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**joeyCanada** · 08-07-2011, 09:54 AM

You ask some very interesting questions. I hope I can help a little.

I have been looking (very lightly) at the Anatta concept.While I see it as an ultra obscure philosophical notion;

Some people do present it as something exotic and obscure, but people tend to do that because they want to romanticise and elevate the Buddha. There's nothing really obscure or difficult about the original formulation of the idea. The Buddha looked within and couldn't find a soul/atman, so he said as much. Then he looked further for anything whatsoever that persists unchanged/identical throughout one's lifetime and still couldn't find anything. The Hindu atman that people believe(d) in? Imaginary, he said.

(1) Is impermanency seen to persist relevant to our finite (illusionary grasp) in terms of what we percieve...e.g animals, trees, humans etc. Does this cognative stuff become eventually extinct, or is their a perpetual backwards/ forwards flux.
Permanent change would seem to indicate ever changing phenomena and extinction of some former things. Your terminology points out the difficulty with relying too much on language. "Permanent change" seems to make sense until you realize that it's an oxymoron. It only seems to make sense because the syntax works. However, "change" is not an entity that can persist unchanged over time, so the notion the question is based upon falls apart under scrutiny.

(2) Is Anatta a contentious issue within Buddhist circles. Thank you. The word for the concept itself is universally agreed upon, but some try to sneak in something that transmigrates, despite this being antithetical to what is contained in the Pali suttas. You might say there are 'hardliners' who don't see anything that transmigrates and refuse to budge without evidence, then there are some who posit abstract formulas for something that transmigrates. I doubt 100% consensus is possible or even desirable.

08-07-2011, 09:54 AM	#3
joeyCanada Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 484 Senior Member	You ask some very interesting questions. I hope I can help a little. I have been looking (very lightly) at the Anatta concept.While I see it as an ultra obscure philosophical notion; Some people do present it as something exotic and obscure, but people tend to do that because they want to romanticise and elevate the Buddha. There's nothing really obscure or difficult about the original formulation of the idea. The Buddha looked within and couldn't find a soul/atman, so he said as much. Then he looked further for anything whatsoever that persists unchanged/identical throughout one's lifetime and still couldn't find anything. The Hindu atman that people believe(d) in? Imaginary, he said. (1) Is impermanency seen to persist relevant to our finite (illusionary grasp) in terms of what we percieve...e.g animals, trees, humans etc. Does this cognative stuff become eventually extinct, or is their a perpetual backwards/ forwards flux. Permanent change would seem to indicate ever changing phenomena and extinction of some former things. Your terminology points out the difficulty with relying too much on language. "Permanent change" seems to make sense until you realize that it's an oxymoron. It only seems to make sense because the syntax works. However, "change" is not an entity that can persist unchanged over time, so the notion the question is based upon falls apart under scrutiny. (2) Is Anatta a contentious issue within Buddhist circles. Thank you. The word for the concept itself is universally agreed upon, but some try to sneak in something that transmigrates, despite this being antithetical to what is contained in the Pali suttas. You might say there are 'hardliners' who don't see anything that transmigrates and refuse to budge without evidence, then there are some who posit abstract formulas for something that transmigrates. I doubt 100% consensus is possible or even desirable.
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