synonim to craving. And I think there are suttas where it is used this way, though I don’t know. In any case, probably all people here generally understand clinging as a synonim for craving.

Or, if it is not seen this way, it is seen as a synonim for attachment. For example one has craving for a car, then he buys it, then develops clinging for the car and he will feel bad if something happens to it. This is the way attachment is meant in DO and why it is based on craving. I there would be no craving, there would be no clinging.

I am no expert in pali, so maybe you can tell me if this “clinging” that you are reffering to is the same as the one described in DO. If it is, then there is no special meaning to it, meaning that you attributed to it in this topic.

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I wouldn’t say so. craving and clinging are two separate things in dependent origination. Also, clinging is connected to the first noble truth of dukkha and craving to the second noble truth of origin of dukkha.

Would agree with this, on the other hand

29

No, a baby or a child below age 2 does not have self view. Also the huge majority of animals do not have self view. There is actually a sutta where some young monks won a debate and told the Buddha about it. Buddha was surprised that their opponents did not bring up the “simile of the baby” that you just used right now, and scolded the young monks for not knowing how to debate, since they won the debate only cause their opponents were even worse.

The answer is that, while there is no such thing as self view in a baby, there is the seed or the development of self view in that baby.

As for atheist, they all believe in a self. They believe there is a self that will be destroyed at death and will never appear again. They do not believe that there never was a self to begin with.

I never recall that I believe in a permanent, stable self, fixed person with body, mind, feelings, memories, cognition… I always know that I will someday die. I understand that I am changing everyday. I can see clearly that I am not the same person as I was when I was 2 year old in both body and mind. I can see clearly the changing in my feelings. Sometimes I am happy, sometimes I am sad. Am I free from sakkayaditthi ?

Who will get reborn ? Is this consciousness of yours the thing that will get reborn ?

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30

If a baby has no self view, is he/she a stream-enter?

Edit#1: May be I better ask: "If there is no such thing as self view in a baby then can we say that a baby is free from sakkayaditthi? Or if one is free from sakkayadithhi can one (re)develops sakkayadithhi?

It depends on who do you ask this question. If you ask an ordinary person, he/she will answer that “I am”. If you ask a stream enter or above, he/she will tell you that your question is invalid question.

Edit#2: If you ask a person who clings to self doctrine then he/she may tell you that it is the “self” that is reborn. If you ask a person who clings to no self doctrine then he/she may tell you that it is that (stream of) consciousness which is reborn…

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31

That’s true, but is this “taking” the sort of appropriation of the Aggregates as self handled by the suttas?

I think it probably comes under sense restraint, where “taking” as “mine” might perhaps be directed to the external bases as part of abhij­jhā (covetousness) manifesting.

If, on the other hand, this taking of a dwelling is equivalent to appropriation of the Bases as self, then it appears it has to be given up as well for Stream Entry - SN 35.121. Personally, I don’t think the defilement of taking one’s kuṭī as “mine” is of type of clinging discussed in SN 22. It’s probably just plain avarice. A non-avaricious monk does not necessarily imply Stream Entry.

32

I think MN 64 may provide the answers you seek. It asks how in an infant who does not have the notion of sakkāya (ie the 5 Aggregates), could sakkāyadiṭṭhi arise? The sutta then proposes that sakkā­ya­diṭṭhā­nusaya (the latent tendency to views on the 5 Aggregates) does indeed anuseti.

For sakkāyadiṭṭhi to arise, there must be craving as cause and condition, there must be clinging to self as cause and condition. I believe the anusayas are what eventually cause the manifold cravings to mature into clingings of various sorts. Rebirth may give you a clean slate, except from the anusayas and past kammas. I’m just not sure if our old beliefs from a past life can survive rebirth in a verbalisable form. But craving can propel one through many births - AN 3.34.

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33

Hi again.

I hesitate to venture here, as I am not sure that you use “attachment” in the same sense as the suttas. If you mean it in the technical sense of ajjhosāna, then in some contexts such as AN 4.10, it is a synonym for craving.

But if your car example is anything like the kuṭī example above, I think that kind of attachment is just plain avarice or possessiveness. But we would never, I hope, regard the car or kuṭī as “This is mine, This I am, This is my self”.

I would saying appropriating the Aggregates as self is the basis for 3 of the 4 clingings described in SN 12.2, ie clinging to views, clinging to rules and vows, clinging to a doctrine of self. Not appropriating the Aggregates as self leads to the disappearance of these 3 kinds of clingings : the SN 24 series.

