By ‘assuming‘something is true we are really asserting something is true without any credible and convincing proof. This is what it means to assume. When Western Buddhists market Buddhism to the public as teaching there is no self or Buddhism is an anti-brahmanical religion, they are marketing their assumptions. Looking at the actual discourses of the Buddha he nowhere denies the self (P., natthatta). As far as Brahmanism is concerned, judging from the discourse, the Buddha appears to be a reformer of Brahmanism—not its archenemy.
Western Buddhist scholars have no idea how the Buddha’s discourses would read if they had won nirvana or how Zen would read if they were awakened to Buddha Mind. This applies also to Buddhist clergy and laypersons. Short of such a gnosis, one has to make lots of assumptions from scholarly assumptions to assumptions posted on some Buddhist chat forum on the Internet. But the Buddhism derived from such assumptions is not ture Buddhism.
As compared with the average Buddhist, for those who are sotapanna (current enterers, in German: Stromeingetretener) or have realized the luminous Mind, the discourses of the Buddha, for obvious reasons, are read and understood differently. To deem oneself competent to put Buddhism together into a coherent picture without gnosis of Buddha Mind or lacking a glimpse into nirvana is to commit a grave error. Partially, it smacks of hubris.
A coherent interpretation of Buddhism is unlikely if one is still groping around in the dark unsure of what nirvana or Buddha Mind is, based on their assumptions.
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