The History of Buddhist Thought c14.42

c14.42

There is, however, a further problem concerning the relation of Buddhism to Sānkhya. The system of the Yoga philosophy¹ has most of its leading conceptions identical with Sānkhya. It differs by introducing the concept of a God and by making yoga-practices an essential part of its training. Did Buddhism get its notions of Sānkhya through the Yoga philosophy? The historical facts are very slender. The legend tells us that Buddha before his enlightenment practised yoga under two teachers. It is not likely that exact details have been preserved and, in fact, the legend describes the teaching in purely Buddhistic terms. Āḷāra Kālāma is said to have practised the third Attainment of the state of nothingness, and Uddaka the fourth, the Attainment of the state of neither consciousness nor non-consciousness. This is what we are also told by Aśvaghosha in his life of Buddha,² a poem of the first or second century A.D. Here he follows the canonical account, but he also gives an account of Āḷāra’s philosophy, and this has some resemblance to the Sānkhya philosophy. It is not identical with it, and it cannot be said to be probable that Aśvaghosha had any real knowledge of the philosophy of a teacher who had died some six centuries before, and some time before Buddha began to preach. But the resemblances between the yoga-practices and the terminology of Buddhism and Yoga are unmistakable.