NAGARJUNA'S PHILOSOPHY being To set free the sense of the real from its moorings in abstractions constitute� the chief-most mission of the farer on the Middle Way Vijnana, the subtle body and the mahat: We have seen that the Siistra identifies the subtle bo dy of the non-Buddhists like the Sankhya with the antarabhava-vijniina, the intermediary state, of the Buddhists ; it identifies also the mahat of the Sankhyas with this antarabhava It seems that a distinction has got to be made between the antarabhava which is a composite entity constituted of all the skandhas, the constituents of individuality, in the subtle forrn, and the principle of self-conscious intellection (vijiiiina) which is their maker, their master, the principal element among them.80 When (( vijiiiina" is mentioned to be the same as the subtle body it is as the antariibhava, the composite entity, the whole perso nality in the subtle form, that is meant When it is said to be the same as the mahat it is to the principle of intellection that the special reference is made However, this can be only a relative emphasis For, on the o ne hand the mahat at the stage of evolution is full with potencies On the other hand when it is identified with vijfiana which is self-con scious intellection it has got to be taken with ahankiira, the "I." Vijnana and mahat are alike the principles of determination from which there proceed all further determinate entities or categories They are alike the subtle, i.e., non-specific, Wldistinguished, seed of all distinct and determinate events In both alike there lie implicit the lines of future development which become explicit and are made specific They con tain the tendencies which develop and take form, become definite Both are alike not substances but principles of activity and systems of activities But while the Sankhyas tend to take mahat as a universal principle, vijiiiina is here definitely an individual principle While the drawing of these and other parallt"ls and contrasts that spring from this prolific statement of the Siistra that the mahat is the same as vijiiana would indeed be fruitful towards the working out of an outline of the relation between the Sankhya and the Buddhist philosophies, it is necessary to note that the intention of the Siistra does not lie in the suggestion of these parallels It lies in pointing to the fact that the Sankhya conception that prak,ti 248 WORLD AND INDIVIDUAL is an ultimate reali ty is but an imagination, a seizing of the determinate as itsel f the ultimate The Siistra points out tha t the contemp latives , in the course of their remembering their previous spans of life in o rder to search for their root, stop at the complex of the intermediary skandhas in which all is indistinct and from which all the d istinct phases of life proceed Now this complex of the intermediary skandhas, in being cognizable as of a deftnite nature, is something determinate and is there fore not ultimate Seeing this, t.lte co ntemplatives seek to place it on an ultima te basis, a completely indefmite principle So they infer the reality of such a completely indefmite principle and call it prakrti They seize it as an ultimate principle, but it is not really ultimate The truly inde terminate, the Madhyamika would say, which is the unconditioned real1ty, is nothing short of the undivid ed being ; prakrti is not that Thus the Siistra says: Those who are given to contemplation see by virtue of their power of rememb ering former spans of life, things of eighty thousand kalpas; beyond this they are not able to know anything They just see the vijiiiina of the intermediary state which app ears in the beginning i.e., -prior to gross embodiment And they think that because this vijiiiina (b eing something deter�ate) cannot be without its causes and conditions therefore it must also have its own causes and conditions (Giving rise to this tho ught ,) what they fail to Wlderstand through the power of knowing the previous spans of life, they simply construct out of imagi nation and thus conceive that there is:an entity called prakrti (tltit) ; they conceive it as beyond the knowledge of the ftve senses, subtle like an atom In this prakrti (which is avyakta, compktely indistinct) there arises first of all the mahat (W:), (which is the ftrst determinate principle and is the basic principle of all further determination) This mahat is simply the vijiiiina of the intermediary state (546c) The intention of this stricture on the Sarikhya is to point out that what they hold to be ultimate is really not so ; what they cling to as Wl conditioned is only the comp lex of conditioned entities, the ftve 49 NAGAR-luNA'S PHILOSOPHY skandhas The truly (advayadharma) ultimate is nothing short of the undivided reality The ignorant and the wise: It is essential to note that the cycle of life rooted in the thirst conditioned by ignorance and issuing in clinging is not applicable to all cases of the course of mundane life It is applicable only to the case of the ignorant The Buddha takes birth and accepts an intermediary state prior to assuming the specific embodiment as a de finite person But He is not impelled by the thirst for becoming, He is altogether free from ignorance and passion Wisdom and compassion much be operating forces as ignorance and passion in condition can as ing mundane existence Again, the things that constitute mundane ex istence are what the individual himself gives rise to in response to