Eternal India Encyclopedia

PHILOSOPHY

Eternal India

encyclopedia

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

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.

According to R.C. Majumdar the development of

Tantricism

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.

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.