I am not sure whether you touched on it, but from my understanding of anatta the Buddha described it as another characteristic of an unenlightened person's experience.
The Buddha used anatta, I believe, as not so much a polemic against the Vedic religion but to borrow a familiar term of the time that expressed independence and permanence.
The way our cognitive faculties work is to take various dependently originated inputs and project upon it substantial, independent entities, whether this be raw experience or mental objects. I believe the Buddha never denied there was a subject that experienced things, what I think he did deny, which is simply an extension or what I mentioned above, is that there is a permanent, independent conceptual entity or self which is in reality is simply a conglomeration of changing thoughts, feelings and memories.
He stressed this not to make a philosophical point but to help one see that what is really behind our firmest an most intimate intuitions so as to prevent us grasping and causing suffering.
What you are saying, I think, is a traditional or perhaps even a modern interpretation of what the Buddha said. Let's leave aside the issue of what we know about what the Buddha said and assume that we're talking about the Pāli Canon (this is a naive assumption, but one I can live with for now).
So where did the Buddha say this thing about independence?
Note that ātman could in no way be said to mean "independent" in a Vedic milieu - ātam is brahman. It is in no sense independent and actually the underlying idea behind all Vedic religion was that everything is interconnected and the Upaniṣads are full of examples of some of the more esoteric connections. So using a term from the Vedic religion which in many ways expresses the fundamental interconnectedness of the individual with everything in the universe would be ironic, especially in the light of the Huayen/Avataṃsaka tradition which reinstates the idea a few centuries later! So as far as I know ātman has never meant "independent".
Let me be the advocatus diaboli for a minute. What would be the problem of interpreting that we are experiencing independent entities? Surely if you and I agree on a common experience (my blog post for instance) then there must be something which is independent of the two of us. Why is that a problem? Everyday the keys on my keyboard are in the same place and each key has the same function - it has not changed. What is the problem with that? Doesn't it deny the mantra that everything changes? And recall that the Buddha didn't have a microscope, let alone a theory of atoms or subatomic particles!
My reading of the texts, as opposed to what I've learnt about it from teachers and tradition, is that the Buddha avoided making statements about the nature of "things" and self, but was talking about the nature of experience.
The sort of thing that the Buddha says is: monks, the locus of experience is selfless, sensations are selfless, recognition is selfless, the process of naming and isolating is selfless, and our motivations and habitual responses are selfless - that is, monks, these five blazing masses of fuel (pañca-aggi-upādāna-khandha) are selfless.
But what does this tell us about the nature of the subject? Actually what does it tell us about anything? It's an obscure cipher!
I think you're almost there. The subject is a problem because we still only have the apparatus of experience in order to know the subject. And we don't see that.
Now we're back to the problem - why did people think that there might be a permanent self? They thought that because it is a central plank of the Vedic religion which was the milieu in which the Buddha was operating. Additionally the Jains foregrounded the idea of the jīva or soul of the person so that they also saw things in terms of a permanent entity. We don't do this. On the whole we don't see our existential situation in these kinds of terms - we are not concerned with the fate of our immortal soul any longer. And this is why, I believe, the focus has shifted from this traditional, more metaphysical, interpretation to a merely psychological one.
Even though the tradition doesn't make sense we, like Buddhists down through the ages, are afraid to put it aside because we believe that the Buddha said it. We find a way for it to make sense in terms of what our contemporary concerns are, and in the terms of our contemporary discourse. In a way this is not a problem, it's just not what the texts say. It may well be useful for contemporary practitioners, but in this case we should be saying that it's our idea, not the Buddha's. That's fine in my book, if it works.
BTW the term usually translated as grasping (upādāna) literally means "fuel". Grasping is an interpretation which crept in quite early. Gombrich sites "fuel" in the tradition as part of the an extended metaphor of fire in which existence is seen as appetitive like fire: desire (tanha) is the fuel (upādāna) for fire continued becoming (bhava) and the end of suffering is the blowing our of the fire (nibbāna). The senses, and the whole mental and physical apparatus of experience (khandha) are on fire. What we crave on the whole is continued pleasant vedanā, or the ending of painful vedanā.
I think there are seeds here for a good discussion.
I just wanted to make a quick few points.
