Soul theories and the Dhamma

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
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Caodemarte
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by Caodemarte »

davidbrainerd wrote:
Goofaholix wrote:
davidbrainerd wrote: What is their relationship to the body?
The body participates in processes.
So these processes are they like non-material things that cause the creation of the body? Or they arise from the body?
The standard Buddhist definition is that the aggregates are the body. All things are made of aggregates. Processes, like cause and effect, are not a cause in the sense of a pre-existing first cause, but rather how things relate. In a sense you can say that cause and effect is the aggregates as it is not a separate thing floating around in the ether as dome Platoinc ideal. It gets more subtle after that according to the school.
davidbrainerd
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by davidbrainerd »

Goofaholix wrote:
davidbrainerd wrote:So these processes are they like non-material things that cause the creation of the body? Or they arise from the body?
That's a chicken and egg question, the body just is, it's the situation we've found ourselves in, if you want a creation myth you're in the wrong religion.

Digestion is a process, running is a process, can running create a body? Of course not, but the processes of sexual intercourse can, or the process of evolution can. These weren't the processes the Buddha was specifically interested in though when he laid out his methodology for awakening, the 5 aggregates outlines some of these.
I'm not asking how the cycle of rebirth started, just what the relationship between body and aggregates is if the aggregates are not simply the body. I've always thought of form aggregate as the body, and the other 4 as different functions of the physical brain. So to find that someone interprets them as totally distinct from the body is shocking. I just want to know what the aggregates are in everyone else's view and saying "processes" doesn't mean anything to me without some explanation of their relationship to the body.
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by cappuccino »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandha

The perfect state of enlightenment is one without any personality, no "I am" conceit, no physical identification, no intellectual identification
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Goofaholix
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by Goofaholix »

Caodemarte wrote:In a sense you can say that cause and effect is the aggregates as it is not a separate thing floating around in the ether as dome Platoinc ideal. It gets more subtle after that according to the school.
That's a good way to put it. I think the Buddha taught in terms of the only constant is change, once we understand this we stop defining our world in terms of objects or in terms of thingness but instead look at in terms of processes, or cause and affect, or in changing relationships. Of course things participate in processes but they are no longer the focus of our attention.

When we aren't attached to seeing the world in terms of thingness we are free to participate in change rather than resisting it. When we aren't attached to seeing the world in terms of self we are free to participate in change rather than resisting it.
Pronouns (no self / not self)
“Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it.”
― Ajahn Chah
davidbrainerd
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by davidbrainerd »

Goofaholix wrote:
Caodemarte wrote:In a sense you can say that cause and effect is the aggregates as it is not a separate thing floating around in the ether as dome Platoinc ideal. It gets more subtle after that according to the school.
That's a good way to put it. I think the Buddha taught in terms of the only constant is change, once we understand this we stop defining our world in terms of objects or in terms of thingness but instead look at in terms of processes, or cause and affect, or in changing relationships. Of course things participate in processes but they are no longer the focus of our attention.

When we aren't attached to seeing the world in terms of thingness we are free to participate in change rather than resisting it. When we aren't attached to seeing the world in terms of self we are free to participate in change rather than resisting it.
How does any thing change if there is no thing? No thing = no thing to change.
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Goofaholix
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by Goofaholix »

davidbrainerd wrote:I'm not asking how the cycle of rebirth started, just what the relationship between body and aggregates is if the aggregates are not simply the body. I've always thought of form aggregate as the body, and the other 4 as different functions of the physical brain. So to find that someone interprets them as totally distinct from the body is shocking. I just want to know what the aggregates are in everyone else's view and saying "processes" doesn't mean anything to me without some explanation of their relationship to the body.
What you want to know is probably best obtained from a high school biology class. I think the Buddhas approach is not about defining things or matter and putting them into convenient compartments like scientists would but defining how our mental and physical processes participate in change and how seeing this clearly leads to cessation of Dukkha.
Pronouns (no self / not self)
“Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it.”
― Ajahn Chah
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Goofaholix
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by Goofaholix »

davidbrainerd wrote:How does any thing change if there is no thing? No thing = no thing to change.
You're missing my point, processes change, things are however we define them at any given point in time. For example is your body the exact same thing it was 20 years ago? no, because it's in a constant process of change.
Pronouns (no self / not self)
“Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it.”
― Ajahn Chah
davidbrainerd
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by davidbrainerd »

Goofaholix wrote:
davidbrainerd wrote:How does any thing change if there is no thing? No thing = no thing to change.
You're missing my point, processes change, things are however we define them at any given point in time. For example is your body the exact same thing it was 20 years ago? no, because it's in a constant process of change.
You're misunderstanding my question as much as I'm missing your point.
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Goofaholix
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by Goofaholix »

davidbrainerd wrote:You're misunderstanding my question as much as I'm missing your point.
I think your question is very clear, it's just not relevant or at least the assumptions behind it aren't
Pronouns (no self / not self)
“Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it.”
― Ajahn Chah
Caodemarte
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by Caodemarte »

davidbrainerd wrote:
How does any thing change if there is no thing? No thing = no thing to change.
Many Buddhists use the opposite argument. If something changes then it cannot have a permanent existence by definition. Eveything changes so there is no permanent existence. If something was permanent then it could not change. If you agree that everything changes and nothing has a permanent existence, but only a temporary, provisional existence you are well on the way to the Buddhist idea of temporary existence only, no permanent existence. Add in the notion of interdependent co-arising (to account for how change happens, but that's a different question) and you are there.
davidbrainerd
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by davidbrainerd »

