If the concept of an atta is just a mental fabrication, then it’s not an axiomatic reality that is discovered via neti, neti. The Buddha’s way wasn’t of neti, neti to arrive at the atta. His Dhamma was about the absence of the atta to begin with.
We have already talked about this a lot I think.
You cannot logically exclude an unreal (“square triangle”) from the description of a real (“a shape”). The statement “this shape is not a square triangle” would be an absurd statement - because such a statement would mean “this shape can be anything other than a square triangle” which is a statement devoid of meaning. The listener would be none the wiser for having heard it.
I guess you have not convinced an Excel Spreadsheet not to display a referential integrity error for using an imaginary reference in a formula. Try it once.
So why do you assume the Buddha would have not understood that he coud only describe something as anattā as long as he was not assuming the attā to be unreal.
I think you’ve probably touched on one of the reasons why there is chatter about Buddhism suiting capitalism, and this would come down to ethics. Yours are utilitarian, I suspect. I’ve read arguments in favour of Buddha having every different type of ethics.
I think most people familiar with Buddhist ethics would agree that there is … I think the best way to say it is … “yes, an element of normative ethics here.”
To go beyond that would require a pretty sophisticated conversation. And I know I certainly wouldn’t be able to handle it, because I do have to spend my time looking at the question to see what is being said and discussed by people who know much more than me.
What exactly brought you at this topic of ethics? I do not understand.
Ethics. This is ethics.
a “momentary” “continuum” is a contradiction in terms. a thing cannot be momentary or instantaneous at the same time as being continuous or extended.
the idea that “dhammas” are “momentary” is a Theravadin and therefore sectarian position.
the actual position in the EBT, best articulated at DN1 DN2 and DN9 is that there cannot be an “experience” of anatta, as “anatta” is a property (or if you would rather an absence of a property) of any given phenomena of experience.
any experience must be dependent on the phenomena experienced. and liberation or independence from phenomena cannot itself depend on phenomena for it’s realization, as again this would be a contradiction.
However it must be possible to have knowledge of liberation, otherwise how could the Buddha have worked it out?
therefore an epistemology that does not make appeal to the status or otherwise of anything “outside” phenomena, but nevertheless grounds and warrants assertions about the impossibility of suffering without phenomena is implied if Buddhism is true.
That there may be conceptual difficulties to explore and explain with such a picture is borne out by the history of Buddhism, especially in the Mahayana literature.
However the Buddhist claim is that there can be knowledge of the nature of phenomena that can be experienced, by the observation of phenomena themselves, without appeal to anything “outside” phenomena, which we cannot know, and cannot have experience of, and therefore cannot say anything about.
The “witness” in this case is not problematic, as the experience of “witnessing” or “having witnessed” is not posited as something that is happening “outside” the collection of experiential phenomena.
If it were possible to “experience” something that is not existent, i.e if we could experience a NOT self, then there would BE a “not-self” and this contradicts the abayakata.
for further discussion see :
The EBT, and especially the parts outlined above , outline a sophisticated philosophy reminiscent of Zeno and Parmenides, the later glosses that make solipsistic and ridiculously philosophically naïve claims that reify anatta and posit an “experience” of it as a metaphysical reality completely miss the point and fail to honor the depth and brilliance of the original articulation in the EBT.
The idea that the (false) “self” literally IS the 5 aggregates is perhaps the most egregious misreading of the early material imaginable, other than the even worse revisionism of claiming that Buddhism is a disguised Hinduism and that there is a (non-phenomenological) “self” that grounds the identity of “reals”
Hope that helps.
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Hi. The above statement does not sound true.
there is still that “witness” inside of us, which witnesses the impermanence of “I”.
Impermanence of any “I” is witnessed by consciousness & not by the “I”. There are five aggregates in Buddhism (SN 22.48). The “I” is a product of sankhara aggregate (SN 22.81) while consciousness is called vinnana aggregate. The scriptures say truth discerning wisdom & consciousness are conjoined (MN 43).
So, how is this compatible with the idea that “I” is just a conception, an umbrella word for the sum of constituents (skandhas)?
While the “I” is certainly a thought conception, i.e., a sankhara (SN 22.81); the “I” is not an an umbrella word for the sum of constituents (khandhas). “I” is simply grasping at one or more of the aggregates (SN 22.79).
this is an excellent point.
