SARVĀSTIVĀDA Skt., roughly “the teaching that says that everything is”; school of the Hīnayāna that split off from the Sthaviras under the reign of King Ashoka. The name of this school comes from its basic premise that everything —past, present, and future— exists simultaneously. The Sarvāstivādin school prevailed primarily in Kashmir and Gandhāra. It constitutes a transitional stage between the Hīnayāna and the Mahāyāna.
The Sarvāstivādins possessed their own canon, composed in Sanskrit, which is partially preserved in Chinese and Tibetan translation. The most important works of this school are the Abhidharmakosha by Vasubandhu and the Mahāvibhāshā (Great Exegesis), which was composed under the supervision of Vasumitra at the council of Kashmir and to which the school owes the name Vaibhāshika, by which it is also known. The Mahāvibhāshā is a summary of the Sarvāstivāda teaching and is the latest of the seven works of the – Abhidharma-pitaka. Another important work is the Abhidharma-hridaya, the Heart of Abhidharma in ten chapters. The Vibhāshā by Kātyāyaniputra is also a summary of the doctrine. The Lokaprajñapti gives a description of the mythical universe of Buddhism. On matters of discipline, only the Vinaya-vbhāshā is extant.
The teaching of the Sarvāstivādins is a radical pluralism based on denial of the reality of a self as a substance or soul (anātman) and the affirmation of the existence of momentary entities, the so-called dharmas.
The Sarvāstivādins postulate seventy-five different dharmas, which (like the ancient notion of atoms) represent final, indivisible units, viewed as real. They distinguished conditioned (samskrita) and unconditioned (asamskrita) dharmas. Among the latter are space (ākāsha), apratishthita-nirvāna, and pratishthita-nirvāna.
The conditioned dharmas are divided into four categories: form or matter (rūpa); consciousness (vijñāna); mental factors (chetasika), meaning all psychological processes; and dharmas, which are neither form nor consciousness, and include, for example, old age, vitality, attainment, nonattainment impermanence, and so on.
According to the Sarvāstivādins, these conditioned dharmas do not come into being but rather exist from beginningless time and only change from a latent to a manifest state. From this the view results that “everything is,” and that past, present, and future exist simultaneously in a single dharma. In addition, one finds in the Sarvāstivāda an early form of the Mahāyāna teaching of the trikāya and the belief, which continued to grow in importance, in the future buddha Maitreya.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen. Shambhala Publications, Inc.
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External Links: Branches of Buddhism / Schools of Buddhism / Early Buddhist schools / The eighteen schools / Sarvastivada