existence: bhava (q.v.) - The 5 groups of e.: khandha (q.v.) - The 4 substrata of e.: upadhi (q.v.). - Courses of e.: gati (q.v.). - Wheel of e.: saṃsāra (q.v.). - Craving for e.: bhava-taṇhā; s. taṇhā; - The 3 characteristics of e.: ti-lakkhaṇa (q.v.).
Existence. Traditionally the term "existence" is contrasted with the term "essence". (See Essence.) It is derived from the Latin ex (out of) and sistere (to emerge, to step forth). Plato regarded everything in what we would call the empirical world (e.g., horses and dogs, stars and planets, tables and chairs, courageous acts and cowardly deeds) as having each behind it an essential "form" or archetype beyond the world we normally take to be the "real" world. They are phenomena, not the reality behind the phenomena, without which the phenomena could not occur. That is not to say they are illusory. On the contrary, these entities we commonly perceive all around us participate in the reality that lies behind them all, yet they are to be distinguished from that reality. The world we see is a shadow-world. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato imagines people in a cave, looking at the wall and seeing the shadow play reflected on the wall from what is going on outside. Chained to their places they can see only these reflections (such as we might call blackand-white films on a screen), which, being all they know, they take to be realities. They are not entirely wrong, since what they see are indeed reflections of reality. One of the "filmwatchers", however, breaks away from his chains and walks out to the mouth of the cave. He (the authentic philosopher) is temporarily blinded by the intensity of the fight to which he is unaccustomed, but as his eyes become adapted to it he begins to see the brightness of the colors, the threedimensional character of the people and objects passing by, and the general vitality of the scene. He calls to his companions to tell them about his vision, but they have no idea what he is talking about, being content with the forms of existence under which they see the reflection of reality. Plato's model, although modified in innumerable ways through the ages, became determinative of the entire course of traditional Western thought, from Plato to Hegel. It is echoed, moreover, in those evolutionary views that provide process-and-reality models. (See Evolution.) Resistance to this existence-essence antithesis developed, however, in various quarters, having its most remarkable 19th c. exemplar in Kierkegaard and, in the 20th c., a strikingly different one in Jean-Paul Sartre, the former profoundly religious and the latter a nihilist. See Existentialism.
existence : (nt.) pavattana. (f.) atthitā; vijjamāṇatā. (m.) sambhava.
bden par grub pa
[translation-san] satya-siddhi
[translation-san] satyasiddha
[translation-eng] {Hopkins} true establishment; truly existent; truly established; name of school founded by Harivarman; existence
[comments] one of the eight types of object of negation (dgag bya) in the Prāsaṅgika system (and one of five in Svātantrika); for others see: dgag bya
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