1 - Mahajana.net

12 BUDDHIST LOGICby two great men, natives of Peshaver, the brothers Saint A s a n g aand Master Vasubandhu. Evidently in accordance with the spiritof the new age, the condemnation of all logic which characterized thepreceding period, was forsaken, and Buddhists began to take a verykeen interest in logical problems. This is the first outstanding featureof that period, a keen interest in logic, which towards the end of theperiod becomes overwhelming and supersedes all the former theoreticalpart of Buddhism.The starting point of the new departure seems to have beensomething in the kind of an Indian y)Cogito, ergo sum". «We cannotdeny the validity of Introspection, the Buddhists now 7 declared, asagainst the school of total Illusionism, because, if we deny introspection,we must deny conbdousness itself, the whole universe will then bereduced to the condition of absolute cecity». «If we do not reallyknow that we cognize a patch of blue, we will never cognize the blueitself. Therefore introspection must be admitted as a valid source ofknowledge*). The problem of Introspection afterwards divided all Indiaas well as the Buddhists into two camps, its advocates and its opponents,9 but originally the theory, seems to have been directed againstthe extreme skepticism of the Madhyainikas. It constitutes the secondfeature of Buddhist philosophy in its third period.A further feature, a feature which gave its stamp to the wholeperiod, consists in the fact that the skepticism of the preceding periodwas fully maintained, regarding the existence of an external world. Buddhismbecame idealistic. It maintained that all existence is necessarilymental 3 and that our ideas have no support in a corresponding externalreality. 4 However, not all ideas were admitted as equally real; degreesof reality were established. Ideas were divided in absolutely fanciful, 5relatively real 6 and absolutely real 7 The second and the third cate-* SDS gives the formulation evidently from Pr. viniscaya, cp. NK., p. 261.Expressed more precisely the Indian formula would be — cogitantem me sentio,ne sit caecus mundus omnis — svasatnvedanarn angikaryam, anyatha jagad-andhyampra8ajyeta. Prof. Sylvain Levi has already compared the sva-samvedana to thecogito ergo sum, cp. Mahayana-sHtralankara, II, p. 20.2 Cp. vol. II, p. 29 n. 4.3 vijrlana-matra-vada — sems-tsarn-pa.4 niralambana-vada.6 parikalpita.6 para-tanira.7 pari-nispanna.