I perfectly agree with this. There are suttas explaining what “clinging aggregates” means. They are called like that because they can be clung to. The aggregates are not the fetter themselves, the delight and lust for them is the fetter there. And suffering comes to be because of the impermanence characteristic of these aggregates and because of clinging to impermanent things.
Secondarily and probably more contentious: I take anattā to mean ‘not-soul’ or ‘non-soul’ rather than ‘not-self’ for various reasons, e.g.:
I have to disagree with that. How would that fit in with the innumerable passages about seen things as no-self ? For example seen consciousness as no-soul or seen the body as no-soul would not make any sense.
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
And that is why Buddha rejected anihilationism. Because they do believe in a self that gets destroyed. While in Buddha teachings, there was never any self to begin with. This is strongly contradicting the no-soul idea by itself.
- 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.
It is a logical mistake to assume the aggregates do not exist because they are no-self. I believe you’re no-soul idea is an overreaction to the solipsist ideas of Nanananda, Nanavira etc. that have become popular today. For a proper refutal of existentialist/postmodernist/solipsist buddhism I suggest to do it using these suttas, not by changing the meaning of no-self:
- SN 22.94 - explaining things do exist and that any “wise man in the world” agrees on that.
- SN 14.7 - explaining the diversity of perceptions depends on the diversity of elements. In Triple N’s view only diversity of perceptions exist and the diversity of elements is just an illusion created through the internal process of assumption
- SN 24.1 - calls solipsism a wrong view. Solipsism is listed as the first wrong view and the sutta is repeated 4 times throughout the “wrong view” section.
- AN 6.41 - Explains how there is a wood-pile and how one can attend to different proprieties of this wood pile (such as the eath property, water property etc)
- DN 5 - Explains what external material form is
- MN 28 - Explains what external elements are
For more refutations of solipsism there is this topic: Ven. Ñāṇananda, Nibbana and Phenomenological Existentialism - #124 by mikenz66