Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s2.1

c24.s2.1

The essential cause of transmigration and bondage is the act accomplished with belief in the self; this delusion is the source of false views, of passion; it leads men to believe in the eternity or the destruction of the self, to love it or hate it. It is, then, essential to extirpate the delusion, to clear the mind of all the desires in which the self finds pleasure, and to realize the nothingness of all phenomena. But the task is a difficult one, for to achieve it directly involves an antinomy. The Vedāntin may desire release directly without injury, and may declare his identity with the absolute, because he is a believer in reality. But the Buddhist who seeks to be rid of the illusion of the self, or asserts boldly that he is void, is falling into the fatal error of holding as real, if not the self, at least the illusion of the self, and his action is in effect egoistic. The desire for non-existence (*vibhava-tṛṣṇā*) leads directly into the fatal heresy of belief in existence.³ The Jinas have declared the vacuity as the remedy for all false views, but those who falsely attach themselves to vacuity they have declared beyond redemption. What does not exist cannot be the subject of a negation; to deny unreal appearances is really to affirm them. Employed untimely, the idea of vacuity is no better than poison; it is to practise negation, which is in essence affirmation and involves the heresy of the doctrine of destruction, an idea utterly repugnant to the schools, which agree that, if the illusion of the self really existed, it would be eternal.