Victoria Lysenko

The introduction to the topic of this issue is an overview of the research articles authored by Russian, Lithuanian, and Indian scholars on various problems of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. While explaining the status of the terms “Mahāyāna” and “Hīnayāna,” the author emphasizes that since they are represent the apologetic conceptualizations of Mahayanists, the appellation “Hīnayāna” (“Lesser Vehicle”, etc.) is not recognized either by those Buddhists who are supposed to be characterized by it, or by scholars striving for a neutral appellation. This creates difficulties, including the need for a generally accepted designation for this Buddhist tradition. However, despite the apologetic nature of the Mahāyāna - Hīnayāna opposition, the difference between the two is captured very plausibly. The first one teaches about the individual way of achieving liberation from the cycle of endless rebirths (saṃsāra) through a personal, individual self-perfection (the path of the arhat) leading to enlightenment (bodhi) and nirvāṇa (extinction of passions). The second one develops a full-fledged religion with its own pantheon and rituals, in which nirvāṇa and individual liberation, while remaining, more or less theoretically, the ultimate goal, are pushed to a distant plane. At the same time, the idea of compassion and the ideal of bodhisattva who, having taken a vow to help all living beings to get rid of sufferings, continues to remain in saṃsāra, is put forward in the center. However, despite this major difference a Buddhist discipline known as Abhidharma which consists in analysis and classification of discrete states of consciousness (dharmas), identified in meditation, remains a reference point in both traditions. Three authors touch upon it (Helen Ostrovskaya, Pradeep Gokhale, and Vladimir Korobov). Two of them (Ostrovskaya and Gokhale) focus on the problems of murder and death, and the third one (Korobov) dwells on the methodology of Abhidharma. Vladimir Ivanov offers a new interpretation of the structure of Śāntarakṣita’s treatise “Tattva-saṃgraha” with Kamalaśīla’s “Pañjikā” commentary. Yangutov and Lepekhov explore the specificity of Buddhism reception in China, Tibet, Mongolia, and Russia. Nesterkin publishes for the first time B. Baradiin’s theses for Agvan Dordjiev’s lecture, which exemplifies the Buryat Buddhist Renovationists’ interpretation of Buddhism. Burmistrov analyzes the views of Indian historians of philosophy on the history of Buddhism, Volkova - the concepts of Buddhist ethics in contemporary analytical philosophy.

The article deals with the structure and function of perceptual judgment in the perception theories of the Buddhist Diṅṅāga and the Vaiśeṣika Praśastapāda. I show their indebtedness to the Vyākaraṇa tradition and particularly to Patañjali. Following Shōryū Katsura’s idea that the status of perceptual judgment with regard to the Buddhist system of instruments of valid cognition was first established by Dharmakīrti, I argue that Diṅṅāga’s examples in his definition of perception in Pramāṇasamuccaya-vṛtti I,3d could be considered as perceptual judgments in the sense of Charles Peirce. After the examination of Diṅṅāga’s and Praśastapāda’s examples of perceptual judgments, I come to the conclusion that Diṅṅāga, as a nominalist, sees in them an expression of ordinary linguistic behaviour shaped by convention and grammatical tradition, while Praśastapāda, as a realist, seeks to show that perceptual judgments follow the Vaiśeṣika ontological categories. If in Diṅṅāga’s epistemology perceptual judgement remains outside the pramāṇa system, in Praśastapāda’s Vaiśeṣika it pertains to the pramāṇa of perception.