Oke, but there are views that there is an atta, like a personal eternal soullike entity inside us. A Buddha points out that this kind of existence is not there. I belief this is very radical. We humans have always been very impressible for magic thinking. All children go trough a phase of magical thinking.
Magical thinking is that kind of thinking that you can see in the Lord of the Rings. The whole world is magical and even trees are personal entities who live and have a kind of self-power to move. Magical thinking is like a tree decides it will drop her leaves. It sees the tree as an entity with some will. While leaves do not drop that way. They drop because of causes and conditioned (light, temp etc) and not because a tree decides to drop leaves. This can also be applied to the behaviour of living beings.
What is meant by substance is probably that knowledge or wisdom we acquired through meditation that we still identify with. So the highest identification is pre Arahantship. There is because this mind-body different layers of identification. Like Ram Dass explains even the sign of zodiac is identification. I’m Aries. If we are still doing the smallest identification strongly and not understanding it’s just used as a way humans to explain things. See the identification in the wrong way. See it as totally accurate. Then we still have identification. I like astrology but one point a person brought for example. We all have all the 12 signs. That removes the idea that your truly the sign that they told you was your birth sign. That’s why in this body is the All that reflects outside. Like Buddha taught you can’t say there is no atta. Because that’s annihilation. That’s because identification has cause and effect.
Dhamma is the law. It is the eternal truth. Therefore, it is never-changing. it is always correct. However, it is not an entity. It is not a thing or a being. The Dhamma can be lost to us, but the truth is always there for re-discovering.
Atta is defined as “the self, the soul, as a permanent, unchangeable, autonomous entity”. Therefore, Dhamma is not Atta.
The different layers of identification i have seen explained as:
sakkaya ditthi, which is a more conceptual, view-like (ditthi) identification
and
-asmi mana, which is more perception like (sanna), how one perceives oneself. It is the deep sense of I exist. Asmi mana is a deeper layer of identification.
I think SN22.89 explains the difference. Khemaka was in pain. And the sutta seems to suggest that he did not have any sakkaya ditthi’s but still he suffered from that pain. The sutta seems to explain this because he still had asmi mana, i.e. a sense of I am in regard to that pain and vice versa.
And the sutta seems to say that he was still burdened by the pain because of this asmi mana. He was not able to experience the pain in a completely detached way.
But also this notion of I am, the longing I am and the underlying tendency I am can disappear.
So again we’re in the realm of tautology. If we say that atta has to be a thing, it automatically implies that it’s subject to decay. If really atta has to be a thing, to additionally say that it’s nicca is just hot air… grass is green.
I don’t think it’s clear. And I still wonder, according to the suttas, what about the truth does not allow to take it as my most fundamental essence? After all even the arahants identified with the dhamma:
“I am a son of the Blessed One, born of his breast, born of his mouth, born of the Dhamma, created by the Dhamma, an heir to the Dhamma” (SN 16.11, MN 111, DN 27)
Do you mean I should find another word that you then can ask about what it means? Descriptions go only so far. Books have been written about “the divine”, “the eternal” etc. I think wordfishing goes only so far.
I just want to make sure that I understand what you mean. If you want something that you can attach your deluded mind to then you can always attach it to the truth. It is always there. However, the truth is universal. It is not about an individual person .
Because you introduced new concept into the conversation; therefore, I need to make sure that I do not misunderstand what you say.
When you say “quality” I think that you want something good and stable. That’s why I asked to make sure.
The truth is not always good or bad. It can be good or bad, but it is always true. If the desired atta or essence is " eternal divine" then it only has the good part. Of course, you do not want to cling to the bad part.
I think it’s rather normal that the “divine” category transcends the human good and bad. Yes, in a sense it’s per default good, but often it is expressed that we don’t necessarily see the good.
I don’t introduce a new concept. The upanisadic brahman is surely transpersonal, connected to truth, eternal, etc. At least in Shankara’s Vedanta interpretation. Just as my ideas about brahman are surely deluded, object to change etc., so it is with my ideas about truth or the Buddha-dhamma. That doesn’t disqualify truth or the dhamma, but somehow Buddhists have disqualified the attachment to concepts like Brahman as if it’s crude and primitive, not seeing how attached they are themselves (and rightly so) to the Dhamma.
