Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c22.s5.1

c22.s5.1

The appearance of a tendency to recognize an absolute in the Mahāyānaçraddhotpāda has been naturally enough attributed, on the theory that the author of that treatise is Açvaghoṣa, to the Brahmanical training of that accomplished poet. In any case the parallel between Vedāntic absolutism and Mahāyāna tenets is striking and undeniable. In the Vijñānavāda we have definitely the conception of void intellect as the final reality, and, though the Vedāntic absolute is being, thought, and bliss, we are aware that thought here has no object and is therefore, if intelligible in any sense, nothing essentially different from the void intellect of the Vijñānavāda. The bliss of such a void intellect is too mysterious a matter to inquire into, and its existence is clearly on a par with the existence of the void intellect of the Vijñānavāda.