Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

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coffeendonuts
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by coffeendonuts »

@zan

All Yogacara was saying is summed up in the Wynne quote above. For some reason in that society and time period it was fashionable to write and debate in long-winded philosophical treatises to come around to that point. Today it is fashionable to debate on the internet. The cycle never ends.

If there is one eternal truth in the Buddhist scriptures, it is that they contradict each other over and over again. You can find support in there for anything you want to.

Buddhism is not philosophy, and it doesn't even do well with literalism. This is so cliche, but it's like an antidote to free you from your own suffering. Much better to take a basic meditation technique that you resonate with and go out there and persist in doing it, seeing if it is positively transforming your experience. Preferably in some way you can measure. The philosophy books will eventually give you a headache, as they did with me.
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by Ceisiwr »

Having a look at Sn 1.1 again it could be possible that what is being called "unreal" or "not true" is indeed the Sabbaṃ. I've had a go at a rough re-translation:

Yo nāccasārī na paccasārī,
Sabbaṃ accagamā imaṃ papañcaṃ;
So bhikkhu jahāti orapāraṃ,
Urago jiṇṇamivattacaṃ purāṇaṃ.

Yo nāccasārī na paccasārī,
Sabbaṃ vitathamidanti ñatva loke;
So bhikkhu jahāti orapāraṃ,
Urago jiṇṇamivattacaṃ purāṇaṃ.

Neither slipping past nor turning back,
Overcame this diffusion; Sabbaṃ
a Bhikkhu abandons the 12 āyatana
As a snake, it’s worn out skin.

Neither slipping past nor turning back,
“The Sabbaṃ is not true”; This, known in the worlds
a Bhikkhu abandons the 12 āyatana
As a snake, it’s worn out skin.


Interesting. This of course depends upon if "vitatha" is best translated as "not true" or as "vain/futile". In the suttas I've only ever found it to mean "not true" and never "vain" or "futile". Elsewhere the Buddha has stated that nibbāna is the only truth:
“His deliverance, being founded upon truth, is unshakeable. For that is false, bhikkhu, which has a deceptive nature, and that is true which has an undeceptive nature—Nibbāna. Therefore a bhikkhu possessing this truth possesses the supreme foundation of truth. For this, bhikkhu, is the supreme noble truth, namely, Nibbāna, which has an undeceptive nature."
https://suttacentral.net/mn140/en/bodhi

:reading:
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
zan
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by zan »

The final word is just simple common sense. If the Buddha meant to teach exactly as the Yogacara did (or something very similar): "all is mind", he would have just said so. The Pali Canon would read exactly like the Mahayana sutras that teach all is mind, as well as the Yogacara teachings that teach the same. However the exact opposite is true; the Pali Canon reads nothing like those documents and, indeed, rupa is confirmed as not purely mind, consistently and unequivocally within. The only way to ostensibly find this "all is mind" teaching in the Pali Canon requires redefining words, eel wriggling, word juggling and careful reinterpretation, or completely ignoring many suttas and teachings that utterly discredit this idea, or focusing in on and misinterpreting rare, vague or poetic statements by the Buddha that only ostensibly support this idea.

The Buddha was verbose and extremely repetitive. He repeated his core teachings over and over and over and if "all is mind" was what he meant, in contradiction to his other teachings no less, he would have said it thousands of times, in language that would not require reinterpretation, redefining of words, eel wriggling and word juggling. So finding a few isolated and disparate statements doesn't prove anything.
The acceptance of this dichotomy between conventional and transcendental language is widespread today, as is the suppositious parallel distinction between conventional and absolute truth, or reality. Therefore some may be surprised to learn that such a distinction (whether with regard to language, truth, or reality) ... is of later invention and is not to be met with in the Suttas. Quite the contrary, it is specifically and repeatedly condemned. At M. 99: ii,202, for instance, the Buddha goes out of his way to lead his listener to acknowledge the superiority of conventional speech (as well as of speech that is well-advised, spoken after reflection, and connected with the goal) over unconventional speech (and also over speech that is ill-advised, etc.). And consistent with this, at M. 139: iii,230 the monks are advised that when teaching they should (among other things) “not deviate from recognized parlance.

