Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chronology
- Development of Buddhist thought in India
- 1 The Buddha's suffering
- 2 Practice and theory of no-self
- 3 Kleśas and compassion
- 4 The second Buddha's greater vehicle
- 5 Karmic questions
- 6 Irresponsible selves, responsible non-selves
- 7 The third turning: Yogācāra
- 8 The long sixth to seventh century: epistemology as ethics
- Epilogue
- Background information
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - The long sixth to seventh century: epistemology as ethics
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chronology
- Development of Buddhist thought in India
- 1 The Buddha's suffering
- 2 Practice and theory of no-self
- 3 Kleśas and compassion
- 4 The second Buddha's greater vehicle
- 5 Karmic questions
- 6 Irresponsible selves, responsible non-selves
- 7 The third turning: Yogācāra
- 8 The long sixth to seventh century: epistemology as ethics
- Epilogue
- Background information
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Vasubandhu really put the cat among the pigeons. Orthodox Vaibhāṣikas, like his near contemporary Sahghabhadra, devoted themselves to disproving Vasubandhu's Sautrāntika innovations in Abhidharma, possibly with some success. The Yogācārins were bursting with new energy, insisting that we focus on the mental nature of all dharmas in order to realize the ungraspable ultimate reality that this implies. And the Mādhyamikas, meanwhile, previously largely quiescent intellectually, are roused into a defence of their version of emptiness over the Yogācāra alternative. Nāgārjuna's close successor, Āryadeva, does not seem to have troubled the intellectual waters much. But when Buddhapālita writes his commentary on the Mūlamadhyamaka Kārikā at the beginning of the sixth century CE, he unleashes a furore of Madhyamaka activity, igniting disputes that carried on into Tibet and up to today.
Within all this metaphysical controversy, there are at least two distinct pressures towards epistemology. First, the contested claims about ultimate reality, or the distinctions and related natures of conventional and ultimate reality, become easily converted into disputes about what grounds one has for one's position, and then over what count as good grounds at all. This pressure towards epistemology comes not just from inter-Buddhist dispute, but also from the broader intellectual context. Non-Buddhists had not been idle in the face of the proliferation and refinement of Buddhist views. The intellectual world of India was a dynamic and contested space. Arguments were meant to give reasons to those not already persuaded. Debates were public, and had consequences.
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- Information
- Indian Buddhist Philosophy , pp. 169 - 231Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2013