Buddhism and the Self

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

I don't think it neccessarily means you are disrespecting Shankaracharya
to assert the view expressed below.  It is plausible though very unlikely.
The case would be bolstered if there were actually quotes from Buddhists
to this effect.  Translators often have their own agenda.

Certainly all the "astika" authorities not just advaitins are vehemently
against the tenets of Buddhism as they understand it.  So any attempt to
assert otherwise would be an uphill struggle.

As for the topic of this list it is Advaita Vedanta as explained by Ishwar
through Maharshi Vyas through Shankaracharya and his successors up to the
present day.  I request list members to kindly take the soggy new age crap
elsewhere.

--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>
I got engaged! See the pictures ==> http://www.braincells.com/jaldhar/sagpan

On Tue, 16 Sep 1997 un824 at FREENET.VICTORIA.BC.CA wrote:

> 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
>