The present treatise by Prof. Dr. H.V. Glasenapp has beenselected for reprint particularly in view of the excellentelucidation of the Anatta Doctrine which it contains. The treatise,in its German original, appeared in 1950 in the Proceeding of the"Akademie der Wissenschaften and Literatur" (Academy of Sciencesand Literature). The present selection from that original is basedon the abridged translations published in "The Buddhist," Vol.XXI,No. 12 (Colombo 1951). Partial use has also been made of adifferent selection and translation which appeared in "The MiddleWay," Vol. XXXI, No. 4 (London 1957).
The author of this treatise is an eminent Indologist of WesternGermany, formerly of the University of Koenigsberg, now occupyingthe indological chair of the University of Tuebingen. Among hismany scholarly publications are books on Buddhism, Hinduism,Jainism and on comparative religion.
— Buddhist Publication Society
Vedanta and Buddhism are the highlights of Indian philosophicalthought. Since both have grown in the same spiritual soil, theyshare many basic ideas: both of them assert that the universe showsa periodical succession of arising, existing and vanishing, andthat this process is without beginning and end. They believe in thecausality which binds the result of an action to its cause (karma),and in rebirth conditioned by that nexus. Both are convinced of thetransitory, and therefore sorrowful character, of individualexistence in the world; they hope to attain gradually to aredeeming knowledge through renunciation and meditation and theyassume the possibility of a blissful and serene state, in which allworldly imperfections have vanished for ever. The original form ofthese two doctrines shows however strong contrast. The earlyVedanta, formulated in most of the older and middle Upanishads, insome passages of the Mahabharata and the Puranas, and still alivetoday (though greatly changed) as the basis of several Hinduisticsystems, teaches an ens realissimum (an entity of highestreality) as the primordial cause of all existence, from whicheverything has arisen and with which it again merges, eithertemporarily or for ever.
With the monistic metaphysics of the Vedanta contrasts thepluralistic Philosophy of Flux of the early Buddhism of the Palitexts which up to the present time flourishes in Ceylon, Burma andSiam. It teaches that in the whole empirical reality there isnowhere anything that persists; neither material nor mentalsubstances exist independently by themselves; there is no originalentity or primordial Being in whatsoever form it may be imagined,from which these substances might have developed. On the contrary,the manifold world of mental and material elements arises solelythrough the causal co-operation of the transitory factors ofexistence (dharma) which depend functionally upon each other, thatis, the material and mental universe arises through the concurrenceof forces that, according to the Buddhists, are not reducible tosomething else. It is therefore obvious that deliverance from theSamsara, i.e., the sorrow-laden round of existence, cannot consistin the re-absorption into an eternal Absolute which is at the rootof all manifoldness, but can only be achieved by a completeextinguishing of all factors which condition the processesconstituting life and world. The Buddhist Nirvana is, therefore,not the primordial ground, the eternal essence, which is at thebasis of everything and form which the whole world has arisen (theBrahman of the Upanishads) but the reverse of all that we know,something altogether different which must be characterized as anothing in relation to the world, but which is experienced ashighest bliss by those who have attained to it (Anguttara Nikaya,Navaka-nipata 34). Vedantists and Buddhists have been fully awareof the gulf between their doctrines, a gulf that cannot be bridgedover. According to Majjhima Nikaya, Sutta 22, a doctrine thatproclaims "The same is the world and the self. This I shall beafter death; imperishable, permanent, eternal!" (see Brh. UP. 4, 4,13), was styled by the Buddha a perfectly foolish doctrine. On theother side, the Katha-Upanishad (2, 1, 14) does not see a way todeliverance in the Buddhist theory of dharmas (impersonalprocesses): He who supposes a profusion of particulars gets lostlike rain water on a mountain slope; the truly wise man, however,must realize that his Atman is at one with the Universal Atman, andthat the former, if purified from dross, is being absorbed by thelatter, "just as clear water poured into clear water becomes onewith it, indistinguishably."
Vedanta and Buddhism have lived side by side for such a longtime that obviously they must have influenced each other. Thestrong predilection of the Indian mind for a doctrine of universalunity (monism) has led the representatives of Mahayana to conceiveSamsara and Nirvana as two aspects of the same and single truereality; for Nagarjuna the empirical world is a mere appearance, asall dharmas, manifest in it, are perishable and conditioned byother dharmas, without having any independent existence of theirown. Only the indefinable "Voidness" (sunyata) to be graspedin meditation, and realized in Nirvana, has true reality.
This so-called Middle Doctrine of Nagarjuna remains true to theBuddhist principle that there can be nowhere a substance, in so faras Nagarjuna sees the last unity as a kind of abyss, characterizedonly negatively, which has no genetic relation to the world. Asangaand Vasubandhu, however, in their doctrine of Consciousness Only,have abandoned the Buddhist principle of denying a positive realitywhich is at the root all phenomena, and in doing so, they have madea further approach to Vedanta. To that mahayanistic school ofYogacaras, the highest reality is a pure and undifferentiatedspiritual element that represents the non- relative substratum ofall phenomena. To be sure, they thereby do not assert, as the(older) Vedanta does, that the ens realissimum (the highestessence) is identical with the universe, the relation between thetwo is rather being defined as "being neither different nor notdifferent." It is only in the later Buddhist systems of the FarEast that the undivided, absolute consciousness is taken to be thebasis of the manifold world of phenomena. But in contrast to theolder Vedanta, it is never maintained that the world is anunfoldment from the unchangeable, eternal, blissful Absolute;suffering and passions, manifest in the world of plurality, arerather traced back to worldly delusion.
