112
THE SECRET ORAL TEACHINGS
is the world, arises in our mind only to sink back and dissolve in it the moment after, like the "waves which arise from the sea and fall back into it" .3 This root originally free from any admixture, otigin of the illusory world in which we live, is a fleeting contact with some unknowable instant of Reality, some indefinable force which the vasanas obscure at once, superimposing on it the screen on which the images which we see, are painted.4
*
*
*
Eighteen kinds of Void5 are ehumerated in Buddhist Philosophy, illustrating what has just been said~ that the Absolute, the Reality, are void of all our conceptions.
* *
*
A frequent comparison in the works of Indian philosophies. "See Chapter II, page 21. 1 Interior Void. External Void. Internal and external Void. Void of Void. Great ¡void. Real Void. Compound Void. Non-compound Void. Unlimited Void. Void without beginning, nor end. Void which rejects nothing. Intrinsic Void. Void of all elements. Void of any characfer ¡of its own. Void of perceptions, of representations. Void of proprieties. Void of its own essence. Void without any properties. These last three kinds are also qualified as : Void of existence, Void of non-existence. Void at the same time of being and non-being. Denial and affirmation of a thing co-existing with its opposite are usual in the Buddhist philosophical phraseology : it is a way of expressing the fact that the mind comes upon the unconceivable. 3