The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature c7.s3.72.2

c7.s3.72.2

But it may be asked: “How is this possible, if there is no ‘soul’ that survives death?” This relevant question may be answered by declaring once for all that the Buddhist Sanskrit writers teach the existence of the “soul” in the ordinary sense of that word, but that they deny the existence of “spirit” as an immutable, non-composite, unconditioned, noumenal, absolute Substance, exempt from the law of change and causality. Ātman should be translated as “Spirit”, and not as “soul”. When the Buddhists condemned and combated the ātman doctrine, they meant that they did not believe in the ātman as it was described in the Upaniṣads and the treatises of the Vedānta system. The Chāndogya Upaniṣad declares that the ātman is immortal (8, 14, page 510—tad brahma tad amṛtam sa ātmā). The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad also speaks of “that ātman, that Immortal, that Brahman, that All”. The Kaṭha Upaniṣad teaches that the Ātman (which is also Brahman) is undecaying and unchangeable. Similar ideas are expressed in several other passages of the Upaniṣads. 193 But the Buddhists made no exception to the universal law of change and relativity, and they carried on a vigorous polemic against this ātman-brahman doctrine.