Self is not the bad guy

The subject of self has always overshadowed the real significance of the Five Aggregates obscuring the fact that they are, without a doubt, harmful if not evil, and more importantly, cannot be purified.  This is not the case with self.  

Nowhere in the Pali canon, for example, does the Buddha equate self with Mara the Evil One, which is not the case with the Five Aggregates which he equates with Mara as a killer ( S. iii. 189).  Yet, many Buddhists have come to believe the self is the bad guy—the aggregates are okay.

This is rather odd when you take into consideration how much ink has been spilled by sectarian Buddhists proclaiming that the Buddha denied the self—even the Dalai Lama—who have fallen prey to this not-so-provable hypothesis.

Presently, it has become a scandal to even suggest that Buddhists are wrong who postulate that the Buddha categorically denied the self!  (He did not.)  Yet, if we open up the Pali canon, it is not so self-evident or obvious that the Buddha categorically denied the self.  He did, however, say that the Five Aggregates are not the self which is to suggest (and strongly so) that the self is not at all like the harmful and evil aggregates which belong to Mara, the Buddhist devil!  This can only imply that since the self is not an aggregate it isn’t to be rejected—and it is certainly neither evil nor Mara.

There is almost a kind of intellectual madness that takes over some Buddhists who impulsively feel it is their duty to attack the idea of self while, at the same time, being  mum about the evil Five Mara Aggregates, failing to acknowledge that the aggregates—not the self—are what is to be rejected.  Here is such an example whereby the disciple rejects each of the five aggregates as being his self.

“But monks, an instructed disciple [ariya-savako] of the pure ones...regards material shape as: ‘This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self;’ he regards feeling as:  ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my  self;’ he regards perception as:  ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my  self;’ he regards the habitual tendencies as:  ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my  self;’ he regards consciousness as:  ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my  self.’  And also he regards whatever is see, heard, sensed, cognised, reached, looked for, pondered by the mind as:  ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my  self’” (M. i. 136).

This is not a straightforward, unambiguous denial of the self by any stretch of the imagination.  When we examine the bulk of discourses on the Five Aggregates, the latter are always portrayed in a bad light, the self never.  Yet, to reiterate, the self gets the bad press; the Five Aggregates almost never.

I.B. Horner who was a scholar and translator of Pali, working mainly with the Pali canon; who was also the late president of the Pali Text Society, had this to say about the self in Buddhism:

“The Self (attâ) as both divine and human was no more repudiated by early Sâkya than were either the Âtman as Brahman, or the âtman as the self of man by the Upanishads” ( I.B. Horner, The Early Buddhist Theory of Man Perfected, 41).

Comments

[minx]

Sorry Frank. These days I sail the seas of the Mind with a very low exposure.

But I can give you this tiny advice for your own journey.

Your heart needs to reprogram itself. It needs to be filled entirely with a dream of an odyssey of the spirit and not of the flesh.

It needs a tall tale to be wispered under the good sails of prajna and with a final destination in the skilled eye of its captain; the nirvanic shore of the Buddhas.

If you care for all suffering beings and your own self, ask for no more than this and above all, no less.

[Frank]

Minx, I must say your comments are among the most thought-provoking I've read. Do you have your own blog? If so, what's the web addy?

[minx]

Ants on your keyboard is very auspicious indeed. It is a reminder from the great master Hakuin himself!

http://iriz.hanazono.ac.jp/newhomepage/fuji_tom/index.html

click on this link and scroll down to the poem;

An ant circles an iron handmill, around and around with never a rest.
Beings in the Six Paths of Existence are like this, suffering rebirth and redeath and never finding release.
Born here, dying there, becoming a demon, becoming an animal.
If you seek for liberation from this sorrow, hear the Sound of One Hand.”

Unlike most Japanese zen teachers, Hakuin (Rinzai-zen) was never a fan of Dogen. Hakuin once commented on Dogens soto-zen as; "sitting still and silent like a withered tree and holding on to death"(suzuki 1976,16).

It seems after all you have mighty protectors on your spiritual path (Laughs).

[Frank]

Minx, intriguing posts, to say the least. I'll have to consider your words for a while before responding. I'm watcing these ants crawl around my keyboard as I type this. Can't "control" them with ant spray because that might harm the cats...I'm no Jain, but I love my cats. I don't mind some ants, but when do some ants become too many? And when do some thoughts become too many? And for whom?

[minx]

Frank wrote:

"Rather than dismiss the self as a fiction, Gotama presented it as a project to be realized."

He goes on in this vein, but why ruin the ending?

Frank, Frank...Its spring and a good time to play some zen tennis. LOL

Let me put it this way; If you are a simple man, a virtous man, a soul of apparently poor means and not not used to own precious things, and if as such a gentle soul one day recieve one very precious thing by some strange reason, your first thought will probably be, " what should i do with it?" . Your second will probably be , "If I hide it in this house, what if someone breakes in and steals it?!" and suddenly without realizing it, a subtle bond of interdependant origination is slowly being forged between you and that which presently preoccupies your mind. This is in a way "defilement" of the jewel, or more precisely, defilement of the right view of the "jewel", because the latter cannot in reality ever be defiled initself. It is fundamentaly and permanently pure. Undivided, uncreated, unborn and thus not subject to any tangibility by the mundane, divided, created or born.

Ensnared by the mundane world or mundane things, you have in a way become the very obstacle of your own self-realization. Something eternal or permanent in you is by your own desired existence as Frank, hindered to awake (Budh) to the absolute glory of its own true nature.

In a way, you become like a walking dead. Living in hell without knowing it. The distressing and numbing sensation is there, but not the realization of this spiritual dilemma, and thus, there is a silent suffering until the end of this life. No-thing can ever cure such a hopeless position of the mind. The only cure is to allow the mundane mind become silent and that which desires awakening become free to one day become en-light-ened by the larger Buddha Mind . The latter precedes your present artificial existence, which is dependant on so many internal and external factors (all impermanent). In the beginning of the path of true self-realization you are much like a caveman, lost in an icy cold wilderness, eager to find a fire to warm himself but unable to locate the fire due to a vast thick black cloud of thick poisonous smoke. If he doesnt find the fire he will certainly soon die in the cold of the wilderness but if he find the fire underneath all that smoke, he will first feel its warmth as a leading compass and soon stand face to face with its blazing glory and live! LOL.