Lung-shu complains that some persons maintain birth, duration, and destruction to be the same thing. He then proceeds to state that the body in its nature is not permanent, that its being called body has arisen from the distinctions which men in their ignorance have made, and that the correct doctrine of the body being non-permanent is inseparably connected with the various physical and mental operations which spring from the body; because, he adds, man is in his entire form non-permanent.

Buddha, in the instructions he gave to the Bikshus his disciples, always held the doctrine that actions are nonpermanent. This must ever be kept in mind in making the statement that the body is non-permanent.

Bikshu is one of the names given to the followers of Buddha generally. They are also called Shamen and Ho-shang.

The author then undertakes to prove the second sentence of his theme, namely, "Thus, then, my body is not a body." The doctrine of non-permanence has been introduced to aid in proving this. The non-permanent is necessarily unsubstantial. The things we see are liable to perish. Therefore they are not real things. We must speak of things as they really are. Hence the words "my body is not body," are correct and appropriate.

The third sentence, when it says, "My body in its nature is not body," asserts that, apart from the unsubstantial and the vanishing, no body exists; and that therefore it is right to say of my own body, that it does not exist.

Cousin, in his lectures already referred to, speaks of the psychology of Buddhism as being contained in two propositions, extracted by Burnouf from Buddhist books.

1st, Thought or spirit--for the faculty is not distinguished from the subject--appears only with sensation, and does not survive it.

2d, The spirit cannot itself lay hold of itself; and in directing its attention to itself, it draws from it only the conviction of its powerlessness to see itself otherwise than as successive and transitory.

Burnouf adds, these theses are radically opposed to Brahmanism, whose first article of faith is the perpetuity of the thinking subject.

We see that the non-permanence of things, which is so important a principle with our author, also pervades the books of Nepaul which Burnouf studied, and constitutes a watchword of Buddhism.

Lung-shu proceeds to observe that some persons hold false views on this subject. One opinion is that independently of the unsubstantial there is substance, but this is contrary to the Sutras. Others say the unsubstantial is my body, but this is wrong (although it is correct to

say that my body is unsubstantial), because it is not found in the Sutras. Such are not the words of Buddha, nor are they met with in the great holy Sutras, and they must not be believed.