anatman

ThailandTom

Greetings again Sangha.

The title speaks for itself really. This is a teaching that I find really hard to get my head around. Partly because I have asked people before and never really got a straight answer. I have read about it a couple of times, but prefer to hear it from someone. This and emptiness are hard to grasp for most people at first I am sure, but I think they are probably fundamental to buddhism so am keen to get an understanding. If anyone can help that would be great, Tom

Shutoku

nothing exists independant of everything else.
I am a compilation of causes and conditions.

For example, does life lie in the heart, or the lungs, or the brain? The answer is none of these. All three much be functioning to some level for one to be alive. No single one is really more important because each relies on the other two. Life and by extension "self" is not contained in any one.

Think about how we talk about ourselves.
What is "me"?
If you ask what is inside my skull I will answer "my brain". Notice I say it is some thing that belongs to "me" but I don't define it as me. And the same is true of everything. "My consciousness, my awareness, my nose, my leg, my opinion, my feelings.
At best I might point my finger in the general direction of my chest and say "this is me", but then I am referring to the composite of all the things that together form "me" and no individual "thing".

Anatman and emptiness are basically the same thing. All things are empty of any independantly existing self.

Jason

You can find some of my thoughts about it here. I'd post it in its entirety, but I've spammed it so much that I'm sure everyone else is sick of reading it already.

pegembara

Our sense of "self" is dependent on the 5 aggregates of form, feelings, perception, volitional formations and consciousness ie. mind- body complex.

All of which are impermanent and in a state of ceaseless change ie. empty of inherent existence.

This sense of self comes and goes. When one is unconscious self disappears. The self is prominent when there is a desire/greed and aversion/hatred and false identification with our body, feelings, perceptions and thoughts.

Mental suffering comes from false identification/delusion and taking the 5 impermanent aggregates[5 Illusionists] as a permanent self.

ThailandTom

Ah, that really has helped my understanding of the subject, thank you. I was going to ask why is this teaching important, but pegembara has pretty much given a brief example to why it is an important aspect of buddhism.
Now can anyone help with the idea of emptiness..

Tom

Dazzle

Still on the subject of anatta, this is worth reading:


http://das-buddhistische-haus.de/pages/images/stories/dokumente-englisch/Ajahn-Buddhadasa/Ajahn_Buddhadasa--Anatta_and_Rebirth.pdf



and Ajahn Buddhadasa on emptiness:

http://www.abuddhistlibrary.com/Buddhism/B%20-%20Theravada/Teachers/Buddhadasa/Emptiness/Buddhadasa%20-%20Emptiness.htm






.

SherabDorje

“Emptiness” in Buddhism means simply that phenomena do not exist as the conventional mind construes them. There is the level of everyday discourse in which things exist conventionally, such as the chair I am sitting in and the keyboard I am typing on. We need to define these things conventionally in order to interact with them and to be able to “be-in-the-world”.


For me, the concept of emptiness is best understood by the use of reductionism, in which anything that can be proposed to “exist” in the conventional sense can be reduced to constituent parts, and then those parts can be reduced to constituent parts, all the way down to what, in quantum mechanics at least, are the fundamental constituents of physical reality, that is, superstrings, which are supposedly just “strings” of energy vibrating at certain frequencies. This is how something like a chair or a keyboard or a rock can be seen to be nothing more than a grouping of constituent parts which are in flux in the same way the constituent parts that make up a “personality” can be shown to be “empty of self”.


If I understand the classic teachings correctly, the Buddha taught against going to the “extreme of nihilism”, which posits that nothing at all really exists beyond this series of reductions. What I know best is Mahayana and Vajrayana, and in those traditions at least, what is “uncovered” after the reductionism is “of the nature of clear light” or “primordial wisdom” and this is true of both “atman” and physical phenomena. Things to not exist as they appear to us as “beings-in-the-world”, but we need to avoid both the extreme of nihilism and the extreme of believing in too much permanence.


Hope that helps.

thickpaper

I would add that:

Emptiness is the same as interconnectivity. They are the same condition; one seen looking inwards the other seen looking outwards.

Emptiness really is realised at all points in reality, its is as true of a nation state as it is a mind or a molecule.

So Anataman isn't exclusively no self, it is "no thing" and when applied to psychology etc, it is then no self.

NamelessRiver

This and emptiness are hard to grasp for most people at first I am sure, but I think they are probably fundamental to buddhism so am keen to get an understanding. If anyone can help that would be great, Tom

There is more than one way to understand emptiness. As for anatta, there are also differences in the treatment of this concept and emptiness. I'll give my own explanation of anatta:

The first thing to note is that Buddha never stated there wasn't a Self at all. What he did was state that each of the aggregates are not the Self. And what is that self that is absent from the aggregates?