1) At least in the Pali canon, you are right that the Buddha never explicity said that anatta had to do with independence. However, my understanding of atman is that is an immutable, essence that is eternal and not subject to change. As it is not dependent on any conditions (can not change) it can be seen as as existing independently of the phenomenal world. An interesting essay at: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/vonglasenapp/wheel002.html seems to support this point.
2) There is nothing wrong per say in seeing the phenomenal world as seperate entities. In fact it would be impossible to live if we did not see the world as such. The point I believe the Buddha was making by emphasizing anatta was so we can in a sense see beyond our reifications of reality or belief systems so as not get caught up by them.
3) It is a good point you make on grasping as (upadana) or fuel. I don't however think that what, "we crave on the whole is continued pleasant vedana." What I believe we crave is continued becoming or a sense of continuity or permanence whether it be pleasant feeling, the avoidance of bad feelings or the maintenance of the status quo.
Oh, by the way I just started a new blog at:
http://www.dreamwhitehorses.blogspot.com/ on buddhism, check it out!
1. Yes. In fact I have thought that if there were one thing in the universe that did not change, then, things being interconnected, nothing at all could change. The fact some anything changes, means that everything must. But this was before I realised that all of this was intended to apply to dharmas which are mental.
2. I more or less agree with this, but argue that the forms used were determined by the social conditions.
3. I think my view is more fundamental. I don't think anyone really thinks in the terms you suggest. What makes us crave continued existence is the pleasant experience, or the anticipation of it; or conversely we hope than pain with stop, or that we won't have it in the future. If I was to guarantee you a life of entirely unpleasant vedanas - pain without exception and without pause and no hope of change - you wouldn't want to continue becoming. So I say that our response to vedana is what determines our view, and that the craving for becoming is a more sophisticated phenomena than craving for pleasure.
I haven't read your blog in detail yet, but it looks like a promising, vigorously iconoclastic start! Keep it up!
Not sure why I didn't mention this before, but reading the Holy Dharma this morning I stumbled on the word sakāyadiṭṭhi and was reminded that the problem of "I, me, mine" comes under this heading.
I suppose it is a view (diṭṭhi) that this body (kāya) is my own (sa), but generally speaking it is all the ideas associated with selfhood in the sense that we could more proper translate as ego. This body is me, it is mine; this vedana is me, it is mine, etc. Note that this is a diṭṭhi: a view or opinion.
Discussion of atta by constrast comes under attavāda. A vāda in this case is a theory, or a dogma. Vāda comes from the root vāc - speech. So a diṭṭhi is more like an internal conception; while a vāda is a formulated belief set forth as an argument. The ātman is a hypothetical entity; while the experience of being a 'self' is something we all have from moment to moment.
So there are two problems which have become conflated in contemporary Buddhism: that of the idea of a hypothetical immanent Godhood, ie the ātman theory ("ahaṃ brahman", "tat tvaṃ asi" etc); and the problem of not seeing that the sense of self has the same ontological status as other dhammas.
This contrast makes the situation more clear to me, I hope for you'll as well.
Best wishes Jayarava
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
In comments to some other posts I discussed the context of the idea of anatta (Sanskrit anātman) and I thought it might be useful to give it more prominence. Anatta is usually translated as no-self, or as non-self. Misleadingly it is often rendered as egolessness - I'll get to why this is a problem shortly.
Anatta is the third of the tilakkhaṇā or three marks. In the Dhammapada 279 it says that sabbe dhammā anatta - All dhammas are non-self. The order of presentation of the lakkhanas is significant. In fact it is helpful to work through them backwards. We might ask for instance why are all dhammas anatta? They are anatta because of the second lakkhana - dukkha. Dhp 278 says in fact that sabbe saṅkhārā dukkha - all compounds are suffering.
Backtracking a little we need to look at what atta or ātman is. Ātman, using Sanskrit because it fits the context, is a concept introduced by the philosophers associated with the Upaniṣads. It was introduced not that long before the Buddha and was a distinct move away from the Vedic religion which had revolved around sacrifices to gods, and bonds between this world and the cosmos known as bandhu. It was also associated with a new idea about reincarnation - Joanna Jurevich has shown that reincarnation in a nascent form is, contrary to popular opinion, present in the Ṛgveda. However the Upaniṣads made reincarnation dependent on the actions of the person, on their carrying out of their religious duties and ceremonies. Ātman here was the immanent aspect of godhood - brahman. Not to be confused with the masculine personification of godhead Brahmā. Brahman was an abstract absolute transcendental principle. However the Upaniṣads equate ātman and brahman. The latter idea became highly influential in the popular form of Hinduism known as Avaita-Vedanta. The immmanent and transcendent aspects of godhead were not two. Brahman was said to have only three attributes (trilakṣaṇa) : satcitānanda - being, consciousness, and bliss. Ātman seems to have been the most influential religious idea in India at the time the Buddha was born. One's attitude to ātman - to the nature of selfhood as immanent godhood - was what defined many religious discussions, just as the existence and influence of the Christian God define religious discourse in the present.
