Richard Hayes

In the svārthānumāna chapter of his Pramāṇavārttika, the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti presented a defense of his claim that legitimate inference must rest on a metaphysical basis if it is to be immune from the risks ordinarily involved in inducing general principles from a finite number of observations. Even if one repeatedly observes that x occurs with y and never observes y in the absence of x, there is no guarantee, on the basis of observation alone, that one will never observe y in the absence of x at some point in the future. To provide such a guarantee, claims Dharmakīrti, one must know that there is a causal connection between x and y such that there is no possibility of y occurring in the absence of x. In the course of defending this central claim, Dharmakīrti ponders how one can know that there is a causal relationship of the kind necessary to guarantee a proposition of the form “Every y occurs with an x.” He also dismisses an interpretation of his predecessor Dignāga whereby Dignāga would be claiming non-observation of y in the absence of x is sufficient to warrant to the claim that no y occurs without x. The present article consists of a translation of kārikās 11–38 of Pramānavārttikam, svārthānumānaparicchedaḥ along with Dharmakīrti’s own prose commentary. The translators have also provided an English commentary, which includes a detailed introduction to the central issues in the translated text and their history in the literature before Dharmakīrti

The Madhyamaka school of Buddhism, the followers of which are called Mādhyamikas, was one of the two principal schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India, the other school being the Yogācāra. The name of the school is a reference to the claim made of Buddhism in general that it is a middle path (madhyamā pratipad) that avoids the two extremes of eternalism—the doctrine that all things exist because of an eternal essence—and annihilationism—the doctrine that things have essences while they exist but that these essences are annihilated just when the things themselves go out of existence. The conviction of the Madhyamaka school, which can be called the Centrist school in English, is that this middle path is best achieved by a denial that things have any inherent natures at all. All things are, in other words, empty of inherent natures. This doctrine of universal emptiness of inherent natures (svabhāva-śūnyatā) is the hallmark of the school, which places the school solidly in the tradition associated with the Perfection of Wisdom (prajñāpāramitā) literature of Mahāyāna Buddhism

The doctrine that there is no permanent creator who superintends creation and takes care of his creatures accords quite well with each of the principles known as the four noble truths of Buddhism. The first truth, that distress is universal, is traditionally expounded in terms of the impermanence of all features of experience and in terms of the absence of genuine unity or personal identity in the multitude of physical and mental factors that constitute what we experience as a single person. As we saw above, the principal Buddhist arguments against the existence of God focus on the impossibility of permanence and unity in the causal structure of the universe. The second noble truth, that distress is the outcome of one's own unrealistic aspirations, is traditionally seen as ruling out the erroneous view that distress is something inflicted upon creatures by a cosmic superintendent or by other circumstances completely beyond their control. The third noble truth, that distress can be eliminated by divesting oneself of all unrealistic aspirations, rules out the view that sentient beings, as powerless victims of a divine will, have no alternative to a life of constant frustration. And the fourth noble truth, that the best means of removing unrealistic desires is to follow a methodical course of self-discipline, counters the view that the road to happiness lies in obedience to divine will or in trying to manipulate the sentiments of a cosmic intelligence through prayer or ritual

Writers presenting Buddhism to European and North American audiences have often availed themselves of philosophical terminology from modern traditions to convey presumably less familiar ideas coming from various classical and medieval Asian settings. Since the Buddha and many philosophers who developed his ideas seem to have stressed the importance of practice over theory, Buddhism is frequently described as practical or even pragmatic in its orientation. Since there have been few unpleasant clashes between traditional Buddhist beliefs and the findings of modern science, and nothing that would compare in importance to the confrontations between Darwinians and Creationists, many Buddhist apologists have been able to get away with characterizing theirs as a religion that is scientific in spirit; many Buddhists, especially Therav ¯.

Buddhism currently enjoys the reputation of being one of the leading voices in a chorus that sings the praises of religious tolerance and perhaps even of pluralism. It is open to question, however, whether this reputation is deserved. The purpose of the present article is to examine whether the teachings of classical Buddhism have a contribution to make to the jubilation over religious pluralism that has become fashionable in some quarters in recent years. It is hoped that this examination might shed some light both on some of the implications of religious pluralism and on the spirit of the teachings of classical Buddhism. A task preliminary to dealing with this question is to clarify what is meant by religious pluralism. For the purpose of this discussion, let us take “pluralism” to signify not the mere acknowledgment that there is variety but the celebration of this variety. Whereas tolerance might be described as the attitude of being resigned to the fact that a variety exists, pluralism will be taken to mean the attitude that variety is healthy and therefore something to be desired. And religious pluralism, of course, will be taken as the attitude that it is salubrious to have a variety of religions. Such an attitude might be founded, for example, on an analogy with biology. The health of each living organism, it could be argued, is enhanced by the general health of the organism’s wider environment, and the health of this wider environment is in turn enhanced by the rich variety of species of organisms living therein. The value of variety, if one follows this biological analogy, is not merely aesthetic, not merely a pleasant respite from the monotony of too much uniformity; rather, variety is what makes life of any kind possible. Similarly, it could be argued by a devoted religious pluralist, the variety of religious beliefs and practices and experiences and modes of expression is vital to human survival and self-understanding. And just as the health of an individual organism, such as a cow, might actually be enhanced by the presence of other apparently annoying organisms, such as gadflies and mosquitoes, the health and perhaps even the very survival of any one religious tradition might actually be enhanced by the presence of other apparently antagonistic traditions, or by the presence of heresies within the same tradition..

