Studies in Indian Philosophy

Author(s): Dalsukh Malvania, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 50

A note on Atta
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As a final proof of the fact that the khandhas are not their aitā, i, e, a final refutation of the view that the external world and the khandhas and the attā are the same around thing, he points to the wood being collected and burned them in the Jetavana, where the discussion is taking place, and he asks his audience if they think, when people do this, that they are carrying them (his audience) away and burning them. The answer is 'No', and the reason is that they do not have attā or anything belonging to attā in them. The Buddha closes by saying that they are to abandon everything which is not theirs, and what is not theirs is rūpa, etc.
We are now in a position to assess the basis of the Buddha's refutation. The doctrine that the world and the attā are the same (so loko so attā) also affirms the oneness of the individual attā and the world-attā. The phrase eso 'ham asmi
I am that, is the tat tvam asi “Thou art that' of the Upanisada looked at from the point of view of the first person instead of the second person. Since loko=attā, then the Buddha's argument is : 'If there is world-attā, then there is something belonging to world-atta in me. If there is something belonging to world-attā ia me, i.e. if there is a world-attā, then I (and all other things) would have attā which is part of the world-attā, and I would have all the "things” that go to make up world-attā. Material form (rūpa), etc., would be "mine". If, however, each individual attă were part of the world-attā, then each painful sensation felt by one part of the world-attā would be felt by every other part of the worldattā, i.e. when wood is burned the attā in us would feel the pain suffered by the attă in it. We do not feel any such pain because there is no world-attā'.
E. J. Thomas seems to have overlooked this reference to the world-atta when he wrote : "The Vedic religion had deve. loped on the philosophical side into the doctrine of the soul (ātman) as an ultiamate reality, either as the one universal soul, or as an infinity of souls involved in matter. Buddhism appears to know only this second form...., and this it denied by