On the other hand, the doctrines of later Buddhist philosophyhad a far-reaching influence on Vedanta. It is well known thatGaudapada, and other representatives of later Vedanta, taught anillusionistic acosmism, for which true Reality is only "theeternally pure, eternally awakened, eternally redeemed" universalspirit whilst all manifoldness is only delusion; the Brahma hastherefore not developed into the world, as asserted by the olderVedanta, but it forms only the world's unchangeable background,comparable to the white screen on which appear the changing imagesof an unreal shadow play.
In my opinion, there was in later times, especially since theChristian era, much mutual influence of Vedanta and Buddhism, butoriginally the systems are diametrically opposed to each other. TheAtman doctrine of the Vedanta and the Dharma theory of Buddhismexclude each other. The Vedanta tries to establish an Atman as thebasis of everything, whilst Buddhism maintains that everything inthe empirical world is only a stream of passing Dharmas (impersonaland evanescent processes) which therefore has to be characterizedas Anatta, i.e., being without a persisting self, withoutindependent existence.
Again and again scholars have tried to prove a closer connectionbetween the early Buddhism of the Pali texts, and the Vedanta ofthe Upanishads; they have even tried to interpret Buddhism as afurther development of the Atman doctrine. There are, e.g., twobooks which show that tendency: The Vedantic Buddhism of theBuddha, by J.G. Jennings (Oxford University Press, 1947), andin German language, The Soul Problem of Early Buddhism, byHerbert Guenther (Konstanz 1949).
The essential difference between the conception of deliverancein Vedanta and in Pali Buddhism lies in the following ideas:Vedanta sees deliverance as the manifestation of a state which,though obscured, has been existing from time immemorial; for theBuddhist, however, Nirvana is a reality which differs entirely fromall dharmas as manifested in Samsara, and which only becomeseffective, if they are abolished. To sum up: the Vedantin wishes topenetrate to the last reality which dwells within him as animmortal essence, or seed, out of which everything has arisen. Thefollower of Pali Buddhism, however, hopes by complete abandoning ofall corporeality, all sensations, all perceptions, all volitions,and acts of consciousness, to realize a state of bliss which isentirely different from all that exists in the Samsara.
After these introductory remarks we shall now discusssystematically the relation of original Buddhism and Vedanta.
(1) First of all we have to clarify to what extent a knowledgeof Upanishadic texts may be assumed for the canonical Paliscriptures. The five old prose Upanishads are, on reasons ofcontents and language, generally held to be pre-Buddhistic. Theyounger Upanishads, in any case those beginning fromMaitrayana, were certainly written at a time when Buddhismalready existed.
The number of passages in the Pali canon dealing withUpanishadic doctrines, is very small. It is true that earlyBuddhism shares many doctrines with the Upanishads (Karma, rebirth,liberation through insight), but these tenets were so widely heldin philosophical circles of those times that we can no longerregard the Upanishads are the direct source from which the Buddhahas drawn. The special metaphysical concern of the Upanishads, theidentity of the individual and the universal Atman, has beenmentioned and rejected only in a few passages in the early Buddhisttexts, for instance in the saying of the Buddha quoted earlier.Nothing shows better the great distance that separates the Vedantaand the teachings of the Buddha, than the fact that the twoprincipal concepts of Upanishadic wisdom, Atman and Brahman, do notappear anywhere in the Buddhist texts, with the clear and distinctmeaning of a "primordial ground of the world, core of existence,ens realissimum (true substance)," or similarly. As thisholds likewise true for the early Jaina literature, one must assumethat early Vedanta was of no great importance in Magadha, at thetime of the Buddha and the Mahavira; otherwise the oppositionagainst if would have left more distinct traces in the texts ofthese two doctrines.
(2) It is of decisive importance for examining the relationbetween Vedanta and Buddhism, clearly to establish the meaning ofthe words atta and anatta in Buddhist literature.
The meaning of the word attan (nominative: atta,Sanskrit: atman, nominative: atma) divides into twogroups: (1) in daily usage, attan ("self") serves fordenoting one's own person, and has the function of a reflexivepronoun. This usage is, for instance, illustrated in the 12thChapter of the Dhammapada. As a philosophical term attandenotes the individual soul as assumed by the Jainas and otherschools, but rejected by the Buddhists. This individual soul washeld to be an eternal unchangeable spiritual monad, perfect andblissful by nature, although its qualities may be temporarilyobscured through its connection with matter. Starting from thisview held by the heretics, the Buddhists further understand by theterm "self" (atman) any eternal, unchangeable individualentity, in other words, that which Western metaphysics calls a"substance": "something existing through and in itself, and notthrough something else; nor existing attached to, or inherent in,something else." In the philosophical usage of the Buddhists,attan is, therefore, any entity of which the hereticswrongly assume that it exists independently of everything else, andthat it has existence on its own strength.
