Chapter 6: The Refutation of the Self¶

[PLANNED] This chapter has not yet been written; what follows is a skeleton. Items may be added or removed, and the order may change.

What this chapter does. The one place in the book that treats the self head-on, and the most direct landing of the part's topic. The Vātsīputrīyas posit an ineffable person, neither identical with the aggregates nor other than them; Vasubandhu presses each move until the ineffability itself is pressed; the Vaiśeṣika and Sāṃkhya selves take their turns alongside. By bulk the chapter is a twentieth of the book; by position it is the close of the whole; weight is measured by position.

Structure.

First, the formal anomaly. Title not at the head of a fascicle, no verses anywhere, prose alone after eight chapters of alternation; appendix or integral close, a question of format with content in it (uniformity across recensions to be verified).

Second, the Vātsīputrīya position. The person's ineffable relation to the aggregates; ineffability as an ontological strategy, and which two things it hopes to keep at once.

Third, Vasubandhu's arguments, one pass through. The recurring landing point: the ineffable either says something or says nothing.

Fourth, the two outsiders. The disputes with the Vaiśeṣika self and the Sāṃkhya self; the three engagements together as the fullest form the no-self argument takes.

Fifth, the line back. Part 13, Chapter 3 set up the aggregates and no-self; Part 14, Chapter 7 watched the Theravāda hold the line; this chapter is the best-equipped engagement on the same line.

Data and sources. Fascicles twenty-nine and thirty are in the library; the two formal points (title position, absence of verses) verified against the translation; recensions and Paramārtha's side to be verified.

To Chapter 7. Vasubandhu has spoken; the school answers: Saṅghabhadra.