A Critique of Buddhist Soteriology¶

Volume II of Studies in Buddhist Thought. Volume I was history; this one is argument. Proceeding from the record established there, it judges the soteriologies of Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, tathāgatagarbha, Vajrayāna, and Pure Land in turn.

This volume is an exercise in doctrinal classification¶

Ranking the teachings is an old Buddhist practice. Tiantai worked from the Lotus, Huayan from the Avataṃsaka, each sorting the mass of doctrine into higher and lower, definitive and provisional. In the modern period Yinshun proposed a threefold scheme — emptiness and mere names, false imagination and mere consciousness, the true and eternal mind — measured against the Āgamas and Nikāyas. This volume continues that tradition, and its position is close to Yinshun's, though the angle differs: where he attends to historical strata and doctrinal descent, this volume asks more directly what craving lies within the philosophical motive of each system's soteriology.

One difference from the tradition should be noted. Having ranked the teachings, Tiantai and Huayan still gather them all back into the Buddha's word, accommodated as expedient or definitive. This volume does not take that step. The form of the classification is inherited; its basis is philosophical argument. Whether a claim holds is settled by its reasons, not by its lineage.

The volume does not pretend to neutrality. Its standard is the early-Buddhist baseline established in the introductory section, and the reasons for that choice are given openly. Refusing neutrality does not, however, waive the duty to argue: each section first states the system's central claims and strongest defence, then offers the criticism, and uses premises the system itself grants wherever it can. How the baseline is delimited, and why the earliest textual stratum yields "early" rather than "true," are treated in the Preface and the introductory section.

The five systems and their cravings¶

Madhyamaka — craving for the intellect. Its reductio dissolves every claim to intrinsic nature with great precision, and ends as a body of scholastic argument so demanding that only sustained intellectual training gains entry. The craving here is recursive: thought takes itself for its object, layer upon layer.

Yogācāra — craving for a foundation, and for explanation that is certain. This craving is iterative rather than recursive: it presses downward along one line, as though one more layer would reach the bottom. The store-consciousness is thereby required to carry the entire weight of explaining how phenomena arise.

Tathāgatagarbha — craving for permanence, and for a guarantee of liberation. It answers directly the questions on which early Buddhism deliberately kept silent, and it sets a conclusion still awaiting verification as a premise instead.

Vajrayāna — craving for the result, and for enactment. The fruit is taken as the path, and the authority to verify is moved to the front.

Pure Land — craving for rescue, and for entrusting. This system is the structural exception here: it is in substance a soteriology of salvation, and verification is deferred until after death.

Structure¶

The introductory section establishes the baseline and the method. Sections on Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, tathāgatagarbha, Vajrayāna, and Pure Land follow. Section seven draws the criticism together and sets the five systems side by side. The appendices compare Yinshun's threefold scheme and treat the modern forms of Madhyamaka.

In relation to the other volumes¶

Volume I, A History of Buddhist Philosophy, supplies the historical and doctrinal groundwork this volume assumes; readers unfamiliar with a given system may want it first. Volume III, A History of Buddhist Transformation, asks a different question altogether: not whether each system is right, but who made each turn, and out of what.