History of Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 007593
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Surendranath Dasgupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Year: 1922
Total Pages: 2517
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 125 MB

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Buddhist Philosophy
[ch.
He held that in the soul two aspects may be distinguished —the aspect as thatness (bhūtatathatā) and the aspect as the cycle of birth and death (samsāra). The soul as bhūtatathatā means the oneness of the totality of all things (dharmadhātu). Its essential nature is uncreate and external. All things simply on account of the beginningless traces of the incipient and unconscious memory of our past experiences of many previous lives (sinsti) appear under the forms of individuation'. If we could overcome this smrti “the signs of individuation would disappear and there would be no trace of a world of objects.” "All things in their fundamental nature are not nameable or explicable. They cannot be adequately expressed in any form of language. They possess absolute sameness (samatā). They are subject neither to transformation nor to destruction. They are nothing but one soul” --thatness (bhūtatathatā). This “thatness" has no attribute and it can only be somehow pointed out in speech as “thatness." As soon as you understand that when the totality of existence is spoken of or thought of, there is neither that which speaks nor that which is spoken of, there is neither that which thinks nor that which is thought of, "this is the stage of thatness. This bhūtatathatā is neither that which is existence, nor that which is non-existence, nor that which is at once existence and nonexistence, nor that which is not at once existence and non-existence; it is neither that which is plurality, nor that which is at once unity and plurality, nor that which is not at once unity and plurality. It is a negative concept in the sense that it is beyond all that is conditional and yet it is a positive concept in the sense that it holds all within it. It cannot be comprehended by any kind of particularization or distinction. It is only by transcending the range of our intellectual categories of the comprehension of the limited range of finite phenomena that we can get a glimpse of it. It cannot be comprehended by the particularizing consciousness of all beings, and we thus may call it negation, "śūnyatā,” in this sense. The truth is that which
invented a musical instrument called Rāstavara that he might by that means convert the people of the city. “Its melody was classical, mournful, and melodious, inducing the audience to ponder on the misery, emptiness, and non-ātmanness of life.” Suzuki, p. 35.
I have ventured to translate "smrti" in the sense of vāsanā in preference to Suzuki's “confused subjectivity" because smrti in the sense of vāsanā is not unfamiliar to the readers of such Buddhist works as Laikāvatūra. The word “subjectivity" seems to be too European a term to be used as a word to represent the Buddhist sense.