SuttaCentral
Suppose, you see the body in the mirror, do you not regard this body as you or yours at this moment, habitually? Is there not a train of thoughts in the mind like this?
Or, suppose, you feel pain, don’t you habitually reflect about this experience in terms of ‘this pain is mine’, or, maybe, ‘this pain has arisen in me’? or ‘I am in pains, i have pain’?
Hi @Green,
I’ve never had any thoughts even remotely close to that with my body’s reflection in mirrors. Sure, I abide, as in the previous sentence, by verbal behavioral convention of personal pronoun use, but that’s only to avoid confusing people and/or annoying them with nerding out on linguistic technicalities. Yet I don’t think, or feel, or have any emotions about identifying my body as one or more of my selves when I use personal pronouns, and since the idea of True or Higher or Real Self, or core identity, or Eternal Soul, etc…, has always felt foreign to me, I’ve never believed I had one of those to identify with anything.
As far as pain goes: (1) it’s not an aggregate. (2) I’ve had chronic pain since my early teens (I’m 53), and the last thing I want to do is identify it as one of my selves. Even the phrase, “I am in pain,” has never confused me into thinking it’s one of my selves. (3) In all the instances where we find The Buddha saying, “My back is sore,” no one accuses him of contradicting his anattā teachings.
Don’t get me wrong, I can behave selfishly, egotistically and conceitedly, did so at a much higher rate before I took up consistent metta and generosity practices. But I can’t recall even one of those instances of selfishness, and/or egotism, and/or conceit involving identifying one or more of my selves with one or more of the aggregates.
best,
~l
I have, kinda sorta (especially in terms of not identifying at all with the vedanā which is where I’d situate chronic pain and the like), but it’s pretty common for people to identify with their cognizances or consciousness or whatever we’re calling viññāṇa these days.
Also, a lot of this stuff is specifically directed at the Upanishadic idea of the atman as eternal, unchangeable, and (in some of those schools of thoughts) as identifiable with the cosmos as a whole, which was definitely a thing in the milieu back then and there, but not really so much for your and my cultural background, maybe.
On another hand, I knew one guy who wrote his PhD thesis on “the credit theory of identity.” He was a proto-TESCREAL type back in the 1980s who was concerned with how identity could be maintained philosophically over the course of very long lifespan and extensive self-transformation. Since he put his money on who got the credit for making the choices and decisions that resulted in whatever this entity became, his theory amounted to identifying self with saṅkhāra. He was very definitely a metaphysical materialist, one of those “scientific realist” guys.
The 5 are the upādānakkhandhā and the 4 are the
X as self,
self as having X,
X in self, or
self in X
where X is one of the 5.
Hi Landis,
Thanks.
I see all anusaya as subconsciously arising compulsive, unfree, tendencies. Very strong conditionings, strong habitual ingrained patterns.
A Buddha can still deal with the body and mind as me and mine, but this is freed, it is not compulsive of nature but just functional to live.
I do not believe Nibbana is about loosing the intellectual capacities, the ability to think and conceive or the ability to regard things, but it is not anymore of an obsessive nature, no slavery, it is also freed.
Think about will or volition. In the unfree mind volition rules us, as it were. But Nibbana means we freely can use the will.
Or, think about how a defiled mind unvoluntairy becomes directed upon and engaged with a sense object. If Nibbana is realised there is still the capacity to direct the mind but now it is freely to use.
Nibbana represents such freedom and all anusaya, also sakkaya ditthi, represent unfreedom, habitual patterns, slavery, strong conditionings.
I see that sakkaya ditthi refers to the strong, unfree, habit to automatically start to reflect (intellectually relate) upon experiences in terms of me and mine.
Pain belongs to the vedana khandha and when pain arises almost always a train of thoughts arises in the sense of ‘I have this pain’ etc. Experiences so often give rise to thoughts, reflection that can be summed up as identitviews.
At those moment we also feel that these thoughts are true, that experiences really are mine, and there really is an I or Me as the owner of these experiences and as the one who experiences them.
If we do not stop reflecting this way upon experiences, we also never even start to question the existence of this Me-that-experiences and this ownership.
I also think this is not really a topic for many people. Also not many religious people but as i see it, it is here where Buddha sees the escape of suffering.
Indeed. Very often, i see.
There is something that makes gold gold and not lead. In this sense there is also identity, not as some unchangeable essence or substance but gold can be identified as gold and not as lead because it is really different. I can also be identified as Green and not as Landis. That shows, i feel, that identity also has a true basis. Identity is not really about some eternal essence, substance. It does not require it.
