Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c8.s1.5

c8.s1.5

All the world of appearance, and this is the only world recognized by the Buddha, the argument runs, is summed up by him in the phrase the five groups of assumption (*upādāna-kkhandha*), that is, our coming into relation with the apparent things of this world; this very phrase shows conclusively that only psychical value was attributed to the world, and this conclusion is confirmed by the use of the world of the term Saṃkhāras, denoting ideas or presentations. Had the Buddha believed that there was anything real behind the presentations, he could never have committed himself to the doctrine of the Kevaddha Sutta³ that all the great elements and name and form are comprehended in the intellect of the Arahant, dying out when it does. Name and form again, denoting the whole of the apparent world, are made in the formula of causation¹ to be dependent on intellect, from which they are produced, and the same formula asserts that existence depends on assumption, while the body elsewhere is expressly declared to be nothing but the groups of assumption.² But the case is even stronger; if anything is to exist, it must exist for a subject, and the Buddha, by denying the existence of any self, deprives the appearance of any possibility of reality; the self is a mere idle name, and one of the modes of furthering liberation is the consciousness that no self exists (*an-atta-saññā*); nay more, we have the assertion that even in pain, the most real of all things for the Buddha, there is no self, and more generally all objects of our perception are declared to be without a self (*sabbe dhammā anattā*).³ The belief, ‘I am’, is a delusion which must be laid aside, and he who has entered on the path to salvation is already freed from the false belief in the existence of a real body (*sakkāya-diṭṭhi*). Form is nothing but bounded space. The Buddhist is bidden to be guarded as to the doors of sense; when he sees a colour with the eye, hears a sound with the ear, smells an odour with the nose, he is not to assume an object corresponding to the sensation (*na nimittaggāhī hoti*).⁴ The changing, painful character of existence is correctly held by the Buddhists to be inconsistent with true reality, and it is significant that the Buddha declines to discuss the question, from the nihilistic point of view absurd, of the continued existence after death of the soul, or the eternity of the world. An essential part of the discipline to attain Nirvāṇa consists in the overcoming of the delusion of the existence of forms; in the Jhānas the expert attains the conviction of utter non-existence (*ākiñcañña*).