The History of Buddhist Thought c25.43

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.