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

Very remarkable are then the coincidences between Nagarjuna’s nega¬ tivism and the condemnation by Mr. Bradley of almost every conception of the every day world: things and qualities,, relations, space and time, chauge, causation, motion, the Self. From the Indian standpoint Bradley can be characterised as a genuine Madhyamika. But above all these %

1 De l’intuition philosophique, Revue de Metaph., 1911.

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

3 Cp. Bertrand Russel, External World, p. 167 if.

parallelisms we may perhaps find a still greater family likeness between the dialectical method of Hegel and Nagarjuna’s dialectics. Hegel in his Phanomenologie des Geistes 1 challenges common sense to point out some object which is certainly known for what, in our experience, it is, and solves the question by stating that all we really know of the object is its «thisness», all its remaining content is relation. This is the exact meaning of the tathatd , or of «suchness», of the Mahayanist, and Relativity, as we have seen, is the exact meaning of the term sunyata. We further see the full application of the method which maintains that we can truly define an object only by taking explicit account of other objects, with whom it is contrasted, that debarring this contrast the object becomes «devoid» of any content, and that both the opposites coalesce in some higher unity which embraces them both. The facts are knowable only as interrelated, and the universal law of Relativity is all that is properly meant by reality. Both philosophers assure us that Negativity {sunyata.) is the Soul of the Universe,«Ne • gativit&t ist die Seele der Welt». Reducing the world of fact to a realm of universal relativity this implies that every thing cognisable is false, tran¬ sient aud illusory, but that the constitution of the real world depends upon this very fact. Even sensations and sense data (rupa ) 2 which first appeared as ultimate realities, we then gradually discover to stand in relations without which they prove to be meaningless. Relativity, or negativity, is really the Soul of the Universe.

Some more points of similarity will be easily detected between Nagar¬ juna and every monistic philosophy, the more so between him and those philosophers who, like Nicolaus Cusanus, G. Bruno and others, insist upon the negative method of cognising the Absolute. It will hardly be denied that the Mahayanist conception of Buddha’s Cosmical Body as the unique substance is very similar to Spinozas conception of God as the only substance, Deus sive substantia, Deus sive natura. Although Spinoza’s intuitus of everything particular sub specie aeternitaiis is supposed to be a rational capacity of the intellect and Nagarjuna’s intuition is mystic, nevertheless both lead to the same result.

These several points of similarity should, as a matter of course, be taken for what they are worth. For one thing, they might preclude the characte-

1 For the English phrasing of Hegel’s principles I am indebted to Baldwin’s dictionary.

2 Ibid. IV. 1.

nirvana ristic of a «nihilist» to be applied to Nagarjuna. The chief divergence bet¬ ween him and his European colleagues in Monism is that he did not believe in logic, at least for the ultimate aim of cognising what reality in itself is. Hegel and Bradley seem to believe in the efficiency of their logic. It did not occur to them that if applied to their own results their logic would sublate itself. Nagarjuna was fully aware of this fact. Therefore abandoning logic altogether he betook himself to direct mystic intuition of the Absolute, the One-without-a-Second. This step, or jump, from a condemned logic to direct intuition, has been made by many philosophers and in our days it has a very eloquent exponent in the person of M. H. Bergson.

XX. The position of nyaya-vaisesika