From the Anattalakkhana Sutta:

"Form, O monks, is not-self; if form were self, then form would not lead to affliction and it should obtain regarding form: 'May my form be thus, may my form not be thus'; and indeed, O monks, since form is not-self, therefore form leads to affliction and it does not obtain regarding form: 'May my form be thus, may my form not be thus.'

From this we can infer that the Self absent from the aggregates would be something that does not lead to affliction and that can be fully controlled by our will.

Later on that sutra:

"What do you think of this, O monks? Is form permanent or impermanent?"
"Impermanent, O Lord."
"Now, that which is impermanent, is it unsatisfactory or satisfactory?"
"Unsatisfactory, O Lord."

That which is impermanent is unsatisfactory, and if it is unsatisfactory it is not Self. In that case, we see that, for a Self to exist within a given aggregate, it would have to be permanent.

So, from this we notice that a Self, to exist, would have to be permanent, fully controllable, and would not lead to affliction. Since none of the aggregates possess these three qualities, they are not Self.

You can say, then, that the Buddha treats the Self more as a group of characteristics than as a soul or some other kind of entity. That is very important indeed, because self, as stated in this sutra, is more of an adjective than a substantive. Therefore, you won't be seeing the Buddha stating if there is or not a Self, the same way it wouldn't make sense to claim the existence of an entity called 'Hot', or 'Beautiful', or 'Cold', or 'Bright'.

How does this concept of anatta fits the doctrine of Awakening proposed by the Buddha? How does it lead us away from suffering? The answer we see later on in the sutra:

"O monks, the well-instructed noble disciple, seeing thus, gets wearied of form, gets wearied of feeling, gets wearied of perception, gets wearied of mental formations, gets wearied of consciousness. Being wearied he becomes passion-free. In his freedom from passion, he is emancipated. Being emancipated, there is the knowledge that he is emancipated. He knows: 'birth is exhausted, lived is the holy life, what had to be done is done, there is nothing more of this becoming.'"

In the Buddha's line of thought, liberation comes from seeing things as they really are.

This concludes what I had to say about anatta. I'll leave the explanation of emptiness to others more well-versed than myself. :-)

Nios

I have always been taught to differentiate no-self and not-self, in that, in Buddhist terms, to say there is no-self is wrong, but to say there is not-self is correct.

I'm still a bit of a novice, but I believe, not-self is correct because there is a self in conventional terms, but it is not an independant, eternal entity, but rather a dependant imperminant self.
Confused? Perhaps this might help before I dig my hole even deeper :P http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/notself2.html

Nios.

PS. Or is it just pedantic semantics???

ThailandTom

Thank you everyone, I have a lot of reading to do

I have been curious of the dharma for a little over a year I think and have gained a fair bit of knowledge. Although sometimes I find that I try to inplicate my knowledge to every day life and I often feel as if I am swamped with information. Almost as if I am stood in an open field filled with fog or drowning in a swimming pool of teachings. I view is often hazy and I find it hard to properly understand what I am meant to think, how I am meant to act. I understand that one of the main and most important aspects to loving kindness to living beings and of course yourself. This is the most obvious maybe to implicate. Also aspects such as living in the present moment, kamma and attachment are quite easy to understand, but not so easily implicated. The rest I understand on a certain level but it is very hard for me to grasp as of now. I guess it simply takes a lot of practice, research, reflection and time. One thing that drew me to buddhism in the first place is how profound and logical it appeared to be, I still get this notion now

Tom

Jeffrey

My teacher says that non-self and emptiness are not a concept to understand but rather the natural spaciousness of our minds. You can observe this spaciousness in meditation as you are caught up in a thought and then recognize that and come back to the breath. Or when you are trying to make a feeling go away. There is actually space for that feeling.

ThailandTom

I watched a talk on the true nature of reality today given by a nun on the buddhist society you tube page. I have found this collection of many talks to be of huge help with my understanding. I do not remember who dropped me the link in the first place, but it was someone from this forum so I thank them a lot
I understand that nothing exists in the way we think it does. There is nothing that is in independent existence as it is made up of many other things. Like what is this laptop I am using, is it a laptop... Does it exist as a laptop, it is in fact made up from various components that make what I call 'laptop'. Those components are in turn made up of smaller components and so on.
Also the idea that has eve been established by scientists in this modern day that everything is an illusion created by our senses. The concept that we only perceive a reality that mine as well be a dream.
It is still really quite difficult to get my hear around and I have heard that anatman and non self does not instantly become apparent to people, well most people. Meditation and thought needs to be put in for many months or even years. But What I am having trouble is this. Say for example I get hurt by a friend who lies to me. I should think this friend does not exist at all as I think, I do not exist in this way either.. But thie lie still creates suffering to me as he or she is my friend and I fele betrayed by them. I cannot make that jump from understanding or being told things do not exist in the way they do, to implying it in my life. Is it even my life? ahhhh lol, craziness

Tom