self

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Shonin
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Re: self

Post by Shonin »

There are real bodily processes. There are real mental processes. There is a real sense of self (created by mental processes). But none of these processes constitutes a real self. We do exist - as the collection of these processes - but we don't exist in the way that most people feel they exist - as something continuous and distinct, a transcendent ego.
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Goedert
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Re: self

Post by Goedert »

There is a text of Ajahn Thanissaro that can clarify the not-self and no-self.
One of the first stumbling blocks that Westerners often encounter when they learn about Buddhism is the teaching on anatta, often translated as no-self. This teaching is a stumbling block for two reasons. First, the idea of there being no self doesn't fit well with other Buddhist teachings, such as the doctrine of kamma and rebirth: If there's no self, what experiences the results of kamma and takes rebirth? Second, it doesn't fit well with our own Judeo-Christian background, which assumes the existence of an eternal soul or self as a basic presupposition: If there's no self, what's the purpose of a spiritual life? Many books try to answer these questions, but if you look at the Pali canon — the earliest extant record of the Buddha's teachings — you won't find them addressed at all. In fact, the one place where the Buddha was asked point-blank whether or not there was a self, he refused to answer. When later asked why, he said that to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible. Thus the question should be put aside. To understand what his silence on this question says about the meaning of anatta, we first have to look at his teachings on how questions should be asked and answered, and how to interpret his answers.

The Buddha divided all questions into four classes: those that deserve a categorical (straight yes or no) answer; those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question; those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner's court; and those that deserve to be put aside. The last class of question consists of those that don't lead to the end of suffering and stress. The first duty of a teacher, when asked a question, is to figure out which class the question belongs to, and then to respond in the appropriate way. You don't, for example, say yes or no to a question that should be put aside. If you are the person asking the question and you get an answer, you should then determine how far the answer should be interpreted. The Buddha said that there are two types of people who misrepresent him: those who draw inferences from statements that shouldn't have inferences drawn from them, and those who don't draw inferences from those that should.

These are the basic ground rules for interpreting the Buddha's teachings, but if we look at the way most writers treat the anatta doctrine, we find these ground rules ignored. Some writers try to qualify the no-self interpretation by saying that the Buddha denied the existence of an eternal self or a separate self, but this is to give an analytical answer to a question that the Buddha showed should be put aside. Others try to draw inferences from the few statements in the discourse that seem to imply that there is no self, but it seems safe to assume that if one forces those statements to give an answer to a question that should be put aside, one is drawing inferences where they shouldn't be drawn.

So, instead of answering "no" to the question of whether or not there is a self — interconnected or separate, eternal or not — the Buddha felt that the question was misguided to begin with. Why? No matter how you define the line between "self" and "other," the notion of self involves an element of self-identification and clinging, and thus suffering and stress. This holds as much for an interconnected self, which recognizes no "other," as it does for a separate self. If one identifies with all of nature, one is pained by every felled tree. It also holds for an entirely "other" universe, in which the sense of alienation and futility would become so debilitating as to make the quest for happiness — one's own or that of others — impossible. For these reasons, the Buddha advised paying no attention to such questions as "Do I exist?" or "Don't I exist?" for however you answer them, they lead to suffering and stress.

To avoid the suffering implicit in questions of "self" and "other," he offered an alternative way of dividing up experience: the four Noble Truths of stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. Rather than viewing these truths as pertaining to self or other, he said, one should recognize them simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each. Stress should be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed. These duties form the context in which the anatta doctrine is best understood. If you develop the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment to a state of calm well-being and use that calm state to look at experience in terms of the Noble Truths, the questions that occur to the mind are not "Is there a self? What is my self?" but rather "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?" These last questions merit straightforward answers, as they then help you to comprehend stress and to chip away at the attachment and clinging — the residual sense of self-identification — that cause it, until ultimately all traces of self-identification are gone and all that's left is limitless freedom.

