original buddhism website www.attan.com

www.attan.com

This is a website about original buddhism which I find to be very informative and scholarly. I will summarize a few of the key facts about the website, and then a few other interesting things that I know of about the author

-Original Buddhism is defined as citations coming from the 5 nikayas of Buddhism, prior to Theravada and Mahayana. This is important because Theravadas claim to be the official and oldest form of Buddhism. According to attan.com, the Theravada was created during the second Buddhist council when divisions were starting to form in the Buddhist Sangha. The first council, the 5 Nikayas, contain no divisive sects and are according to the author of the website the oldest proof of the living thoughts of Buddha sans a time machine.

-Opposed to Theravada "no soul Buddhism" the author of attan.com states over and over again that the Buddha did believe in a Self/Soul and in no way diverged from the Upanishads. The author offers many examples of how the no-self doctrine is a corruption of the meaning of anatta. I will leave you to investigate this matter on your own through the websites many articles.

-Although compassion and kindness are hallmarks of modern Buddhism, the author states that original buddhism is purely about transcendence and not about morality.

-the Buddha did not speak about the origin of the universe, but this does not mean he offered no metaphysics whatsoever. Buddhism contains many esoteric truths such as "the tathagatta is without the mark of all things, he dwells upwards within the signless inflexured mind/will (citta/soul) there within Ananda, dwell with the light as your soul, with the light as refuge, with none other as refuge."

-the author states that the fourth noble truth of the Buddha is not the "right" way but the Mahjjima/middle path, and that samma does not mean right but perfection. "right" is a Christian moralist idea and has no place in original buddhism.


There are many more things I could say. A few things though I would like to say about the author, namely

-1, the swastika, which is wall papered behind the writings. As he goes on to explain, he uses the swastika as the way the Vedas have used it for over 5000 years and in no way is a neo-nazi.

however, he is

-2 openly hostile to modern buddhism, as well as other forms of political tolerance, and has links to racist websites on his own website, one of them is Detroit sucks which basically is a anti-black website.

-3 I've talked to this man on yahoo chat under the name ancientbuddhism, while I doubted it at first, I do believe I was talking to either the actual author or perhaps the webmaster, since he didn't say anything that wasn't a citation from his own website. Talking to him in person, I can tell you that he is egotistical, a bit racist, a lot insulting to those he deems ignorant, and above all highly educated on all things Buddhism. In my professional opinion, I believe he thinks of himself as an "aryan" in the sense of Indo-Aryan nobility, not so much as Aryan neo-nazi, however, I can easily see how squeamish people might think he is racist, especially with the use of the swastika despite his explanation that he is in no way a neo-nazi

with that said, hopefully we can get passed the man and onto the message. What do you think of the content of his website, specifically as it deals with Buddhism and his idea of original buddhism as opposed to Theravada?