I am inviting serious Buddhist scholars/thinkers and also any scholarly thinking people here to help me pin down what is anatta in Buddhism.
What I know from reading about Buddhism is that anatta is what in English one would call non-self; so that if Yrreg is a self and he dies, then he is a non-self already.
Another example of a non-self is the baby which a woman could have conceived and given birth to had she gotten married, but she never got married and she died before ever getting married: the baby is a non-self.
Abstractly, a non-self is the opposite of a self; so that if a self exists, a non-self does not exist.
So far, so good?
Well, every child who knows how to use reflective pronouns know what is a self and what is a non-self: for example, he can say: "I hurt myself," when he falls down the stairs and sustains some injury. If it is another child who got hurt falling down the stairs, he can say about the other child: (referring to the other child) "He hurt himself."
Okay, he knows himself and he knows another self, but does he know what is a non-self. Silly question, of course he knows; because if he drops a chair while coming down the stairs carrying a chair, and his mother asks him shouting from the kitchen, "Did you hurt yourself?" and he answers, "No, I didn't hurt myself." "Well," the mother persisted, "did anyone else get hurt?" And he answered: "No, no one else hurt himself."
At this point I happening to be visiting with the family ask the child: "Tell me, suppose you say to your mommy that no self got hurt, is that correct?" "Sure, that's correct," he agrees with my suggestive question.
Then if I propose to him to holler to his mother in the kitchen the following line: "Mom, I am telling you again, no self got hurt," using no self for a subject of the sentence instead of no one; what do you think the child will tell me?
"Sir, using no self for no one is an awkward way of talking, and my mother will think that I am trying to be funny or to effect some peculiar kind of language." "But," I continued, "isn't no one and no self the same, tell me honestly." I am sure if I were him I would say, "Certainly, of course, surely, they are the same; it's just that we are not accustomed to use no self when we want to say not I, not you, not she, he, or it, and not any two or more entities as the subject of a sentence, when we want to indicate that there is no subject, not even one, so no one."
Self in English therefore is a reflexive pronoun standing for a human person. Can there be the use of reflexive pronouns on non human entities? like this sentence: The dynamite stick blew up itself.
Does that sentence make sense in English? Nonsense of course, because a dynamite stick is not a human person or person in short and therefore cannot do anything much less to itself; no need for us to assign itself as an agent.
What about a computer that is programmed to self-charge its power pack when the charge level has gotten low? Can we say that the computer charges itself, i.e., its battery?
This is going to take a lot of examination of words and ideas and agency of causality.
For the present we can say that the self in English is a person, understanding a human person -- because in theistic religions and in belief-systems where there are also non-human but intelligent beings in possession of choice, socalled invisible spirits, God being the supreme one, all these entities withal being invisible are also persons.
I am sorry, I seem to meander and get nowhere; hopefully you guys who are Buddhist/scholars and people of scholarly leaning can discern some direction I am taking.
I will go and read from Buddhist thinkers who are native Sri Lankans and Thais and Nepalese and Taiwanese and Chinese, but who are also conversant in English and in Western thinking, what they say about anatta.
You see, what I read about anatta is all from Westerners who have converted to Buddhism and are trying to expound anatta, and basing themselves on texts favored by the Theravada school or the Mahayana school; to my knowledge they don't ever bother to consult with the millennial adherents of Buddhism in the lands where Buddhism first saw the light of dawn in the Far East.
Right now, I would suggest that we all find out whether the anatta or the non-self talked about in Buddhism is exclusively to be focused on humans, or is Buddhism concerned also with non human entities like stone on the one side and non-human animate beings like land and sea and sky animals on the other side?
And this is where also things get very complex and complicated, because in Buddhism you have the belief in rebirth aka reincarnation (but Western converts don't relish that term, reincarnation, why? go and find out why).
I will narrow down the topic for this thread in my next message.
Yrreg
What I know from reading about Buddhism is that anatta is what in English one would call non-self; so that if Yrreg is a self and he dies, then he is a non-self already.
Another example of a non-self is the baby which a woman could have conceived and given birth to had she gotten married, but she never got married and she died before ever getting married: the baby is a non-self.
Abstractly, a non-self is the opposite of a self; so that if a self exists, a non-self does not exist.
So far, so good?
Well, every child who knows how to use reflective pronouns know what is a self and what is a non-self: for example, he can say: "I hurt myself," when he falls down the stairs and sustains some injury. If it is another child who got hurt falling down the stairs, he can say about the other child: (referring to the other child) "He hurt himself."
Okay, he knows himself and he knows another self, but does he know what is a non-self. Silly question, of course he knows; because if he drops a chair while coming down the stairs carrying a chair, and his mother asks him shouting from the kitchen, "Did you hurt yourself?" and he answers, "No, I didn't hurt myself." "Well," the mother persisted, "did anyone else get hurt?" And he answered: "No, no one else hurt himself."
At this point I happening to be visiting with the family ask the child: "Tell me, suppose you say to your mommy that no self got hurt, is that correct?" "Sure, that's correct," he agrees with my suggestive question.
Then if I propose to him to holler to his mother in the kitchen the following line: "Mom, I am telling you again, no self got hurt," using no self for a subject of the sentence instead of no one; what do you think the child will tell me?
"Sir, using no self for no one is an awkward way of talking, and my mother will think that I am trying to be funny or to effect some peculiar kind of language." "But," I continued, "isn't no one and no self the same, tell me honestly." I am sure if I were him I would say, "Certainly, of course, surely, they are the same; it's just that we are not accustomed to use no self when we want to say not I, not you, not she, he, or it, and not any two or more entities as the subject of a sentence, when we want to indicate that there is no subject, not even one, so no one."
Self in English therefore is a reflexive pronoun standing for a human person. Can there be the use of reflexive pronouns on non human entities? like this sentence: The dynamite stick blew up itself.
Does that sentence make sense in English? Nonsense of course, because a dynamite stick is not a human person or person in short and therefore cannot do anything much less to itself; no need for us to assign itself as an agent.
What about a computer that is programmed to self-charge its power pack when the charge level has gotten low? Can we say that the computer charges itself, i.e., its battery?
This is going to take a lot of examination of words and ideas and agency of causality.
For the present we can say that the self in English is a person, understanding a human person -- because in theistic religions and in belief-systems where there are also non-human but intelligent beings in possession of choice, socalled invisible spirits, God being the supreme one, all these entities withal being invisible are also persons.
I am sorry, I seem to meander and get nowhere; hopefully you guys who are Buddhist/scholars and people of scholarly leaning can discern some direction I am taking.
I will go and read from Buddhist thinkers who are native Sri Lankans and Thais and Nepalese and Taiwanese and Chinese, but who are also conversant in English and in Western thinking, what they say about anatta.
You see, what I read about anatta is all from Westerners who have converted to Buddhism and are trying to expound anatta, and basing themselves on texts favored by the Theravada school or the Mahayana school; to my knowledge they don't ever bother to consult with the millennial adherents of Buddhism in the lands where Buddhism first saw the light of dawn in the Far East.
Right now, I would suggest that we all find out whether the anatta or the non-self talked about in Buddhism is exclusively to be focused on humans, or is Buddhism concerned also with non human entities like stone on the one side and non-human animate beings like land and sea and sky animals on the other side?
And this is where also things get very complex and complicated, because in Buddhism you have the belief in rebirth aka reincarnation (but Western converts don't relish that term, reincarnation, why? go and find out why).
I will narrow down the topic for this thread in my next message.
Yrreg
