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the way to a state of union with that which they do not know, neither have seen—such a condition of thing has no existence. As when a string of blind men are clinging one to the other, neither can the foremost see nor can the middle one see, nor can the hindmost see, just so is the talk of the Brāhmanas versed in the three Vedas."
What explanation then does Ponddha offer as to the nature of man and his relation to the world around him? In fact, Buddhism does not attempt to solve the problem of the primary origin of all things. When Malunka asked Buddha whether the existence of the world is eternal or non-eternal, he made him no reply; the reason of this was that it was considered by him as an inquiry which tended to no profit. Buddhism takes as its ultimate fact the existence of the material world and of conscious beings living within it and it holds that everything is subject to the law of cause and effect, and that everything is constantly though imperceptibly changing. The whole cosmos-earth, heavens and hell--is always tending to renovation or destruction; it is always in a course of change, a series of revolutions, or of cycles, of which the beginning and the end are unknowable and unknown.
As to the nature of man, Buddha's teaching is that it consists of an assemblage of different properties or qualities of aggregates none of which corresponds to the Hindu or modern notion of soul. These are Rūpa, forms or material attributes, Vedanå, sensations, Samjñā, notions or abstract ideas, Saṁskāra, tendencies or potentialities, and Vijñāna, i.e., con
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