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

On p. 9.1 read with the Mss. Tcatham anava(ga)te ’prapte sambhavah, and on p. 8.10 preferably etaccayuktam.

1 Bhavaviveka here partly returns to the interpretation already contained in the Hinayana sutras (e. g., M. N. III. 63), but of course its meaning is quite changed. Formerly it re¬ ferred to real elements ( dharmas ), now it means Sunyata, or unreal dharmas .

2 The difficulty arising from the interpretation of the term as involving a disjunctive sen¬ tence is also mentioned by Vasubandhu, op. cit. ad. III. 28.

NIRVANA

VIII. The principle op Relativity the Law of all pluralistic

EXISTENCE

• 10 . li. Thus it is that Buddha wished to put in a strong light 1 (the principle of Relativity, i.e.), the fact that entities are produced only in the sense of being coordinated. 2 He therefore maintains that they neither are produced at random, nor from a unique cause, nor from a variety of causes; he denies that they are identical (with their causes), that they are different from them,
• 10 . 12 . or that they are both (partly identical and partly non-identical). By this negative method he discloses the true relative character of all the relative entities (of every day life). This is the relative existence or dependent ori¬ gination, 3 because nothing really new is produced. From the transcendentalist’s 4 point of view it is a condition where nothing disappears, (nor some¬ thing new appears) etc., and in which there is no motion. It is a condition cha¬ racterised by the eight above mentioned characteristics, ((nothing disap¬ pears)) etc. 5 The whole of this treatise is intended by its author to prove

1 paridlpayatd—parito dlpayatd.

- hetu-pratyaya-apeksa.

3 pratitya-samutpdda is here synonymous with sunyatva — anta-dvaya-rahitatva = advaita, and although it is the contrary of samvrtti, it is here called sdmvrttah pratitya-samutpadah meaning, that pratitya-samutpannalva or advaita or iunyata is the real condition which is «covered)> or hidden behind the phenomenal world, the samvrtti. (It is a karma-sddhana, i. e., samvriyate etad iti sdmvrta, not a karana-sddhana, i. e., not samvriyate aneno).

4 The drya or arya-pudgala is the Buddhist Saint who has entered the path of Salvation, has become srota-apanna, has reached insight (drsti-marga) of reality as it reveals itself to the philosopher. In Hlnayana it is the man who has acquired the intellectual habit of seeing every¬ where only separate, discrete, evanescent elements ( dharmata—anatma ). He has got rid of the im¬ pression of stability which the world produces upon the ordinary man. In Mahayana, as is seen from this passage, it is the man who has acquired a monistic view of the Universe, he has cognised the pratitya-samutpdda as Sunyatd—dharma-nairdtmya. From the phrasing of this and many other passages it clearly appears that the Mahayanistic Saint, the arya and the Bodhisattva, possesses, in addition to his moral achievements, his Mahayanistic bodhi-cittautpada, the practise of the naramitas, the attainment of bhumis and the Mahayanistic Great Commiseration, as a foundation of all this, a monistic view of the Universe, acquired by yogipratyaksa. It constitutes the Omniscience, sarvajTiata , of the Bodhisattva which together with the sarva-dkdra-jnata of the Buddha is the main idea of the. abhisamaya or prajna-pdramitd in Aryasanga’s interpretation. This starvajrlatd is accordingly very different from our con¬ ception of Omniscience. We find a very interesting exposition of these topics in Vacaspatimisras Nyayakanika, the sarvajHa-vdda begins p.110.16 (Keprint from the Pandit), the Bud¬ dhist yogi-pratyaksa p. 147.4 ff., the brahmanical yogi-abhimata-sarvajna p. 205.16 ff., its re¬ futation (sva-matena) p. 181.25 flf., Naiyayika-abhimata-yogi-pratyaksa p. 168.12 ff.