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Posted

What exactly is the difference between anatta and sunnata? I've seen definitions but they seem pretty much the same.

And, on a vaguely related subject, how did Buddhadasa Bhikkhu become "Thailand's most revered monk" after he was accused of being a heretic, communist and Mahayanist, and taught that rebirth was a foolish idea that had nothing to do with Buddhism?

Posted
What exactly is the difference between anatta and sunnata? I've seen definitions but they seem pretty much the same.

And, on a vaguely related subject, how did Buddhadasa Bhikkhu become "Thailand's most revered monk" after he was accused of being a heretic, communist and Mahayanist, and taught that rebirth was a foolish idea that had nothing to do with Buddhism?

I'll take a stab at this. Anatta is Pali for 'no atma', i.e., 'no self'. What exactly that means is regularly debated by Buddhist scholars though many take it to mean 'neither self nor not-self', meaning what we take to be our identity can't be defined merely as a separate, individual entity. The concept is closely allied with anicca or impermanence, with the implication that anything we might take to be self or not self exists only briefly.

Sunnata means 'void' or 'emptiness' as I understand it, and is always present, that is, not subject to anicca. The Pali suttas include several mentions of sunnata or emptiness, I'll paste a link to a translation of the Cula-Sunnata Sutta below. To me these references don't go very far in explaining the concept, which was much further developed (I think) in Mahayana and esp Zen.

If seems to me that the Pali suttas describe anatta as a condition of existence, and sunnata as a spiritual attainment -- more or less.

cula-sunnata

Ven Buddhadasa often separated the concept into two lines of thought, using the Thai khwaam-waang (emptiness) and jit waang (empty mind). One of my favourite lectures of his, available in written Thai and perhaps nowadays in English, is called "Emptiness & Empty Mind" (khwaam-waang -- jit waang).

How did Ven B go from heretic to hero? His ideas appealed to a liberal wing of Buddhism that resisted the Thai military dictatorship of the 70s and early 80s, and when the right-wingers tried branding Ven B as a communist, etc, that automatically magnified their interest and support. Many of the students who fled to the mountains and joined the CPT considered Ven B to be the only cleric who spoke for them, while the orthodoxy more or less acquiesced to the military.

Meanwhile the silent majority of Thais were swayed by the government's fear tactics and regarded Ven B somewhat suspiciously (all the more so because Ven B refused offers of high clerical rank, preferring to remain the abbot of a simple forest monastery).

Thailand was very polarised in those days, and even Thai Buddhism became more political than usual. The right-wingers had their hero in Phra Kittivuttho, who smuggled arms to paramilitary organisations and made such pronouncements as "Killing a communist isn't a sin, it's like placing a fish in a monk's bowl." The Communist Party of Thailand had their own monks who would preach on radio in CPT-held areas of the country (Ven B was not one of them, although he did teach CPT members in Surat, and anyone else who came to him, regardless of political affiliation).

After the amnesty of '82, when the students returned to the cities, Ven B's many supporters were able to defeat the right-wing propaganda about him, and this helped sway the general public towards Ven B. During the relatively liberal 80s, his teachings received a lot of support from the middle class. At least by then, taking the balance of his life and career, it was obvious he was never a danger to Thai society etc.

After he passed away in '93, Thais began suggesting he may have been an arahant, which has of course added to the legend.

I spent a few weeks in his company in 1981, can't say whether he was an arahant but he was a master Pali scholar, and could cut to the heart of any questions about Buddhism very quickly. His successor, Ven Po, can do the same.

Posted (edited)

I thought that anatta meant 'not self' which to me is different from 'no self'. I thought that the suttas are littered with comments about various phenomena being 'not self' but that it the suttas do not contain any statement that says that there is 'no self'.

An example of the difference might be if you saw a dog on a leash....you would say that the leash is 'not dog' but you would be wrong to say that there is 'no dog'. In a similar way the Buddha said that the body (for example) is 'not self'....but this does not mean that there is 'no self'.

Also wasn't the Buddha asked if there was a 'self' and he refused to answer? I'm thinking that the question asking if there is a self or not is one of the questions that should not be answered because any way that it is answered it will lead you to wrong view?...but perhaps my memory is incorrect on this.

I'm not wanting to argue about this....I've heard long arguments about this before and I always wonder where the misunderstanding came from...if what I have said above is correct then there doesn't seem much room for controversy so perhaps I'm missing something about this topic.

