Also,
Nirvana would be the destruction of the self.
Before, it would arise and vanish all the time.
Without an agent the result would not exist.
Distinct are culprit and experiencing side. (6.128)
If the self were made up of the aggregates, when one reaches nirvana and the aggregates are discontinued, the self would be annihilated. Such a belief in annihilation would be a nihilistic view, since according to yourself it constitutes an extremist view to think that there is permanence or annihilation in relation to any idea of selfhood involved in the ‘I’- and ‘mine’-based view of self. One cannot therefore accept that the self is discontinued at the time of nirvana, since that would constitute an extremist view. Hence, the self cannot be made up of the aggregates.
Just as prior to entering nirvana, the aggregates arise and vanish every instant, the self too would be arising and vanishing, since the self is made up of the aggregates. And just as one couldn’t then say, ‘This body of mine came into being,’ the statement, ‘At that point, at that time, I was a king named Māndātṛ,’ would not have been made, because the self, just like the body, would have been destroyed, and it would be accepted that it was another that was born at present. As the Treatise states:
The assimilated, which arises
And ceases to be, is not the self.
How indeed could the assimilated
Become the that which assimilates.1
Likewise,
If the self were the aggregates,
It would be appearing and disappearing.2
And if it keeps appearing and disappearing, an agent self does not exist, which means it cannot have a relationship to a result. If the act by which it comes into being is impermanent, the agent then no longer existing, having nothing to support it the act as well will not exist. There will then be no viable relationship between actions and their results.
If the result of karma produced in a prior moment were experienced in subsequent moments, the result of karma accumulated by one would be experienced by another, which is why it says, the culprit and the experiencer would be other. What has been done can then disappear, and there can be consequences from what one has not done. The Treatise states:
If it were different, even in the absence
Of that it could then still be present.
And what was would likewise then remain,
It could now be born without having died.
Karmas would disappear, be annihilated,
And the consequence of acts carried out by one
Could be experienced by another.
These and other faults would follow.3
It does not therefore make sense that the aggregates can be the self.
Title
Chapter 1: Pramuditā
