laborate accounts of it
may be found in any of the important Nyaya works of this period
such as _Nynyamanjari, Tatparyya@tika_ of Vacaspati Mis'ra, etc.

Buddhism did not at any time believe anything to be permanent.
With the development of this doctrine they gave great
emphasis to this point. Things came to view at one moment and
the next moment they were destroyed. Whatever is existent is
momentary. It is said that our notion of permanence is derived
from the notion of permanence of ourselves, but Buddhism denied
the existence of any such permanent selves. What appears as
self is but the bundle of ideas, emotions, and active tendencies
manifesting at any particular moment. The next moment these
dissolve, and new bundles determined by the preceding ones
appear and so on. The present thought is thus the only thinker.
Apart from the emotions, ideas, and active tendencies, we cannot
discover any separate self or soul. It is the combined product of
these ideas, emotions, etc., that yield the illusory appearance of
self at any moment. The consciousness of self is the resultant product
as it were of the combination of ideas, emotions, etc., at any
particular moment. As these ideas, emotions, etc., change every
moment there is no such thing as a permanent self.

The fact that I remember that I have been existing for

162

a long time past does not prove that a permanent self has been
existing for such a long period. When I say this is that book, I
perceive the book with my eye at the present moment, but that
"this book" is the same as "that book" (i.e. the book arising in
memory), cannot be perceived by the senses. It is evident
that the "that book" of memory refers to a book seen in the
past, whereas "this book" refers to the book which is before
my eyes. The feeling of identity which is adduced to prove permanence
is thus due to a confusion between an object of memory
referring to a past and different object with the object as perceived
at the present moment by the senses [Footnote ref 1]. This is true not only
of all recognition of identity and permanence of external objects but
also of the perception of the identity of self, for the perception of
self-identity results from the confusion of certain ideas or emotions
arising in memory with similar ideas of the present moment. But
since memory points to an object of past perception, and the perception
to another object of the present moment, identity cannot
be proved