Publication Details

Abstract

Buddhism, as unorthodox teaching, has not accepted the authority of Vedas and rejected it and applied serious reservations towawrds the Upanishad doctrine as well. The Brahma-atman theory of the older and middle Upanishads, as well ais the consequences resulting from it, were completely contradictory to the Buddhist teaching on the causal connection of all things, which could not respect the Upanishad opinion on the rise and development of everything existing (i. e. also man) by evolution from the only last principle. The man of the Upanishads was concerned first of all with the identification with „the world spiritual principle“ —1 while this identification was his cognition and vice versa. This was, according to Upanishad thinkers, the top of man’s being, the final goal of his efforts. „The substance“ of man was thus defined ontologioally in the Upanishads, essentially, while in Buddhism it is the ethical-anthropological definition of human substance from the point of view of earthly existence of man that is the matter.