Soma999 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 3:03 pm
The concept of anatman as we understand it today does not come directly from the Buddha. It has been the subject of many discussions by many scholars and practitionners. It has taken a specific form which may not emphasise the same things as it did during the time of the Buddha.
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Buddhism use a negative way to find divinity, by dissolving all kind of ego-centerdness.
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Soul is a complex subject. You speak about Ruah for exemple in hebrew. In their tradition there are five level of souls, and books can be written solely on this subject.
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Meditation on the emptiness of a self serve to awaken bodicitta. If it serves to generate nihilism, this is a misunderstanding.
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1. By the time of the Buddha and the Sramana movement, the Vedas had already spread and some of the oldest Upanishads had already been composed.
Hinduism is a religion that will only appear (as it currently exists) around the 17th - 18th century, but its bases are the concepts of Brahmanism that are based on the Vedas.
This notion of Atman, for example, is presented for the first time in the Vedas, and its proximity to ideas in other cultures possibly lies in the fact that the Aryan peoples, from Central Asia, settled in various parts of the world, and this notion it may even be older than the very formation of India as a "country".
Thus, as the Vedas and the first Upanishads already existed at the time of the Buddha, it is not possible to think that he was referring to an earlier notion.
Furthermore, the notion of Atman among the various Hindu schools is essentially the same, what is different is the understanding that each school has of the relationship between Atman and Brahma (dualist, non-dualist, monist perspectives, etc.).
(note: Brahma means "highest")
But all Hindu, Brahmanical and Vedic schools, without exception, always identify Atman as a reality separate from bodily and mental functions, whereas the analytical activity of Buddhism fails to find (either through rational methods or through practical methods) anything in addition to bodily (form) and mental (sensations, perceptions, volitions and consciousness) functions in sentient beings.
That is why it is called anatman/anatta. It does not mean that there is not an atman, the five skandas provisionally form an individual, so that it is not possible to deny their existence, however, as their existence is not self-sufficient, as it is not eternal, as it is conditioned, then "this" that exists it cannot be called an "atman", even though it is an "I", so the only proper name for what exists is "anatman", an "I" that is not an "I".
This is a "middle way" between nihilism and the notion of an eternal existence.
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2.
Ruah in the Hebrew tradition, there is what is expressed in the biblical texts, and what was endorsed by Rabbinic Judaism and its theological and mystical derivations.
In Genesis (b'reshit) there is no notion of "creatio ex-nihilo" and even less of "immortal soul". These are Greek conceptions that ended up entering and being endorsed by the rabbis later in the formation of Judaism.
The concept of God in the Pentateuch is something quite complex, it is a paradoxical path, his "name" instead of a noun is a verb, and a verb in the imperfect tense, indicating something still going on, which assumes that he is not exactly a "person", but the action of things, the movement of everything. His essential condition is that of "spirit" (ruah).
Thus, ancient Hebrew cosmology understands only two things: matter and spirit. The spirit would be an energy that puts primordial matter into action, giving rise to everything that exists.
The narrative of man's creation in Genesis 2 demonstrates this insight: YHWH Elohim molds man from clay (matter) and breathes into his nostrils (spirit) and then man becomes a soul (something that exists).
This is quite an advanced view for an ancient people, but even so, this notion of "ruah" requires something that exists by itself, that is eternal, unconditioned, self-sufficient, etc., that is, it is still the notion of an atman.
Although this may be fully real in terms of a general existence (since, after all, modern physics presupposes the eternal existence of matter-energy), the concern of the Buddha was not to think about a cosmology, but to understand the functioning of sensible beings in view of the emancipation of suffering. There is no individual existence in sentient beings which survives after the causes and conditions which make it exist disappear.