Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c7.s2.4

c7.s2.4

The first groups of these consist of eternalists,⁴ teachers who believe in the eternity of the soul and of the world, induced to this conviction in the first three cases by memories of former births, extending for periods reaching in the last case forty Aeons, and in the fourth case by reasoning and sophistry. The next four groups are represented by those who maintain that the soul and the world are partly eternal and partly not; the first of these groups arises through the delusion of memory of one who has come to life again after a world period in the retinue of Brahmā; like Brahmā himself he thinks that Brahmā is absolutely the first of beings, and he thinks that he is created by Brahmā, and, when he is reborn in the fullness of time as a teacher on earth, he deems that Brahmā is eternal, while others are impermanent. The second and third groups have their origin in the memories of those teachers who were once gods in heaven, but by moral defects, love of pleasure or envy towards one another, fall from their high estate, and erroneously compare themselves as impermanent with the permanent deities who shared not their defects. The fourth group rely on reasoning; the body and the organs pass away, but the soul as heart, or mind, or consciousness, is abiding amid the impermanence. A third set of four groups includes those who by application of intuitive thought convince themselves that the world is finite, or infinite, or finite vertically and infinite horizontally, or by reasoning conclude that it is neither finite nor infinite.