Advaitin vs. Buddhist takes on awareness/reality

[rachmiel]

In Advaita Vedanta, pure awareness (brahman) is considered to be the ultimate, unchanging, eternal substrate of reality.

In Buddhism, consciousness (vijnana) is considered to be one of the five skandhas, thus empty of independent existence.

My questions:

Are Advaita and Buddhism talking about the same thing here -- i.e. does pure awareness = vijnana -- but interpreting this thing radically differently?

Is there a Buddhist equivalent to Advaita's pure awareness / brahman? Is there any ultimate substrate/reality in Buddhism? Or does Buddhism see "what is" as just a buncha ever-changing impermanent stuff in a grand web of inter-dependence?

Thanks,

rachMiel

[ancientbuddhism]

Because Advaita Vedānta is later development than contemporary to the Buddha, there is no reason to compare it to the Nikāyan period.

However, there is no equivalent to the Brahman-Absolute of the Upaniṣads in the Nikāyas. In fact, the Buddha was very clearly pushing back at the Upaniṣadic Ātman theory throughout his teaching career. The Buddha’s answer to a Brahman-ātman life-force dynamic was to deconstruct the assumptions of continuum with personhood, with the framework dependent origination (paṭiccasamuppāda) of the five bases [subject to] identification (pañcupādānakkhandhā), and reconstruct the aspirant toward liberating knowledge through direct knowledge of conditional sensate and cognitive processes.

[rachmiel]

Thanks, ancientbuddhism.

A followup:

Does Buddhism say "There is no ultimate reality, no brahman" or "It's of no use to speculate about ultimate reality, because it's unknowable." The first shuts out the possibility of brahman, the second doesn't.

[ancientbuddhism]

Does Buddhism say "There is no ultimate reality, no brahman" or "It's of no use to speculate about ultimate reality, because it's unknowable." The first shuts out the possibility of brahman, the second doesn't.

An ontological ‘ultimate’ is flat-out rejected throughout the Nikāyas, especially in the Alagaddūpama Sutta where the Buddha outright mocked the brāhmaṇa doctrine of ātman as a ‘doctrine of fools’ (bāladhammo), translated by Nyanaponika Thera as a 'foolish idea'.

Norman discusses this nicely in A Note on Attā in the Alagaddūpama Sutta.

Also see Anattā: A Different Approach, By Sue Hamilton