This is less excellent and more problematic, there is no argument that the “I” of the deluded egoist is a delusion, however even with the absence of such a delusion there still remains many simple common sense questions about the beings that lack such a misconceived “I” idea, for example how do we justify the belief that it was gotoma who picked up the fork if there is no such thing as gotama and no such thing as forks? ( the “two truths” line is a non starter here, as it is manifestly vacuous from a philosophical perspective).
again this begs the question. “grasps” implies an entity that does the “grasping”. It is staggering that the authority of the religious tradition in Buddhism has managed to suppress the very obvious questions in this space for so long at least in the southern tradition.
if there really are aggregates and there really is grasping then there really must be something that grasps.
Thankfully the EBT do NOT claim that there “really are” aggregates and that there really is “grasping” so we do not need to appeal to a really real “grasper”.
Metta.
ummm. yes you can.
“there are no shapes such that the shape has both 3 and four sides.”
it is not absurd, it is analytically true of any shape. its practically the literal opposite of absurd.
there are a lot of negations in this sentence, could you rephrase in simpler terms, I am not sure I understand what is meant.
getting back to triangles and “squaiangles”, we do not arrive at our knowledge of the triangle by appeal to the unreality of “squaiangles”, we derive our knowledge of the impossibility of “squiangles” precisely from our knowledge of triangles, a “real” thing (in the minimal sense of being a thing grounded in phenomena that we can coherently talk about.
ok, i have edited your sentence:
“The Buddha could only describe something as anattā as long as
he was assuming the attā real.”
this is simply false.
and it, like the Therevadan
“The Buddha could only describe something as anattā as long as
he was assuming the anattā was real.”
it completely fails to resolve the problems posed by the undeclared points.
The Dhamma is always most excellent. 
however even with the absence of such a delusion there still remains many simple common sense questions about the beings
that lack such a misconceived “I” idea
??? 
The Dhamma say “a being” (“satta”) is an “I” (SN 23.2).
for example how do we justify the belief that it was gotoma who picked up the fork if there is no such thing as gotama and no such thing as forks?
The body picks up forks. Intention commands the body to pick up forks. No “I” is necessary for using spoons, knives & forks. “Gotama” is merely a “convention” (SN 1.25; SN 5.10). For the enlightened, name & clan are merely verbal designations (MN 98).
“grasps” implies an entity
that does the “grasping”.
SN 12.12 corrects the wrong view above. 
It is staggering that the authority of the religious tradition in Buddhism has managed to suppress the very obvious questions in this space for so long at least in the southern tradition.
SN 12.12 says craving is the condition for grasping rather than an “entity” grasps. The questions raised here sound like Hinduism.
if there really are aggregates and there really is grasping then there really must be something that grasps.
Ignorance grasps. Craving grasps. Sankhara aggregate grasps. No ghosts or spirits are involved here.
SN 44.10 is undeclared because it is not about anatta. I hope Thanissaro’s misunderstandings of Vacchagotta’s atthattā & nattatta are not being posted here as the Buddha’s Dhamma. 
this is all wrong. “the body” identifies that which picks up the fork. an identification implies an identity, that is that the body is identical to the thing that picked up the fork.
again, you can’t have a designation without a designator, you cant have a body (at least one capable of picking up forks) without a mind, and all sorts of other things, that are identifiable as belonging to gotama or me or sariputta, and do not get mixed up between us like goop.
no it doesn’t. it says that the buddha does not speak of “one who grasps” but describes “grasping” as conditional on craving.
this does not address the question at all, which as I say, is addressed in more robust from at DN1 DN2 and DN9
the other problem is that viññāṇāhāraṃ āhāretī occurs only in that sutta.
also,
“Mendicants, there are these four fuels. They maintain sentient beings that have been born and help those that are about to be born.
“Cattārome, bhikkhave, āhārā bhūtānaṁ vā sattānaṁ ṭhitiyā sambhavesīnaṁ vā anuggahāya.
What four?
Katame cattāro?
Solid food, whether coarse or fine; contact is the second, mental intention the third, and consciousness the fourth.
Kabaḷīkāro āhāro oḷāriko vā sukhumo vā, phasso dutiyo, manosañcetanā tatiyā, viññāṇaṁ catutthaṁ.
These are the four fuels that maintain sentient beings that have been born and help those that are about to be born.”
