The History of Buddhist Thought c20.55

c20.55

The twelve āyatanas are also, like the scheme of the khandhas, a means of classifying everything. They consist of the six senses : sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and mind or consciousness, and of the six objects of the senses : body, sound, odour, objects of taste, tangibles, objects of consciousness. “Everything” is thus classified under the six channels of knowledge and their objects, but in whatever way everything is classed, the essential question is how it exists. The Theravādins understood it to mean that the Sarvāstivādins asserted that “the past exists, the future exists, the present exists”.¹ As O. Rosenberg said, the name of the school means the view which says that everything is, in which “everything” does not refer to all dharmas, in the sense of dharmas of every kind, but to the dharmas of all the three times.¹