Early Monastic Buddhism v1.c7.s1.28

v1.c7.s1.28

Sañjaya was an ajñānavādin, i.e., an agnostic or sceptic.³ He refuses to give a definite answer to questions dealing with ultimate problems, e.g., "Is there an after-life or not?" "Is there any fruit of good or evil deeds?" "Does the Tathāgata exist or not after death?" It is rather strange that Sañjaya’s attitude towards the ultimate problems is criticised by the Buddhists, for the Buddhists themselves admit these problems as indeterminable (avyākata).⁴ It may be that Sañjaya unlike the Buddhist thinkers carried his logic too far inasmuch as he refused to give a definite answer to questions relating even to moral responsibility. In any case, he is criticised as an *Amarāvikkhepikā*¹ but not as an *Akiriyavādin*. The story that Sāriputta was the quondam disciple of Sañjaya is not unworthy of belief, for Sañjaya's teaching is only a stepping stone to that of Buddha, who dissuaded men from wasting their time on the solution of ultimate problems before they had developed their intellectual faculties and convinced themselves of the process of origin and destruction of worldly things.