The Spirit of Contradiction in the Buddhist Doctrine of Not-Self

Abstract

In his comprehensive and authoritative study of the doctrine of “notself ” (Pāli anattā; Sanskrit anātman) in Theravāda Buddhism, Selfless Persons (1982), Steven Collins identifies two distinct functions of this doctrine. He correlates these functions, moreover, to a sociological distinction between the religious specialist and the ordinary Buddhist. Thus, in the context of the practice of the analytical “insight” meditation practiced by members of the former group, the anattā doctrine refers to “the classification of any experience or concept into a known, nonvalued, impersonal category.” Such classification or redescription of experience serves as an effective technique for cultivating an attitude of disinterest toward the object thus classified, thus negating the desire that, according to the Buddha’s Second Noble Truth, is the root cause of suffering. For the vast majority of Buddhists, however, who do not practice such meditation, the doctrine’s main function was to provide “an intransigent symbolic opposition to Brahmanical thought.” Because Collins associates this latter, oppositional dimension of the anattā doctrine with those Buddhists lacking in specialized knowledge of the doctrine or a commitment to the corresponding regimens of meditative practice, one might be tempted to infer that this political-ideological function of anattā appears only in default of the former, as a kind of