Sassatavada
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone! 🙏🙏🙏
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
Sassatavada (Pali: "eternalism") is a kind of thinking rejected by the Buddha in the nikayas (and agamas). One example of it is the belief that the individual has an unchanging Self. Views of this kind were held at the Buddha's time by a variety of groups.
The Buddha rejected this and the opposite concept of ucchedavada (materialism) on both logical and epistemic grounds. He proposed a middle way between these extremes, relying not on ontology but on causality.
Eternalism included the belief that the extinction of things means their stable latency and the production of things means their manifestation — this violates the Buddha's principle of the middle way.
Eternalism is one of the corners or limits of the 'Four Limits' (Sanskrit: Caturanta), a particular configuration of the Catuskoti.