sphairos wrote: ↑Fri Jul 02, 2021 3:15 pm
No , you are gravely mistaken, he never said anything of the like! He said that there is an eye and sights, ear and sounds. He never said anything about actually existing external objects,
When we look to the suttas we find the Buddha talking about 6 internal sense bases and 6 external sense objects, both of which are said to exist (atthi). We also find him talking about the signless and meditation on nibbāna, where this is non-attention to external "signs". Signs of course being marks by which we recognise dhammas.
“Could it be, sir, that a mendicant might gain a state of immersion such that there’s no ego, possessiveness, or underlying tendency to conceit for this conscious body; and no ego, possessiveness, or underlying tendency to conceit for all external stimuli;
“Siyā nu kho, bhante, bhikkhuno tathārūpo samādhipaṭilābho yathā imasmiñca saviññāṇake kāye ahaṅkāramamaṅkāramānānusayā nāssu, bahiddhā ca sabbanimittesu ahaṅkāramamaṅkāramānānusayā nāssu;
https://suttacentral.net/an3.32/en/sujato
and, moreover, he said that the "world" is just eye and sights etc. --
Between the eye and forms (which are external stimuli) we do create our own worlds due to craving, conceit and views.
he rejects any "objective reality" of the world thus and replaces it with the subjective reality of personal experience. And there is nothing "external", everything that is happening to a person is subjective, "internal".
Not that you have shown, and based on the suttas we see him acknowledging an external reality.
there is this body and external name-and-form: thus this dyad. Dependent on the dyad there is contact. There are just six sense bases, contacted through which—or through a certain one among them—the fool experiences pleasure and pain.
https://suttacentral.net/sn12.19/en/bodhi
Consciousness is always conscious of something. It always requires a stimuli. If all we perceive is within mind the Buddha wouldn't have taught the 6 sense bases and the 6 external dhammas. Instead he would have just taught 1 sense base with it's objects. Namely, the mind. There are mind only dhammas, but there are also physical dhammas. This makes sense, since the Buddha was concerned with direct experience. Part of our direct experience is of a physical reality. Different types of physical reality actually.
these are just some artificial mental constructs of late Buddhist scholastics, who already hardly understood what the Buddha taught. If i were you I wouldn't even bother about them. But people need time to realize it.
Strange. They appear in the suttas, so it seems the Abhidhammikas of old did understand the Buddha.
And why, bhikkhus, do you call it form? ‘It is deformed,’ bhikkhus, therefore it is called form. Deformed by what? Deformed by cold, deformed by heat, deformed by hunger, deformed by thirst, deformed by contact with flies, mosquitoes, wind, sun, and serpents. ‘It is deformed,’ bhikkhus, therefore it is called form.
“And why, bhikkhus, do you call it feeling? ‘It feels,’ bhikkhus, therefore it is called feeling. And what does it feel? It feels pleasure, it feels pain, it feels neither-pain-nor-pleasure. ‘It feels,’ bhikkhus, therefore it is called feeling.
“And why, bhikkhus, do you call it perception? ‘It perceives,’ bhikkhus, therefore it is called perception. And what does it perceive? It perceives blue, it perceives yellow, it perceives red, it perceives white. ‘It perceives,’ bhikkhus, therefore it is called perception.
“And why, bhikkhus, do you call them volitional formations? ‘They construct the conditioned,’ bhikkhus, therefore they are called volitional formations. And what is the conditioned that they construct? They construct conditioned form as form; they construct conditioned feeling as feeling; they construct conditioned perception as perception; they construct conditioned volitional formations as volitional formations; they construct conditioned consciousness as consciousness. ‘They construct the conditioned,’ bhikkhus, therefore they are called volitional formations.
“And why, bhikkhus, do you call it consciousness? ‘It cognizes, ’ bhikkhus, therefore it is called consciousness. And what does it cognize? It cognizes sour, it cognizes bitter, it cognizes pungent, it cognizes sweet, it cognizes sharp, it cognizes mild, it cognizes salty, it cognizes bland. ‘It cognizes,’ bhikkhus, therefore it is called consciousness.
https://suttacentral.net/sn22.79/en/bodhi
Sabhāva is the own-nature of each dhamma. As the sutta shows above, the sabhāva of consciousness is to cognise. Also interesting to note that the Buddha acknowledges here external objects which interact with form.
It is quite clear in general -- his Teaching(s) is to be cast away, like a raft. In MN 74 and other places the Buddha clearly reveals that his teaching is a no-teaching, or at least one without any views. But of course it's much harder to understand and accept than sabhāva dhammas.
I do understand it. I used to hold a similar view. The question you leave unanswered is what the Buddha actually meant by a view? Seems rather obvious to me they are metaphysical in nature, and deal in things not actually experienced. These are then held dogmatically and argued as being absolute truth, when they are anything but due to their epistemological flaws. What the Buddha was concerned with was knowledge. With direct experience. So we can say the Buddha has given up views, yet has knowledge. This allows him to state things categorically such as certain dhammas which indeed do exist (form that is impermanent, nibbāna etc), certain behaviours which are always unskilful (lying, killing etc) and that certain facts of experience always exist (dependent origination). The Buddha then does not have "views", by which he seems to mean metaphysical and abstract ideas built on shaky epistemological grounds, but he does indeed have a position since he has knowledge. This makes him opposed to both the metaphysician and the sceptic alike. Regarding the raft simile, the message is about not grasping the teachings and using them to win debates, which is quite an egoistical thing to do, rather than the path culminating in the abandoning of all definitive statements and collapsing into some kind of Pyrrhonist ataraxia. That said, even the Pyrrhonists allowed for statements such as "right now pain exists".
"Here, bhikkhus, some clansmen learn the Dhamma—discourses…answers to questions—and having learned the Dhamma, they examine the meaning of those teachings with wisdom. Examining the meaning of those teachings with wisdom, they gain a reflective acceptance of them. They do not learn the Dhamma for the sake of criticising others and for winning in debates, and they experience the good for the sake of which they learned the Dhamma. Those teachings, being rightly grasped by them, conduce to their welfare and happiness for a long time. Why is that? Because of the right grasp of those teachings...
“Bhikkhus, I shall show you how the Dhamma is similar to a raft, being for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of grasping."
So to conclude sabhāva, at least in it's Theravādin usage, is perfectly in line with the suttas. We can categorically state certain things to be true or not, when we have said knowledge and the Buddha said external dhammas exist and so acknowledged an external reality.