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The Seventh Lesson: Buddhism.1255
When examined carefully, it will be seen that Gautama claims nothing more,
in this respect, than does the Advaitist Vedanta with its “Tat tvam Asi”—
“That Thou art”—the individual soul being considered merely as the result
of “the One appearing as the Many.” But Gautama really goes a little further,
and refuses to admit even the appearance of an individual soul, or spiritentity,
claiming that the same is not necessary to account for the sense of
“Personality,” or to explain Reincarnation. Critics have claimed that Gautama
used “the desperate expedient” of the principle of Karma to carry the
effects of the causes of one life over into the next, which idea was held to
postulate a great injustice, because it would be the bestowing upon one
individual of the effects of causes generated by another individual. But this
is not so, because the only “individual” affected is the same in both cases,
just as is the man of sixty the same “individual” as the man of twenty, or
the child of six, although appearing differently to an observer. The whole
trouble arises from the understanding of the word “soul.”
To the Sankhyas the “soul” was the individual Purusha—an entity gathering
to itself certain “qualities and attributes” from the mental evolution of the
Prakriti—that is that a “soul” was something different from its mind—being
the “spirit” or permanent thing, animating the mind or impermanent thing—
the soul being a persistent Principle. Now Gautama would not admit this
Principle of the individual “soul,” even as being a manifestation of and one of
the dual-principles emanated by that. Instead, he held that the only Spirit
in man was the animating reflection or manifestation of the undivided One
Spirit of that; he holding that there was no separate “soul” other than the
“character” of the individual, which character consisted of the Attributes
and Qualities of the man—his personal nature, or characteristics considered
as a whole. This “Character” he held was the only “soul” that man had, or
could have, and that it was that “character” which reincarnated in a new body,
under the laws of Karma. In other words, this Character was the essence of
the man’s thoughts and actions, held together firmly, and constituting an “I”
which was individual but which was not a real and eternal entity.