Edited by chownah
Posted (edited)

Anatta contradicts atta, or the atman cocnept of soul in Hinduism. (Atman - the inner spirit or soul, Brahman - the universal spirit, or some "god"-like entity).

The Buddha reffered to each of the five aggregates as anatta, meaning there is no self to be found in them.

As for sunnata, indeed not much in Theravada about it, some say the suttas were lost. The Mahayana concept of sunnata is wider than anatta, it means emptiness of all things, nothingness and no essence in any matter or concept! :o

Edited by ~G~
Posted
An example of the difference might be if you saw a dog on a leash....you would say that the leash is 'not dog' but you would be wrong to say that there is 'no dog'.  In a similar way the Buddha said that the body (for example) is 'not self'....but this does not mean that there is 'no self'.

What about the body of the dog, is that the dog or is it not dog? Or the mind of the dog is that the dog or is it not dog? How about the collection of the mind and body of the dog?

Conventionally we have to say there is a dog, but ultimately is there a dog that is permant, partless and causeless?

Is there a dog that self supporting and substantially existant?

Is there a dog that exists inherently from it's own side?

If we fail to find a dog even when one appears to our mind does that mean that everything is sunnata?

Posted (edited)
An example of the difference might be if you saw a dog on a leash....you would say that the leash is 'not dog' but you would be wrong to say that there is 'no dog'.  In a similar way the Buddha said that the body (for example) is 'not self'....but this does not mean that there is 'no self'.

What about the body of the dog, is that the dog or is it not dog? Or the mind of the dog is that the dog or is it not dog? How about the collection of the mind and body of the dog?

Conventionally we have to say there is a dog, but ultimately is there a dog that is permant, partless and causeless?

Is there a dog that self supporting and substantially existant?

Is there a dog that exists inherently from it's own side?

If we fail to find a dog even when one appears to our mind does that mean that everything is sunnata?

'Dog' is not a thing external to the mind. 'Dog' is a mental fabrication that arises from a bundle of conditioned experiences. When contact is made among the sense bases, their forms, and the associated consciousnesses and some conditioned threshold level of similarity to other events of consciousness from the past is reached then our mind creates the mental fabrication 'dog'. 'Dog' is only in your mind.....the fact that when we perceive a lot of different blood filled leather bags covered with hair and they all bring up the same mental fabrication 'dog' is a truly amazing mental feat considering that with relatively minor changes a group of blood filled leather bags covered with hair will bring up the mental fabrication of 'cat'.....and we all seem to agree on 'dog' or 'cat'....with virtually 100% agreement.

My previous post was not meant to talk about the existance of 'dog'....it was meant to explain a point about the difference between 'not self' and 'no self' or more generally speaking 'not thing' and 'no thing'....more of an explanation of grammar than Buddhist philosophy.

Edited by chownah
Posted
An example of the difference might be if you saw a dog on a leash....you would say that the leash is 'not dog' but you would be wrong to say that there is 'no dog'.  In a similar way the Buddha said that the body (for example) is 'not self'....but this does not mean that there is 'no self'.

What about the body of the dog, is that the dog or is it not dog? Or the mind of the dog is that the dog or is it not dog? How about the collection of the mind and body of the dog?

Conventionally we have to say there is a dog, but ultimately is there a dog that is permant, partless and causeless?

Is there a dog that self supporting and substantially existant?

Is there a dog that exists inherently from it's own side?

If we fail to find a dog even when one appears to our mind does that mean that everything is sunnata?

'Dog' is not a thing external to the mind. 'Dog' is a mental fabrication that arises from a bundle of conditioned experiences. When contact is made among the sense bases, their forms, and the associated consciousnesses and some conditioned threshold level of similarity to other events of consciousness from the past is reached then our mind creates the mental fabrication 'dog'. 'Dog' is only in your mind.....the fact that when we perceive a lot of different blood filled leather bags covered with hair and they all bring up the same mental fabrication 'dog' is a truly amazing mental feat considering that with relatively minor changes a group of blood filled leather bags covered with hair will bring up the mental fabrication of 'cat'.....and we all seem to agree on 'dog' or 'cat'....with virtually 100% agreement.

My previous post was not meant to talk about the existance of 'dog'....it was meant to explain a point about the difference between 'not self' and 'no self' or more generally speaking 'not thing' and 'no thing'....more of an explanation of grammar than Buddhist philosophy.

