Jain Journal 1995 10

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

Page 37

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JAIN JOURNAL: Vol-XXX, No. 2. October 1995
themselves are not enduring, but are series of momentary events. While there is a flux of constantly changing factors in any given individual there is also a continuity in the proecss, sufficient to give the appearance, both at physical and psychological levels of that individual. It is this continuity that helps one to give names and terms to individuals and things. What we mean by substance (including a human person) is only name and form there is no chariot except that it is made of parts, no substance apart from its qualities, no matter beyond sense data, and no soul beyond the separate mental data. Buddha says that these are worldly usages, worldly language, worldly terms of communication, worldly description by which a Tathagatha communicates without misapprehending them.39 But in the course of Buddhist history the idea of an individual self was re-introduced and affirmed by the pudgalavadins whose views were not accepted as true by other Buddhist schools.
What is commonly regarded as a human 'individual' is analysed into 5 khandhas: the first group of factors is rupa (from) i. e., the physical or corporeal and the second group of factors is nāma (name) which included the other 4 khandhas, namely sensation or feeling (vedanā), perception (samjñā), volition or formative principle (samskāra) and consciousness (vijñāna). Each of these is a group, aggregate or bundle of elements of that type which are continually in flux. The whole process constituted by the 5 groups is the human individual at any given moment of his/her life history.
The ultimate elements of psycho-physical existence are the dhammas.40 These are the atoms of which the khandhas are groups or aggregates. The dhammas are of momentary existence only. They are thus as it where flashes of reality. They co-operate among themselves according to the laws of causation.41 The analogy of the light buring through the night is used to explain how elements of being join one another in serial succession.42 The motivating or the generating 'forces' that operate in each Dhamma, whether material
39. Digha-Nikaya, I. 195f.
40. The shortest statement of the essence and spirit of Buddhism is declared in the Mahāvagga Buddha discovered the elements (dhamma) of existence, their causal connexion, and a method to suppress their efficiency for ever (Nirodha) (Mahāvagga, i. 23 as quoted by Stcherbatsky, Central conception of Buddhism and the meaning of the word Dharma, Prize publication Jund, Vol. VII of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1923, p.3).
41. H.C. Warren, op.cit. p. 166. This is known as the middle-doctrine between 'that things have being!' and 'that things have no being'. 42. ibid., p. 149.