Early Monastic Buddhism v2.c36.34

v2.c36.34

The Vā. in reply state that they were not prepared to accept the statements attributed to Buddha as authentic¹ as these were not to be found in their Piṭaka. They referred to statements, in which Buddha spoke of a person's past existence or recognised *pubbenivāsañāṇa*² as one of the higher acquisitions of an adept, and asked, who is it that remembers? Is it *pudgala* or the *skandhas*? They further argue that if Buddha be regarded as omniscient, i.e. he knows everything past or present, of every place, of every being etc. it also implies a continuity of something, in other words, it implies the existence of a *pudgala*. The Vā. further state that unless there were some form of *pudgala* why the disciples should be instructed to avoid thinking of *rūpavān ahaṃ babhūvātīte 'dhvani* (in the past I possessed a body) and so forth.³