Anatta in Buddhism
Uploaded by Kerrytom on Aug 10, 2013
The teaching of ‘no self’ or anatta in Buddhism can be a misleading one. There are many different views and interpretations on the subject and over the course of this essay, we will discuss the various understandings of anatta.
The first thing that is needed to do when examining this statement is to define exactly what ‘no-self’ or anatta in Buddhism is. Anatta literally means ‘no-self’. It its one of the key central teachings of Buddhism. What this doctrine means is that there is no ‘self’, in the since of a permanent, fixed, integral being, within an individual existence. In some religions, a person has an individual soul, which after death, lives eternally on either in heaven or hell. Other religions teach that the soul gets purified, by going through many lives, before being united with its particular deity, in a higher state of consciousness. However, Buddhism is unique in that it denies the existence of a soul.
Another Buddhist teaching on ‘self’, is that an individual is a combination of five aggregates of existence, called the Five Skandhas. We will discuss what these mean in relation to anatta and ‘self’. This is an important aspect to understanding what Buddha taught about ‘self’.
In addition to the Five Skandhas, we will discuss the suggestions that Buddha taught the concept of anatta, not as a metaphysical assertion, but as a strategy for gaining release from suffering.
A third aspect of this which needs examination is the fact that the two main forms of Buddhism, differ in their interpretations of anatta. We will discuss in which ways and to what extent they differ.
A final aspect to be explored on this topic, is the notion that ‘self’ is an illusion and also an obstacle to the realisation of truth.
People often find the Buddha’s teaching of anatta or ‘not self’ a difficult and confusing doctrine to comprehend. The first thing needed to do to understand his teaching of ‘not self’, is to understand how the Buddha himself defined ‘self’. Buddha essentially thought of ‘self’ in a metaphysical way. An example of what that fundamentally means is that he thought of ‘self’ as something,
“eternal, permanent, unchanging, perfectly pure, self-contained and not dependent on the body or the environment” (Denise Cush, 1983: 36).
It is a permanent abiding essence that survives...