Light and Silence: 3

Nāgārjuna's other signal contribution is the doctrine of the two truths. He argues: truth appears on two levels. Conventional truth (saṃvṛtisatya)—in daily life, the world seems to 'exist,' and that existence serves well enough to conduct our affairs; we speak of 'chariot,' we speak of 'person,' we say 'I'—these work practically, even though ultimate analysis cannot sustain them. And ultimate truth (paramārthasatya)—when we look deeply, all things are empty; nothing possesses intrinsic being. Neglect either truth, and the Buddha's teaching eludes us—cling only to conventional truth and you are snared in eternalism; cling only to ultimate truth and you fall into nihilism. This middle path remains faithful to Buddhist principle: emptiness is not the source of the world (as Brahman is the source in Vedānta); emptiness is simply the inexplicable groundlessness of all conception and existence—a groundlessness bearing no generative or creative relation to the world.




Asaṅga and Vasubandhu: Yogācāra and Ālayavijñāna




Asaṅga and Vasubandhu (c. fourth century)—two brothers who founded the second great Mahāyāna school of Buddhist philosophy—advanced one step further with their doctrine of vijñaptimātra, 'Consciousness Only.' Vijñaptimātra means precisely that: all that we see, hear, feel, and experience is the mind's own projection; no distinct reality exists outside consciousness. Here they have moved somewhat from Buddhist orthodoxy—for they grant that beneath all visible reality lies a positive entity. For the Yogācāra school, this supreme reality is ālayavijñāna (ālayavijñāna)—literally 'storehouse-consciousness' or 'warehouse-consciousness.' It contains the seeds of all experience—just as countless seeds lie dormant in a warehouse and sprout when conditions align, so too the seeds of all actions lie gathered in the storehouse-consciousness, bearing fruit when circumstances permit. This conception draws perilously close to the Vedāntic notion of Brahman.




Yet they did not drift into the old Vedāntic current by declaring this entity identical with the world—the relation is defined as 'neither different nor identical,' a cautious, liminal position. In later East Asian Buddhist thought (especially in the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna, a text of disputed authorship and date yet of immeasurable influence), this conception was carried further—an undivided supreme consciousness is posited as the ground of the manifold world. This 'one mind' has two aspects: the absolute aspect (tathāgatagarbha—which is pure, unchanging) and the phenomenal aspect (ālayavijñāna—which is deluded, mutable). Yet it is never said that the world is an 'unfoldment' or 'manifestation' of that absolute reality (as in Vedānta, where the world emerges from Brahman); rather, the world's suffering and craving are traced to worldly delusion—that is, the world is not a creation of the absolute reality, but a misunderstanding of it.




Tathāgatagarbha: The Most Contested Bridge




The most contested notion in Mahāyāna Buddhism is tathāgatagarbha. 'Tathāgata' means Buddha—he who 'thus has gone' or 'thus has come' (the Sanskrit term admits both readings). 'Garbha' carries many meanings—womb, essence, embryo, seed, storehouse. Thus tathāgatagarbha can mean 'the womb of the Buddha' (wherein Buddhahood lies hidden), or 'Buddha-nature' (the latent Buddhahood inherent in each being), or 'the seed of Buddhahood.'




The Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra of the third century and the Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra proclaim: in all sentient beings, the seed of Buddhahood lies dormant—veiled beneath afflictions (kleśa: mental impurities—craving, hatred, delusion, and the rest). The sūtras offer nine similes, the two most celebrated being these: as a golden image wrapped in filthy cloth—the image is gold indeed; one need only remove the dirt; as a lotus blossom enclosed in mud—the flower is already formed within; one need only break through the husk and emerge.

# The Buddha-Nature Doctrine and Its Paradox

The fifth-century *Ratnagotravibhāga* (attributed to Maitreyanātha or Sāramati) gave systematic form to this doctrine—the tathāgatagarbha is ‘immaculate suchness mingled with defilement’ (*samalā tathatā*)—that is, reality itself present, yet obscured by obscuration; while Buddhahood or the Dharma-body is ‘immaculate suchness’ (*nirmalā tathatā*)—that same reality, once the obscuration has dissolved. One substance, differing only in the presence or absence of defilement.

This conception bears a striking resemblance to the Vedāntic *ātman* and *brahman*—so much so that the parallels can be laid out almost point for point: the Buddha-seed like the individual self (the dormant essence within), Buddha-nature like Brahman (the universal absolute), the veils of affliction like ignorance or *māyā* (which covers truth). Scholars such as Takasaki Jikidō (the Japanese scholar whose research on the tathāgatagarbha remains the most exhaustive), Obermiller, Lamotte, and Frauwallner have detected in this a drift toward monism. The Japanese scholar Matsumoto Shirō is more severe—he dismisses the doctrine outright as ‘un-Buddhist’ (*dhātu-vāda*, that is, faith in an enduring ‘substratum’ or fundamental principle, which contradicts the Buddhist doctrine of non-self) and has built his entire ‘Critical Buddhism’ (*hihan bukkyō*) movement upon this critique—a position that sparked fierce controversy among Japanese Buddhist scholars in the 1990s.

