Mahayana Buddhism and Early Advaita Vedanta (Study)
by Asokan N. | 2018 | 48,955 words
This thesis is called: Mahayana Buddhism And Early Advaita Vedanta A Critical Study. It shows how Buddhism (especially Mahayana) was assimilated into Vedantic theorisation in due course of time. Philosophical distance between Mahayana Buddhism and Advaita-Vedanta became minimal with the advent of Gaudapada and Shankaracharya, who were both harbinge...
Chapter 4 - Reality according to Madhyamika and Advaita (introduction)
In Buddhism reality is Prajna that is also called Prajnaparamita, and in Advaita Vedanta it is Absolute, Brahman. The absolute can only be realized by non-empirical intuition. In the other word, it is ‘Tathata’. Madhyamika Vijnanavada negates the conceptualist tendency. This supreme truth, what we are having to establish, can be experienced through the intuition of vision. It is paramarthika not Vyavaharika, in its primary sense. Madhyamika tells, it is only in transcended level of understanding that we can experience in the state of Nirvana. Nirvana (Shunya) is experienceble and it is the state of complete identity with Absolute. That is Tathata, which is the state of identity with Absolute in the Phenomenal, in its essential nature.