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Self in Buddhism
Very recently, I started feeling "settled"(I don't get any other word) in Buddhism... But recently, I saw a Wikipedia article on Nirvana which says that The Buddha taught non-self only out of expediency.... I have boldened those lines which express this...
But I would like you to read just the above article and comment... Though later in this passage there are some who oppose it, it might be a fact... I am referring to the boldened words of the passage by it...
As I already mentioned, till now, I have been strengthening my knowledge in this path(of no self)... But now, I am in a dilemma... What do you people say about this? For the sources please visit the original article which include Nirvana in Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism...
Love,
Nidish
The link to the full article is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NirvanaMahayana Perspectives on Nirvana
The idea of Nirvana as purified, non-dualistic 'superior mind' can be found in some Mahayana/Tantric texts. The Samputa, for instance, states:
'Undefiled by lust and emotional impurities, unclouded by any dualistic perceptions, this superior mind is indeed the supreme Nirvana.'
Some Mahayana traditions see the Buddha in almost docetic terms, viewing his visible manifestations as projections from within the state of Nirvana. According to Professor Etienne Lamotte, Buddhas are always and at all times in Nirvana, and their corporeal displays of themselves and their Buddhic careers are ultimately illusory. Lamotte writes of the Buddhas: ‘they are born, reach enlightenment, set turning the Wheel of Dharma, and enter Nirvana. However, all this is only illusion: the appearance of a Buddha is the absence of arising, duration and destruction; their Nirvana is the fact that they are always and at all times in Nirvana.’
Some Mahayana sutras go further and attempt to characterize the nature of Nirvana itself. The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, which has as one of its main topics precisely the realm or dhatu of Nirvana, has the Buddha speak of four essential elements which make up Nirvana. One of these is ‘Self’ (atman), which is construed as the enduring Self of the Buddha. Writing on this Mahayana understanding of Nirvana, William Edward Soothill and Lewis Hodous state:
‘The Nirvana Sutra claims for Nirvana the ancient ideas of permanence, bliss, personality, purity in the transcendental realm. Mahayana declares that Hinayana, by denying personality in the transcendental realm, denies the existence of the Buddha. In Mahayana, final Nirvana is transcendental, and is also used as a term for the Absolute.’
At the time this scripture was written, there was already a long tradition of positive language about Nirvana and the Buddha. While in early Buddhist thought Nirvana is characterized by permanence, bliss, and purity, it is viewed as being the stopping of the breeding-ground for the "I am" attitude, and is beyond all possibility of the Self delusion. The Mahaparinirvana Sutra, a long and highly composite Mahayana scripture, refers to the Buddha's using the term "Self" in order to win over non-Buddhist ascetics. From this, it continues: "The Buddha-nature is in fact not the self. For the sake of [guiding] sentient beings, I describe it as the self."
The Ratnagotravibhaga, a related text, points out that the teaching of the tathagatagarbha is intended to win sentient beings over to abandoning "affection for one's self" - one of the five defects caused by non-Buddhist teaching. Youru Wang notes similar language in the Lankavatara Sutra, then writes: "Noticing this context is important. It will help us to avoid jumping to the conclusion that tathagatagarbha thought is simply another case of metaphysical imagination." However, some[who?] have objected to this reading regarding the Mahāparinirvāna Sutra in particular, and claim that the Buddha then caps his comments in this passage with an affirmation of the reality of the Self, declaring that he is in fact that Self:
'Due to various causes and conditions, I have also taught that that which is the self is devoid of self, for though there is truly the self, I have taught that there is no self, and yet there is no falsehood in that. The Buddha-dhātu is devoid of self. When the Tathagata teaches that there is no self, it is because of the Eternal. The Tathāgata is the Self, and his teaching that there is no self is because he has attained mastery/sovereignty [aisvarya].'
In the Nirvāna Sutra, the Buddha states that he will now teach previously undisclosed doctrines (including on Nirvana) and that his earlier teaching on non-Self was one of expediency only. Dr. Kosho Yamamoto writes:
‘He says that the non-Self which he once taught is none but of expediency … He says that he is now ready to speak about the undisclosed teachings. Men abide in upside-down thoughts. So he will now speak of the affirmative attributes of Nirvana, which are none other than the Eternal, Bliss, the Self and the Pure.’
