Thoughts on Sakkāya and Sabba

Discussion
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Moving this note from a comment on the translation of sakkāya and its use in the texts. See: On Sakkāya and Substantial Reality and a comment on the term

I have been thinking that the Buddha’s redefinition and use of the term “sakkāya” (‘substantial reality’) is the non-Vedic parallel to his dialectic with the term “sabba/sarva” (‘the Whole’).

The Buddha famously and boldly defines the Whole in terms of the sensory domains (e.g. SN 35.23). This is a dialectic response to Brahmanical notions of the Whole found, for example, in the early Upaniṣads. Notably, however, nowhere do we find the aggregates defined as the Whole. The response is restricted to sensory fields.

Perhaps the correlate dialectic to non-Vedic thought has been overlooked due to not emphasizing Buddhist and non-Vedic connections. There has been quite a lot of comparative work done between Brahmanism and early Buddhism. But similar research with Jainism and other non-Vedic schools of thought are comparatively quite minimal.

I think we can say that he defined the aggregates as “sakkāya" in a very similar move as defining the Whole in terms of the senses.

What might the significance of this divide between the senses and aggregates, the Whole and substantial reality, be?

The Brahmanical philosophy of the early Upaniṣads tended towards a monistic ontology emphasizing oneness. The idea of the Whole is of a unified, all-encompassing Being that is the totality of all reality. It is the essential unity of what appears to be a manifest multiplicity. An unchanging totality of a seeming chaotic diversity. This idea first appears in the early Pāḷi texts in the very first sermon of the very first collection as the very first view of the eternalists (DN 1). It goes on to be criticized in various ways in other texts.

On the other hand, we see that the “substance” ontologies of the non-Vedic sects focused more on a multiplicity of substances and souls in the world. Jainism is pluralistic, as is the philosophy of Pakudha Kaccāyana (DN 2) as well as the Ājīvakas (also likely represented by Makkhali Gosāla in DN 2).

The idea of various substances is not of an underlying oneness in spite of the plurality, but rather an embrace of the plurality without allowing it to dissolve into chaos. It is instead broken up into more solid chunks of substantial entities and essential categories that make up the world. In other words, multiplicity is made up of sub-sets of smaller unities within it. It is a kind of “middle way” between a pure Being and sheer chaos.

By defining the Whole in terms of the senses, the Buddha is redirecting speculation about oneness, wholeness, and totality by grounding those ideas back on the empirical reality that they are induced from. The empirical reality of sensation is manifestly pluralistic and incredibly unstable; it does not lend itself to such speculation. Rather than speculate that underlying the impressions of the senses there is a deeper unifying principle of Being, the Buddha reduces such thinking with a move away from any reach beyond the senses to something else. The Buddha took away any attempts at finding some solid, unifying ground for our selves underneath the chaos.

On the other hand, for the problem of separate and distinct substances, we find a different approach. This is fitting, because the nature of the problem is similar in one sense, but distinct in another. Here the problem is not an underlying wholeness, but of reifying and solidifying plurality into distinct unities or singular entities which make up that pluralistic world. The very idea of “plurality” itself implies substantial unities. This view of the world avoids, perhaps, a sort of Unmanifest that the Upaniṣadic thinkers were eventually led to accept. But it is still based on solidifying and projecting a notion of a substantial self on the world.

The Buddha focuses his dialectic with substantial reality and sakkāya by honing in on how the world is solidified and reified by contrasting an independent and substantial “self” somehow inhabiting it. Even within the world of impressions itself, we can establish separate substances only if there is a substantial subject somewhere to ground and match the reality of those substances. Without a substantial subject in relation to the world, what grounds are there for establishing substances in general?

So the essentialism and substantialism of the world is a projection and necessary by-product of substantial self views. I’m reminded of Parmenides establishing general substantial “Being” in a near identical way that Descartes established the substantial subjective self. The Buddha dismisses an independent subject and agent which bumps into a world of likewise independent substances, focusing instead on the conditional nature of the self and world.

