{"id":1276,"date":"2015-04-29T01:08:06","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T01:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/?p=1276"},"modified":"2015-04-29T01:08:06","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T01:08:06","slug":"the-atman-brahman-in-ancient-buddhism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/the-atman-brahman-in-ancient-buddhism\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u0100tman-Brahman in Ancient Buddhism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The long-awaited English translation of Kamaleswar Bhattacharya\u2019s 1973 French book, <em>L\u2019\u0100tman-Brahman dans le Bouddhisme ancien<\/em>, has just been published, and is now available at Amazon.com. As stated in the book\u2019s description:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe thesis of this book is nothing less than epoch-making. While no one doubts that the Buddha denied the <em>\u0101tman<\/em>, the self, the question is: Which <em>\u0101tman<\/em>? Buddhism, as a religion, has long taken this to be the universal <em>\u0101tman<\/em> taught in the Hindu Upani\u1e63ads, equivalent to <em>brahman<\/em>. What we find in the Buddha\u2019s words as recorded in the Buddhist scriptures, however, is only a denial of any permanent self in the ever-changing aggregates that form a person. In decades of teaching, the Buddha had many opportunities to clearly deny the universal <em>\u0101tman<\/em> if that was his intention. He did not do so. Kamaleswar Bhattacharya\u2019s research is the most important study of this fundamentally important question to have appeared. Other studies of this question exist, coming to the same conclusion, but in general they have not been taken seriously. Bhattacharya\u2019s research, because of the high level of his scholarship, has to be taken seriously. One may disagree with it, but it cannot be dismissed or ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Professor Bhattacharya\u2019s thesis, as stated in his Preface, is: \u201cthe Buddha does not deny the Upani\u1e63adic <em>\u0101tman<\/em>; on the contrary, he indirectly affirms it, <em>in denying that which is falsely believed to be the<\/em> <em>\u0101tman<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>How, one may wonder, could such a fundamental teaching be misunderstood for so long? He writes in his Preface:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe one request I would make of such eminent scholars as have devoted their lives to the study of Buddhism is that they adopt a genuinely Buddhist attitude and read this book before saying, \u2018That is impossible.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The long-awaited English translation of Kamaleswar Bhattacharya\u2019s 1973 French book, L\u2019\u0100tman-Brahman dans le Bouddhisme ancien, has just been published, and is now available at Amazon.com. As stated in the book\u2019s description: \u201cThe thesis of this book is nothing less than epoch-making. While no one doubts that the Buddha denied the \u0101tman, the self, the question [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-noteworthy-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1277,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1276\/revisions\/1277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}