human mind lives in affirmation and not in negation. Any critic of Mahâyâna philosophy, who with sympathetic insight penetrates deep enough into its heart, would readily find that behind a series of negations offered by the Mahâyâna thinkers there is really the assertion of a higher truth, which, owing to the limitations of the human intellect, cannot be presented by any other means than by negation. It is not due to sophistry nor mere abstraction that the Buddhists sometimes appear to delight in a negative statement of truth. They are most earnestly religious; they know that the deepest religious truth cannot be presented in a stereotyped philosophical formula. Only those who are short-sighted timidly stop at the negation and refuse to go beyond. If they thus misjudge the significance of Mahâyâna Buddhism, the fault is on their own side.
What, then, is that positive something offered by the Mahâyâna scholars as the logical conclusion of the theory of non-atman? It is generally designated as tatvâ or suchness. This is a philosophical term, and when its religious importance is emphasized it is called dharmakâya.[1] In this conception of suchness, or dharmakâya, they find the highest possible affirmation which is reached after a series of negations and which unifies all forms of contradiction, psychological, ethical, and ontological. Ashvagosha, one of the greatest early Buddhist philosophers in India, says in his Awakening of Faith in the Mahâyâna:[2] "Suchness is neither that which is existent, nor that which is nonexistent; it is neither that which is at once existent and non-existent, nor that which is not at once existent and
- ↑ The term dharmakâ is very difficult to define. Neither "essence body," "law-body," nor "being-system" exactly expresses its idea. "Dharma" is a very comprehensive term in Buddhist philosophy, and in this case it means all this: essence, being, law, and doctrine. In short, let use understand "Dharmakâya" here as the source, the ultimate reality, from which is derived the reason of existence, morality, and religion.
- ↑ Translated to English by the present author from the Chinese Translations, 1900. A new revised edition will be issued in the near future.
