The Sa gītipary ya is the earliest Sarv stiv da philosophical text that enumerates a series of contaminants (anuśaya) , i.e. innate proclivities, inherited from former births, to do something of usually evil nature. This early list comprises seven such contaminants. As it is the contaminants that lead a worldling (p thagjana) to doing volitional actions and thus to forming a karmic result (karmavip ka) , these contaminants naturally also bear on the path to salvation. The gradual development of the (...) peculiar Sarv stiv din path to salvation necessitated a gradual refinement and reinterpretation of the original list of seven contaminants. Apart from a mere technical aspect, this reinterpretation also reflects the viewpoint of the Sautr ntika school of Buddhist philosophy on the nature of contaminants, i.e. their acceptance of a latent and an active state of the defilements, vis- -vis the Vaibh ika viewpoint according to whom no such difference exists. Within Sarv stiv da literature, the H daya treatises illustrate this philosophical development. (shrink)

The dynamic process of karmic activity is one of the key philosophical concepts of the Buddhist doctrine, and is traditionally explained as the operation of a chain of 12 mutually interlinked members of dependent origination. Textual research, however, reveals that a series of alternative chains of members of dependent origination coexisted prior to the systematization of this earlier textual material into the standardized list of 12 members. Such an alternative list consists of 10 members. This article examines the importance of (...) this particular list of 10 members in the development of Yogācāra Buddhist philosophy. This philosophy, the basic interpretation of the mundane world of which is that the world around us only xists as the working of the human mind, i.e. the domain of perceptual consciousness, matured in the late fourth–early fifth century CE. This examination of the 10-fold formula of dependent origination also adds to our knowledge of the region of origin of Yogācāra philosophy, and thus on the geographical diversities within the development of Buddhist philosophy. (shrink)

According to the Buddhist concept of ‘dependent origination’ (pratītyasamutpāda), discrete factors come into existence because of a combination of causes (hetu) and conditions (pratyaya). Such discrete factors, further, are combinations of five aggregates (pañ caskandha) that, themselves, are subject to constant change. Discrete factors, therefore, lack a self-nature (ātman). The passing through time of discrete factors is characterized by the ‘characteristic marks of the conditioned’: birth (utpāda), change in continuance (sthityanyathātva), and passing away (vyaya); or, alternatively: birth (jāti), duration (sthiti), (...) decay (jarā), and impermanence (anityatā). In the interpretation of the precise nature of these characteristic marks of the conditioned, and their relation to the discrete factor they characterize, different opinions were prevalent within the Sarvāstivāda School of Buddhist philosophy, with, judging from later scholastic literature, the views of the Dārṣṭāntika/sautrāntika and the Vaibhāṣika sub-schools as most prominent ones. The Indian and Chinese Madhyamaka philosophers pointed to the fallacies in the Sarvāstivāda interpretations of the nature of the characteristic marks of the conditioned and their relation to the discrete factors they characterize, and, hence, to the fallacies in the Sarvāstivāda interpretations of the concepts ‘time’ and ‘temporality’. (shrink)