The true self was with the Upani@sads a matter of transcendental experience as it were, for they said that it could not be described in terms of anything, but could only be pointed out as "there," behind all the changing mental categories. The Buddha looked into the mind and saw that it did not exist. But how was it that the existence of this self was so widely spoken of as demonstrated in experience? To this the reply of the Buddha was that what people perceived there when they said that they perceived the self was but the mental experiences either individually or together. The ignorant ordinary man did not know the noble truths and was not trained in the way of wise men, and considered himself to be endowed with form (rûpa) or found the forms in his self or the self in the forms. He
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[Footnote 1: Sa@myutta Nikûya, III. pp. 44-45 ff.]
[Footnote 2: See B@rh. IV. iv. Chândogya, VIII. 7-12.]
[Footnote 3: Sa@myutta Nikaya, III 45.]
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experienced the thought (of the moment) as it were the self or experienced himself as being endowed with thought, or the thought in the self or the self in the thought. It is these kinds of experiences that he considered as the perception of the self [Footnote ref 1].
The Upani@sads did not try to establish any school of discipline or systematic thought. They revealed throughout the dawn of an experience of an immutable Reality as the self of man, as the only abiding truth behind all changes. But Buddhism holds that this immutable self of man is a delusion and a false knowledge. The first postulate of the system is that impermanence is sorrow. Ignorance about sorrow, ignorance about the way it originates, ignorance about the nature of the extinction of sorrow, and ignorance about the means of bringing about this extinction represent the fourfold ignorance (avijjâ) [Footnote ref 2]. The avidyâ, which is equivalent to the Pâli word avijjâ, occurs in the Upani@sads also, but there it means ignorance about the âtman doctrine, and it is sometimes contrasted with vidyâ or true knowledge about the self (âtman) [Footnote ref 3]. With the Upani@sads the highest truth was the permanent self, the bliss, but with the Buddha there was nothing permanent; and all was change; and all change and impermanence was sorrow [Footnote ref 4]. This is, then, the cardinal truth of Buddhism, and ignorance concerning it in the above fourfold ways represented the fourfold ignorance which stood in the way of the right comprehension of the fourfold cardinal truths (âriya sacca)—sorrow, cause of the origination of sorrow, extinction of sorrow, and the means thereto.
There is no Brahman or supreme permanent reality and no self, and this ignorance does not belong to any ego or self as we may ordinarily be led to suppose.
Thus it is said in the Visuddhimagga "inasmuch however as ignorance is empty of stability from being subject to a coming into existence and a disappearing from existence…and is empty of a self-determining Ego from being subject to dependence,—…or in other words inasmuch as ignorance is not an Ego, and similarly with reference to Karma and the rest—therefore is it to be understood of the wheel of existence that it is empty with a twelvefold emptiness [Footnote ref 5]."