INTRODUCTION TO THE  STUDY OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

SEMINAR TWO

TEXT II. On the Mark of No-Self[1]

(The Second Sermon)

Thus have I heard. The Lord was then abiding in the Deer Park at Isipitana (the Resort of Seers) near Benares. There he addressed the group of five monks:

“Body,[2] monks, is not Self. Now, wre this body Self, it would not tend to sickness, and one might get the chance of saying about (one’s) body: “let the body become thus for me, let the body not become thus for me”. But inasmuch as body is not Self and therefore tends to sickness, one cannot get the chance of saying that. Likewise, feeling is not Self, perception is not Self, mental synergies are not Self, consciousness is not Self. So one cannot say, with respect to any of the five aggregates: “let it become thus for me” etc.

“Now, monks, is body permanent or impermanent? – Impermanent, Lord.

But is that which is impermanent painful or pleasurable? – Painful, Lord. But would it be proper to consider that which is impermanent, changeable as: “This is mine, this I am, this is my Self? – It is not, Lord. “Wherefore, monks, whatever the body is, future, present or past, internal or external,[3] gross or subtle,[4] low or superior, far or near, but seen as it is,[5] it should be seen thus: “this is not mine, this I am not, this is not my Self.” And the same with other four aggregates.”

Seeing all this in this way, the instructed pupil of the Noble Ones[6] refuses to know, disregards all the aggregates. Disregarding then he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion he is freed and knows: I am freed, what should be done is done, there is nothing left to be done for me. This is my last rebirth. There is no more becoming for me.[7]

Delighted, the five monks rejoiced in what the Blessed One said. Moreover, while this sermon was being uttered, their minds were freed from (all) obscurations[8] and became devoid of grasping.

At that time there were six awakened ones[9] in this world.

SEMINAR II: “Why it is not I?” or “Why I am not it?”

Let us start the philosophical consideration: as the second (after suffering in Text I) mark of the phenomenal world No-Self or I-less-ness means not so much that there is no “I” or no Self, as that there is not a thing or a phenomenon (dharma) in the universe, which would be “I” or Self. To which could be added: …“being, at the same time what it (i.e., a thing or a phenomenon) is.” From this follows the duality of our questions and the ambivalence of No-Self (or I-less-ness) as a notion and term of Buddhist philosophy. Thus when one says (note, “one” here is also an enigmatic word, but about it a little later), “I am not my body” or “I am not my mind”, one’s saying so may have at least two senses. The first sense, objective, is that no phenomenon, no dharma, including “one”, “body” and “mind”, can be I or Self. The second, subjective, that what I call “I” (that is, in the sense of the first person singular pronoun), is neither (my) body, nor (my) mind, but something else. Or, shall we say some thing other than… Other than what? – In fact, other than anything.

The objective and the subjective sense are irreducible to one another; nor can there be some “third” sense which would subsume both of them as two of its particular cases. When the sages of the Upanishads stated in their almost sacred formula “Thou art that” (skr. tat tvam asi) where that denotes the self (åtman), it simply means: “thou art not body, thou art not mind, nor thine name, nor clan, nor people, nor anything which is not that.” Whereas the Buddha’s antithesis to it, in this sermon, is: “thou art neither that, nor anything else.” However, the main, crucial difference between the Upanishadic thesis and the Buddhist antithesis is not so much in their initial postulates, non-atman vs. atman, non-existence of self vs. existence of Self, as between their respective rules of deduction from these postulates. So, according to this sermon, you cannot do anything to your body and mind because they are not Self, whereas according to the early prose-Upanishads, to the contrary, you can do nothing to that (i.e., to thee, for example) just because it is Self.

Moerover, it is in this sermon that is stated with utmost clarity: that which is not suffers, not-being is suffering. Hense, also: that which suffers, is not. Furthermore, that which is not – is impermanent, changeable, not being is impermanence, changeability. Hence also: that which is impermanent, is not.

