Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c24.s6.2

c24.s6.2

From the point of view of the Vijñānavāda there seems no chance of permitting either divine intervention or the transfer of merit; it denies the external world; it admits only the existence of thought series, self-determining, and the whole apparatus of salvation cannot be accorded any real basis. The case is not so simple with the Madhyamaka, which accepts the double form of the chain of causation, internal and external, though it denies either any absolute reality. It is true that, though the intervention of external objects thus becomes possible and in a sense real, as real as the intellectual elements, strictly speaking the material universe ought to provide its material forms for the carrying into effect of the fruition of earlier actions; the eye should give vision for enjoyment or misery to a being who has merited such recompense, just as the embryo is formed in the womb to receive such and such a consciousness.² Such a scheme, it is plain, excludes rigidly the freedom of the will, or any solidarity between men or super-men; there exist, we admit, numerous series, some alive, some without life, each causally determined, but without true interaction of any sort or kind.