Ime kho, bhikkhave, cattāro āhārā bhūtānaṁ vā sattānaṁ ṭhitiyā sambhavesīnaṁ vā anuggahāyā”ti.
from the same sutta, asserts the existence of sentient beings, who consume the fuels.
so the idea that the buddha “does not speak of who consumes” is contradicted in the first paragraph of the sutta, in fact it is almost certainly the philosophical conundrum raised by top knot in response to this which prompts the sutta’s preservation.
The response given is simply incoherent given the first paragraph, and I feel that this excludes it from being an authentic teaching.
the absence of true knowledge cannot “grasp” something, again, more or less by definition.
Nope. again see my thread about the undeclared points.
I have no idea what Thanissaro thinks and am not influenced in any way by him, just for the record.
These problems have a rich literary history, even if you choose to ignore the EBT passages I examine in the undeclared thread, most famously starting with Nagarjuna and continuing for thousands of years since.
No you cannot. Excluding something unreal would be meaningless. Excluding a nothing is no exclusion at all.
If you declare that a square-triangle (which is an unreal or illusory shape) is excluded from a group of real shapes, you haven’t really excluded anything at all from that group. The group still remains as it was. There is no meaningful change to the group.
So to declare that a square-triangle is excluded from a group of real shapes would be a meaningless statement. Such an exclusion would be pointless or absurd.
It is precisely because it resolves the problems of the undeclared points, that the ātman cannot be assumed as unreal.
If it was possible to make positive assertions about the ātman, it wouldn’t have had to remain as an undeclared.
You seem to be ignoring my example, so i will give you another one:
“There are no even primes greater than 2”
In fact I can easily generate as many such sentences as you like, and every such sentence would be both meaningful and true.
I am not going to contunue to respond to you, as I do not believe you have a coherent position to address.
Good luck with your journey.
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It’s not just Theravada that believed it. As far as I’m aware all the early schools did. In fact for the Sautrantika dhammas are so momentary there can be no direct perception. Instead all we are aware of are mental images. It looks like this then helped inform the later Yogacara.
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All the early schools where wrong then 
There is a sense in which it makes sense. The first is that it’s an outgrowth of the way sense experience is outlined in the texts. Depending on eye and forms, eye consciousness arises etc. From another point of view since dhammas are dependent there can’t be any substances in them. Without truly existing substances, or substantive nouns, you are left with qualities. If all there are are qualities then experience is quite momentary. For example every moment there is “cold”, “blue”, “soft” etc. Where it gets a bit strange is when some schools said these qualities have an existence of their own.
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Even more strange is the Sarvastivada version. The dhammas are substantially existent (Dravyasat) but our experience of them is momentary, but one isn’t a quality of the other.
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this is all wrong.
Dhamma is not wrong.
“the body” identifies
The body aggregate is physical/material. It cannot “identify”.
identifies that which picks up the fork
Sanna aggregate perceives a fork. Sankhara aggregate understands the usefulness of a fork. This perception & understanding is not “sakkaya”, generally translated as “identity”. “Self-identity” (“sakkaya”) is not the distinguishing/differentiating performed by sanna (perception). Please stick to the Pali language rather than convolute with English words.
again, you can’t have a designation without a designator
Sounds like more Hinduism. Both designation (fork) and designator (mind) are impersonal & not a self.
that are identifiable as belonging to gotama or me or sariputta
Gotama or sariputta are conventions (SN 1.25; MN 98); a verbal designation placed upon the respective manifestation of respective aggregates (khandhānaṁ pātubhāvo; SN 12.2). For puthujjana, these verbal designations are “selves” or “beings” or “jati”. For the enlightened, these verbal designations are mere conventions; non-jati; non-marana.
from the same sutta, asserts the existence of sentient beings, who consume the fuels.
The suttas say the four nutriments sustain, maintain or cause “the beings” (SN 23.2) that have “come to be” (“bhūtānaṁ”). It is not the opposite that you are suggesting, that there are preexisting “beings” that at a later time consume the nutriments. SN 5.10 says there is no “being” to be found, expect in the deluded mind of Mara. 
philosophical conundrum
Befuddlement, similar to Vacchagotta in SN 44.10
Nope. again see my thread about the undeclared points.
Nothing to read there of relevance.
These problems have a rich literary history
Buddhism has a rich history of being misunderstood. 