Non-self, anatta, ought not to be thought of as a sheer negation of self (åtman), because they belong to two different levels of philosophical abstraction. Åtman (or åtman-brahman) was born as pure mythological (and mythologically interpreted) notion in a purely ritual Vedic context. Later, in the early Upanishads, it was being subject to more and more philosophical interpretations, and by the time of the appearance of Buddhism had already become the most fundamental notion and the ontological focus of all traditional Brahmanic philosophising. The concept of non-atman was not “naturally” born in any ritual context and knew not of any of its mythological antecedents. It was, from the very beginning, a merely philosophical notion invented in a very specialised ascetical (and, in all probability, also yoigic) context of the early Buddhism.

Now let us deliberate over non-self, anatta, as it is exposed in this sermon, but philosophically, that is, barring all trivial (that is, all which as it were “goes without saying”, “is self-evident”, or “follows dogmatically from what has been said”). We shall start with two merely hypothetical considerations.

(1) If anatta, as a universal quality, is contingent on two other universal qualities, suffering and impermanence, then it may be supposed that anatta does not apply to the cases when suffering and, therefore, impermanence do not arise. This makes anatta somewhat less definite as to the sphere of its application and, thereby, precludes it from becoming an absolute, or an extreme, anta. But what are those cases? Are they persons or men? It is here that we are returning to the questions preceding this seminar, that is, “why it (that is, Self, åtman) is not I?” and “Why I am not it?” The first is succintly answered in the sermon: simply, thou which is denoted in the question by “I” in the sense of the 1st person singular pronoun, is nothing but the five aggregates of individual existence which are by definition (!) marked (as all else) by suffering and impermanence, are not self and therefore “being” them, thou art not too. The second is far more complicated and could be, no more than provisionally answered: “You are not it because you are not (not yet?) one of those excluded from the number of those who are anatta, which means “you are not an exceptuon from the universal rule.” So, in a general case you cannot even to be a subject of suffering and impermanence because it is your body that suffers and changes, your feeling, your mind, etc., that is, the five aggregates which are only conventionally ascribed to “you” who is not their “owner”, “possessor”, etc. But what if I were an arahant, a Buddha? – Then there can be no such conventional attribution, because in Nirvana there can be no conventional “I” as the name and form (nåmarüpa), in which case self is as it were “suspended” as well as non-self.

(2) No-Self or anatta is considered the most difficult to understand by the commentators. It is so first of all for the reason that, as a sheer absence it defies all attempts of any empiricist analysis (as does åtman, though in a different way). The first pupil of Buddha, Annakondanna (??) became an arahant only after having heard and understood this sermon. Moreover, it is anatta from which the Buddhist idea of pure absence – also as an object of transcendental meditation (or concentration of mind) – is borne out, together with the idea that pure absence is not pure negation and may have its positive context. Anatta – or, probably, our thinking of it – varies with varying universes. It may be conjectured that anatta is the transcendental variable as åtman is the transcendental constant.

[1] Vinaya-pitaka, mahåvagga, I. 37-46. Also, The Book of the Discipline, Vol. IV, translated by I. B. Horner, The Pali Text Society, Oxford, 1993 (1951), pp. 20-21.

“Mark” (P.lakkhana, Skr. laksana) here denotes that by which all that there is (or all phenomena, all dharmas) is marked. There are three such marks: 1) impermanence (P. anicca, Skr. anitya); 2) No-Self (P. anatta, Skr. anåtman), and 3) suffering (see I, n. 24).

[2] Body here is, first of all, the first of the five aggregates of individual existence (see I, n. 25).

[3] “External” in two senses: first, as “externally perceivable by five organs of sense (and particularly by eyesight), second, as “material”, i.e. consisting of four material elements (P. and Skr. mahåbhüta) – earth, water, heat, and air. “Internal” as consisting of organs of sense, perceptions, and consciousness.

[4] “Gross” (P. thüla, Skr. sthüla) means the body in its anatomical and physiological sense; “subtle” (P. sukhuma, Skr. süksma) means non-perceivable (and invisible).

[5] See I, n. 36, 1).

[6] Here “Noble Ones” are those who had already realized the Four Noble Truths.

[7] As in the text I, n. 43.

[8] Or, better, “influxes” (P. åsava, Skr. åßrava).

[9] More exactly, arhats (P. arahant, Skr. arhant). “Six”, that is, the five monks and the Buddha.