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Atman-Brahman in Buddhism

Rick O'Shez

Rick O'Shez

Irishman bouncing off walls
Are there any references to universal atman in the suttas or sutras, and is it distinguished from personal atman?
 
Rick O'Shez

Rick O'Shez

Irishman bouncing off walls
I've heard the argument that since the Buddha taught the aggregates were not-self, this implies that there was a true self "beyond" the aggregates. Personally I don't find the argument very convincing, but is this a different argument to the one being made in the book?
 
Nicholas

Nicholas

Bodhicitta
V

von bek

Well-Known Member
Sabba Sutta: The All

"Monks, I will teach you the All. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak."

"As you say, lord," the monks responded.

The Blessed One said, "What is the All? Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas. This, monks, is called the All. [1] Anyone who would say, 'Repudiating this All, I will describe another,' if questioned on what exactly might be the grounds for his statement, would be unable to explain, and furthermore, would be put to grief. Why? Because it lies beyond range."
Click to expand...
 
Kirran

Kirran

ॐ
Premium Member
If I may comment, over here in the neighbouring DIR, and that next closest to my heart:

The Buddha taught that there was no self, nothing that made you you, there was only a emptiness there. But that that emptiness was constant.

Adi Shankara taught that the small self, the ahamkara, that which made you you, was transitory and false. It wasn't actually you. What you are, is that timeless emptiness within all things.

I feel these aren't contradictory. It's repudiating the small self either way, and identifying the individual with the universal.
 
Vishvavajra

Vishvavajra

Active Member
Spiny Norman said:
I've heard the argument that since the Buddha taught the aggregates were not-self, this implies that there was a true self "beyond" the aggregates. Personally I don't find the argument very convincing, but is this a different argument to the one being made in the book?
Click to expand...
Siderits (an actual academic Buddhologist) presents this view, and I would say it's quite convincing. In the book Buddhism as Philosophy (essential reading for anyone interested in the subject) he works through the philosophical bases of various Buddhist tenets in modern philosophical terms, often presenting Buddhist arguments against other contemporary philosophies as a way of showing the context in which they developed. I'd say it's pretty clear the entire point of the aggregates is to demonstrate a reductionist ontology as a way of deconstructing the concept of selfhood. It is not to redirect people's attention onto an alternative concept of self. See also the scripture quoted by Von Bek.

Buddhism does not posit a "true" self beyond the illusory one. Rather, Buddhist thought thoroughly deconstructs the concept of "self" to the point where such a thing would be meaningless to begin with. How is reality-as-such equivalent to the self? If the self is anything, it is a point of reference distinguished by opposition to the other (i.e. duality), and once you remove that point of reference (e.g. by showing that there is nothing essentially there), by what standard would you call something "self" or "other"?

Buddhism does not deny reality-as-such, but it does not find it useful to identify it with the self or with the other, but rather to consider it as being prior to such distinctions.
 
Nicholas

Nicholas

Bodhicitta
The publisher David Reigle writes about & quotes from Bhattacharya's book:

This quotation (p. 33) comes from Vasubandhu’s own commentary on his Vijñapti-mātratā-siddhi Viṃśatikā, verse 10:

yo bālair dharmāṇāṃ svabhāvo grāhyagrāhakādiḥ parikalpitas tena kalpitenātmanā teṣāṃ nairātmyam, na tv anabhilāpyenātmanā yo buddhānāṃ viṣayaḥ.

“The own-nature of phenomena, consisting in graspable and grasper, as childish minds imagine it, that is the imaginary Self of phenomena; and it is through this imaginary Self that phenomena are without-self; but not by the ineffable Self which is the domain of the Buddhas.”

Vasubandhu, at least, here accepted an ineffable (anabhilāpya) ātman that is the domain (viṣaya) of the Buddhas. This he distinguished from the absence of self (nairātmya) in phenomena (dharma-s).

Yes, this is the same Vasubandhu who earlier wrote a supplementary chapter to his Abhidharma-kośa on the person (pudgala). This supplementary chapter, chapter 9, is one of the strongest statements of anātman and one of the most sustained arguments against the ātman to be found anywhere in the Buddhist writings. It is for reasons like this that Bhattacharya in his book stresses the need to ask “which ātman?” is being referred to in any Buddhist statement about the ātman.
 
Nicholas

Nicholas

Bodhicitta
Given the eager responses and fervid interest in this book and topic,
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here are more writings by Bhattacharya:

More on Ātman-Brahman by Kamaleswar Bhattacharya — The Book of Dzyan
 
atanu

atanu

Member
Premium Member
Kirran said:
If I may comment, over here in the neighbouring DIR, and that next closest to my heart:

The Buddha taught that there was no self, nothing that made you you, there was only a emptiness there. But that that emptiness was constant.

Adi Shankara taught that the small self, the ahamkara, that which made you you, was transitory and false. It wasn't actually you. What you are, is that timeless emptiness within all things.

I feel these aren't contradictory. It's repudiating the small self either way, and identifying the individual with the universal.
Click to expand...

What is real can never become unreal. What is unreal can never become real.

IMO, if we replace the word atman with 'real', ............
 
atanu

atanu

Member
Premium Member
The only problem is that who or what knows, sees, and teaches about that 'real'?
 
Nicholas

Nicholas

Bodhicitta
From page 207 of Bhattacharya's conclusion:

The Buddha certainly denied the åtman. That åtman,
however, is not the Upanishadic åtman. Better still: the true
spiritual åtman, for the Upanishads as for the Buddha, is the
negation of that which men generally consider to be the
åtman, that is, the psycho-physical individuality.

In actual fact, our controversy is nothing but an argument
over words. The authentic åtman, being the negation of
the empirical åtman, is anåtman; and anåtman is a negative
expression which indicates the authentic åtman, which is ineffable
and—from the objective point of view—“non-existent.”

There is no contradiction between åtman and anåtman. The
åtman, which is denied, and that which is affirmed, through
that negation itself, pertains to two different levels. It is only
when we have not succeeded in distinguishing between
them, that the terms åtman and anåtman seem to us to be
opposed.
 
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