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Updated: June 18, 2025
The realization of mukti, i.e., the power of the atman to transcend the physical, is thus expressed by Solomon, clearly indicating that he had found liberation: "My beloved spoke and said unto me, 'Rise up my love my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is passed, the rain is over and gone.
The doctrine of Gotama as expressed in his earliest utterance on the subject to the five monks at Benares is that neither the body, nor any mental faculty to which a name can be given, is what was called in Brahmanic theology âtman, that is to say an entity which is absolutely free, imperishable, changeless and not subject to pain.
"As all waters have their meeting place in the sea, all touch in the skin, all tastes in the tongue, all odours in the nose, all colours in the eye, all sounds in the ear, all percepts in the mind, all knowledge in the heart, all actions in the hands....As a lump of salt has no inside nor outside and is nothing but taste, so has this Âtman neither inside nor outside and is nothing but knowledge.
"No," he replied, "like the life of the rich would be thy life but there is no hope of immortality." Maitreyî said that she had no need of what would not make her immortal. Yâjñavalkya proceeded to explain to her his doctrine of the Âtman, the self or essence, the spirit present in man as well as in the universe. "Not for the husband's sake is the husband dear but for the sake of the Âtman.
Was it not the Atman, He, the only one, the singular one? Were the gods not creations, created like me and you, subject to time, mortal? Was it therefore good, was it right, was it meaningful and the highest occupation to make offerings to the gods? For whom else were offerings to be made, who else was to be worshipped but Him, the only one, the Atman?
Its first great text-book is the Bhagavad-gîtâ, but it is also mentioned in the last verse of the Śvetâśvatara Upanishad and Pâṇini appears to allude to bhakti felt for Vâsudeva. The Kaṭhâ Upanishad contains the following passage: "That Âtman cannot be gained by the Veda, nor by understanding nor by much learning. He whom the Âtman chooses, by him the Âtman can be gained.
In India the doctrine of the âtman was really dangerous, because it led a religious man to suppose that to ensure happiness and emancipation it is only necessary to isolate the âtman by self-mortification and by suppressing discursive thought as well as passion. But this, the Buddha teaches, is a capital error.
It took me a long time and am not finished learning this yet, oh Govinda: that there is nothing to be learned! There is indeed no such thing, so I believe, as what we refer to as `learning'. There is, oh my friend, just one knowledge, this is everywhere, this is Atman, this is within me and within you and within every creature.
Surely, many verses of the holy books, particularly in the Upanishades of Samaveda, spoke of this innermost and ultimate thing, wonderful verses. "Your soul is the whole world", was written there, and it was written that man in his sleep, in his deep sleep, would meet with his innermost part and would reside in the Atman.
The belief in transmigration which Buddhism received from the religion it found existing in India, does not belong to the higher thought of Brahmanism described in this section; the atman or self, which is identical with the supreme self, belongs to quite a different order of thought from the soul which was formerly in some one else, is now in me, and may yet come to be in many another being.
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