Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 534

HINAYANA AND MAHAYANA
have been compelled to cry out piteously, as eleven centuries before: “The Order is divided! The Order is divided!" 67
The seeds of the conflict are in the words of the Buddha as recorded in the canon. The unsystematized cpistemological, meldphysical, and psychological implications implicit in the program of spiritual therapy prescribed by him whose own one-pointedness had carried him beyond the sphere of simple ratiocination rankled in the minds of those still caught in the nets of thought; or one might say perhaps, in the minds of those who had been originally Brāhmans (rather than Ksatriyas, like Gautama) and were therefore more disposed than he lo adhere to the ways of thought, the ways of jñāna, the processes of thinking problems through. Many, it is clear, attained Enlightenment; their formulae are not the vain scrimshaw of unreposeful intellects, but profoundly inspired, original renditions in philosophical terms of the realization promised by the Buddha's cure. Thus we find that just as the Doctrinc, when rendered according to the dispositions of the bhakta, yielded a Buddhist art of broad popular appeal, so when apprchended by the Brāhman intellect, its implications opened into the most wonderfully subtle systems of metaphysical philosophy. The Wheel of the Law indeed was turning-churning the whole nature of man to new fulfillment. The Mahāyāna, the big ferryboat, and the Hinayāna, the little, whether side by side or far apart, have together carried the millions of the Orient through centuries of transformation, secure
B7 Editor's note: The above sections, from p. 490 to the present point, have been developed from a single page of Dr. Zimmer's notes, a page containing one linc: "The councils of Asoka and Kaniska." The treatment is based on my recollection of conversations with Dr. Zimmer, and on the authorities whom I have been careful to cite in footnotes. Dr. Zimmer's papers from this point forward are cxtremely sketchy, many carrying simply jottings from texts and critical studies. I have developed them (as briefly as possible) by turning to the texts, and I cite in footnotes all quoted authorities. Where such notices do not occur the passage is based on the notes of Dr. Zimmer.
511