The moderator has kindly allowed me to reframe my question
regarding the terms atta/attan as they relate to being translated
into English as 'soul' or 'self'. I beg your patience for submitting
this longer post, but I do not wish to be misunderstood.
In discussions regarding the controvery (real or imagined) of
whether the Buddha posited a 'soul' or not, I land firmly on the
latter side --that the Buddha did not posit a soul and neither did
he posit a separate self. My readings of the suttas, my many
teachers and my own meditations confirm this for me. That is not
a question for me as a Buddhist. However those individuals who
come from an 'eternalist' viewpoint, who posit a soul, frequently
point to the original Pali and the English translations and they
perceive discrepancies. Where atta/attan is used as a reflexive
pronoun, they will grumble, but the more reasonable (the less
dogmatic) will accept that explanation and move on. However
when atta/attan is translated as the noun 'self' we will often hear
much protestation and gnashing of teeth from the 'eternalist'
camp: "Here," they argue, "this use of atta/attan as a noun
*must* mean soul, etc, etc." It is wearying and frustrating
argument as we all have experienced.
I cannot, however be wholly insensitive to the dilemma which
they describe and I feel compelled to investigate their argument,
not from a dogmatic point of view, but rather from a
transcultural/transmillenial point of view --how we use and
understand language and concepts across the span of oceans,
continents, cultures and 2500 years of time.
The principal question that came up for me was: Did 5th cen
BCE Indians have a sense of a separate, secular self as we do
in 21st century modern culture? Modern Christians who posit a
soul frequently refer to the soul as a (separate) part of their total
self-identity. They have a distinct sense of their secular
personalities and their 'immortal souls'. But can we assume that
the learned Indians of 5th century BCE India had that same, very
modern sense of a separate secular self apart from their
precious Brahmanic souls? Their language, using atta/attan as
reflexive pronouns as well as nouns, suggests to me that they
did not.*
If --IF-- they did not --just imagine for a moment-- would it truly
change the meaning or the efficacy of the Buddha's teaching?
Personally, I do not *think* it would. For example:
"Bhikkhus, material form is not self, feeling is not self, perception
is not self,feeling is not self, perception is not self, formations
are not self, consciousness is not self. All formations are
impermanent, all things are not self." The Culasaccaka Sutta
MN. 35. 4
If you substitute 'soul' for 'self' it accomplishes the same end of
deconstructing the belief of the self or soul as a separate,
impervious entity. If the person that the Buddha was addressing
only understood his self and soul to be one in the same, as I
suspect 5th cen BCE Indians *may* have, would not the
Buddha's words be just as alarming and just as ultimately
enlightening, if not even more so?
I wonder?
Now, would this stop the 'eternalist' arguments? Of course not.
Because I have heard the 'eternalist' argument that: "See the
Buddha said the 'soul' was not the khandas, so that means that
the 'soul' is transcendent!" And then of course the more patient
(or more masochistic) of us would suffer this and then point out
the last sentence of the above sutta, "ALL formations are
impermanent, ALL things are not..."
I will stop here, now, and see if I have made any sense to
anyone whatsoever. And I again beg your pardon if I have
seemed impertinent or, for that matter, if I have just seemed
simply stupid!
Respectfully and sincerely,
--Osel Dorje,
Buddhist layperson, American, journalist and occasional public
nuisance
*(A 25-year old memory of my college days popped up reminding
me of Claude Levy-Strauss's ideas that pre-industrial peoples
perceived and communicated in flexible, multiple layers of
meaning. That these earlier peoples did not discern as much in
our rigid exclusivist modern terms of 'either/or' as they percieved
and communicated in the more inclusive, multidimensional
terms of 'and/both'.)