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without external things, whence we deduce that all consciousness exists without such things; the variety of our experience is explained by the presence in our consciousness of the impressions of ideas, the stream of ideas and impressions continuing unbroken for ever, and excluding any need of external reality.

The Vedanta reply is that the analysis given is artificial; in our perception of external reality we have the consciousness and the object as two distinct and irreducible psychological elements. This is in effect admitted by the Vijñānavāda which admits that objects appear as if external (bāhyavat), an expression which is explicable only because those who use it at the bottom of their hearts recognize the existence of that which is external. It is useless to urge that the expression is justified, because external things are impossible: possibility must be judged on the basis of the operation of the means of correct knowledge, and not made to depend on a priori ratiocination. Possible is whatever is apprehended by perception or other means of cognition, and external things are essentially so apprehended, a fact which outweighs the sophistical dilemma of difference or non-difference from atoms. Examination of perception reveals that the idea is the means of knowing the external object which dictates its shape; the distinction of consciousness and external reality can be made clear, if we consider the perception and recollection of a jar, where there is change in consciousness with permanence of object, or the successive consciousness of two different objects, when consciousness remains in principle the same, but its distinctive attributes differ.

More fundamental still is the onslaught on the momentary character of ideas; this doctrine, if logically followed out, is fatal to the distinction of ideas, to the differentiation of classes and individuals, to the conception of the leaving of impressions on the mind, to the doctrine of the confusion owing to nescience of existence and non-existence, and consequently to the doctrine of bondage and release, for all these matters depend on the possibility of comparison of ideas, which is inconceivable unless there is a permanent knowing subject and not merely momentary ideas. It is idle to seek to evade this result by holding that the idea knows itself, as a lamp illuminates itself. But this is false;

nothing can act on itself, the lamp cannot manifest itself save with the concurrence of the eye; the idea must be known by the self. Nor is there any regress ad infinitum here; the self is self revealed, not the object of an idea, and is not an idea.

The argument from the nature of dreams or illusions is effectively refuted by insisting, first, that dreams and illusions are shown to be different from waking consciousness because their objects are negated by that consciousness, while waking consciousness has objects which are not negated by any other state. Secondly, dream consciousness is founded on remembrance as opposed to immediate consciousness and the distinction between the two is felt by all to be based on the absence and presence of the object respectively. To argue that waking consciousness is false, because it resembles dream consciousness, is as absurd as to argue that water is hot, because it shares attributes with fire or vice versa.1

The attempt to deduce the external world from mental impres sions is also refuted. It involves an idle regressus ad infinitum in order to avoid the normal admission that impressions are derived from external things. Moreover, it is impossible for any impression to be left when there is no permanent substratum like a self on which the impression is to be recorded. If the receptacle intellect (alayavijñāna) is put forward as the substratum, then the Buddhist either contradicts the doctrine of momentariness and supplies a quasi-self, or, if he maintains momentariness of this intellect also, his position is impossible; remembrance, recognition, and so on require some permanent reality. Recognition of 'this' as similar to 'that' cannot be made without the presence of a self which can remember and compare; recognition of a thing as the same attests also the permanence of the object, and is illustrated completely by the recognition of the permanence of the self on which no one is mistaken. The Vijñānavāda, therefore, is no more tenable than the view of the realists which fails utterly to account for the existence of the aggregates making up the self, which advances a theory of causation absurd on account of the parallel theory of momentariness, and which asserts the origin of

On BS. ii. 2. 29.

2

2 On BS. ii, 2. 30, 31.

existence from non-existence, while at the same time it holds that all mental complexes are derived from the four psychical aggregates and material complexes from the atoms. The Madhyamaka doctrine fares even worse, being dismissed contemptuously on the ground that its tenet of vacuity is contradicted by every means of knowledge.1

1 On BS. ii. 2. 32. Rāmānuja (ii. 2. 80) points out that nothingness is merely a form of existence, and that its proof involves the existence of the proof, and contradicts the result.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BUDDHIST TRIKAYA

1. The Dharmakaya, Body of the Law

THE doctrine of the three bodies of a Buddha' is specifically a possession of the Mahāyāna, but it is not without precursors in the earlier history of Buddhism, and it is the special distinction of the Mahāyāna to have converted a doctrine merely theological into an ontological and cosmogonical speculation. In various aspects the theory is found both in the Madhyamaka, the Vijñānavāda, and the Mahāyānaçraddhotpāda; it is modified slightly to meet the metaphysical aspects of each theory, but these changes are slight, nor is it always possible to say precisely what view in detail was held by the schools.

We find already in the Hinayana the conception of the distinction between the mere physical body of the Buddha which passes away, and the body of the law, which is the doctrine taught by him, to be realized by each man for himself. Later we find the idea that the material body of the Buddha is his body, while the law is the soul.2 The law, however, which is the true nature of the Buddha, is true knowledge or the insight or intuition (prajñā) which is attained by a Buddha. The body of the law, therefore, can be equated with enlightenment (bodhi), or with release (nirvana). But for the Madhyamaka release, enlightenment, and the body of the law are ultimately no more or less than the highest and only true reality, the void, which lies underneath every phenomenal thing. For the Vijñānavāda in the same way

3

1 Poussin, JRAS. 1906, pp. 943 ff.; Kern, Muséon, vii. (1906), 46 ff.; Wassilieff, Bouddhisme, p. 127; Rockhill, Buddha, pp. 200 ff. See also Poussin, Muséon, 1913, pp. 257 ft.

2 Divyāvadāna, pp. 19 f. See DN. iii. 84; Geiger, PD., p. 78.

PP., pp. 94, 462; BCAP. ix. 38.

the body of the law as highest reality is the void intelligence, whose infection (samklcça) results in the process of birth and death, while its purification brings about Nirvāņa or its restoration to its primitive transparence.

At the same time the body of the law must be considered, not merely abstractly, but also in its relation to the world of phenomena. The schools are agreed that the only truth is Nirvana or Buddhahood or cessation or purification of thought; that such purification is impossible, if infection or defilement is real; and that every individual being is only illusion; hence it follows that the body of the law is the true reality of everything. Or, as it is defined in a verse1 possibly by Nagarjuna, it is neither one nor multiple, it supports the great blessing of salvation for oneself and for others, it neither exists nor does not exist, it is homogeneous like the ether, its nature is unmanifested, it is undefiled, unchanging, blessed, unique in its kind, diffused, transcendant, and to be known by every one in himself. It is neither one, since it pervades everything, nor multiple, since it remains identical with itself. This appertains to every Buddha, but at the same time each Buddha is asserted to have a Dharmakaya of his own, and receives a special denomination in this aspect; Amitabha, for instance, is named thus as Dharmakaya, but Amitayus as Sambhogakāya, body of enjoyment. In the case of Mañjuçri, who is essentially an embodiment of wisdom, the term body of knowledge (jñānakāya) appears in lieu of body of the law.

The Dharmakaya has an equivalent in suchness (tathata) or suchness of being, a term which in some aspects stresses the primitive non-differentiation of reality, and has, therefore, so far, analogies with the matter of the Samkhya. It also may be equated with the womb of the Tathāgata (tathāgata-garbha), which is primarily intuition or true knowledge, and, derivatively, the source of every individual being. Further, though it cannot be identified with, it underlies the store of phenomena (dharma-dhātu,

3

JRAS. 1906, p. 955, n. 2, from the Chinese of Fa-Tien (A. D. 982) and comm. on Nāmasamgīli.

2 On the supposed Chinese origin of this person, see Eliot, HB. ii. 19. • Lank. p. 80.

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