ABSTRACT
Three views are relevant here: Advaita Vedanta’s claim that (i) onlyBrahman without qualities exists, Jainism’s contention that (ii) per-sons are inherently immortal and independently existing beings, and the typical Buddhist view that (iii) persons are composite entities, made up of other things that are not persons and that comprise the basic constituents of the universe. These are obviously logically incompatible claims; all could be false, but not more than one could be true. If only qualityless Brahman exists, persons and nonperson constituents of persons, which have qualities if they exist, do not exist – if (i) is true, (ii) and (iii) are false. If persons are not composed of nonperson constituents, then they have properties, and so are not identical to Brahman – if (ii) is true, then (i) and (iii) are false. If persons are made up of nonperson constituents, then these constituents have properties and persons are composite and so dependent – if (iii) is true, then (i) and (ii) are false.
