It stands to reason that the Buddhism of Siddhartha Gautama is much different than the Buddhism of today. What accounts for this is that over time wrong views eventually find their way into Buddhism when, in fact, they were never part of Buddhism.
Two such wrong views come to mind which are: the Buddha denied the self or the atman and there is no rebirth taught in Buddhism because there is no atman in Buddhism.
As far as both are concerned there are no actual utterances made by the Buddha where he states, unambiguously, there is no atman or there is no rebirth which in Pali is punabhava.
If, in fact, the Buddha had taught there is, ultimately, no permanent, unchanging ‘self’ or atman the Buddha then would be teaching the doctrine of annihilationism (ucchedavada). This doctrine was taught during the Buddha’s time. This doctrine believed there is no self which in Pali would be rendered natthattā meaning there is not a self. This evident in the Ānandasutta (44:10) which if read in Pali is quite evident.
When Vacchagotta asked me whether the self does not exist absolutely, if I had answered that ‘the self does not exist absolutely’ I would have been siding with the ascetics and brahmins who are annihilationists.
Ahañcānanda, vacchagottassa paribbājakassa ‘natthattā’ti puṭṭho samāno ‘natthattā’ti byākareyyaṃ, ye te, ānanda, samaṇabrāhmaṇā ucchedavādā tesametaṃ saddhiṃ abhavissa.
On the matter of self, the Buddha’s teaching was quite different. He taught that the conditioned five aggregates are not the self or atman, and that we should regard each aggregate thusly: ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’ This is not a denial of self. It is an implicit affirmation of self insofar as the five aggregates belong to Mara, the Buddhist equivalent of the devil. A monk during the time of the Buddha would have been seen as being stark raving mad to deny the self by using the five aggregates as the criterion.
The Buddha taught that unenlightened people always regard what is not their self, namely, the five aggregates, as being their self. They are never other than inverted. The Buddha once taught a person named Radha to see the five aggregates as Mara, as the killer. This means that unenlightened people are unconsciously attached to evil.
How do many Buddhists today handle this problem? From what I have personally witnessed, they double down and get really angry. But never once have they provided a single word by the Buddha where he categorically declares there is no atman which in Pali is, natthattā. As for the fact that the five aggregates are essentially evil their anger gets worse when they read this:
[He sees] the five aggregates as impermanent, as painful, as a disease, a boil, a dart, a calamity, an affliction, as alien, as disintegrating, as a plague, a disaster, a terror, a menace, as fickle, perishable, unenduring, as not protection, no shelter, no refuge, as empty, vain, void, not self, as a danger, as subject to change, as having no core, as the root of calamity, as murderous, as due to be annihilated, as subject to cankers, as formed, as Mara's bait, as connected with the idea of birth, connected with the idea of aging, connected with the idea of illness, connected with the idea of death, connected with the idea of sorrow, connected with the idea of lamentation, connected with the idea of despair, connected with the idea of defilement (Paṭisambhidāmagga II 238).
As for rebirth or punabhava many who take up the practice of either Buddhism or Zen Buddhism are uncomfortable with the idea of rebirth. In their mind, they figure that since Buddhism denies the self, therefore, there is no transmigrant from this life to the next. No self; no rebirth! No problem. But this is not true. The self is not the transmigrant in Buddhism that goes from one life to the next. It is consciousness which in Sanskrit is vijnana which means something like 'dual knowing' in which a subject-object relation is implicit. This is the transmigrant. This is also the fifth aggregate after corporality, feeling, perception, and volitional formations. The Buddha even likened consciousness to a magician’s illusion. This is summed up quite well from this passage.
"Just as a silkworm makes a cocoon in which to wrap itself and then leaves the cocoon behind, so consciousness produces a body to envelop itself and then leaves that body to undergo other karmic results in a new body" (Maharatnakuta Sutra).
Comments