([return])
Param nirodhâdbhagavân bhavatîtyeva nohyate,
Na bhavatyubhayam ceti nobhayam ceti nohyate:
Atiṣṭhamâno ‘pi bhagavân bhavatîtyeva nohyate,
Na bhavatyubhayam ceti nobhayam ceti nohyate.
(Mâdhyamika, p. 199).
([return])
[50] He was the third son of king of Kâçi (?) in southern India. He came to China A.D. 527 and after a vain attempt to convert Emperor Wu to his own view, he retired to a monastery, where, it is reported, he spent all day in gazing at the wall without making any further venture to propagate his mysticism. But finally he found a most devoted disciple in the person of Shen Kuang, who was once a Confucian, and through whom the Dhyâna school became one of the most powerful Mahâyâna sect in China as well as in Japan. Dharma died in the year 535. Besides the one here mentioned, he had another audience with the Emperor. At that time, the Emperor said to Dharma: “I have dedicated so many monasteries, copied so many sacred books, and converted so many bhiksus and bhiksunis: what do you think my merits are or ought to be?” To this, however, Dharma replied curtly, “No merit whatever.” ([return])
[51] Another interesting utterance by a Chinese Buddhist, who, earnestly pondering over the absoluteness of Suchness for several years, understood it one day all of a sudden, is: “The very instant you say it is something (or a nothing), you miss the mark.” ([return])
[52] The Vimalakîrti Sûtra, Kumârajîva’s translation, Part II, Chapter 5. ([return])
[53] Deussen relates, in his address delivered before the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1893, a similar attitude of a Vedantist mystic in regard to the highest Brahma. “The Bhava, therefore, when asked by the king Vaksalin, to explain the Brahman, kept silence. And when the king repeated his request again and again, the rishi broke out into the answer: ‘I tell it you, but you don’t understand it; çânto ’yam âtmâ, this âtmâ is silence!’ ” ([return])
[54] It is a well-known fact that the Vedanta philosophy, too, makes a similar distinction between Brahman as sagunam (qualified) and Brahman as nirgunam (unqualified). The former is relative, phenomenal, and has characteristics of its own; but the latter is absolute, having no qualification whatever to speak of, it is absolute Suchness. (See Max Mueller’s The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, p. 220 et seq.)
Here, a very interesting question suggests itself: Which is the original and which is the copy, Mahâyânism or Vedantism? Most of European Sanskrit scholars would fain wish to dispose of it at once by declaring that Buddhism must be the borrower. But I am strongly inclined to the opposite view, for there is reliable evidence in favor of it. In a writing of Açvaghoṣa, who dates much earlier than Çankara or Badarayana we notice this distinction of absolute Suchness and relative Suchness. He writes in his Awakening of Faith (p. 55 et seq.) that though Suchness is free from all modes of limitation and conditionality, and therefore it cannot be thought of by our finite consciousness, yet on account of Avidyâ inherent in the human mind absolute Suchness manifests itself in the phenomenal world, thereby subjecting itself to the law of causality and relativity and proceeds to say that there is a twofold aspect in Suchness from the point of view of its explicability. The first aspect is trueness as negation (çûnyatâ) in the sense that it is completely set apart from the attributes of all things unreal, that it is a veritable reality. The second aspect is trueness as affirmation (açûnyatâ), in the sense that it contains infinite merits, that it is self-existent. Considering the fact that Açvaghoṣa comes earlier than any Vedanta philosophers, it stands to reason to say that the latter might have borrowed the idea of distinguishing the two aspects of Brahma from their Buddhist predecessors.