ABSTRACT
We have now come to the end of our story. In the course of one millennium the many potentialities inherent in the Buddha’s Dharma had been actualized one after the other. By about AD 500 or 600 the lotus of this Dharma had unfolded all its petals. When looking back on the narrative of the last 270 pages, the reader will realize that throughout we had to deal with one and the same doctrine, and that the differences were no more than the facets of a diamond which light up as and when it is turned this way or that. After roughly 1000 BE no new facets have been discovered and the next, Tantric, phase of Buddhism is not a straightforward continuation of the philosophical doctrines we have expounded here, but has its beginnings elsewhere.
