ome
unreal. But you cannot maintain that the passer is different from the
passing, for a passer as distinct from passing and passing as
distinct from a passer have no meaning. "But how can two entities
exist at all, if they exist neither as identical with one another nor
as different from one another?"

The above, though much abridged, gives an idea of the logic of these
sutras. They proceed to show that all manner of things, such as the
five skandhas, the elements, contact, attachment, fire and fuel,
origination, continuation and extinction have no real existence.
Similar reasoning is then applied to religious topics: the world of
transmigration as well as bondage and liberation are declared
non-existent. In reality no soul is in bondage and none is
released.[105] Similarly Karma, the Buddha himself, the four truths,
Nirvana and the twelve links in the chain of causation are all unreal.
This is not a declaration of scepticism. It means that the Buddha as a
human or celestial being and Nirvana as a state attainable in this
world are conceivable only in connection with this world and
therefore, like the world, unreal. No religious idea can enter into
the unreal (that is the practical) life of the world unless it is
itself unreal. This sounds a topsy turvy argument but it is really the
same as the Advaita doctrine. The Vedanta is on the one hand a scheme
of salvation for liberating souls which transmigrate unceasingly in a
world ruled by a personal God. But when true knowledge is attained,
the soul sees that it is identical with the Highest Brahman and that
souls which are in bondage and God who rules the world are illusions
like the world itself. But the Advaita has at least a verbal
superiority over the Madhyamika philosophy, for in its terminology
Brahman is the real and the existent contrasted with the world of
illusion. The result of giving to what the Advaita calls the real and
existent the name of sunyata or void is disconcerting. To say that
everything without distinction is non-existent is much the same as
saying that everything is existent. It only means that a wrong sense
is habitually given to the word exist, as if it meant to be
self-contained and without relation to other objects. Unless we can
make a verbal contrast and assert that there is something which does
exist, it seems futile to insist on the unreality of the world. Yet
this mode of thought is not confined to text-books on logic. It
invades the sc