In this sense, the anatta teaching is not a doctrine of no-self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go of its cause, leading to the highest, undying happiness. At that point, questions of self, no-self, and not-self fall aside. Once there's the experience of such total freedom, where would there be any concern about what's experiencing it, or whether or not it's a self?
Further understanding:
The Not-self Strategy
Emptiness
The Integrity of Emptiness
chandrafabian
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Re: self

Post by chandrafabian »

Shonin wrote:There are real bodily processes. There are real mental processes. There is a real sense of self (created by mental processes). But none of these processes constitutes a real self. We do exist - as the collection of these processes - but we don't exist in the way that most people feel they exist - as something continuous and distinct, a transcendent ego.
Dear Shonin,

I agree with you, what we call being is only construction of aggregates.
The translation of atta as self probably not accurate enough, ATTA or ATMAN in Sanskrit means soul (eternal soul)
The Indians believe there is eternal entity in every being, what they called soul, much like Yudeo/Christian beliefs.
If we applied soul as translation of atta would help clear up the confusion.
So in my opinion the translation of anatta would be more accurate no soul or no eternal soul.

Mettacittena,
fabian
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tiltbillings
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Re: self

Post by tiltbillings »

chandrafabian wrote:
Shonin wrote:There are real bodily processes. There are real mental processes. There is a real sense of self (created by mental processes). But none of these processes constitutes a real self. We do exist - as the collection of these processes - but we don't exist in the way that most people feel they exist - as something continuous and distinct, a transcendent ego.
Dear Shonin,

I agree with you, what we call being is only construction of aggregates.
The translation of atta as self probably not accurate enough, ATTA or ATMAN in Sanskrit means soul (eternal soul)
The Indians believe there is eternal entity in every being, what they called soul, much like Yudeo/Christian beliefs.
If we applied soul as translation of atta would help clear up the confusion.
So in my opinion the translation of anatta would be more accurate no soul or no eternal soul.

Mettacittena,
fabian
Take a look at Dhammapada chapter XII, the Attavagga. Atta is used as a reflexive pronoun: By oneself [atta] committing evil. . . . - v 165. One [atta], truly, is the master of oneself [atta]. - v 160.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
rowyourboat
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Re: self

Post by rowyourboat »

I think there is a danger in considering atta as just the soul. Because then the solution is to not believe in a soul, yet there might still be a sense of 'me' as a person being in existence. This is also illusory. It is nothing but a string of causes and effects. There is no doer.

with metta

RYB
With Metta

Karuna
Mudita
& Upekkha
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tiltbillings
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Re: self

Post by tiltbillings »

rowyourboat wrote:I think there is a danger in considering atta as just the soul. Because then the solution is to not believe in a soul, yet there might still be a sense of 'me' as a person being in existence. This is also illusory. It is nothing but a string of causes and effects. There is no doer.

with metta

RYB
Don't forget: an illusion is real.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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mikenz66
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Re: self

Post by mikenz66 »

Hi Tilt,
tiltbillings wrote: In the mean time we have to start from where we are; we have to deal with this sense of self that seems so real. We can tell it where to get off, we can pretend it is not real, but being stubborn, recalcitrant, it won't get off; it persists. So we in a real sense, via the teachings of the Buddha, we cultivate it, we train it, we tame it via learning the teachings, via practicing the precepts and meditative practice, and through giving and lovingkindness practice.
I think that this is an important point. The Buddha's teachings have a tension between developing the realisation that there is no permanent self to be found anywhere in our experience, but on the other hand there is a "non-permanent self arising from conditions" that one must work with, and develop, in the ways you describe.

My impression is that simply clinging to the view "there is no self" is not helpful. Though it seems quite logically clear from the teachings that there is no permanent ("metaphysical") self to be found anywhere, my understanding is that one needs more than mere logic. One needs to see through the illusion experientially by dropping the clinging to those things that create a sense of self in the body and mind. Clinging to logic can be an obstacle to that.

Furthermore, it also seems clear that as well as dropping the sense of "non-permanent self", there is a concurrent development that leads towards the perfection of the "non-permanent self". If one examines the behaviour of the Buddha, as reported in the Suttas, or the behaviour of modern individuals with a high degree of development of the Path, one sees a highly functional, compassionate, decisive "conventional self".

It seems to me that the two (seeing through the sense of self and developing the conventional, impermanent self that one is working with) go hand in hand. Both are essential, and by no means contradictory.

