SuttaCentral
It is correct to say “Historians can be biased”. Nevertheless, it does not conclude that there is no “pure historical research” in EBTs studies.
E.g. I previously stated that “one also should not overlook the symbiotic relationship between “Folk Buddhism” and “Essential Buddhism” from Early Buddhism and beyond”. See the discussion: Deity worship in Buddhism - Essays - Discuss & Discover
Critical thinking is essential in EBTs studies.
Perhaps we understand something different by “pure historical research.” And maybe there is no misunderstanding at all.
Just a biased view:
As long as you believe that “pure historical research” can exist, the door to openness toward anyone who is a Buddhist monk will remain closed. Thus, any discussion will be fruitless. As Venerable Sunyo wrote.
Those who are willing to let go of this view
may have the chance to learn something new.
I second that! IMHO, this is the purest form of research. Please forgive me for this digression.
Much metta 
There is such a thing as purely historical research, but it requires a wealth of contemporaneous documents and witnesses to what took place during a given time period. In that case, a person doesn’t need to speculate and over-interpret their subject because events can be sussed out by comparing sources and so forth, and there’s plenty detail to be documented about events and the people involved. With early Buddhist studies, we don’t have much that’s actually contemporaneous to early Buddhism. What we have are the remnants of early Buddhist canons from later eras that had changed quite a bit before that reached our time today. The closest things to contemporaneous sources are archeological studies of ancient India and Asoka’s inscriptions. And they don’t tell us much about early Buddhism.
So, it is problematic for EBT studies to be purely historical … and it begs the question as to how exactly an academic like Wynne can claim to be engaged in purely historical research as opposed to anyone else writing on the subject.
The issues regarding documents, witnesses, sources you mentioned here are in fact pure historical research questions for EBT studies. So, critical thinking is essential for the studies.
Hi Dogen, thanks for your reply, which is very considerate, overly so! 
So first:
What do you mean “late”? 
I sometimes take weeks to respond! Please take your time. Also, about “stupid questions”, I think you’re asking some of the least stupid questions around here, haha! 
Jokes aside,
TLDR: historical separation and doctrinal separation are two distinct matters. To tell whether a doctrine is continuous between texts, we have to compare the actual messages of the texts. I believe history tells us next to nothing about this.
It’s fair that you think I have the burden of proof regarding the doctrinal separation between the “Two Books” (Snp4 & 5) and the rest of the early canon. I do indeed, if the scholarly consensus is that there is a doctrinal separation. I’m not aware that there is, though. I only know of a few voices here and there, which have also been argued against. But please point me in the right direction.
There is a wide consensus that there is a historical separation, that the Two Books are earlier. I would challenge this also. But it remains “another issue” for me.
Historical separation and doctrinal separation are distinct matters which need to be proven independently. For me there is not a lot to the argument of the type “this is text is earlier, which implies it teaches a different doctrine”. Even if you’re not making it, I’ve seen others do so in this specific case, and you may be relying on it for the consensus. But it can be a minor supporting argument at best. By itself, it carries very little weight. In theory, a text could easily be earlier and teach a similar doctrine, or it could be contemporaneous and teach a different doctrine nevertheless.
You say “we rely on those monastics, who kept the canon intact”. But they are the ones who I rely on as well! However, my view is, in the early days those monastics had a single teacher (either still alive or in recent memory), who throughout his career shared a unified message. This message they wanted to preserve. And when composing the early texts they all worked together, checking on each other, especially since it was an oral tradition still. For these reasons, whatever texts the early monastics collected or composed would also have a generally unified message. If they would have started some unorthodox line of thinking, their message would have been censored by the larger consensus. It wouldn’t have made it into the early canon. So it would have been quite the opposite of a “freely fictive and pluralist storytelling tradition”.
If you do not think there was a historical Buddha and a community who in the early days did their best to preserved his unified message, then I can grant some of your conclusions. But I think it’s the best explanation for why we have the writings that we do, as far as the early Buddhist texts go.
