Anatta

Anatta was indeed the central philosophy of early, authentic buddhism. But is was not fully understood and rapidly compromised and corrupted. Its recovery, preservation and further exposition and development is found nevertheless in various schools of the East and West, both ancient (and even pre-buddhist) and modern.

Our working hypothesis is that original Buddhism was strictly based on ethics, philosophical insight and meditation (bhavana) and had no religious component whatsoever. Metaphysical questions and questions regarding the afterlife were treated exactly as in Pyrrho or Kant's transcendental dialectics. The concepts of karma and rebirth were originally philosophical teachings whose meaning was lost, being corrupted into literal religious beliefs (wherein the bhikkhu ultimately replaced the brahmin). The original teaching on karma (which involves impersonal polarized psychological energies) did not depend in the least on a literal mythological understanding of rebirth. 

Thus for example we can think of human beings as receptors, generators and transmitters of certain psychological energies, and as being immersed in an environment in which such energies can also exist in a free form.  Negative energies and deeds not only rebound with unfortunate consequences in the life of the individual but also, conceivably, during the process of death the sum-total of such an individual's habitual and accumulated energies may be explosively released into the world and thus influence other beings in a positive, neutral or negative way (there might be an analogy with a supernova in astrophysics). Also during the process of death the individual may experience a kind of final dream in which that individual's life-history and sum-total of energies and habits is lived out in a final synthetic way. 

We hold that Anatta is the essence and culmination of TPC and TPP.  We have discussed and highlighted the importance of Pyrrho, Hume, Nagarjuna - and a certain approach to Hegel.

Let us just say that an entity or structure can be inherently not only fragmentary and incomplete but also inconsistent. A fragmented inconsistent being does not have within itself a representation of its own negation, non-being, of a state where it is not. That is to say, there is no true being without self-transcendence. The best that can happen for an entity is to see clearly the circularity of its own inescapable inner contradiction.

The core of TPP is the development of intentional habits and fundamental energies and forces, virtues of consciousness which counteract from a central source and in all dimensions  the limitations, delusions, inconsistencies and self-postulation and self-proliferation of the fragmentary being.

The categories of consciousness (including space, time, locality) are to be transcended.

We must find strong evidence for the presence and practice of this same TPC and TPP among the most diverse places and people in prehistoric, classical antiquity and subsequent history, all in complete agreement with regards to the only necessary central essential core (which in itself as virtually infinite inexhaustible content).

The primordial tradition is not some kind of primitive human culture, rather it is the ubiquitous and timeless presence of the power of complete transcendence of humanity.

 There is not great difference between logic and argumentation and games. These are the factors involved. One accepts a game  G as a game and holds that the game is interpersonally objective and follows publically agreed upon rules.  One fixes a side, a starting point, a choice X in G. Then X is processed by G (in a way which may involve deliberate choice and participation, or not) and eventually yields an element U from a predefined set of possible outcomes. Logic and argumentation involves furthermore that acceptance of a translation-representation between intentional mental-cognitive content and a choice X as well as the reverse translation from U back to meaningful mental content. Furthermore it is often the case that we postulate a principle of continuity in that the processing steps of G are transparent in their mental interpretability though such do not play any role in the processing itself.

The interpretation of Gödel's dialectica translation in terms of games is one of the most interesting developments in logic in the recent decades (a formula is turned into a game-like formula and proofs become winning strategies codified by closed terms in system T) - and should be compared not only with our reconstruction of the debate game in Aristotle's Topics but also with modern proposals for a logic of dialogue.

We observe that in original Buddhism we meet with many suttas which share a logical-argumentation template and dialectical method which is itself far more important than the contingent details. This method involves a combinatoric bringing to light and articulation of possibilities aiming a bringing about a catharsis and detachment (like the Pyrrhonic epokhe).

Thus Buddhist dialectics and Buddhist phenomenology rest both on a subtle hermeneutics of language, that is, language considered as the vehicle and dwelling place of the proliferation and self-reinforcement of the fragmentary entity. Hermeneutics asks the most fundamental questions which lead to the appearance of cracks and tears in the fabric of constructed reality.