Says the Buddha: “If the soul, as you say, exists in the relation between the sense-organs (_indṛya_) and their respective sense-objects (_viṣaya_), should we consider the soul as uniting and partaking the natures of these two incongruous things, viṣaya and indṛya? If the soul partakes something of each, it has no characteristics of its own. If it unites the two natures, the distinction between subject and object exists no more. ‘In the middle’ is an empty word; that is to say, to conceive the soul as the relation between the indryas and the viṣayas is to make it an airy nothing.” The seventh and final hypothesis offered by Ânanda is that the soul is the state of non-attachment, and that, therefore, it has no particular locality in which it abides. But this is also mercilessly attacked by the Buddha who declares: “Attachment presupposes the existence of beings to which a mind-may be attached. {163} Now, should we consider these things (_dharmas_) such as the world, space, land, water, birds, beasts, etc. as existing or not existing? If the external world does not exist, we cannot speak about non-attachment, as there is nothing to attach from the first. If the external world really is, how can we manage not to come in contact with it? When we say that things are devoid of all characteristic marks, it amounts to the declaration that they are non-existent. But they are not non-existent, they must have certain characteristics that distinguish themselves. Now, the external world has certainly some marks (_lakṣana_) and it must by all means be considered as existing. There then is no room for your theory of non-attachment.” At this, Ânanda surrenders and the Buddha discloses his theory of Dharmakâya, which we shall expound at some length in the chapter specially devoted to it. * * * By way of a summary of the above, let me remark that the Buddhists do not deny the existence of the so-called empirical ego in contradistinction to the noumenal ego, which latter can be considered to correspond to the Buddhist âtman. Vasubandhu in his treatise on the Yogâcâra’s idealistic philosophy declares that the existence of âtman and dharma is only hypothetical, provisional, apparent, and not in any sense real and ultimate. To express this in modern terms, the soul and the world, or subject and object, have only relative existence, and no absolute reality can {164} be ascribed to them. Psychologically speaking, every one of us has an ego or soul which means the unity of consciousness; and physically, this world of phenomena is real either as a manifestation of one energy or as a composite of atoms or electrons, as is considered by physicists.