Self, No-Self, or Dependent Origination?

O Buddha, please explain just two things to me, not-self and Dependent Origination! Al E.

But, Buddha, if there is no self, what is there? - There is Dependent Origination.

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Self or no-self? How could it be?

At all times many delusions (wrong views) have influenced and are still influencing living beings.

They are quoted in the sutras. Among them, however, the one wrong view that everywhere at all times has most misled and deluded beings is personality-view, namely, the ego-illusion (atta-ditthi).

It is of two kinds, either manifesting as "eternalism" or "annihilationism."

On the one hand, the view or belief that one is eternal (sassata-ditthi) is that a soul, ego-entity, or personality exists and persists independent of the physical-and-mental processes that constitute a life and continue after death in an endless series of linked rebirths.

On the other hand, the view or belief that someone or something more or less identical with those physical-and-mental processes, a soul, self, ego-entity, personality is annihilated (uccheda-ditthi) at death.

Dissolution at death is neither means that one survives death nor that one is annihilated at death. (Then what happens? What is dependently originated continues to be -- marked by the Three Universal Characteristics of All States of Existence -- with elements that are radically impermanent, disappointing (unsatisfactory), and impersonal.

An impersonal (empty, suññatā) process continues to roll on and relink to yet another rebirth unless it has previously been brought to rest by awakening (bodhi).

For the 20 kinds of personality-belief, see sakkāya-ditthi. More at "view" ditthi.

What is Dependent Origination?

Abhidhamma (Leigh Brasington)

Paticca-samuppāda (conditioned co-genesis, conditioned co-arising, the composite and empty nature of things) is the doctrine of the conditionality of all physical and mental phenomena.

This uniquely Buddhist Teaching (Dharma), together with the doctrine of not-self (anattā), which is that all things are impersonal, forms the indispensable condition for any real understanding and realization of the Teaching of the Buddha.

• What does the Buddha teach? Only two things, suffering (dukkha, disappointment) and the end of all suffering (nirvana). Enlightenment (bodhi) is awakening to the liberating truth. How? By learning the cause (found within the Four Noble Truths, where "noble" means aryan or "enlightening"), the solution, the Enlightening Eightfold Path, is practiced full realization here and now in this very life.

What did the Buddha teach for awakening?

It points out the conditional or dependent nature of the uninterrupted flux of manifold physical and mental phenomena of existence conventionally called the self, soul, ego, or personality.

On the one hand, the anattā doctrine (that self and all other things are impersonal) proceeds analytically. It splits (analyzes) existence into its ultimate constituent parts -- mere empty, insubstantial phenomena or elements.

On the other hand, the doctrine of Dependent Origination proceeds synthetically. It shows that all phenomena are conditionally related with each other.

In fact, the entire collection of the Dharma in Ultimate [rather than conventional] Terms (Abhidhamma Pitaka), as a whole, is nothing but a treatment of just these two doctrines, phenomenality implying the impersonal and conditional nature of all existence.

The former or analytical method is applied in the Dhammasangani, the first book of the Abhidhamma collection; the latter or synthetical method, in Patthāna, the last book of the Abhidhamma collection. For a synopsis of these two works, see Guide I and VII. More

• Guide: Guide Through the Abhidhamma Pitaka (3rd ed., 1971), by Ven. Nyanatiloka (Buddhist Publication Society)
• Venerable Nyanatiloka Mahathera (German born Anton Walther Florus Gueth), Buddhist Dictionary; edited and clarified by Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly