The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana — Th. Stcherbatsky (1927)

1 Another transitional school between Hlnayana and Mahayana is the so called satyasiddhi school of Harivarman known only from Chinese sourses, cp. Yamakami Sogen, Sys¬ tems of Buddist Thonght, p. 172 ff. (Calcutta 1912), 0. Rosenberg, Problems p. 274.

3 This Vasubandhu himself hints, cf. my Soul Theory, p. 852 and M. de la Vallee Poussin’s transl. IX p. 273. Vasubandhu who himself favoured this school, as well as his pupil and continuator Dignaga, are already Mahayanists and have partly adopted Vijnanavada views. They call themselves Vijnanavadins although in the cardinal point of absolute reality they partly adhere to the Sautrantika view (cf. Nyayablndutlkatipp. ed. B. B. p. 19).

Mahayanists and the «school men». When the battle that raged during 500 years was inclining to its end, they coalesced with the Mahayanists who had won the battle and formed with them the hybrid school of Yogacara- Sautrantika. Among the ultimate realities of the earlier lists which were declared by the new movement, i. e., by both the Mahayanists and the Sautrantikas, to be nominal we find Nirvana ( nirodha ).

It was known long ago that the Vaibhasika and the Sautrantika schools were engaged in a dispute regarding the nature of Nirvana. The first maintained that it was something real ( vastu ), the second objected that it was nothing real by itself, that it was merely the cessation of all personal life. The exact meaning of this issue could, of course, be fully appreciated only if the complicated arguments of both contending schools would have been known. Our information about the Vaibhasikas is much more ample now, and we can represent in detail the argumentation which led to the tenet of Nirvana as a reality. About the other school, the Sautrantikas, our information is still indirect. The works of the early Sautrantikas, Ivumaralabha, Srilabha, Mahabhadanta, Vasumitra and others are still inaccessible. Vasubandhu can be taken as the exponent of the latest phase of this school, when it was about to coalesce with the Mahayanists. However enough is known to allow a definite conclusion about their supposed «denial» of Nirvana and the meaning of their answer to the Vaibhasikas.

M. de la Vallde Poussin thinks that his hypothesis about a pre-Kanonic Buddhism, consisting of a simple faith in Immortality and Yoga practices, as well as his interpretation of the passages where Buddha is reported to have answered some metaphysical questions by silence — that both these hypotheses are fully borne out by the position which the later schools take regarding Nirvana (p. 132). When it is called a «reality» {vastu) he declares it to be a confirmation of the existence (some500 years ago) of that simple faith in Immortality which, by a similar method, he has discovered in Early Buddhism. We find in his book (pp. 136—148) many interesting details about the battle that raged between the two schools in the V century A. D., but unfortunately the meaning of the controversy has entirely escaped his attention, since it is exactly the reverse of what he assumes it to be. The Vaibhasikas did not maintain that Nirvana was a kind of paradise, but that the annihilation of all life {nirodha), the essence of Nirvana, was a reality {nirodha-satya, vastu), i. e., a materialistic lifeless reality. The Sautrantikas,

NIRVANA

VIII. THE VAIBHASIKAS on the other hand, admit the existence of Buddha’s Cosmical Body (dharmakciya), i. e., they adhere to the Mahayana conception which consists in iden¬ tifying Nirvana with the living world itself. Therefore, just as the Mahayanists, they deny the reality of Nirvana as a separate element which transcends the living world. It is a denial of the reality of that materialistic kind of annihilation which was favoured by the Vaibhasikas.

VII. The double character of the absolute