Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c9.s2: 2. Personalist Doctrines

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c9.s2

Language: English

2. Personalist Doctrines

c9.s2.1

Although the doctrine which denied a self was certainly orthodox, from the point of view of the Pali Canon, it is certain that other Buddhists were perfectly contented with the conception of a true person (*pudgala*) which for all practical purposes may be regarded as an effective self. We need not accept from them, any more than we do from the advocates of the not-self, the view that their opinion was precisely that of the Buddha; it is sufficient to accept the obvious fact that they represent one branch of the early Buddhist belief, although not the branch which finally prevailed in the philosophical schools. It is important to note that the comment on the *Kathāvatthu*, where the heresy of the belief in a person occupies the first place, ascribes the doctrine to the Sammitiyas and the Vajjiputtakas within the schools and to many teachers outside the Buddhist community; the Vajjiputtakas are reckoned in the orthodox tradition as the first of the seceders, a valuable hint of the antiquity of their doctrine.

c9.s2.2

The hint is confirmed by the occurrence in the *Saṃyutta Nikāya*¹ of the Sūtra of the burden-bearer. We learn there of the bearer of the burden, the burden, the taking up of the burden, and the laying down of the burden; the burden is the five aggregates viewed as modes of clinging to existence (*upādāna*); the taking up is desire which leads to rebirth; the depositing is the laying aside of desire; the bearer is the individual the person (*pudgala*) of such and such a family. He, it is, who on enlightenment, having laid aside his heavy burden, does not take up another, but attains Nirvāṇa. Now it is possible to explain away the Sūtra, as do Buddhaghoṣa, Vasubandhu, Candrakīrti, and Yaçomitra; but it is equally obvious that it is mere explaining away, and that the author of the Sūtra did not entertain the view that the person is nothing save the five aggregates as these authorities insist, and all those who maintain that the Sūtra accepts a person are justified, including Uddyotakara who argues from it that the Buddhists in accepting the doctrine of the non-ego were contradicting their own master. To say that the aggregates are the bearer is to contradict the text, and the preservation of the doctrine of the person in the Canon is the most striking proof of its authenticity.

c9.s2.3

¹ iii. 25; cf. AKV. 474 b5 (Burnouf, *Intr.*, p. 507); Minayeff, *Recherches*, p. 225, n. 2; BCAP. ix. 73; NV., p. 342; Poussin, JRAS. 1901, p. 308; JA. 1902, ii. 266 ff.; Hardy, JRAS. 1901, p. 573.

c9.s2.4

There are other passages which permit of a similar rendering; the Buddha declares there are four kinds of persons, he who applies himself to the good of another not of the self, &c.;² the self is declared to be the lord of the self, the witness of its good and evil, in the *Dhammapada*,³ and it is clearly no adequate answer to argue that the self is nothing but the thought (*citta*), for that is merely a question of phraseology. What we recognize in such expressions is the fact that there is a dominant element in the individual, the object of taming, and we find in the *Milinda-pañha*⁴ the analogous conception in the intellectual sphere; the intelligence (*viññāṇa*) is compared with the guardian of a city, who, seated at the cross roads, watches the coming of men from diverse directions.

c9.s2.5

² AN. ii. 95; PP., p. 54; KV. comm., p. 8.

c9.s2.6

³ 160 compared in AKV. and BCAP. with 35: *cittassa damanaṃ sādhu*; MKV., p. 354.

c9.s2.7

⁴ p. 62.

c9.s2.8

The contention of the personalists is supported by arguments of a dialectical character; they appeal, of course, to the obvious difficulty of any real action of Karman if it is held that the individual who suffers is not he who sinned; but they use also the contention¹ that the Buddha would not have condemned the proposition that the Tathāgata does not exist in Nirvāṇa, unless the Nirvāṇa were existence, and they contend, of course, that Nirvāṇa is real, which doubtless accords with the general tone of the Canon itself. Another scholastic contention is based on the refusal of the Buddha to answer the questions: ‘Is the Jīva the same as the body? Is the Jīva different from the body?’ In its original sense the questions may have referred to the issue of the identity of the vital principle (jivitendriya) and the body; but the argument of the personalists treats it as applying to the person (pudgala) and the five aggregates, and they contend that, if the person were really no more than an insecure method of describing the five aggregates, the Buddha must have accepted as correct the identification of the Jīva and the body. They can appeal also to such declarations as the doctrine that the doer of the deed is neither the same as, nor different from the sufferer of the penalty; the person who has a sensation is neither the same as nor different from the sensation.² Similarly the person is neither identical with the aggregates, nor yet is he distinct from them; the relationship is properly described as ineffable (avācya), a position which forms the subject of attack by the Madhyamaka as well as by Vasubandhu.³ Its merits, however, are obvious; it mediates, in the best Buddhist manner, between phenomena with a basis and the permanent unchanging self of the Brahmanic tradition. It accords also, though the point seems not to have been noted, with the position asserted by Sāriputta in his discussions with Sāti,¹ for there we find that the Tathāgata is declared neither to be the five aggregates nor to be different from them. In truth the doctrine of the purely phenomenal self was one which presented interminable difficulties, and it is characteristic of the lack of serious attempt to deal with these difficulties in the orthodox school that the Canon makes no effort on its own doctrine to explain the phenomena of memory, leaving the problem for later definition.

Linked texts (8)

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā — Nāgārjuna, Sanskrit
Majjhimanikāya — Pāli
Aṅguttaranikāya — Pāli
Kathāvatthu — Moggaliputta Tissa, Pāli
Milindapañha — Pāli
བྱང་ཆུབ་ཀྱི་སྤྱོད་པ་ལ་འཇུག་པའི་དཀའ་འགྲེལ — Classical Tibetan
Dhammapada — Pāli
Saṃyuttanikāya — Pāli