The suttas, then, clearly assert that they are to be understood as saying what they mean. They are not to be interpreted, for to do so must result in misunderstanding them.
-Samanera Bodhesako
Assume all of my words on dhamma could be incorrect. Seek an arahant for truth.


"If we base ourselves on the Pali Nikayas, then we should be compelled to conclude that Buddhism is realistic. There is no explicit denial anywhere of the external world. Nor is there any positive evidence to show that the world is mind-made or simply a projection of subjective thoughts. That Buddhism recognizes the extra-mental existence of matter and the external world is clearly suggested by the texts. Throughout the discourses it is the language of realism that one encounters.
-Y. Karunadasa
The2nd
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by The2nd »

zan wrote: Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:36 am Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Perhaps under different wording like "nothing is true," "nothing exists," "all is imaginary/illusory/mind/etc.,"

Anything that could even cover this idea broadly?

He discussed so many views with hundreds, maybe thousands of people. It would be odd if no one ever presented this view.
Dn2, has what you are looikng for I believe:

"Another time, venerable sir, I approached Ajita Kesakambala, exchanged greetings and courtesies with him, and sat down to one side. I then asked him (as in §14) if he could point out a fruit of recluseship visible here and now.

“When I had finished speaking, Ajita Kesakambala said to me: ‘Great king, there is no giving, no offering, no liberality. There is no fruit or result of good and bad actions. There is no present world, no world beyond, no mother, no father, no beings who have taken rebirth. In the world there are no recluses and brahmins of right attainment and right practice who explain this world and the world beyond on the basis of their own direct knowledge and realization. A person is composed of the four primary elements. When he dies, the earth (in his body) returns to and merges with the (external) body of earth; the water (in his body) returns to and merges with the (external) body of water; the fire (in his body) returns to and merges with the (external) body of fire; the air (in his body) returns to and merges with the (external) body of air. His sense faculties pass over into space. Four men carry the corpse along on a bier. His eulogies are sounded until they reach the charnel ground. His bones turn pigeon-coloured. His meritorious offerings end in ashes. The practice of giving is a doctrine of fools. Those who declare that there is (an afterlife) speak only false, empty prattle. With the breaking up of the body, the foolish and the wise alike are annihilated and utterly perish. They do not exist after death...’
zan
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by zan »

In fact, Vyasa who wrote the Brahma sutras classified the Pali Canon reliant school as "realists", and delineated them from the Yogacara "idealists" and Madhyamaka "nihilists":
This Sutra begins the refutation of the Bauddha school. There are three principal schools of Buddhism, viz . the Realists, who accept the reality of both the outside and the inside world, consisting respectively of external things and thought; the Idealists, who maintain that thought alone is real; anft the Nihilists, who maintain that everything is void and unreal.
-Vyasa, Brahma sutras, commentary Sankara 2.2.18

So it seems this bizarre view that traditional Buddhism is a type of idealism is a contemporary one. Probably it has come about because of the raging popularity of Mahayana before the internet made information on scholarly opinion easily and widely available, and then those that appreciated this philosophy learning, years later, that scholarship generally agrees that traditional Buddhism is the original, in which case they felt awkward holding late texts as authoritative but didn't want to give up their views and so had to ostensibly "find" them in the original texts.
Assume all of my words on dhamma could be incorrect. Seek an arahant for truth.


"If we base ourselves on the Pali Nikayas, then we should be compelled to conclude that Buddhism is realistic. There is no explicit denial anywhere of the external world. Nor is there any positive evidence to show that the world is mind-made or simply a projection of subjective thoughts. That Buddhism recognizes the extra-mental existence of matter and the external world is clearly suggested by the texts. Throughout the discourses it is the language of realism that one encounters.
-Y. Karunadasa
ToVincent
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by ToVincent »

Snp 1.1 is not SN 1.1
And Snp 1 to Snp 3 are acknowledged to be late suttas.

Therefore, the doubtful two sentences and their no less doubtful and interpretative translations:
"Yo nāccasārī na paccasārī,
Sabbaṃ vitathamidanti ñatva loke"
must be taken with a grain of salt, as big as Brobdingnag.
Vṛtra, the great obfuscator, must have been around when those late lines were written.

