Introduction

pp. 3-4

in: Alfonso Verdu, The philosophy of Buddhism, Berlin, Springer, 1981

Abstract

The theories of causation which preceded totalism and paved the way for its advent can be reduced to two fundamentally opposing views. The first is the pluralistic conception based on the "factors of existence"(dharmāḥ ) theory as propounded by the Hinayāna schools. The second is represented by the idealistic schools of "cognitionism"(vijñānavāda) which advocated — in some ways — a return to the monistic conceptions of the Upanisads. The first negates the presence of any underlying unity to the nature of personal conscious experience, whereas the second reduces all sense of external plurality in world experience to an illusion projected from the unitary and indivisible ground of consciousness. The following two chapters will deal respectively with these two, obviously perspectival, views. As for totalism, grounding itself on its own law of "universal complementarity," it will delve into the core of an issue which all perspectival doctrines viewed only as though shrouded in mystery, namely, the riddle of universal causation and its ensuring universal 'suffering," an issue which — in Heidegger's terms — is evinced by such a question as "why is there something at all, rather than nothing?"