NONMONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONS 1133 Simplicity
Jain persons lack constituents. They have no elements and are incomposite.
A Jain person at a time T is a self-conscious substance that exists at T. If she
is embodied at T, her body is not part of her at T. Her thoughts at T are
thoughts but not parts; her qualities at T are qualities but not parts. A person
that exists at times T1 and T2 does not have a T1-part and a T2-part. One
might say: all of her exists at T1 and all of her exists at T2 – she is not
temporally scattered. She has a life, and that life (in some sense, at least) can
have parts – say, one part where she is a student in Delhi and another part
where she is a professor in Benares. Her life can have parts or segments; she
cannot. She is an incomposite substance, a self-conscious mind. While being
alive (not to be confused with being embodied) is essential to a person, a
person is not identical to any particular life or series of lives. A person could
have lived lives other than the one he did live, and he has a life, and a long
series of lives, without being any or all of those lives (whatever exactly that
might amount to).
Buddhist persons have constituents. They have elements and are
composite. A Buddhist person at a time T is a simultaneous bundle that
exists at T.^32 Her thoughts at T are thoughts that are parts of her at T; her
qualities at T are qualities that are parts of her at T. A person that exists at
times T1 and T2 does have a T1-part and a T2-part, the former being a
bundle of elements-simultaneously-existing-at-T1 and the latter a bundle
of elements-simultaneously-existing-at-T2. One might say: at no moment
of a person’s existence does all of her exist at once – she is temporally
scattered. If a person could exist at just two moments, half of her would exist
at each moment. If a life is composed of one simultaneous bundle followed
by another followed by another, a person is a life, and that life has as many
parts as there are moments at which some simultaneous bundle or other
occurs in the life-series. While being alive (not to be confused with being
embodied) is essential to a person, a person is identical to the particular
series of lives that she lives.^33
A basic difference between the Jain doctrine and the
Buddhist doctrine of persons
The difference between the Jain and the Buddhist accounts of what it is to be
a person is important but it can be difficult to grasp. Here is another way of
putting it. Consider an atom of the sort that Isaac Newton believed in. In his
physics, an atom in effect was a tiny pellet – a billiard ball shrunk to