Sarvāstivādins’ attitude towards the existence of environmental facts

Abstract

Sarvāstivāda was a major school of interdenominational Buddhism and their key philosophical teaching is ‘everything exists forever’ (sarvaṅsarvadāasti). In accordance with above foremost teaching of Sarvāstivādins’ existence of environmental facts emphasized as eternal or perpetual fact. Further, they emphasized that every environmental fact exist continuously in past, present and future. All the interdenominational schools of Buddhism besides Sarvāstivānins analyzed their philosophical concepts in accordance with early Buddhism but the key philosophical point of Sarvāstivadins is completely different from early Buddhism because their teaching “sarvaṅsarvadāasti” opposes to early Buddhist teaching of non-soul(anatta).To avoid falling into siding with the concept of eternal soul they insisted two major teaching of the existence of environmental facts,viz.1) Sāmānya lakṣana, 2)Svabhāva lakṣana. According to sāmanya lakṣan, everything is subjected to decay and death but it is conventional nature of all dharmas. Sarvāstivādins emphasized four forms of existence of dharmas as uppāda(birth)stiti(existence)jaratā(decay)and anityatā(impermanent).They stressed that even though the conventional existence of the environmental facts changed their nature (svabhāva) would never change. Thus unchangeable natures of environmental facts were called as Sāmañya lakṣana. For example, by using gold it is possible to make different ornaments. Even though conventional shapes of the ornaments were changed inherent nature of gold would never change. This example emphasizes that according to Sarvāstivādins elements of the things does not change even their conventional nature was changed. Thus inherent nature of anything exists past present and future. This is the teaching of the eternal existence of things that was emphasized by Sarvāstivādins. They taught following teachings to emphasize their above fact. They are bhāvānyatāvāda, lakṣanānyatāvāda, avastānyatāvāda and anyatānnyatāvāda. Owing to this teaching of Sarvāstivādin they are called as dharmathavādins who emphasized the bhāhyārtapratyakṣavāda. This is Sarvāstivadins’ teaching that exemplified the incessant existence of environmental facts.