What do you think about Ven Thanissaro's view on Anatta?

[IndyJ]

There is a counter argument from science for almost all that you say here.

Nature has no understanding of a “tree” - where does a tree begun and end? “Tree” is a man made concept, dependent on our particular sensory organs. For example, you and I see a red and black flower in a tree, but an insect sees a purple and white one depending on the nature of our eyes. Which one is correct?

This is anatta.

Even at the physical level - if our eyes were even slightly more sensitive, we would not see physical objects, but wave like motions of particles. Which one is correct?

It’s an ego centric view to consider the world is real according to the way our senses perceived it. The truth is there is no one real world - it is actually without any intrinsic essence - anatta.

[Green]

@IndyJ

Nature has no understanding of a “tree” - where does a tree begun and end? “Tree” is a man made concept, dependent on our particular sensory organs. For example, you and I see a red and black flower in a tree, but an insect sees a purple and white one depending on the nature of our eyes. Which one is correct?

First of all, seeing a tree is dependend on the reflection of sunlight of a material structure outside the body. That reflected sunlight enters your eye, etc

If there is nothing outside the senses, outside the body, no material structures, again, how do you explain sunlight can reflect from a surface?

You must also differentiate here. Material structures like atoms, molecules and larger structures exist. Theu have a certain capability to absorb and reflect sunlight in a specific way. Some surfaces almost absorb all the sunlight, some reflect specific wavelenghts. It depends. The way beings see this differs. Some as blue, others as red or even grey. That depends also on their make up. What colour is true is not relevant. I agree. But that does not disprove that their are materials structures outside the body. Also Buddha teaches this because he also teaches external rupa.

Do you really think ‘a stone’ is concept? So if i throw a stone on your head, you are hit by a concept? Is that really possible? (same with hit by a car, hit by an arm, hit by a falling tree, hit by…)

[prabhath]

@Green

Do you really think ‘a stone’ is concept? So if i throw a stone on your head, you are hit by a concept? Is that really possible?

Sorry to bring this up again—but please check out the origin story of the appeal to the stone.

[IndyJ]

“Stone” is a concept. Only a sentient being can comprehend what a “stone” is. It is a perception - a thing with attributes that is recollected. It is not the thing itself.

Consider - the red car you see is actually every colour except red - the red colour is the wavelength that is not absorbed by the paint. Not real, uncertain, anatta.

That is not to say that things don’t exist outside of us. However our comprehension and conceptualization of them can only exist within us. We should recognise that the way they exist depends out the sense organ perceiving them - in truth, they are devoid of essence, anatta.

In any case, the pain from a stone in no way proves it exists. There are plenty of instances of pain from things that don’t exist - phantom limb pain is an excellent example.

The properties of objects are conditional. Change the conditions, and the properties change. Atoms are not static - electrons are constantly in motion - again anatta.

[Green]

@IndyJ ,

I think that when you are hit by a stone, are wounded, and have a boil on your head, and must go to the hospital for suturing, you must really be a very stubborn philosopher to keep telling those surgeons that althought you are wounded this does not proove that the stone exist?

I see it this way: Only the name ‘stone’ is a concept but what hits you is certainly no concept, but a material thing, which we call a stone.
If you give it a name or not, the stone exist. Giving it a name, does not change the stone.
It is like a certain bird. We can agree to call it a swan or a geese but that bird does not change. Those names are just conventions but the bird is no concept.

Regarding vinnana and the role of observer:

Soundwaves can arise, exist, and cease independend of vinnana but sound does never. There is huge difference between those two. So if a tree falls, and there are no observers, ofcourse, there is no sound produced, but there are waves in the air produced, soundwaves.

The same with molecules which cause smell and taste and bind with nose and tongue receptors.
The arising, existing, and ceasing of those molecules is totally independend of an observer but smell, and taste is always within the domain of vinnana and needs vinnana.

If i hit on a stake, waves in the air are produced, but if there is no ear anywhere nor any vinnana anywhere, no sounds will be produced.

Tactile feelings, ofcouse, do not exist independend of vinnana, but material structures do.
EM-waves do not need an observer to arise. We do not have to see the sun for the sun to produce those waves. But visual images and colour do never arise outside of visual vinnana.

Are sound and soundwaves the same? No, H2S is also not the same as the smell of rotten eggs.
If you investigate the conditions in which (for example) sound arises and soundwaves you see those are not the same. Sound, colour, visuals, smell, taste, tactile feelings etc all need a vinnana as necessary condition to arise but soundwaves, em-waves, molecules, material structures do not. .

