A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 756 pages of information about A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1.

A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 756 pages of information about A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1.

The third dhyana, that in which the mind realizes that the thought that there is no self nor that there are the appearances, is itself the result of imagination and thus lapses into the thatness (tathata).  This dhyana is called tathatalambana, because it has for its object tathata or thatness.

The last or the fourth dhyana is that in which the lapse of the mind into the state of thatness is such that the nothingness and incomprehensibility of all phenomena is perfectly realized;

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and nirvana is that in which all root desires (vasana) manifesting themselves in knowledge are destroyed and the mind with knowledge and perceptions, making false creations, ceases to work.  This cannot be called death, for it will not have any rebirth and it cannot be called destruction, for only compounded things (sa@msk@rta) suffer destruction, so that it is different from either death or destruction.  This nirvana is different from that of the s’ravakas and the pratyekabuddhas for they are satisfied to call that state nirva@na, in which by the knowledge of the general characteristics of all things (transitoriness and misery) they are not attached to things and cease to make erroneous judgments [Footnote ref 1].

Thus we see that there is no cause (in the sense of ground) of all these phenomena as other heretics maintain.  When it is said that the world is maya or illusion, what is meant to be emphasized is this, that there is no cause, no ground.  The phenomena that seem to originate, stay, and be destroyed are mere constructions of tainted imagination, and the tathata or thatness is nothing but the turning away of this constructive activity or nature of the imagination (vikalpa) tainted with the associations of beginningless root desires (vasana) [Footnote ref 2].  The tathata has no separate reality from illusion, but it is illusion itself when the course of the construction of illusion has ceased.  It is therefore also spoken of as that which is cut off or detached from the mind (cittavimukta), for here there is no construction of imagination (sarvakalpanavirahitam) [Footnote ref 3].

Sautrantika Theory of Perception.

Dharmottara (847 A.D.), a commentator of Dharmakirtti’s [Footnote ref 4] (about 635 A.D.) Nyayabindu, a Sautrantika logical and epistemological work, describes right knowledge (samyagjnana) as an invariable antecedent to the accomplishment of all that a man

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[Footnote 1:  Lankavatarasutra, p. 100.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid. p. 109.]

[Footnote 3:  This account of the Vijnanavada school is collected mainly from Lankavatarasutra, as no other authentic work of the Vijnanavada school is available.  Hindu accounts and criticisms of this school may be had in such books as Kumarila’s S’loka varttika or S’a@nkara’s bhasya, II. ii, etc.  Asak@nga’s Mahayanasutralamkara deals more with the duties concerning the career of a saint (Bodhisattva) than with the metaphysics of the system.]

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A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.