The real doctrine of no-soul

 Buddhism, at times, seems split right down the middle between those who firmly believe the Buddha denied the self or âtman and those who insist he didn’t.  Buddhist scholars, for the most part, take the latter position to the extent that the Buddha did not unambiguously deny the self.  This, I hasten to add, is different than what Buddhist clergy teach who, more than often, tend to believe that the Buddha categorically denied the self.  There is no real, fundamental self, in other words.

In Pali and Sanskrit, anattâ and anâtman do not mean there is no self.  Far from it.  For example, when the Buddha says that form, which is the first of the Five Aggregates (P., khandhas; S., skandhas), is anattâ or anâtman, this means in English that form is not the self or the soul. In this respect, anattâ could well be an adjective insofar as what it is applied to, in the example of form or rûpa, lacks a soul or a self.  Essentially, what the Buddha is teaching us is we should not mistake our psychophysical body for our true self—it is not our soul (anâtman).

Understanding self or the soul in this way is much differnt than believing the Buddha taught there is no self.  When the Theravada monk Walpola Rahula asserts, in his book, What the Buddha Taught, “that the Buddha denied categorically, in unequivocal terms ... the existence of Âtman, Soul, Self, or Ego,” he is clearly wrong.  Instead, the Buddha did not teach there is no self, soul or âtman rather he taught that the Five Aggregates, which make up our psychophysical body, lack the âtman or the self.  Thus, if we wish to know our true nature or self, we should not look for it in our psychophysical being which is impermanent and suffering.  It is not there.  In fact, the Buddha said of each constitutent or aggregate such as form or feeling, “This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self.”

Westerners and Asians who insist that the Buddha, in unequivocal terms, denied the self or the soul are really engaged in fraud if by fraud we mean intentional misrepresentation.  I am convinced that it is no accident that a concerted effort has been made by some Buddhists to give a misrepresentation of what the Buddha taught as regards the self or soul.  Here is an example of what I mean.  

Is any one of the five aggregates the self or soul (atta)? The Buddha's answer is "No." Then what remains to be called the self or the soul? As has been said above, apart from the five aggregates there remains nothing to be called the soul” (Kenneth W. Morgan, The Path of the Buddha, pp. 83–84).

In this quote the author should know that in many, many examples found in the Pali Nikayas the Buddha wants his followers to reject the Five Aggregates as being who they really are. The Buddha then goes on to say of each aggregate: This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.”  In other words, the Buddha invites his disciples to cease identifying with what is not their true being or soul, namely, the aggregate form, feeling, conceptualization, volitions and consciousness. These aggregates or khandhas may seem to belong to me but they are not my true self.  Thus, the teaching of anâtman is not intended to deny the self or soul.  Its only purpose is to call on us to reject the Five Aggregates as being our soul. What I truly am as a self or a soul transcends the aggregates.

 

Comments

[The Zennist]

Eisel Mazzar: Others who read Pali don't agree with the likes of Rahula. One, in particular, is Joaquin Perez-Remon. You might get his abridged dissertation, Self and Non-Self In Early Buddhism.

[Eisel Mazard]

Incidentally, if you'd like to consult a specialized book (that is indeed rather hard to find) devoted to the subject of the oft-forgotten historical school of Buddhists who would agree with your interpretation (that "no soul" doesn't mean "no soul") here it is:

Leonard C. D. C. Priestley,
Pudgalavāda Buddhism:
the reality of the indeterminate self
http://books.google.ca/books?id=x2PYAAAAMAAJ

My own opinion, of course, is incompatible with your own, but that's not the point: the point is that people shouldn't have opinions about Shakespeare without actually reading Shakespeare (and, believe me, you can meet some people in China who have only seen movies about Shakespeare in bad Chinese translation, and who come out of the cinema just as confused about the philosophy of Hamlet as most white folks are about Buddhism) --and, by the same token, people who are not reading the original sources (in their original contexts) need to refrain about having opinions about things they haven't read or seen for themselves.

Walpola Rahula was a mere mortal like ourselves; he wasn't right about everything, but he wasn't wrong about everything, either.

[Eisel Mazard]

It is interesting to see a self-professed "Zennist" using the Pali canon as his authority.

You're welcome to try, but the thing is about the Pali canon: it's written in Pali.

Some of us can read Pali, and some of us can't.
http://a-bas-le-ciel.blogspot.ca/2012/06/on-learning-pali-fascicle-1.html

The Buddha's philosophy isn't recorded in English, and it isn't recorded in Japanese, either.

With all best wishes, I really don't think that you're in a position to refute Walpola Rahula (as imperfect and refutable as he may be) on the interpretation of Pali texts. You might be 10 years of hard work away from that --and it would be 10 years of hard work very much unrelated to the Zen tradition (and Zen practice) perhaps even incompatible with it.