Could you quote some suttas to back that? I’m not completely sure about this. There is no further birth, but the status of a tathagatha is left open since wondering if they exist or don’t after death is not useful for the path. If the Buddha taught about the cessation of arahant’s kandhas, then the question would be definitely answered: they don’t exist after death.
So I actually don’t know if there is or not a kind of continuation of the kandhas. The Sarvastivada Abhidharma talks about pure skandhas, which are basically the wisdom that realizes the Dharma (somewhere in the first chapter of Abhidharmakosha Vasubandhu refers to it). Yogacharins also talk about the continuity (and timelessness) of wisdom. Tibetans have a similar understanding.
What is not clear to me yet is what EBTs teach on this issue. According to EBTs, does it make any sense to talk about the unconditioned as being our true nature?
I think the way you and @Green have been talking about the unconditioned (or eternal divine, etc.) is probably similar to Brahmanical ideas about the Atman.
Do you guys think the Buddha thought his teaching on the Dhamma was similar to what brahmins meant by the Brahman?
One important difference I see is in the simile of the raft, and also in the call to go beyond all views (as in Suttanipata akatavagga), to let go of any attachment to any idea about Dhamma or whatever might be useful to cross the flood of suffering. Also, another difference is shown in the snake simile.
Sorry for not linking the suttas. If anybody needs it I can add the links here.
Atta in EBTs is basically a synonym for the 5 kandhas, or the 5 kandhas are an explanation for what we call atta. That’s what I think I’ve learned here so far Since the unconditioned is neither of the kandhas( which are all conditioned) then to call it atta we must mean something different than what the word means in EBTs.
I believe they argued that there was a person, but it’s not an atta. It was a real concept, whereas for all the other Abhidhammikas of the other Sthavira traditions ultimately all concepts are unreal and so can’t be said to exist or not exist. A view also shared by Madhyamaka.
The original question is: “Why shouldn’t the dhamma be atta?”
To answer this question, we need to agree on what do we mean “Dhamma” and “Atta”? I think we can agree that Dhamma is the truth. Therefore, we also need to agree on what do we mean “atta”?
Different people can understand the same word differently. Therefore, we need to make sure we are talking about the same thing.
If the upanisadic brahman is defined as transpersonal, connected to truth, eternal, etc then we will need to see if we can accept that definition? If not, then we cannot use that. If we can verify and accept that definition then we can use it to prove something else.
The Dhamma is the truth, and we can verify it. With birth as condition, death. We can see and verify this fact. If we can verify the upanisadic brahman then we can accept it as fact.
If you think atta is the upanisadic brahman and it has different definition than “the self, the soul, as a permanent, unchangeable, autonomous entity” which is defined for atta in Pali’s dictionary then you will need to clarify what it should be before we can accept it. The current definition for atta shows that it is an entity.
My first answer was based on the current definition of atta in Pali’s dictionary. The definition at least is accepted by many people, and we can use it as a common ground for discussion. However, if we do not accept that definition, then we will need to re-define it before we can go further.
Actually I’m convinced that he didn’t teach a similar concept as brahman, but that we don’t yet understand the real difference that he taught (or rather not any more).
You’re right about the simile of the raft, but it appears only twice, in MN 22 and MN 38.
And a No-View Buddhism would get dangerously close to the “teaching” of Sañjaya Belatthaputta, which is obviously rejected (e.g. in SN 42.13, AN 3.66, AN 3.118, AN 8.29, 10.211).
If we are still doing the smallest identification strongly and not understanding it’s just used as a way humans to explain things. See the identification in the wrong way. See it as totally accurate. Then we still have identification. I like astrology but one point a person brought for example. We all have all the 12 signs. That removes the idea that your truly 
the sign that they told you was your birth sign. That’s why in this body is the All that reflects outside. Like Buddha taught you can’t say there is no atta. Because that’s annihilation. That’s because identification has cause and effect.
Since the unconditioned is neither of the kandhas( which are all conditioned) then to call it atta we must mean something different than what the word means in EBTs.