But though the Buddha denied that there is in man anything permanent which can be called the self, this does not imply a denial that human nature can by mental training be changed into something different, something infinitely superior to the nature of the ordinary man, perhaps something other than the skandhas[482].  One of his principal objections to the doctrine of the permanent self was that, if it were true, emancipation and sanctity would be impossible[483], because human nature could not be changed.  In India the doctrine of the atman was really dangerous, because it led a religious man to suppose that to ensure happiness and emancipation it is only necessary to isolate the atman by self-mortification and by suppressing discursive thought as well as passion.  But this, the Buddha teaches, is a capital error.  That which can make an end of suffering is not something lurking ready-made in human nature but something that must be built up:  man must be reborn, not flayed and stripped of everything except some core of unchanging soul.  As to the nature of this new being the Pitakas are reticent, but not absolutely silent, as we shall see below.  Our loose use of language might possibly lead us to call the new being a soul, but it is decidedly not an atman, for it is something which has been brought into being by deliberate effort.  The collective name for these higher states of mind is panna[484], wisdom or knowledge.  This word is the Pali equivalent of the Sanskrit prajna and is interesting as connecting early and later Buddhism, for prajna in the sense of transcendental or absolute knowledge plays a great part in Mahayanism and is even personified.

The Pitakas imply that Buddhas and Arhats can understand things which the ordinary human mind cannot grasp and human words cannot utter.  Later Indian Buddhists had no scruples in formulating what the master left unformulated.  They did not venture to use the words atman or atta, but they said that the saint can rise above all difference and plurality, transcend the distinction between subject and object and that nirvana is the absolute (Bhutatathata).  The Buddha would doubtless have objected to this terminology as he objected to all attempts to express the ineffable but perhaps the thought which struggles for expression in such language is not far removed from his own thought.

One of the common Buddhist similes for human life is fire and it is the best simile for illuminating all Buddhist psychology.  To insist on finding a soul is like describing flames as substances.  Fire is often spoken of as an element but it is really a process which cannot be isolated or interrupted.  A flame is not the same as its fuel and it can be distinguished from other flames.  But though you can individualize it and propagate it indefinitely, you cannot isolate it from its fuel and keep it by itself.  Even so in the human being there is not any soul which can be isolated and go on living eternally but the analogy of the flame still holds good.  Unseizable though a flame may be, and undefinable as substance, it is not unreasonable to trim a fire and make a flame rise above its fuel, free from smoke, clear and pure.  If it were a conscious flame, such might be its own ideal.