Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c21.s1.3

c21.s1.3

Below absolute truth is the realm of relative knowledge (*paratantralakṣaṇa*), which embraces the whole series of intellectual states into which the school resolves all the world of experience. But the extent of the reality of this knowledge is a matter of dispute;² in one view it is to be regarded as having absolute reality in the sense that it does exist and not as illusion, but disappears absolutely when the thought is purified and Nirvāṇa is attained. The other, and more prevalent view, seems to tend to a much lower estimate; the subject of knowledge, the object, and knowledge itself should not be regarded as real in any sense; there is no distinction in actual truth, but merely an illusion. Thought, in itself absolutely pure (*vyavadāta*), by an inveterate error imagines itself to be infected or defiled (*kliṣṭa*), and thus conceives itself under the three forms of subject, object, and knowledge. The distinction between these views is obviously parallel to that between the orthodox interpretation of Buddhapālita of the Madhyamaka and the realistic preferences of Bhāvaviveka, who admits the the existence of phenomena as such.