Both the senses as the “Whole” and the aggregates as “substantial reality” refocus the conversation on how our experience of ‘reality’ is relational and conditional, rather than substantial and inhabited. A similar method is applied in both, but in subtle and nuanced ways based on the context of each term!

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yes, that’s the loop in our experience. Every time “I know this” there is a movement to take the ownership for “me”. This is the basis for the knowledge of Reality and only can by surpassed through the knowledge of anatta, which is an exclusive teaching from the Buddhas.

"'It’s with possessiveness, friend Ananda, that there is “I am,” not without possessiveness. And through possessiveness of what is there “I am,” not without possessiveness? Through possessiveness of form there is “I am,” not without possessiveness. Through possessiveness of feeling… perception… fabrications… Through possessiveness of consciousness there is “I am,” not without possessiveness.
SN 22.83

substantiation is not anywhere, it is only in the ownership

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It’s of interest to note that the parallel to SN 22.83 says it’s the arising of the five aggregates that causes a self to imagined, not “possessiveness.” More than likely it’s the fact of existence as a result of taking on a birth that the Pali is referring to. You have a concept of yourself because you’re here.

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There is appropriation only because there is ignorance - there’s no choice whether to appropriate or not to appropriate. And since ignorance is there from the moment of birth, that very birth, by definition, is not a manifestation of aggregates, but only of the aggregates of clinging - a manifestation of already appropriated aggregates.

There is birth as ‘I was born’ because there is existence as ‘I am’; there is existence as ‘I am’ because there is appropriation as ‘mine’; there is appropriation as ‘mine’ because there is ignorance of the fact that all that I take as mine and myself cannot be mine. With the cessation of ignorance there is the cessation of appropriation as ‘mine’; with the cessation of appropriation as ‘mine’ there is the cessation of existence as ‘I am’; with the cessation of existence as ‘I am’ there is the cessation of birth as ‘I was born’, right here and now.

So there is no contradiction, just an interesting shift in perspective on the subject.

Edit:
To put it another way, any view about the self, be it the existence of the self or the non-existence of the self in any form or combination, arises from the fundamental misunderstanding that there is ‘‘mine’’ because ‘‘I am’’. The view that ‘there is no me and there cannot be a me’ is no different here from any ‘I am such and such’ - not only these two polar views, but the whole spectrum of views between them in general is the result of ignorance and delusion - it is the spectrum of wrong views, the spectrum of views around ‘there is mine because I am’. When order is restored and delusion is removed there is simply no room for such ideas because the very problem of the existence of the self ‘I am’ falls away as secondary and derivative of ‘there is mine’ - there is no more place or need for speculations about self.

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Yes. In the context of dependent origination, there’s the past that we can’t do anything about, and then there is the continuing actions in the present that are choices. Grasping is important in that context because it causes rebirth to continue into the next life.

I didn’t have time when I replied, but SN 22.83’s use of upādāya (from the v. upādiyati) corresponds to SA 261’s use of 生, which could translate S. utpadyate.

P. upādiyati becomes BHS. upādīyati and G. uvadiyadi.

S. utpadyate becomes P. uppajjati and in G. upajadi.

My point is only that the words are very similar sounding in different Prakrits, which apparently caused them to be interpreted in these different ways. Perhaps they were confused for each other in different Indic language recensions. It’s difficult to say, to me, which is more correct. Though in the case of SA 261, the metaphor of seeing one’s face in a mirror makes a little more sense to me as the image “arising” in the mirror, rather than them looking because of “grasping.” Sometimes it’s the metaphors that indicate the issue of shifting vocabulary.

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I think similar to Sasha_A. There is no becoming and birth from the aggregates without grasping. We are here because there is a -self delusion, no the inverse.

The metaphor of seeing one’s face in a mirror is referred to grasping. Becasue there is -self delusion there is a vinnana movement to know something, there is grasping and ownership and the -self is born. This loop continue at each moment and through many lives.