What is individuality?

 

What is individuality?

  Through method of ‘Shastrartha’- debating on an issue with logic and reasoning  

 

King Milinda asking concept of individuality from Nagasena- a Buddhist monk –


Milinda- “By ‘I’ you mean you are face, legs or hands,”

Nagasena- “I am not the nails, hairs, teeth, skin or brain or any part of the body.”

Milinda- “Then you are known by attributes, or by thinking, or by pain or by feelings.”

Nagasena- “No Lord King, I am not feeling or thinking or any attribute.”

Milinda- “Then how you will describe yourself when you are neither body nor soul and nor any feeling or emotions.”

Nagasena- “Just as a chariot, which is neither pole, nor wheels, nor axle and neither spokes, not even the frame and not even the horses, the chariot is the combination of every part and without horses there is no chariot and without wheels there is no chariot, neither a wheel or horse is known as chariot. The combination of the whole is the chariot.”

“In the same way the combination of soul, body, body parts, emotions, pain, feelings and thinking is the combination of individuality.” Milinda- Panho II (1)

 The method or argumentation was the main base of philosophy, whatever was the theory or principle of any philosophical school of Hindus, they proved the concept on the basis of reasoning. The Nayaya philosophical stream put forward the validity of knowledge which is the correspondent to reality and proved the knowledge on the basis of perception, inference, comparison and testimony. Even this school came a step ahead to give reasons for the false knowledge i.e. which do not correspond to the reality.

According to this school the memory, doubts, hypothesis and error are the source of wrong knowledge. “Philosophy to be more than mere barren speculation, must find its reason and its fulfillment on a way of life, thought should lead to action. Doctrine gives birth to method” T H Stcherbatshy on Buddhism.

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