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Y. S. Shastri
the Upanişadic seer he calls Reality as immortal or ampta. After attainment of sambodhi or enlightenment, Buddha revealed his experience to his five desciples (Pancavargiya Bhikṣu) as that of immortality declaring that thereby the gates of immortality are opened for all48.
The idea is the same as that of the Upanişads. In the Upanişad, Reality is called Ātman, Immortal, and Brahman;49 and in the Kenopanişad it is also mentioned that, when it is known through every conscious state, it is rightly known and one attains eternal life or immortality. Through his own knowledge he gains immortality 10
This immortality can be attained through effort. Buddha himself declared that : "even so, brethren, have I seen an ancient path, an ancient track traversed by the perfectly enlightened ones of former times”.61 His criticism is against the permanence of the empirical ego or Jiva which is separate from Ātman in the Vedānta. The Upanişadic notion of Ātman is misunderstood and misrepresented by Buddha and his followers. But in the ultimate sense he accepted the Ātman or the Absolute Reality. Instead of calling his conception of reality as Ātman, he calls it 'Dharma' or 'Bodhi' or 'Amsta', which in the ultimate analysis only represents a different jargon for the same entity. The Hinayānists taking the literal meaning of Buddha's statement about the self, embraced sheer materialism.
In the Mahāyānists works this misunderstanding of the notion of Ātman of the Vedāntins as individual ego, is explicitly noticeable. They accept the absolute Reality but criticise the existence of Ātman as mere illusion or unreal. Consciousness associated with ego is called Ātman by some of the later Vijñānavādins.
Ašvaghoşa's Tathatā (Suchness) or Bhūta-tathatā is nothing but Ātman of the Upanişads. He recognizes it as Absolute suchness, which, ultimately speaking, transcends everything. But tainted with ignorance it manifests itself as 'conditional suchness'. The subject-object duality is the result of this conditional suchness. When true knowledge dawns, we realise that we are no more finite things but absolute suchness. 53 This is the self-existent, Immortal Reality, calm and blissful, which must be realised.58 It is beyond the grasp of intellect. This 'thatness' or Tathatā has no attribute and it can only somehow be pointed in speech as 'thatness'. It is neither existence nor non-existence nor both nor neither. It is neither unity nor plurality, nor both nor neither. It is neither affirmation nor negation nor both nor neither. Similar statements are found in the Upanişads. The BỊhadāranyaka clearly states that Ātman is ungraspable; it can be expressed as not this, not this. 5$ In the Mandūkya, it is described as neither inwardly nor outwardly cognisant, nor on both sides together. It is unseen, ungraspable, indefinable, unthinkable, unpointable.56 Dasgupta rightly points out that Asvaghoşa being a learned Brāhmin in his early age, interpreted Buddhism in the light of the Upanişads.
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