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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
128
Ātman and Moksa
is a flux of ever-dying momentary existences. It is an aggregate not only of the mental states of an individual, but it also includes in it the physical and bodily states. Th. Stcherbatsky describes the Self in the following manner -- "Buddhism never denies the existence of a personality, or a soul, in the empirical sense, it only maintains that it is no ultimate reality (not a dharma). The Buddhist term for an individual, a term which is intended to suggest the difference between Buddhist view and other theories, is santāna, i.e. a 'stream' viz. of interconnected facts. It includes the mental elements and the physical ones as well, the elements of one's own body and the external objects, as far as they constitute the experience of a given personality." Thus the changing Reality and the Self also is often compared by the Buddhists with a burning flame or an everflowing stream of water. The flame, in fact, changes every moment and in spite of its changes it appears as stable and identical; so also a stream appears the same in spite of the fact that the waters flowing in it never remain the same at any spot for more than a moment. Thus, in spite of their internal changes they appear as permanent things. The Reality in the same manner appears as permanent and identical even though it is ever-changing in its real nature like a burning flame and a flowing stream.
Buddhism refused to admit the existence of a fictitious entity called Self because it did not find
1Stcherbatsky Th.: The Central Conception of Buddhism, p. 26.
For Private And Personal
