38 PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE: THE HUMAN CONDITIONNAMSARA AND THE 501.TL KARMA 60 THE SIX REALMS OF BEING 62 PART 2 • ClIAPTER 1 Todd T LewisTHE HUMAN CONDITIONsiessamoramemiammemmakan SAMSARA AND THE SOULBuddhism shares with Ilinduism the doctrine of samsara, whereby all beings pass through an unceasing cycle of birth, death, and rebirth until they find a means of liberation from the cycle. I ioweven Buddhism differs from Hinduism in rejecting the assertion that every human being possesses a changeless soul which constitutes his or her ultimate identity, and which transmigrates from one incarnation to the next, The Buddhist perspective is that humans, like all phenomena, are constantly changing, in flux, impermanent. Therefore no fixed entity called “the soul” is possible, The Buddha’s teaching of iirtiabrian r non-self”) rejects any notion of an intrinsic, unchanging entity at the core of a person. What then did he regard as a human being? Seeking to see all reality as process, the Buddha analyzed a person as a collection of five components (skandhas): the physi-cal body (rupa), which is made of combinations of the four elements (earth, crater, fire, air); feelings f riedana), which arise from sensory contact in theTHE COMPASSION OF SU JATA T1e hundreds of jadaka (“birth”) tales—accounts +:1 the Buddha’s previous lives—indicate the emphasis that Buddhists place on the reality of rebirth as the framework for all experience. In the following story, the future Buddha alleviates his father’s grief by compassionately reminding him that his grandfather has passed on, literally, to another existence in a different form. “Grandfather,’ like the ox, existed only when all the five skandhas (see main text} were present, and hence the father’s attachment to a few physical remains is pointless. “In the past, when Brahmadatta [a king] was reigning in Benares, the future Buddha was born in the house of a landowner and called Sujata. When his grandfather died, his father, steeped in grief, brought the bones from the burning pyre, laid them out on a mound, and hon-ored them with flowers, contemplating and lamenting,and neglected to bathe, eat, or attend to his work. The future Buddha conceived a plan to make his father lose his excessive sorrow. He found a dead ox, then fetched some grass and water; laying them before the ox, he called out `Eat! Drink!’ Passers-by reported this to his father, who asked Sujata to explain his actions, The Future Buddha replied: The head’s yet there, the feet,/ Front, hind, and tail 1 Are still the same—methinks / The ox may yet rise up./ But no more is seen of Grandfather’s hands, feet, or bead! / Weeping beside the mound I You are alone, out of your mind!’ The father reflected and said, ‘Dear wise Sujata, I know the saying, “all things are transient!’ Henceforth, I will not grieve further, thanks to my grief-dispelling son…’ So in compassion work the very wise, turning us back from grief.”
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