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<aside> 📌 THE IDEA OF PHILOSOPHICAL BUDDHISM
This second approach to being Buddhist could be called the ‘philosophical’ or ‘contemplative’ path, and loosely corresponds to the Madhyamika School (‘Middle Way’) founded by the Indian Buddhist monk Nāgārjuna (c. 1st Century AD). This school is also known as the Śūnyatavāda ("Emptiness School") or the Sānlùn School in Chinese (三論宗, Jp. Sanron) the **"Three Treatise School" based upon three important commentary poems composed by Nāgārjuna.
First we will explore the philosophy of early Buddhism, focusing primarily on the teachings of ‘no-self’ (anātman) and the Five Skandhas (’aggregates’), the constituent elements of any sentient being, which are: Form (rūpa), Sensations (vedanā), Perception (saṃjñā), Conditioning (saṃskāra), and Consciousness (vijñāna).
Then we will examine the philosophical innovations of Nāgārjuna and the formation of the Madhyamika School
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Chandrakīrti was a seventh-century Indian Buddhist philosopher, revered for his interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s teachings on the Middle Way. Chandrakīrti’s Madhyamakavatara1 is one of the Dalai Lama’s favourite books and the interpretation by Tsongkhapa is the basis of his Gelug tradition. This book includes a verse translation of the Madhyamakavatara followed by an exhaustive logical explanation of its meaning by the modern Tibetan master Jamgön Mipham. Chandrakirti’s work is an introduction to the Mādhyamika teachings of Nāgārjuna, which are themselves a systematisation of the Prajñāpāramitā, or “Perfection of Wisdom”. Chandrakīrti’s work has been accepted throughout Tibetan Buddhism as the highest expression of the Buddhist view and forms the fundamental basis of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Rightly called the Middle Path, the sūtras steers a middle course avoiding the snares of eternalism or the abyss of nihilism and carefully explain emptiness. The theory of Dependent Origination, pratityasamutpāda, is presented by all the Buddhist Schools but it is Nāgārjuna who interpreted it more emphatically and authentically than anyone else. Nāgārjuna emphasises “When the mind realises emptiness, it overcomes the subject-object dichotomy. It does not just break through the appearances that conceal the ultimate status of phenomena, it also penetrates the veils of mental construction that had concealed its own true nature and had made the misperception of phenomena possible. When the true nature of phenomena is discovered, the mind’s nature also stands revealed, for the realisation of emptiness is the experience of nondual wisdom.” Chandrakirti further developed the philosophy into a dialectic that stresses on svabhāva śūnyatā. His argument was, if something has an essential nature it could exist independently in its own right. All things originate only in dependence upon other things. Things have no essential nature (nisvabhāvata) and everything is empty of an essential nature (svabhāva śūnyatā). Therefore everything is empty (śūnya). Emptiness is the equivalent of nisvabhāvata which is the outcome of the understanding of dependent origination. It is the emptiness of the phenomena. This is the correct understanding of the Middle Way, because it avoids the two extremes of performance and annihilation
As emphasised so often by Nāgārjuna, absolute identity involves permanence and absolute difference implies annihilation. Dependent arising is the middle way adopted by Buddha and Nāgārjuna in elucidating change and causation. The Dependent Origination or Pratītyasamutpāda is the central philosophy of Buddhist teaching. But it is by no means easy to grasp its full implication. Dependent coarising contains many feedback loops and it is a self-sustaining process with the potential to maintain itself indefinitely until something is actively done to cut the feedback loops that keep the process going. Dependent co-arising operates on many scales — from the micro level of events in the mind, to the macro level of lifetimes across time in the cosmos — it shows how micro events can lead to rebirth on the macro scale, and, conversely, how the practice of training the mind can put an end to all forms of suffering at every level. What this means in practice is that no matter how much you observe the events of dependent co-arising in the present moment, if you do not appreciate their potential to sustain one another indefinitely, you do not fully comprehend them. If you don’t fully comprehend them, you
cannot gain full release from them. This the ultimate truth but requires deep understanding and practise. Nāgārjuna made this philosophy of voidness comprehensive and systematic. He made the world as only an appearance, which is the empirical truth. Everything that belongs to the world is only empirical truth (vyavahārika). The Buddhist concept of aggregates (skandhās), the elements, bases and dharma are also empirical. This empirical world and its phenomena are only an appearance according to both Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara. Nāgārjuna demonstrates the flux itself could not be held to be real, nor could the consciousness perceiving it, as it itself is a part of the flux. Nāgārjuna explains Śūnyatā is not nihilism but relativity and conditionedness, (i.e.) is not a rejection of the world of becoming and the meaningfulness of life but the very mundane existence is appreciated as a course of conditioned becoming. The objects of his critique are not the empirical facts of existence that inescapably appear to us but the erroneous assumptions that we make about these facts of existence.
