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But it is suffering only that comes into existence and passes away." And Buddhaghosa says: "Misery only doth exist, none miserable; No doer is there, naught but the deed is found; Nirvana is, but not the man that seeks it; The path exists but not the traveller on it." Thus the Buddha and his disciples rejected such ideas as soul, being and personality.
The third Pitaka is known by the name of Abhidhamma. Dhamma is the usual designation for the doctrine of the Buddha and Buddhaghosa explains the prefix abhi as signifying excess and distinction, so that this Pitaka is considered pre-eminent because it surpasses the others. This pre-eminence consists solely in method and scope, not in novelty of matter or charm of diction.
It is probable that many more inscriptions remain to be discovered but none of those known allude to the convening of a Council and our information as to this meeting comes from the two Sinhalese Chronicles and the works of Buddhaghosa.
The power of recollecting one's previous births, often mentioned in the Pitakas, has been described in detail by Buddhist writers and Buddhaghosa distinguishes between the powers possessed by various persons. The lowest form of recollection merely passes from one mental state to a previous mental state and so on backwards through successive lives, not however understanding each life as a whole.
Buddhaghosa has given an account of the way in which the Buddha was wont to spend his days when stopping in some such resting-place, and his description is confirmed by the numerous details given in the Pitakas.
A Buddha's intelligence dispenses with the necessity of moving backwards from birth to birth but can select any point of time and see at once the whole series of births extending from it in both directions, backwards and forwards. Buddhaghosa then goes on to prescribe the method to be followed by a monk who tries for the first time to recollect previous births.
Buddhaghosa observes that name-and-form are like the playing of a lute which does not come from any store of sound and when it ceases does not go to form a store of sound elsewhere. On what do name-and-form depend? On consciousness. This point is so important that in teaching Ânanda the Buddha adds further explanations.
Though the chain of causation treats of a human life, it never speaks of a person being born or growing old and Buddhaghosa observes that the Wheel of existence is without known beginning, without a personal cause or passive recipient and empty with a twelvefold emptiness.
The most precise statements about this Council are those of Buddhaghosa who says that an assembly of monks who knew the three Pitakas by heart recited the Vinaya and the Dhamma.
According to tradition Buddhaghosa was well versed in Sanskrit but deliberately preferred the southern canon. The Mahayanist doctor Asanga cites texts found in the Pali version, but not in the Sanskrit . The monks of the Mahâvihâra were probably too indulgent in admitting late scholastic treatises, such as the Parivâra.
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