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The Bauddha believed that in man there is an abiding substance called the soul (atma), which persists through changes that overcome the body, exists before birth and after death, and migrates from one body to another. Consistently with his theories of conditional existence and universal change, Bauddha denies the existence of such soul. Though denying the continuity of an identical substance in man, Bauddha does not deny the continuity of the stream of successive states that compose his life. Life is an unbroken series of 9. A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy p. 63.

166 states: each of these states depends on the condition just preceding and gives rise to the one just succeeding it. The continuity of the life-series is, therefore, based on a causal connection running through the different states. This continuity is often explained with the example of a lamp burning through out the night. The flame of each moment is dependent on its own conditions and different from that of another moment which is dependent on other conditions. Yet there is an unbroken succession of the different flames. Again, as from one flame another may be lighted, and though the two are different, they are connected causally. Similarly, the end-state of this life may cause the beginning of the next. Rebirth is, therefore, not transmigration, i.e. the migration of the same soul into another body; it is the causation of the next life by the present. The conception of a soul is thus replaced here by that of an unbroken stream of consciousness. Buddha repeatedly exhorts his disciples to give up the false view about the self. He points out that people who suffer from the illusion of the self, do not know its nature clearly; they want to make the soul happy by obtaining salvation. 'Man is only a conventional name for a collection of different constituents, the material body (kaya), the immaterial mind (manas or citta), the formless consciousness (vijnana), just as a chariot is a collection of wheels, axles, shafts, etc. The existence of man depends on this collection and it dissolves when the collection breaks up. The soul or the ego denotes nothing more than this collection.'10 10. An Introduction to Indian Philosophy p. 138.