Vasubandhu on the Dharmic Ontology of the Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika Buddhist School (Abhidharmakośa 5. 25–26 and Bhāṣya)

Kardaš, Goran. (2011). Vasubandhu on the Dharmic Ontology of the Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika Buddhist School (Abhidharmakośa 5. 25–26 and Bhāṣya). Filozofska istraživanja, 31(3). pp. 587-603. ISSN 1848-2309

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Abstract

The article deals with the main line of argumentation of the Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika Buddhist school of thought in defence of their basic ontological thesis of the existence of dharmas through all three-time period (traikālyavāda) as it is exposed in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (5.25–26). Introductorily some observations are given with regard to major controversies connected with the origin and textual corpus of that Buddhist school. Then follows investigation of Vasubandhu’s exposition of the particularity of the Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika Dharmic ontology – e.g. functionality (kāritra) of dharmas, their causal efficiency and the problem of »transition « of temporal dharmas (dravya-dharma) into the domain of a real experience (kāritra-dharma). In the concluding philosophical assessment an attempt is made to show that the general shift of the philosophical perspective in the period of the so-called postcanonical Abhidharma (from »how« to »what« regarding dharmas) was the most radical reflected in the Sarvāstivāda- Vaibhāṣika school which was forced to (apparently unsuccessfuly) harmonize through various theoretical constructs their basic notion of dharmas as »atemporal« constituens of experience (dravya-, svabhāva-dharma) with the general Buddhist understanding of all phenomena as impermanent and devoid of substance of any kind.

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