Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c7.s2.9

c7.s2.9

These eighteen views concern the past; the remaining deal with the future. The first sixteen maintain that the soul, after death, does not suffer decay but is conscious, and their divergence of view depends on the point of the actual condition of the soul; thus some hold that it has form, is formless, is both, is neither; some maintain it is finite, is infinite, both, or neither; some that it has one mode of consciousness, or various modes, or limited consciousness, or unlimited consciousness; some that it is altogether happy, altogether miserable, both or neither; a curious opportunity of further enumeration is lost in the failure to specify the results attained by combining these sixteen different views. Eight groups approve an unconscious existence after death for the soul, their divisions resting on the four possibilities regarding form, and finite character. Eight more groups accept the doctrine that the soul is neither conscious nor unconscious after death, with the same grounds of subdivision. The scholastic character of these divisions is apparent enough, but we are assured by Buddhaghosa that the Ājīvakas accepted the conscious survival of a soul possessing form, while the Nigaṇṭhas held that the soul was formless.