Advaita and Buddhism

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The subject of the relationship between Advaita and Buddhism is a highly

controversial topic and this is what this series of articles is about. This

article is actually a product of a discussion in the Advaita list and I

apologize to the members for not posting it earlier. Fortunately Ram

reminded me and here I am.

 

The views expressed in the article are based upon existing information. Due

to the mystery which shrouds Indian philosophy especially regarding

authorship and chronology, I can give no assurance that my views are

correct. It's at best an earnest and sincere attempt with the information

available.

 

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Philosophical conditions before the advent of the MAdhyamaka

 

Principally there were two streams - the AtmavAdins or those

who advocated an eternal Self and the nairAtmavAdins or

those who denied it. The Brahmanical schools and the JainAs

fall in the first category and the early Bauddhas fall in

the second.

 

The Upanishads teach that Brahman made the world out of itself

and is thus the material cause of the world. But how do we

distinguish Brahman from the phenomenal world and what's the

significance of this with personal salvation?

 

The AtmavAdins simply didn't know. If one's to be beyond

pain and suffering, he should always be thus. It cannot be

that one can evolve from suffering to liberation. Also the

shruti taught that that man's true nature was beyond the

pleasures and pains of the world. So the main quest was to

find the true Self of man - which would be the unchangable

substance underlying the modes.

 

In that process they seperated the subject from the object

- ie purusha from prAkriti or the Atman from the paramAnu -

pushing everything which can be related to pain and suffering

i.e, the mind and the body, to the side of matter apart from

the subject - the Self. But what was the Self - though the

shruti taught that the Self was beyond the intellect, the early

philosophers couldn't resist from speculating. In their quest

for an entity in man which could be identified as being apart

from the pain and suffering, some identified it with

consciousness and some with non-consciousness.

 

They said knowledge of the true nature

of things - the subject and object - will result in liberation.

All the AtmavAdins insisted that the Self was neither the body

nor the senses nor the mind and that it was eternal and beyond

suffering. The Self was the underlying essence in man and to

know this Self or to know the object as different from the

subject would lead to liberation. Since personal salvation was

at stake, all the AtmavAdins asserted that there was a plurality

of souls. The proto-VedAntin - the Aupanishada - might have been

an exception in the plurality of souls category. But since we do

not really know about VedAnta between BAdarAyana and GaudapAda,

we shall not speculate.

 

The object - the material world and the mental faculties - was

generally accorded a seperate reality. But this is not truly

consistent with the teachings of the Upanishads, which teaces

the underlying unity of all things.

 

The Buddha truly made a remarkable contribution to philosophy

with his theory of anatta or the, "no self". As NAgArjuna was to

observe later, this is what brings forth a logically consistent

transcendal absolutism.

 

The early bauddhas interpreted anatta as lack of substance

or essence in anything. They decried the eternal Self as egoistic

and as the main obstacle towards liberation. For them, there's

no underlying essence in anything. The modes are that

which make a thing and the substance is a figment of imagination.

For e.g a chariot is made up of parts. The chariot is just a

word to describe the coming together of parts and without

the parts there's no chariot. So a chariot doesn't exist in

the absolute sense. Likewise a man is also made up only of

the five skandhas - form, feeling, perception, intelligence

and predispositions. Coming together in a particular form

he's an individual. But there's no permenant Self apart from

the skandhas.

 

So what's nirvAna?

 

NirvAna is what comes after the cessation of consciousness.

What it is can never be expressed.

 

And from these two positions of substance and modal views, both

sides fought for a while.

 

Ashvaghosa is probably the first philosopher who explored the

real significance of the anatta doctrine. Anatta doesn't mean

no self or lack of substance, but it means in one way the unreality of

the phenomenal self and in an other way, the selflessness of the

real self which underlies the phenomenal self. If the self as we

know it itself were real, where's the meaning in liberation? And

if there were no self, who's to be liberated? Even the Astika schools

were agreed on that individuality ceases to exist in the ultimate

state. When all subjectivity and individuality is erased, where's

there an individual self? The real Self is just pure consciousness,

the real nature of which is identical with the rest of the world.

(Ashvaghosa actually uses the word "Atman" to describe the Self).

NirvAna is just a higher level of consciousness where all

contradictions are reconciled. So samsAra and nirvAna are like two

sides of the same coin.

 

In Ashvaghosa, the germs of the later systems of shUnyavAda,

vijnAnavAda, advaya, the two levels of reality are all found.

History has it that he was a VedAntin who was converted to

Buddhism. A Chinese tradition names him as the guru of NAgArjuna

himself.

 

 

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