Upadana.
The term upadana refers to the "material cause" of
anything in Indian philosophy, i.e. the matter from which it is made.
Although this theory may seem simple to contemporary
materialist ears, it contains numerous key assumptions that not all Indian
philosophical schools were ready to accept, including the existence of actual
objects in the world, their creation from other things, and their changes.
The "realist" schools, such as the Samkhya,
Nyaya-Vaisheshika, and Vishishthadvaita Vedanta, believed in a material cause.
Buddhist schools were opposed to it because they believed
that reality was constantly changing, making the concept of real things
problematic.
It was also challenged by the Advaita Vedanta school, which
assumed that there was only one "true" entity at the end of the day—the
formless Brahman (Supreme Reality)—and therefore anything becoming anything
else was erroneous.
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