"Thou art that"

[VeganLiz]

In my Eastern Philosophy class my professor wrote on the board "Thou art that." He left us to ponder over the meaning, next class it is our topic of discussion.

Supposedly it has something to do with meditation but in all honesty, it doesn't make any sense to me.

Has anyone ever come across the saying "Thou art that"? Does it mean anything significant to you?

[andre9999]

I always like an opportunity to say not-self in any thread!

So I'd guess that. We're all connected. See also:

Sister Khema
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/khema/bl095.html

I Heart Huckabees
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kB_mOfvDPU

[Khalil Bodhi]

Hi VeganLiz,

You're probably not going to get much of a response because the maxim "Tat Tvam Asi" (Thou art that) comes straight from the Hindu yogic philosphies. The Buddhadhamma teaches that there is no unchanging self to be found (hence the not-self doctrine of anatta). I'd suggest googling Sanatana Dharma if you're interested in finding out more about your original question. Be well.

[plwk]

I suspect it comes from the Sanskrit "Tat Tvam Asi"
For myself, the answers to that may range from this... Ananda Sutta & Anatta-lakkhana Sutta to this...

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .budd.html
Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought.
If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought.
If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.

Have fun

[meindzai]

This is "tat tvam asi" (sanskrit) from the Upanishads, which represent one of the prevailing doctrines in the time of the Buddha. In most basic terms it relates "thou/you" with some eternal divinity/God/Brahman.

You can think of it as the reaction to our everyday notions about reality, where there is an "I" walking around in some world consisting of things (outside ourself). Mysticism in general (Hindu, Sufi, some Christian Mysticism) essentially says that there is no such separation and that "everything is one," or "we are one with God." The concept of enlightenment in such traditions is that you stop identifying with a small "self" and identify with the totality.

Buddhism is more like "thou art not that." You can think of it as a reaction to the above, or such a doctrine taken one step further. Instead of saying that there some kind of "self" that merges with an "other," Buddhism says that it's the identification with an idea of "self" that causes suffering. But this includes any concept of self whatsoever, including a cosmic or divine one.

You can roughly identify the concept of "thou art that" with Eastern philosophies, except for Buddhism, which teaches no-self or "anatta," instead. Hopefully your eastern philosophy teacher knows this, but a surprisingly large number of people do not, and lump all eastern philosophy together as teaching this sort of philosophy.

As for any personal interpretation of the meaning, I feel that anyone who can identify with some sort of cosmic, universal self, divinity, etc. then they are what I might consider an accomplished mystic or spiritually advanced or whatever, but they do not have the level of realization that the Buddha had, since he went much further to drop even this notion of a self.

-M

[Goofaholix]

Perhaps the the view of Buddhist practice could be summarised "Thou art not that".

[kirk5a]

Nice summary meindzai. It's funny because the Buddha explicitly taught the practice of 'This is not me, this is not my self, this is not what I am.' Then we have other people teaching "this is me, this is what I am" or "I am the universe." Hm. Amounts to "the same thing in different words"? Nope I don't think so.

[VeganLiz]

I don't understand the concept of "no self"

What exactly does it imply?

[kirk5a]

Maybe this article will help frame "anatta" more usefully than "there is no self"

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... self2.html

[VeganLiz]

Maybe this article will help frame "anatta" more usefully than "there is no self"

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... self2.html

Danke. I will read that after class tonight...

Just wanted to add that I just finished my Eastern Philosophy class for today and you're right poster from a while ago...it is concerning Hinduism.

[meindzai]

Maybe this article will help frame "anatta" more usefully than "there is no self"

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... self2.html

Danke. I will read that after class tonight...

Just wanted to add that I just finished my Eastern Philosophy class for today and you're right poster from a while ago...it is concerning Hinduism.

It's actually a good thing your professor didn't lump Buddhism in there with it, as some people do, including even academics, and Buddhists themselves who have not studied the teachings.

Briefly on Anatta - The Buddha stated that all forms identification with a self would be a cause for suffering. Vedic literature states something sorta-kinda similar, in that it says that identifying with a *separate* self is a cause for suffering, and once that separate self merges into the whole there will be no problem. This is the whole "one with the universe" bit.

