In the Pañcaskandhakavibhāṣā, Sthiramati conducts mainly doctrinal investigations, and considerations of philosophical topics are rare. Among the few philosophical issues, however, his “critiques of the theory of the real existence of dharmas in the three time periods” and “investigations on satkāyadṛṣṭi being based on anātmavāda and kṣaṇikavāda” are worthy of attention. In this paper, I examine the latter topic, Sthirmati’s investigation of satkāyadṛṣṭi, placing it within the broader context of fundamental Buddhist philosophical arguments, in order to better understand the depth of Sthiramati’s philosophical insight.
Sthiramati’s Pañcaskandhakavibhāṣā is a commentary to Vasubandhu’s Pañcaskandhaka. Satkāyadṛṣṭi is classified in the Pañcaskandhaka in the following way: satkāyadṛṣṭi is one of the five wrong views, wherein dṛṣṭi (view) is classified as one of the six kleśas (defiled thoughts), which are listed as saṃskāraskandha (aggregates as conditioned forces) of the five skandhas. Satkāyadṛṣṭi is transliterated-cum-translated into Chinese by Xuanzang as sajiaye jian薩迦耶見.
In the Pañcaskandhaka Vasubandhu defines satkāyadṛṣṭi as “a defiled knowledge (prajñā) which sees the five skandhas as ātman (me) or ātmīya (mine)”.
Following Vasubandhu’s definition, Sthiramati, in his commentary, made a further detailed investigation of satkāyadṛṣṭi in relation with Buddhist theories of anātmavāda and kṣaṇikavāda. This investigation, especially its discussion on the theory of kriyā (activity) accompanying the theory of kṣaṇikavāda, forms the logical background to the idea of transcendence of time and space in the theory of nirvāṇa, which is a central problem within Buddhist philosophy.
