or ”I have done this wonderful deed
”
The thought of thine ego stands between thy rational nature and truth;
banish it, and then wilt thou see things as they are.
He who thinks correctly will rid himself of ignorance and acquire wisdom.
The ideas ”I am” and ”I shall be” or ”I shall not be”
do not occur to a clear thinker. [7]
"Moreover, if our ego remains, how can we attain true deliverance
If the ego is to be reborn in any of the three worlds,
be it in hell, upon earth, or be it in heaven,
we shall meet again and again the same inevitable doom of sorrow.
We shall remain chained to the wheel of inpiduality
and shall be implicated in egotism and wrong. [8]
"All combinations is subject to separation,
and we cannot escape birth, disease, old age, and death.
Is this a final escape
" [9]
Said Uddaka: "Consider the unity of things.
Things are not their parts, yet they exist.
The members and organs of thy body are not thine ego,
but thine ego possesses all these parts.
What, for instance, is the Ganges
Is the sand the Ganges
Is the water the Ganges
Is the hither bank the Ganges
Is the farther bank the Ganges
The Ganges is a mighty river and it possesses all these several qualities.
Exactly so is our ego." [10]
But the Bodhisatta replied: "Not so, sir!
If we except the water, the sand, the hither bank and the farther bank,
where can we find any Ganges
In the same way I observe the activities of man in their harmonious union,
but there is no ground for an ego outside it parts." [11]
The Brahman sage, however, insisted on the existence of the ego, saying:
"The ego is the doer of our deeds.
How can there be karma without a self as its performer
Do we not see around us the effects of karma
What makes men different in character, station, possessions, and fate
It is their karma, and karma includes merit and demerit.
The transmigration of the soul is subject to its karma.
We inherit from former existences the evil effects of our evil deeds
and the good effects of our good deeds.
If that were not so, how could we be different
" [12]
The Tathagata meditated deeply on the problems of transmigration and karma,
and found the truth that lies in them. [13]
"The doctrine of karma," he said, "is undeniable,
but thy theory of the ego has no foundation. [14]
"Like everything else in nature,
the life of man is subject to the law of cause and effect.
The present reaps what the past has sown,
and the future is the product of the present.
But there is no evidence of the existence of an immutable ego-being,
of a self which remains the same and migrates from body to body.
There is rebirth but no transmigration. [15]
"Is not this inpiduality of mine a combination, material as well as mental
Is it not made up of qualities that sprang into being by a gradual evolution
The five roots of sense-perception in this organism
have come from ancestors who performed these functions.
The ideas which I think, came to me partly from others who thought them,
and partly they rise from combinations of the ideas in my mind.
Those who have used the same sense-organs, and have thought the same ideas
before I was composed into this inpiduality of mine are my previous existences;
they are my ancestors as much as the I of yesterday is the father of the I of to-day,
and the karma of my past deeds conditions the fate of my present existence. [16]
"Supposing that were an atman that performs the actions of the senses,
then if the door of sight were torn down and the eye plucked out,
that atman would be able to peep through the larger aperture
and see the forms of its surroundings better and more clearly than before.
it would be able to hear sounds better if the ears were torn away;
smell better if the nose w…
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