Also, when Buddha addresses the "All", it is about Buddha's definition of the "All", namely:
The All is the eye and forms, the ear and sounds, the nose and odours, the tongue and tastes, the body and tactile objects, the mano and mental phenomena. As in SN 35.23 (with a perfect parallel SA 319).

SA 319:
At that time, a Brahmin who had heard of the Brahmacharya, came to the Buddha and asked him a question:
Gautama, One says "the All" (一切), what is "the All"?

The Buddha told the Brahmin: "The All is the twelve fields of sensory perception 入處) - eye and form, ear and sound, nose and scent, tongue and taste, body and touch, mentation (意) and dhamma (法). This is called" the All".

And Buddha's "World" is usually:
The eye, forms, eye-consciousness, eye-contact and whatever feeling arises with eye-contact as condition.
The ear … The mano … Whatever feeling arises with mano-contact as condition.
SN 35.82 (with a perfect parallel).
The world is empty of self or what belongs to self.


Buddha doesn't address any Veda's definition of the All; when he speaks of his "All".


There is nothing "unreal" in the Buddha's "All", in the early texts.
Not even in SN 22.95 where the illusion is the continuum [santāno] (viz. a self in the world; as in the late Vedic creed) - There is no substance (saro) into that.
[it is found to be insubstantial and without solidity, there is no a self or what belongs to a self in this bodily aggregate SA 265 ]
That is to say for instance, that when the body dies, it vanishes like a bubble.
There is no continuous body and self/Self in that, like in the Upaniṣadic creed.

See when Buddhism became "unrealistic" (second period).
https://justpaste.it/jgq8
(From Buddhist logic | Th. F. Stcherbatsky)
.
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In this world, there are many people acting and yearning for the Mara's world; some for the Brahma's world; and very few for the Unborn.
coffeendonuts
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by coffeendonuts »

If we follow the few suttas that textual criticism has identified as likely to be the unedited words of the historical Buddha, we get the picture that the Buddha did not leave his embodiment, the world of direct perceptions. He only spoke of the 5 skandhas. He never answered philosophical questions.

We're not the Buddha, so we have to take a stance or position on something. We want to cling. Everyone around us does it. They all have their religious and political positions squared away, ready to debate and change other people's minds. So why not just speculate a bit and cling to a little bit of something.

Because the 5 skandhas create the illusion of personal identity, and because of the iddhis that develop out of meditative skill, we can say there is an illusoriness to experience. Things are not what they appear to be. There is an uncanny similarity between waking life and nightly dream life. It arises the same way, and some suttas say the powers that can be developed in a dream can occur in waking life too when we slide down the pole of Awakening. They say the Buddha demonstrated this to his disciples.

That's a position that can scratch our itch for answers on "reality."

Because there is a cognizing knowingness in the background of our experiences, whether asleep, awake, unconscious, dreaming, we can say there is something transcendent to us.

That's a position that can scratch our itch for answers on "identity."

As soon as we go too far in speculation, like "all is in my head" or "all is objectively real," "I have a self," "I have no self," we jump out of our immediate embodied experience into a conceptual world of mental computing. It's true that mental abstraction gave us advanced mathematics and engineering. But we should probably recognize when we get lost this way, say "no" and return back.
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by sphairos »

zan wrote: Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:36 am Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Perhaps under different wording like "nothing is true," "nothing exists," "all is imaginary/illusory/mind/etc.,"

Anything that could even cover this idea broadly?

He discussed so many views with hundreds, maybe thousands of people. It would be odd if no one ever presented this view.
I think that something like that (the perceived world is illusory) is implied in all those dialogues of the Buddha, where the "higher states of concsiousness" are discussed.

For instance, in the Poṭṭhapāda-sutta (DN 9) there is such passage:
trans. M. Walshe wrote: 39. 'Poṭṭhapāda, there are three kinds of "acquired self":220
the gross acquired. self, the mind-made acquired self, the
formless acquired self. What is the gross acquired self? It has
form, is composed of the four great elements, nourished by
material food. What is the mind-made self? It has form, com·
plete with all its parts, not defective in any sense-organ. What
is the formless acquired self? It is without form, and made up
of perception.
These are non-Buddhist teachings, that are in the following passage rejected by the Buddha. So you see that there are "gross" self, and a "subtle", "mind-made" and "formless" self. They correspond to the three realms of reality of Ancient Indian thought: realm of sensual/sexual passion, realm of subtle, mind-made forms, and formless reality, where there is only "concsiousness". So there are "grades of reality", from lower, "gross", to subtle, "formless". I am assured that it is tacitly assumed, that the lower level realms are "less real", and the higher levels are "more real". So the lower realms, like the one we live in, are "not real", illusory, compared to the higher "true ones".