Religious doctrines and the philosophical arguments supporting them often become more clearly defined as a result of being challenged by opposing views and counterarguments. Conversely, ideas that are never challenged often remain relatively obscure and poorly defined. The process of encountering rival ideas and alternative theories requires people to re-examine their own assumptions and provide reasons for holding views that could previously be taken for granted. It is not surprising, therefore, that a number of important notions within Buddhist philosophy became better defined in the centuries after they became more widely dispersed in the Indian subcontinent; for it was only after coming into contact with opposing theories that many of the ideas articulated by the Buddha, and the presuppositions underlying those ideas, were seriously examined. Once these doctrines were challenged, later Buddhist philosophers had the task of either offering solid arguments in their support or revising the doctrines to a form in which they could be supported. Among the most important doctrines of early Buddhism, and one that remained unexamined for a relatively long time, was the doctrine of rebirth (punarbhava). It appears that most other philosophical systems in India were, like Buddhism, based on the notion that the foremost predicament for all living beings is that they are bound to experience the consequences of actions performed in previous lives; therefore, few philosophers challenged the Buddha in his statement of this as the problem most in need of a solution. Eventually, however, philosophers did arise who began to question the doctrine of rebirth and to pose strong arguments against it. Once this opposition had been stated, it was no longer possible for Buddhist apologists to take the doctrine of rebirth for granted. It became necessary to defend their position by finding evidence in support of it and by finding flaws in the arguments adduced against it.

Like most religions, the Buddhist tradition is rich in stories that are designed to illustrate key principles and values. Stories of the Buddha himself offer a verbal portrait of an ideal human being that followers of the tradition can aspire to emulate; his story offers a picture of a person with a perfectly healthy mind. Stories of other people (and of gods, ghosts and ghouls) portray a wide range of beings from the nearly perfect to the dreadfully imperfect, all presented as models of what one could eventually become oneself through gradual transformations from one’s present mentality. In what follows, I shall first tell a brief story about myself and will then recount the stories of two men who were cousins with similar but importantly different mentalities. And I shall conclude with a few observations about what I see as the significance of the difference between these two cousins.

This chapter discusses canonical views of Buddhist philosophers on the relation of physical and mental events, including Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu, Dharmakīrti, and Śāntideva. Over the course of the first fifteen centuries of Buddhist philosophy one finds several positions taken on the relation of mental events to physical events. In some quarters one finds a robust mind‐body dualism in which the physical world and consciousness are ontologically independent of one another but interactive; in other quarters one finds a view that consciousness is the ultimate source of the physical world; in other quarters one finds a tendency to reject the reality of the physical world as anything other than a figment of imagination; and in yet other quarters one finds an anti‐intellectual tendency to regard this very problem as a distraction from more important tasks.

It is true for many disciplines within the humanities that there are numerous excellent works that introduce the beginner to the basic building blocks of the discipline, and also many advanced studies for the accomplished scholar, but few works that help the student get from the beginning stage to the advanced level. That has certainly been true of the discipline of Sanskrit. Once a student has devoted a couple of years to working through one of the excellent introductions to the language by Ashok Aklujkar, Michael Coulson, Madhav Deshpande, Robert Goldman, or Walter Maurer, there have been hardly any intermediate texts to help the student systematically progress to more advanced levels. Now, however, with the publication of Scholastic Sanskrit, an important step has been taken toward filling that lacuna. This book assumes that the student has learned enough about Sanskrit grammar and syntax to be ready to begin plunging into the vast corpus comprising the many genres of Sanskrit literature. It is built on the conviction that even a student at the early stages of exploring Sanskrit literature can benefit from the work of traditional commentators; it is also built on the observation that until now there have not been reliable guides to help the student make intelligent use of Sanskrit commentaries.

For as long as scholars have been presenting Asian thinkers to readers of European languages, efforts have been made to present the presumably less familiar Asian thinkers as having points of commonality with the presumably more familiar European thinkers. In presenting classical Indian Buddhist philosophers to his readers in the 1920s and 1930s, for example, Stcherbatsky portrayed them as anticipating important features of European philosophers. In his study of Madhyamaka, Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti are depicted as adumbrating the philosophy of Kant and Hegel. In the works of other scholars, the presentation of early Buddhism as an anticipation of aspects of Hume became commonplace. A number of scholars have...

Dinnaga's stated purpose in composing his Pramanasamuccaya was to rectify what he felt to be misconceptions concerning the various means of acquiring new knowledge and concerning the most fundamental types of subject matter of cognitive acts. In conformity with his view that the objects that are the subject matter of cognition fall into two mutually exclusive types, particulars and universals, Dinnaga argued that there are two mutually exclusive types of cognitive act, namely, the cognition of particulars and the cognition of universals; every cognition, he argued, falls under one and only one of these two basic types. What follows from this view is that knowledge acquired through language is not a special type of knowledge but rather is to be subsumed under the type of knowledge the subject matter of which is universals. This doctrine that knowledge acquired through language is but a subclass of knowledge acquired through inference, the type of cognition that deals with universals, had important implications for the question of whether statements in scriptures may be known as true in their own right, independently of empirical observations or deductive proof. Dinnaga devoted a chapter of his Pramanasamuccaya to showing that the truth of linguistic utterances can be known to be true only if they meet the tests for deductive certainty. In the course of this chapter, the fifth in the Pramanasamuccaya, Dinnaga argues his case that the basis for dividing the subject matters of cognitive acts into two mutually distinct classes is that particulars are discovered by cognition, whereas universals are fabricated by cognition itself and have no existence as objects external to cognition. ;In discussing the above theories of Dinnaga, I have first attempted to give an overview of his epistemological theories as presented in the first two chapters of the Pramanasamuccaya, and have then discussed the particular arguments presented in the fifth chapter where his own version of a nominalist philosophy is developed. The study concludes with a translation of key passages of the fifth chapter of the Pramanasamuccaya that have never before been translated into a Western language