It’s true that doctrines started to diverge later, probably proliferating after writing became used. But we can see quite clearly where in the Pali canon this happens. To put the late works of the Kuddhaka Nikāya (some of which are only included in some versions of the canon btw) and Abhidharma on the same level as the Two Books, that is not an equal comparison. It’s immediately obvious that the Abhidharma and such are not of the same class as the main Nikāyas. For example, they aren’t even attributed to the Buddha in the same way. For the Two Books the supposed difference is not so obvious, to say the least. They are very much of the same style as the main Nikāyas.
Also, some of the later parts of the Kuddhaka are arguably doctrinally more continuous with the “early” Two Books than even with the rest of the EBTs. I’m thinking particularly of the Niddesa when it directly comments on the two books. This shows again that separation in time is no proof for separation in doctrine.
To be clear, I don’t uphold a strong Buddha-vacana view even for the EBTs. So when I say something like “the Buddha’s message”, I mean the Buddha of the texts and the message attributed to him in those texts. Pardon me if I sometimes mess this up.
If anything of the Buddha is recorded directly, it is most likely prose passages or verses he composed by himself, not conversations in verse. That’s why I especially doubt the historical accuracy of the Pārāyana and parts of the Atthaka. I think nobody has actual conversations like the one the Buddha supposedly had with Upasīva. As Gethin argues for the Upāsiva Sutta, it was likely composed, being formed later.
But this also doesn’t imply that the Two Books teach a different doctrine. I even venture to argue the opposite again. For reasons I mentioned, the Two Books would have been composed to be in line with the overall message. Gethin, if I understand him correctly, goes further than this, arguing that the even commentaries are in line with the Upasīva Sutta exactly because it was a “deliberate and self-conscious literary construct”. He further says (arguing against Wynne): “the commentarial tradition of interpretation turns out to be more in tune with the literary tradition underlying the poem and better suited to drawing out the potential for meaning in the verses than a bare method of historical criticism”.
I’m not sure if I’m willing to go this far, but I would agree that history and meaning (and hence doctrine) are separate matters.
I would also challenge you to take your own reasoning further. If the compilers had a “freely fictive and pluralist storytelling tradition”, then who’s to say that the Two Books themselves have a coherent message? Both with one another and within themselves, from sutta to sutta? How can we know that?
We can’t just assume it. We have to read what the books actually say. Then we might conclude, yes, they do teach a coherent doctrine. I suspect you’ve already done so.
Now, I suggest that if we do the same for the main Nikayas alongside the Two Books, we find that they also teach the same basic message. History has little to nothing to do with how we arrive at this conclusion (or the opposite, for that matter). We must compare the actual message of the texts themselves. That’s the way to tell whether they are doctrinally continuous or not. So that’s what I was doing in my essay.
I won’t argue why I think the Two Books as a whole are doctrinally in line with the main Nikāyas. For now, I think I’ve adequately shown how the Upasiva Sutta very neatly fits the Middle Teaching, teachings on anatta, and verses on expressions found elsewhere. They even use the same terminology and similes, as I showed. So on paper I didn’t start with the assumption that the sutta teaches the same doctrine as these other texts; I showed it.
To get back on topic, you might more specifically challenge these connections re. the Upasiva Sutta. That’s the way to disprove my view that there is a doctrinal continuity—instead of a general discussion about the history of the texts, interesting though it may be in its own right.
Thanks for clarifying what you meant here. But I already replied to this question in post #17, with the ‘human realm’ thing. And in #22 in response to yeshe.tenley.
OK. I agree we should leave personal feelings out of this discussion.
It seems to me you’re proving my point. I’m not saying we cannot speak about nothingness by terms of what it is not. I’m just saying we can’t speak about it in terms of what it itself is. Because it isn’t “is” anything.
y = left undefined
If someone asks “Is y = 1?” I say “I don’t know!”
Assuming for the moment that the right conclusion to draw is “I don’t know if Y is 1”, I wouldnt disagree. See the essay: “Things that are fundamentally unknowable […] might perhaps be considered truly ineffable.” But the noble ones do know what nibbāna is. So I don’t think this is a good comparison in the first place. The situation we’re talking about is different from an unknown Y.
Anyway, I don’t think the right conclusion “I don’t know if Y = 1”. In arithmetic, if Y is undefined, you do know it’s not 1. It being undefined means there is no possible number Y, that Y is not an existing number. So it can’t be 1, either.
