tman_and_moksa

SR No.: 020053
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: G N Joshi
Publisher: Gujarat University
Publication Year: 1965
Total Pages: 901
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 12 MB

Page 156

Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
124
Atman and Mokşa
have an individual entity sustained by an immortal egosubstratum. In fact, the material body (rūpakāya542TT) alone is not what makes the ego-soul, nor the sensation (again), nor the deed ( FF?!?); nor the consciousness (fazia), nor the conception (HF); but only when they are all combined in a certain form they make a sentient being ... This combination of the constituent elements, Buddhism declares is achieved by themselves after their Karma."1 These aggregates, even though they are the constituents of the Self are not stable substances. They are always changing their nature without pause. Consequently the Self never remains an immutable entity. The Self also is in a continuous flux. Poussin describes the Self quite appropriately in the following passage-“There is not a Self, a permanent substantial unity, but there is a person, to be described as 'a living continuous fluid complex', which does not remain quite the same for two consecutive moments, but which continues for an endless number of deaths, without becoming completely different from itself."2 The Self is impermanent in its nature. In fact, it has no essential nature of itself. It is entirely dependent for its emergence and presence upon the co-operation of the five aggregates. J. E. Ellam puts the view of eternal impermanence of the Self as follows — “The Buddhist analysis of man's being into the five Khandhas (FFET) is exactly in accordance with scientific monism. The body ( 59, the vehicle) we know to be made
1 Ibid. pp. 149-150. 2 Poussin D. L. V. : The Way to Nirvana, p. 35.
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