I think anatta is something for you to observe in your own experience, not for labeling cellular masses.
Why not both?
On a more serious not, discussing anatta in the present context is not equal to realizing anatta. Ask any physicist working with the quantum mechanics: he surely know what the wave-particle dualism is, can describe it, illsutrates it with examples, but can hardly claim he has ādirect knowledgeā or ārealizationā of what it really is. Discussing anatta āfrom outsideā is one thing, experiencing it is another thing altogether: I cannot get enlightened just by talking about prokaryotes, as SarathW1 rightly said we get enlightened by practicing
Yes I agree.
The danger of trying to understand Anatta using cellular masses or matter is that we can fall on to the extreme of nihilistism.
Iād like to suggest looking at it from a different angle.
The status quo is already that delusion is causing something that is not-self to appear as āthis is me, this is mine, this is myself.ā
Whether a being splits or merges does not really matter, because there are no beings to begin with.
There is only this stuff that you can either be wrong about (this stuff is me, mine, myself) or right about (this stuff is not me, not mine, not myself).
If someone has split personalities, is that two separate kammic entities or one?
Either way thatās only two different ways to be wrong about not-self. Surely you can identify with a split personality āthatās not really youā and create kamma out of that, because your own personality is already not you.
Or you can not identify with one of the split personalities, and have less suffering probably, but this isnāt right or wrong. Thereās no right amount* of delusion to have.
*expect no delusion at all, of course
You nailed it
In my opinion, this is the exact reason why things become so weird when we talk about being unsimilar so unsimilar to us. Itās just a matter of inadequate description born of our delusion
This is an incorrect and dangerous assumption.
Buddha never said that there are no beings.
If he said so, can you provide a Sutta support please.
In conventional sense there are beings but in ultimate sense you canāt find an unchanging soul.
On the other hand Buddha said that there is ignorance.
Ignorance is the being.
This is true as well, and I understand your being cautious. I would agree it is dangerous to say there are no beings period.
However, I donāt think Erik meant āthere are no beings at allā but rather referred to the absence of any core, essence or self in the beings, so in some sense there are no beings. On the other hands, there are five clinging khandhas that make up fuzzily bordered processes we call beings, so in some sense there are beings. The same can be said about anything, literally anything in the world (SN 12.15). Trying to pin it down in one single phrase is bound to be unsuccessful: we are to realize the truth in our practice.
Ajahn Chah once gave Ajahn Brahm a very short and pregnant teaching:
āBrahmavamso, there is nothing. Do you understand?ā
āYes, Venerable Sir.ā
āNo, you donāt.ā
True, this is not as good as the Buddhaās words, but I personally tend to think the Venerable Ajahn knew what he did when he gave this teaching
Like @Vstakan mentioned, I mean it in the sense that there is no essence or self in the five khandas.
Of course, the feeling of being someone exists and is a real feeling that is generated by delusion
There are no Souls or Selves or Unchangingnesses, but there are individuals, i.e. lives that can be differentiated from other lives.
Also, the aggregates are not what make up a being, they are what comprise any given experience. It is the clinging to that, or to part of it, that warrants a designation ābeingā, not the aggregates on their own (so, Iād not say it was the clinging-aggregates that underpin a being, it is only clinging that does so - SN 23.2 discusses this, though maybe itās a distinction without a difference).
In other words, individual āfuzzily bordered processesā Still, something very different from what we as puthujjanas usually refer to when we say ābeingsā. We may know for sure that a table has an atomic structure bur still refer to a solid entity when we say ātableā. This ātableā does not exist, just as āthere are no beingsā.
So an arahant isnāt a being if I understand you correctly. This is not an assumption that your interpretation is wrong, just a question for the sake of clarification.
āBut, Anuradha, when the Tathagata is not apprehended by you as real and actual here in this very life, is it fitting for you to declareā¦
Itās my (intellectual) understanding that this* is true for all individuals, and that realizing it with direct knowledge causes the 5-khanda process - which one previously took as a basis for selfhood - to come to an end.
*i.e. that if one uses that same mode of analysis, no being whatsoever can be apprehended as real and actual here in this very life.
So, you think you can apprehend a puthujjana as real and actual here in this very life by pointing out his clinging? That is interesting, thanks for this suggestion.
Anyway, it doesnāt change much in my point: clinging to aggregates is still impersonal, not a being as we define beings in the everyday language, and since the five aggregates as its object have pretty fuzzy borders, clinging is also not āone-pointedā, as it may be attached to borderline phenomena as well. Besides, clinging taken on its own without the five aggregates does not constitute a being, in fact there is no clinging without the five aggregates as per the DO formula, so while you can say it is clinging that grants designation ābeingā, you cannot say that it makes up a being. Just as, to give an over-simplified simile, liquidness grants designation of āliquidā to a substance but does not make up an actual liquid. As you see, in my interpretation clinging is rather a characteristic of the five aggregates making up a being rather than an ontologically independent phenomenon. So, a being is made up, as any other experience, by the five aggregates, and has the quality of clinging. Thanks for this idea and the one about Tathagata, they are very interesting!
Iām not saying āreal & actualā, Iām saying the designation ābeingā comes about through clinging.
Now, bhikkhus, this is the way leading to the origination of identity. One regards the eye thus: āThis is mine, this I am, this is my self.ā One regards forms thusā¦
Friend Koį¹į¹hita, the eye is not the fetter of forms nor are forms the fetter of the eye, but rather the desire and lust that arise there in dependence on both: that is the fetter there.
Any desire, passion, delight, or craving for form, Radha: when one is caught up there, tied up there, one is said to be āa being.ā
I have a peculiar feeling we are talking about the same thing. And this is great, don get me wrong