Buddhism and the Self

[un824 at FREENET.VICTORIA.BC.CA]

Namaste,

A recent heated exchange on Advaita-L concerned the Buddhist notion of
anatman (not-self).  I recall one list member making the rather sweeping
statement that interpreting anatman as a strategy akin to the "neti neti"
of the Upanishads was tantamount to calling Sankara a fool (because why
would Sankara have bothered to refute anatman if it was not denying the
Self), etc.  I hope the following quote shows this reading of Buddhism to
be quite academically respectable and well within the universe of informed
discourse on the topic.

"Such questions have also caused a number of modern western and Indian
writers to assert that, in saying that many things were not-Self, early
Buddhist sources implicitly, or even explicitly, asserted the existence of
such a Self, beyond the realm of empirical personality. The list of such
interpreters includes Mrs. C.A.F. Rhys Davids, Ananda Coomaraswamy, George
Grimm, K.Bhattacharya, J.Perez-Remon, and even two of the most illustrious
translators of Buddhist texts, Miss I.B.Horner, late president of the Pali
Text Society, and Edward Conze, renowned for his work on Mahayana
Perfection of Wisdom texts, and author of many fine books on Buddhism."
                -from "The Selfless Mind" by Peter Harvey

I'm sure none of the above were thereby calling Sankara a fool, nor do I
believe any members of this list were calling him a fool either. The only
person saying Sankara must have been a fool to bother to defeat anatman (if
it did not deny the Self) was the person accusing others of having
disrespect for Sankara. Perhaps Sankara was just defeating a particularly
pernicious reading of Buddhism prevalent at that time. That way, he'd still
be Shiva incarnate and we could all be friends again, right?  :-)

I'd like to make one last general comment about the conduct of this list.
More than one list member seems to feel that Advaita-L should be confined
to discussions of orthodox Hinduism rather than the wider interpretation of
Advaita sometimes called the "perennial philosophy" or "primordial
tradition". I know many members of this list prefer to think of Advaita as
expressing the truth of all great spiritual systems of the world and not
just Hinduism. If this wider view is not welcome here then perhaps we are
on the wrong list.  Can anyone clarify this point?

Sincerely,

 -Allan Curry