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 556

HINAYANA AND MAHAYANA
yet the totality of phenomenal existence, though manifold in its manifestations, in its constitution and process of continuous becoming, is one.
The world in its life is one; nevertheless, since "facts" are never experienced in their reality but only as recorded in variously limited individual systems of consciousness, the character of existence is experienced differently in the different spheres of being. "A river appears to man," writes one of the commentators on Vasubandhu, "as a mass of running water; to the infernal creatures doomed to suffer the torments of hell it appears as a stream of red-hot molten metal; while to the gods among celestial delights, looking down from above, it appears as a necklace of pearls on the breast of the goddess Earth." 81 Each view is conditioned subjectively, as a function of the peculiar nuance of avidya of each variety of being; for what makes us feel that the world exists at all is simply the magic of "ignorance," and this differs in its effects in each. Hence, all that we see is an appropriate reflex of ourselves, whereas actually the whole context is non-existent. Hell is nothing but a notion of hell, inflicted on us by our peculiar style of imagination. There are no infernal ministers, as Vasubandhu shows in his Vijñaptimātratāvimśatikā; "yet sinners, owing to their sins, fancy that they see the infernal ministers and the thought arises in them: "This is hell; this is the place of hell; this is the time of hell.... This is an infernal minister. I am a sinner. . . . As a consequence of their bad karma, they fancy that they see and experience the various infernal tortures." The bad karma is rooted in the pure alaya, and made manifest as the self-perpetuating impurity of an unreal individual, harassed by correlative unrealities that are no more unreal than himself.
81 Editor's note: Possibly Agotra, commenting on Vijñaptimătratăvimsatikā 3-5. Compare supra, p. 471. I have not been able to locate Dr. Zimmer's sources for these quotations.
82 Vasubandhu, Vijñaptimātratā-viṁśatikā 4.
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