be transferred from one personality to another.  The Mahayana continued to teach that an act once performed affects a particular series of mental states until its effect is exhausted, or in popular language that an individual enjoys or suffers through a series of births the consequences of previous acts.  Even the instance of Amitabha’s paradise, though it strains the doctrine of Karma to the utmost, does not repudiate it.  For the believer performs an act—­to wit, the invocation of Amitabha—­to which has been attached the wonderful result that the performer is reborn in a blessed state.  This is not essentially different from the idea found in the Pali Canon that attentions paid to a Buddha may be rewarded by a happy rebirth in heaven.[100]

Mahayanist metaphysics, like all other departments of this theology, are beset by the difficulty that the authorities who treat of them are not always in accord and do not pretend to be in accord.  The idea that variety is permissible in belief and conduct is deeply rooted in later Buddhism:  there are many vehicles, some better than others no doubt and some very ramshackle, but all are capable of conveying their passengers to salvation.  Nominally the Mahayana was divided into only two schools of philosophy:  practically every important treatise propounds a system with features of its own.  The two schools are the Yogacaras and Madhyamikas.[101] Both are idealists and deny the reality of the external world, but whereas the Yogacaras (also called Vijnanavadins) admit that Vijnana or consciousness and the series of states of which it consists are real, the Madhyamikas refuse the title of reality to both the subjective and the objective world and hence gained a reputation of being complete nihilists.  Probably the Madhyamikas are the older school.

Both schools attach importance to the distinction between relative and absolute knowledge.  Relative knowledge is true for human beings living in the world:  that is to say it is not more false than the world of appearance in which they live.  The Hinayanist doctrines are true in this sense.  Absolute knowledge rises above the world of appearance and is altogether true but difficult to express in words.  The Yogacara makes three divisions, dividing the inferior knowledge into two.  It distinguishes first illusory knowledge (parikalpita) such as mistaking a piece of rope for a snake or belief in the existence of individual souls.  Secondly knowledge which depends on the relations of things (paratantra) and which though not absolutely wrong is necessarily limited, such as belief in the real existence of ropes and snakes.  And thirdly absolute knowledge (parinishpanna), which understands all things as the manifestation of an underlying principle.  The Madhyamikas more simply divide knowledge into samvriti-satya and paramartha-satya, that is the truth of every-day life and transcendental truth.  The world and ordinary religion with its doctrines and injunctions