Eternal India Encyclopedia

Eternal India encyclopedia

PHILOSOPHY

According to R.C. Majumdar the development of Tantricism is the chief cause of the decline of Buddhism in India: "The decline of royal patronage was perhaps as much a cause, as the result of the growing unpopularity of Buddhism. The chief cause of this unpopu- larity was the development of the Tantric beliefs and rituals... What- ever might have been the original ideal behind it, some of the debased forms which are met with from the 7th century onwards can only be regarded as a travesty of Buddhism. Even gross sensuality and carnal passions of man found a religious sanction in some tenets of these schools and the result was a looseness of sexual morality masquer- ading in the name of religion. It would be of course untrue to say that purer forms of Buddhism did not flourish at this period. But the masses naturally followed what was more suited to their tastes and their unbridled licentiousness brought odium upon the whole religion and hastened its decline and downfall." (S.R.) THE AJIVIKAS The Ajivikas were the followers of a great champion of fatalism named Gosala Maskariputra who was a contemporary of Buddha and Mahavira. He was of humble birth, the son of a street singer and probably followed this occupation himself. He was born in a cow- shed ( gosala ) in the town of Saravana near Sravasti, hence his name. He left home for some unknown reason and became a homeless wanderer. His career as a homeless wanderer covers 24 years of which the first six were spent with Mahavira. He parted company with Mahavira on account of doctrinal differences and went to Sravasti where he became the leader of the Ajivika sect. He died a year or so before the Buddha (c 485 B.C.) after a fierce argument with Mahavira in the town of Sravasti. The Ajivikas experienced a period of prosperity in Mauryan times when Asoka and his succes- sor Dasaratha dedicated three caves in the Nagarjuna Hills (Bihar) to the "Venerable Ajivikas." But in the 2nd century B.C. the Ajivika school had disappeared in North India. In the southern part of the country, it survived in a small area of Mysore and the adjoining areas in Madras (Tamil Nadu) till the 14th Century A.D. Atheism and strict determinism are central features of the Ajivika philosophy. Fate ( niyati ) determines every being's path though the chain of rebirths. It cannot be changed or influenced and therefore deeds, good or bad, are of no consequence for the quality of rebirth. The Ajivikas denied the doctrine of Karma which taught that though a man's present condition is determined by his past actions-he could influence his future life by his conduct in his present life. Religious observances are also valueless and even being an Ajivika will not help in speeding up the process of liberation. Everything is pre- ordained by fate. Liberation will come after a being has passed through 8,400,000 aeons of samsaric wanderings.

By the spiritual merit which they gained, Bodhisattvas could assist all living beings on the way to perfection. Faith in the Bodhisattva and the help they afforded was thought to carry many beings along the road to bliss while the older school which did not accept the Bodhisattva ideal, could save only a few patient and strenuous souls. Mahayana Buddhism is divided into two systems of thought: the Madhyamika (Doctrine of the Middle Position) and the Vijnananada (Doctrine of Mind Consciousness) or Yogacara (The way of Yoga or union). The former, school was founded by Nagarjuna (lst-2nd Century A.D.) and was so called because it took a middle way between the uncompromising realism of the Sarvastivadins and the idealism of the Yogacara. The philosophers of the Madhyamika school taught that the phenomenal world had only a qualified reality. They tried to prove that all beings labour under the constant illusion of perceiving things where in fact there is only emptiness, a void. This Emptiness- or Void ( Sunyata ) is all that truly exists, and the Madhyamikas were sometimes also called Sunyavadins ("Exponents of the Doctrine of Emptiness"). Nagarjuna's teaching of the unreality of conceptual thought and of absolute intuitive knowledge became the basis of Zen Buddhism which originated in China in the 6th century and became most wide- spread in Japan. Unlike other Buddhist schools Zen Buddhism preaches "sudden awakening", the "sudden" path to Satori, the Zen name for enlightenment. The Yogacara or Vijnanavada school rejected the realism of the Sarvastivadins as well as the qualified realism of the Madhyamikas. It was one of pure idealism. The whole universe exists only in the mind of the perceiver. The only reality was "Suchness" ( Tathata ) which was equivalent to the void of Nagarjuna. The Yogacara was so called because it emphasised the practice of yoga (meditation) as the most effective method for the attainment of the highest truth. The school is also known as the Vijnanavada on account of the fact that it holds Vijnaptimatra (nothing but consciousness) to be the ultimate reality. Mahayana Buddhism has much in common with the doc- trines of Shankaracharya. The philosopher of Vedanta probably learnt much from Buddhism and was dubbed a crypto-Buddhist by his opponents. A new branch of Buddhism which took root in eastern India in the 4th and 5th Century A.D. was Vajrayana, The Vehicle of the Thunderbolt. It had its origin in the cult of feminine divinities and the practice of magico-religious rites which were supposed to result in salvation or superhuman power. This Buddhism, like the magical Hinduism which arose at the same time, is often known as Tantri- cism, from the Tantras, or scriptures of the sects, describing the spells, formulas and rites which the systems advocated. The chief divinities of the new sect were the Saviouresses (Taras), the spouses of the Buddhas and Bodhisattavas. Philosophically, they represented the shakti or active aspect, which was considered as feminine, of the Buddha and Bhodisattvas - like the consorts of the Hindu Gods. Vajrayana provided a philosophical basic for the practices of Tantric Buddhism by taking over one of the doctrines of the Yogac- ara school of Mahayana, that the world and all things in it are an illusion. This was perverted to provide a metaphysical cover or excuse for drunkenness, meat-eating, sexual promiscuity and even ritual murder. Tantricism should not, however, be judged from such perversions. In its higher mystical form Tantricism is very much a part of Tibetan Buddhism.

SELECTED REFERENCES

The Cultural Heritage of India. Ramakrishna Mission, Calcutta. 1970 Sources of Indian Tradition, Compiled by Theodore De Bary and others. New Delhi 1988. The Philosophies and Religions of India, Yogi Ramacharaka Bombay 1963 The Wonder That was India, A.L. Basham, London 1967 Spiritual Heritage of India, Swami Prabhavananda, Madras, 1981.