Returning to the Buddhist anatta idea we can see that where there is an experience of dukkha - suffering, misery, diappointment, grief, etc, then that is not blissful. What is not blissful is not, ipso facto, ātman. Now the Buddha says that all compounded experiences are disappointing. The Buddha seems to have considered all experiences associated with the senses or the mind, which he considered as being synonymous with all unenlightened experience, as being disappointing (dukkha). Hence his constant refrain that the senses and the cognitive apparatus are anatta - not the ātman.
Note also that the Buddha taught that cittā - consciousness - arises in dependence on contact between a sense organ and a sense object. Because of this we must consider all sense experience as compounded or complex. More crucially cittā ceases when the contact ceases. Now if consciousness (cit) is a dependent product of contact, then brahman in it's cit aspect is conditioned! This is a major blow against the Upaniṣadic philosophy that doesn't get much attention these days because Buddhists are largely ignorant of that philosophy and fail to see the relevance of it.
We need to briefly mention that the reason that the Buddha said sabbe saṅkhārā dukkha, was because he had already observed in Dhp 277 that sabbe saṅkhārā anicca. Compounds are compounded of dhammas - and these are the objects of mano, the mind, and therefore saṅkhārā is more or less synonymous with cittā when used in this sense. Because we fail to properly see dhammas as ephemeral and fleeting (see also Language and Discrimination) we find all of our experiences disappointing. (The argument for unpleasent dhammas is more complex, but it also amounts to disappointment).
So in forward order: experiences are fleeting; because we don't get this at a fundamental level we find experiences disappointing; and because experience is not blissful it cannot be ātman. So nothing related to the body, senses, or mind - the apparatus of experience - can be the ātman. This is the proper context for the idea, and is the only context where it really makes sense.
Now for a variety of reasons, most of which relate to later Buddhist failure to take interest in the context the Buddha was operating it, the doctrine became decontextualized. Buddhists began to make new explanations for what the Buddha meant by anatta. One of the most prominent became that the Buddha taught that we have no self. There is apparently, and here I rely on Sue Hamilton, no explicit denial of self per se in the Pali Canon. What the Buddha denies is that any aspect of our experience is ātman in the sense of immanent godhood. The Buddha is trying to reframe the religious discourse away from ātman and towards a consideration of the existential experiential situation - he repeatedly refused to answer metaphysical questions and responded that he taught "suffering, the cause, the end and the way to end suffering".
A popular version of this corruption is that the Buddha taught something called "egolessness". Now this is problematic in several ways. The term ego is introduced by Freud's English translators - he called the psychic function in question "ich". Using Latin led to a reification of the term in popular usage - it moves from being an abstract function, to being a concrete part of the person. One can now speak of "having an ego", for instance, as though ego is a "thing". One can have too much ego, or perhaps too little. This is a dismal error that flies in the face of Buddhist approaches too being as process as well as what is intended in psychological jargon.
Buddhists take this one step further by making the ego wholeheartedly bad, and proposing that all people should be egoless. A person with no ego would be incapable of communication or learning, or any kind of interaction. Egolessness would be disastrous for the individual. I've expounded this at length in the past. Ātman as the immanent godhood is nothing at all to do with the ordinary sense of self. The Buddha even at one point suggests that a sense of self is essential for the development of empathy! I've suggested that the English word "selfless" is much more in keeping with the Buddhist concept - it means not, someone with no self, but someone who is altruistic! A final irony is that Buddhists who promote egolessness are often the same ones who are proponents of the doctrine of tathāgatagarbha (literally "the matrix of one who is like that") - or Buddha nature. Now some of the tathāgatagarbha literature equates the tathāgatagarbha with ātman (see for instance Williams, p.98-9). So while treating anatta as egolessness, they promote the idea of an intrinsic immanent Buddhahood which is like the ātman. So we're basically back to Vedantic eternalism at this point, the very kind of idea which anatta was designed to critique.