About the four nutriments, the full story is:
“Bhikkhus, there are these four kinds of nutriment for the maintenance of beings that already have come to be and for the support of those about to come to be. What four? They are: physical food as nutriment, gross or subtle; contact as the second; mental volition as the third; and consciousness as the fourth.
“Now, bhikkhus, these four kinds of nutriment have what as their source, what as their origin, from what are they born and produced? These four kinds of nutriment have craving as their source, craving as their origin; they are born and produced from craving. And this craving has what as its source…? Craving has feeling as its source…And this feeling has what as its source…? Feeling has contact as its source…And this contact has what as its source…? Contact has the sixfold base as its source…And this sixfold base has what as its source…? The sixfold base has mentality-materiality as its source…And this mentality-materiality has what as its source…? Mentality-materiality has consciousness as its source…And this consciousness has what as its source…? Consciousness has formations as its source…And these formations have what as their source, what as their origin, from what are they born and produced? Formations have ignorance as their source, ignorance as their origin; they are born and produced from ignorance.
MN 38
The nutriments are born from craving & craving is born from ignorance. Where there is ignorance & craving then, if ignorance continues, the mental conception or “view” (ditthi") of “a being” (“satta”) is born; as described in SN 5.10 & SN 23.2
“Why do you believe there’s such a thing as a ‘sentient being’?
“Kiṁ nu sattoti paccesi,
Māra, is this your theory [view]?
māra diṭṭhigataṁ nu te;
This is just a pile of conditions,
Suddhasaṅkhārapuñjoyaṁ,
you won’t find a sentient being here.
nayidha sattupalabbhati.When the parts are assembled
Yathā hi aṅgasambhārā,
we use the word ‘chariot’.
hoti saddo ratho iti;
So too, when the aggregates are present
Evaṁ khandhesu santesu,
‘sentient being’ is the convention we use.
hoti sattoti sammuti.But it’s only suffering that comes to be,
Dukkhameva hi sambhoti,
lasts a while, then disappears.
dukkhaṁ tiṭṭhati veti ca;
Naught but suffering comes to be,
Nāññatra dukkhā sambhoti,
naught but suffering ceases.”
nāññaṁ dukkhā nirujjhatī”ti.SN 5.10
“Sir, they speak of this thing called a ‘sentient being’.
“‘satto, satto’ti, bhante, vuccati.
How is a sentient being defined?”
Kittāvatā nu kho, bhante, sattoti vuccatī”ti?“Rādha, when you cling, strongly cling, to desire, greed, relishing, and craving for form, then a being is spoken of.
“Rūpe kho, rādha, yo chando yo rāgo yā nandī yā taṇhā, tatra satto, tatra visatto, tasmā sattoti vuccati.
When you cling, strongly cling, to desire, greed, relishing, and craving for feeling …
Vedanāya …
perception …
saññāya …
choices …
saṅkhāresu …
consciousness, then a being is spoken of.
viññāṇe yo chando yo rāgo yā nandī yā taṇhā, tatra satto, tatra visatto, tasmā sattoti vuccati.Suppose some boys or girls were playing with sandcastles.
Seyyathāpi, rādha, kumārakā vā kumārikāyo vā paṁsvāgārakehi kīḷanti.
As long as they’re not rid of greed, desire, fondness, thirst, passion, and craving for those sandcastles, they cherish them, fancy them, treasure them, and treat them as their own.
Yāvakīvañca tesu paṁsvāgārakesu avigatarāgā honti avigatacchandā avigatapemā avigatapipāsā avigatapariḷāhā avigatataṇhā, tāva tāni paṁsvāgārakāni allīyanti keḷāyanti dhanāyantiSN 23.2
But that doesnt follow, and if there are things that are “Momentary” in the semse that they have no extenstion in time (duration) then no amount of them can add up to something with duration.
Likewise if things do have “duration” then we can appeal to the identity of the things “earlier” existance as a guarantee of its “current” existance.
So things cannot be
Momentary
Durational
Made up of both momentarienss and duration
Characteristised by appeal to something without momenta or durations
This is the abayakata and it excludes “momenteriness” just like it excludes a metaphysical “anatta” (or atta, or both or niether).
Just to be clear: I think you are wrong about just about everything you say about Buddhism and or philosophy.
I have not bothered to read your entire post.
good luck.
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