Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c21.s2.15

c21.s2.15

idea of matter or of extension will not bear examination; the atoms¹ of the Vaiçeṣika or the Sautrāntikas are absurd; they have six sides, since they face six contiguous atoms, and are therefore not truly indivisible; moreover, either contiguity or distance between the atoms is unthinkable. The relation of whole and part is absurd also, and any attempt to carry it out simply leads into difficulties; without parts there can be no whole, but it is impossible to describe any manner in which the whole can really be related to the parts, so that the entire conception must be laid aside. Nor must we think that even in negation we have truth; negations are equally appearances; the ultimate truth is one in which being and not being are one and the same (*bhāvābhāva-samānatā*)². The mind, indeed, ever tends to take things either as existing as this or the other (*ekatvānyatva*), as both or not both, as existing or not existing, or as eternal or transient, but all four modes of viewing things are incorrect. The true view is to regard things as void, and this can be done from various aspects. Thus we may remember that things are always interdependent, that they thus cannot have any nature of their own, and cannot be determined in terms of anything else, since, as they have no nature of their own, a reference to another nature does not serve as a determinant. Moreover, they can have no positive essence, since they spring up from a condition of natural non-existence. Or again, they are of an unknown type of non-existence (*apracarita-çūnyatā*), seeing that all the aggregates disappear in Nirvāṇa. Yet they appear phenomenally as connected, though void (*pracarita-çūnyatā*), since, while the aggregates have no real existence nor relations to others, they appear as if causally connected with other aggregates. Again, it is impossible to describe anything as having any definite character; their voidness is being inexpressible (*nirabhilāpya-çūnyatā*). There is no possibility of knowledge of things such as is brought by the effect of the obscuration of thought by defects which produce the illusion of experience. Further, things are void, since we assert their existence in time and place where they are not found (*itaretara-çūnyatā*). But in all cases we find ourselves confronted with the emptiness of our conceptions.