According to some scholars, the language used in the Tathāgatagarbha genre of sutras can be seen as an attempt to state orthodox Buddhist teachings of dependent origination using positive language instead, to prevent people from being turned away from Buddhism by a false impression of nihilism. For example, in some of these sutras the perfection of the wisdom of not-self is stated to be the true self; the ultimate goal of the path is then characterized using a range of positive language that had been used in Indian philosophy previously by essentialist philosophers, but which was now transmuted into a new Buddhist vocabulary to describe a being who has successfully completed the Buddhist path.
Dr. Yamamoto points out that this ‘affirmative’ characterization of Nirvana pertains to a supposedly higher form of Nirvana – that of ‘Great Nirvana’. Speaking of the 'Bodhisattva Highly Virtuous King' chapter of the Nirvana Sutra, Yamamoto quotes the scripture itself: 'What is nirvana? ...this is as in the case in which one who has hunger has peace and bliss as he has taken a little food.' . Yamamoto continues with the quotation, adding his own comment:
"‘But such a Nirvāna cannot be called “Great Nirvāna”". And it [i.e. the Buddha’s new revelation regarding Nirvana] goes on to dwell on the “Great Self”, “Great Bliss”, and “Great Purity”, all of which, along with the Eternal, constitute the four attributes of Great Nirvana.’
According to some scholars, the "Self" discussed in the and related sutras does not represent a substantial Self. Rather, it is a positive language expression of emptiness and represents the potentiality to realize Buddhahood through Buddhist practices. In this view, the intention of the teaching of 'tathāgatagarbha'/Buddha nature is soteriological rather than theoretical.
However, this interpretation is contentious. Not all scholars share it. Writing on the diverse understandings of tathagatagarbha doctrine as found in the Nirvana Sutra and similar scriptures, Dr. Jamie Hubbard comments on how some scholars see a tendency towards absolutism and monism in this Tathagatagarbha [a tendency which Japanese scholar Matsumoto castigates as non-Buddhist]. Dr. Hubbard comments:
'Matsumoto [calls] attention to the similarity between the extremely positive language and causal structure of enlightenment found in the tathagatagarbha literature and that of the substantial monism found in the atman/Brahman tradition. Matsumoto, of course, is not the only one to have noted this resemblance. Takasaki Jikido, for example, the preeminent scholar of the tathagatagarbha tradition, sees monism in the doctrine of the tathagatagarbha and the Mahayana in general … Obermiller wedded this notion of a monistic Absolute to the tathagatagarbha literature in his translation and comments to the Ratnagotra, which he aptly subtitled “A Manual of Buddhist Monism” … Lamotte and Frauwallner have seen the tathagatagarbha doctrine as diametrically opposed to the Madhyamika and representing something akin to the monism of the atman/Brahman strain, while yet others such as Nagao, Seyfort Ruegg, and Johnston (the editor of the Ratnagotra) simply voice their doubts and state that it seems similar to post-Vedic forms of monism. Yet another camp, represented by Yamaguchi Susumu and his student Ogawa Ichijo, is able to understand tathagatagarbha thought without recourse to Vedic notions by putting it squarely within the Buddhist tradition of conditioned causality and emptiness, which, of course, explicitly rejects monism of any sort. Obviously, the question of the monist or absolutist nature of the tathagatagarbha and Buddha-nature traditions is complex.
