The History of Buddhist Thought c26.45

c26.45

The theory of knowledge is the same as that which we find in the *Laṅkāvatāra*. The transformation of consciousness itself results in false imagination (*vikalpa*). Everything thus imagined is in general *parikalpita*, falsely imagined, and has no self-existence. But things may be thought in a certain regular order as being due to causes or conditions. Such thought has a relative self-existence (*paratantra*), and it expresses the relative truth of things as perceived; but it becomes as false as the rest when the great revulsion takes place, when the non-self-existence of all things is realized, and everything is known to be only store-consciousness. This is perfected knowledge (*pariniṣpanna*).