The word anattan (nominative: anatta) is a noun(Sanskrit: anatma) and means "not-self" in the sense of anentity that is not independent. The word anatman is found inits meaning of "what is not the Soul (or Spirit)," also inbrahmanical Sanskrit sources (Bhagavadgita, 6,6; Shankara toBrahma Sutra I, 1, 1, Bibl, Indica, p 16; VedantasaraSection 158). Its frequent use in Buddhism is accounted for by theBuddhist' characteristic preference for negative nouns. Phraseslike rupam anatta are therefore to be translated"corporeality is a not-self," or "corporeality is not anindependent entity."
As an adjective, the word anattan (as occasionallyattan too; see Dhammapada 379; Geiger, Pali Lit.,Section 92) changes from the consonantal to thea-declension; anatta (see Sanskrit anatmaka,anatmya), e.g., Samyutta 22, 55, 7 PTS III p. 56), anattamrupam... anatte sankare... na pajanati ("he does not know thatcorporeality is without self,... that the mental formations arewithout self"). The word anatta is therefore, to betranslated here by "not having the nature of a self,non-independent, without a (persisting) self, without an (eternal)substance," etc. The passage anattam rupam anatta rupan tiyathabhutam na pajanati has to be rendered: "With regard tocorporeality having not the nature of a self, he does not knowaccording to truth, 'Corporeality is a not-self (not an independententity).'" The noun attan and the adjective anattacan both be rendered by "without a self, without an independentessence, without a persisting core," since the Buddhists themselvesdo not make any difference in the use of these two grammaticalforms. This becomes particularly evident in the case of the wordanatta, which may be either a singular or a plural noun. Inthe well-known phrase sabbe sankhara anicca... sabbe dhammaanatta (Dhp. 279), "all conditioned factors of existence aretransitory... all factors existent whatever (Nirvana included) arewithout a self," it is undoubtedly a plural noun, for the Sanskritversion has sarve dharma anatmanah.
The fact that the Anatta doctrine only purports to state that adharma is "void of a self," is evident from the passage inthe Samyutta Nikaya (35, 85; PTS IV, p.54) where it is saidrupa sunna attena va attaniyenava, "forms are void of a self(an independent essence) and of anything pertaining to a self (or'self-like')."
Where Guenther has translated anattan or anatta as"not the self," one should use "a self" instead of"the self," because in the Pali canon the word atmandoes not occur in the sense of "universal soul."
(3) It is not necessary to assume that the existence ofindestructible monads is a necessary condition for a belief in lifeafter death. The view that an eternal, immortal, persisting soulsubstance is the conditio sine qua non of rebirth can berefuted by the mere fact that not only in the older Upanishads, butalso in Pythagoras and Empedocles, rebirth is taught without theassumption of an imperishable soul substance.
(4) Guenther can substantiate his view only through arbitrarytranslations which contradict the whole of Buddhist tradition. Thisis particularly evident in those passages where Guenther assertsthat "the Buddha meant the same by Nirvana and atman" and that"Nirvana is the true nature of man." For in Udana 8,2,Nirvana is expressly described as anattam, which is rightlyrendered by Dhammapala's commentary (p. 21) as atta-virahita(without a self), and in Vinaya V, p. 86, Nirvana is said tobe, just as the conditioned factors of existence (sankhata),"without a self" (p. 151). Neither can the equation atman=nirvanabe proved by the well-known phrase attadipa viharatha,dhammadipa, for, whether dipa here means "lamp" or"island of deliverance," this passage can, after all, only refer tothe monks taking refuge in themselves and in the doctrine(dhamma), and attan and dhamma cannot possiblybe interpreted as Nirvana. In the same way, too, it is quitepreposterous to translate Dhammapada 160, atta hi attanonatho as "Nirvana is for a man the leader" (p. 155); for thechapter is concerned only with the idea that we should strive hardand purify ourselves. Otherwise Guenther would have to translate inthe following verse 161, attana va katam papam attajamattasambhavam: "By Nirvana evil is done, it arises out ofNirvana, it has its origin in Nirvana." It is obvious that thiskind of interpretation must lead to manifestly absurdconsequences.
(5) As far as I can see there is not a single passage in thePali canon where the word atta is used in the sense of theUpanishadic Atman.[1] This is not surprising, since the wordatman, current in all Indian philosophical systems, has themeaning of "universal soul, ens realissimum, the Absolute,"exclusively in the pan-en-theistic and theopantistic Vedanta, but,in that sense, it is alien to all other brahmanical andnon-Buddhist doctrines. Why, then, should it have a Vedanticmeaning in Buddhism? As far as I know, no one has ever conceivedthe idea of giving to the term atman a Vedanticinterpretation, in the case of Nyaya, Vaisesika, classical Sankhya,Yoga, Mimamsa, or Jainism.
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