The idea of anatta is often elevated to being "the doctrine of anatta". I don't think it was ever intended as a stand alone doctrine. It seems more likely that it required not only a Buddhist context, but the Vedantic context against which it was being offered as a polemic, in order to make sense. So on the whole it does not make sense in the present. Anatta was part, and only a part, of a Buddhist demolition Vedantic arguments which are not relevant in the modern west, though it may still be relevant in India. What we need at present is a Buddhist critique of the Christian idea of creation, and the scientific idea of evolution. Both tend to draw attention away from the existential situation and from the problems associated with the apparatus of experience - and therefore neither are likely to be helpful in the Buddhist Enlightenment project. Perhaps a subject for a future rave...
Bibliography
Hamilton, Sue. 2000. Early Buddhism : a new approach. The I of the beholder. Richmond, Surrey : Curzon.Williams, P. 1989. Mahāyāna Buddhism : the doctrinal foundations. 1st ed. London : Routledge.
5 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formI am not sure whether you touched on it, but from my understanding of anatta the Buddha described it as another characteristic of an unenlightened person's experience.
The Buddha used anatta, I believe, as not so much a polemic against the Vedic religion but to borrow a familiar term of the time that expressed independence and permanence.
The way our cognitive faculties work is to take various dependently originated inputs and project upon it substantial, independent entities, whether this be raw experience or mental objects. I believe the Buddha never denied there was a subject that experienced things, what I think he did deny, which is simply an extension or what I mentioned above, is that there is a permanent, independent conceptual entity or self which is in reality is simply a conglomeration of changing thoughts, feelings and memories.
He stressed this not to make a philosophical point but to help one see that what is really behind our firmest an most intimate intuitions so as to prevent us grasping and causing suffering.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Hi darkdream,
What you are saying, I think, is a traditional or perhaps even a modern interpretation of what the Buddha said. Let's leave aside the issue of what we know about what the Buddha said and assume that we're talking about the Pāli Canon (this is a naive assumption, but one I can live with for now).
So where did the Buddha say this thing about independence?
Note that ātman could in no way be said to mean "independent" in a Vedic milieu - ātam is brahman. It is in no sense independent and actually the underlying idea behind all Vedic religion was that everything is interconnected and the Upaniṣads are full of examples of some of the more esoteric connections. So using a term from the Vedic religion which in many ways expresses the fundamental interconnectedness of the individual with everything in the universe would be ironic, especially in the light of the Huayen/Avataṃsaka tradition which reinstates the idea a few centuries later! So as far as I know ātman has never meant "independent".
Let me be the advocatus diaboli for a minute. What would be the problem of interpreting that we are experiencing independent entities? Surely if you and I agree on a common experience (my blog post for instance) then there must be something which is independent of the two of us. Why is that a problem? Everyday the keys on my keyboard are in the same place and each key has the same function - it has not changed. What is the problem with that? Doesn't it deny the mantra that everything changes? And recall that the Buddha didn't have a microscope, let alone a theory of atoms or subatomic particles!
My reading of the texts, as opposed to what I've learnt about it from teachers and tradition, is that the Buddha avoided making statements about the nature of "things" and self, but was talking about the nature of experience.
The sort of thing that the Buddha says is: monks, the locus of experience is selfless, sensations are selfless, recognition is selfless, the process of naming and isolating is selfless, and our motivations and habitual responses are selfless - that is, monks, these five blazing masses of fuel (pañca-aggi-upādāna-khandha) are selfless.
But what does this tell us about the nature of the subject? Actually what does it tell us about anything? It's an obscure cipher!
I think you're almost there. The subject is a problem because we still only have the apparatus of experience in order to know the subject. And we don't see that.
Now we're back to the problem - why did people think that there might be a permanent self? They thought that because it is a central plank of the Vedic religion which was the milieu in which the Buddha was operating. Additionally the Jains foregrounded the idea of the jīva or soul of the person so that they also saw things in terms of a permanent entity. We don't do this. On the whole we don't see our existential situation in these kinds of terms - we are not concerned with the fate of our immortal soul any longer. And this is why, I believe, the focus has shifted from this traditional, more metaphysical, interpretation to a merely psychological one.
