Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon

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Item Code: IDG323
Publisher: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office
Author: A. Berriedale Keith
Edition: 2002
ISBN: 8170800641
Pages: 340
Cover: Hardcover
Other Details 8.5" X 5.5"
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Book Description

Publisher's Note:

This is one of the most systematic and thorough expositions of the Buddhist Philosophy. After giving a critical exposition to the Buddhism in Pali Cannon in its first part, it proceeds in the next two parts to discuss at length the Buddhist philosophy of both Hinayana and Mahayana Schools, with their sub-schools and declensions. Its fourth part is devoted to the study of the origin and development of Buddhist Logic.

The author has made the work as comprehensive as is possible and familiarises the readers with the vast extent and subtleties of the subject with clarity and lucidity which is so characteristic of his style. Throughout, the work is profusely documented with references from original sources and contemporary critical literature.

It is one of the 'must' books on Buddhist philosophy and is equally useful for both scholars and students. However, it was unfortunate that such a useful book remained out of print for a long time. Our reprint has been made by photo-offset process, from the original edition of 1923. We hope that it will receive the encouragement it deserves.

Preface:

To attempt a short account of Buddhist Philosophy in its historical development in India and Ceylon is a task beset with difficulties. The literature of the subject is vast in extent, and much of it buried in Tibetan and Chinese translations, which are not likely to be effectively and completely exploited for many years to come. The preliminary studies, on which any comprehensive summary should be based, have only in a few cases yet been carried out, and Buddhist enthusiasts in England have concentrated their attention on the Pali Canon to the neglect of other schools of the Hinayana and of the Mahayana.

To these inevitable difficulties there has been gratuitously added a further obstacle to the possibility of an intelligible view of the progress of Buddhist thought. Buddhism as a revealed religion demand faith from its votaries, and for sympathetic interpretation in some degree even from its students. But it is an excess of this quality to believe, on the faith of a Ceylonese tradition which cannot be proved older than A. D. 400, that the Buddhist Canon took final shape, even in its record of controversies which had arisen among the schools, at a Council held under the Emperor Asoka probably in the latter part of the third century B. C., a Council of which we have no other record, although the pious Emperor has recorded with infinite complacency matters of comparative unimportance. To credulity of this kind it is of negligible importance. To credulity of this kind it is of negligible importance that the Canon is written in an artificial literary language which is patently later than Asoka, or that the absurdity of the position has been repeatedly demonstrated.

Yet another, and perhaps more serious, defect in the most popular of current expositions of Buddhism is the determination to modernize, to show that early in Buddhist thought we find fully appreciated ideas which have only slowly and laboriously been elaborated in Europe, and are normally regarded as the particular achievement of modern philosophy. Now there is nothing more interesting or legitimate than, on the basis of a careful investigation of any ancient philosophy, to mark in what measure it attains conceptions familiar in modern thought; but it is a very different thing to distort early ideas in order to bring them up to date, and the futility of the process may be realized when it is remembered that every generation which yields to the temptation will succeed in finding its own conceptions foreshadowed. Truth compels us to admit that the adherents of Buddhism were intent, like their master, on salvation, and that their philosophical conceptions lacked both system and maturity, a fact historically reflected in the Negativism of the Mahayana. But instead of a frank recognition of these facts-of which Buddhism has no cause to be ashamed, for man seeks salvation rather than philosophical insight-we have interpretations offered to us as representing the true views of Buddhism, which import into it wholesale the conceptions of rationalism, of psychology without a soul, of Kant, of Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, Bertrand Russell, Bergson, et hoc genus omne. We are assured that Buddhism was from the first a system of subjective idealism, although history plainly show that such a conception slowly came into being and took shape in the Vijnanavada school which assails the realism of the more orthodox; we are equally assured that space was an ideal construction in the Buddhist view, though even in mediaeval Ceylon and Burma there is not a trace of the view, and it frankly contradicts the Canon and all the texts based upon it.

It is easy to understand this attitude as a reaction against the still practically complete failure of western philosophers to realize that, if they claim to be students of the history of thought-as a priori they should be-they have omitted a substantial part of their duty, if they do not make themselves reasonably familiar with the main outlines of Indian philosophy. But it is unphilosophical to exaggerate or distort, even in a just cause. Indian philosophy has merits of its own far from negligible, which are merely obscured by attempts to parallel the Dialogues of the Buddha with those of Plato, and the undeserved neglect which it has suffered in the west is largely excusable by the unattractive form in which Indian ideas are too often clothed.

My chief obligations, which I most gratefully acknowledge, are to the writings of the late Professor Hermann Oldenberg and of Professor de la Vallee Poussin; of others mention is due to Professor and Mrs. Rhys Davids for the admirable translations which more than redeem the defects of the texts issued by the Pali Text Society, and to Professors Beckh, Franke, Geiger, Kern, Oltramare, Stcherbatskoi, and Walleser. To my wife I am indebted for both criticism and assistance.