Here one must remember, that in the Buddhist discourse the "world" and the "I" are not discussed separately: in the Brahmajāla-sutta it is always repeated that the world and "I" (attā ca loko ca) are either eternal (sassato), non-eternal etc. The world and "I" are seen as an inseparable continuum.

There are two great elucidations of this point:

Richard F. Gombrich, Louis H. Jordan Lectures Seminar Paper 2, ‘Metaphor, allegory, satire’,
published as Chapter III in "How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early
Teachings" (1996).

Rupert Gethin. Cosmology and Meditation: From the Aggañña-Sutta to the Mahāyāna (1997).

So I think many of the ascetics and philosophers who the Buddha met would have answered the question "If the perceived world is illusory/non-real?" affirmatively. It was a common place then, that didn't even need a mention.

If you mean something like the position of the radical madhyamaka, that nothing is real, we don't have the direct encounter of such a view with the early Buddhist one. But I argue such a position is implied by many of the ancient and modern Indian teachings.
Last edited by sphairos on Mon Jan 18, 2021 1:25 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by sphairos »

Regarding the reality of the external world I can recommend:

Sue Hamilton. The ‘External World’: Its Status and Relevance in the Pāli Nikāyas (1999).

https://is.muni.cz/el/phil/podzim2008/R ... n_1999.pdf

Very thoughtful paper...
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by Ceisiwr »

I found this in AN 10:46 today:

“Kāmā hi, bhante, aniccā tucchā musā mosadhammā”ti.”

If we accept that Kāmā is better translated as “5 senses” rather than the Abhidhamma definition of “sensual pleasures” we get this:

“Because the 5 senses, sir, are impermanent, hollow, false, and deceptive.”

If this reading holds than an interesting question arises. What does it mean to say that sights, sounds, taste, smell & touch are “hollow, false, and deceptive.”?
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by coconut »

Ceisiwr wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 1:43 pm I found this in AN 10:46 today:

“Kāmā hi, bhante, aniccā tucchā musā mosadhammā”ti.”

If we accept that Kāmā is better translated as “5 senses” rather than the Abhidhamma definition of “sensual pleasures” we get this:

“Because the 5 senses, sir, are impermanent, hollow, false, and deceptive.”

If this reading holds than an interesting question arises. What does it mean to say that sights, sounds, taste, smell & touch are “hollow, false, and deceptive.”?
It means nothing satisfying can be had from them.
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by coffeendonuts »

Ceisiwr wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 1:43 pm I found this in AN 10:46 today:

“Kāmā hi, bhante, aniccā tucchā musā mosadhammā”ti.”

If we accept that Kāmā is better translated as “5 senses” rather than the Abhidhamma definition of “sensual pleasures” we get this:

“Because the 5 senses, sir, are impermanent, hollow, false, and deceptive.”

If this reading holds than an interesting question arises. What does it mean to say that sights, sounds, taste, smell & touch are “hollow, false, and deceptive.”?
Good question. I think when we look at later philosophical treatises in the Mahayana, cutting through all the flowery and dense logical analysis that can get people really spinning, the conclusions aren't much different.

Also in modern neuroscience, with understandings of how perceptions are created, etc., sort of give some insight on this too.
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by SteRo »

Ceisiwr wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 1:43 pm What does it mean to say that sights, sounds, taste, smell & touch are “hollow, false, and deceptive.”?
Just one of these nibbida-instructions typical for theravada doctrine ... meaning "you have to see it as ... because of impermanence, misery and not-self." Compare with Phena sutta. The peak of insight into impermanence isn't "rise and fall" but "dissolution", i.e. the nature of the impermanent is dissolution which comes close to the impermanent being like illusion.
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by coffeendonuts »

SteRo wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 4:37 pmthe impermanent being like illusion.
Bingo. It's arising and passing is like a mirage.
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Re: Is there a sutta in the Pali Canon where someone holds the view "all is unreal" and the Buddha addresses this view?

