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RECONCILIATION OF BUDDHIST AND VEDANTIC
NOTION OF SELF
Y. S. Shastri
There is a general impression that Buddhism is opposed to the existence of Self or Ātman... Indeed many scholars of distinction maintained that this non-soul theory demarcates Buddhism from Vedāntic philosophy. The Hinayānists, the Mahāyānists, namely Sūnyavādins and Vijñānavādins explicity denied the existence of soul. In other words, this non-soul theory embraces entire Buddhist philosophical literature. Granted, all schools of Buddhism criticise the existence of Ātman; however, it is equally important to comprehend the notion of 'self' as they understood.
For this purpose, we must look through the arguments set forth by Buddhism against the existence of Atman, from the days of Buddha to the Mahāyānist thinkers. It seems that the word Ātman for Buddha is nothing but 'ego' i.e. notion of
l' and 'mine'. The notion of 'self' is here regarded as the cause of misery and bondage. The Buddhists call it 'sat-kāya dřsti'. When we take anything as a 'self! we get attached to it and dislike other things that are opposed to it. The notion of self is considered as ignorance (Avidyā) and from it proceed all passions. This notion of self is, for the Buddhists, the root cause of all kinds of attachment, and hence of misery and pain. This notion of self which is, the fountainhead of all misdeeds led Buddhists to deny the existence of Ātman. Following this limited concept of Ātman as an individual ego', Buddhism in all subsequent phases of its development criticises the existence of Ātman as a false notion of the Vedāntins.
Says Buddha : Anattā (Anātman) means 'non-ego, not-self' i. e. the fact that neither within these bodily and mental phenomena of existence nor outside them can be found anything that in the ultimate sense can be called as self-reliant real ego-entity or personality. "All are impermanent, body, sensation, perception, they are not self”. It is mentioned in the Samyukta-nikāya8 that self is nothing else but an aggregate of five skandhas, namely aggregate of body (rūpa) and four mental processes --feeling (vedanā), perception (samjñā), disposition (saṁskāra) and selfconsciousness (vijñāna). The five states of the five senses and the mind, the feeling that is related to mind, all these are void of self. There is no self or person or life principle which is permanent. No consciousness of any such permanent changeless entity or eternal principle obtains in man. In the Maijhima-nikāya, Buddha condemned the notion of self as an unreal thing imagined only by dull people.4 Early Buddhist literature reveals that Buddha admitted the states of consciousness but
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