Also, mathematically 0 is just as much a number as 1 or 2. But “undefined” is not even a number! So Y being undefined is arguably closer to nothingness than X being 0.
And if by “undefined” you instead mean Y is just an empty variable, then you also do know it is not 1, in which case it would be defined. And you also know it’s not even 0, in which case it would also be defined just the same. So the concept of “undefined” is again closer to nothingness than 0.
So in either case, you argue that an undefined Y is less effable than X = 0. I’d agree but would argue that the case of an undefined Y is actually closer to nothingness than the case of X = 0. So you proved my point!
But let’s look at your “X = 0” argument separately. Compare it to: “X = nothingness. So is X an apple? No, X = nothingness.”
Here I haven’t said anything about what nothingness itself is. I just know that I’ve named it X and that it’s not an apple. But that doesn’t teach me anything about nothingness in its own right. We can extend the reasoning by including more things that nothingness is not, but the principle remains the same.
Your explanation “whatever you can think of, remove all of that” also is not describing what nothingness is. It’s describing what it’s not. Again it seems you prove my point. Note that I argued nothingness is ineffable in a particular way, namely that there are no ontologically positive things to say about it. I didn’t argue that we can’t say anything about “it” at all. I even wrote: “We can talk about what has ceased, about what does not exist anymore.”
I am asking: “Tell me, what IS nothingness? Don’t tell me what it’s not. Tell me what it actually consists of. What is the nature of nothingness itself?” And I don’t think you’ll be able to say anything meaningful. Even calling it “it” and “nothingness” is going too far, because there isn’t anything these words apply to. In this, it is unlike anything else.
PS. Just want to clarify again that nibbāna is not even some state of nothingness.
I reread my own essay, and in defense of Wynne, in some parts of the introduction and section on ineffability, I did approach the topic in a way that wasn’t purely textual/historical and was based on personal views. So Wynne has a point. If there is anything “unfair” it’s that the statement wasn’t backed up by any examples.
Anyway, I still think that my main arguments about the Upasīva Sutta itself are based on the texts. If I base an argument on encountering the same phrase in different texts for example, clearly this has nothing to do with personal Buddhist presuppositions. It’s about as purely textual as one can get.
Anyway, what I care more about is: it doesn’t address whether or not there is a connection to the Middle Teaching and anatta, which was my main point… which nobody else yet has questioned directly either. 
So hopefully that helps us get back on topic.
That’s a very good question. This discourse is somewhat strange to me as well, and a challenge indeed. I’m not exactly sure what to make of it, especially of the annihilationist position. Perhaps you and others can help me out.
Here is the crucial part of my translation of SN12.17:
Eternalism is explained as “one does the deeds (karma) and the same one experiences their results”. Annihilationism as “one does the deeds and another one experiences their results”. That’s what it means for suffering to either be made by oneself or made by another. So far, so good.
Given the context, the result of deeds refers to the results in another life, as it does most of the time. Eternalism is relatively easy to understand: if there is a self who experiences the results of its own actions in another life, then it would continue from life to life, hence it would be eternal. This then also was the case in past, so this self existed “since the beginning [of time]”.
Annihilationism is harder to understand. But one explanation is the one given by @Jasudho. There is a self in one life, which ends at death, giving rise to another self in a next life. The first self is completely annihilated. This is a peculiar view to me, but it does align with how some misunderstand rebirth when not correctly reflecting on anatta. And it is the standard explanation in later literature, as far as I know.
I also have thought of other explanations for it, but they’d be too hypothetical and drift too far from the Upasīva Sutta to share now. Either way, this would only be a particular type of annihilationism, not a description of all possible forms. It also says it “leans towards” annihilationism, so it may not even be completely similar to it.
To understand eternalism and annihilationism, I think it’s better to start texts such as DN1. It’s clearer about these views and also claims to encompass all types of them.
Sure. But then the aggregates are not suffering as they are not an experience.
So let me rephrase my question - how about the survival and non-survival of the aggregates? Are the aggregates like the self and like a flame - a mere label - or are they more substantial?
Many thanks for your extensive explanations, Bhante. 
