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THE MEETING OF EAST AND WEST is called, in Indian philosophy, nāman (Latin nomen, our word "name"). The very substance on and by which the mind operates when thinking consists of this name-treasury of notions. Naman is the internal realm of concepts, which corresponds to the external realm of perceived "forms," the Sanskrit term for the latter being rūpa, "form," "shape," "color" (for there are no shapes or forms without color). Rūpa is the outcr counterpart of nănian; naman the interior of rūpa. Nāma-rūpa therefore denotes, on the one hand, man, the experiencing, thinking individual, man as endowed with mind and senses, and on the other, all the means and objects of thought and perception. Nāma. rūpa is the whole world, subjective and objective, as observed and known.
Now, all of the schools of Indian philosophy, though greatly diverging in their formulations of the essence of ultimate truth or basic reality, are unanimous in asserting that the ultimate object of thought and final goal of knowledge lies beyond the range of năma-rūpa. Both Vedāntic Hinduism and Mahāyāna Buddhism constantly insist on the inadequacy of language and logical thought for the cxpression and comprehension of their systems. According to the classical Vedāntic formula, the fundamental factor responsible for the character and problems of our normal day-world consciousness, the force that builds the ego and leads it to mistake itself and its experiences for reality, is "ignorance, nescience" (avidyā). This ignorance is to be described neither as "being or existent” (sat), nor as "non-being, non-existent" (a-sat), but as "ineffable, inexplicable, indescribable" (a-nirvacanīya). For if it were "unreal, non-existent"-So the argument runs-it would not be of force sufficicnt 10 bind consciousness to the limitations of the individual and shroud from man's inner eye the realization of the immcdiate reality of the Self, which is the only Being. But on the other hand, if it were "real," of absolute indestructibility, then it could not be so readily dispelled by knowledge (vidyā); the Self (ātman) would never have been discovered
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