It may be supposed that this doctrine of an unqualified ultimate truth comes near to the Vedantic atman or Brahman like the tathata doctrine of As’vagho@sa; and we find in La@nkavatara that Rava@na asks the Buddha “How can you say that your doctrine of tathagatagarbha was not the same as the atman doctrine of the other schools of philosophers, for those heretics also consider the atman as eternal, agent, unqualified, all pervading and unchanged?” To this the Buddha is found to reply thus—­“Our doctrine is not the same as the doctrine of those heretics; it is in consideration of the fact that the instruction of a philosophy which considered that there was no soul or substance in anything (nairatmya) would frighten the disciples, that I say that all things are in reality the tathagatagarbha.  This should not be regarded as atman.  Just as a lump of clay is made into various shapes, so it is the non-essential nature of all phenomena and their freedom from all characteristics (sarvavikalpalak@sa@navinivrttam) that is variously described as the garbha or the nairatmya (essencelessness).  This explanation of tathagatagarbha as the ultimate truth and reality is given in order to attract to our creed those heretics who are superstitiously inclined to believe in the atman doctrine [Footnote ref 5].”

So far as the appearance of the phenomena was concerned, the idealistic Buddhists (vijnanavadins) agreed to the doctrine of pratityasamutpada with certain modifications.  There was with them an external pratityasamutpada just as it appeared in the

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[Footnote 1:  Asa@nga’s Mahayanasutrala@mkara, p. 65.]

[Footnote 2:  Lankavatarasutra, p. 70.]

[Footnote 3:  Ibid. p. 78.]

[Footnote 4:  Ibid. p. 80.]

[Footnote 5:  Ibid. pp. 80-81.]

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objective aspect and an internal pratityasamutpada.  The external pratityasamutpada (dependent origination) is represented in the way in which material things (e.g. a jug) came into being by the co-operation of diverse elements—­the lump of clay, the potter, the wheel, etc.  The internal (adhyatmika) pratityasamutpada was represented by avidya, t@r@s@na, karma, the skandhas, and the ayatanas produced out of them [Footnote ref 1].

Our understanding is composed of two categories called the pravichayabuddhi and the vikalpalak@sa@nagraha
bhinives’aprati@s@thapikabuddhi.  The pravicayabuddhi is that which always seeks to take things in either of the following four ways, that they are either this or the other (ekatvanyaiva); either both or not both (ubhayanubhaya), either are or are not (astinasti), either eternal or non-eternal (nityanitya).  But in reality none of these can be affirmed of the phenomena.  The second category consists of that habit of the