So, the way I understand this is, the Buddha answered all four or the propositions of the tetralemma as he did by not assuming a self. In the same way, “one does the deeds and another one experiences their results” is annihilationism when assuming there is a self who was annihilated and another completely different entity suffers another’s kamma.
But if one does the deeds and the body breaks up at death, the seeds of that consciousness spring into another life, inheriting that stream of consciousness as a continuation, not of a self, but of the ever changing flux of a stream of consciousness. The kamma for the previous deeds is inherited, but not by a surviving self. Therefore, by being neither eternalism nor annihilationism, isn’t this the same logic as the tetralemma?
Consciousness, feeling, perception, choices, these are just names for experiences. The aggregate of vedana (or its verb forms ) are even often translated as ‘experience’ in some contexts. With form it may be slightly different, but by and large it still refers to the living body as it is experienced.
When the enlightened being passes away, the aggregates cease. However, no self ceases, because it was just a delusion.
To say the aggregates also don’t really cease, I can understand this argument, and it has its place. But it puts the self and aggregates on the same level, which I don’t think is generally useful. It tends towards the view of a complete nonexistence of the aggregates. Hence the Buddha of the early text never makes such an argument.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
It would be. To align it within the middle teaching and tetralemma, that’s not the difficulty I see. The view “suffering is made by another” or “one does the deeds and another experiences their results” clearly pose a self of some kind.
I just don’t think it is a typical annihilationist idea: “there is a self who was annihilated and another completely different entity suffers another’s kamma”. Usually annihilationists deny kamma in total. There is a self who is annihilated at death, and that’s the end of it.
That’s why I wonder if there are ways to interpret this that don’t require rebirth or a self in another life.
Hi Venerable, it is true the Teacher never made an argument for the complete non-existence of the aggregates, but I’d say the same about the self. The self exists conventionally just like the aggregates.
As for sutta, I’ll cite the Phena sutta where he makes quite clear the aggregates are to be understood as insubstantial, gossamer, like an illusion; and to seek this understanding as if your head was on fire 
Whether you regard the Phena sutta as EBT I don’t know, but there are other sutta where he similarity explains the insubstantiality of the aggregates in much the same way he explains the insubstantiality of the self. Not sure if you’d regard them as EBT either, but they are in the Pali canon 
Anyway, not looking to debate this or convince you. I just wanted to see if your understanding had changed as your essay provided hints that this was so. Appears the aggregates might still be a hang up for you. Once again, thanks for the wonderful essay and keep on keeping on searching for that middle!
I think you should be careful here
I’m worried you are going to find yourself in the future saddled with an unruly Dhamma student asking you whether Descartes had it right that the self is just the experience of thinking. Kamma and all.
Hi again,
But he never says this about the self. Because the self doesn’t exist at all, not even as an insubstantial/temporal phenomenon. So it makes no sense to say the self is insubstantial, or literally “without core” (asāraka) . Because there is no self in the first place to have no core. It’d be like saying unicorns have no wings.
What it means for the aggregates to be without core is exactly that they don’t have a self / are not a self. But the aggregates themselves, for example consciousness, are still there (as insubstantial phenomena), otherwise there is nothing to contemplate as being without core. Or nothing that could do the contemplation in the first place.
That’s again the two “levels” I talked about, which are clearly there in the suttas. The self and the aggregates just aren’t treated equally, like you are proposing.
Likewise, in the Upasiva Sutta, no sage as such exists, but there still is namarupa and consciousness to cease.
I’d appreciate your concern, but no need to insinuate anything about my personal views. Let’s just get back to the suttas. And maybe not rehash the same exchange.
Fair enough, Bhante !
I believe “Leaving the raft of Dharma behind” (Dharma here in the sense of Principles, Doctrine, as Buddha says “Let alone Non-Dharma”, which doesn’t make sense to read as “Non-Phenomenon”) points towards utilitarian and conventional function of the Dharma.
If Dharma pointed to something universal, objective, fundamental, we wouldn’t need to leave it behind, it would be something eternal, thus sukha, and perhaps even called self, following the arguments of the suttas !
I think you’ll have a hard time quoting “Self doesn’t exist at all”, which is an inference based on the exposition, but not something Buddha actually ever says! 
