antana_, a succession or series of mental phenomena. In the Pali
books this doctrine is applied chiefly to the soul and psychological
enquiries. The Mahayana applied it to the external world and proved by
ingenious arguments that nothing at all exists. Similarly the doctrine
of Karma is maintained, though it is seriously modified by the
admission that merit can be transferred from one personality to
another. The Mahayana continued to teach that an act once performed
affects a particular series of mental states until its effect is
exhausted, or in popular language that an individual enjoys or suffers
through a series of births the consequences of previous acts. Even the
instance of Amitabha's paradise, though it strains the doctrine of
Karma to the utmost, does not repudiate it. For the believer performs
an act--to wit, the invocation of Amitabha--to which has been attached
the wonderful result that the performer is reborn in a blessed state.
This is not essentially different from the idea found in the Pali
Canon that attentions paid to a Buddha may be rewarded by a happy
rebirth in heaven.[100]

Mahayanist metaphysics, like all other departments of this theology,
are beset by the difficulty that the authorities who treat of them are
not always in accord and do not pretend to be in accord. The idea that
variety is permissible in belief and conduct is deeply rooted in later
Buddhism: there are many vehicles, some better than others no doubt
and some very ramshackle, but all are capable of conveying their
passengers to salvation. Nominally the Mahayana was divided into only
two schools of philosophy: practically every important treatise
propounds a system with features of its own. The two schools are the
Yogacaras and Madhyamikas.[101] Both are idealists and deny the
reality of the external world, but whereas the Yogacaras (also called
Vijnanavadins) admit that Vijnana or consciousness and the series of
states of which it consists are real, the Madhyamikas refuse the title
of reality to both the subjective and the objective world and hence
gained a reputation of being complete nihilists. Probably the
Madhyamikas are the older school.

Both schools attach importance to the distinction between relative and
absolute knowledge. Relative knowledge is true for human beings living
in the world: that is to say it is not more false than the world of
appearance in which they live. The Hinayanist doctrines are true in
this sense. A