Chapter 10 - Attavadupadana

Attavadupadana is a compound of attavada and upadana. Attavada means belief in soul entity and attavadupadana is attachment to the view that every person is a living soul.

Attachment to the ego belief is of two kinds, viz., ordinary attachment and deep rooted attachment. Ordinary attachment that prevails among ignorant Buddhists is not harmful to progress on the holy path. The belief is not deeply entrenched because Buddhists accept the Buddhas teaching which denies the permanent soul and recognizes nama rupa as the only reality behind a living being. Intelligent Buddhists are still less vulnerable to the belief. For they know that seeing, hearing, etc., involve only the sense organs (eye, ear, etc.), the corresponding sense objects (visual form, sound, etc.) and the corresponding states of consciousness.

But most people are not wholly free from the ego belief. Even the yogi who practises vipassana may at times fall for it and it is likely to attract every man who has not attained the holy path.

In fact those who taught ego belief described the ego as the owner of the five khandhas, as an independent entity, possessing free will and self determination. It was this view of atta (soul) that the Buddha questioned in his dialogue with the wandering ascetic Saccaka. Said the Buddha, “You say that this physical body is your atta. Then can you always keep it well, free from anything unpleasant?” Saccaka had to answer in the negative. Further questioning by the Lord elicited from him the reply that he had in fact no control over any of the five khandhas.

So the ancient Buddhist teachers translate “rupam anatta” as “the physical body is subject to no control”, etc. In fact it is the denial of the “samiatta” or the false view of atta as a controlling entity. Every ordinary person holds this view and believes in free will. He can overcome it completely only through vipassana contemplation.

The attavada teachers also say that atta exists permanently in the physical body. In other words, it means the personal identity that is said to persist through the whole existence.

Again, they say that atta is the subject of all actions, thus identifying it with sankharakkhandha. It is the illusion that creates the belief: “It is I that see, hear, etc.”

They also say that atta is the living entity that feels; that it is atta that is happy or unhappy. In other words, they describe atta or soul in terms of vedana or feeling.

Thus, although the Atmanists (attavadi) insist that atta has nothing to do with the five khandhas, they credit it with ownership of the body, etc., permanent residence in the body, subjectivity and feeling: and, hence, in effect they identify it with the five khandhas. The ego illusion is rooted in the khandhas and a man can free himself completely from it only when he becomes aware of the real nature of khandhas through contemplation.

Of the four upadana, the first upadana (clinging to sensuality) is the developed form of craving (tanha). The other three upadanas differ only as regards their objects; basically they all relate to beliefs, viz., belief in ego, belief in the efficacy of practices other than those of the Eightfold Path, and any false belief other than those in the category of the other two upadana. All false beliefs arise in connection with craving. Men cling to a belief because they like it. Thus there is no doubt that all the four upadanas stem from craving and hence the Buddhas teaching: “From tanha there arises upadana.”

In point of fact, craving is the cause and clinging is the effect. Craving for sensual pleasure, ego belief, or practices irrelevant to the holy path or other false beliefs is the cause, and this craving develops into clinging to sensuality, ego belief, etc., and thus becomes effects.