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34

Well that very sutta, SN 12.2, lists clinging to sensual pleasures as a form of clinging. For example the clinging to the car that I gave as an example. So I don’t see any translation problems. We only see clinging = attachment in a normal sense, not clinging = appropriation.

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35

Indeed!

But that was not the issue that engendered this thread. I don’t know if you followed that previous thread regarding SN 24.2 -

SN 24.2: can a phrase 'when this happens... that happens' be used for a full-fledged modus ponens?

There, the issue was the specific type of clinging as appropriation of the Aggregates as Self. I don’t believe anyone has asserted that kāmupādāna falls into the appropriation of the Aggregates as self, at least not me.

As I mentioned in my first post to you in this thread, part of the confusion that has arisen comes from the sloppiness in which the issue has been framed. The clinging being debated was in this context -

Somehow, this thread has gone off on a tangent to discuss other forms of clinging, in this instance kāmupādāna (clinging to the kāmā).

Might it be possible to return to the original proposition being discussed, ie -

Is appropriation of the Aggregates as self a sufficient condition for the arising of Self-view?

If you wish to discuss kāmupādāna in a separate thread, we can explore -

Is kāmupādāna a sufficient condition for the arising of kāmabhava?

This will of course bring us back to the jhāna debates.

36

I do not know Pali and my English is not good. For me to understand you better…

When you refer to “self” what do you mean by that? permanent, impermanent, unknowable or something else?

How do you understand "sakkāyadiṭṭhi "?

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Without understanding what you mean by “self”, I am afraid that you may misunderstand what I will say…However, I will try…

Since you asked “Is it possible to appropriate the Aggregates as self, and still not have Self-views?” …

Because I see “self” is just this “I, me” without worrying if it is permanent, impermanent, stable, exist,… or not. That is the “self” that I can see and experience. (That’s why I am afraid that I may refer one thing while you see other)

To me, self view (or identity view) is a view that makes us believe that form, feeling, perception, mental volition, consciousness is/are “I am, mine, myself”. Note that mine, myself implies “I” in it. (My view is unique, strange and not orthodox, so if you do not agree with this view then you can stop here. No objection)

A stream-enter no longer has self view. This means that he/she can clearly see and understand without a doubt that there is nothing that he/she can refer as “I, my”, or he/she is no longer believe that form, feeling, perception, mental volition, consciousness is “I, my”. However, he/she still has a body (form), even though he/she understands that the body he/she is using is not “his/her body”, yet he/she still need to use/appropriate that body to continue his/her holy life.

Therefore, when one no longer has self view, one could still use/take form for other purposes (like to work on other fetters…) without ever believing it as “my body”. However, if one takes/appropriates form (body) as “I, me, my” then one must have self view by my understanding of self view.

If you refer to “self” as a permanent, stable, fixed entity that does not exist (or indefinable) then you will need another answer.

38

Hi

For clarity, perhaps it’s better to translate attan as Soul, instead of Self. That helps us distinguish this from the other meaning of attan as the reflexive pronoun “myself” or “himself”.

The Buddha dealt with every imaginable conceiving of the Soul. The eternalists posited several varieties of a permanent Soul (DN 1). For the annihilationists, we see the suttas depict 2 types of Souls -

  1. a Soul that can finally be destroyed upon attaining the Formless attainments (DN 1); and
  2. a Soul that does not create kammic continuity and responsibility from life-to-life (SN 12.17).

If you look at DN 1, there are many forms of sakkāyadiṭṭhi listed there. But as has often been noted, DN 1 was not intended to be a closed list, limited to the 62 catalogued there. DN 1 is actually an exposition on the 2nd Noble Reality of craving. It is craving which conceives all these different views on the Soul, including the eel-wriggling of those too scared to argue.

You can get a partial sense of the common thread that unites all the different forms of appropriation from SN 24.2 to SN 24.4. What you take to be the Soul is sakkāya, another word for the 5 Clingable Aggregates. There is another formula of appropriation sometimes used -

So too, friend Yamaka, the uninstructed worldling, who is not a seer of the noble ones and is unskilled and undisciplined in their Dhamma, who is not a seer of superior persons and is unskilled and undisciplined in their Dhamma, regards form as self, or self as possessing form, or form as in self, or self as in form. - SN 22.85

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39

If you would take my odd understanding of self view (sakkāyadiṭṭhi ), you will understand MN1 easier. To me, MN1 simply list every possible things (including nibbana) that you can insert/refer in every possible way the “I, mine, my, myself” in it. It simply describes self view and how to end it.

40

I generally understand your position. If it eventually turns on this seeming distinction -

That is not treated as clinging to form, according to the suttas as far as I can tell.