Even if an union consist of merely many shells and one does not find a core, does this mean it cannot be identified as union?
To speak about identity must there really be some unique substance, core, essence that always exist?
I don’t know if this thread is still live or if ven Sujato will see it, but I wonder if he has come across the article by Richard Gombrich on satkāya? Gombrich’s conjecture is that satkāya means ‘the category (kāya) of existence (sat)’ and refers to the Brahmanical view of reality in terms of a permanent essence (sat). This is broadly comparable to what Sujato writes about the Jain astikāya theory. The Buddha uses satkāya to characterise a way of thinking that is philosophically developed in the Upaniṣadic theory of sat and / or in the Jain theory of astikāya, and turns it upside-down, seeing it as false and synonymous with saṃsāra.
I wonder though if the translation ‘substantial reality’ is quite right. It isn’t completely clear what it refers to. The English ‘substantial’ isn’t usually read in terms of substances but rather in terms of importance. And as for substances, it isn’t clear that in ancient India of the time of the Buddha that there was yet any working out of the idea of dravya or substance. My own suggestion as a quite free interpretive translation of what satkāya is getting at is ‘naive realism’. The word satkāya is used in relation to naive realism about the self, i.e. the assumption that the self exists, but in my view there are plenty of instances where satkāya is also used in relation to naive realism about self and world, as a synonym for saṃsāra.
The later Buddhist tradition knew that satkāya meant naive realism about the self but struggled to know how it meant it, as it seems the tradition didn’t remember the intellectual context in which the Buddha had formulated this term. Akira Saito’s new-ish article on satkaya makes some useful points about the history of how satkāya was interpreted, which makes sense of how it has come to be translated as ‘personality’ and ‘identity’ even though these don’t quite work, as Bhikkhu Bodhi realised.
Gombrich–Vedanta stood on its head.pdf (150.3 KB)
Saito–Satkāyadṛṣṭi.pdf (1.1 MB)
The word insubstantial is used in SN 22.95.
These are the first definitions that pop-up when you google for insubstantial. Seems quite straightforward. Nothing to do with importance. Does imply substance. Substantial is the antonym and would seem perfectly fitting as a translation.
asārakaññeva is an interesting word. Sāra is the heartwood; when talking about the key thing, the most prized thing, etc, sāra of the matter, heart of the matter, it is said.
Translating asārakaññeva is not easy. I think “unimportant” would be a legit choice; “inessential” (rather than “insubstantial”, though not excluding it altogether); etc.
For my artistic DHP rendering (for personal amusement only, a rendering that fusses very little over semantic faithfulness), I translate a section of Pairs from DHP as thus:
Who see worth in the worthless show,
And fail to grasp where true worth flows,
They won’t find what’s truly real,
For their misguided minds conceal.
Bhante Sujato has this:
Thinking the inessential is essential,
Asāre sāramatino,
seeing the essential as inessential;
sāre cāsāradassino;
they don’t realize the essential,
Te sāraṁ nādhigacchanti,
for wrong thoughts are their habitat.
micchāsaṅkappagocarā.
Thus, we’re said to pursue sāra things; that is to say, important, essential, etc.
Insubstantial starts to sounds like a metaphysical declaration - although one could read something like anatta (and thus perhaps sunyata into it) as well.
But I wouldn’t fault someone for translating as “important / unimportant”.
Being mindful of how the sentence flows in SN 22.95:
For what core could there be in form?
Kiñhi siyā, bhikkhave, rūpe sāro?
Interestingly, even in english, we use the term “matter” when something “matters”, coming from “material”.
Thus perhaps “immaterial” could be a fine word! For what matter could be found in this things? 
The similes in SN 22.95 all translate very well as empty, hollow, insubstantial. Lack of a core to a banana tree, soap bubbles, mirages, magic tricks… the definitions for insubstantial above line up very well as an adjective for these things. Whereas substantial implies solidity, having substance, not imaginary, real. I’ll keep maintaining that substantial reality is a great translation. Really don’t understand why others don’t like it
Let me explain, I also think that “substantial reality” is a great translation for sakkāya, and a real (substantial!) improvement over previous translations. Thanks a lot to ven Sujato for being bold with proposing it! But maybe there is a bit more yet to be brought out about the meaning of sakkāya, that was starting point in the post above.