Anatta and paticca-samuppada (dependent origination)

[renaldo]

@RobertK

Thus we see how the teaching on paticcasamuppada (dependent origination) is also an exposition on anatta as it explains the conditioned nature of phenomena-giving the important links, and revealing that there is no self behind these links.

It is not surprising if at times we have resistance about anatta.
Even the venerable Channa, who later became an arahat, knew the teaching about anatta but he shrunk back from it.

Yes, and we can say for certain that since very early on, whole movements, in fact, shrank back from it. For example, in the thread “Bhāra Sutta and the Puggalavādin mess”,@bksubhuti quotes notes to the sutta which demonstrate this very nicely.

When defining this factor as the person (or individual, puggala), the Buddha drops the abstract form of the other factors, and uses the ordinary, everyday language of narrative: the person with such-and-such a name. And how would this person translate into more abstract factors? He doesn’t say. After his passing away, however, Buddhist scholastics attempted to provide an answer for him, and divided into two major camps over the issue.

One camp refused to rank the concept of person as a truth on the ultimate level. This group inspired what eventually became the classic Theravada position on this issue: that the “person” was simply a conventional designation for the five aggregates. However, the other camp — who developed into the Pudgalavadin (Personalist) school — said that the person was neither a ultimate truth nor a mere conventional designation, neither identical with nor totally separate from the five aggregates. This special meaning of person, they said, was required to account for three things: the cohesion of a person’s identity in this lifetime (one person’s memories, for instance, cannot become another person’s memories); the unitary nature of rebirth (one person cannot be reborn in several places at once); and the fact that, with the cessation of the khandhas at the death of an arahant, he/she is said to attain the Further Shore. However, after that moment, they said, nothing further could be said about the person, for that was as far as the concept’s descriptive powers could go.

As might be imagined, the first group accused the second group of denying the concept of anatta, or not-self; whereas the second group accused the first of being unable to account for the truths that they said their concept of person explained.

The Puggalavādins wound up having a huge influence in India, as can be seen from the following excerpts.

“According to Thiện Châu, the Vātsīputrīyas were the initial parent school out of which branched off four sub-schools (sometime between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE); mainly the Saṃmitīyas, Dhammuttariyas, Bhadrayanikas, and the Sandagarikas.^[29] The Vātsīputrīya communities were established in Kosambi and Sarnath, living side by side with the Saṃmitīyas, a school which quickly eclipsed them in popularity.^[30…

…By the 4th century, this school had become so influential that they replaced the Sarvastivādins in Sarnath as the most prominent school. By the time of King Harsha in the seventh century, they were the largest Nikāya Buddhist school in India.^[33] …

…Their most influential center of learning was at Valabhi University in Gujarat, which remained an important place for the study of Nikāya Buddhism until the 8th century.^[34] Yijing, who visited Gujarat in 670 CE, noted that the Sammitiyas had the greatest number of followers in Western India and that the learning center at Valabhi rivaled that of Nalanda.^[34]

Étienne Lamotte, using the writings of the Chinese traveler Xuanzang, asserted that the Saṃmitīya were in all likelihood the most populous non-Mahāyāna sect in India, comprising double the number of the next largest sect,^[35] although scholar L. S. Cousins revised his estimate down to a quarter of all non-Mahāyāna monks, still the largest overall.^[36] The Saṃmitīya sect seems to have been particularly strong in the Sindh, where one scholar estimates 350 Buddhist monasteries were Saṃmitīya of a total of 450.^[37] This area was rapidly Islamised in the wake of the Arab conquest. They continued to be a presence in India until the end of Indian Buddhism, but, never having gained a foothold elsewhere, did not continue thereafter.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pudgalavada

When we see that some of the biggest Buddhist schools in history shrank back from the doctrine of anattā, it really should come as no surprise that many Buddhists today do too. In fact, if we are going to incorporate what the Commentarial literature says vis-à-vis people of today’s age having less positive accumulations than those of times past, then we should expect to see not just a greater, but a much greater number of Buddhists shrinking back from the doctrine of anattā in such ways today. This becomes relevant when we examine our own practice to see if we are engaging in such shrinking back from the doctrine of anattā ourselves (which we should all do), as well as when we examine potential teachers to see if they are, as a greater percentage of teachers should do so today than did then.

R