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

to exist between moments only, the appearance of every moment being coordinated with the appearance of a number of other moments. Strictly speaking it was no causality at all, no question of one thing producing the other. There could be neither a causa materialise since there was no con¬ tinuant substance, nor could there be any causa efficiens, since one momentary entity, disappearing as it did at once, could not influence any other entity. So the formula was supplemented by another one «not from itself ( causa materialis ), not from something foreign (causa efficients), nor a combination of both does an entity spring up», x «it is coordinated, it is not really produced)). 2 Apart from these momentary entities 3 the system admitted eternal unchanging elements, Space and Nirvana, the latter repre¬ senting some indefinite essence ( dharma-svabhdva ), of these forces which were active in phenomenal life, but are now extinct and converted into eternal death. Thus both the phenomenal world and this kind of an absolute, both samsara and nirvana , were conceived as realities, somehow' interconnected, linked together in a whole (sarvam)* but in an ideal whole, having, as a combi¬ nation of elements, only nominal existence.

XIII. This doctrine modified in Mahayana

Now, the Madhyamika system started with an entirely different con¬ ception of reality. Real was what possessed a reality of its own (sva-bhdva), what was not produced by causes ( akrtaka = asamskrta), what was not de¬ pendent upon anything else (paratra nirapeksa ). 5 In Hinayana the elements, although interpendent (samskrta — pratUyasamutpanna), were real (vastu).

1 Sarny. II. 113 and Madhy. Kar. I. 1, XII. 1.

2 Madhy. vr.. p. 7— tat tat prdpya yad utpannam notpannam tat. svdbhdvatah-, ibid, p. 375,6 — paramarthaio Hyantdnutpadatvdt sarvadharmdydm.

3 If I am not very much mistaken, this view of causality, viz. that, there is, properly speaking, no real causality, that this notion should he cancelled altogether and replaced hy a law of coordination between point-instants, is not quite a stranger to modern science and philo¬ sophy, cf. B. Russel, On the Notion of Cause, in Mysticism and Logic, p. 194. The Buddhist conception of causality would thus be something similar to the conception of a function in mat¬ hematics, « funktionelle Abhangigkeit», such a view of causality as was entertained in Europe hy D’Alembert, Comte, Claude Bernard, Avenarius, E. Mach and others, cp. the references inEisler, Handworterbuch der Philosophic, p. 338. We hope to devote before long a special article to this question.

4 Cp. Central Conception, p. 6 and below p. 54, n. 5.

5 Madhy. Kar. XV, 2. In the sequel the references with roman figures will refer to chapter and karika of Nagarjuna’s Madhyamika sastra, and the references in Arabic figures to Candrakirti’s comment, ed. B. B. IV.

In Mahayana all elements, because interdependent, were unreal (sunya = = svabhava-sunya ). 1 In Hinayana every whole (rasi=avayavin) is regarded as a nominal existence ( prajnaptisat ) and only the parts or ultimate elements (dharma) are real (vastu). In Mahayana all parts or elements are unreal (sunya), and only the whole, i. e., the Whole of the wholes (dharmata=dharma-kaya), is real. The definition of reality (tattva) in Mahayana is the following one — «uncognisable from without, quiescent, undifferentiated in words, unrealisable in concepts, non-plural — this is the essence of reality)). 2 A dependent existence is no real existence, just as borrowed money is no real wealth. 3 The theory that all real existence can last only for one moment, since two moments implied already a synthesis, was abandoned, and the con¬ ception of a momentary entity ( ksana ), so characteristic for other schools of Buddhist thought, was given up, 4 as unwarranted ( asiddha ), not capable of resisting critique. 5 In Hinayana the individual ( pudgala ), the Self (dtma) was resolved in its component elements (skandha - ayatana - dhdtavah = — anatma), there were no real personalities (pudgala - nairdtmya), but a congeries of flashing forces (samskdra-samiiha). In Mahayana we have, on the contrary, a denial of real elements (dharma-nairdtmya), and an assertion of the whole, in the sense of the absolute Whole (dharma-kaya). & In Hinayana, in a word, we have a radical Pluralism, converted in Mahayana in as radical a Monism.