DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45392#0322
Buddha & the Gospel of Buddhism
‘Void,’ for example, is not by any means ‘naught,’ but
simply the absence of characteristics; the Dharmakaya is
‘void’ just as the Brahman is ‘not so, not so,’ and as
Duns Scotus says that God ‘ is not improperly called
Nothing.’ It is precisely from the undetermined that
evolution is imaginable; where there is nothing there is
room for everything. The voidness of things is the non-
existence of things-in-themselves, on which so much stress
is rightly laid in early Buddhism. The phrase ‘ Own-
nature body ’ emphasizes the thought ‘ I am that I am.’
Bodhi is the ‘wisdom-heart’ which awakens with the
determination to become a Buddha. ‘ Suchness ’ may be
taken to mean inevitability, or spontaneity, that the
highest cause of everything must needs be in the thing
itself.
A special meaning attaches to the name Prajna or Prajna-
paramita, viz. Supreme Knowledge, Reason, Understand-
ing, Sophia; for the name Prajnaparamita is applied
to the chief of the Mahayana scriptures, or a group of
scriptures, signifying the divine knowledge which they
embody, and she is also personified as a feminine divinity.
As one with the Dharmakaya she is the knowledge of the
Abyss, the Buddhahood in which the individual Bodhi-
sattva passes away. But as Reason or Understanding she
is Tathagata-garbha, the Womb or Mother of the Buddhas,
and the source from which issues the variety of things,
both mental and physical.1 In Hindu phraseology, she is
the Sakti of the Supreme, the power of manifestation
inseparable from that which Manifests : she is Devi, Maya,
or Prakriti, the One who is also the many. “ In the
1 Precisely as the Zero may be regarded as a Womb, being the sum and
source of an infinite series of plus and of minus quantities, such as the
Extremes or Pairs of opposites of the relative world.
24O
‘Void,’ for example, is not by any means ‘naught,’ but
simply the absence of characteristics; the Dharmakaya is
‘void’ just as the Brahman is ‘not so, not so,’ and as
Duns Scotus says that God ‘ is not improperly called
Nothing.’ It is precisely from the undetermined that
evolution is imaginable; where there is nothing there is
room for everything. The voidness of things is the non-
existence of things-in-themselves, on which so much stress
is rightly laid in early Buddhism. The phrase ‘ Own-
nature body ’ emphasizes the thought ‘ I am that I am.’
Bodhi is the ‘wisdom-heart’ which awakens with the
determination to become a Buddha. ‘ Suchness ’ may be
taken to mean inevitability, or spontaneity, that the
highest cause of everything must needs be in the thing
itself.
A special meaning attaches to the name Prajna or Prajna-
paramita, viz. Supreme Knowledge, Reason, Understand-
ing, Sophia; for the name Prajnaparamita is applied
to the chief of the Mahayana scriptures, or a group of
scriptures, signifying the divine knowledge which they
embody, and she is also personified as a feminine divinity.
As one with the Dharmakaya she is the knowledge of the
Abyss, the Buddhahood in which the individual Bodhi-
sattva passes away. But as Reason or Understanding she
is Tathagata-garbha, the Womb or Mother of the Buddhas,
and the source from which issues the variety of things,
both mental and physical.1 In Hindu phraseology, she is
the Sakti of the Supreme, the power of manifestation
inseparable from that which Manifests : she is Devi, Maya,
or Prakriti, the One who is also the many. “ In the
1 Precisely as the Zero may be regarded as a Womb, being the sum and
source of an infinite series of plus and of minus quantities, such as the
Extremes or Pairs of opposites of the relative world.
24O