[prabhath]

@Green

Only the name ‘stone’ is a concept but what hits you is certainly no concept, but a material thing, which we call a stone.

This is basically naïve realism (in the technical sense—I’m not using the term pejoratively). When adopting this stance, one must be aware that even science, which this argument usually relies upon (in the guise of ‘common sense’), no longer takes this supposedly objective world for granted at a fundamental level.

[Gabriel]

@prabhath

This is basically naïve realism (in the technical sense—I’m not using the term pejoratively).

It basically shows how the philosophical progress that Kant has made (in the West) is still not digested broadly, namely that our apparatus has no access to objects-as-such. These contra-intuitive developments were necessary, in physics, math, psychology. But like in Godfather III, “Just when I thought I was out, the mind pulls me back in!”…

[Green]

This is not about Kants Ding-an-sich and Ding-fur -mich. By the way, would the Buddha agree with Kants ding an sich which cannot be known?

This is not a difficult subject. We all know that we see things because sunlight reflects on surfaces, on material structures outside our eye and body. That is why we see houses, trees, other beings. We do not hallucinate them, like they do not exist, or like sunliight would reflect on concepts.

[ORsEnTURVi]

Hi @Alaray, this is an important question and I think it deserves its own separate discussion topic. The reason is: nibbāna and anattā are both core teachings of the Buddha.

@Alaray

furthermore the formula is whatever is impermanent is suffering and is not self thus whatever is permanent,unchangeable and bliss is self ,do you disagree with this ?

I disagree with your flow of logic. This is your flow of logic:

1. whatever is impermanent is suffering and is not self: I agree
2. Your conclusion: thus whatever is permanent, unchangeable and bliss is self: I disagree

The correct flow of logic should be:

thus, whatever is self is not suffering, permanent, unchangeable
That means: whatever is not suffering, permanent, unchangeable is NOT guaranteed, NOT necessary, NOT immediately to be self.
That means: nibbāna is NOT guaranteed, NOT necessary, NOT immediately to be self by this kind of logical reasoning.

Please refer to this article about modus tollens to see where you went wrong.

@Alaray

can we call nibbana as self ?

My answer: No. Because nibbāna is also not-self (anattā).

I will give you 2 logical explanations and 2 quotes from suttas to support my answer.

1st logical explanation:
Start with the phenomenon of anesthetic (or you can test it yourself tonight during your deep sleep or if you do deep meditation state of cessation of perception and feeling). You can verify by yourself or ask anyone comes out of surgery after anesthetic session. My question to you: is something called “I” or “self” exist in such state? You will be very surprised to check after you woke up to learn that how long you have been out of conscious.

So, my flow of logic is: If you can agree that there is no self in such a state of merely temporarily reduced of certain aggregates. It will leads to a big jump of blind faith on your side to claim that there is a self in an even total cessation of ALL the aggregates as in the case of nibbāna.

2nd logical explanation:
If you agree that nibbāna is permanent, you will have to agree that nibbāna is also there when you are still not enlightened yet. If now you claim that nibbāna is self which means: you (in the sense that your own self separately and not the same as referring to me); then this leads to contradiction: we will have two different states of nibbāna, one that sticks to you and nobody else when you are still not enlightened and full of suffering, another one that sticks to you and nobody else when you are enlightened.

In other words, when you claim that nibbāna is self, such nibbāna can NOT be permanent.

1st support from sutta: MN1

“He perceives Nibbāna as Nibbāna. Having perceived Nibbāna as Nibbāna, he conceives himself as Nibbāna, he conceives himself in Nibbāna, he conceives himself apart from Nibbāna, he conceives Nibbāna to be ‘mine,’ he delights in Nibbāna. Why is that? Because he has not fully understood it, I say.

2nd support from sutta: MN22
“Bhikkhus, you may well cling to that doctrine of self that would not arouse sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair in one who clings to it. But do you see any such doctrine of self, bhikkhus?”—“No, venerable sir.”—“Good, bhikkhus. I too do not see any doctrine of self that would not arouse sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair in one who clings to it.

Finally, Venerable @Sunyo gave a nice Dhamma talk about nibbāna 2 years ago, maybe he can also give you some even better explanations.

[Green]

@prabhath

When adopting this stance, one must be aware that even science, which this argument usually relies upon (in the guise of ‘common sense’), no longer takes this supposedly objective world for granted at a fundamental level.

