Many of the reasons given in contemporary Buddhist literature as to why the Buddha rejected the notion of the self amount to gobbledegook especially if we bear in mind that the self is the ultimate reference point for distinguishing the conditioned from the unconditioned absolute.
Much of the current view of Buddhism as regards the self is wrong. The Buddha’s teaching was never directed towards the elimination of self. He mainly taught that the ultimate reference point, namely, the self, cannot be the Five Aggregates consisting of form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness.
“Bhikkhus, form is nonself [lit., not the self]. What is nonself should be see as it really is with correct wisdom thus: ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’ Feeling is nonself... Perception is nonself...Volitional formations are nonself...Consciousness is nonself. What is nonself should be seen as it really is with correct wisdom: ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’” (S.iii.22–23).
Failing to understand that the Five aggregates are what is to be dropped, instead of the self as the ultimate reference point, has led to much confusion for over two-thousand years, especially in regard to Theravada Buddhism and now, it would appear, American popular Buddhism.
This shouldn’t suggest that the Buddha wasn’t clear in what he taught. The problem with what the Buddha taught rests with those who hold there is nothing beyond impermanent and suffering corporeality. They firmly believe that the body they possess together with its mental life and passions, is the sum of who they are. There is no beyond, in other words. This is extremely nihilistic, I hasten to add.
I find it exceedingly interesting that in the many discourses of the Buddha where he unambiguously states that the Five Aggregates are impermanent and suffering, he never once states, in plainest words, that the self, too, is impermanent and suffering. As a matter of fact, on one occasion, the Buddha said that “What is suffering is not the self” (yam dukkham tad anatta)!
Why, then, do so many Buddhists insist that the Buddha denied the self? Can anyone really believe that the Buddha asked us to deny the reference point of self so that we might enjoy the impermanence and suffering of the Five Aggregates which are mere accidents? But apparently many Buddhists, by implication, believe such. How then do they explain the fact that these same aggregates are synonymous with the Buddhist devil who is called "Mara the Evil One" (cp., S.iii.195)? Shouldn’t the self, instead, be the devil instead of the Five Aggregates?
It is a fact that never once is the actual self, as our true reference point, deprecated by the Buddha. The only error we make with regard to the self, is to view the body, consisting of the Five Aggregates, to be the self. But the self is never temporal. In Mahayana Buddhism the notion of the self is further developed into the Great Self which is synonymous with the Great Nirvana according to the Mahaparinirvana Sutra.
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