This paper presents the doctrinal argumentation on the continuity of the life of an individual sentient being found in the Abhidharma Buddhist texts translated by Xuanzang and his Tang Dynasty (618–907) collaborators. Vasubandhu, in the Treasury of the Abhidharma, and Saṅghabhadra, in his two commentaries on this text, the Abhidharma Treatise Conforming to the Correct Logic, and the Treatise Clarifying Abhidharma Tenets, enlist the doctrines of the continuum (Skt. saṃtāna; Ch. xiangxu 相續) and the aggregates (Skt. skandha; Ch. yun 蘊) to support the idea that the life of an individual sentient being does not end with the death of the body. The conceptualization of survivability, articulated by Vasubandhu and Saṅghabhadra in these three Abhidharma masterworks, is that an individual sentient being continues in life, and survives death, the afterlife, and reincarnation, in the form of aggregates bundled together in the continuum. This paper enlists a source criticism methodology to compare the translations of the Abhidharma texts by Xuanzang and his coterie, with earlier recensions of the texts in Chinese, and received versions in Tibetan and Sanskrit, to describe the definitions, examples, and logic employed by Vasubandhu and Saṅghabhadra in their argumentation in defense of the doctrine that the life of an individual sentient being persists throughout the four stages of the Buddhist life cycle: life, death, the afterlife, and reincarnation. Ultimately, for Vasubandhu and Saṅghabhadra, as well as for Xuanzang, the individual life constituted by the continuum of a sentient being persists in the face of constant change and radical impermanence.
目次
Introduction 171 Momentariness, Impermanence, Saṃtāna, and the Five Skandhas 175 Surviving the Pūrvabhava, the World of Fundamental Being 178 Continuity in the Pūrvabhava: Causal Efficacy, Causal Capacity, and Momentariness 179 Surviving Maraṇabhava, the Time of Becoming Deceased 188 Surviving Maraṇabhava: The Transformation of the FruitBearing Plant 189 Surviving the Antarābhava, the Intermediate State 192 The Body of the Upapāduka 196 The Karma of the Intermediate Being 200 Proofs of the Existence of an Intermediate State 202 Surviving Reincarnation: The Pratisaṃdhikāla 208 The Exposition of the Example of the Flame of a Candle 210 Saṅghabhadra Contends That the Brāhmaṇical Ātman Is Not the Locus of Transmigration 213 Conclusion 219