There is no use to talk about Quantum Mechanics and fundamentel level in these kind of discussions. Totally useless. It is often used in new age like articles in which all kind of wild metaphysical ideas (sold as real spiritual insights) are ‘prooven’ by science. You see this often. That spiritual ideas, because they are only ideas must be given some weight by science.

[Mike_0123]

Thank you for the reply, Bhante!

@Sunyo

But, Mike, in my post on this in the other thread (couple years back) I wondered why Bhikkhu Bodhi spend so much time on arguing against this view… but now I’m wondering the same thing about myself! So I’ll let this one slide. Hope you don’t mind.

Sure! No problem. My intention was just to create a place for people to tell and discuss their opinions on this topic, just for fun.

Also, may I ask how you interpret the argument in the anicca sutta? Something that has always bothered me was why the intermediary logical step is “What is anicca is dukkha. What is dukkha is anatta,” instead of “what is anicca is anatta.” If the Buddha’s argument was only that there is no self because the self must be permanent, then why is dukkha relevant in the argument? All times I saw people explaining this sutta, this part was totally dismissed or stripped from its logical function. For example, once I saw it interpreted as a reference to how the self in the upanishads is blissful, i.e. dukkha doesn’t have a logical role, so, when reading the sutta, we should take into account only the anicca and anatta part and connect them disregarding the intermediary step. (I don’t intend to force you to keep arguing against Thanissaro’s viewpoint. In fact, this is a sincere question).

@Sunyo

PS. On the featureless consciousness which you mentioned earlier, you may be interested in this: Viññāṇa anidassana: the state of boundless consciousness

I had read your essay before and found it very well explained. Thank you for that.

[Mike_0123]

@prabhath @Green @IndyJ I feel that this thread has instigated a discussion between realism and idealism, instead of whether or not the non-self strategy is correct. I don’t mean this in a bad way, though. Actually, this is a very interesting topic, and the points you’re bringing up could easily form a whole new thread, which would allow other users to join it more easily. I also am not denying the connection between anatta and whether realism or idealism is correct, but rather that the focus has changed from Thanissaro’s non-self strategy to the connection between anatta, realism, and idealism.

[prabhath]

@Green

It is often used in new age like articles in which all kind of wild metaphysical ideas (sold as real spiritual insights) are ‘prooven’ by science.

To take sensorial experience as an accurate representation of objective reality—as you have done here—is to take a metaphysical stance too. The logic is circuitous: “it must be true because it seems so.”

Not being a naive realist does not mean that one is then an idealist. There is a middle path, where one is sees that whatever metaphysical stance one takes is always dependent on subjective experience, that one cannot transcend subjectivity, and that the knot of existence can be untied only in one’s subjective experience.

Whether things are objectively real or not is entirely beside the point.

[prabhath]

Sorry, I agree It is best discussed in a different thread.

[Green]

Metaphysical stance…? I have never said sensorial experience is an exact representation of a socalled objective reality. Where do i say that?

What i have said is that sound, smell, taste, colour/visuals, tactile sensations are experiences which do not exist independ of vinnana. Without vinnana they do not exist. The objective counterpart, as you wish, which instigates those sensorial experiences is soundwaves (for sound), molecules (for taste and smell), structures (for tactile sensations and seeing), EM-waves (for colour and seeing).

Ofcourse the eye, and brain process things. What they process? Soundwaves hitting the eardrum. EM-light entering in the eye, molecules which bind on receptors, skin receptors which detect hardness etc.
Ofcouse those sensorial experiences do not arise by change. They are instigated. Brain and mind work together in forming a certain sensorial experience. But, one cannot say, all begins in the mind, i find.

About concepts?
What is the use of calling a stone a concept? Stone is just a name given to something material.
I can call an apple a concept but what is the use of thinking that concepts feed me?
Concepts are more like ideas. The concept of an apple refers to a certain fruit, form, hardness, taste etc.
But the concept of an apple does not still my hunger.

I stop this discussion here now.

[Green]

@Mike_0123

@prabhath @Green @IndyJ I feel that this thread has instigated a discussion between realism and idealism, instead of whether or not the non-self strategy is correct.

Hi @Mike_0123 ,

I feel this is allready answered. In sutta’s and internal commentaries, like Patisambhidamagga, it is said that we need to see the khandha’s as empty, void, alien, vain, not-self. That is contemplating anatta in the khandha’s. It is something which one has to develop to see things the right way and stream towards Nibbana.

In the context of contemplation, anicca, anatta and asubha and dukkha are perceptions to develop. One must see things in a correct way to abandon passion and defilements and enter the stream towards Nibbana.

[IndyJ]

@Mike_0123, agree - quite far from original topic.

