Dear Ven Jayasara
I think trying to see how the Buddha’s teachings all connect is a very good and important venture.
The last nearly 20 years I’ve been working on connecting the teachings of the Buddha, based on early work of Dr Rod Bucknell, which I see is the practice of comparing phrases and meanings of his teaching. I believe the Buddha said that is part of the way to ensure his teaching lasts a long time for the benefit of the many, in his instruction to the monks to hold Sangha Councils. I find most of his more down to earth teachings are about the 4th noble truth. So I focus on the path. (Much of my work is on Academia.edu.) The smaller elephant’s footprint discourse would seem to be about the path.
More directly towards your graphic:
These days I make a clear distinction between dukkha: the Five Clinging Aggregates and the Five Aggregates vis sn22.48. Your map seems to identify the Five Aggregates as suffering, which I consider to be a common misrepresentation of the Buddha’s teaching and possibly the basis for the Three Characteristics.
Secondarily and probably more contentious: I take anattā to mean ‘not-soul’ or ‘non-soul’ rather than ‘not-self’ for various reasons, e.g.:
- attā is the Pali equivalent of ātman and ‘soul’ in English would seem to best represent a non-changing personal essence, atheists and agnostics would believe in a self, but probably not a soul
- non-self is a teaching found in the world based on deep calm meditative practices, seemingly without the help of the Buddha, e.g. pre Buddha Indic texts and Taoism
- the Pali translation was not an-ahaṃ, which it could easily have been
- I recall reading in the suttas the Buddha saying something like: ‘if one doubts one’s existence, there is no possibility of the practice of the path’, sorry I can’t supply the reference.
best wishes