Classical Advaitic Definitions of ‘Substance’ and the Unreality of the World

Abstract

Many recent studies have highlighted the dialectical structure of the argumentative strategies through which Brahmanical and Buddhist conceptual systems developed in classical India.The diverse groups of Vedāntic thinkers were engaged in mutual doctrinal controversy over the nature of Brahman, and sought alternately to appropriate or to dismantle the standpoints of their Buddhist interlocutors. For instance, while medieval Advaita Vedānta often positioned itself as sharply antagonistic to Buddhism, Śaṁkara (c.c.800 CE) himself had, however, arguably Vedānticized certain Buddhist elements that were transmitted to him through his spiritual lineage. Further, there are striking parallels between the deconstruction of rival Buddhist standpoints attempted by Nāgārjuna (c.c.200 CE) who tried to demonstrate the deep incoherence of any substantialist vocabulary, and the Advaitin project, roughly ten centuries later, of Śrī Harṣa who trained his dialectical weapons at the realist categories of the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika. If a standard accusation against Vedāntic figures such as Śaṁkara was that they had 'gone Buddhist', some Buddhist figures themselves would seem, at least in the representation of their rivals, to have moved towards Vedāntic conceptualisations of the self as substantival. Thus, strands of Mahāyāna Buddhism such as the Yogāacāra and the Tathāgatagarbha were sometimes accused by other Buddhist camps of 'substantializing' the ultimate when they spoke respectively of a 'storehouse-consciousness' underlying empirical cognitions or a 'Buddha-nature' in all sentient beings. This overview of some of the overlaps as well as disjunctions between the two camps in Vedāntic-Buddhist dialectics already indicates that a central theme that structured these Formatted: No underline