Mike
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Vepacitta
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Re: self

Post by Vepacitta »

This may be rambly - so bear with me (or not as the case may be).

Compassion - whether there are 'selves' or not - is important - because whether you look at things personally (I! Me! You! Yours!) or impersonally (no substrata, no 'ground of being' no firm foothold, a net of tendencies) (Christ it's hard to describe what cannot be described) - lack of compassion just adds to more dukkha (suffering, stress, unsatisfactoriness) in the world -

And yes - as a previous poster said - the realisation that others are acting - sometimes quite annoyingly - out of their own clinging to self - can serve to help one become more compassionate - e.g., whiny person at work whines and moans and complains all day - annoying one and all - (why? it offends "me" - it annoys "me" - aack!) However - this person is only whining because "they are coming from their "me" (I'm not being appreciated, I'm not being paid attention to, etc and so forth). If you can see that the other person's behaviour comes from their sense of 'self' - it might not annoy your selnse of "self".

This is difficult for me to explain. Apologies. And I've seen folks here freak out at the word self - although it's the referent that we must use in conventional terms. Writing "this collection of aggregates thinks ..." seems a bit awkward.

Another issue I've been mulling over (and I want to ask my teacher about this when he gets back) is - it seems that a lot of the difficulty when discussing anatta is that - nowadays - we take a positive approach to teaching - that is - we discuss what a concept is. However, the Buddha's teaching on many points done in the negative mode - what something is not - as what is ineffable cannot be reduced to a positive 'what it is' statement.

So, when teachers try and explain anatta and especially re-birth ("If there's no self then what .... ?) the eternal (ahem) question - and so forth - they use terms like 'tendencies' or 'continuum' or 'stream of consciousness' get "reborn" as the best terms available to them to describe such concepts as "what they are" - when it really can't be done. Hence the Tathagatha's refusal to get into the matter.

And hence - it's got to be worked out by experience. You can only hammer out so much by thinking.

Ajahn Sumedho said something interesting which struck me - I'll paraphrase: "What is it that goes to the freezer to get some ice cream? Is that you - is THAT your eternal soul?" Now I don't believe for a moment that Ven. Sumedho posits a soul or permanent self. However, that little sentence provoked (for me) an 'aha' moment. 'O! Wait! Yeh it feels like a 'me' deciding to go to the fridge for food but ... what is that really? " (Light bulb, zen, epiphany)

Now .. what the heck did 'I" just say? :thinking:

YFNA,

V.
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Vepacitta
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Re: self

Post by Vepacitta »

Upon re-reading my above post - I realise I was partly answering a different post in this section - on if anatta - why compasson?

Apologies for the "duh" interlude ... :shock:
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chandrafabian
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Re: self

Post by chandrafabian »

tiltbillings wrote:
chandrafabian wrote:
Shonin wrote:There are real bodily processes. There are real mental processes. There is a real sense of self (created by mental processes). But none of these processes constitutes a real self. We do exist - as the collection of these processes - but we don't exist in the way that most people feel they exist - as something continuous and distinct, a transcendent ego.
Dear Shonin,

I agree with you, what we call being is only construction of aggregates.
The translation of atta as self probably not accurate enough, ATTA or ATMAN in Sanskrit means soul (eternal soul)
The Indians believe there is eternal entity in every being, what they called soul, much like Yudeo/Christian beliefs.
If we applied soul as translation of atta would help clear up the confusion.
So in my opinion the translation of anatta would be more accurate no soul or no eternal soul.

Mettacittena,
fabian
Take a look at Dhammapada chapter XII, the Attavagga. Atta is used as a reflexive pronoun: By oneself [atta] committing evil. . . . - v 165. One [atta], truly, is the master of oneself [atta]. - v 160.
What I mean here is relation of word anatta only, so exclusively we can translate anatta as no soul/no permanent soul.
But atta can be translated as self or soul.
rowyourboat wrote:I think there is a danger in considering atta as just the soul. Because then the solution is to not believe in a soul, yet there might still be a sense of 'me' as a person being in existence. This is also illusory. It is nothing but a string of causes and effects. There is no doer.

with metta

RYB
Please do not confuse, The Buddha teaches self as the five aggregates is empty of soul, this is the Buddha's teaching. So sometimes the statement of anatta as no soul is overlapping with understanding of five aggregates.
In some Sutta, atta means self as our five aggregates. In other Sutta's atta means soul which never existed.
Therefore we should remember "Sabbe dhamma anatta" every condition is empty of soul.
THERE WOULD NEVER BE EXISTENCE OF SOUL ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE... (sorry for capital letter) this is the Buddha's teaching. What we consider as living being is only a compound of aggregates, no substance soul, no entity soul.

