Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c6.8

c6.8

These expressions, which receive no more than bare mention in the Pāli literature under the belief that their true sense can only be comprehended by one who has risen to the highest state of sanctification, served, however, as a basis for many of the speculations of the later Buddhists. The Yogācārins recognise that the truth is beyond the four limitations, viz., the same or different or both or non-both, *i.e.*, it does not admit of the questions of existence or non-existence.¹ But this recognition did not deter them from conceiving a Tathāgata-garbha, the "Womb of the Universe," or "the transcendental soul of man just coming under the bondage of karmaic causation".² The Mādhyamikas, who are too severe in their logical conclusions, consider that the four limitations are so many impossibilities and that any discussion about them is like the discussion about the 'colour of the son of a barren woman'; and it is for this reason that they add that Buddha had no other alternative than to say that they are indeterminable (*avyākṛta*).³ The limitations, however, helped the Mādhyamikas in building their theory of Śūnyatā as an impersonal absolute principle, regarding which the above mentioned fourfold inquiry is inadmissible.