Tagged: Brahmajāla Sutta
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Wynne - The ātman and its negation (2010)
1The famous Buddhist "No Self" (anātman) doctrine is largely absent from the earliest texts because the original teachings were founded on a different and more subtle philosophy than the later, standard interpretation. Early critiques, such as the "Not-Self" (anattā) teaching, are grounded in a principle of "epistemological conditioning," where fundamental concepts including "self," "existence," and even space-time are not ultimate realities but are dependently originated through cognitive processes. This is why the early texts pragmatically avoid direct ontological statements like "the self does not exist," instead guiding practitioners to see that identifying with conditioned phenomena is "unsuitable" and thereby transcend the very conceptual framework that creates a sense of self. The explicit "No Self" doctrine developed later, as seen in texts like the *Vajirā Sutta* and the Abhidharma, when this subtle philosophy gave way to a "reductionistic realism" that analyzes the person as a collection of essenceless components within an objectively real world, thus shifting the focus from a radical critique of conceptuality to the denial of a specific entity.
Bronkhorst, Johannes - Greater Magadha, Brill (2007)
2In *Greater Magadha*, Johannes Bronkhorst posits the existence of a distinct cultural sphere in early India, located east of the traditional Brahmanical heartland, which was the cradle of religious movements such as Buddhism, Jainism, and Ājīvikism. This culture was defined by a unique spiritual ideology centered on the belief in rebirth and karmic retribution, as well as by features like round funerary mounds (stūpas), a distinct medical tradition, and a cyclical conception of time. Bronkhorst argues that these concepts were foreign to the Vedic-Brahmanical culture to its west, which only gradually absorbed them over a long period of cultural interaction. This process is traced through Brahmanical texts that reveal varied reactions - hesitant acceptance and adaptation in the Upaniṣads and the Mahābhārata, long-term disregard by the Mīmāṃsā school, and outright rejection by the Cārvākas, whom he identifies as a Brahmanical school. A central part of the thesis involves a chronological re-evaluation of late-Vedic literature, which Bronkhorst, using evidence from grammarians like Pāṇini, argues is much later than traditionally held and was composed contemporaneously with this cultural amalgamation.