Even though the tradition doesn't make sense we, like Buddhists down through the ages, are afraid to put it aside because we believe that the Buddha said it. We find a way for it to make sense in terms of what our contemporary concerns are, and in the terms of our contemporary discourse. In a way this is not a problem, it's just not what the texts say. It may well be useful for contemporary practitioners, but in this case we should be saying that it's our idea, not the Buddha's. That's fine in my book, if it works.
BTW the term usually translated as grasping (upādāna) literally means "fuel". Grasping is an interpretation which crept in quite early. Gombrich sites "fuel" in the tradition as part of the an extended metaphor of fire in which existence is seen as appetitive like fire: desire (tanha) is the fuel (upādāna) for fire continued becoming (bhava) and the end of suffering is the blowing our of the fire (nibbāna). The senses, and the whole mental and physical apparatus of experience (khandha) are on fire. What we crave on the whole is continued pleasant vedanā, or the ending of painful vedanā.
Thanks for commenting.
Best wishes
Jayarava
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Jayarava,
Thanks for replying to my comment.
I think there are seeds here for a good discussion.
I just wanted to make a quick few points.
1) At least in the Pali canon, you are right that the Buddha never explicity said that anatta had to do with independence. However, my understanding of atman is that is an immutable, essence that is eternal and not subject to change. As it is not dependent on any conditions (can not change) it can be seen as as existing independently of the phenomenal world. An interesting essay at: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/vonglasenapp/wheel002.html
seems to support this point.
2) There is nothing wrong per say in seeing the phenomenal world as seperate entities. In fact it would be impossible to live if we did not see the world as such. The point I believe the Buddha was making by emphasizing anatta was so we can in a sense see beyond our reifications of reality or belief systems so as not get caught up by them.
3) It is a good point you make on grasping as (upadana) or fuel. I don't however think that what, "we crave on the whole is continued pleasant vedana." What I believe we crave is continued becoming or a sense of continuity or permanence whether it be pleasant feeling, the avoidance of bad feelings or the maintenance of the status quo.
Oh, by the way I just started a new blog at:
http://www.dreamwhitehorses.blogspot.com/ on buddhism, check it out!
All the best,
DarkDream
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Hi Dark Dream,
1. Yes. In fact I have thought that if there were one thing in the universe that did not change, then, things being interconnected, nothing at all could change. The fact some anything changes, means that everything must. But this was before I realised that all of this was intended to apply to dharmas which are mental.
2. I more or less agree with this, but argue that the forms used were determined by the social conditions.
3. I think my view is more fundamental. I don't think anyone really thinks in the terms you suggest. What makes us crave continued existence is the pleasant experience, or the anticipation of it; or conversely we hope than pain with stop, or that we won't have it in the future. If I was to guarantee you a life of entirely unpleasant vedanas - pain without exception and without pause and no hope of change - you wouldn't want to continue becoming. So I say that our response to vedana is what determines our view, and that the craving for becoming is a more sophisticated phenomena than craving for pleasure.
I haven't read your blog in detail yet, but it looks like a promising, vigorously iconoclastic start! Keep it up!
Best wishes
Jayarava
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Not sure why I didn't mention this before, but reading the Holy Dharma this morning I stumbled on the word sakāyadiṭṭhi and was reminded that the problem of "I, me, mine" comes under this heading.
I suppose it is a view (diṭṭhi) that this body (kāya) is my own (sa), but generally speaking it is all the ideas associated with selfhood in the sense that we could more proper translate as ego. This body is me, it is mine; this vedana is me, it is mine, etc. Note that this is a diṭṭhi: a view or opinion.
Discussion of atta by constrast comes under attavāda. A vāda in this case is a theory, or a dogma. Vāda comes from the root vāc - speech. So a diṭṭhi is more like an internal conception; while a vāda is a formulated belief set forth as an argument. The ātman is a hypothetical entity; while the experience of being a 'self' is something we all have from moment to moment.
So there are two problems which have become conflated in contemporary Buddhism: that of the idea of a hypothetical immanent Godhood, ie the ātman theory ("ahaṃ brahman", "tat tvaṃ asi" etc); and the problem of not seeing that the sense of self has the same ontological status as other dhammas.
This contrast makes the situation more clear to me, I hope for you'll as well.
Best wishes
Jayarava
Tuesday, November 11, 2008