Teaching poison
Teaching the marks of conditioned or phenomenal existence, namely, impermanence, suffering and no self can be thought of as medicine which is intended to cure those who, by their self-inflicted ignorance, tenaciously cling to the illusory, conditioned world as being truly real. Applying this medicine is not meant to deny eternal (nitya), blissful nirvana or the true self but is, instead, meant to wean deluded beings off of samsara, sufficiently, so they might eventually be healthy enough to begin to understand the true teaching (saddharma).
Little did the Buddha realize that, later on, modern Buddhists (mainly Westerners) would turn his medicine into poison. They teach that the Buddha taught only impermanence, suffering and there is no self! Furthermore, as proof that there is no self these same misguided Buddhists regard the five skandhas as the standard for determining whether or not the self is real. For example, they teach that when the Buddha says of the first skandha, form (rupa), it is not the self or antman, this means there is fundamentally no self! But this is what the Buddha really said in the Culasaccaka Sutta:
"Now, Aggivessana, a disciple of mine in regard to whatever is material shape, past, future, present, subjective or objective, gross or subtle, low or excellent, distant or near, sees all material shape as it really is by means of perfect intuitive wisdom as: This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self" (M. i. 234).
This passage proves that true Buddhism doesnt hinge on a denial of self but points in the opposite direction, that our true self is not what our material condition is.
The entire older Pali canon is simply showing sincere Buddhists that the psychophysical body (the five skandhas of form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, consciousness) and the world they sense through it is for abandoning, not holding on to. T! his mean s the true self, deliverance, nirvana, and Buddhahood transcend the psychophysical body and the world. And because they are transcendent, a true Buddhist must directly realize the transcendent if they are to escape rebirth in the conditioned, phenomenal world of suffering.
