Richard Gombrich says the translation of anatta (anatman)
"
is very often mistranslated (sometimes by too, in the past) as 'not having a self or essence'. That is indeed how later Buddhists came to interpret it, but that was not its original meaning - in fact, it is doubly misleading. Both Pali grammar [14] and a comparison with the Vendanta show that the word means 'is not atman' rather than 'does not have atman'. Comparison with the Vendanta further shows that the translation 'self' is appropriate, as the reference is to living beings. However, as time went by the term was taken as a possessive compound and also taken to refer to everything, so that it became the one-word expression of the buddha's anti-essentialism."Page 70, What the Buddha Thought
[14] "
The word was originally a karmadharaya compound, not a bahuvrihi" page 214, Notes to pages 69-81 (links to wikipedia added, not Gombrich's links)
Therefore anatman was not, according to Gombrich, using the primitive
a to create a "no-atman" entity or condition (e.g., new noun with which to establish a negative version (the no-atman) of the positive version (the atman)), but was using primitive "a" as an appositional compound (wherein "an" is applied to the unchanged concept of "atman" to mean "is not atman") and, thus, atman does not change its meaning nor is it modified by the preceding primitive a.
Gombrich describes the triad which Gotama countered as the Upanishadic concepts of being*, consciousness, and bliss
*Page 67:
The Buddha was influenced by the Upanishadic theory if 'being' on two levels. Firstly, he accepted the conceptualization of 'being' as the opposite of 'change' or 'becoming". On a more abstract or philosophical level, however, he rejects the reification of 'being'. He declares that there are three major fetters (samyojana) binding us to the cycle of rebirth, and the first of these is the view that there is a category 'being'. [10]
(...)
Famously, the Buddha's approach to life's problems was pragmatic. Our problems are urgent, and irrelevant theorizing is as silly as refusing to receive treatment for an arrow wound until you know the name of the man who shot the arrow. Today we see the world as in perpetual motion, and that reminds people of the Buddhist principle of imperanence. True, the Buddha saw our experiences as an ever-changing process, a stream of consciousness - the literal Pali equivalent of that expression does occur. But we are talking physics, whereas the Buddha was talking psychology. In my view, he did not see an object like a stone or table as changing from moment to moment (see below). Nor did he hold the opposite view. Such an analysis of the world outside our minds was to him irrelevant and a mere distraction from what should be commanding our attention, namely, escape from samsara. I shall have more to say about this pragmatic approach in Chapter 11. Here let me just reiterate that it was our experience of the world - of life, if you like, that the Buddha was focusing on, and it was our experience that he considered to be a causally conditioned process.
[10]
sak-kaya-ditthi. The Sanskrit equivalent would be sat-kaya-drsti. I have devoted an article to this:
'Vedanta stood on its head: sakkaya and skkaya ditthi'.
To consider Gombrich's research
could be to accept things as they are, as in:
I am here, and 'I' is not some substrate of being, consciousness or bliss, nor is there a not-I (aka: no self) form/entity/condition arising among spontaneously arising forms/things-happening-on-their-own speculation. This could cause a believer of the no-self cosmology (with all matter arising spontaneouslyhappening-on-their-own) to quarrel with the pragmatic I-exist-without-permanent-beingness/
see-things-as-they-are person. There is no reason to enter such a dialogue after/if differing views are exchanged. Such views do not even need to be cultivated:
Gombrich again:
The result of this self-denying ordinance was that the Buddha condemned all theorizing which had no practical value. Whether we like it or not, he tended to be quite harsh on those who indulged in metaphysical speculation. In the Pali tradition, the very first sutta in the entire collection of his sermons is the Brahma-jala Sutta, which spends many pages on the kinds of speculation that people indulge in concerning both the world and the self, and then saying that the Buddha has himself realized their seductive power and made his escape from them".
(...)
'So', says the Buddha, 'remember what I have left unexplained as unexplained..."Page 166-67, What the Buddha Thought
Anyway, wet your whistle? It's good book, though debated among scholars.
Edit: bolding a section, and then some