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JAINA THEORIES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
which signifies an enduring entity, the "something I know not what”, as Locke puts it, behind the dynamic and discrete moments.
Perhaps the varied developments of Buddhism are a continual series of approximations to the spirit of the
enlightenment' (bodhi) which dawned upon the Buddha who must have felt that this mischievous or dangerous idea of an enduring something behind the goings-on of our life and the world breeds a craving for possession and the consequent ills' of despair and suffering at loss. In the words of Stcherbatsky the history of Buddhism is “a series of attempts to penetrate more deeply into the original intuition of Buddha, what he himself believed to be his great discovery". The same writer refers to "a sense of opposition or even animosity” as being "clearly felt" in the words of Buddha whenever he (Buddha) talked about satkāyadȚsti or the doctrines of a permanent self or substance. Mrs. Caroline Rhys Davids also remarks: "how carefully and conscientiously this antisubstantialist position had been cherished and upheld” as the "central point of the whole bulk of Buddhist teaching".
Thus the original character of soullessness or substancelessness remains the fundamental attitude of Buddhism in spite of the fact that we find several different shades of idealism and realism within the range of its philosophical
1. ātma-drştau ca satyam ātma-snehādayaḥ kleśāḥ pravartante /
STBD, Abhidharmakośavyākhyā, p. 697. 2. Ibid., p. 824. 3. Quoted: ibid., pp. 824-5.
