Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c9.s1.3

c9.s1.3

The doctrine of the characteristics of the non-ego are effectively set out in the sermon at Benares;¹ matter cannot be the self, for if it were, then the body would not be subject to disease and one would be able to control one’s body at pleasure, the self being assumed as autonomous. The same argument is applied to the other four aggregates constituting the spiritual nature of man, the feelings, perceptions, dispositions, and intellect; in each case they cannot be equated with the self. Then it is pointed out that the body is shifting and ever in change, and that it therefore is ever accompanied by misery; accordingly it cannot be the self, and the same argument is then repeated of the other aggregates. Then, it is added, when a man realizes that all these things are not the self he turns away from them and by the extinction of desire he attains release. An interesting form of the argument is given in the Mahānidāna Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya,² where three hypotheses are selected for investigation. The first is that the soul is feeling; to this it is replied that feelings are threefold pleasant, painful, and neutral; that they are impermanent, succeeding one another; and that they are products and certain to pass away. If then, when a pleasant feeling is experienced, the conclusion is arrived at: ‘This is my soul;’ then when a painful feeling supersedes it one must conclude: ‘My soul has passed away’. To call, therefore, feeling the self is to make out as self a thing which is impermanent, blended of happiness and pain, and liable to begin and end. Secondly, the hypothesis is made that the soul is neither feeling nor is insentient—that is, doubtless, the soul and the body are identical. But this contention is defeated by the simple consideration that where there is no feeling it is impossible to say: ‘I am’; that is, a soul without self-reference has no meaning. Thirdly, the soul is regarded as not identical with feeling but as possessing feeling; but this doctrine is also rejected, on the ground that, were feeling of every kind to cease absolutely, then, there being, owing to the cessation, no feeling whatever, no one could say: ‘I myself am.’ Therefore, the conclusion is drawn, one should lay aside these false views of the self, and thus save oneself from desire and attain complete rest. The same doctrine appears in a tedious scholastic form in the other Nikāyas,¹ where, by the use of permutations and combinations, twenty theories of the possible identification of the soul with one or more or all the five aggregates are enunciated and disapproved. A dialogue between Sāriputta and Yamaka in the Samyutta Nikāya develops the same theme; the self is not to be found in any of the aggregates or in their combination, and the realization of this has the usual practical effect of leading a man to final peace. The doctrine is consistently carried out; when the Buddha is asked who has feeling or other sensation, his answer is to point out that he does not assert that any one feels, but that there is feeling, which is a totally different proposition. Similarly it is not correct to ask who undergoes old age and rebirth.² Indeed, if one is to assert that anything is the self, it is really more correct to give the name to the body, for that may endure for as much as a hundred years, while consciousness in all its forms is impermanent, in constant flux, comparable to the ape in the forest which seizes one branch, only to let it go and grasp another.³ The constant change is illustrated by the metaphors of the fire or the movement of water.⁴