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Updated: August 7, 2024
But though the Buddha denied that there is in man anything permanent which can be called the self, this does not imply a denial that human nature can by mental training be changed into something different, something infinitely superior to the nature of the ordinary man, perhaps something other than the skandhas . One of his principal objections to the doctrine of the permanent self was that, if it were true, emancipation and sanctity would be impossible , because human nature could not be changed.
When anything is predicated of several subjects, for instance the five Skandhas, it is rare to find a single sentence containing a combined statement. As a rule what has to be said is predicated first of the first Skandha and then repeated totidem verbis of the others.
The natural sense of this seems to be that the skandhas have no more to do with the real being of man than have the trees of the forest where he happens to be . This suggests that there is in man something real and permanent, to be contrasted with the transitory skandhas and when the Buddha asks whether anything which is perishable and changeable can be called the self, he seems to imply that there is somewhere such a self.
It is not the same soul that suffers, for in either case there is no soul; there is only a bundle of so-called skandhas certain faculties of mind and body newly combined whose interaction produces thought and emotion. Yet there is conscious suffering.
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