..续本文上一页e action. It is only that “I,” which can walk, and sit, and think, and eat, and sleep. But that “I” is not a permanent, unchanging entity; it is identified with the action, is the action itself, and thus changes with the action. “I” cannot stay at home, while “I” go out for a walk.

　　It is the conventional language which has spoilt the purity of conception, though in some cases even the language has remained pure enough, as e.g. in the intransitive form of impersonal verbs; e.g. it rains. Who rains

　　 What rains

　　 Simply: it rains, meaning rain rains. Likewise the concept should not be: I think, but thought thinks.

　　The fact that conventional language uses the terms “I” and “mine” may be advanced in support of the human conviction; but that does not make that conviction any truer than our way of speaking of sunrise and sunset.

　　The inpidual, conventionally called “I” or “self,” is a mass of physical and psychical elements without a soul behind them, without a soul inherent in them, the elements themselves being a mere flux (santaana), a continuity of changes without identity.

　　The Saa.nkhyas too believed in constant change, but a change of the same substratum, eternal matter.

　　The assemblage of impermanent elements, however, does not require a permanent entity to keep them together. The very presence of an unchanging substance would pre­vent any change in the phenomena dependent on it.

　　In postulating a mythical, permanent, unchanging entity, as the possessor of changing qualities, one merely assumes that the existence of which had to be proved. A single moment of existence has no qualities, but it is those qualities.

　　Matter does not have extension, cohesion, temperature, vibration, but it merely is all that, and without that it is not. Mind, likewise, is not an entity, but a function, con­sciousness is thought, and it arises when certain conditions are present: the object, the sense-organ, the proper attention. Thus a thought arises not as the action of a thinking sub­ject, but conditioned by, originating from, dependent on other states. And as such it will be again the condition to, the origin of, the raison d”etre of further states—in ceasing passing on its movement, thus giving the impulse to new arising.

　　“Mind arises from a cause; and without assignable conditions consciousness does not come about” (MN 8). Then the Lord Buddha further explains in the Mahaata.nhaasa.nkhaya Sutta, that consciousness is conditioned by the objects, i.e. thought arises in dependence on objects presented to the sense organs. If the object is a visible shape and is presented to the eye, then dependent on those conditions, a thought may arise which is called in this case eye-con­sciousness, as fire derives its name, wood-fire, grass-fire, from the fuel applied.

　　Without fuel, however, no fire, without objects and organs, no thought can arise. Becoming is according to the stimulus (lit. food) and when that stimulus ceases, that which has become also ceases.

　　“Void is this of self, or aught of the nature soul.”

　　(MN 43, Mahaa Vedalla Sutta)

　　The teaching of anattaa does not proclaim that there is no inpiduality, no self, but only that there is no per­manent inpiduality, no unchanging self.

　　Personality or inpiduality is according to Buddhism not an entity, but a process of arising and passing away, a process of nutrition, a process of combustion, a process of grasping.

　　This inpiduality has no permanent existence, as a wave in the ocean is only existent as a process, and in rolling on makes itself, and destroys itself.

　　Yet the inpiduality of consciousness, though not a permanent entity or soul, is neither a merely physical process. It is a process of grasping. Like fire can only burn as long as it lays hold of new fuel,…

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