There Is Nothing That I Am
Topics: dhamma, personal-identity 2024-06-09 22:55
sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā
sabbe saṅkhārā dukkhā
sabbe dhammā anattā
—Dhammapada 277-9
Ven. Ñāṇavīra translated this verse as follows:
All determinations are impermanent;
All determinations are unpleasurable (suffering);
All things are not-self.
There’s nothing wrong with this translation, and it suits the purpose he intended for it in his writing perfectly well. However, it’s not as approachable as it could be for people unfamiliar with the Dhamma.
In his talk Stilling of All Activities, Ven. Ñāṇamoli said:
The problem with it is, as I’ve said before, when you look into the Suttas there’s often very practical instructions given by the Buddha, how to calm the saṅkhāras, how to regard them, and so on. But any other translation, it just was not practical enough. “‘How to calm determinations…’ so I’ll just refrain from determining? But how am I ‘determining’ things? I’m not determining anything…” Or even more ambiguous, ‘formations’, ‘mental formations’. […] So what’s in common is that those things are active. Movements, intentions, directions, pressures. So, a form of activity. […] So then he realised, it’s not about removing the activities, it’s about removing a particular aspect of them. […] So the whole point there, it’s not like ‘I’ll just stop doing everything’. It’s more like to see the relationship between wholesome activities and not going into the unwholesome activities, and then fundamentally to see that aspect that you are ignorant of, in regard to the activities, that will free you from activities and all the suffering. And that aspect is ownership of the activities. The fundamental activity of taking things as ‘mine’. Taking things as ‘belonging to me’.
In his talk Why ‘Focusing’ Meditations are Wrong, Ven. Ñāṇamoli said:
That’s anicca. Unownable. Anicca means impossible to own, impossible to be mine. And if it’s unownable, and yet here I am depending on it, that’s suffering. If it’s unownable, it is dukkha. If it’s unownable and dukkha, then this sense of my self, I don’t own even that. So if it’s unownable and dukkha, then my experience is anattā. You don’t need to do anattā then. ‘Oh, this is impermanent, this is suffering… and this is the not-self.’ No, this is impermanence, this is suffering, this experience is experienced as not-self. So if you see your sense of self as inseparably rooted in that which cannot be your sense of self, which is unownable, inaccessible to you, even in your imagination, then your sense of self right here and now will be felt as not my sense-of-self. So, attā and anattā means basically my self or not my self.
In the essay Prey to Suffering, appearing in his book Dhamma Within Reach, Ven. Ñāṇamoli wrote:
Even when you suffer, that dukkha is a symptom of your liability-to-suffering (Dukkha). And that’s where the problem is, that’s why you suffer in the first place: because you are liable to suffer even when you are not suffering. […] ‘Suffering’ is a bit of an unfortunate translation. You could say that because symptoms of Dukkha are suffering, dukkha is also suffering, of course. But these things are not on the same level. Dukkha that needs to be understood is on the level of that ‘liability’. Something like an ever-present risk of suffering. That risk is not on the level of some particular thing that currently might be bothering you. That’s why the Buddha would say: ‘The wise man would reflect: I am subject to suffering. I’m subject to misfortune.’ Meaning: ‘Nothing has happened to me, but it could. I am subjected to the possibility of these bad things happening.’ I am at risk.
In his talk On Nanavira Thera’s ‘A Note On Paṭiccasamuppāda’, Ven. Ñāṇamoli said:
Usually, people think ‘I am, because of that, things are mine’. Start reversing that view, and start regarding it as ‘no, it’s because I keep taking things as mine, that’s why I am’. But when you have been taking things as yours for so long, that’s how that sense of ‘I am’ starts taking priority. And then taking things as mine, which is really the cause, the fuel for the sense of ‘I am’, becomes second, and is seen as a result of ‘I am’. But again, if you deny ‘I am’, then you deny the whole problem. So there is a sense of self, and you don’t want to deny it, you want to regard it as not belonging to me. So my own sense of self is not actually mine. Why is it not mine? Because it depends upon, it’s fully determined by, its manifestation persists on account of things that I cannot own at the same time. So my sense of self depends upon that which cannot be mine. Thus, how can that sense of self belong to me? Because if it were truly mine, its origins, its control, would be within my power. But it isn’t. So I can say ‘this is mine, this obeys me’, until it’s taken away. Which means it was never really yours.
Given the above, and with the goal of communicating the meaning of this verse to someone who would not understand the words ‘determinations’, ‘impermanent’, ‘suffering’, or ‘not-self’ correctly (or at all) I would translate this verse as follows:
Everything my sense of self depends on is unownable.
Everything my sense of self depends on makes me vulnerable.
There is nothing that I am.