On the last line of SN 44.10

[josephzizys]

@Vaddha

It’s not holding a no-self view that protects one from annihilationism, it’s uprooting all views and identification so as to relinquish two forms of craving: craving to exist and craving to stop existence. Both of these are inherently tied to self-view and conceit as the suttas consistently present them.

I just don’t think this is true @Vaddha , it is my very strong impression that the “tying” to “self-view” is more or less totally absent from DN, rare and garbled in MN, and overwhelming in SN.

(For a lengthy rant on my part about this including many sutta qoutes and word counts see here:
Whats bound to be another wildly popular observation around here: - #8 by josephzizys )

So I would not say that this is something “consistent” in the suttas.

@Vaddha

Bhaskar (1972) says Ajita Kesakambali was of the view that ‘the body and the soul (jīva) are one and the same.”

This is another example of why anatta, taken as a view that “the self does not exist” is untenable, or at least totally incompatible with the tetralemma, if the body is real and the self is not real then they are different things. however this was a view that the Buddha famously refused to endorse.

@Vaddha

And I agree that could be part of this: the self is manifest, but it doesn’t actually exist. But that’s not what the Buddha wants to say. So he just stays silent with this whole reference of an ‘attā’ and says ‘sabbe dhammā anattā’ and describes conditionality/dependent arising. This gets around the entire issue, and it won’t cause confusion to people like Vacchagotta. Unfortunately, it causes a lot of confusion 2.500 years later

So the Buddha hardly ever says 'sabbe dhamma anatta", and the handful of times he does puts the authenticity of the statement into a very questionable status, see here:

I am researching sabbe dhammā anattā

Finally, the key sutta, SN22.90, the sutta where the SA parallel also uses the phrase, is VERY INTERESTING! Because the whole sutta is about Channa hearing “sabbe dhammā anattā” and feeling kind of ‘weird’ about it! He then goes to Ananda, and guess what!? Ananda reports to Channa what the Buddha told Vacchagotta, reinforcing that “The self does not exist” is an extreme, wrong view! At one time several senior mendicants were staying near Benares, in the deer park at Isipatana. Ekaṁ samayaṁ samb…

secondly MN72 clearly asserts that it is precisely the profundity and depth of conditionality that confuses Vachagotta, and of course in DN15 Buddha scolds Ananda for thinking that DO is easy to understand, asserting rather that it is the profoundest and most difficult of his teachings.

FInally, again, this whole gloss that the Buddha stays silent on these points is that " the self is manifest, but it doesn’t actually exist. But that’s not what the Buddha wants to say" just doesn’t bear scrutiny, in MN72 the “doesn’t exist” option is ruled out as inapplicable just like the others, just like applying cardinality to an extinguished fire rules out north and south as well as east and west, so to does a correct understanding of conditionality rule out selves not existing as well as existing (both, neither).

What I find fascinating is that all of this is stated explicitly in long, detailed suttas, while things like “sabbe dhamma anatta” are confined to criptic, and suspicious suttas that demonstrate thier anxiety about the statement in palpable ways (see Ananda’s reassurance of Channa, the Buddhas confirmation of Assaji’s statment “deep in the woods” etc)

Nevertheless, most people today blithly assert the latter in defense of a postion that seems incompatible with the former, at least in the form many put it.

Basically as a denial of the positive braminical metaphysics of a permanent and happy substrate to existence that is ultimately identical with the innermost individual annatta is fine and unproblematic, although probably, like the atman hegemony itself, a later scholastic development than the earliest buddism. Taken as a positive metaphysical assertion that selves or a self doesn’t exist it is unreconcilable to the undoubtedly early teaching of the undeclared points, and taken in that form as an underwriting of the whole Buddhist project, it breaks the philosophical depth and beauty of DO and renders BUddhism into a very weird kind of nihilism for non exisiting persons who don’t want to non-exist anymore.

I am very much enjoying your presence on the board @Vaddha and I am thinking that I should maybe put together a separate post outlining my broader current picture of early Buddhism so as to solicit your feedback. If I can resist the urge I will therefore stop posting on this thread and work on my own, until then.

(p.s I also think it is very suggestive that the Pali canon has deleted, or the Agama canon has added, "different from self, both, neither, from many of the relevent suttas, for examples see my “wildly popular observation” post. this again suggests to me that anatta as “persons are fictions” is a more or less sectarian position, or at least proto-sectarian, and one that we simply do not find in the earliest formulations of buddhism)

Metta.