Sautrantika
Sautrāntika is the name of a branch of the Sthaviravāda branch of early Indian Buddhism , which developed around 150 BC. Split from the school of Sarvāstivāda . In its doctrinal interpretation, Sautrāntika forms a transition from early Buddhism to Mahayana and is closest to Mahayana among its schools. The school died out with the decline of Buddhism in India (11th / 12th centuries), but its teachings continue to have an effect in Chinese Chan Buddhism and in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.
Origin and Philosophy
There were fundamentally different points of view that led to the creation of the sautrāntika. On the one hand, the Sautrāntikas rejected the scholastic literature of the Sanskrit Abhidharma of the Sarvāstivāda as inauthentic and only allowed the subarea of the Sanskrit sutras to apply (hence the name "sautrāntika", for example: "those for whom [the Tripitaka ] with the sutras ends "; from sutra + anta =" end "). On the other hand, differences of opinion about the status of the basic elements of reality, the factors of existence ( dharmas ), caused a break with the Sarvāstivāden.
“The criticism of the Sautrāntika turned primarily against metaphysical attempts by the Sarvāstivāda to recognize actual truths behind given experience and to grasp them theoretically. So the sautrāntika encountered the differentiation of subjective awareness into object, perception and awareness as three different dharmas with the argument that this contradicts the immediacy of human experience. "
Accordingly, the Sautrāntikas turned against the notion of an inherent "self-existence" (svabhava), which the Sarvāstivāds ascribed to the factors of existence. For them this amounted to a violation of the central Buddhist doctrine of " not-self ", since the Sarvāstivādin ontologized the factors of existence, which were originally intended as aids in meditative practice, to "ultimate realities", and in this way again to a permanent one Introduced "self" to the back door. The Sarvāstivādin dismantled the self into its components of reality, but then raised these components to the level of an "Eternal" that latently exists throughout all three times in a "Dharma sphere".
In contrast, the Sautrāntikas (and in accordance with the Theravadin Pali-Abhidhamma) held a doctrine of instantaneousness (kshanikavada), according to which the factors of existence arise and cease at the same moment. The existence factors therefore have no temporal and spatial extension and no linear cause-effect relationship to one another. Before they came into being they were completely non-existent and they change into this non-existence again after they have completely disappeared. Space and nirvana, which the Sarvāstivādin included in the category of unconditional (asamskrta) dharmas, the Sautrāntikas, on the other hand, defined as the complete absence of any dharmas - they therefore also rejected the designation of unconditional factors of existence.
According to the Sautrāntikas, only the images of reality can be experienced (vijnapti), since the factors of existence are so short-lived that they cannot be perceived directly and immediately, but only inferred (bahya-anumeya). The Sautrāntikas provided the basis for the later Yogacara with their teaching, which puts consciousness at the center of the analysis . Several doctrines developed in Sautrāntika were adopted and further developed by Yogacara. These include the teaching of representation (vijnapti) and the teaching of the stream of consciousness (santana), in which certain formative impressions are left behind, are stored there as seeds (bija) and mature for later actions. In Sautrāntika, as later in Yogacara, salvation means a final breaking off of this stream of consciousness - which has the effect that the skandhas do not come together again in order to cause a subsequent existence.
literature
Volker Zotz : History of Buddhist Philosophy , Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlts enzyklopädie) 1996, pages 68 to 80.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Volker Zotz: History of Buddhist Philosophy , p. 76