ursive thought as well as
passion. But this, the Buddha teaches, is a capital error. That which
can make an end of suffering is not something lurking ready-made in
human nature but something that must be built up: man must be reborn,
not flayed and stripped of everything except some core of unchanging
soul. As to the nature of this new being the Pitakas are reticent, but
not absolutely silent, as we shall see below. Our loose use of language
might possibly lead us to call the new being a soul, but it is decidedly
not an atman, for it is something which has been brought into being by
deliberate effort. The collective name for these higher states of mind
is _panna_[484], wisdom or knowledge. This word is the Pali equivalent
of the Sanskrit _prajna_ and is interesting as connecting early and
later Buddhism, for _prajna_ in the sense of transcendental or absolute
knowledge plays a great part in Mahayanism and is even personified.

The Pitakas imply that Buddhas and Arhats can understand things which
the ordinary human mind cannot grasp and human words cannot utter. Later
Indian Buddhists had no scruples in formulating what the master left
unformulated. They did not venture to use the words atman or atta, but
they said that the saint can rise above all difference and plurality,
transcend the distinction between subject and object and that nirvana is
the absolute (Bhutatathata). The Buddha would doubtless have objected to
this terminology as he objected to all attempts to express the ineffable
but perhaps the thought which struggles for expression in such language
is not far removed from his own thought.

One of the common Buddhist similes for human life is fire and it is the
best simile for illuminating all Buddhist psychology. To insist on
finding a soul is like describing flames as substances. Fire is often
spoken of as an element but it is really a process which cannot be
isolated or interrupted. A flame is not the same as its fuel and it can
be distinguished from other flames. But though you can individualize it
and propagate it indefinitely, you cannot isolate it from its fuel and
keep it by itself. Even so in the human being there is not any soul
which can be isolated and go on living eternally but the analogy of the
flame still holds good. Unseizable though a flame may be, and
undefinable as substance, it is not unreasonable to trim a fire and make
a flame rise above its fuel, free from smoke, clear and pure. If it we