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[Per diff:] The Alexander Wynne is taken out of context. He quotes Gethin as saying
[T]he five khandhas, as treated in the Nikāyas and early abhidhamma, do not exactly take on the character of a formal theory of the nature of man. The concern is not so much the presentation of an analysis of man as object, but rather the understanding of the nature of conditioned existence from the point of view of the experiencing subject. Thus at the most general level rūpa, vedanā, saññā, saṃkhārā and viññāṇa are presented as five aspects of an individual being’s experience of the world...
And Hamilton saying "not a comprehensive analysis of what a human being is comprised of... rather they are factors of human experience." Neither of these are statements of agreement with Thanissaro that "non-self in the five aggregates does not necessarily mean there is no self." Alexander Wynne's own quote about not-self turning into no-self is based on his own view that the "Vajirā Sutta represents a relatively late stratum in the Pāli Suttapiṭaka." Leaving out that context changes things considerably because that is the foundation of his belief. If he is wrong about the date of the Vajira Sutta then his view collapses. Dharmalion76 ( talk) 14:12, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
There is what we may think of as a Buddhist answer to the triad 'being, consciousness, bliss'. It is the triad referred to as 'the three hallmarks' (P: ti-lakkhana) , that is, the hallmarks of phenomenal existence. These are impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, absence of self. The order betrays the Upanisadic reasoning. Things are impermanent, i.e., ever-changing, and by that token they are not satisfactory, and by that token they cannot be the atman. The third hallmark is very often mistranslated (sometimes by me too, in the past) as 'not having a self or essence'. That is indeed how later Buddhists came to interpret it, but that was not its original meaning - in fact, it is doubly misleading. Both Pali grammar and a comparison with the Vedanta show that the word means "is not atman" rather than "does not have atman". Comparison with the Vedanta further shows that the translation 'self is appropriate, as the reference is to living beings. However, as time went by the term was taken as a possessive compound and also taken to refer to everything, so that it became the one-word expression of the Buddha's anti-essentialism.
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 |
[Per diff:] The Alexander Wynne is taken out of context. He quotes Gethin as saying
[T]he five khandhas, as treated in the Nikāyas and early abhidhamma, do not exactly take on the character of a formal theory of the nature of man. The concern is not so much the presentation of an analysis of man as object, but rather the understanding of the nature of conditioned existence from the point of view of the experiencing subject. Thus at the most general level rūpa, vedanā, saññā, saṃkhārā and viññāṇa are presented as five aspects of an individual being’s experience of the world...
And Hamilton saying "not a comprehensive analysis of what a human being is comprised of... rather they are factors of human experience." Neither of these are statements of agreement with Thanissaro that "non-self in the five aggregates does not necessarily mean there is no self." Alexander Wynne's own quote about not-self turning into no-self is based on his own view that the "Vajirā Sutta represents a relatively late stratum in the Pāli Suttapiṭaka." Leaving out that context changes things considerably because that is the foundation of his belief. If he is wrong about the date of the Vajira Sutta then his view collapses. Dharmalion76 ( talk) 14:12, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
There is what we may think of as a Buddhist answer to the triad 'being, consciousness, bliss'. It is the triad referred to as 'the three hallmarks' (P: ti-lakkhana) , that is, the hallmarks of phenomenal existence. These are impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, absence of self. The order betrays the Upanisadic reasoning. Things are impermanent, i.e., ever-changing, and by that token they are not satisfactory, and by that token they cannot be the atman. The third hallmark is very often mistranslated (sometimes by me too, in the past) as 'not having a self or essence'. That is indeed how later Buddhists came to interpret it, but that was not its original meaning - in fact, it is doubly misleading. Both Pali grammar and a comparison with the Vedanta show that the word means "is not atman" rather than "does not have atman". Comparison with the Vedanta further shows that the translation 'self is appropriate, as the reference is to living beings. However, as time went by the term was taken as a possessive compound and also taken to refer to everything, so that it became the one-word expression of the Buddha's anti-essentialism.