Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism

by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki

“Every positive and historical religion presents three distinctive and essential elements: (1) An attempt at a mythical and non-scientific explanation of natural phenomena (divine intervention, miracles, efficacious prayers, etc.), or of historical facts (incarnation of Jesus Christ or of Buddha, revelation, and so forth); (2) A system of dogmas, that is to say, of symbolic ideas, of imaginative beliefs, forcibly imposed upon one’s faith as absolute verities, even though they are susceptible of no scientific demonstration or philosophical justification; (3) A cult and a system of rites, that is to say, of more or less immutable practices regarded as possessing a marvelous efficacy upon the course of things, a propitiatory virtue. A religion without myth, without dogma, without cult, without rite, is no more than that somewhat bastard product, ‘natural religion,’ which is resolvable to a system of metaphysical hypotheses.”

M. Guyau seems to think that what will be left in religion, when severed from its superstitions and imaginary beliefs and mysterious rites, is a system of metaphysical speculations, and that, therefore, it is not a religion. But in my opinion the French sociologist shares the error that is very prevalent among the scientific men of to-day. He is perfectly right in trying to strip religion of all its ephemeral elements and external integuments, but he is entirely wrong when he does this at the expense of its very essence, which consists of the inmost yearnings of the human heart. And this essence has no affinity with the superstitions which grow round it like excrescences as the results of insufficient or abnormal nourishment. Nor does it concern itself with mere philosophising and constructing hypotheses about metaphysical problems. Far from it. Religion is a cry from the abysmal depths of the human heart, that can never be silenced, until it finds that something and identifies itself with it, which reveals the teleological significance of life and the universe. But this something has a subjective value only, as Goethe makes Faust exclaim, “Feeling is all in all, name for it I have none.” Why? Because it cannot objectively or intellectually be demonstrated, as in the case with those laws which govern phenomenal existences,—the proper objects of the discursive human understanding. And this subjectivity of religion is what makes “all righteousnesses as filthy garments.” If religion deprived of its dogmas and cults is to be considered, as M. Guyau thinks, nothing but a system of metaphysics, we utterly lose sight of its subjective significance or its emotional element, which indeed constitutes its raison d’être.

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Having this in view we proceed to see first on what metaphysical hypothesis speculative Mahâyâna Buddhism is built up; but the reader must remember that this phase of Mahâyânism is merely a preliminary to its more essential part, which we expound later under the heading of “Practical Mahâyânism,” in contradistinction to “Speculative Mahâyânism.”

CHAPTER IV.
CLASSIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE.

Three Forms of Knowledge.

Mahâyânism generally distinguishes two or three forms of knowledge. This classification is a sort of epistemology, inasmuch as it proposes to ascertain the extent and nature of human knowledge, from a religious point of view. Its object is to see what kind of human knowledge is most reliable and valuable for the annihilation of ignorance and the attainment of enlightenment. The Mahâyâna school which has given most attention to this division of Buddhist philosophy is the Yogâcâra of Asanga and Vasubandhu. The Lankâvatarâ and the Sandhinirmocana and some other Sûtras, on which the school claims to have its doctrinal foundation, teach three forms of knowledge. The sûtra literature, however, as a rule does not enter into any detailed exposition of the subject; it merely classifies knowledge and points out what form of knowledge is most desirable by the Buddhists. To obtain a fuller and more discursive elucidation, we must come to the Abhidharma Pitaka of that school. Of the text books most generally studied of the Yogâcâra, we may mention Vasubandhu’s Vijñânamâtra with its commentaries and Asanga’s Comprehensive Treatise on Mahâyânism. The following statements are abstracted mainly from these documents.

The three forms of knowledge as classified by the Yogâcâra are: (1) Illusion (parikalpita), (2) Relative Knowledge (paratantra), and (3) Absolute Knowledge (pariniṣpanna).

Illusion.

Illusion (parikalpita), to use Kantian phraseology, is a sense-perception not co-ordinated by the categories of the understanding; that is to say, it is a purely subjective elaboration, not verified by objective reality and critical judgment. So long as we make no practical application of it, it will harbor no danger; there is no evil in it, at least religiously. Perceptual illusion is a psychical fact, and as such it is justified. A straight rod in water appears crooked on account of the refraction of light; a sensation is often felt in the limb after it has been amputated, for the nervous system has not yet adjusted itself to the new condition. They are all illusions, however. They are doubtless the correct interpretation of the sense-impressions in question, but they are not confirmed by other sense-impressions whose coördination is necessary to establish an objective reality. The moral involved in this is: all sound inferences and correct behavior must be based on critical knowledge and not on illusory premises.