We are dealing here with very subtle point of Dhamma, and I don’t think introduction such terms as conventional reality, about which in the case of sakkaya Lord Buddha is silent, is neseccery.
So would you agree on such description: sakkayaditthi means to see oneself as a person (sakkaya)(he sees the body as a self … and so on) and surely as far as puthujjana conviction goes there is nothing conventional in being a person, neither there is nothing conventional in his attavada -attavadupadana- is very real phenomen, and in fact this is the tasks of the Dhamma Teaching: namely help him to remove it.
People are selfish, surely they see something what they take as a self and what they prefer over other things? No doubt it is only in presence of ignorance such self-identification is possible, but this simply means that notion of self is a deception and as deception it has to be removed from experience. Deception exist and is on the side of dukkha†.
And talking about attavada that it is convention and in reality attavadin does not exist isn’t very helpful to attavadin. Suppose I am a victim of attavadupadana and you want to help me. Would you say, friend in reality you don’t exist, because there is no such thing as a self; or rather you would say, now, friend you take for granted your self. But what in fact do you consider to be your self: body? feeling?, perception? intentions? consciousness? All these things are impermanent and should be seen as: this is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.
Do notice that attāvada is inseparable with sakkayaditthi and to go beyond sakkayaditthi one has to actively reverse it by self-disidentification: “this I am not, this is not my self”. But the attitude “I am” itself also is dependent on ignorance. Nevertheless such ignorance is very powerful that sekha still is a victim of it. Introduction of idea that conceit I am is merely convention and in reality conceit “I am” doesn’t exist, is absolutely unnecessary, and you cannot find it in Suttas.
Absence of notion of self is what distinguish sotāpanna from puthujjana:
“This world, Kaccāna, is for the most part shackled by engagement, clinging, and adherence. But this one [with right view] does not become engaged and cling through that engagement and clinging, mental standpoint, adherence, underlying tendency; he does not take a stand about ‘my self.’
He has no perplexity or doubt that what arises is only suffering arising, what ceases is only suffering ceasing. His knowledge about this is independent of others. It is in this way, Kaccāna, that there is right view. SN 12: 15
You idea about self as conventional reality can be translated as a teaching: friend while you are victim of attavadupadana and so you are imprisoned in Brahmajala, your imprisonment is a conventional reality…Your suffering is just conventional reality, ultimately there is no such thing as suffering.
†
But now you say, ‘If all things are characterized by dukkha…’ This needs careful qualification. In the first place, the universal dukkha you refer to here is obviously not the dukkha of rheumatism or a toothache, which is by no means universal. It is, rather, the sankhāra-dukkha (the unpleasure or suffering connected with determinations) of this Sutta passage:
There are, monk, three feelings stated by me: sukha feeling, dukkha feeling, neither-dukkha-nor-sukha feeling. These three feelings have been stated by me. But this, monk, has been stated by me: whatever is felt, that counts as dukkha. But that, monk, was said by me with reference just to the impermanence of determinations… (Vedanā Samy. 11: iv,216)
But what is this dukkha that is bound up with impermanence? It is the implicit taking as pleasantly-permanent (perhaps ‘eternal’ would be better) of what actually is impermanent. And things are implicitly taken as pleasantly-permanent (or eternal) when they are taken (in one way or another) as ‘I’ or ‘mine’ (since, as you rightly imply, ideas of subjectivity are associated with ideas of immortality). And the puthujjana takes all things in this way. So, for the puthujjana, all things are (sankhāra-)dukkha. How then—and this seems to be the crux of your argument—how then does the puthujjana see or know (or adjudge) that ‘all things are dukkha’ unless there is some background (or criterion or norm) of non-dukkha (i.e. of sukha) against which all things stand out as dukkha? The answer is quite simple: he does not see or know (or adjudge) that ‘all things are dukkha’. The puthujjana has no criterion or norm for making any such judgement, and so he does not make it.
The puthujjana’s experience is (sankhāra-)dukkha from top to bottom, and the consequence is that he has no way of knowing dukkha for himself; for however much he ‘steps back’ from himself in a reflexive effort he still takes dukkha with him. (I have discussed this question in terms of avijjā (‘nescience’) in A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPĀDA §§23 & 25, where I show that avijjā, which is dukkhe aññānam (‘non-knowledge of dukkha’), has a hierarchical structure and breeds only itself.) The whole point is that the puthujjana’s non-knowledge of dukkha is the dukkha that he has non-knowledge of;[a] and this dukkha that is at the same time non-knowledge of dukkha is the puthujjana’s (mistaken) acceptance of what seems to be a ‘self’ or ‘subject’ or ‘ego’ at its face value (as nicca/sukha/attā, ‘permanent/pleasant/self’).
And how, then, does knowledge of dukkha come about? How it is with a Buddha I can’t say (though it seems from the Suttas to be a matter of prodigiously intelligent trial-by-error over a long period); but in others it comes about by their hearing (as puthujjanas) the Buddha’s Teaching, which goes against their whole way of thinking. They accept out of trust (saddhā) this teaching of anicca/dukkha/anattā; and it is this that, being accepted, becomes the criterion or norm with reference to which they eventually come to see for themselves that all things are dukkha—for the puthujjana. But in seeing this they cease to be puthujjanas and, to the extent that they cease to be puthujjanas,[b] to that extent (sankhāra-)dukkha ceases, and to that extent also they have in all their experience a ‘built-in’ criterion or norm by reference to which they make further progress. (The sekha—no longer a puthujjana but not yet an arahat—has a kind of ‘double vision’, one part unregenerate, the other regenerate.) As soon as one becomes a sotāpanna one is possessed of aparapaccayā ñānam, or ‘knowledge that does not depend upon anyone else’: this knowledge is also said to be ‘not shared by puthujjanas’, and the man who has it has (except for accelerating his progress) no further need to hear the Teaching—in a sense he is (in part) that Teaching.
So far, then, from its being a Subject (immortal soul) that judges ‘all things are dukkha’ with reference to an objective sukha, it is only with subsidence of (ideas of) subjectivity that there appears an (objective) sukha with reference to which the judgement ‘all things are dukkha (for the commoner)’ becomes possible at all.
[L. 145 | 155] 2 July 1965 - Ñāṇavīra Thera Dhamma Page