Nāgārjuna distinguished two truths, paramārtha satya and saṁvṛti satya, through rigorous logical argumentation. It is impossible, he says, to grasp the teaching of the Buddha without a correct understanding of the way the two truths are differentiated. There is no liberation without the realisation of emptiness and there is no approach to the ultimate without correctly relying on the conventional. The doctrine of emptiness, however, is a double-edged sword, and has to be understood correctly. Understood correctly, it leads to liberation; understood wrongly, it can be a source of spiritual and moral degeneration — as dangerous as holding a poisonous snake at the wrong end. The concepts of paramārtha satya and saṁvṛti satya appear similar to the paramārthika satya and vyavahārika satya of advaita, respectively. To draw a one-to-one correspondence between the two would be what philosophers would call a category mistake. Advaita follows an ontological approach and tries to prove that existence alone is, which is pristine consciousness. However, Nāgārjuna employs an epistemological scheme to arrive at its two levels. Advaita uses one truth of Brahman and that alone exists in the paramārthika and the relative world is mithyā. However, the concept by Nāgārjuna is that the relative world is false and thus
reach the paramārtha satya. An advaitin is encouraged to abide in the substratum that underlines the mithyā world to get established in the paramārthika satya while the Mādhyamika buddhist asserts the untruth of saṁvṛti satya to get established in paramārtha satya. In any case, the theory of ajātivāda that existence alone is was a landmark in the Nāgārjuna’s Philosophy. It wastaken and interpreted in the laterAdvaita literature, especially by Gauḍapāda’s philosophy, logically. Both Mādhyamika and Advaita deny that the ultimate reality can be understood in a dualistic manner. In the Mādhyamika, this amounts to a subversion of separate self-sufficiency (nisvabhāvata), while in advaita, non-difference is a proclamation of the reality of the nondual substratum underlying all experiences. Both philosophies would conclude “Ultimate reality, which is the essence of everything, can be neither being nor non-being. It cannot be both because they are contradictions. It cannot be neither also, as we have only the two alternatives and there is no third. All that we can say is that we cannot characterise it in any way. It is, therefore, that which is devoid of all characterisations, all determinations.” This ultimate does not lie within the realm of intellect but it is not remote from the phenomena. The ultimate is said to be beyond the world only because it is veiled by the appearances of the world but for ordinary beings, appearances are the world. Thus the ultimate is not separate from phenomena; it is the very nature of phenomena. The ultimate is what the conventional really is; the conventional is the way the ultimate appears. The two truths are neverseparate; they merge and coincide in phenomena. The difference is not ontological but epistemic.
Nāgārjuna re-defines the nondual truth, advaya, which is similar toAdvaitin’s Brahman. But only in a negative sense. The final truth is negative conventionality. It is self-realisable, quiescent, above speech and mind, Sūnyata itself. Sūnyata means void or contentless. Voidness is not nothingness or vacuity of thought. It is the truth of perfection of wisdom, Prajñāpāramitā. Of course, fundamentally, neither does the world nor does the ignorance that is said to have caused it exist. What exists is one without a second (advaya), changeless (avyaya), and never born (aja). All the explanations about the cause of the world are given only to point to this one truth.
They are all ultimately negated by the ‘neti neti’ (‘not so’) vākyas (sentences). This is the method of the Vedanta — adhyāropa apavādābhyāṁ niṣprapañcaṁ prapañcyate — stating that the Reality is untouched by the world and is revealed through false superimposition followed by negation. The ignorance is falsely superimposed on the truth to seemingly give an explanation for the cause of the world to the beginner student, only to later negate the existence of the world and its cause. The necessary first step towards a complete comprehension of the ultimate reality is the realisation of, not only the real root i.e., the universal ground of all, but as the real nature of everything. One should first of all cultivate the comprehension of the mundane nature of things, viz. they are possible source of suffering, impermanency and is devoid of substantiality. If samsara were truly existent, then liberation would also exist. But samsara is empty of real existence, and liberation is likewise empty of real and substantial existence as a thing. Emptiness is not a thing, it means that there is nothing that has a ‘distinct and independent existence’.All phenomena are free of distinctions and they only appear to have distinctions because of the interdependence on other phenomena. Thus, it would not be nothing but not a thing i.e., no-thing. Thus emptiness is not a thing; rather, it is no-thingness (not nothingness)
Consciousness (vijñāna) is nondual, unborn, motionless and is not an object. It has the appearance (ābhāsa) of birth, the appearance of moving and the appearance of being an object. Thus, both philosophies seem to indicate existence as “no-thing”. The firebrand analogy and snake-rope analogy are akin to the imaginary appearances of object to the perception. The analogy of a firebrand was originally used by Buddhists to distinguish the real from the unreal. When firebrand is moved in a circular motion there appearsto be a wheel of fire hovering in the air. The illusion of performance is created by the firebrand’s swift movements. Nāgārjuna also usesthe famousrope-snake analogy to show the projection and illusion appearance of objects to the mind. Both of these analogies are extensively used later by Gaudapāda. However, Chandrakīrti, further arguesthat the view of consciousness and object is similar to two haystacks standing dependent on each other; as one falls, the other automatically falls. If experience can be thought of as an object arising in consciousness, he argues that both arise simultaneously and there cannot be a single permanent witness consciousness. Back to the book, the introduction is around 50 pages and gives an excellent background on this topic. One could even say that the introduction itself is worth the price of the book. The introduction is followed by the translation of the actual text of Chandrakīrti’s commentary in verse form and lasts about 50 pages. Following this, we have Jamgon Mipham’s commentary for over 200 pages. Obviously this is a work of profound depth and requires rereading and study to begin to appreciate the teachings. Mipham’s text itself is both profound and charming, and he takes great pains to make something clear, repeating himself from different angles until he drives the point home. These texts are like good friends, their value develops in relationship over time as new facets are revealed in every encounter. These texts are read not as a duty in fulfilment of a study or a degree to be obtained but as an inspiration, as the very embodiment of the principle of the guru. The Buddha said, “Of all footprints, that of the elephant is the deepest and most supreme. Of all contemplations, that of impermanence is the deepest and most supreme.” This one word, impermanence, captures the full range of samsaric dissatisfaction. To understand impermanence, you need to understand dependent origination. To comprehend dependent origination, one has to understand the teachings of Nāgārjuna. To interpret histeachingsthoroughly, there is nothing better than the commentary of Chandrakīrti. For that purpose, there is no better book than this.