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REVIEW ARTICLE
WAS THE BUDDHA A BUDDHA?
Tilmann Vetter, Der Buddha und seine Lehre in Dharmakirtis Pramanavirttika. Der Abschnitt über den Buddha und die vier edlen Wahrheiten im Prāmanasiddhi-Kapitel. Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Heft 12, Wien 1984. Price: ÖS 230,-. To be ordered from Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Maria Theresien-Strasse 3/4/26, A-1090 Wien, Austria.
The four noble truths may be considered not only as the starting point of Buddhist philosophy, but also as a conceptual framework within which almost all Buddhist philosophical theories may be subsumed. The truth of suffering may include all theories answering the question what the world is in general and living beings (especially humans) in particular. The truth of the arising of suffering may include the theories of causality. The truth of the cessation of suffering may include theories of the absolute, that is, of Nirvana, of Buddhahood, of lathalii, etc. And the fourth truth may include theories of practice, especially ethics and theories of meditation. These are, roughly speaking, the traditional themes dealt with by Buddhist philosophers. However, it is less than obvious whether, and if so how, the Buddhist pramina-school, which deals mainly with epistemological and logical problems, is to be related to this conceptual framework: all the more so as Dignāga, the founder of the school, as well as all the other logicians who came after him, did not recognize scripture or authorita tive verbal communication (agama, sabda) as an independent means of knowledge.
In a short but most edifying case-history Professor Steinkellner pointed out that the majority of modern scholars who dealt with the
Journal of Indian Philosophy 17:81-99, 1989.
1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers. I'rinted in the Netherlands
