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Y. S. Shastri
because it clings to affirmation. Even at first sight, no student of Vedanta and Buddhism can fail to understand the superficial and fallacious distinction made by the Lankavatara-sutra between Tathāgatagarbha and Atman of the Vedanta.
The Atman of the Upanisads transcends all categories of thought. Atman cannot be reached by speech and mind.64 Atman is beyond the grasp of intellect and learning. It is ungraspable, indescribable, and indefinable. Atman does. not cling to the category of affirmation. In fact no category can adequately describe it. It is attributeless. That the Atman is pure existence (sat) does not mean clinging to affirmation. It means to indicate the self-luminous 'consciousness self' in limited terms. It is really beyond description of categories of thought. 'Neti, Neti', 'Not this, Not this' clearly indicates the indescribable nature of Atman or Absolute Consciousness. It cannot be described, but it can be only experienced.
The Lankavatara-sutra, however, speaks of self-realization. Suzuki points out that the idea of self realization is a special feature of the Lankavatāra. If there is no self, no reality, no truth, then self realization would not have been preached. It says that: "All things are in their self nature, un-born; mahāmati, belongs to the realm of self-realization attained by noble wisdom and does not belong essentially to the realm of dualistic discrimination cherished by the ignorant and the simple-minded." It is also said that Reality is eternal. "The ancient road of Reality, on Mahamati, has been here all the time, like gold, silver or pearl, preserved in the mine. Mahamati, the Dharmadhätu, abides for ever, whether the Tathāgata appears in the world or not, as the Tathāgata eternally abides, so does the reason (Dharmata) of all things, reality for ever abides; Reality keeps it in order, like the roads in an ancient city."
It may be noted here that even though Buddhists implicitly accepted the doctrine of Atman of the Upanisads, they hesitated to use the word Atman explicitly, simply because this terminology belonged to their opponents. Seemingly at the time of the composition of the Lankavatara-sutra, there was a trend to preach the Atman theory explicitly.
For Asanga, Absolute is Pure Consciousness (Cittam). It is non-dual. It is beyond the purview of speech or expression and indeed, it is indescribable. It is neither existence nor non-existence, neither affirmation nor negation, neither production nor destruction, neither increasing nor diminishing, neither pure nor impure; it is a characteristic of Reality.71
These descriptions of Asanga do not differ from Vedantic description of Atman or Brahman which is beyond the grasp of intellect, speech and which is pure consciousness. Asanga goes a step further than earlier Buddhists and calls Absolute Reality as Pure Atman and even Paramätman. "Understanding the true meaning of the doctrine of Sunya and Nairatmya, the enlightened ones (Buddha) transcend the
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