@Green, the Buddha advised that to progress on the path, one should contemplate impermanence in all things we experience with mind and body. without that, it is very hard to see how all things are anatta. feel free to message me if you want to to continue his discussion, but i feel that may be trying to make you see something that your mind doesn’t seem to want to. best wishes to you - be well.

[josephzizys]

It seems to me that the basic structure of the argument is that what is hurting you can’t (or is not fit to be seen as) BE(ing) you. How could the thing causing the harm be the thing to which the harm is caused?

I also think that there is a lexical purpose to the move, sukkha did not just mean pleasure, it also had the connotation of “stable”, dukkha doesn’t just mean pain or sorrow it also meant “unstable” “I’ll-fitting” “irritating”.

So I think that just because something is impermanent is not quite enough to get the Buddhist argument off the ground, you still have an Ajita Kesakambala type position (though as I said to @Sunyo I think his actual position is to deny any “real” self whatever) where you can argue that there is a real but impermanent self that is temporary. Buddhism rejects this position and uses pain as a way to bring in a sort of subjective consequentialism that Ajita would deny.

Again, taken as a metaphysical assertion annica commits one to a kind of nihilism, taken as a denial of the positive assertion of permanence it opens the way for the Buddhist philosophy of conditionality that can resolve the issue of personal suffering without reifying concepts like self and world. Again, this is pretty much “mainstream Buddhism” as I understand it outside of Theravada where I am beginning to realise a more positive metaphysics is asserted as the Buddha teaching. I have not yet heard a coherent “explain it to me like I’m a simple graduate student in philosophy” explanation that doesn’t seem to entail a nihilism that I take to be explicitly denied in the EBT’s.

[josephzizys]

Just on the realism idealism debate, my understanding is that conditionality is precisely the Buddha’s resolution of this very debate and that annica dukkha anatta is precisely the “negative dialectic” of conditionality; if there where permanent stable essences or identities to objects and subjects then we would be trapped in whatever reality happened to be, but because things are in fact mutable, arising and ceasing in dependence on other things, some of which we have influence and agency over, there is this “way out” of our conundrum, the unconditioned. Specifically what is unconditioned by lust, hatred and delusion.

Once again, I think that all this is fairly explicit in DN1, DN2, MN1, the atthakavagga and the parayanavagga and a lot of other places in the EBT’s.

Metta

[freedom]

I do not try to talk about venerable Thanissaro’s view on Annata; however, I think this may bring up some ideas for this topic so others can talk about it.

As I understand the suttas, atta (self) refers to an existence that is totally free and happy. Of course, everybody will wish to have it if there is one.

For an ordinary person, self simply means his/her existence. Of course, he/she wants that self (existence) to be totally free and happy too.

When an ordinary person asks if there is a self. He refers to his existence. If we answer that there is no self, he will be confused because he will understand that he does not exist while he can clearly see that he actually exists! If we answer that there is a self, then we affirms that there is an existence that is free and happy. However, this is not true, and it is not what the Buddha teaches.

The Buddha teaches that we cannot find that self (atta) - an existence that is totally free and happy in the five aggregates, and he also teaches that we cannot find that self apart from the five aggregates. What does this mean? It means that there is no existence that is totally free and happy. However, it does not mean that there is no existence. There are existences but they all are suffering and are not free.

When we refer to a self as an existence then it exists, but it is suffering. When we refer to a self as an existence that is totally free and happy then it does not exist.

Some people cling to no self, they affirm that there is no person, no soul,… When they say so, they affirm that there is no existence. However, there are existences, but they are sufferings. We can see the person and talk to him. That person is an existence. If he does not exist, we cannot see and talk to him.

Some people cling to self. They affirm that there is self. That person, that soul is a self, or there is person, there is soul… When they say so, they refer to the existence of the person or the soul; however, that self, person, soul is not “atta” which is an existence that is totally free and happy; Therefore, they are referring something that is “suffering” as “totally free and happy”.

The “self” that is reborn is the existence that is not free and happy. This “self” exists and is running around samsara. This “self” is simply that existence.

Most of us will be totally confused when we cannot cling to any existence. We cannot function without existence. However, existence is actually the real problem. The question becomes if we can be totally free and happy without existence? Does this mean annihilation? Of course, the Buddha said that there is no annihilation.

To answer this question, we will need to understand what is existence? Can we function without it? Will we be totally free and happy without it? However, this is another big topic, and it is not very easy to see and understand if one is tied to craving and clinging. Moreover, this is not what this topic is about.