SELF

Question 1

Defining the “self”: Brahmanic–al background, early India, ca 1500 BCE

Answer 1

™ From the Vedic literature, ātman refers to the principle which animates all beings, being associated to the vital breathing (prāṇa).
o Also a reflexivepronoun,“oneself”.
™ In the upaniṣads, designates the unperishable, invisible reality, which ensures unity and continuity to any sentient being, even beyond death. Located at the centre of the heart and, at the same time, all-pervasive.
™ The self ends up being recognised as the Absolute (brahman), whose full, non-discursive realisation, leads to liberation.
atman close to our understanding of “soul”: every individual as cosmic principle

Question 2

Buddhas insights (ca 400 BCE)

Answer 2

• impermanence (anitya)
• unsatisfactoriness /suffering (duḥkha) –
• absence of self (anātman)

Question 3

Buddhist doctrine of no-self (anātman)

Answer 3

To exist independently, as a “self” means to have a:
- permanent
- unchanging
- essential nature (Skt.svabhāva)
But nothing is permanent —> nothing has a “self”

Question 4

The “self” = Five “Aggregates” SKANDHAS

Answer 4

BUT NONE OF THESE ARE THE SELF!
* visible matter / physical basis (rūpa)
* sensation / feeling (vedanā)
* notion / recognition (saṃjñā)
* mental formations / volition (saṃskāra)
* consciousness (vijñāna)

they form cognitive basis
in daily life convention of self is helpful, but it is more a process then a state

encounter with Mara as deconstruction of the self

Question 5

what transmigrates?

Answer 5

Ø The individual = a flow of physical and mental phenomena, a continuum (Skt. santāna)
Ø The aggregates are ever-changing; they dissolve and reassemble at the juncture between two lives.

nothing substantial migrates, only aggrgated karma heritage

Question 6

The building-blocks of transient existence

Answer 6

dharmas = real (momentary) irreducible components of existence, that combine to form living (self-less) beings
* Conditioned (saṃskrṭa) dharmas are characterized by three characteristic marks (lakṣaṇa): arising, duration- cum-alteration, disappearance.

Question 7

KLAUSUR PRINZIP WICHTIG: Describing reality through lists: 75 dharmas in Sarvāstivādin Schol–asticism (Abhidharma)

Answer 7

• 3 unconditioned: space and 2 nirvāṇas (due and not due to discriminating thought, pratisaṃkhyā)
• 11 material dharmas: 5 sense organs, 5 objects, 1 “unmanifest action” (avijñāptirūpa)
• Thought (citta)
• 46 Mental factors (caitta)
• 14 forces dissociated from thought (cittaviprayuktasaṃskāra), accounting for a range of experiential or doctrinally necessary events (such as birth, old age…)

Question 8

Buddhism as t–he “Middle Path”

Answer 8

• Practically, Middle Path between a life of pleasure and extreme asceticism.
  -Doctrinally, Middle Path between “eternalism”(śāśvatadṛṣti)and“nihilism” (ucchedadṛṣṭi).

Question 9

Buddhist beliefs in a “person” (pudgala)

Answer 9

Early Buddhist discourses, , identifying the “burden” with the five agregates and the bearer of the burden as the “person” (pudgala).
– Interpreted by an influential Buddhist trend (the Pudgalavādins) as a transmigrating person, neither distinct nor different from the five agregates, and as fundamentally “inexpressible” (avācya).
– This view is attacked by most Buddhists as lurching towards the belief in the Self (ātmavāda), and branded as heterodox. Argued that “individual” was in the Bhārahārasūtra a conventional designation.
– Still, non-Buddhist authors used the sūtra to point a contradiction in Buddhist discourses which, ultimately, have to resort to accepting the “self”.

Question 10

Emptiness and non-duality in Mahāyāna thought

Answer 10

KEY TEARM
™ Term which plays a major role in an early and influential group of discourses defining the “Great Vehicle” (Mahāyāna), the Prajñāparamitā or “Perfection of Wisdom”
– This group of texts redefines prajñā, “discernment”, as the correct understanding of the emptiness of all things or dharmas.
– Reinterprets the earlier doctrine of non-Self (anātman, pudgalanairātmya) as a form of emptiness, “emptiness of being” (sattvaśūnyatā), and argues for the insubstantiality of the very building blocks of existence, the “emptiness of dharmas”.
™ śūnya, “empty” (also “zero”) – śūnyatā, “emptiness”

Question 11

“Empty” and “emptiness” in pre- (or non-)Prajñāpāramitā discourses

Answer 11

Being impermanent, dharmas are sometimes qualified as “devoid” (śūnya) of self, of I or of mine. (śūnyā ātmanā cātmīyena ca)
Ø In some passages, trace of the so-called “emptiness of dharmas”, but śūnyatā is not used as an overarching principle.
In the two Sūtras on Emptiness (Śūnyatāsūtra), śūnyatā is a relational form of emptiness, “a recognition of the absence or presence of states within the field of meditative awareness of the practitioner” (Skilling).
Ø No ontological or philosophical status, but a practice of progressive abstraction from the objects of perceptions, an “obliterative” form of meditation that leads to go beyond mental signs and to liberation

Question 12

The domain of emptiness

Answer 12

All dharmas are empty, that is:
2 without a nature of their own, without characteristic marks (proper or common), without essence
(against the scholastic analysis of dharmas)
2 without birth or destruction; originally at rest (reinterpretation of dependent arising)
2 equal and non-dual
(developing the rejection of all extremes)

Question 13

“Empty of Emptiness”

Answer 13

Against the reification of emptiness: those who hold to emptiness are mislead.
But… emptiness is not nothing (the perfection of wisdom is not a nihilism); it is beyond existence and non-existence.
Later debates on the ontological status of emptiness, between two major philosophical schools, the Yogācāra and the Mādhyamika : training the mind in non-attachment