By the later Vedic period, as represented in the Upaniṣads, Brahmanic philosophy posited that the human being was actually the abode of God (ātman-Brahman equivalence), and so the individual needed to cultivate the realization of that equivalence to transcend saṃsāra.•It was this latest development in Brahmanism (Upaniṣadicphilosophy) that Buddhism (and Jainism) turned away from