It is âtman or the first-person that is liberated from samsara by attaining nirvana. We can also say it is the liberation of the first-person from the realm of conditionality who, all along, was unconditioned but had no way of confirming and realizing this until nirvana. Lacking nirvana. the first-person was only acquainted with suffering, in particular the psychophysical body. This is the world of samsara which is the cycle of repeated birth and death.
But anâtman, or what is not the first-person, is also useful since it serves in the liberation of the first-person. It reveals what is not the first-person including what I am to abandon and not desire. The process is sort of a Buddhist via negativa. Adding to this, it is much easier to know what I am not than what I am. Where the confusion arises most, is separating the first-person from the psychophysical constituents (skandha), namely, physical shape, feeling, perception, habitual tendencies, and consciousness, the last being the most subtle of all constituents.
Often we read that the Buddha teaches his followers that the five skandhas or psychophysical constituents, are not the first-person or not the âtman which is anâtman. He might say, citing an example from the Pali canon (S. iii. 23), "What is nonself [anâtman] should be seen as it really is with correct wisdom thus: 'This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.'" Here, we get the sense of breaking away from our former wrong identification with the five skandhas.
As a result of this breaking away, we are becoming more of who we really are and less of who we are not. There is also less of an inversion of perception (saññâya vipariyesâ). We are no longer just perceiving permanence, happiness, selfhood, and beauty in what is actually impermanent, suffering, not the self, and foul (A. ii. 52). This is about the salvation of the first-person.
Good news for the suttas:
http://sujato.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/a-good-day-for-fans-of-the-suttas/
Posted by: Methexis | September 22, 2013 at 09:12 AM