Dr. Hubbard summarises his research on tathagatagarbha doctrines with the words:
'the teaching of the tathagatagarbha has always been debatable, for it is fundamentally an affirmative approach to truth and wisdom, offering descriptions of reality not in negative terms of what it is lacking or empty of (apophatic description, typical of the Pefection of Wisdom corpus and the Madhyhamika school) but rather in positive terms of what it is (cataphatic description, more typical of the devotional, tantric, Mahaparinirvana and Lotus Sutra traditions, and, it should be noted, the monistic terms of the orthodox Brahmanic systems)'
According to Paul Williams, the similarity to the monism of atman/Brahman thought is explained when the Nirvana sutra presents its Self teachings as an attempt to win over non-Buddhist ascetics:
It is tempting to speak of Hindu influence on Buddhism at this point, but simply to talk of influences is almost always too easy ... Having said that, of course the Mahaparinirvana-Sutra itself admits Hindu influence in a sense when it refers to the Buddha using the term 'Self' in order to win over non-Buddhist ascetics. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to think in particular of the transcendental Self-Brahman of Advaita Vedanta as necessarily influencing Buddhism at this point. It is by no means clear that the Self which is really no-Self of the Mahaparinirvana-Sutra is at all comparably to the Advaita Brahman, and anyway these Tathagatagarbha sutras are earlier than Gaudapada (seventh century), the founder of the Hindu Advaita school ...The sutra also states that the Buddha-nature is really no-Self, but is said to be a Self in a manner of speaking.
In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, it is stated that there are three ways for a person to "have" something; to have it in the past, to have it in the present, and to have it in the future. It states that what it means by "all beings have Buddha-nature" is that all beings will in the future become Buddhas. Dogen however explicitly says that the Buddha-Nature is had in some sense in the present even by non Buddhas: actually equating the reality of the present moment (or "That without constancy") with the Buddha-Nature, including that of grass and trees as well as mind and body. For Dogen, to look at anything is to see the Buddha-Nature, whereas Chinul argues that it is in the body right now as smelling and vision and so on. The important Lankavatara Sutra states that all actions are actions of the Buddha-Nature, that it is their cause and the root of all karmic destiny,
As indicated above, the Japanese Zen master, Dogen, has a distinctive interpretation of the Buddha-nature, in which 'whole-being' is viewed as Buddha-nature, and nothing (even inanimate objects) is separate or distinct from it. Buddha-nature is not a 'potential' for Buddhahood, but is the very nature of all things. All things in their impermanence are seen as Buddha-nature[53], and do not constitute a seed of 'potential' for Buddha-nature. Dr. Masao Abe writes on this understanding:
'... in Dogen's understanding, the Buddha-nature is not a potentiality, like a seed, that exists within all sentient beings. Instead, all sentient beings, or more exactly, all beings, living and nonliving, are originally Buddha-nature. It is not a potentiality to be actualized sometime in the future, but the original, fundamental naure of all beings.'
Dogen thus expands the notion of Buddha-nature and that of 'sentient beings' to embrace absolutely all things, which are seen to be alive, possessed of mind and to be the Buddha-nature itself. Dr. Masao Abe elucidates:
'... Dogen broadens not only the meaning of the term Buddha-nature, but also that of the term, sentient beings (shujo). In the "Bussho" fascicle, immediately after saying "Whole-being is the Buddha-nature", he continues, "I call one integral entity of whole-being 'sentient beings'" ... This means that Dogen broadens the meaning of shujo [sentient being], which traditionally referred to living or sentient beings, to include nonliving or nonsentient beings. In other words, he ascribes life to nonliving beings, sentiments to nonsentient beings, and ultimately mind and the Buddha-nature to all of them.
But I would like you to read just the above article and comment... Though later in this passage there are some who oppose it, it might be a fact... I am referring to the boldened words of the passage by it...
As I already mentioned, till now, I have been strengthening my knowledge in this path(of no self)... But now, I am in a dilemma... What do you people say about this? For the sources please visit the original article which include Nirvana in Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism...
Love,
Nidish
0
Comments
First, take notice of what your teacher says and not what wikipedia might have to say.
What you have quoted is very much a Western theological, rational and logical explanation which might sound rather grand but is not an accurate reflection of emptiness.
I am not interested in theological debate from a Western perspective because the rational mind is of little use when engaging in meditation on emptiness. In fact, remaining anchored in a Western philosophic tradition is a hinderance to your path.
Concentrate on your own teacher and not the speculations of others.
And, can I know what your teacher says of this?
Love,
Nidish
I do Google it sometimes to look up entertainment gossip though if I am in the mood...