Upanishad Vs Buddhism Research Paper

Jeff Keenan

Rel507

Professor Stainton

Oct 8th The idea and conception of “I” or self determines how you view reality and sets the agenda for how you live life. All religions confront the idea of self, but the Upanishads and Buddhist thought offer a unique sense of self that is not addressed by other religions. This is important because an ideological conception of the self will reflect the goals, purposes and your overall perspective of your life. During the course of this paper I will evaluate the Upanishad and Buddhist view of self-identity, and the nature, similarities, and differences of these two ideological conceptions. The relationship between the Upanishads and Buddhism ontological conceptions can be traced back throughout the Vedic

The Upanishads state the atman as the soul that suffers from the vision of variety and the influence of the Maya. They state the Maya is what keeps the self wrapped around in a sense driven world. The self, or Atman according to the Upanishads is an immortal characteristic to a world that is mortal. Going further into the Upanishads Ontology, they speak of a universal cosmic soul, who they refer to as the Brahman. The Brahman is the foundation and basis of all origins and the God of all Gods. The Vedic texts try to describe the characteristics of the metaphysical world as best as language can permit. The most basic way to see it, is that the Atman is The Brahman itself, the very self that originates down to all forms of life. Upanishad thought says that the self is bound by and limited by our sensory perceptions and knowledge and that limits us from the truth. “The self existence lord pierced the senses to make them turn outward. Thus we look to the external world and see not the self within us”, stated in the Kena Upanishad (Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads, Pondicherry, pg 55) The Upanishads say that the self cannot be explained through mind or language, and it is the “silent partner in all our deeds and experiences, the observer, and the indweller of all embodied

Buddhist thought does not believe in the existence of an inner and unchanging soul as do the Upanishads. This is because Buddhist hold the ontological conception that there is nothing permanent or fixed in this existence, and simply everything changes forms and decays. This is what leads Buddhist to believe in solutions to the present reality, rather than believing in a transcendental reality that they don’t and cant experience. The Buddha taught that God nor a soul didn’t existent. According to budda there is no such thing as an internal soul in man, because its not possible to believe that a soul, that is permanent and stable can exist in a being, because all beings are subject to continuous change; such as death & decay. Our bodies are “becoming” continuously. (Karen Pechilis & Selva J Raj, South Asian Religions, pg