Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c22.s5.4

c22.s5.4

It is, however, of importance that the later supporters of the doctrine of duality, adherents of the Sāṃkhya as well as of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, do not hesitate to pronounce judgement against the monist Vedānta by accusing it of being nothing but Vijñānavāda Buddhism concealed; in this Puranic evidence concurs with Vijñānabhikṣu, and the earlier testimony of Yamunācārya, spiritual grandfather of Rāmānuja, so that the accusation was evidently current shortly after Śaṅkara had established the orthodoxy of the Māyāvāda.² On the other hand, it is obvious that the Buddhists themselves were aware of the approximation of the Vijñānavāda in some of its aspects to the Vedānta; we have in the *Laṅkāvatāra*³ a direct challenge of the similarity of the doctrine of the Tathāgatagarbha and the Vedānta self, though the Buddha repudiates the charge of plagiarism by insisting that his teaching is merely *ad populum*. Again in the *Ṣuklavidarçaṇabhūmi*⁴ it is shown that a famous Buddha’s utterance: ‘This threefold world is only thought’, is equivalent to the doctrine of the Upaniṣads: ‘Verily all this universe is Brahman.’ Similarly, a verse in the Pitāputriyasaṃhitā (elsewhere attributed to Vārṣagaṇya’s Ṣaṣṭitantra):¹ ‘The real nature of things does not fall within sight, and what is visible is absolutely void and illusion,’ is identical in sense with the doctrine of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad.