Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The History of Buddhist Thought c25: Chapter XVII

The History of Buddhist Thought c25

Language
English

Contents

Chapter XVII

c25.1

THE bodhisattva doctrine arose out of the fact that Buddhism was at first a religion involving the teaching that an individual in order to win salvation must follow out a course of life directed to one end.¹ This was the career of the arhat, and it was this career which was remodelled and extended into the career of the bodhisattva. His career to enlightenment also meant grasping the truth of the new metaphysical theories. In the second and first centuries B.C. the prevailing schools of Buddhism in northern India were branches of the Sarvāstivādins, and somewhere within them the new developments arose. But these schools, which were large institutions of education in all branches of the doctrine, also developed their philosophical principles. From the beginning these principles involved metaphysical assumptions, whether they were recognized as assumptions or not. They certainly became recognized when they had to be defended against opponents.

c25.2

¹ The precariousness of the dating of the later period of Buddhism can be seen from Walleser's attempt to date the rise of the doctrine of the Void as seen in the Prajñāpāramitā literature. He says that it is fairly credibly recorded that the beginnings of Mahāyāna fall in the period immediately preceding the reign of Kanishka. This credible record is that of Tāranātha, a Tibetan author of the seventeenth century, and he only says that at the time of the third Council (i.e. of Kanishka) all sorts of Mahāyāna texts appeared. But we do not learn how long it had already existed in the oral teaching of the schools. The first systematic exposition of the doctrine of the Void was Nāgārjuna, who is usually put in the second century A.D. There were already Prajñāpāramitā sūtras in existence, works ascribed to Buddha and intended to give authority to doctrines already taught. They are probably among the earliest Mahāyāna works, and show close relation to the Sarvāstivādins both in literary resemblances and in their direct hostility to the older doctrine. We may place the doctrines and perhaps some of the sūtras as early as the first century B.C. Still earlier must be the period before the doctrines became the possession of a distinct school. Walleser, *Prajñāpāramitā*, p. 1; Stcherbatsky, *The Conception of Buddhist Nirvāṇa*, p. 66.

c25.3

There were internal disputes between the different schools, and probably rivalry with the orthodox philosophies. The result was a metaphysical system in conscious opposition to the older standpoint. Dr. Stcherbatsky thus describes it in rather highly coloured language: "When we see an atheistic, soul-denying, philosophic teaching of a path to personal final deliverance, consisting in an absolute extinction of life and a simple worship of the memory of its human founder—when we see it superseded by a magnificent High Church with a supreme God, surrounded by a numerous pantheon and a host of saints, a religion highly devotional, highly ceremonious and clerical, with an ideal of universal salvation of all living creatures, a salvation by the divine grace of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, a salvation not in annihilation but in eternal life—we are fully justified in maintaining that the history of religions has scarcely witnessed such a break between new and old within the pale of what nevertheless continues to claim common descent from the same religious founder.” 1

c25.4

We find the first stage of the transformation of the metaphysical basis already completed in the doctrine of the Void. This doctrine belongs to several schools, but the earliest formulation found is the doctrine which came to be known as the Mādhyamika, the teaching of Nāgārjuna. We do not know the actual circumstances of the transformation, and it is useless to attempt to trace in the abstract the supposed course of this change. Such changes do not occur in the abstract. They are due to the intellectual ability of individuals, and there must have been many original minds in the Buddhist schools of the two or three centuries before the Christian era. But the last thing that such minds wanted was to appear original. What they claimed to be expounding was the teaching of Buddha, and that this was their teaching they always maintained. If it was pointed out that Buddha’s discourses contained different teaching, then they explained it as teaching meant only for the simple, or they replied that the higher doctrine had been proclaimed by Buddha in one of the heavens and was intended to be promulgated later. They already had the example of the Abhidharma, which was first taught in this way. They were further enabled to justify their position by producing discourses in Buddha’s actual words, which gave them a basis for all that they wished to say.

c25.5

¹ *The Conception of Buddhist Nirvāṇa*, p. 36. How differently the matter can be conceived may be seen from Rosenberg’s remark (*Probleme*, 226) that between Mahāyāna and Hināyāna “es keinen Grundunterschied in der Weltanschauung gibt. Der Unterschied besteht nicht in der Theorie, sondern in der Praxis der Erlösung, in welcher das Mahāyāna eine grössere Anzahl von Wegen zulässt, die zum selben Ziele führen.” This seems to underrate the importance of philosophical principles.

c25.6

Perhaps the earliest class of such discourses is a number of sūtras known as *Prajñāpāramitā*, the Perfection of Wisdom. Some of them may be as early as the first century B.C., and we may take them as evidence that at the time when they appeared the new teaching was being systematically promulgated in the schools. The works of Nāgārjuna in the second century A.D. are the earliest written record of the reasoned out system which probably lay behind these sūtras from the beginning. There may be something in Nāgārjuna’s work due to his own genius, but he was not professing to be original. His presentation of the system has made *Śūnyavāda*, the doctrine of the Void, one of the most important philosophical systems of India.

c25.7

This, however, cannot be said of its presentation in the *Prajñāpāramitā* sūtras. There the doctrine is dogmatically stated, and it is put in such a form that it has been termed sheer nonsense.¹ In order to present this aspect it will be well to analyse one of the shorter forms, the *Vajracchedikā* (Diamond-cutter). Its teaching is that the senses give us only the experience of transient phenomena. No particular thing is real. At every moment it is passing into something else. And the conclusion is summed up in a verse, which says that as in the sky:

c25.8

¹ So Dr. Har Dayal, *The Bodhisattva doctrine*, who calls it puerile logomachy, p. 245, and this of a system represented by Nāgārjuna, whom Dr. Masuda calls the greatest Buddhist thinker since Buddha.

c25.9

The stars, as darkness, as a lamp,
As Māyā,² as hoar frost, or a bubble,
As dream, or as the lightning’s flash,
So should one look on compound things.

c25.10

² *Māyā* is deception and, as other references show, here refers to the illusion produced by a magician or conjurer of things apparently real.

c25.11

The sūtra begins in exactly the same way as the older sūtras, except that many bodhisattvas are said to be present with the monks, and it consists of a dialogue between Buddha and the elder Subhūti, one of the eighty great disciples.

c25.12

A bodhisattva, says Buddha, must produce the thought that all beings in all forms of existence are to be placed by him in the Nirvāṇa which is without a remainder of element of rebirth (*upadhi*). Yet not one of them is placed in Nirvāṇa. If the idea of a being were to arise in the bodhisattva, he ought not to be called a bodhisattva. It is denied that a Tathāgata is to be perceived by his marks. The possession of marks spoken of by the Tathāgata is the possession of non-marks. A disciple who has attained the fruit of Entering the Stream does not think that he has attained it. He has attained no *dharma* or thing. If he were to think so, he would have the belief in a self (*ātman*) or living being or individual. This exposition of the doctrine is said to be inconceivable and incomparable. It cannot be listened to by beings of low disposition who believe in an *ātman*. Tathāgata is a name of true suchness (*bhūtatathatā*) it is a name of the law of non-arising, of the destruction of things, and of the utterly non-arisen. If one should say that the doctrine has been taught by the Tathāgata, he would speak falsely. “One who should say that belief in a self has been spoken by the Tathāgata would not speak truly, for the belief in a self spoken by the Tathāgata is a no-belief. Therefore it is called belief in a self. Thus all things are to be known and looked upon by one who does not rest upon the perception of things but of the perception of non-things. The perception of non-things has been called non-perception by the Tathāgata. Therefore it is called the non-perception of things.”

c25.13

There is no attempt here at explanation or proof. The assertions and denials are put dogmatically, and they are made about the most fundamental beliefs of a Buddhist, as if the author wished to shock his hearers. There is little doubt that this was one of his motives, for he taunts his opponents with the fact that the teaching is beyond the intelligence of beings of low disposition, and that it is to be understood only by those who have acquired bodhisattva knowledge. He speaks of hearers who are terrified at it. It is the confidence that he possesses this knowledge which makes him so ready to startle his opponents.

c25.14

There are at least twelve sūtras which set forth the doctrine of the Void in this popular form. They belong to a school which expounded it as the Perfection of Wisdom. The best known is the *Aṣṭasāhasrika-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra*.¹ This sūtra is free from the imaginative passages in some of the later works, which often run riot in describing the attendant hosts of gods. This probably indicates an early stage of Mahāyāna, when there was direct imitation of the sober style of the earlier sūtras. Not even bodhisattvas are present. Buddha asks the elder Subhūti to let a thought occur to him so that bodhisattvas may acquire the Perfection of Wisdom. The elder Śāriputra wonders whether Subhūti will do it by applying his own wisdom or through the might of Buddha. Subhūti, knowing his thought, replies that everything that disciples say is done through the virile force of the Tathāgata. “ But (Subhūti continues) when the Lord says ‘ bodhisattva ’, of what object is that the name ? I do not see the object named ‘ bodhisattva ’. Further, I do not see the object named ‘ Perfection of Wisdom ’ . . . What bodhisattva and in what Perfection of Wisdom shall I exhort and instruct ? But further, if at my speaking and teaching the mind of a bodhisattva does not sink, if he is not terrified [at the doctrine now set forth] even so is he to be instructed in the Perfection of Wisdom . . . The bodhisattva who is practising the Perfection of Wisdom must so learn that in learning he forms no imagination through the thought of enlightenment. And why ? Because his thought is non-thought. The nature of his thought is pure (i.e. free from any sense-element).”

c25.15

¹ i.e. the Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 verses. It is in prose, but its length is calculated according to the number of syllables it would have if it were in verse.

c25.16

Subhūti goes on to explain that in the state of non-thought there is neither existence nor non-existence. This state of non-thought is without change and without false imagination. Hence a bodhisattva is to be considered as not capable of turning back from enlightenment, and is to be looked upon as not deprived of the Perfection of Wisdom. This Perfection of Wisdom should be heard by those in the stage of disciple, by those in the stage of pratyekabuddha, and also by those in the stage of bodhisattva. For in the Perfection of Wisdom all the qualities of the bodhisattva are contained at length.

c25.17

The first chapter is devoted to repeating in different ways that the bodhisattva wins complete enlightenment by not accepting any dharma as real. Form, feeling, all the skandhas are delusion (māyā). The actual nature of things (dharmatā) is dependent upon the nature of such delusion. Just as a clever conjurer may produce the illusion of a crowd of people, but when he makes them vanish he has not killed them, so a bodhisattva takes countless beings to Nirvāṇa, though there is no being who attains Nirvāṇa. The same teaching is given in the next chapter, where it is addressed to the gods. The gods are laymen, and it is clear that this is the popular form of the doctrine addressed to laymen.

c25.18

The fundamental principle is expounded in the chapter on the Void. “ ‘ Profound ’ is a name of the Void, of the signless, of the undetermined, of non-accumulating, of non-arising, of non-birth, of non-passion, of cessation, of Nirvāṇa, of departure.” It is also a name for all things, and things that are void are also imperishable. The Void is the immeasurable. Hence in these things no distinction or plurality is found.

c25.19

It is not surprising that a system expressed in such terms should have been called negativism or even nihilism.¹ It was even so-called by contemporary opponents, and Nāgārjuna’s commentator Chandrakīrti had to deny that the Mādhyamikas were nihilists (nāstika, nāsti, “ is not ”). D. T. Suzuki says, “ it simply means conditionality or transitoriness of all phenomenal existences.”² Stcherbatsky translates śūnya (void) and śūnyatā (voidness) by “ relativity ”, and says, “ we use the term ‘ relative ’ to express the fact that a thing can be identified only by mentioning its relations to something else, and becomes meaningless without these relations.”³ This explains the relative side, but says nothing about the positive. It is not the doctrine that all is relative, but that all is relative to an absolute.

c25.20

¹ According to Walleser, Buddhism was at first “ positivistisch ”, and then turned to “ den ausgesprochensten Negativismus ”. According to O. Franke, nothing but negativism was ever taught in old Buddhism. *Festschrift E. Kuhn*, p. 336.

c25.21

² *Outlines of Mahāyāna Buddhism*, p. 173.

c25.22

³ *Conc. of Nirv.*, p. 42.

c25.23

It is clear that a term which has to be interpreted in such an apparently arbitrary way as by Suzuki and Stcherbatsky is not self-evident. The choice of the term was due to the practice of the early Mahāyānists of adopting certain established terms in a new sense.⁴ They were thus enabled to find evidence in the Scriptures for their own doctrines. The term Void in the literal sense of emptiness is often found. There are two suttas on emptiness in the Majjhima (121, 122). The monk first meditates on the emptiness of an empty place, and then on the eight stages of concentration, each of which is empty with regard to the former, until he rests in signless (*animitta*) concentration of mind. Here the Void is purely psychological. The universe (*loka*) is also said to be void of a self or of anything belonging to a self,¹ and there is the same standpoint in *Sutta-nipāta*, 1119:

c25.24

⁴ *Gambhīra, anutpāda, animitta, apraṇihita, virāga, nirodha, nirvāṇa*, all synonyms of the Void, are examples of such terms.

c25.25

¹ *Saṃy.*, iv, 54; this is the standpoint taken by the two *Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya-sūtras*, which declare that the skandhas, āyatanas, and dhātus (i.e. everything) are void.

c25.26

As void one should look upon the world,
O Mogharāja, being ever mindful ;
When he has destroyed the theory of a self,
Then will he overcome Death.

c25.27

Three of the most characteristic terms of the doctrine of the Void are also found applied to the sense-contact of one who rises from the Attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling: *suññata* (here an adjective, void), *animitta* (signless), and *appaṇihita* (undetermined, unapplied).² It may be asked whether we have in this case the intrusion of later doctrine, but the probability is that, as in several other cases, the terms have later been given a new sense in the doctrine of the Void.

c25.28

² Ibid., iv, 295.

c25.29

The old doctrine that there was no entity in a self beyond the elements that compose it was extended to things in general (*dharmanairātmya*). Existence consists of dharmas, things or objects, but what can be said of these objects? They are all impermanent and changing, and nothing can be said of them at one moment which is not false the next. They are as unreal as the ātman itself.

c25.30

The Buddhist thinkers had without realizing it stumbled upon the fact that the terms of ordinary language do not express the real facts of existence. Words are static, but the objects to which they refer. The contradictions were attributed not to the defects of verbal expression, but to the nature of the experience. The discovery of antinomies has happened more than once in the history of philosophy. They are well known in the paradoxes of Zeno, the pupil of Parmenides.³ Parmenides had taught that the existent is one, it is imperishable, indivisible, and perfect. All plurality, variety, coming into being, and destruction are empty words. This itself is a remarkable parallel to the doctrine of the Void, and the paradoxes of Zeno are an illustration of the same kind of dialectic as we find in Mahāyāna. If existence is many, said Zeno, it must be infinitely great and infinitely small. Motion is impossible, and so on.¹ The philosophical geniuses who followed Zeno were able to start afresh from a sounder standpoint, but the Indian philosophers never doubted that words were an adequate expression of things. For the Buddhists words were the verbal statement of the facts, or rather of the data, of sense experience. Instead of trying to restate their position they went forward, but actual experience had to be accounted for. Hence their theory of two kinds of truth, veiled or conventional truth (*saṃvṛti*), and truth in the highest sense (*paramārtha*). Truth in the highest sense is *tathatā*, “suchness,” reality without any qualifications, the absolute. It cannot even be called existent, for existence implies relation to a possible non-existent. As it is beyond all relation it is inexpressible.

c25.31

³ Kant’s antinomies were not quite the same. He found that antinomies arose when reason proceeded to draw conclusions from certain concepts that could not be verified in experience. But the antinomies arose from the same cause, the impossibility of making the terms of the concepts correspond with actual reality. For the latest treatment of Parmenides see F. M. Cornford in *Class. Quart.*, 1933, p. 97.

c25.32

¹ The impossibility of motion is discussed by Nāgārjuna in his second chapter. The problem of Achilles and the tortoise is one of Zeno’s paradoxes, but this rests on his assuming that a line divided into an infinite number of parts is necessarily infinite in length.

c25.33

The work of Nāgārjuna ² on the doctrine of the Void consists of a series of verses (*kārikā*), on which he himself wrote a commentary called *Akutobhayā*, “the fearless,” explaining and expanding the argument. There are other commentaries, the most important being the *Prasannapadā* by Chandrakīrti.

c25.34

² The name of the school of Nāgārjuna is *Mādhyamika* “follower of the *madhyamā pratipat*, the Middle Way or Path ”, and there is little doubt that the term is taken from the first sermon of Buddha, where the Middle Path is preached. But the old meaning was transformed, and for Nāgārjuna it was the middle path between asserting the real existence of dharmas and denying them in the sense of negating a possible real.

c25.35

Nāgārjuna begins by discussing the nature of causation as expressed in the theory of dependent origination (*pratītya-samutpāda*) of the Causal Formula. Dependent origination is said to be characterized by being (1) without cessation, (2) without origination, (3) without cutting off, (4) not eternal, (5) not one, (6) not differentiated, (7) without coming, (8) without going. Its interpretation as a series of causes and effects is entirely rejected. The argument consists in showing that contradictions arise in whatever way their causal relations are considered, and then both alternatives are denied. The actual paradox of Zeno about the impossibility of motion occurs here.

c25.36

“There are no things at all that have arisen, either of themselves or from another, or from both, or without a cause.” Arising out of itself would imply that itself already existed. If a thing could be caused from what is other to itself, then anything could be produced from anything. Following the moral rules might lead to hell and the ten sins to heaven. That a thing could arise without a cause is still more absurd. The Mādhyamika has no objection to using arguments which would not be valid for himself. They are valid for his opponent, and all that he has to do is to show the contradictory results.

c25.37

“There are four kinds of conditions : cause (hetu), object (ālambana), the preceding moment (anantara), and the predominating condition (adhipati).¹ In these conditions no self-existence of the entities is found. When there is no self-existence, there is no related existence.” Here the existence of any causal relation is denied, much as was done by Hume. By association we read causal relations into the sequence. “Effect is with conditions ; effect is not with conditions ; conditions are not without effects, nor with them.”

c25.38

¹ This is the analysis of causal conditions as stated by the Sarvāstivādins, Abhk., ii, 61 ff. It has been well discussed by O. Rosenberg, *Die Probleme d. buddh. Phil.*, ch. 15.

c25.39

“Suppose it is said that there are conditions if a thing arises causally. So long as they have not arisen, why are they not called non-conditions ?” This, says La Vallée Poussin, is the cornerstone of Mādhyamika dialectic. It occurs elsewhere in the form, “ if there is no father without a son, how does the existence of a son come about ? If there is no son there is no father, and hence both father and son are unreal.”² He goes on : “ neither of the non-existent nor of the existent is there a cause. If a cause of the non-existent, of what is it the cause ? If of the existent, why a cause ?”

c25.40

² *Bodhicaryāv.*, ix, 114.

c25.41

The next point is the relation between things considered as consciousness (citta), or any special form which it takes (caitta), and that which is dependent on it, the object. If the consciousness exists in its own right, it is useless to consider an object. If the object already exists before the consciousness arises, then there is no question of relation to what is non-existent. There is no cessation (disappearance) of things which have not originated, and the preceding moment disappears in the effect, so that there is no cause.

c25.42

The “ predominating condition ” is the condition as stated in the general formulation of cause, “ when this exists, that exists.” But as there is no real entity in entities the formula becomes meaningless. The result does not exist in any one of the conditions nor in all of them. Cloth cannot be perceived in the loom, nor in the threads, nor in the shuttle. If from such conditions something appears which was never in them, why does not a result appear from non-conditions ? “ Therefore there is nothing that has a condition, no result without a condition ; as there are no results, how are there any conditions or non-conditions ? ”

c25.43

The history of the theories of the cause in philosophical systems suggests that it is not surprising that contradictions should arise when the popular conception is analysed. The Buddhists had not even one conception. They had the Causal Formula, with a whole series of examples of causal sequence. No analysis was ever successful in interpreting them consistently. The only uniform expression ever reached was, “ this being so, that happens,” and this was so generalized that the scholastics had been able to find four different types of cause or conditional relation. It was not to Nāgārjuna’s interest to find a better concept. The more defective the current concepts were, the easier it was for him to prove them all inconsistent. But that was only one half of the doctrine. Behind everything inconsistent and unreal or “ void ” there was an absolute reality. From the first there had been, though it was not conceived cosmically, but as a permanent attainable state, and from the first it was attainable not by reasoning processes, but by direct intuition. This method, the practice of concentration, was as essential in Mahāyāna as it had ever been.

c25.44

As Dr. Schayer says, the normal means for attaining the mystic end is the methodically exercised practice of Yoga. In the long-prepared ecstasy the saint has beheld and grasped the all-unity, and although he awakes again to normal life, i.e. is again brought back to the distinction of subject and object, perceives colours, sounds, etc., feels feelings, and thinks thoughts, yet his consciousness of reality is fundamentally transformed by his post-ecstatic retrospection, just in this sense that now everything actual appears empty and unreal, dreamlike and illusory.¹

c25.45

¹ *Augewählte Kapitel aus der Prasannapadā*, p. xxiv.

c25.46

Whatever the Void means—and it was only an old term adapted to a new concept—the fundamental fact for the Buddhist was this reality. How it was interpreted in relation to the Doctrine and the person of Buddha will be seen later. There are still other points in the teaching of Nāgārjuna which will make his position clearer.

c25.47

He proceeds through all the characteristic doctrines of the Vaibhāshikas, treating them in the same way—on the impossibility of motion, on the sense faculties, the skandhas, action and actor, the truth of pain, the self, time, etc. In the chapter on Binding and Release *saṃsāra*² itself is said to be unreal. “If the saṃskāras transmigrate, they do not transmigrate as anything permanent nor as impermanent, and the argument for the existence of a being is just the same.” Here the saṃskāras are the elements of which all compound things consist. But nothing is permanent except the three uncompounded things, and if the compounds are impermanent they perish as soon as they arise. This assumes the doctrine of momentariness (*kṣaṇikavāda*), according to which each thing consists of a series of moments. Nor does the individual (*pudgala*) transmigrate. “If it is said that an individual transmigrates, he must be sought in fivefold way in the skandhas, in the āyatanas and the dhātus, but he (apart from these) does not exist. Who then transmigrates?” The ātman is as unreal as the son of a barren woman. “From one form of grasping (*upādāna*) to another it would have no existence in *saṃsāra*; as it is without existence and without grasping, how does it transmigrate?” There is no transmigration of an ātman, adds the commentator, and as there is no transmigration of compounded things either, therefore there is no transmigration at all.

c25.48

² *Saṃsāra* may mean transmigration; here it is rather the world of change in which transmigration takes place.

c25.49

But all this is true of Nirvāṇa itself. It is a dream, a magician’s deluding, says the commentator, quoting the passage in the *Aṣṭasāhasrika* given above (p. 216). Yet, says an objector, though you deny transmigration and Nirvāṇa, yet there are binding and release. Nāgārjuna replies : “ Compounded things, whose nature is arising and passing away, are neither bound nor released ; nor is a being, as said above, either bound or released.” But surely, says the objector, grasping is a bond, and as that is real there is binding. No, is the reply, for that which is already bound cannot come into the state of being bound, and that which is not bound is free from binding. It is the same argument which has already been used to prove the impossibility of motion. “ The bound is not released, and the not bound is likewise not released. If the bound were released, binding and releasing would be simultaneous.”

c25.50

Those who say, “ I shall attain Nirvāṇa when I am without grasping, and Nirvāṇa will be mine,” hold a great false notion, the belief in a real self (*satkāyadrṣṭi*). Here the doctrine of non-self is turned against the whole Hīnayāna scheme of salvation. The commentator quotes a long passage from a Mahāyāna sūtra, the *Dhyāyitamuṣṭi-sūtra*. In a conversation with Mañjuśrī the Lord describes the whole career of the disciple who enters the Order, keeps the moral laws, thinks that all compounds are transitory, feels revulsion, practises the path, and realizes tranquillity. He thinks, “ I am released from all pains, there is nothing more for me to do, I am an arhat.” Thus he forms the idea of a self, and at the time of death he is convinced of the rebirth (*utpatti*) of the self, so that doubt and uncertainty arise, and uncertainty about the enlightenment of an enlightened one. When he dies, he falls into the great hell, because although all things are unoriginated he imagines them as real.

c25.51

The true Mahāyāna doctrine according to this sūtra is, “ he who looks upon all compounds as not arisen has understood pain. He who looks upon all things as unoriginated has abandoned the cause of pain. He who looks upon all things as utterly extinguished has realized its cessation. He who looks upon all things as utterly void has practised the Way. He who thus looks upon the four noble Truths forms no idea or notion that ‘ these things are good, those things are bad, these things are to be abandoned, those things are to be realized, pain is to be understood, its origin is to be abandoned, its cessation is to be realized, the Way is to be practised.’ And why ? Because there is no thing which he imagines as real ; fools and common people do so, and thus they feel passion, hatred, and delusion. He neither accepts or denies any *dharma* (thing), and thus his mind clings to nothing in the three worlds. He looks upon the whole three worlds as unborn."

c25.52

It is with reference to this Scripture (Āgama), says the commentator, that Nāgārjuna states the question of Nirvāṇa from the point of view of absolute truth: " where there is no attribution of reality to Nirvāṇa and no withdrawal of *saṃsāra*, how can *saṃsāra* and Nirvāṇa be there distinguished in thought?" They are thus identical, or at least proved to be identical. They are no more different than the waves of the ocean are different from the ocean.

c25.53

Nāgārjuna discusses the question of Nirvāṇa in full in chapter 25. "If everything is void, there is no origination and no passing away; of what is there Nirvāṇa either by abandonment or by cessation?" The commentator first gives a fair statement of the Hīnayāna view. "Now with regard to this the Lord has described a twofold Nirvāṇa of individuals who have practised the religious life, followed the teaching of Buddha, acquired the greater and lesser doctrines, namely, Nirvāṇa with the remainder of a substratum of rebirth (*upadhi*) and Nirvāṇa without a remainder. The first is understood as due to complete abandonment of the depravities, ignorance, passion, etc. . . . It is like a village in which all the gangs of robbers have been destroyed.¹ But the Nirvāṇa in which even the mere skandhas no longer exist is Nirvāṇa without such a remainder.² It is like a village which, after the gangs of robbers have been destroyed, has itself been annihilated."

c25.54

¹ The simile of the village and robbers goes back to *Samy.*, iv, 175.

c25.55

² The word *parinirvāṇa*, sometimes supposed to be the term for complete Nirvāṇa, is not used; see p. 122.

c25.56

But, says Nāgārjuna, "if everything is non-void (real in the popular sense), there is neither arising nor passing away. Of what is there Nirvāṇa either by abandonment or cessation?" The Hīnayānist replies, "if there is Nirvāṇa, there will indeed be no depravities or skandhas when Nirvāṇa is attained, hence their destruction will be Nirvāṇa." The reply as stated by the commentator is, "get rid of your false view (*grāha*). If things exist really, they cannot become non-existent. As Nāgārjuna says, 'The limit of Nirvāṇa is also the limit of *saṃsāra*; not the finest distinction is found between them.' It must be understood that there is no abandoning of anything through Nirvāṇa, nor the ceasing of anything. Hence Nirvāṇa is the destruction of all false imaginings, as has been said by the Lord:

c25.57

No real thing is of such a nature that it passes away;
A thing that is not does not exist at all.
He who imagines that things exist and exist not
Will never make pain to cease.

c25.58

The meaning of the verse is that in Nirvāṇa without a remainder there is non-existence through the utter disappearance of things, whether the depravities, karma, birth, or the skandhas. This all schools admit. Now things which are in Nirvāṇa do not exist at all. They are like the fear of a rope mistaken for a snake, which disappears when a light is brought in. As for existence in *saṃsāra*, fools and common people who believe in a self and selfhood are like people suffering from ophthalmia who see unreal hairs and flies floating before them.”

c25.59

The conclusion is drawn that Nirvāṇa is neither (1) existent, (2) nor non-existent, (3) nor existent and non-existent, (4) nor non-existent and not non-existent. The fourfold denial is another instance of direct connection with the older schools, for it is the same fourfold division as we find in the four undetermined questions about the existence of a Tathāgata after death. Here it is applied to the existence of Nirvāṇa. Existence is related to non-existence and to cause and effect. The reality of Nirvāṇa is beyond all conditions. The doctrine is one that is found differently expressed in other religions. The ultimately real is nowhere found in transient things. Nothing can be said of it but “no, no”. But it can be apprehended in mystic intuition, and if this is knowledge, it is a knowledge entirely different from that of ordinary experience. Of this knowledge Nāgārjuna does not speak, but it is the counterpart of his attitude to the knowledge and experience of the senses, which he analyses and pulverizes. It is the attitude of the mystic who with the experience of the one reality knows that all else is empty and vain. This one reality, which is not to be called anything, not even real, is Nirvāṇa.

c25.60

Buddhism, which began with the mysticism of yoga-practices, also ended with it. For the mystic, the ultimately real of his experience was *tathatā*, “suchness.” As the goal of his attainment it was Nirvāṇa, and as the object of his thought it was Buddha as the *dharmakāya*, “the body of the doctrine,” or (with the ontological meaning of *dharma*) “the body of the nature of things.” Like other forms of mysticism that try to express the inexpressible, Mahāyāna developed a mystic symbolism. This will be seen in the other great Mahāyāna school, that of the Yogāchāras.

c25.61

The Middle doctrine of Nāgārjuna appears later than the earliest form of the doctrine of the Void, as taught in the sūtras of the Perfection of Wisdom, but it cannot be assumed that all the sūtras of this class are earlier than Nāgārjuna. They probably continued to be composed and revised. As they were intended for the edification of the laity they glorify the career of the bodhisattva and preach the great merits of hearing the recitation of each sūtra.

c25.62

The introductory verses of the *Daśabhūmika* end with the words, “let those desirous of enlightenment hear the *Daśabhūmika* uttered, which has been proclaimed as the pure middle course that avoids (the extremes of) annihilation and permanence.” These verses may be later than the sūtra itself, but evidently we have here an instance of the popular teaching going on at the side of the philosophical. The *Suvarṇaprabhāsa-sūtra* is a still more striking instance of the popular aspect. It contains the same four introductory verses as the *Daśabhūmika*, but with its own name substituted. This makes the line unmetrical, and implies that here at least there is an addition. The popularity of this sūtra is shown by the frequency with which it was translated into Chinese, Tibetan, and other languages, and these translations, with their changes and additions, allow us to see the growth of doctrine as well. According to the editor, Mr. Idzumi, it was first translated into Chinese about A.D. 412–426. This translation, like the Sanskrit itself, contains no explicit reference to the three bodies of a Buddha. In later versions a special chapter on the subject is inserted, and the rise of the doctrine can be certainly placed between the second and fifth centuries A.D.

c25.63

The *Suvarṇaprabhāsa*, even more than the *Lotus*, shows the popular side of Mahāyāna teaching. The first chapter is devoted to its merits and the benefits of hearing it. The second has the same title as chapter 15 of the *Lotus*, on The length of life of the Tathāgata, and the teaching is the same :

c25.64

The Buddha does not attain Nirvāṇa,
The Doctrine does not pass away ;
But for the sake of ripening beings
He makes a show to attain Nirvāṇa.

c25.65

This teaching is given to Ruchiraketu, and then follows the story of his having a dream and going to Buddha, before whom he makes the bodhisattva's vow to attain enlightenment.

c25.66

The rest consists of chapters all very instructive to the laity, but without any inner connection. The four Great Kings come and tell how the sūtra has given them heroism and strength. The goddess Sarasvatī gives a spell against evil planets and dreams, and other gods and goddesses appear. Then follows a discourse on the duties of kings and stories of the former deeds of bodhisattvas. Some of them are formal jātakas with identification of the characters at the end. Chapter 6 is called The Void, and it undertakes to give in summary what other sūtras have given at length. It consists simply of thirty mixed triṣṭubh verses, which might have been inserted from anywhere. The body is described as an empty village, in which the senses run about like six thieves (the same simile as used by Nāgārjuna, p. 224). The elements are like four snakes, and the conclusion is that all things are void and have arisen through conditions from ignorance.

c25.67

Philosophically there is little to be gleaned from these sūtras. Their religious conceptions of bodhisattva practice and worship were shared by the Yogāchāras, but philosophically the Yogāchāras, though retaining the fundamental concept of the void, made a great advance by starting from a psychological standpoint.

Note on the Later Schools

c25.s1.1

The later schools were once classed according to the four divisions given by Mādhava in his *Sarvadarśanasamgraha*. This is a work of the fourteenth century, and merely shows us how the Buddhist schools appeared to a Hindu at that time. Even so, what we learn from it is not the fundamental teaching, but the points of dispute which had been selected for refutation by the orthodox schools. The schools mentioned are two of the older group (Hīnayāna), the Vaibhāṣikas (Sarvāstivādins) and the Sautrāntikas, and the two chief Mahāyāna schools, the Mādhyamikas and the Yogācāras.

c25.s1.2

More details are given by Tāranātha in his history of Buddhism.¹ It contains much that is unhistorical and fantastic, and it is not necessary here to discuss it in detail. Its value for us is that it was written by one who had the Buddhist literature behind him, and we can now see what that literary development was.

c25.s1.3

¹ The contents have been well analysed by Professor P. L. Vaidya in his *Études sur Āryadeva*.

c25.s1.4

This first began in the Abhidharma schools. Besides the Sarvāstivādin group the chief schools were the Sautrāntikas and the Sāmmitīyas.² Of these we have no complete accounts, but the *Abhidharmakośa* discusses many of their views. The author Vasubandhu undertook to expound Sarvāstivāda doctrine, though he appears to have been inclined to the Sautrāntikas. The name Sautrāntika implies that they rejected the Abhidharma works as an authority, and accepted only the *sūtrāntas*. The Sāmmitīyas are best known for holding, like the Vātsīputrīyas, the pudgala doctrine, the view that though the individual does not exist apart from his parts, yet he is something more than the mere sum of them. Another important Hīnayāna school is well known as the Mahāsanghika, whose buddhological doctrines, if not the school itself, became merged in Mahāyāna.

c25.s1.5

² On these two schools, see *ERE*.

c25.s1.6

It is clear, both from the Mahāyāna sūtras and the systematic works, that the chief opponents of the early Mahāyāna controversialists were the Sarvāstivādins. These continued to flourish at the side of the Mahāyānists, for Vasubandhu’s great work on Abhidharma belongs to the fifth century.

c25.s1.7

We have seen the scope of Nāgārjuna’s work. It was a systematization of the doctrine that first appears in the Mahāyāna sūtras. But this was probably only the final outcome of what had already been taught in a systematic form in the monasteries.³ Another author who contributed to it was Āryadeva, and it continued to flourish and be commented on for centuries.

c25.s1.8

³ P. L. Vaidya, ibid., p. 20, puts Nāgārjuna A.D. 170–200, and Āryadeva A.D. 200–225.

c25.s1.9

There is a similar course of development in the next great school, the Yogāchāra. We find a popular presentation in sūtra form, and then a systematic treatment by several scholars. Again, it is a natural surmise that when the sūtra was set forth there was already a systematic treatment in the monasteries, and that what we have now in the works of Asanga and Vasubandhu represents the form that it had taken in one of the centres of learning. After this there were no more important metaphysical developments. There was a subtle change in the religious side in the movement known as Tantrism, which affected both Buddhist and Hindu schools. In both cases it appears as an alien growth, but in the mysticism of the Yogāchāras there was a natural soil for its development.

c25.s1.10

The later we go the clearer become the traces in Buddhist literature of contact with the orthodox Hindu schools. There is a passage in Chandrakīrti's commentary on Nāgārjuna which gives us an interesting glimpse of the state of philosophical parties in the seventh century A.D.¹ He refers to the different ways in which reality is asserted. (1) There are those who imagine the real existence of entities, and they are said to be the three Hindu schools of Karma-mīmāmsā, Vaiśeshika, and Sānkhya, and the Vaibhāshikas. (2) Those who deny existence are the Nāstikas, the materialists or nihilists. (3) Those who are those who deny the existence of past and future, of moral character (avijñapti),² of unconscious mental elements, but assert it of the rest. These appear to be the Sautrāntikas. (4) There are those who deny the real existence of the falsely known (parikalpita), but assert it of that which exists (relatively) through conditions (paratantra), and of that which is thought in its true nature (parinishpanna). These are the Yogāchāras, who had already become an important school. There appears to be no recognition here of the holders of upanishadic doctrine, nor of the form which it finally took as the Vedānta.

c25.s1.11

¹ Madhyamakavṛ, 523.

c25.s1.12

² Thus reading with Stcherbatsky, not vijñapti; cf. p. 162.

Linked texts (11)