If “Self doesn’t exist” is true at face value, then why do we have an entire section dedicated to cultivating self, protecting self, not sacrificing the welfare of self for another, Bhante?
The difference between unicorns and self is that of course, we have no such teaching about the importance of cultivating a unicorn, and protecting the unicorn!
So, conventionally, we can talk about a self; ultimately, there’s nothing to talk about. I think it ties into these verses, no?
This feels like just moving the goalpost arbitrarily.
This seems like a weird rabbithole to me “Flame doesn’t exist; it’s just fuel and chemical reaction.” Then what is fuel? Etc.
What would stop me from treating the term “Consciousness” the same way “being” is treated? I could say “There’s no Consciousness, it’s just a convention we use when certain psychocomatic configurations happen”.
Taking this approach to it’s extreme, there’s two possible outcomes:
In the many examples below, I think we can safely challenge the first point of being able to declare something “substantial” and real, call it aggregates, experience or suffering.
Also, these verses don’t say anything to the effect of “There’s no sage, there’s only aggregates”.
In these verses, it isn’t displayed that the Sage never existed but the consciousness has disappeared. On the contrary, the Buddha refuses to talk about Consciousness of the sage, precisely because the sage has disappeared.
I think we’d find such a remark in SNP 1.1:
Yo nāccasārī na paccasārī,
Sabbaṁ vitathamidanti ñatva loke;
So bhikkhu jahāti orapāraṁ,
Urago jiṇṇamivattacaṁ purāṇaṁ.
I think it’s very useful to view aggregates on the same level as self, and as for your remark that it would mean “the complete nonexistence of the aggregates”, that’s a (weak) conventional way to posit it.
It seems some Buddhists are comfortable with rejecting the “Chariot”, only to assert the truth of the “Wheel”. I only suggest we take this attitude to everything.
Conventionally, all of these things can be appropriate, ultimately, there’s nothing to talk about:
Why would that brahmin say, ‘It’s true’
or with whom would they dispute, ‘It’s false’?
There is no equal or unequal in them,
so who would they take on in debate?
SNP 4.9
And of course, I could refer to Kaccānagotta Sutta, which you read in terms of “survival” or “non-survival”.
But I think the insight here runs deeper than “X actually exists, and at some point, it doesn’t, and that’s Nirvana”.
When perhaps, in reality, “Existence” or “Nonexistence”, verbal designations, concepts, mental grasping, all of these things were faulty to begin with.
But of course, the only way Buddha could’ve explained such a view, would be for him to declare verbatim “Existence or non-existence doesn’t apply”, the Pāli words for it being “Atthi & Natthi”, and if you only read those in terms of survival, we’ll of course find no other examples to that effect.
I think The Two Books point towards that Epistemic Negation (“There’s nothing to talk about”), in many places
“I do not say that all ascetics and brahmins, Nanda,” said the Gracious One,
“are enveloped in birth and old age:
whoever here has given up reliance on what is seen,
heard, or sensed, and virtue and practices,
and has also given up all the countless other ways,
who, by fully knowing craving, are pollutant-free—
I say those men have crossed over the flood.”
Snp5.8
Having understood the many different conventions,
they look on when others grasp.
Having untied the knots here in the world,
the sage takes no side among disputes.
SNP 4.13
The cleansed one has no formulated view
at all in the world about the different realms.
Having given up illusion and conceit,
by what path would they go? They are not involved.
Snp4.3
Therefore, it seems the very act of formulating and saying “Self doesn’t exist” or “Aggregates exist” or anything else of the sort, is something a sage doesn’t enter into.
Obviously there’s no way to grasp these concepts without formulation. And even if we do not do it verbally, then it’s still a subtle formulation.
Any sort of generalisation, extrapolation, projection, with or without a verbal component, would be “formulation”, wouldn’t you agree?
And what is Dharma except for the very act of generalisation, etc. ? The very same boat the Buddha tells us to abandon, the sage is said to have abandoned?
If the sage abandons all such formulations altogether, then to them, it isn’t that “There’s no self”, but there’s no formulation of “Self exists” or “Self doesn’t exist”.
