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Comment: Ken-sur Nga-w#ang-lek-den etymologized this is "full-fall", i.e., one who is filled with the afflictions and has fallen into cyclic existence. As he said, this is not true of all persons, because even a Buddha, for instance, is a person. It is to be noted that animals, for instance, are persons. It is said that in general "self" (bdag, Atman) "person," and "I" (nga, ahaM) are equivalent, but in the particular context of the selflessness of persons "self" and "person" are not at all equivalent and do not at all have the same meaning. In the term "selflessness of persons," "self" refers to a falsely imagined status that needs to be refuted, whereas "persons" refers to existent beings who are the bases with respect to which that refutation is made. All four Buddhist schools, therefore, hold that persons exist; they do not claim that persons are mere fictions of ignorance. The schools hold differing opinions on the nature of the person. According to Ge-luk-b#a scholars, all except the Middle Way Consequence School posit something from within the bases of imputation of a person — usually either mind or the collection of mind and body — as being the person. In contrast, the Consequence School holds that, even though a person is imputed in dependence upon mind and body (in the Formless Realm, a person is imputed in dependence only on mind), the person is neither mind nor body nor a collection of mind and body, since it is just the I that is imputed in dependence upon mind and body. Following the lead of ChandrakIrti, recognized by most as the founder of the Consequence School, Ge-luk-b#a scholars identify how in the other schools some factor among the five aggregates (forms, feelings, discriminations, compositional factors, and consciousnesses) or the collection of them is considered to be the person when sought analytically from among its bases of imputation: the Proponents of the Great Exposition, in general, hold that the mere collection of the mental and physical aggregates is the person; however, some of the five SaMmitIya subschools of the Great Exposition School maintain that all five aggregates are the person (although the absurdity of one person being five persons would seem difficult not to notice) while another subschool, the Avantaka, asserts that the mind alone is the person; the SUtra School Following Scripture assert that the continuum of the aggregates is the person; the SUtra School Following Reasoning maintains that the mental consciousness is the person; the Mind-Only School Following Scripture holds that the mind-basis-of-all (kun gzhi rnam par shes pa, AlayavijJAna) is the person; the Mind-Only School Following Reasoning asserts that the mental consciousness is the person; both the Yogic Autonomy School and the SUtra Autonomy School assert that a subtle, neutral mental consciousness is the person. For the most part, the delineation of what these schools assert to be the person is a matter of conjecture and not reporting of forthright statements in these schools' own texts. Though it is clear that most of these schools (if not all) accept that persons exist, it is often not clear in their own literature that they assert that something from within the bases of imputation of a person is the person. Rather, as presented in Vasubandhu's commentary on the ninth chapter of his Treasury of Manifest Knowledge, persons are merely asserted to be "non-associated compositional factors" (ldan min 'du byed, viprayuktasaMskAra) and thus an instance of the fourth aggregate, compositional factors, without a specific identification — of any of the five aggregates that are a person's bases of imputation — as the person.

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