the basic impulse in him, viz., the urge to realize the real The ignorant, having himself given rise to things, himself clings to them As with the silkworm, his own constructions become a web to him where he gets caught and becomes subject to suffering But the wise who know and have no illusions about things indeed create concepts as well as con ventional entities and accept willingly the specific embodiments and yet they are not subject to suffering, because they are free from igno rance and passion To the non-clinging the world is itself Nirv�a, while to the clinging even Nirval)a would tum out to be satpsiira It is the mission of the farer on the Middle Way to enable everyone to destroy ignorance and overcome clinging, to enable everyone to trans form the basic forces of the course of life from ignorance and passion to wisdom and compassion CHAPTER IX REALITY Section I T H E I N D E T E RMINATE GR O UND The indeterminate ground of the determinate: Righdy comprehended, the conditioned entity itself lays bare the truth of its ultimate nature The realization of this ultimate nature of things clearly belongs to a level which is not confmed to the conditioned while at the same time not also completely devoid of the conditioned S t rictly , the Wldivided is the Wlutterahle ; but the Wlutterable is yet uttered on the mWldane level in a non-clinging way The utterance that in their ultimate nature things are devoid of conditionedness and contingency belongs to this level This very truth is revealed also by saying that all things ultimately enter the indeterminate dharma or that within the heart of every conditioned entity, as its core, as its true essence, as its very real nature, there is the indeterminate dharma While the one expresses the transcendence of the ultimate reality, the other speaks of its inunanence The one says that the ultimate reality is beyond the distinctions that hold only among things in the world of the determinate and the other, that the ultimate reality is not an entity apart and wholly removed from the determinate, but is the real nature of the determinate itsel£ These a re different ways of conveying on the mundane level by means of determina te concepts the basic truth of the ultimate reality This conveying of the Wlutterable truth thro ugh utterance is necessary for those who are engrossed in the world of concepts and conventional entities Wlder the sway of ignorance and have lost sight of the true nature of the very things which they have themselves given rise to There is the need to enable one to open one's NAGAR.JUNA'S PHILOSOPHY eye of wisdom, to grow "the claws of wisdom" in order to rend a SlUlder the bonds of ignorance and passion, to realize the true way and get back to one's true essence, the unconditioned reality A Tathatll ' The import of the essential relativity of the determinate : The precise i mpor t of the conditioned is its dependent nature, its deriving its nature from an "other," a "beyond" which is not itself dependent It is possible to ignore this import but it is impossible to deny it Unconditioned reality asserts itself in the very denial ; for the grolUld of the denial is just the sense of the lUldeniable It is to the unconditioned as the gro tind of the conditioned that the attention of the wayfarer is directed, for he is the seeker of the ultimate truth While confmement to the conditioned in one's search for the lUlconditioned inevitably results in an endless regression , criticism is meant to enable one to rise above this confine ment by realizing the essential conditionedness of all that is sp ecific To cling to the determinate as itself ultimate is not only futile but lead ing to self-contradiction It is the laying bare of this self-contradiction that should enable one to ceaSe to cling Can it not be that the conditioned is essentially different and there fore completely separate from the unconditioned? Between the things that are essentially different and completely separate there is no relation of essential dependence The lUlconditioned is not another entity apart from the conditioned Nor are the conditioned and the uncondilioned as such identical The lUlconditioned is relevant to the conditioned pre cisely as its gro lUld The one is the real and the other is the unreal ; the one ever remains as it is, the other arises and passes away ; the one is undivided by time or space, devoid of the divisions of internal and external, while the other is essentially distinct, determinate, admitting of the division of internal and external The determinate has its being precisely as a determinate form of the indeterminate, a division within the undivided But of the indeterminate, there is no absolute determina tion, of the undivided there is no absolute division In other words, the lUldivided is the reality and the divided is the appearance The real is ... admitting of the division of internal and external The determinate has its being precisely as a determinate form of the indeterminate, a division within the undivided But of the indeterminate, there... ftrst determinate principle and is the basic principle of all further determination) This mahat is simply the vijiiiina of the intermediary state (546c) The intention of this stricture on the Sarikhya... reality asserts itself in the very denial ; for the grolUld of the denial is just the sense of the lUldeniable It is to the unconditioned as the gro tind of the conditioned that the attention of the