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Conception of Nirvana
"Nirvana is merely the extinction of all conceptions of our productive imagin. ation". For Madhyamikas, there is no difference between Nirvana and saṁsára. The same reality viewed from empirical stand-point is samsara and viewed from transcendental view-point is Nirvana. It is free from all pluralities. It is sunvata i.e. "giving up all views, standpoints and predicaments"," The conception of Nirvana of Vijnanavadins is slightly different from that of Madhyamikas. For Madhyamika absolute is sunya i.e., indescribable. So, Nirvana is also sunya. Vijñānavādin's ultimate reality is pure consciousness. So Nirvan is also a state of pure consciousness, (cittam) where it is free from all the subject-object duality. It is the law of the universe; it is the same as dharmakaya of Buddha. Nirvana meant realising this dharmakaya or dharmadhatu. For Vijnanava dins every being is potentially a Buddha and is, in essence, the same as dharmadhatu. It means, Nirvana is nothing but realisation of this potentiality.
It comes to mean self-realisation. This idea of self-realisation is found in the Lankavatāra and is prominent in Asanga's works. Though these Vijñānavadins, including Asanga, Vasubandhu and later thinkers, directly or indirectly, uphold it.
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Nirvana, according to Lankavatāru, is something indefinable. It is nondualistic in nature. It cannot be called even by the word Nirvana because it is indescribable. Lankavatāra mentions more than twenty theories of Nirvana and rejects all of them on the ground that they are all dualistic in nature. They all conceive Nirvana dualistically and in a causal connection. 3
The real knowledge of the Alaya is Nirvana for Lankavatara. Alayavijñana is the Nirvana where a revulsion of all the seven pravṛttivijñānas (caksu. ghrāṇa, śrotra, jihva, kaya, manas and visista manovijñāna) takes place. This is self-realisation.4
when the self-nature and the habit energy of wrong speculation go through revulsion, it is Nirvana. It is the state in which sunyata (emptiness) of the whole phenomenal world is realised. It is to see the Reality as it
1. na samsarasya nirvānāt kiñcidasti viseṣaṇam, na nirvāṇasya samsärätkincidasti viseṣaṇam -Madhyamakaŝastra-XXV-19. ed. by Vaidya, P. L., Mithila Institute, Darbhanga, 1960, p. 234.
2. Ibid, p. 234.
3. Lankavatarasutra. (L.A.S.) chapter-III, ed. Vaidya, P. L., Mithila Institute, Darbhanga, 1963.
4. LAS II. p. 41, 51, 52.
5. LAS II. y. 41.
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