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Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c10.s5: Nature of the Repetitions

Aspects of Mahāyāna Buddhism and its Relation to Hīnayāna c10.s5

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English

Nature of the Repetitions

c10.s5.1

We shall now proceed to form an idea of the nature of the repetitions resorted to in the Prajñāpāramitās and the reasons therefor. In these days, when so much attention is given to the conservation of time and energy, one is apt to get weary of repetitions, and particularly of the mechanical repetitions, which are so often found in the Prajñāpāramitās. Writers on philosophical subjects very naturally ring the changes on the theme that they desire to establish; but so long as they do it skilfully, and without tiring their readers there can be little objection to their enthusiasm. One notices these repetitions in the most modern of philosophical works of the west and the east, as well as in the masterly Buddhist works of Nāgārjuna and Asaṅga. For the fulfilment of its object a new philosophical work is necessarily burdened with the unpleasant and arduous task of first wiping out from the minds of its readers several old ideas, some of them deep-rooted, in order to implant new ideas in their places. Again, to deepen the impression it has to revert to its topic over again in different ways and lead its readers unconsciously to the new point of view. The early Buddhist literature, specially the *Prajñāpāramitās*, sadly lacked the knowledge of artful repetitions and consequently it is tiresome. Compared with the great philosophical works produced in India before or about the time of the *Prajñāpāramitās*, the *Prajñāpāramitās* are conspicuously lacking in philosophical precision and phraseology, deficiencies which it tried to remedy by repetitions. For instance, when it endeavours to establish the thesis that everything is śūnya (non-existent), a doubt may be left in the mind of the reader whether the Tathāgata or the Asamskṛtadhātus like the Ākāśa or Nirvāṇa are excluded or included, so the *Prajñāpāramitās* have punctiliously mentioned that each of them whether Tathāgata, Nirvāṇa or Ākāśa, even the various Śūnyatās, are śūnya in the sense that Cakṣu or Cakṣuvijñāna is śūnya. A modern reader can certainly complain of this defect in view of the immense literature that he has to wade through within a short space of time but the writers of the *Prajñāpāramitās* had at their disposal ample time and patience to read and write works like these.

c10.s5.2

The *Prajñāpāramitās* also like all other philosophical works had to eradicate many of the old deep-rooted ideas. They directed their attention mainly to their predecessors, the Hīnayānists. The Hīnayānists, as is well known, had already enjoyed a long lease of life and developed a fair amount of literature on their doctrines, the classification of dharmas, psychological analyses, etc. The *Prajñāpāramitās* took the most popular of these doctrines and disciplines, and tried to show that from the new point of view, which the *Prajñāpāramitās* set out to inculcate, they were all to be treated as mere names having no existence whatsoever. To give an illustration: They preach that a bodhisattva while practising the prajñāpāramitā does not consider himself attached or unattached to any (mentioning each and every one) of the 5 skandhas, 6 indriyas, 6 āyatanas, 6 vijñānas, 4 mahābhūtas, 12 links of the pratityasamutpāda, 6 pāramitās, 18 śūnyatās, 37 bodhipakṣikadharmas, apramāṇas, samādhis, samāpattis, āveṇikadharmas, balas, vaiśāradyas, phalas, tathatā, ātman, sukha, nirvāṇa, and so forth.

c10.s5.3

They repeated the same list over again to maintain that each of them was not bodhisattva or that each of them was not different from bodhisattva. In short, the *Prajñāpāramitās* in order to establish *Śūnyatā* have shown that there is nothing in the world of our knowledge which has any real existence. Everything that we are conscious of has only dreamy existence, and that all the 84,000 dharmaskandhas supposed to have been preached by Buddha are only expedients (*upāyakauśalya*) adopted by him for the benefit of ignorant and deluded beings, and consequently a bodhisattva while practising the *prajñāpāramitā* should treat them as mere apparitions devoid of reality.

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