Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c7.s3.t10.1

c7.s3.t10.1

Prof. La Vallée Poussin starts with the statement that it is possible to distinguish Buddhism on the one hand as popular and devotional, and on the other as clerical and mystic.¹ The former is meant for the laity and the latter for the monks. The popular and devotional form of Buddhism holds out the prospect of paradise to the laity. It is only a means to an end, for the layman in one of his later lives is to become a monk and take to the clerical and mystic side of Buddhism and ultimately attain Nirvāṇa. Prof. Poussin then proceeds to define Nirvāṇa. He says that Nirvāṇa is undoubtedly the highest happiness, putting a stop to duḥkha and transmigration. It implies the absence of merit as well as of demerit. It requires a purely ascetic discipline to bring the desires or passions to an end.² The monks unlike the laity do not seek paradise, for even the life in paradise ends with the exhaustion of one's good karma.³ They therefore seek a state which affords eternal (dhruva) beatitude (sukha).⁴ The very common appellation to denote this state is Amatapadam (immortality), which Prof. Poussin considers to be a very old and characteristic expression used to describe Nirvāṇa. He thinks that the notion of deliverance has been made precise in the early Buddhist literature. It is an *abode*, supreme and definite, but yet this notion has not been coloured by any positive philosophic doctrine or by speculation upon God, soul, or being in itself.¹ He, as also Dr. E. J. Thomas², refers to the fact that the early Buddhists did not speculate about such Upaniṣadic doctrine as the Parabrahman which was developed by the Vedāntists long after Buddhism. They knew only of the highest heaven called Brahmaloka. Dr. Thomas remarks in connection with the *Brahmajāla Sutta* that "among all these views there is no expressed contradiction or even recognition of the Vedāntic theory of Ātman or Brahman as the one ultimate reality" ³. Prof. Poussin also points out that it is not correct to hold that Buddhism originated purely in opposition to Brāhmanic theories. He says that there is nothing which permits us to affirm that Nirvāṇa was conceived in opposition to any Brāhmanic theory. Nirvāṇa, Immortality, or Deliverance appears to be a rudimentary idea free from all metaphysical speculations. It is connected more with myths than with metaphysics. Nirvāṇa is an invisible abode where the saint disappears, often in the middle of a flame, or in a kind of apotheosis.⁴ In short, the Hinayāna Buddhism from the time of the *Mahāvagga* to Buddhaghosa emanated, so to say, from the Yoga almost without any mixture. The Immortal State, the Inexpressible is what a saint aims at, because it is the deliverance from birth and death. It is, however, not possible to establish any relation, philosophical or ontological, between the Immortal and the world of beings who transmigrate. Immortality is the name given to Nirvāṇa; in other words, perfect happiness, extinction, detachment are terms which are devoid of doctrinal complexities, and which, in fact, appear to signify merely the extinction of the fire of desire, or, to put it in another way, constitute the road to the Immortal State, or the Immortal State itself.⁵ It is obvious that Prof. Poussin wants to contradict the longadvocated view that Nirvāṇa is annihilation. He cites several passages to show that the self-originating fire in which a saint consumed himself, as also the saint himself, was not annihilated.¹ While summarising his views, he gives the following different uses of the term Nirvāṇa: