PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: A contemporary introduction

SORTS OF RELIGION 31

minds, the food, doings, desires, the open and secret deeds of all liv-

ing beings in the whole world; he the Arhat, for whom there is no

secret, knew and saw all conditions of all living beings in the world,

what they thought, spoke, or did at any moment.

Occasionally it is claimed that one who reaches kevala even learns that he
or she is omnipotent; at any rate, one learns that one is omniscient and
dependent for one’s existence on nothing external to oneself. The same
Sutras say of the soul that “since it possesses no corporeal form, it is
eternal.”^16 This is not a variety of monotheism; there is no reference to God
or (as in monotheistic Hinduism) to Brahman with qualities. Nor does it
posit an identity between the soul and qualityless Brahman. Another Jaina
text says that

Liberation is the freedom from all karmic matter, owing to the

non-existence of the cause of bondage and to the shedding of the

karmas. After the soul is released, there remain perfect right-be-

lief, perfect right-knowledge, and the state of having accom-

plished all.^17

Thus personal identity is retained in enlightenment; a mental substance
that once existed under severe epistemic and other constraints is freed from
those constraints.

Buddhism

Theravada Buddhism

A Buddhist text says that

Nagasena [or any other personal proper name] is but a way of

counting, term, appellation, convenient designation, mere name

for the hair of my head, hair of my body... brain of the head,

form, sensation, perception, the predispositions and conscious-

ness. But in the absolute sense there is no ego.^18

An individual person is a set of elements, each momentary and transitory,
and everything else is made up of momentary, transitive states as well.
There is no atman or jiva or enduring self – no enduring mental substance

• nor is there an unchanging ultimate Brahman. Thus one reads that