Page:Gospel of Buddha.djvu/181

 are reborn; that they migrate in the evolution of life; and that subject to the law of karma we must reap what we sow. Yet thou .teachest the non-existence of the soul! Thy disciples praise utter self-extinction as the highest bliss of Nirvāna. If I am merely a combination of the sankharās, my existence will cease when I die. If I am merely a compound of sensations and ideas and desires, wither can I go at the dissolution of the body?" Said the Blessed One: "O Brahman, thou art religious and earnest. Thou art seriously concerned about thy soul. Yet is thy work in vain because thou art lacking in the one thing that is needful.

"There is rebirth of character, but no transmigration of a self. Thy thought-forms reappear, but there is no ego-entity transferred. The stanza uttered by a teacher is reborn in the scholar who repeats the words.

"Only through ignorance and delusion do men indulge in the dream that their souls are separate and self-existent entities.

"Thy heart, O Brahman, is cleaving still to self; thou art anxious about heaven but thou seekest the pleasures of self in heaven, and thus thou canst not see the bliss of truth and the. immortality of truth.

"Verily I say unto thee: The Blessed One has not come to teach death, but to teach life, and thou discernest not the nature of living and dying.

"This body will be dissolved and no amount of sacrifice will save it. Therefore, seek thou the life that is of the mind. Where self is, truth cannot be yet when truth comes, self will disappear. Therefore, let thy mind rest in the truth; propagate the truth, put thy whole will in it, and let it spread. In the truth thou shah live forever.

"Self is death and truth is life. The cleaving to self is a perpetual dying, while moving in the truth is partaking of Nirvāna which is life everlasting." 153