Theology
c. 4th to 5th century CE, Gandhara and Ayodhya
No self, only a stream of momentary factors - the great Buddhist analyst who argued the person away, asked how karma can work without a soul, and split reality into two truths.
Start learning Vasubandhu →Vasubandhu’s sustained argument, in the ninth chapter of the Treasury of Abhidharma , against the Personalists (Pudgalavadins): there is no self standing over and above the five aggregates, and the ‘person’ is only a co…
Vasubandhu’s doctrine of momentariness (ksanikavada): everything arises and perishes instant by instant, felt continuity is really a rapid succession of momentary factors, and the Sarvastivada claim that dharmas ‘exist…
Vasubandhu’s Karmasiddhiprakarana (‘Establishing Action’) faces the hardest puzzle of no-self Buddhism: if there is no enduring self and everything is momentary, how can a deed done now bear its fruit lifetimes later? H…
Two arguments from Vasubandhu’s Vimsatika (Twenty Verses): that partless atoms can never combine into extended objects, so the realist’s material world dissolves under analysis; and that the vividness, order, and force…
Vasubandhu’s distinction between conventional truth (samvrti-satya) and ultimate truth (paramartha-satya): a thing is only conventionally real if the idea of it disappears when you break it apart or analyse it (like a p…
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