So, I was listening to another podcast episode from Tricycle on the weekend, and it featured an American who has long been a Buddhist monk in what is called the Thai Forest Tradition (first time I've heard of that.) His name is Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, and I see from his Wiki page that he's 76 - way older than he sounded on the podcast, I reckon.
Anyway, the podcast episode had the title "Did the Buddha Really Teach That There is No Self?" - which is pretty intriguing, especially coming from a Buddhist monk.
It turns out, now that I have had time to Google him, that this monk has been arguing his take on this for a long time - an article here, from 1996, contains the key argument he was making in the podcast. It's not very long, but given the inevitability of link rot, let's copy most of it here anyway:
...if you look at the Pali canon — the earliest extant record of the Buddha's teachings — you won't find them addressed at all. In fact, the one place where the Buddha was asked point-blank whether or not there was a self, he refused to answer. When later asked why, he said that to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible. Thus the question should be put aside.
The Buddha divided all questions into four classes: those that deserve a categorical (straight yes or no) answer; those that deserve an analytical answer, defining and qualifying the terms of the question; those that deserve a counter-question, putting the ball back in the questioner's court; and those that deserve to be put aside. The last class of question consists of those that don't lead to the end of suffering and stress. The first duty of a teacher, when asked a question, is to figure out which class the question belongs to, and then to respond in the appropriate way. You don't, for example, say yes or no to a question that should be put aside. If you are the person asking the question and you get an answer, you should then determine how far the answer should be interpreted. The Buddha said that there are two types of people who misrepresent him: those who draw inferences from statements that shouldn't have inferences drawn from them, and those who don't draw inferences from those that should.
These are the basic ground rules for interpreting the Buddha's teachings, but if we look at the way most writers treat the anatta doctrine, we find these ground rules ignored. Some writers try to qualify the no-self interpretation by saying that the Buddha denied the existence of an eternal self or a separate self, but this is to give an analytical answer to a question that the Buddha showed should be put aside. Others try to draw inferences from the few statements in the discourse that seem to imply that there is no self, but it seems safe to assume that if one forces those statements to give an answer to a question that should be put aside, one is drawing inferences where they shouldn't be drawn.
So, instead of answering "no" to the question of whether or not there is a self — interconnected or separate, eternal or not — the Buddha felt that the question was misguided to begin with. Why? No matter how you define the line between "self" and "other," the notion of self involves an element of self-identification and clinging, and thus suffering and stress. This holds as much for an interconnected self, which recognizes no "other," as it does for a separate self. If one identifies with all of nature, one is pained by every felled tree. It also holds for an entirely "other" universe, in which the sense of alienation and futility would become so debilitating as to make the quest for happiness — one's own or that of others — impossible. For these reasons, the Buddha advised paying no attention to such questions as "Do I exist?" or "Don't I exist?" for however you answer them, they lead to suffering and stress.
To avoid the suffering implicit in questions of "self" and "other," he offered an alternative way of dividing up experience: the four Noble Truths of stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. Rather than viewing these truths as pertaining to self or other, he said, one should recognize them simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each.
I take it from the podcast that there are certainly other Buddhist figures who disagree with this take, which (as I said in the title to the post) I think could be called an argument that Buddha's true position was akin to agnosticism on the self question, not "no self".
In the podcast he did make some pragmatic comments that went a bit further than that short article (there was talk of the idea of responsibility that is somewhat tied to "self" being a "skilful" thing to - how to put this? - maybe not "believe", but at least not dismiss.)
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