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Anatta

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von bek

Well-Known Member
So I am "disrespectful" and "not even a Buddhist"... because I quote buddhist sutras in a buddhist forum?
If Im debating so are you guys. I just "place the basic teachings and understandings of the Buddhist idea of anatta"

Please stop trolling the Buddhism DIR. There are hundreds of sutras that refute your position. You demand to reinterpret all of them based on your misunderstanding of one text. There is no debate on the subject of anatta in Buddhism.
 

ratikala

Istha gosthi
namaste :namaste

Please stop trolling the Buddhism DIR. There are hundreds of sutras that refute your position. You demand to reinterpret all of them based on your misunderstanding of one text. There is no debate on the subject of anatta in Buddhism.

please please may we be very carefull here ....you feel that there are hundreds of sutras that refute this position , but there are also many Mahayana sutras that give support to this position , surely you are not rejecting the Mahayana veiw?
 

crossfire

LHP Mercuræn Feminist Heretic Bully ☿
Premium Member
One thing's for sure: this debate can certainly generate a lot of dukkha!

Buddha was one smart cookie when he said, "Therefore your duty is the contemplation, 'This is stress... This is the origination of stress... This is the cessation of stress.' Your duty is the contemplation, 'This is the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress.'"

Simsapa Sutta: The Simsapa Leaves

In the above sutta, he states that there are innumerable things that he did not teach, as they did not lead to the cessation of dukkha. However, he did teach about anatta, so it is a necessary component leading to Unbinding.
 

von bek

Well-Known Member
namaste :namaste



please please may we be very carefull here ....you feel that there are hundreds of sutras that refute this position , but there are also many Mahayana sutras that give support to this position , surely you are not rejecting the Mahayana veiw?

Mahayana Buddhists also accept the Buddha's teaching on anatta. We have 2500 years to reflect on. Every major Buddhist tradition teaches not-self. The entire Pali canon reflects the teachings on anatta. The Mahayana sutras do as well. If you can read the Diamond Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, or the Lankavatara Sutra without recognizing what the Buddha is saying about self and not-self, I don't know what to tell you. Not just those sutras, either. I will say it again, hundreds of sutras refute the idea that the Buddha taught atman. 2500 years of monastic commentary from Theravada and Mahayana traditions shows that monks and nuns understood that the Buddha taught anatta. Saying the "Mahayana view" is atman is wrong.
 

ratikala

Istha gosthi
Mahayana Buddhists also accept the Buddha's teaching on anatta. We have 2500 years to reflect on. Every major Buddhist tradition teaches not-self. The entire Pali canon reflects the teachings on anatta. The Mahayana sutras do as well. If you can read the Diamond Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, or the Lankavatara Sutra without recognizing what the Buddha is saying about self and not-self, I don't know what to tell you. Not just those sutras, either. I will say it again, hundreds of sutras refute the idea that the Buddha taught atman. 2500 years of monastic commentary from Theravada and Mahayana traditions shows that monks and nuns understood that the Buddha taught anatta. Saying the "Mahayana view" is atman is wrong.

again I reitterate , ''we need to be very carefull here'' .....it would 'appear' that some Mahayana texts seem to contradict theravada texts ? ...so instead of gettting hot under the collar I suggest we calmly discuss , after all the question only becomes suffering if we attatch too firmly to any one veiw , we should keep an open mind and discuss this subject .

ok every school teaches anatta , but practitioners themselves understand it differently , no self ? not self ? no soul ? not soul? no individual self ? no perminant self ? ... yet Mahayana teaches upon there being a true self to be realised as the ultimate reality , in which case the self which is rejected is the illusuory self of conventional reality , it is this illusuory self that acts as a fetter , here we are speaking of conditioned phenomena , the atman of the mahayana texts is our true nature not our personal identity .

instead of feeling threatened by a subject we should become brave enough to explore it , this is what lord Buddha instructed us to do , yet there is a tendancy to become complacent but this is dangerous as we can inadvertantly attatch to a wrong veiw .

are you familliar with Shantideva ? ... ''treat even your worst enemy as your most kind friend and teacher''

we should not be here to make a comfortable nest out of the teachings that we beleive that we understand , we should be fearless in our search of the truth .
 

von bek

Well-Known Member
are you familliar with Shantideva ? ... ''treat even your worst enemy as your most kind friend and teacher''

Yes, I am familiar with Shantideva. He clearly teaches anatta. As does Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, Buddhagosa, Bodhidharma...
 

DreadFish

Cosmic Vagabond
Im pretty sure that there is a thread for this in the debate forum somewhere (the search function is not working for me at all)

This is an info sticky, not a debate thread. I dont think there is anything to discuss here.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
There is a concept of anatta of which remains empty. It's " there", but not of which can ever be pointed and identified, nor of permanence, yet remains permanent.

The teachings require experience. Not debated by intellectual context of scripture which invariably leads to dukkha.

A good way imo to reflect on such paradoxes would be insight involving your own nature and form. Orginal face giving way to form, of which in turn, " orginal face ceases orginal face" , traversing the dynamics of cause and effect, subsiding, empty, thus illuminating the nature of ones originality by way of perpetuity.

It's my experience im willing to share. I think of my parents as being orginal face, their deaths and decomposition ceasing orginal face, yet still remains orginal face albiet no longer identifiable as orginal face in any respect.
Yet orginal face remains, of which can be pointed to and identified, and yet, cannot be pointed to nor identified harmonizing the paradox by avoiding extremes.

For me anyway, it's been my experiential understanding so far regarding anatman and atman and the reconciliation of written texts as well as it's valid contradictions therein, neither incorrect or correct, which exemplifies further still how such can be approached using the middle way.
 

DreadFish

Cosmic Vagabond
Also, a pertinent passage from the sutta that crossfire linked in another thread:

"As he attends inappropriately in this way, one of six kinds of view arises in him: The view I have a self arises in him as true & established, or the view I have no self... or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive self... or the view It is precisely by means of self that I perceive not-self... or the view It is precisely by means of not-self that I perceive self arises in him as true & established, or else he has a view like this: This very self of mine — the knower that is sensitive here & there to the ripening of good & bad actions — is the self of mine that is constant, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and will stay just as it is for eternity. This is called a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. Bound by a fetter of views, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person is not freed from birth, aging, & death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. He is not freed, I tell you, from suffering & stress.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.002.than.html
 
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