Let me in this connection state an interesting incident in the history of Chinese Buddhism. Hui-K’e, the second patriarch of the Dhyâna sect in China, was troubled with this ego-problem before his conversion. He was at first a faithful Confucian, but Confucianism did not satisfy all his spiritual wants. His soul was wavering between agnosticism and scepticism, and consequently he felt an unspeakable anguish in his inmost heart. When he learned of the arrival of Bodhidharma in his country, he hastened to his monastery and implored him to give him some spiritual advice. But Bodhidharma did not utter a word, being seemingly absorbed in his deep meditation. Hui-K’e, however, was determined to obtain from him some religious instructions at all hazards. So it is reported that he was standing at the same spot seven days and nights, when he at last cut off his left arm with the sword he was carrying (being {149} a military officer) and placed it before Dharma, saying: “This arm is a token of my sincere desire to be instructed in the Holy Doctrine. My soul is troubled and annoyed; pray let your grace show me the way to pacify it.” Dharma quietly arose from his meditation and said: “Where is your soul? Bring it here and I will have it pacified.” Hui-K’e replied: “I have been searching for it all these years, but I have never succeeded in laying a hand on it.” Dharma then exclaimed: “There, I have your soul pacified!” At this, it is said, a flash of spiritual enlightenment went across the mind of Hui-K’e, and his “soul” was pacified once for all. _The Skandhas._ When the five skandhas are combined according to their previous karma and present a temporal existence in the form of a sentient being, vulgar minds imagine that they have here an individual entity sustained by an immortal ego-substratum. In fact, the material body (_rûpakâya_) alone is not what makes the ego-soul, nor the sensation (_vedanâ_), nor the deeds (_sanskâra_), nor the consciousness (_vijñâna_), nor the conception (_samjñâ_); but only when they are all combined in a certain form they make a sentient being. Yet this combination is not the work of a certain independent entity, which, according to its own will, combines the five skandhas in one form and then hides itself in it. The combination of the constituent {150} elements, Buddhism declares, is achieved by themselves after their karma. When a certain number of atoms of hydrogen and of oxygen are brought together, they attract each other on their own accord or owing to their own karma, and the result is water. The ego of water, so to speak, did not will to bring the two elements and make itself out of them. Even so is it with the existence of a sentient being, and there is no need of hypostasising a fabulous ego-monster behind the combination of the five skandhas.