The Religions of India c19.134

c19.134

Metaphysically the human ego to the Buddhist is only a collection of five *skandhas* (form, sensations, ideas, faculties of mind, and reason) that vanishes when the collection is dispersed, but the factors of the collection re-form again, and the new ego is the result of their re-formation. The Northern Buddhists, who turn Buddha into a god, make of this an immortal soul, but this is Buddhism in one phase, not Buddha's own belief. The strength of Northern Buddhism lies not, as some say, in its greater religious zeal, but in its grosser animism, the delight of the vulgar.