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All Mind, Self and Emptiness

What a person fundamentally is: whether there is a fixed self, a mind distinct from matter, or, as Buddhist doctrine holds, no substantial self at all. The subcategory's own name states a live disagreement, since emptiness, sunyata, is a Buddhist answer to a question other traditions answer by positing a soul.

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Forty Two Doctrines Asking Whether There Is a Self Behind Experience

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Mind, Self and Emptiness gathers forty two doctrines addressing the same question from opposite ends: is there a self behind experience, and if so what is it.

Buddhist analysis answers no. Anatta denies any permanent self, finding on analysis only the five aggregates, each impermanent, and dependent origination explains how experience arises without a self behind it; anicca and dukkha are the companion marks, and sunyata generalises the denial to everything, empty of any self standing nature. Buddha-nature and the rangtong and shentong dispute over how strongly emptiness should be read sit closest to the tradition's harder edges, alongside Mahamudra and Dzogchen, whose defining claim is that awakening is already the ground; Dzogchen's own record states plainly that its advanced practice is esoteric and withholds its detail from general readers, a limit this entry keeps. Jhana and samadhi name the absorptions that train toward these recognitions, and satori and kensho name Zen's own breakthrough into them.

Hindu Vedanta answers the opposite way. Atman is a real self reached by neti neti, not this, stripping away everything that can be named, described at its height as turiya, the fourth state beyond waking, dreaming and sleep, and witnessed by sakshi, awareness never itself changed. Avidya names the misperception that hides this, and prakriti and purusha, matter and pure consciousness, supply Samkhya's own version of the same division. Jainism answers a third way, dividing all that exists into jiva and ajiva and insisting through anekantavada that any single account captures only one standpoint. Sufi fana, Hasidic bittul and the Dark Night of the Soul close the group as three traditions' own accounts of the self's dissolution before God.

All Mind, Self and Emptiness
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Ajiva

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Anatta

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Anekantavada

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Anicca

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Atman

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Avidya

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Bittul

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Bodhicitta

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Buddha-nature

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Dependent origination

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Devekut

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Dukkha

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Dzogchen

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Fana and baqa

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Hongaku (Original Enlightenment)

Mind, Self and Emptiness

I and I

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Jhana

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Jiva

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Jot (Divine Light)

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Mahamudra

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Maqamat and Ahwal

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Neti Neti

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Nirvikalpa Samadhi

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Prakriti

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Purusha

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Rangtong and Shentong (Self-Emptiness and Other-Emptiness)

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Rigpa

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Sakshi

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Samadhi

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Satori and Kensho

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Savikalpa Samadhi

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Sunyata

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Syadvada

Mind, Self and Emptiness

The Dark Night of the Soul

Mind, Self and Emptiness

The Five Aggregates

Mind, Self and Emptiness

The Six Sense Bases

Mind, Self and Emptiness

The Three Gunas

Mind, Self and Emptiness

The Three Marks of Existence

Mind, Self and Emptiness

The Three Truths

Mind, Self and Emptiness

The Two Truths

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Turiya

Mind, Self and Emptiness

Unio Mystica

Mind, Self and Emptiness
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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