2023, Vol. 9, Issue 2, Part E

author(s)
Kang Wang

abstract
The Sarvāstivāda assumed that perception (*buddhi) is a direct process, while the Sautrāntika believed that the object is perceived indirectly. My hypothesis is that the root reason for their disagreement on how to perceive the external object arises from ontology. The Sarvāstivāda recognized “tri-temporal existence”, while the Sautrāntika insisted that the past and the future do not actually exist. This paper finds that their ontologies can be conversely justified from an epistemological perspective. The Sarvāstivāda assumed that the physical assemblage (和集 *saṃcaya) of atoms (paramāṇu) can be directly perceived, and refined the theory of presentational perception by proposing “simultaneous causality” (sahabhū-hetu) and three kinds of “direct perception” (pratyakṣa). The Sautrāntika, on the other hand, based on the “pursuannt element” (anudhātu), proposed the theory of “consciousness having representational form (ākāra)”. Therefore, the cognition of the external object is indirect, and the direct object of cognition is the unified complex (和合*sārnagrī) of atoms, by which the Sautrāntika refined its theory of representational perception.