Dear friends,

The purpose of Advayavada Buddhism is to become a true part of the whole.

This week (41) we again study the selflessness and finitude of all things as thoroughly as possible.

This task is based on the Buddhist anatta (Pali) or anatmata (Sanskrit) doctrine. Anatta or anatman means that no self exists in the person in the sense of a permanent, eternal, integral, and independent substance. It is one of the three (in Advayavada Buddhism, four) signs or marks or basic facts of being. In Mahayana Buddhism, the nisvabhava (Sanskrit) doctrine teaches further that in fact ‘all things are empty (shunya) of self-nature (svabhava), i.e. devoid of self-sufficient, independent existence or lasting substance’; everything, indeed, arises, abides, changes, and extinguishes according to the universal process of interdependent origination or pratityasamutpada (understood as in Madhyamaka philosophy, where ‘all causes are effects and all effects are causes’).

The purpose of the autonomous Advayavada Study Plan ASP is that we study (and debate in a local group, the family circle or with good friends) the meaning and implications of the weekly subject, not as a formal and impersonal intellectual exercise, but in the context of whatever we ourselves are presently doing or are concerned with, or about, such as our health, relationships, work, study, our place in society, etc. Advayavada Buddhism does not tell you what to do or believe, but how to make the very best of our own lives by indeed attuning with wondrous overall existence advancing over time now in its manifest direction.

Kind regards,
John Willemsens,
Advayavada Foundation.
@advayavada