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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
Buddhism
125
up of elements which are in constant process of flux... It is the same with the rapid changes -- of sensation, perception, consciousness, and the mental properties (Sankhara); which last if anything, might be called the "soul”, since it is here that the illusion of the self-separate “Ego" arises. This has been aptly likened to a flame, a shifting iridescence... Never for one fraction of a second is it still, or at rest. This is the 'I', the "selt", what men call the "soul". Immortal? It is so mortal that one moment's time can hardly span its life. The body is less mortal than the "soul”." Thus it becomes evident from all these descriptions of the self that the self is not something that endures and maintains its identity in spite of the changes that take place in its various states of experience. It is what it is experienced separately in various states of consciousness. It is constituted of all the changing mental and bodily states. It does not have its separate nature independent of the various states of consciousness. It is curious whether consciousness is an attribute of the body or is entirely independent of it and is only accidently conjoined to it. Paul Dahlke, while describing the nature of consciousness, passes the following remarks about it--"Consciousness is, as compared with the whole of the remainder of the body, nothing but a product, a compound, a symptomthe spiritual in us, nothing but a modification of the corporeal.” Paul Dahlke thus, suggests that
1 Ellam J. E. : The Buddhist Annual of Ceylon, 1921, pp. 79,80.
a Dahlke Paul : Buddhist Essay, p. 205.
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