doctrine of the other schools of philosophers, for those heretics
also consider the atman as eternal, agent, unqualified, all pervading
and unchanged?" To this the Buddha is found to reply
thus--"Our doctrine is not the same as the doctrine of those
heretics; it is in consideration of the fact that the instruction
of a philosophy which considered that there was no soul or substance
in anything (nairatmya) would frighten the disciples, that
I say that all things are in reality the tathagatagarbha. This
should not be regarded as atman. Just as a lump of clay is made
into various shapes, so it is the non-essential nature
of all phenomena and their freedom from all characteristics
(_sarvavikalpalak@sa@navinivrttam_) that is variously described as
the garbha or the nairatmya (essencelessness). This explanation of
tathagatagarbha as the ultimate truth and reality is given in order to
attract to our creed those heretics who are superstitiously
inclined to believe in the atman doctrine [Footnote ref 5]."

So far as the appearance of the phenomena was concerned,
the idealistic Buddhists (_vijnanavadins_) agreed to the doctrine of
pratityasamutpada with certain modifications. There was with
them an external pratityasamutpada just as it appeared in the

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[Footnote 1: Asa@nga's _Mahayanasutrala@mkara_, p. 65.]

[Footnote 2: _Lankavatarasutra_, p. 70.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid._ p. 78.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid._ p. 80.]

[Footnote 5: _Ibid._ pp. 80-81.]

148

objective aspect and an internal pratityasamutpada. The external
pratityasamutpada (dependent origination) is represented in the
way in which material things (e.g. a jug) came into being by the
co-operation of diverse elements--the lump of clay, the potter,
the wheel, etc. The internal (_adhyatmika_) pratityasamutpada
was represented by avidya, t@r@s@na, karma, the skandhas, and the
ayatanas produced out of them [Footnote ref 1].

Our understanding is composed of two categories called the
_pravichayabuddhi_ and the
_vikalpalak@sa@nagrahabhinives'aprati@s@thapikabuddhi_. The
pravicayabuddhi is that which always seeks to take things in either
of the following four ways, that they are either this or the other
(_ekatvanyaiva_); either both or not both (_ubhayanubhaya_), either
are or are not (_astinasti_), either eternal or non-eternal (_nityanitya_).
But in reality none of these can be affirmed of the phenomen