ROUGH OUTLINE FOR EMPTINESS, BUDDHISM, NAGARJUNA 1.0 Introduction Different approaches to emptiness. Stephen Batchelor just gave a dharma talk at Upaya last month on three levels of emptiness: philosophical, affective experience, aesthetic. We ll concentrate on the philosophical side. 2.0 Short History 2.1 Buddha (ca 560-480 BCE, or alternatively, ca 485-405 BCE). Left home at 29, enlightened at 35, died at 80). Four Noble Truths. Suffering (dukkha), no-self, impermanence. Said his teaching wasn t for everyone - only if you recognize suffering as a fundamental issue. 2.1.1 Dependent arising. (aka dependent origination, co-dependent co-arising,...) When this is, that is; this arising, that arises; When this is not, that is not; this ceasing, that ceases. Nothing is independent, but everything comes from other, pre-existing states, that then give rise to other states while they cease. Fizzing quality per John Dunne. No creator God, no Transcendent Principle, no First Cause 2.1.2 Emptiness ( shunyata ) of Self and of some objects (chariots, forests). Local emptiness. 2.1.3 Doctrine of the Two Truths, Conventional Truth and Ultimate Truth 2.2 Perfection-of-Wisdom Sutras (ca 100 BCE and later). Appearance of the Mahayana. Important core insight that more efficacious way to end dukkha was through 1) global emptiness (all things, not just the self, are empty), and 2) the Bodhisattva Ideal. 2.3 Nagarjuna (ca 150 CE). Main work: Mūlamadhyamakakarikā (MMK) Founded Madhyamaka School of Buddhist philosophy, giving the philosophical basis for Mahayana insights. Candrakirti (ca 650 CE) and Tsong Kha Pa (1357-1419 CE). Important commentators. 3.0 Svabhava, or ~ intrinsic nature All dharmas are empty, but what are they empty of? (Here, dharmas = objects, both physical and mental.) Intrinsic nature, or svabhava. (JW example, he s the tallest man in the room : tallest is extrinsic because relative to every other man in room, man is intrinsic) Svabhavas are produced by prapanca (reification, hypostatization). According to Westerhoff, svabhava is substance: the underlying, primary existent in which secondary existents subsist.
Basically, we always experience a thing as something, and not as just uninterpreted sense phenomena. I look at an object on the table and simultaneously see it as a cup. I don t first receive the light from the object in my eyes, then decide it s a cup, but actually see it as one already, as I perceive it. We reify - make a thing out of it, superimpose a concept on top of the sense data. This concept is its intrinsic nature. According to many philosophers, such as Jay Garfield, it s the root error of essentialism. Svabhava (Madhyamaka definition): 1. uncaused, not produced by causes and conditions 2. unchangeable 3. not dependent on any other object. Major types of dependence: mereological: whole depends on its parts - chariot depends on wheels, axle, etc. causal: effect depends on its cause - sadness depends on loss conceptual: one concept depends on another concept - northern NM, mother, effect, good, smart, tall, well-educated, strong 4. (established from its own side) 5. (a natural, not a learned notion) 3.1 Identity - the reified, conceptual core of an object that endures over time 3.1.1 Personal identity, Grandfather s axe ( It s a great axe - I ve only replaced the head twice, and the handle seven times ), Plato s cart 3.2 Our everyday, common-sense meaning of Existence : an object is real if it exists with svabhava. 3.3 Intrinsic nature isn t part of the world. It s something fixed, superimposed on sense experience, added to the flow of dependent arising, by the human mind. It 1) helps us survive in the world, but also 2) makes us miserable. 3.4 Look at MMK Dedicatory Verse: Dedicatory Verse I salute the Fully Enlightened One, the best of teachers, who taught the doctrine of dependent arising, according to which there is neither cessation nor origination, neither annihilation nor the eternal, neither singularity nor plurality, neither the coming nor the going [of any dharma, for the purpose of nirvana characterized by] the auspicious cessation of conceptual thought [ = prapañca].