I agree with your last sentence "It is nothing but a string causes and effects. There is no doer" (in the sense of soul who causes all), if the soul existed The Buddha would have told us.

Mettacittena,
fabian
Last edited by chandrafabian on Sat Aug 07, 2010 6:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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ground
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Re: self

Post by ground »

Basically one has to discern the "gross" self which is a concept caused by teachings of wrong views and is the object of "soul" theorists - and the "subtle" self which is based on the innate self habit, the misunderstanding of sankharas due to ignorance.
The former delusion is easy to overcome (by means of logic) the latter is the illusory object to be eradicated on the path.

Kind regards
rowyourboat
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Re: self

Post by rowyourboat »

Hi Tmingyur, I think the distinction you are making is very important.

Hi Tilt, the illusion maybe real, but the content isn't :)

With metta

RYB
With Metta

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retrofuturist
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Re: self

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings RYB,
rowyourboat wrote:Hi Tilt, the illusion maybe real, but the content isn't :)
What do you mean here by content, and how would you relate it to the loka of experience (e.g. five aggregates or six sense bases).

Metta,
Retro. :)
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
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dhamma_spoon
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Re: self

Post by dhamma_spoon »

TMingyur wrote:Basically one has to discern the "gross" self which is a concept caused by teachings of wrong views and is the object of "soul" theorists - and the "subtle" self which is based on the innate self habit, the misunderstanding of sankharas due to ignorance.
The former delusion is easy to overcome (by means of logic) the latter is the illusory object to be eradicated on the path.

Kind regards
Hello, TMing (and RYB) -


"He assumes consciousness to be the self, or the self as possessing consciousness, or consciousness as in the self, or the self as in consciousness."
[Repeat for the other four aggregates]

To me the seeing/assuming of "a self" in each of the five aggregates (resulting in the 20 self-identifications) is "gross" if self is 'soul', a permanent identity.
On the other hand, the I-sense ('This is what I am') conceit is the subtle self that doesn't have to be permanent. Both cases are corrected by the right knowledge (clear knowing).

"The five faculties, monks, continue as they were. And with regard to them the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones abandons ignorance and gives rise to clear knowing. Owing to the fading of ignorance and the arising of clear knowing, (the thoughts) — 'I am,' 'I am this,' 'I shall be,' 'I shall not be,' 'I shall be possessed of form,' 'I shall be formless,' 'I shall be percipient (conscious),' 'I shall be non-percipient,' and 'I shall be neither percipient nor non-percipient' — do not occur to him." SN 22.47 : Samanupassana Sutta.

Sincerely,

Tep
-----
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A dhamma spoon does not know the taste of the Dhamma!
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ground
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Re: self

Post by ground »

dhamma_spoon wrote:"He assumes consciousness to be the self, or the self as possessing consciousness, or consciousness as in the self, or the self as in consciousness."
[Repeat for the other four aggregates]

To me the seeing/assuming of "a self" in each of the five aggregates (resulting in the 20 self-identifications) is "gross" if self is 'soul', a permanent identity.
Yes, "in", i.e. identical with, or "other than" ... there is no difference since both is conceptual fantasy.
dhamma_spoon wrote: On the other hand, the I-sense ('This is what I am') conceit is the subtle self that doesn't have to be permanent.
"This is what I am" or "doesn't have to be permanent" is conceptualizing retrospectively. So this again is theory comparable to the one of "soul" theorists and is not what I meant with "subtle". The crucial point of "subtle" is the way the illusion appears right in the moment of arising, the instantaneously "felt" self or "I" or "mine". Right in this instant of arising it appears as if permanent and existing "in and of itself", although in the next moment you may think "doesn't have to be permanent".

Kind regards
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