We can say, all Dharma (Again, I’ll read here as all principles) having been removed for the sage (in this very life, abandoning the raft), all pathways to speech likewise removed (and thus he has no formulated views anymore, he doesn’t declare “it’s true” or “it’s false”, he himself is likewise beyond description).
It isn’t that “Sage” was a faulty premise, but aggregates wasn’t, something convoluted like that; nothing that can be formulated is in the mind of a sage.
So I read thus: It isn’t that there were things to say that don’t exist anymore; there was never a valid thing to say, at any time, in any place, so the Sage realizes, and thus he formulates no views, no Dharma, about nothing whatsoever.
And being the fool I am, I still dispute rather than practice!
You’re too kind, Bhante; I hope to live up to that standard!
I apologize Venerable for my jocular words. I didn’t intend to offend. Rather, I intended to playfully call out that despite substantial (pun intended) overlap, we still disagree on a few things.
Namely, I think you err when saying the self does not exist at all. This is one of the rungs of the tetralemme that the Teacher refused to endorse.
It also contradicts conventional understanding. Of course persons exist. You and I exist and so do all the other souls reading this website. We just don’t exist in the way in which we imagine. But I won’t belabor the point.
We disagree on this and that is fine.
In the suttas, attā, “self”, is never said to exist in this way, that is, as some sort of impermanent entity. The five khandhas, however, are specifically said to exist as impermanent entities:
And what is it, bhikkhus, that the wise in the world agree upon as existing, of which I too say that it exists? Form that is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change: this the wise in the world agree upon as existing, and I too say that it exists. Feeling … Perception … Volitional formations … Consciousness that is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change: this the wise in the world agree upon as existing, and I too say that it exists. (SN 22.94)
The two can therefore not in any way be regarded as equivalent.
To understand what the Buddha meant by the word attā, we need to consider how it was conceived of in ancient Indian society. Self did not refer merely to a person, as in ordinary speech, but to a metaphysical entity that is permanent and everlasting. This is quite clear from how it is described in DN1:
[It’s when some ascetic or brahmin] say: ‘The self and the cosmos are eternal, barren, steady as a mountain peak, standing firm like a pillar. They remain the same for all eternity, while these sentient beings wander and transmigrate and pass away and rearise.
It’s fine to disagree, but please don’t do so too quickly. There is nothing more important in life than right view!
Hi Venerable, our disagreement isn’t rash. It comes after quite a bit of study, practice, contemplation and experience. I’m not trying to make light of the disagreement so much as acknowledging that practice and Dhamma understanding takes time.
Respectful and good faith explanations of understanding happen frequently on this website and that is often a helpful thing. But arguments that do not contribute to either side gaining any understanding also happen. Sometimes this leads to one or both sides digging in which can actually hinder growth.
I despair of my own ability to convey why the aggregates and the self are both only conventionally existent in a way that might aid rather than hinder.
This whole line of inquiry started because I thought - wrongly - that Venerable Sunyo’s understanding might have changed wrt the aggregates and self. I was wrong. I don’t see anything to be gained by further explanation of our disagreements at this time.
I apologize for derailing the thread.
Bhante; isn’t it possible that the teachings on anatta are pedagogical, rather than ontological?
Otherwise, what are we to make of extensive records on the importance of taking care of self, in Dhammapada?
Never neglect what is good for yourself
for the sake of another, however great.
Knowing well what is good for yourself,
be intent upon your heart’s goal.
I don’t think Buddha would tell us to take care of something that doesn’t exist at all!
Perhaps you need to distinguish between the word “self” as used in English and the word attā as used in the suttas.
The word has two distinct meaning in the suttas: (1) It functions as the reflexive pronoun “oneself”, “myself”, etc., which is how it is used in the verse you quote from the Dhammapada. (2) It refers to a theoretically hypothesised permanent entity that actually does not exist in reality, as in the quote from DN 1 above. This latter use is ontological.
Which means that the denotate (or, in more proper English, “denotation”) of “oneself”, etc., exists.
So more or less exactly the case with the word “self” in English. I literally just put ‘self’ into google and this is what I saw:
We do use it as a reflexive pronoun, but people sometimes use the English word “self” in more or less exactly the same way as you describe attā. 
