rid himself of covetousness and
melancholy": and similarly as regards the sensations, the mind and
phenomena. The importance of this mindfulness is often insisted on. It
amounts to complete self-mastery by means of self-knowledge which allows
nothing to be done heedlessly and mechanically and controls not merely
recognized acts of volition but also those sense-impressions in which we
are apt to regard the mind as merely receptive. "Self is the lord of
self: who else should be the lord? With self well subdued, a man finds a
lord such as few can find[476]."

Although the Buddha denies that there is any soul or self (atta) apart
from the skandhas, yet here his ethical system seems to assume that a
ruling principle which may be called self does exist. Nor is the
discrepancy fully explained by saying that the non-existence of self or
soul is the correct dogma and that expressions like self being the lord
of self are concessions to the exigencies of exposition. The evolution
of the self-controlled saint out of the confused mental states of the
ordinary man is a psychological difficulty. As we shall see, when the
eightfold path has been followed to the end new powers arise in the
mind, new lights stream into it. Yet if there is no self or soul, where
do they arise, into what do they stream?

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 atman, that is to say an entity which is absolutely
free, imperishable, changeless and not subject to pain. This of course
does not exclude the possibility that there may be something which does
not come under any of the above categories and which may be such an
entity as described. Indeed Brahmanic works which teach the existence of
the atman often use language curiously like that of Buddhism. Thus the
Bhagavad-gita[477] says that actions are performed by the Gunas and only
he who is deluded by egoism thinks "I am the doer." And the Vishnu
Purana objects to the use of personal pronouns. "When one soul is
dispersed in all bodies, it is idle to ask who are you, who am I[478]?"
The accounts of the Buddhist higher life would be easier to understand
if we could suppose that there is such a self: that the pilgrim who is
walking in the paths gradually emancipates, develops and builds it up:
that it becomes partly free in