WHAT BUDDHISTS BELIEVE Anatta: The Teaching of No-Soul

WHAT BUDDHISTS BELIEVE
Anatta: The Teaching of No-Soul  {1}

The Buddha countered all soul-theory and soul-speculation with His Anatta doctrine. Anatta is translated under various labels: No-Soul, No-Self, No-Ego.

To understand the Anatta doctrine, one must understand that the eternal soul theory—‘I have a soul’—and the material theory—‘I have no soul’—are both obstacles to self-realisation or salvation. 

They arise from the misconception ‘I AM’  Hence, to understand the Anatta doctrine, one must not cling to any opinion or views on soul-theory; rather, one must try to see things objectively as they are and without any mental projections. One must learn to see the so-called ‘I’ or Soul or Self for what it really is: merely a combination of changing forces. This requires some analytical explanation.

The Buddha taught that what we conceive as something eternal within us, is merely acombination of physical and mental aggregates or 

forces (pancakkhandha), made up of body or 

matter (rupakkhandha), sensation (vedanakkhandha), perception (sannakkhandha), mental formations (samkharakkhandha) and consciousness (viññanak- khandha). 

These forces are working together in a flux of momentary change; they are never the same for two consecutive moments. They are the component forces of the psycho-physical life. When the Buddha analyzed the psycho-physical life, He found only these five aggregates or forces. He did not find any eternal soul. However, many people still have the misconception that the soul is the consciousness. The Buddha declared in unequivocal terms that consciousness arises dependent on matter, sensation, perception and mental formations and that it cannot exist independently of them.

The Buddha said, ‘The body, O monks, is not the Self. Sensation is not the Self. Perception is not the Self. The mental constructions are not the Self. And neither is consciousness the Self. 

Perceiving this, O monks, the disciple sets no value on the body, or on sensation, or on perception, or on mental constructions, or on consciousness. Setting no value on them, he becomes free of passions and he is liberated. The knowledge of liberation arises there within him. And then he knows that he has done what has to be done, that he has lived the holy life, that he is no longer becoming this or that, that his rebirth is destroyed.’ (ANATTA - LAKKHANA SUTRA) The Anatta doctrine of the Buddha is over 2500 years old. Today the thought current of the modern scientific world is flowing towards the Buddha’s Teaching of Anatta or No-Soul. In the eyes of modern scientists, a human being is merely a bundle of ever-changing sensations. 

Modern physicists say that the apparently solid universe is not, in reality, composed of solid substance at all, but is actually a flux of energy. The modern physicist sees the whole universe as a process of transformation of various forces which include the processes which constitute a human being. The Buddha was the first to realize this. 

W.S. Wily, an author, once said, ‘The existence of the immortal in human beings is becoming increasingly discredited under the influence of the dominant schools of modern thought.’ 

The belief in the immortality of the soul is a dogma that is contradicted by the most clear, empirical investigation.

Anatta:  The Teaching of No-Soul  {2}

The mere belief in an immortal soul, or the conviction that something in us survives death, does not make us immortal unless we know what it is that survives and that we are capable of identifying ourselves with it. 

Most human beings choose death instead of immortality by identifying themselves with that which is perishable and impermanent by clinging stubbornly to the body or the momentary elements of the present personality, which they mistake for the soul or the essential form of life. In reference to those researches of modern scientists who are now more inclined to assert that the so-called ‘Soul’ is no more than a bundle of sensations, emotions, sentiments, all relating to the physical experiences, Prof. William James says that the term ‘Soul’ is a mere figure of speech to which no reality corresponds. It is the same Anatta doctrine of the Buddha that was introduced in the Mahayana school of Buddhism as Sunyata or voidness. 

Although this concept was elaborated by a great Mahayana scholar, Nagarjuna, by giving various interpretations, there is no extraordinary concept in Sunyata that is far different from the Buddha’s original doctrine of Anatta.

 

The belief in Soul or Self and the Creator God, is so strongly rooted in the minds of many people that they cannot imagine why the Buddha did not accept these two concepts which are indispensable to many religions. In fact some people get a shock or become nervous and emotional when they hear that the Buddha rejected these two concepts. 

That is the main reason why to many unbiased scholars and psychologists Buddhism stands unique when compared to all the other religions. At the same time, some other scholars who appreciate the various other aspects of Buddhism are convinced that Buddhism would be enriched by deliberately re-interpreting the Buddha word  'Atta’ in order to introduce the concept of Soul and Self into Buddhism. The Buddha was aware of this unsatisfactoriness of humanity and the conceptual upheaval regarding this belief. 

All conditioned things are impermanent, 

All conditioned things are Dukkha-Suffering, 

All conditioned or unconditioned things 

(Dharma) are soulless or selfless. 

(DHAMMAPADA 277, 278, 279)

There is a parable in our Buddhist texts with regard to the belief in an eternal soul. A man, who mistook a moving rWHAT BUDDHISTS BELIEVE

Anatta: The Teaching of No-Soul ope for a snake, became terrified by that fear in his mind. Upon discovery that it was only a piece of rope, his fear subsided and his mind became peaceful. The belief in an eternal soul is equated to the rope—man’s imagination.

~ Ven. K Sri Dhammananda