But the Buddha states that even in this state there is some (however small from our perspective) self-identification going on here. Instead of identifying with a separate self, one identifies with a larger totality, but one is still identifying. Instead of "I am a little self" it's "I am a big cosmic self." The Buddha is saying that until we drop *ALL* forms of self-identification, there will be a subtle clinging involved, and thus dukkha (suffering/stress) as a result.

Buddhists on message boards and elsewhere endlessly debate about whether the Buddha was trying to state ontologically that "no self exists," or whether he was just talking about a "strategy of non-identification" (Thanissaro Bhikkhu's view) and that ontological arguments were something the Buddha avoided.

-M

[BubbaBuddhist]

It sounds like an Eastern version of "I think therefore I am." Buddha responds, "No you don't; and no you aren't."

M4

[Kenshou]

That article by Ven Than may clear things up, but I think it is important to say 2 things about anatta right from the start. These are the two issues that I've encountered when talking about anatta with people interested in Buddhism:

Anatta does not mean that "everything is an illusion" in an ontologically nihilistic way, that all this stuff is not actually occurring. "No-self" is sort of a misnomer that can lead to this idea, I think. "Not-self" being the preferred term. Since we tend to naturally identify with our experiences, when we hear that there is no self, we then think, "Oh, then everything is an illusion?" But that logic is based in a false assumption, that these things are "us".

The things you experience are really happening (a term I'm using to avoid a dichotomy of is/is not real/actually existent/true etc.), it is the conceptual overlay of self and the related concepts of I/me/mine that are said to be false, because in the flow of our experience there is no self-existent nugget of selfhood that can be found. Larger metaphysical statements of knowledge of selfhood-or-not are beyond the range of experience, but we can see in sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, and cognition, that there is not actually any "self" that we can pinpoint. So these things are not-self.

And on the other hand, anatta does not posit a kind of transcendental hivemind-esque conscious eternal monad that we are all a part of which is the real truth of ourselves (this relates to tattvamasi, I believe), that is taking things too far. It's just that there's no self that we can find. And yet continuing to habitually add a self into the mix causes us stress. Everything we experience is unreliable, impermanent, prone to bringing us dis-ease. When this is understood deeply, one stops craving for this or that, seeing the pointlessness of it. Being dis-en-passioned about things, one doesn't get tied up them, doesn't fight against them, no longer has conceptions of a "me" getting drug around in it all. Being like that, the mind isn't agitated or consumed by what is pleasant or unpleasant, and so is peaceful.

Hopefully what I've said makes sense and is not unhelpful blabber!

[David N. Snyder]

It sounds like an Eastern version of "I think therefore I am." Buddha responds, "No you don't; and no you aren't."

Here are some counter-quotes to the Cartesian quote:

It is precisely because I think,
that I change,
that I cannot remain I.

(original author unknown)

I think, therefore I am not what I think I am

(http://paulgerhards.com/blog_thisisthat ... hink-i-am/)

Anyone know of some other good counter-quotes?

[Euclid]

Don't know if it's direct enough for you, but:

When this had been said, the wanderers said to Anathapindika the householder, 'We have each & every one expounded to you in line with our own positions. Now tell us what views you have.'

'Whatever has been brought into being, is fabricated, willed, dependently co-arisen, that is inconstant. Whatever is inconstant is stress. Whatever is stress is not mine, is not what I am, is not my self. This is the sort of view I have.'

[octathlon]

Perhaps the the view of Buddhist practice could be summarised "Thou art not that".

Or maybe, "That is not thou, That is not thine."

[octathlon]

Anyone know of some other good counter-quotes?

I sink, therefore I swam.

I link, therefore I spam.

I oink, therefore I ham.

[VeganLiz]

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... self2.html

Practicing "Not self strategy" seems pretty challenging.

[alan]

It's also possible your professor was an Alan Watts devotee.
That shtick has been used many, many times before.
I remember reading an interview with the founders of the Esalen institute where they talked about a teacher who did pretty much the same thing.

[kirk5a]

Practicing "Not self strategy" seems pretty challenging.

Yes. But, if we focus on this part -

"Am I suffering stress because I'm holding onto this particular phenomenon? Is it really me, myself, or mine? If it's stressful but not really me or mine, why hold on?"

then I think it's workable. Something we can use. Not TOO challenging (not beyond what we're able to do).