Sorry Chownah but in my very unskillful way that was what I was getting at the difference between 'not thing' and 'no thing'.

Mai pen rai Khrap :o

Posted
I'll take a stab at this. Anatta is Pali for 'no atma', i.e., 'no self'. What exactly that means is regularly debated by Buddhist scholars though many take it to mean 'neither self nor not-self', meaning what we take to be our identity can't be defined merely as a separate, individual entity. The concept is closely allied with anicca or impermanence, with the implication that anything we might take to be self or not self exists only briefly.

Sunnata means 'void' or 'emptiness' as I understand it, and is always present, that is, not subject to anicca. The Pali suttas include several mentions of sunnata or emptiness, I'll paste a link to a translation of the Cula-Sunnata Sutta below. To me these references don't go very far in explaining the concept, which was much further developed (I think) in Mahayana and esp Zen.

Thanks. One reason it's confusing is that "void" is often explained by saying it means "void of self." Anatta and sunnata seem to be two ways of looking at any phenomenon. A chair could be described as anatta, because as we know it will one day become something else. It could be described as sunnata because it, or whatever it becomes, always has the quality of not existing separately from anything else.

However, I don't think nibbana is ever described as anatta, whereas Buddhadasa refers to it as sunnata.

I wonder why "selfless" and "soulless" are often used interchangeably? I would think only sentient beings would normally be described as soulless or having a soul.

Posted
I thought that anatta meant 'not self' which to me is different from 'no self'.  I thought that the suttas are littered with comments about various phenomena being 'not self' but that it the suttas do not contain any statement that says that there is 'no self'.

An example of the difference might be if you saw a dog on a leash....you would say that the leash is 'not dog' but you would be wrong to say that there is 'no dog'.  In a similar way the Buddha said that the body (for example) is 'not self'....but this does not mean that there is 'no self'.

Also wasn't the Buddha asked if there was a 'self' and he refused to answer?  I'm thinking that the question asking if there is a self or not is one of the questions that should not be answered because any way that it is answered it will lead you to wrong view?...but perhaps my memory is incorrect on this.

I'm not wanting to argue about this....I've heard long arguments about this before and I always wonder where the misunderstanding came from...if what I have said above is correct then there doesn't seem much room for controversy so perhaps I'm missing something about this topic.

excellent post chownah - I had never really thought of it from that angle

There is a sutta that describes these perceptions as different to the practitioner, but the same for an arahant ... I will have to dig it out. Anyway, we are all on the right lines I think.

  • 11 months later...
Posted
I'll take a stab at this. Anatta is Pali for 'no atma', i.e., 'no self'. What exactly that means is regularly debated by Buddhist scholars though many take it to mean 'neither self nor not-self', meaning what we take to be our identity can't be defined merely as a separate, individual entity. The concept is closely allied with anicca or impermanence, with the implication that anything we might take to be self or not self exists only briefly.

Sunnata means 'void' or 'emptiness' as I understand it, and is always present, that is, not subject to anicca. The Pali suttas include several mentions of sunnata or emptiness, I'll paste a link to a translation of the Cula-Sunnata Sutta below. To me these references don't go very far in explaining the concept, which was much further developed (I think) in Mahayana and esp Zen.

If seems to me that the Pali suttas describe anatta as a condition of existence, and sunnata as a spiritual attainment -- more or less.

I just came across this in Wikipedia:

Nāgārjuna's primary contribution to Buddhist philosophy is in the development of the concept of śūnyatā, or "emptiness," which brings together other key Buddhist doctrines, particularly anatta (no-self) and pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination). For Nāgārjuna, it is not merely sentient beings that are empty of ātman; all phenomena are without any svabhāva, literally "own-nature" or "self-nature", and thus without any underlying essence; they are empty of being independent. This is so because they are arisen dependently: not by their own power, but by depending on conditions leading to their coming into existence, as opposed to being.

This seems to suggest that anatta describes the condition of no-self in sentient beings (i.e. no immortal soul) whereas sunnata describes a condition of "no self-nature" (i.e. no independent existence) in all phenomena.

Posted

I'll take a stab at this. Anatta is Pali for 'no atma', i.e., 'no self'. What exactly that means is regularly debated by Buddhist scholars though many take it to mean 'neither self nor not-self', meaning what we take to be our identity can't be defined merely as a separate, individual entity. The concept is closely allied with anicca or impermanence, with the implication that anything we might take to be self or not self exists only briefly.

