Jain Journal 1995 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 36

SEKHAR : THE HUMAN PERSON FROM JAINA AND BUDDHIST
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enlightement he received was that there was no reality that was permanent and everything35 was passing. This impermanence was the root cause for dissatisfaction. Creatures desired to fill themselves up to make up for the loss but in turn they were caught up in a whirlpool of continued existences which further got sustained by desire and the like. The foremost thing a person should realize was his/her own impermanancy. Buddha hoped that this realization would surely bring persons to non-attachment to things and to persons.
This logic is beautifully summarized in the Buddhist triple principle (ti-lakkhana) of anicca, anatta and dukkha : transitoriness, non-substanbility and pain/evil. Impermance (anicca) is a feature of all mundane existence. It is empirically observable at the physical levels in a human body, whose constituent elements are in a constant flux quite apart from the more obvious bodily impermance observable in difference between infancy, childhood, youth, maturity and old age. Even more impermanent is the human mind, or consciousness which arises and ceases from moment to moment36 though it is not readily observable empirically. It has to be discerned : 'The characteristic of impermanance does not become apparent, because when rise and fall are not given attention, it is concealed by continuity.....However, when continuity is disrupted by discerning rise and fall, the characteristic of impermanance becomes appparent in its true nature. 37
Each moment of consciousness is regarded as being formed from cause and condition and as being unstable, and therefore immediately dissolving. The analogy of the sound of a lute is used: 'this does not come from any store of sounds. nor does it go anywhere when it has ceased ; rather, from not having been, it is brought into existence by the lute and the player's effort, and then having been, it vanishes37 so with all material and mental events : they came to be, and having been, vanish. Anicca provides subject matter for contemplation for the Buddhists.
Anatta is the doctrine that there is not (an-) permanent self (-atta) within each individual being. This concept is entirely peculiar to Buddhism, distinguishing it from all other religious and philosophical schools of ancient India. Instead, the individual is seen as a temporary collection of five khandhas, or groups of constituent factors. The similie of the chariot is used to explain a human being.38 The khandhas
35. Sutta-Nipāta, II. 94-95 36. Visuddhimagga. XXI. 3 37. Sutta-Nipāta, IV. 197. 38. H.C. Warren, Buddhism in Translations, Cambridge, Mass. Pub. by
Harvard University, 1906, p. 251: Stcherbatsky, Soul Theory of the Buddhists, p. 836.