Caodemarte wrote:
davidbrainerd wrote:
How does any thing change if there is no thing? No thing = no thing to change.
Many Buddhists use the opposite argument. If something changes then it cannot have a permanent existence by definition. Eveything changes so there is no permanent existence. If something was permanent then it could not change. If you agree that everything changes and nothing has a permanent existence, but only a temporary, provisional existence you are well on the way to the Buddhist idea of temporary existence only, no permanent existence. Add in the notion of interdependent co-arising (to account for how change happens, but that's a different question) and you are there.
But I'm not asking if the aggregates continue forever but merely what they are. So the distinction between permanent and inpermanent existence is irrelevant I think.

But what does 'aggregate' mean? A grouping together. Khandha or Skandha would be more obviously translated 'heap'. Heap of what? The way I conceive it is of a massive amount of primoridial atoms that always existed and always will. And an 'aggregate' is merely a smaller mass of that primodial matter 'aggregated' into a particular form. So yes the 'aggregates', the forms, are impermanent, but the substance is permanent. This is how change occurs: what was today an apple in a few weeks breaks down into soil. The atoms weren't destroyed, it didn't pop out of existrnce or go back to nihilo to be called back into existence ex nihilo by some magic process again; its just those aggregates, i.e. forms returned to their primordial matter state to be reformed into some new aggregates. From this perspective, if you are the aggregates, you cannot be reborn, only demolished and the constituent components that were you recycled into something else (or rather multiple something elses at once because all your atoms would not go into only one other thing). Which makes perfect sense to me why Buddha says the aggregates are not you.
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Goofaholix
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by Goofaholix »

davidbrainerd wrote:But what does 'aggregate' mean? A grouping together. Khandha or Skandha would be more obviously translated 'heap'. Heap of what?
It sounds like you are more informed by the landscaping/roading use of the word aggregate. I'm more inclined to the Business Intelligence usage of the word, ie sum, average, percentage, min, max etc. An aggregate is calculated at the intersection of a point in time and by various dimensions that describe it, it can count money and things sure, but often counts events and of course events interacting with things participate in processes etc.

Anyway none of that proves my assertion that the aggregates are processes but good luck finding a thing that is feeling, or a thing that is sensing, or a thing that is perceiving, or a thing that is fabricating if you can do that you should be well on the way to finding your long coveted self.

The only aggregate that inclines towards thingness is rupa but even that is in a constant process of change and includes meny processes within it and many processes that interact with mental processes.
Pronouns (no self / not self)
“Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it.”
― Ajahn Chah
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ancientbuddhism
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by ancientbuddhism »

What is a ‘no-selfer’? But forget about it. You wouldn’t post such if you knew that no-atta is central to the Dhamma.

Discussions like this often boil down to so much over something that was intended to be so simple and direct. The Tathāgata established the 5 aggregates (pañcakkhandhā) to deconstruct the assumptions of a ‘Self’ that were bandied about for a couple of centuries by the Brāhmaṇa of that time, i.e. the khandhā, which represent the physical body and an accretion of cognitive processes, and are what the fool thinks is or is sustained by a ‘Self’. The doctrine of anatta is not nihilism because he also reconstructed how sentience works in Dependant Arising (paṭiccasamuppāda) in terms of ignorance (avijjā) and craving (taṇhā) which lead to dukkha, and the absence of these which lead toward liberation and peace.
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Secure your own mask before assisting others. – NORTHWEST AIRLINES (Pre-Flight Instruction)

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Coëmgenu
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by Coëmgenu »

"There is a self" is a wrong view.
"There is no self" is a wrong view.
The aggregates are not self.

I don't consider myself a "no-selfer", but I am sure, from our past interactions, that you would consider me a "no-selfer", perhaps I am wrong though.

The aggregates are not-self, they cause-to-arise consciousness, but are not-self/are selfless.
What is the Uncreated?
Sublime & free, what is that obscured Eternity?
It is the Undying, the Bright, the Isle.
It is an Ocean, a Secret: Reality.
Both life and oblivion, it is Nirvāṇa.
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Goofaholix
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Re: what do no-selfers think the aggregates are?

Post by Goofaholix »

ancientbuddhism wrote:The Tathāgata established the 5 aggregates (pañcakkhandhā) to deconstruct the assumptions of a ‘Self’
Yes, and from that that point of view I think it's better to understand the 5 aggregates as a model.
Pronouns (no self / not self)
“Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it.”
― Ajahn Chah
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