ABSTRACT

Like all religions that have the inclination toward mysticism, some o f the Buddhist schools in India and China have emphasized that the inner experience and the ultimate truth obtained through private access are beyond rationality, transcend logic, and cannot be understood through discursive concepts. I call this “ the thesis of a n tilo g ic ,. It appears that most of the followers of Buddhism and the scholars in Buddhist philosophy accept the thesis without hesitation. However, it is doubtable that a thesis of antilogic is acceptable or can be held validly without any logical ground. I f other religious belief systems claim to have the same kind of authority o f private access as some of the Buddhist schools claim to have, how can we distinguish the Buddhist truth and experience from that of the other systems and prove its absolute validity? So, it is clear that the appeal to the first-person authority of private access is not a good reason for the acceptance of any religious or philosophical claim.