Early Monastic Buddhism v1.c8.s3.t1.2

v1.c8.s3.t1.2

Refuting *Śāśvatavāda*, *Nāgārjuna* says¹ that if a person of the past could be shown to be the same as that of the present, then only *Śāśvatavāda* could stand, but this is not possible as it would give rise to the contingency of permanency (*nityatva*) of a being as also to the possibility of a being, having a particular form of existence, to assume different bodies (lit. different forms of existence).² A permanent being should not be said to transmigrate nor a human being who was formerly an animal but became a human being through good karma should say that he was an animal, for, *Śāśvatavāda* should insist that a man must remain a man, an animal an animal, and that is absurd.³