Dear Reader — this is the second of two exchanges with Neecha that took place around the Dharma Meltdown period which I would like to share prior to entering the next ‘chapter’ of this blog. The entry here is a question about a Buddhist concept called Sammutti, or ‘conventional forms’.

I was helping LP Anan edit his new translation of the Uturn sermon and it prompts me to ask, about a term/concept from the sermon: The term is Sammutti, usually translated as “conventional forms”. I think I have some sense of what Sammutti is, which I will outline below, I was hoping you could just double-check  that I am in the ballpark and not missing anything big…

What Sammutti is: 

My sense is that Sammutti, “conventional forms” is actually a set of views that we hold that create the scaffolding upon which we build our perception of ourselves and the world –it is what gives meaning to our experiences. So its stuff like language, or money, or social conventions such as a smile. A $10 bill isn’t really a thing that holds any innate value, the word “fun” doesn’t actually mean the same thing to you and me, a smile also doesn’t have the same meaning across person, time and space. Sammutti is clearly not ultimately true, but we forget that…when we don’t really consider Sammutti, we take it as true and we rely on it to navigate our lives, to manage our social relationships, to build our sense of self (more on that later).

Moreover, Sammutti seems to be shared with a group, some subset of people we surround ourselves with. Even though, of course, our understanding of Summutti and theirs aren’t actually the same, the shared culture and experiences we base our memory on are close enough that there is overlap. Enough overlap generally that  we imagine that we are speaking about the same thing when we say fun, or that $10 has the same value to each of us, or that I can be confident in how I interpret your smile. The seeming sharedness actually reinforces my view of Sammutti as true; it is something I use as evidence to sell myself the lie it is universal.

Sammutti and the Self: 

So we basically use Sammutti to build our sense of self. Without some convention, some scaffolding, I couldn’t imagine a self I want, a self that is better than others, a self that other people agree is great and reinforce. For example, I want to be beautiful, but beauty only has meaning in terms on Sammutti..in terms of how I define it, and how those around me define it as well (therefore reinforcing the definition I hold in my head). Or I want to be compassionate, again, this gets based on how I see my actions and how I think others precise them as well — in order to be beautiful, rich, compassionate or any other self, I need a yardstick..one that I think is true and one which I feel is also generally accepted outside myself.

But Self itself is sort of Sammutti –it is something we name, something we project, something we see as solid and contestant, but in truth is is constantly changing. Its not really a mass at all, its a collection of ideas, of memories and imaging and feelings and form..but we tell a story of unity, of structure, of singularity..we mistake some type of continuity as real intentness, as a soul, a self. Society, our friends, family, enemies, they treat us as a self as a singular always the same entity and as such, they reinforce.

Clarifying question: What exactly is the relationship between Sammutti and the aggregate of imagination? Is sammutti actually something we imagine ..but more of a shared delusion? 

The role of Sammitti in practice:

My sense is that Sammitti is like soil, a base in this world — if you plant wisdom seeds in it wisdom grows. If you plant defilement seeds in it defilement grows. So, if we use these ideas we have about the world, these balls of solidness (self, other, thing, etc.) and use them to contemplate the 3 characteristics we can be free (I’m guessing Impermanence especially here can help with the problem of the illusion of solid thingness that happens as a result of continuous connected rising and falling??). We can, I suspect, see Sammutti for what it is, a convenient illusion, a convention to name, to categorize, to function in the world, as opposed to an actually real thing.