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

3 The two churches coexisted peacefully in the same monasteries, because the Buddhists very wisely always made allowance for human nature which sometimes feels inclination towards a simple rationalistic Low Church and sometimes is attracted towards a devotional and magni¬ ficent High Church. They divided humanity in families ( gotra) of which some by nature belonged to the low-church family (hinayana=hinddhimukti) and others to the high-church family. We must imagine the process by which some originally Hinayanistic monasteries gradually turned Mahayanistic as a process of aggrandisement. The educational Buddhist monasteries, which are comparable to mediaeval universities, were aggrandised by the addition of a new college which received its own temple and body of monks studying a new special litteratnre and conducting a special worship. In present days we can witness in Transbaikalia the addition to monasteries, which can afford it, of Kalacakra-colleges with a special temple, a special body of monks, a special literature and a special worship. The different types of Buddhist mona¬ steries are described by B. Baradiin in a very instructive work now published at Verchne- Oudinsk, «0 dy^HHCKMx MOHacTbipax MoHro.iHH n Tn6eTa», (it was accessible to me in MSS.

during my visit to that town in 1925).

Yet the philosophical system which is the foundation of this new reli¬ gion is usually represented as the extreme expression and the logical conse¬ quence of that pessimism and skepticism by which Early Buddhism is suppo¬ sed to have been inspired. It is characterised as ((complete and pure nihilism)), as «the legitimate logical outcome of the principles underlying ancient Bud¬ dhism)). 1 It is accused of teaching that «all our ideas are based upon a non-entity or upon the void». 2 It is represented as a ((negativism which radically empties existence up to the last consequences of negation)), 3 a doctrine whose conception of reality was one of «absolute nothingness)). 4 The Madhyamikas are called the most radical Nihilists that ever existed. 5 When compared with Vedanta, it has been asserted that negation has a po¬ sitive counterpart in that system, whereas there is none in the Madhyamika. Negation in the latter is represented as its ((exclusive ultimate end (Selbstzweck)». 6

The opponents of Mahayana in India describe it much in the same manner. Thus Kumarila accuses the Madhyamikas not only of denying the existence of external objects, but of denying the reality of our ideas as well. 7

1 H. Kern, Manual, p. 126; A. Barth, Quarante aus, I. p. 108: M. de la Vallee Poussin, Bouddhisme, p. 186.

2 H. Jacobi, A. 0. J., XXXI, p. 1.

3 M. Walleser, Die B. Phil., II, p. Ill; Der altere Vedanta, p. 44.

4 B. Keith, op. cit., pp. 237, 239, 247, 261 etc. Prof. B. Keith’s exposition contains (p. 239) what, in my opinion, is the right view, viz. that Nagarjuna’s real object was to show that the intellect «condems itself as inadequate just as it finds hopeless antinomies in the world of experience^). As prof. B. Keith very well knows, Nagarjuna is not the only philosopher who adhered to such a line of arguing, very celebrated men have done that. Why then should Nagar¬ juna’s main conception be «difficult and obscure» (ibid.)? He also hits the right mark when he points to a primitive, non-differentiated reality, identified with Buddha’s Cosmical Body ( dharma- ■kaya), as the central conception of Mahayana. He even finds (ibid. p. 255) much more reality and activity in this conception than in the absolute of the Vedanta with which it is so strikingly similar. How are these views to harmonize with the conflicting opinions of the same author — e. g., p. 261 where it is asserted that for Nagarjuna the world was «absolute nothingness*), that it was a utterly unreal*—I am at a loss to explain. Or does prof. B. Keith suppose that Nagar¬ juna did not admit the doctrine of Dharmakaya, or that, having admitted it, he did not fully realise its consequences, or that «the positive side of the Mahayana» (p. 257), is a later develop¬ ment out of its negative side?

5 I. Wach, Mahayana, p. 58.

6 M. Walleser, Der altere Vedanta, p. 42. «Selbstzweck» is explicitly denied byNagarj u n a, XXIV, 7 and many other places.

7 Slokavartika, Niralambanavada, 14. In fact the Madhyamikas denied the validity of the pramauas and maintained that external and internal were correlative terms which are meaningless beyond this correlation, see below, p. 42.

NIRVANA

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