Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c12.s2.9

c12.s2.9

The matter is complicated by the aversion of the Buddha to metaphysical speculations on topics deemed by him unnecessary, which explains why we have no examination of the conception of the Aupaniṣada absolute. The schematic handling of all possible theories of the continuance of consciousness after death is too formal to help, but in the Majjhima Nikāya¹ we do meet a passage which denounces in set terms as folly the conception of the existence of the self after death as identical with the absolute, the nearest approach—and that not in the earliest part of the Canon—to a formal attack on the absolute. This does not, however, take us necessarily to any connexion with the Sāṃkhya, and it is doubtful whether any aid is given by the attack² on philosophers who assert the eternity of the self and the world, bringing forth nothing new, steadfast as a mountain peak, firmly fixed as a pillar; the metaphor of the mountain top is found in epic and classical Sāṃkhya, but it applies to the spirit alone. Equally unconvincing is a Sāṃkhya origin for the distinction made by some teachers between the impermanent eye, ear, nose, tongue and body and the permanent consciousness, for the Sāṃkhya regards consciousness as equally impermanent.