clw_uk wrote:The buddhas said "the world is void of a self or anything pertaining to a self"
The line "there is no sufferer only suffering" seems in line with this as the suffering that rises does not have a self.
Hi Craig
'Self' is delusion. Thus if we see with right wisdom a child having a tantrum, we see that child is empty of self. It does not have a real self. However, that child's mind is full of delusion. It has delusion. That delusion is real. The delusion in that child's mind gives rise to the view it is a self. The child's mind is obsessively thinking: "I want this", "this is mine", "you cannot do this to me". The child's mind is under the influence of self belief.
If the world was void of self as you are inferring, the Buddha would not have taught his disciples to free their minds of 'self-belief". In the sutta, the Buddha states:
And what is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self? The eye is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Forms... Eye-consciousness... Eye-contact is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self.
"The ear is empty...
"The nose is empty...
"The tongue is empty...
"The body is empty...
"The intellect is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Ideas... Intellect-consciousness... Intellect-contact is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self. Thus it is said that the world is empty."
Buddha said in SN 35.68: "What is the world?" The eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind and associated sense spheres are the world.
The Buddha has exhorted us to examine the emptiness of the individual dhammas mentioned above, such as the eye, ear, etc. The Buddha did not state there was one mass of convoluted and entwined dukkha dhammas and that mass is empty. What can be clearly seen as empty, the Buddha advised was empty. Buddha did not teach as below:
Becoming's Wheel reveals no known beginning;
No maker, no experiencer there;
Void with a twelvefold voidness, and nowhere
It ever halts; for ever it is spinning.
Kind regards
Element