The History of Buddhist Thought c20.54

c20.54

The doctrine which has given the Sarvāstivādins their name is the theory that “everything exists” (sarvam asti). As being an ontological doctrine it does not essentially affect the teaching about the Way. It is an attempt to solve the problem of time. The Kathāvatthu (i, 6) refutes it by taking a number of instances and showing the absurdity of asserting that they are existent both in the present, the past, and the future. Professor Stcherbatsky, however, says : “When the principle ‘everything exists’ is set forth, it has a meaning that nothing but the twelve bases of cognition are existent. An object which cannot be viewed as a separate object of cognition or a separate faculty of cognition is unreal, as e.g. the soul, or the personality. Being a congeries of separate elements, it is declared to be a name and not a reality, not a dharma.” This interpretation is entirely unlike that of the Kathāvatthu. It would make the problem not the problem of the nature of time, but of the reality of certain concepts according as they come within the scheme of the “bases of cognition”, the āyatanas.