4.0 Emptiness, shunyata. 4.1 Global emptiness : all things are empty of intrinsic nature. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Rainbow. Avocado vs artichoke. But, there could be a problem with this statement. It treats empty as an intrinsic property. If we do that - conceptualize emptiness - Nagarjuna would say that we re incurable. So we really can t say this, we can only show that when someone attributes an intrinsic property to something, it leads to nonsense. 4.2 Comment from physics: wave-particle duality may be explained, since where light is a wave or particle would depend on the experiment we were trying, i.e., the context, and so wouldn t have an intrinsic nature. electric charge, rest mass, and spin of an elementary particle seem to be intrinsic properties, however, and so don t follow global emptiness. 5.0 Description of Reality: Doctrine of the Two Truths 5.1 Conventional Truth: a statement is conventionally true if an action based on its acceptance reliably leads to successful practice. Most common-sense truths fall here. Conventional truth is warranted assertability : a statement is true if it satisfies the conditions a society holds necessary for it to be true, such as transparent common sense, success (pragmatism), verification, etc. (Thomas Kuhn s view of science) 5.2 Ultimate Truth: a statement is ultimately true if it corresponds to the nature of reality and neither asserts nor presupposes the existence of any mere conceptual fiction (something thought to exist because of us concept-users and the concepts we happen to employ). 5.2.1 Realism. Reality has one true way it s supposed to be, ultimate truth, and we can know way through proper epistemic means, such as experiment, deduction, induction, mathematics, revelation. Independent of the human mind, and given by the Correspondence Theory of Truth (agreement of statements with facts) (held by many philosophers of science, religion, etc.) 5.2.1.1 Skepticism. Reality has one true way that it s supposed to be, ultimate truth, but we don t possess the means to know it. Empty in the sense that it s ineffable. Ultimate truth is unknowable. (Jay Garfield s reading of Nagarjuna) 5.2.1.2 Nihilism. Reality has one true way that it s supposed to be, ultimate truth, and that the ultimate truth is that nothing exists. Self contradictory. 5.2.2 Anti-realism. There is no one true way that reality is supposed to be. No reality for our statements to correspond to. Empty in the sense that it s incoherent. Ultimate truth is meaningless. The ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth. Conventional truth is the only truth there is. (Mark Siderits s reading of Nagarjuna)
Appendix A1. Different approaches to Nagarjuna, such as seen in two translations of MMK 5.8 Siderits translation: But those of little intellect who take there to be existence and nonexistence with respect to things, they do not see the auspicious cessation of what is to be seen. Batchelor translation: In seeing things To be or not to be Fools fail to see A world at ease. A2. Four Noble Truths (from the Deer Park Sermon, Buddha s first after his Enlightenment) Noble Truth of Suffering (Dukkha). Guatama (Buddha) encounters sickness, old age, and death. Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering Suffering comes from craving, ultimately from ignorance mainly of 1.) the Anatta Doctrine, there is no self ( local emptiness, local shunyata), and 2.) the Anicca Doctrine, all things are impermanent (from dependent origination) Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering. Suffering ceases when craving ceases. Noble Truth of the Way Leading to Cessation of Suffering. The Eightfold Path (Right View, Right Intention, etc.) A3. Per the Wikipedia, According to Madhyamaka all phenomena ( dharmas ) are empty (śūnya) of nature, a substance or essence (svabhava) which gives them solid and independent existence, because they are dependently co-arisen. But this emptiness itself is also empty : it does not have an existence on its own, nor does it refer to a transcendental reality beyond or above phenomenal reality. A4. Svabhava/intrinsic nature has been explained in a number of parallel ways. A4.1 John Dunne, we have a reality habit that kicks in when things really matter to us which hooks into a fixed reality that locates us as agents in the world to get some things (those giving pleasure), avoid other things (those causing pain), and ignore the rest and is caused by our conceptualizing reality, i.e., reification or prapañca, the process of assigning intrinsic nature to things.
A4.2 Mark Siderits, Our common sense view in the world is direct realism : in waking sensory experience we are directly aware of external objects. A4.3 Jay Garfield We have an innate disposition to reify. A4.4 Jan Westerhoff Svabhava is a cognitive default, a superimposition of a concept on sensory experience. A5. Example argument from MMK: causality. Not from itself, not from another, not from both, nor without cause: Never in any way is there any existing thing that has arisen. (MMK 1.1) A5.1 Tetralemma. Four possibilities, for which it s assumed that both cause and effect have intrinsic nature. 1. cause and effect are the same. (if they re the same, then the effect already exists, so why do we need a cause?) 2. cause and effect are different. (If they re different, then what connects the cause with the effect, so that we always get the appropriate effect rather than any totally random event?) 3. cause and effect are both the same and different. (dealt with in the first and second lemmas above) 4. cause and effect are neither the same nor different. (events appearing totally without causes doesn t match experience.) A6. Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 336. But what men consider reasonable or unreasonable alters. At certain periods men find reasonable what at other periods they found unreasonable. And vice versa. But is there no objective character here? Very intelligent and well-educated people believe in the story of creation in the Bible, while others hold it as proven false, and the grounds of the latter are well known to the former.