nirvana before death and wholly free
after death. Schrader[479] has pointed out texts in the Pitakas which
seem to imply that there is something which is absolute and therefore
not touched by the doctrine of anatta. In a remarkable passage[480] the
Buddha says: Therefore my disciples get rid of what is not yours. To get
rid of it will mean your health and happiness for a long time. Form,
sensation, perception, etc., are not yours; get rid of them. If a man
were to take away, or burn, or use for his needs, all the grass, and
boughs, and branches and leaves in this Jeta wood, would it ever occur
to you to say, the man is taking _us_ away, burning _us_, or using _us_
for his needs? Certainly not, Lord. And why not? Because, Lord, it is
not our self or anything belonging to our self. Just in the same way,
replies the Buddha, get rid of the skandhas. 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[481]. 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. But this point
cannot be pressed, for it is perfectly logical to define first of all
what you mean by a ghost and then to prove that such a thing does not
exist. If we take the passages at present collected as a whole, and
admit that they are somewhat inconsistent or imperfectly understood, the
net result is hardly that the name of self can be given to some part of
human nature which remains when the skandhas are set on one side.

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[482]. One of his principal objections
to the doctrine of the permanent self was that, if it were true,
emancipation and sanctity would be impossible[483], because human nature
could not be changed. In India the doctrine of the atman was really
dangerous, because it led a religious man to suppose that to ensure
happiness and emancipation it is only necessary to isolate the atman by
self-mortification and by suppressing disc