Yet in the *Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra*—a text given special authority in Chan/Zen tradition and associated with Bodhidharma—the Buddha himself offers a crucial clarification: ‘The tathāgatagarbha is not the self’—it is merely an expedient means (*upāya*). ‘Expedient means’ signifies ‘skillful strategy’—a cardinal concept in Buddhist philosophy, wherein the teacher meets the student where he stands and speaks in language suited to his comprehension, presenting the ultimate truth in a form the listener can receive. For those habituated to self-doctrine—those who have thought all their lives that ‘the self exists’—to draw them onto the Buddhist path, one must speak in their familiar tongue. Just as a physician sweetens bitter medicine for a child—the medicine is what matters, the sweetness merely the vehicle. The ‘self-like’ language of the tathāgatagarbha is precisely such—the teaching of non-self is the true doctrine; the language of selfhood merely the bridge.

This dual interpretation—the tathāgatagarbha simultaneously Buddhism’s closest and farthest neighbor to Vedānta—sharply expresses the complexity of the relationship between the two philosophies. Close, because the language is nearly identical; distant, because the philosophy standing behind that language is entirely opposed.

## Buddhist Influence upon Vedānta

The influence did not flow in one direction alone—Buddhism too exercised profound influence upon Vedānta. Gauḍapāda (ca. seventh century)—Śaṅkara’s spiritual grandfather (*paramaguru*)—teaches in his *Māṇḍūkya Kārikā* a philosophy that scholars call ‘illusionistic acosmism.’ In plain terms: Brahman has not truly transformed into the world—the world itself is unreal, dream-like. Brahman is ‘eternally pure, conscious, and free in nature’—forever immaculate, wakeful, and liberated. The world is but his immutable backdrop—precisely as the shifting images of shadow-play upon a white screen; the screen does not change, only the shadows. Gauḍapāda’s notion that ‘the world is unreal’ so closely mirrors the Madhyamaka conception of the world as ’empty of intrinsic nature’ that scholars have identified direct Buddhist influence—Gauḍapāda himself employs Buddhist terminology in his *Kārikā* (such as ‘*asparśayoga*,’ which belongs to the Madhyamaka vocabulary).

Śaṅkara (ca. eighth century) directly refutes Buddhist philosophy in his *Brahma Sūtra Bhāṣya*—systematically dismantling Buddhist arguments, particularly against the Yogācāra and Sarvāstivāda schools. Yet the influence of Buddhist Yogācāra and Madhyamaka upon his own non-dualism (*advaita*) runs so deep that later Vaiṣṇava commentators—especially Rāmānuja (*viśiṣṭādvaita*) and Madhva (*dvaita*)—denounced him as a ‘crypto-Buddhist’ (*pracchanna bauddha*), a Buddhist in Hindu disguise. Their charge: what Śaṅkara teaches as the world being ‘*māyā*’ is in truth merely Buddhism’s void (*śūnyatā*) dressed in the clothing of Hinduism.

From the Christian era onward, this mutual influence has deepened—the two philosophies have borrowed each other’s language, absorbed each other’s logical structures, and in refuting one another have drawn ever closer.

Yet this exchange of hues has not altered the fundamental nature. Just as two rivers, flowing in parallel courses, may temporarily merge at some connecting channel but retain separate sources and destinations, so too Vedantic atman-doctrine and Buddhist anatman-doctrine, despite certain conceptual points of contact, remain essentially distinct at the level of ontology and soteriology. On one side stands recognition of the permanent being of soul or atman; on the other, the transience and soullessness of all entities. To dismiss these two positions as merely linguistic differences is philosophically untenable.

Section Six: Glasenapp’s Eight Coherent Arguments

Thus far we have sketched the general outlines of both philosophies, traced their similarities and divergences, explained the two opposing concepts of liberation, and examined the intricate history of their mutual influence. Now Glasenapp, the German scholar of Indian religion and philosophy, draws forth his most formidable weapon—eight precisely defined arguments with which he seeks to demonstrate that ancient Buddhism and Vedanta are not merely ‘different’ but fundamentally opposed. Let us examine these eight arguments one by one.

(1) The Limited Scope of Upanishadic Influence in the Pali Canon

Glasenapp’s first argument is historical. Five ancient prose Upanishads—the Brihadaranyaka, Chandogya, Taittiriya, Aitareya, and Kaushitaki—predate the Buddha; nearly all scholars accept this. The Maitrayan Upanishad and those that follow were composed after Buddhism’s rise. Yet the question arises: did the Buddha know of these pre-Buddhist Upanishads and consciously speak against their teachings?

Glasenapp demonstrates this: in the Pali Canon—that is, the most ancient and authoritative texts of Buddhism—direct discussion of Upanishadic doctrines is remarkably sparse. Yes, the concepts of karma, rebirth, and liberation through knowledge appear in the Pali texts, but these were not the exclusive property of the Upanishads. In the Buddha’s age, throughout the Gangetic valley, such ideas were ubiquitous—among Jains, Ajivikas, and wandering ascetics alike. They formed part of the prevailing philosophical atmosphere of the time, not the unique invention of any single school.

Most significantly: atman and brahman—the two central concepts of the Upanishads—nowhere in the Pali texts are affirmed positively as ‘the primordial ground of the world, the supreme reality.’ Never does the Buddha say: ‘Yes, there exists a supreme Self, and that alone is ultimate truth.’ Rather, wherever this notion is mentioned, it is invariably rejected as false view (micchā-diṭṭhi).

Glasenapp offers another striking piece of evidence: the same absence appears in ancient Jain literature. The Jains believe in atman, yet their concept of jīva differs entirely from the Upanishadic supreme atman. This means: in the Buddha and Mahavira’s time, in the Magadha region of eastern India, Vedantic thought—’all is one; Brahman alone is real’—was not especially dominant. Vedanta remained largely confined to the Brahminical tradition of the Kuru-Pancala regions of western India.