The Essentials of Buddhist Philosophy

Book excerpt: Buddhism had already spread far into other countries before it declined in India in the eleventh century A.D. Hinayana flourished in Ceylone, Burma, Siam and Cambodia; Mystic Buddhism developed in Tibet; Mahayana grew in China. In Japan, the whole of Buddhism became the living and active faith of the masses. The present study relates to Japanese Buddhism, as in Japan alone the whole of Buddhism is preserved. The author presents Buddhist Philosophy in an ideological sequence and not in its historical sequence as Prof. Stcherbatsky has done in his Buddhist logic. But the ideological sequence as presented by the author is not the sequence in the development of ideas; it is rather the systematization of the different schools of thought for the purpose of an easier approach. Divided into fifteen chapters, the book deals with different schools of Buddhist Philosophy. The author has grouped these schools under two heads: (1) the schools of negative rationalism, i.e. the religion of Dialectic Investigation, and (2) the schools of Introspective Intuitionism, i.e. the Religion of Meditative Experience. The author treats these schools in the most scientific and elaborate way.