Reconcliation of Buddhist and Vedantic Notion of Self

Author(s): Yajneshwar S Shastri
Publisher: Z_Aspect_of_Jainology_Part_3_Pundit_Dalsukh_Malvaniya_012017.pdf

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Reconciliation of Buddhist and Vedantic Notion of Self.
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not the soul. According to him the union of mental and material qualities makes the 'individual'. The 'self' is nothing but an empirical aggregate. In the Alagaddüpana-sutta, it is said that there is no self or anything having the nature of self. Vidhusekhara Bhattacharya, quoting various references in support of the Buddhist denial of self, writes: "The existence of personal self or Atman as accepted in other systems was utterly denied by the Buddha, thereby pulling down the very foundation of desire where it can rest."
The same notion of 'self (non-ego)' is accepted by the later Buddhists and. further elaboration of existence of non-soul theory is solely responsible for the misconception that Buddhism is diametrically opposed to Vedantic thought.
In denying this notion of the self all the schools of Buddhism are unanimous. T. R. V. Murti rightly pointed out that "there is no Buddhist school of thought. which did not deny the Atman".
Immediately after Buddha, negative approach towards the existence of the soul reached its climax; especially, in Nagasena, we notice this negative attitude. Nagasena, like Hume, maintained that the so-called 'self' is nothing but a stream of ideas. It is psychologically impossible to believe in the existence of 'self'. He observes that when we analyse the idea of soul, we wrongly imagine a soul under-lying mental states. It is nothing else but a collection of certain qualities which exist together. The soul is a name for the sum total of the states which constitutes our mental existence. The soul or personality is like a stream of river; there is continuity, even though one movement is not the same as another. It is the view of all the Hinayānist schools.
For the Madhyamikas, 'self' is an unreal entity. Nagarjuna (c. 2nd cent. A.D.) declares that it is neither identical with, nor different from the five skandhas." When 'I' and 'mine' cease, the cycle of birth and death comes to a standstill. If the 'self' by the same as the skandhas, then it too, like them, will be subject to birth. and death and it cannot be known. Nägärjuna's followers like Aryadeva and Candrakirti also treated soul as unreal entity. According to Candrakirti, Atman is the root cause of all sufferings and demerits and he says that wise men (yogi) should deny its ultimate reality. Santideva also states similarly when he says that when we analyse the existence of 'self', nothing should be found ultimately. "Just as when one goes on taking off the layers of a plantain trunk or an onion nothing [ultimately] will remain, similarly, if one goes on analysing the so-called existence of self, ultimately it will be found to be nothing."10
In criticising the existence of 'self', the Vijñānavādins are not far behind the earlier Buddhists. They all took the notion of Atman as ego-entity and criticise it as a non-existent entity. Let us see how Asanga, the great Vijñānavädin criticises the notion of self as mere illusion in his major work, the Mahayanasütrālankära. He says that the concept of Atman is simply a 'pre-conception or an "illusory concept',