tman_and_moksa

SR No.: 020053
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: G N Joshi
Publisher: Gujarat University
Publication Year: 1965
Total Pages: 901
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 12 MB

Page 183

Buddhism
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
151
Madhyamikas are known as the ' nihilists', since they believe that everything is void. They are known as the S'unyavadins () or the Sarvavainas'ikas. The Madhyamika school is a branch of the Mahāyāna creed of Buddhism. The Madhyamika philosophy is one of absolute relativism. The Madhyamika school does not believe in the existence of a thing independently of others. It holds that everything is nonexistent or illusory simply for the reason that the being of everything is not contained in itself. It holds that only those things are real and existent whose being issues from themselves. The real things, according to them, must be self-subsistent. The Madhyamikas hold that a thing is what it is because of its relations to other things. The relations of itself to other things and of other things to it constitute its existence. Th. Stcherbatsky says about it-"Real was what possessed a reality of its own (svabhāva), what was not produced by causes (akṛtaka i.e. asamskṛta), which was not dependent upon anything else (paratra nirapekṣa )." Thus, according to the Madhyamikas, whatever is dependent on anything other than itself, is not real. All elements, therefore, are unreal because they are not self-created and self-subsistent, or because all the elements of the world are interdependent. They regarded all the things void, which means void of existence, or S'unya (), because everything is svabhāvas'ūnya (). The Madhyamika theory
For Private And Personal
1 Stcherbatsky Th. The Conception of Buddhist Nirvāṇa,
P. 40.