Post by DooDoot »

coffeendonuts wrote: Sun Jan 17, 2021 1:53 pm Wynne comes to the conclusion that:
The ultimate truth to which Gotama has awakened is that our world of experience belongs in the mind:

"I declare that the world, its arising, cessation and the way thereto occurs in this very fathom-long ‘cadaver’ (kaḷevare), endowed with perception and mind."

This peculiar teaching suggests that the world in which we live is a state of experience, not an objectively real entity. This explains Gotama’s focus on the painful nature of human experience, and especially the means of deconstructing it.

-Who was the Buddha?
Wynne appears utterly illogical above because he appears yet to define his phrase: "the world in which we live". I have rarely ever read such poor scholarship or reasoning. In other words:

1. The physical planet Earth, galaxy & universe in which we live is an objective reality.

2. But the social & personal world which the mind concocts is not an objective reality but something manufactured by the mind of ignorance & craving, per the suttas (SN 12.44; AN 4.45; etc).

:alien:
Ceisiwr wrote: Sun Jan 17, 2021 1:28 pm The Buddha says it himself:

“The monk who hasn't slipped past or turned back,
knowing with regard to the world
that "All this is unreal (vitatha),"
sloughs off the near shore & far —
as a snake, its decrepit old skin.”

Sn 1.1

What that means though is a different matter. I would notice that he says the loka is unreal, not the Totality (Sabbam).
Compare to SN 56.20:
Mendicants, these four things are real, not unreal, not otherwise.
“Cattārimāni, bhikkhave, tathāni avitathāni anaññathāni.

What four?
Katamāni cattāri?

This is suffering’ …
‘Idaṃ dukkhan’ti, bhikkhave, tathametaṃ avitathametaṃ anaññathametaṃ;

‘This is the origin of suffering’ …
‘ayaṃ dukkhasamudayo’ti tathametaṃ avitathametaṃ anaññathametaṃ;

‘This is the cessation of suffering’ …
‘ayaṃ dukkhanirodho’ti tathametaṃ avitathametaṃ anaññathametaṃ;

‘This is the practice that leads to the cessation of suffering’ …
‘ayaṃ dukkhanirodhagāminī paṭipadā’ti tathametaṃ avitathametaṃ anaññathametaṃ—

These four things are real, not unreal, not otherwise.
imāni kho, bhikkhave, cattāri tathāni avitathāni anaññathāni.

https://suttacentral.net/sn56.20/en/sujato
:alien:
Ceisiwr wrote: Sun Jan 17, 2021 1:28 pmIn my view lokas are the worlds we personally create through namarupa & craving based on the Totality.
The suttas appear to not refer to nama-rupa in the above context. The above ideology appears still stuck in the Brahmanistic meaning of nama-rupa. SN 12.44 says: "Now, from the remainderless cessation & fading away of that very craving comes the cessation of...the world".
sphairos wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 12:43 pm Here one must remember, that in the Buddhist discourse the "world" and the "I" are not discussed separately: in the Brahmajāla-sutta it is always repeated that the world and "I" (attā ca loko ca) are either eternal (sassato), non-eternal etc. The world and "I" are seen as an inseparable continuum.
SN 12.44 refers to the origination of the world via dependent origination. "Jati" appears to mean the "I" or the myriad "selves" of "the world". "Jati" is "the various beings in a category of beings". "Beings" are a "view" or "convention" according to the suttas. The "world" appears to be the illusion of various categories of "beings", such as mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, Commies, Nazis, etc.
sphairos wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 12:43 pmThere are two great elucidations of this point:

Richard F. Gombrich, Louis H. Jordan Lectures Seminar Paper 2, ‘Metaphor, allegory, satire’,
published as Chapter III in "How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early
Teachings" (1996).

Rupert Gethin. Cosmology and Meditation: From the Aggañña-Sutta to the Mahāyāna (1997).
The above is empty rhetoric. Richard F. Gombrich does not understand dependent origination.
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