The below post is at Dhamma Wheel message board ( https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=33509&start=75 ):
by Dhammanando » Sun Feb 03, 2019 2:50 am
samsarictravelling wrote: ↑
Sun Feb 03, 2019 2:15 am
So, you read the note from one of Bhikkhu Bodhi's Nikayas-translated-into-English books, like I did? And/or you heard Bhikkhu Bodhi say this also (that anatta as a strategy is heresy) somewhere else?
I think he would be more likely to call it an untenable interpretation rather than using a confrontational term like "heresy". His actual words in an endnote to the sutta in question:
Probably this means that Vacchagotta would have interpreted the Buddha’s denial as a rejection of his empirical personality, which (on account of his inclination towards views of self) he would have been identifying as a self. We should carefully heed the two reasons the Buddha does not declare, “There is no self”: not because he recognizes a transcendent self of some kind (as some interpreters allege), or because he is concerned only with delineating “a strategy of perception” devoid of ontological implications (as others hold), but (i) because such a mode of expression was used by the annihilationists, and the Buddha wanted to avoid aligning his teaching with theirs; and (ii) because he wished to avoid causing confusion in those already attached to the idea of self. The Buddha declares that “all phenomena are nonself” (sabbe dhammā anattā), which means that if one seeks a self anywhere one will not find one. Since “all phenomena” includes both the conditioned and the unconditioned, this precludes an utterly transcendent, ineffable self.
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