Sunnata means 'void' or 'emptiness' as I understand it, and is always present, that is, not subject to anicca. The Pali suttas include several mentions of sunnata or emptiness, I'll paste a link to a translation of the Cula-Sunnata Sutta below. To me these references don't go very far in explaining the concept, which was much further developed (I think) in Mahayana and esp Zen.

If seems to me that the Pali suttas describe anatta as a condition of existence, and sunnata as a spiritual attainment -- more or less.

I just came across this in Wikipedia:

Nāgārjuna's primary contribution to Buddhist philosophy is in the development of the concept of śūnyatā, or "emptiness," which brings together other key Buddhist doctrines, particularly anatta (no-self) and pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination). For Nāgārjuna, it is not merely sentient beings that are empty of ātman; all phenomena are without any svabhāva, literally "own-nature" or "self-nature", and thus without any underlying essence; they are empty of being independent. This is so because they are arisen dependently: not by their own power, but by depending on conditions leading to their coming into existence, as opposed to being.

This seems to suggest that anatta describes the condition of no-self in sentient beings (i.e. no immortal soul) whereas sunnata describes a condition of "no self-nature" (i.e. no independent existence) in all phenomena.

That sounds about right, and seems to be echoed in the Cula-Suññata Sutta.

Posted

I agree with Chownah's post, and strongly so. I think he points out an extremely common misconception-- that of 'anatta' meaning 'no self.' It does not-- it is most certainly an adjective, and thus refers to 'not-self' rather than 'no-self,' just as anicca translates into 'impermanent', rather than 'impermanence.' I do not wish to get into a philisophical debate over this issue-- I am making a purely linguistic point, and one can take the implications thereof as he or she likes. I just find it unfortunate that so many mediocre books on Buddhism blab on about 'no-self,' as this mis-translation obviously has widespread implications. Example-- early German Buddhists assert 'no-self,' which inspires Schopenhaur's dire pessimism, which in turn begets Nietzsche's nihilistic leanings, who's Will to Power inspires Hitler.... :o

Posted

Camerata

This article may be of interest:

Velez de Cea, Abraham

2005 "Emptiness in the pali suttas and the question of Nagarjuna's orthodoxy."

Philosophy East and West, Vol 55/4, pp. 507-529.

Posted
I agree with Chownah's post, and strongly so. I think he points out an extremely common misconception-- that of 'anatta' meaning 'no self.' It does not-- it is most certainly an adjective, and thus refers to 'not-self' rather than 'no-self,' just as anicca translates into 'impermanent', rather than 'impermanence.' I do not wish to get into a philisophical debate over this issue-- I am making a purely linguistic point, and one can take the implications thereof as he or she likes. I just find it unfortunate that so many mediocre books on Buddhism blab on about 'no-self,' as this mis-translation obviously has widespread implications. Example-- early German Buddhists assert 'no-self,' which inspires Schopenhaur's dire pessimism, which in turn begets Nietzsche's nihilistic leanings, who's Will to Power inspires Hitler.... :o

On a purely linguistic level, the Pali anatta (from Sanskrit an + atma) can be translated 'no self', 'non-self' or 'not self'. For that matter the English phrases 'no self' and 'not self' can be interpreted in different ways. So the underlying problem of interpreting anatta can't be solved via etymology alone. :D

I think most Buddhist writings on anatta do put forth the notion that the Pali Buddhist notion of anatta refers to 'neither self nor not-self/no-self', and of course there's the famous sutta passage where the Buddha says exactly that.

As noted by Ven Thanisarro:

The one passage where the Buddha is asked point-blank to take a position on the ontological question of whether or not there is a self, he refuses to answer.

The passages which state most categorically that there is no self are qualified in such a way that they cover all of describable reality, but not all of reality which may be experienced.

Views that there is no self are ranked with views that that there is a self as a "fetter of views" which a person aiming at release from suffering would do well to avoid.

The person who has attained the goal of release views reality in such a way that all views — even such basic notions as self & no-self, true & false — can have no hold power over the mind.

Ven Thanisarro's incisive essay on the topic suggests that the anatta concept is strategic/teleological rather than defining/ontological.

There's another thread on this topic here.

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