The Upani@sads did not try to establish any school of discipline or systematic thought. They revealed throughout the dawn of an experience of an immutable Reality as the self of man, as the only abiding truth behind all changes. But Buddhism holds that this immutable self of man is a delusion and a false knowledge. The first postulate of the system is that impermanence is sorrow. Ignorance about sorrow, ignorance about the way it originates, ignorance about the nature of the extinction of sorrow, and ignorance about the means of bringing about this extinction represent the fourfold ignorance (_avijjâ_) [Footnote ref 2]. The avidyâ, which is equivalent to the Pâli word avijjâ, occurs in the Upani@sads also, but there it means ignorance about the âtman doctrine, and it is sometimes contrasted with vidyâ or true knowledge about the self (_âtman_) [Footnote ref 3]. With the Upani@sads the highest truth was the permanent self, the bliss, but with the Buddha there was nothing permanent; and all was change; and all change and impermanence was sorrow [Footnote ref 4]. This is, then, the cardinal truth of Buddhism, and ignorance concerning it in the above fourfold ways represented the fourfold ignorance which stood in the way of the right comprehension of the fourfold cardinal truths (_âriya sacca_)--sorrow, cause of the origination of sorrow, extinction of sorrow, and the means thereto. There is no Brahman or supreme permanent reality and no self, and this ignorance does not belong to any ego or self as we may ordinarily be led to suppose. Thus it is said in the _Visuddhimagga_ "inasmuch however as ignorance is empty of stability from being subject to a coming into existence and a disappearing from existence...and is empty of a self-determining Ego from being subject to dependence,--...or in other words inasmuch as ignorance is not an Ego, and similarly with reference to Karma and the rest--therefore is it to be understood of the wheel of existence that it is empty with a twelvefold emptiness [Footnote ref 5]." ___________________________________________________________________ [Footnote 1: _Samyutta Nikâya_, II. 46.] [Footnote 2: _Majjhima Nikâya_, I.p. 54.] [Footnote 3: Châ. I.i. 10. B@rh. IV. 3.20. There are some passages where vidyâ and avidyâ have been used in a different and rather obscure sense, I's'â 9-11.] [Footnote 4: _A@ng. Nikâya_, III. 85.] [Footnote 5 Warren's _Buddhism in Translations_ (_Visuddhimagga_, chap. XVII.), p. 175.] 112 The Schools of Theravâda Buddhism.