Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c8.s2.2.1

c8.s2.2.1

We may, indeed, for once believe that we have reached a doctrine which goes back in form to the Buddha himself, in the fact that his central teaching is always represented as the exposition of the four noble truths of misery, its origin, its cessation, and the path leading thereto. The parallelism with the Sāmkhya and Yoga division of topics regarding liberation is striking, but more interesting is the comparison with the division of medical topics into disease, origin of disease, health and healing, though we are still without proof that the medical is the older application.¹ Birth, old age, disease, death, union with what is disliked, separation from what is dear, unsatisfied desire, and all the elements that make up the individual are misery. The ground of this judgement is plainly expressed in the great sermon at Benares² when he expounded to his first disciples the doctrine of the distinguishing marks of the non-self. The five constituents of the empirical individual, material form, perception, feeling, dispositions, and intellect are each declared not to be the self; they are admitted to be unenduring, and therefore misery is predicated of them. Whatever is impermanent is misery; whatever is misery is not the self; whatever is not the self is not mine, I am not that, that is not myself.