[Footnote 3:  Taranatha says that he was converted by Aryadeva, a disciple of Nagarjuna, Geschichte des Buddhismus, German translation by Schiefner, pp. 84-85.  See Suzuki’s Awakening of Faith, pp. 24-32.  As’vagho@sa wrote the Buddhacaritakavya, of great poetical excellence, and the Mahala@mkaras’astra.  He was also a musician and had invented a musical instrument called Rastavara that he might by that means convert the people of the city.  “Its melody was classical, mournful, and melodious, inducing the audience to ponder on the misery, emptiness, and non-atmanness of life.”  Suzuki, p. 35.]

130

He held that in the soul two aspects may be distinguished —­the aspect as thatness (bhutatathata) and the aspect as the cycle of birth and death (sa@msara).  The soul as bhutatathata means the oneness of the totality of all things (dharmadhatu).  Its essential nature is uncreate and external.  All things simply on account of the beginningless traces of the incipient and unconscious memory of our past experiences of many previous lives (sm@rti) appear under the forms of individuation [Footnote ref 1].  If we could overcome this sm@rti “the signs of individuation would disappear and there would be no trace of a world of objects.”  “All things in their fundamental nature are not nameable or explicable.  They cannot be adequately expressed in any form of language.  They possess absolute sameness (samata).  They are subject neither to transformation nor to destruction.  They are nothing but one soul” —­thatness (bhutatathata).  This “thatness” has no attribute and it can only be somehow pointed out in speech as “thatness.”  As soon as you understand that when the totality of existence is spoken of or thought of, there is neither that which speaks nor that which is spoken of, there is neither that which thinks nor that which is thought of, “this is the stage of thatness.”  This bhutatathata is neither that which is existence, nor that which is non-existence, nor that which is at once existence and non-existence, nor that which is not at once existence and non-existence; it is neither that which is plurality, nor that which is at once unity and plurality, nor that which is not at once unity and plurality.  It is a negative concept in the sense that it is beyond all that is conditional and yet it is a positive concept in the sense that it holds all within it.  It cannot be comprehended by any kind of particularization or distinction.  It is only by transcending the range of our intellectual categories of the comprehension of the limited range of finite phenomena that we can get a glimpse of it.  It cannot be comprehended by the particularizing consciousness of all beings, and we thus may call it negation, “s’unyata,” in this sense.  The truth is that which

_______________________________________________________

_____________

[Footnote 1:  I have ventured to translate “sm@rti” in the sense of vasana in preference to Suzuki’s “confused subjectivity” because sm@rti in the sense of vasana is not unfamiliar to the readers of such Buddhist works as La@nkavatara.  The word “subjectivity” seems to be too European a term to be used as a word to represent the Buddhist sense.]