Ending the dogma of nonself

In order to overthrow the current Buddhist dogma that the Buddha’s teaching of anattâ or nonself is meant to do away with a metaphysical self such as the âtman, one only needs a few words of the Buddha and simple logic.

When at SN 22:22, and more than seven other places in the Samyutta-Nikaya, the Buddha said:“What is suffering is anattâ” (yam dukkham tad anattâ), he struck a blow not against the self, but against anattâ, i.e., nonself, and all that anattâ implies and is linked with.  

For example, when in the Dhammapada we read that “all things (dhammâ) are anattâ” (279) this implies that all things are suffering.  Moreover, it implies that nirvana is also suffering in as much as some Theravadins insist that nirvana is a dhamma which makes it anattâ!  One such Theravadin, Walpola Rahula, in his book, What the Buddha Taught (1962) wrote these words:

“There is no term in Buddhist terminology wider than dhamma.  It includes not only the conditioned things and states, but also the non-conditioned, the Absolute, Nirvana.  There is nothing in the universe or outside, good or bad, conditioned or non-conditioned, relative or absolute, which is not included in this term.  Therefore, it is quite clear that, according to this statement: ‘All dhammas are without Self’, there is no Self, no Âtman, not only in the Five Aggregates, but nowhere else too outside them or apart from them” (p. 58).

Thus also, we should conclude, by way of implication, that there is nothing beyond suffering, either, or the same, anattâ (all dhammas = anattâ = dukkha).  In other words, there is nothing outside of the universe other than suffering insofar as all things or dhammas are anattâ, and anattâ is suffering.  But this is patently absurd.  This is why the current anattâ dogma must be rejected.  It’s not what the Buddha taught.

When we turn to the Four Noble Truths, the first one being suffering, it is correct to say that the first noble truth is also anattâ or what is not the self!  Incidentally, the Buddha never once says the first noble truth is the self or attâ.  It follows from this that the second noble truth is the origin of anattâ which is desire, indulgence, inclination, and holding based on anattâ.  The third noble truth then should be the cessation of anattâ.  What does the Buddha actually say: “Bhikkhu, you should abandon desire for whatever is anattâ” (S. iii. 77) which happens to be the Five Aggregates.  In addition, the Buddha actually states that “the Five Aggregates are the noble truth of suffering” (SN 56:13).

Anattâ dogma has not purged the Buddhist canon of a metaphysical self.  Only in the imagination of the self-deniers has it done so—it fact, it does just the opposite.  Everywhere I have looked, including others before me like George Grimm, I have seen the opposite: the Buddha his asking his followers to reject what is anattâ or not the self.

Comments

[thezennist]

Eidolon: Sitting might be useful for some types. Zen master Hsu-yun writes:

"Ch'an [Zen] does not mean sitting (in meditation). The so-called Ch'an hall and the so-called Ch'an sitting are only provided for people (who encounter) insurmountable obstructions (of their own) and who are of shallow wisdom in this period of decadence (of the Dharma)."

[Eidolon]

Watch out, Mr. Primosch, that talk about "time better spent on a cushion" is exactly the other notion that makes this guy start to foam at the mouth like a rabid animal.

[thezennist]

Gregory Primosch:

The German Buddhist scholar Erich Frauwallner sums up the matter quite nicely with this:

"He [the Buddha] does not say that we should know the true self, but that we must not regard as the self (âtmâ, P. attâ) that which is not the self. For otherwise craving clings to this false self, and thus brings about an entanglement in the cycle of beings."

It is much easier to know what is not our self. I am not this aging psychophysical body, for example, insofar as it is impermanent and suffering.

[Gregory Primosch]

There is certainly a bent towards "Buddha said there is no self" in those influenced by Abidhamma tradition, but they are not the only Therevadan voices (thus Ven Thannisarro). I, personally, have a hard time even thinking about an eternal self existing outside the aggregates, but I concede I could be missing something.

I do feel strongly that time spent spinning in my head about how I have this or that kind of self is time probably better spent on a cushion. I don't doubt the Buddha would suggest that clinging to either dogma is unhelpful.

[thezennist]

Gregory Primosch:

Yes, the goal is to end suffering but not by hanging on to what is not the self or anattâ. Theravadins are wrong when they equate any belief in self with eternalism. Eternalism is the belief that an aggregate is the self and the world and then describe this as "eternal and permanent."