Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c6.2

c6.2

Throughout the long history of Buddhism, unity amidst diversity is strikingly evident. Every student or adherent of Buddhism, at all times and places, admits that Buddha taught a middle path (*madhyamā pratipad*), comprising a doctrine which kept clear of the two extremes, existence and non-existence,¹ eternity and non-eternity of the world and its contents, and a discipline which advocated neither self-mortification nor a life of ease. Without questioning the validity of the doctrines of the Teacher about the two extremes, the Buddhist philosophers found ample latitude for speculations about the middle path, but they failed to come to any agreement about the sort of life that Buddha actually wanted men to lead. Some understood it to consist in the leading of the life of a monk and realising the transitoriness of the things of this world including the self; while others understood it to be living in and through this world and realising that there is absolutely no difference between one's self and any other thing of the world, or, in the words of the Mahāyānic texts, between Saṃsāra (world) and Nirvāṇa (its cessation). Even the formulæ, Sarvam duḥkham, Sarvam anityam, and Sarvam anātmam,² which came to be recognised as the characteristic marks of Nirodha, Mārga (misery, cause of misery, cessation of misery, and the path leading to the cessation of misery) and the Pratītyasamutpāda form the watchword of the Hīnayānists and hardly need any explanation for the prominence received by them in the Hīnayāna literature. But those who conceive this world as only an apparition, or as a mere delusion of the mind, must show reasons why the Truths and the Causal Law should find a place in their doctrines. Nāgārjuna devotes two chapters¹ to these two topics, and, at the very commencement of his chapter on Āryasatyas, he anticipates this objection and says that there would have been no Buddha, Dharma and Saṅgha, had there not been the Truths and the Causal Law, for it is through them that the ultimate truth is attained and hence they could not but have a place in their doctrines. According to him Śūnyatā is not nihilism but the absolute principle immanent in all, and hence, with it, no relation of the worldly things and usages can be established; the four Truths and the Causal Law relate to the world and are worldly. The Yogācārins hold an identical view. They have three forms of truth called Parikalpita (imaginary), Paratantra (dependent), and Pariniṣpanna (perfect or ultimate).² Their view of Śūnyatā that the world is a delusion of the mind is a pariniṣpanna truth, while the Āryasatyas and the Pratītyasamutpāda relate to the Paratantra and Parikalpita. In short, the Mahāyānists hold that the four Truths and the Causal Law are the preparatory steps indispensable to the realisation of the absolute truth. Their doctrines exist to lead the ignorant beings from ignorance to knowledge, from darkness to light, and this is effected by and through the Āryasatyas and the Pratītyasamutpāda.