 

A. BERRIEDALE KEITH

EDINBURGH,
July, 1922.

 

CONTENTS

 

PART I. BUDDHISM IN THE PALI CANON
 
    PAGE
I. THE PERSONALITY AND DOCTRINES OF THE BUDDH 13
  1. The Problem and the Sources 13
  2. The Conclusions Attainable 25
II. THE SOURCES AND LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE 33
  1. Authority, Intuition, and Reason 33
  2. Agnosticism 39
III. THE FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTER OF BEING 47
  1. Idealism, Negativism, or Realism 47
  2. The Impermanence and Misery of Existence 56
  3. The Absolute and Nirvana 61
  4. The Conception of Dhamma or the Norm 68
IV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT AND NATURE 75
  1. The Negation of the Self 75
  2. Personalist Doctrines 81
  3. The Empirical Self and the Process of Consciousness 84
  4. Matter and Spirit in the Universe 92
V. THE DOCTRINE OF CAUSATION AND THE ACT 96
  1. Causation 96
  2. The Development of the Chain of Causation 97
  3. The Links of the Chain 99
  4. The Interpretation of the Chain 105
  5. The Significance of the Chain 109
  6. The Breaking of the Chain 111
  7. Causation in Nature 112
  8. The Doctrine of the Act 113
VI. THE PATH OF SALVATION, THE SAINT, AND THE BUDDHA 115
  1. The Path of Salvation 115
  2. The Forms of Meditation 122
  3. Intuition and Nirvana 128
  4. The Saint and the Buddha 130
VII. THE PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN EARLY INDIAN THOUGHT 135
  1. Early Indian Materialism, Fatalism, and Agnosticism 135
  2. Buddhism and the Beginnings of the Samkhya 138
  3. Buddhism and Yoga 143
  4. The Original Element in Buddhism 146
PART II. DEVELOPMENTS IN THE HINAYANA
 
VIII. THE SCHOOLS OF THE HINAYANA 148
  1. The Traditional Lists 148
  2. The Vibhajyavadins 152
  3. Sarvastivadins, Vaibhasikas, and Sautrantikas 153
  4. Precursors of the Mahayana 156
IX. THE DOCTRINE OF REALITY 160
  1. Realism 160
  2. The Nature of Time and Space 163
  3. The Ego as a Series 169
  4. The Doctrine of Causation 176
  5. The Chain of Causation, Internal and External 179
  6. The Later Doctrine of Momentariness and Causal Efficiency 181
  7. Vedanta Criticism of Realism 184
X. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 187
  1. The Abhidhamma Pitaka 187
  2. The Milindapanha 191
  3. Buddhaghosa and the Sarvastivadin Schools 195
  4. The Classifications of Phenomena 200
XI. THE THEORY OF ACTION AND BUDDHOLOGY 203
  1. The Mechanism of the Act 203
  2. The Mode of Transmigration 207
  3. The Nature of the Buddha 208
  4. The Perfections of the Saint 212
  5. Nirvana as the Unconditioned 214
PART III. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE MAHAYANA
 
XII. MAHAYANA ORIGINS AND AUTHORITIES 216
  1. The Origin of the Mahayana 216
  2. The Literature 222
XIII. THE NEGATIVISM OF THE MADHYAMAKA 235
  1. The Doctrine of Knowledge 235
  2. The Doctrine of Negativism and the Void 237
XIV. THE IDEALISTIC NEGATIVISM OF THE VIJNANAVADA 242
  1. The Doctrine of Knowledge 242
  2. Idealism and the Void 244
XV. THE DOCTRINE OF THE ABSOLUTE IN BUDDHISM AND THE VEDANTA 252
  1. Suchness as the Absolute 252
  2. Cosmic and Individual Consciousness 256
  3. Nirvana as the Absolute 257
  4. The Pre-eminence of the Mahayana 259
  5. Vedanta and Mahayana 260
XVI. THE BUDDHIST TRIKAYA 267
  1. The Dharmakaya, Body of the Law 267
  2. The Sambhogakaya, Pody of Bliss 269
  3. The Nirmanakaya, Magic Body 271
XVII. THE DOCTRINE OF SALVATION, BODHISATTVAS, AND BUDDHAS 273
  1. The Problem of Salvation 273
  2. The Equipment of Knowledge 275
  3. The Equipment of Merit 277
  4. The Virtue of Generosity or Compassion 279
  5. Devotion and the Transfer of Merit 283
  6. The Doctrine of the Act and the Causal Series 286
  7. The Career of the Bodhisattva 287
  8. Defects of the New Ideal 295
  9. The Buddhas 298
PART IV. BUDDHIST LOGIC
 
XVIII. THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF BUDDHIST LOGIC 303
  1. Logic in the Hinayana 303
  2. Dignaga 305
  3. Dharmakirti's Doctrine of Perception and Knowledge 308
  4. Dharmakirti's Doctrine of inference 311
  5. Controversies with the Nyaya 313
ENGLISH INDEX 320
SANSKRIT INDEX 332

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