LECTURE 1:  INTRODUCTION

                  The term "Mâdhyamika" refers to a school of Buddhism that originated in India about the second century A.D. and continued there through approximately the eleventh century A.D.  The influence of Mâdhyamika Buddhism is seen throughout Mahâyâna Buddhism.  It continued as a recognized school in China and Japan for several centuries after Buddhism first became known in each culture, but eventually the doctrine and style of exposition found in Mâdhyamika was absorbed into other schools that have continued down to the present time.  In Tibet, the Mâdhyamika and Yogacara schools combined to represent the dominant strain of Buddhist religious thought from antiquity to the present.  In Zen Buddhism, the spirit of Mâdhyamika is seen in the use of koans and the dialogues (mondos) of masters and disciples.  The impact of Nâgârjuna's negative dialectic in arguing for the emptiness of an essential nature of things, elements, or factors of existence has been important throughout Buddhist history.

                Mâdhyamika, the "Middle-Path School," was founded by the Indian cleric Nâgârjuna.  While there is little historical information about him, Nâgârjuna is regarded by Buddhists as a much-revered monk whose spiritual insight and power could destroy evil and overcome illusion.  He was an astute philosopher who clarified the meaning of the notion of "emptiness" as an expression of the changing phenomena that we humans experience in conventional life.

                The earliest available biographical account of Nâgârjuna is by the famous Buddhist translator Kumârajîva, written around 405 A.D.[1]  Kumârajîva agrees with other Chinese and Tibetan accounts[2] that Nâgârjuna was born in south India into a family of the Hindu priestly caste.  While stories of his boyhood are contradictory, they indicate that he had an exceptional intellectual curiosity and that he eventually underwent a spiritual conversion when he had access to the discussions that were eventually termed "Mahâyâna doctrines".

                Nâgârjuna's expression of the "Middle Path" was not entirely new.  A vigorous dialectic to show that all phenomena are empty, and the assertion that there should be no attachment to some preserved essential character of things as they are conventionally perceived and described, was already present in literature that predates Nâgârjuna by a century or two.  We find these notions in the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajñapâramitâ) literature and the Ratnakuta collection of sutras.  Often Nâgârjuna is regarded as a precursor or an innovator of the forms of Buddhism that began the Mahâyâna tradition.  However, key Mahâyâna notions predate Nâgârjuna, and in his two key philosophical treatises it may be better to recognize Nâgârjuna's role as one standing between the Theravada and the Mahâyâna traditions.

                While historical information on Nâgârjuna's life is sparse, we can glean something of the philosopher's and ascetic's life from his writings.  His critical analytical verses, his letters, and his hymns indicate a deep concern to practice non-attachment with reference to people, things, or experiences.  This expresses his constant effort to perceive the emptiness of all things and hence a detachment from them.  In his key treatise, the Mûla-Mâdhyamika-Kârikâs, he criticized both Buddhist and Hindu views of existence.  In his negative dialectic he was interested to show that there is no eternal reality behind changing forms; even unconditioned nirvâna is not independent of the changing forms of existence.  Those beings who have perfected wisdom perceive nirvâna and the changing flux of existence (samsâra) as interrelated aspects of the same reality.[3]  This insight transforms other moral and spiritual activities such as charity, morality, meditation, and effort.  He did not regard his participation in scholarly debates or his explanations of the Buddha's teachings to be inconsistent with religious practice. 

                The analysis and logical dialectic that Nâgârjuna used is not unrelated to the major efforts made by previous monks to analyze the direct perception of reality in their abhidharma analysis, found in the texts of the Abhidarma-pitaka.[4]  For the abhidharma masters, everyday experience was defined and analyzed into classifications of factors or kinds of phenomena (dharmas).  These factors were defined and contemplated upon by the monastic scholars in order to release them from the bondage of common, everyday attachments to "things". 

                The attempt to systematize the phenomenal world and to develop a theory of their inter-relationships was for these scholars a distinctly religious goal.  The detailed analysis of how each moment of experience arose and dissipated was intended to eliminate false assumptions about humanity and existence --  an intent that was directed toward inner freedom, not speculative thought. 

                Nâgârjuna addressed this program directly, employing his negative dialectic to challenge the assumption that the classification of factors or the particular elements that compose human experience were any more real than the things people commonly perceive as real.

                The goal to perceive how emotional, perceptual, and mental conditions contribute to the human experience of pain or happiness is expressed in the earliest recorded statements of the Buddha.  For example, in the Samyutta-nikâya, we find Sariputta expressing to the Buddha what understanding the nature of the arising of existence means for the Buddha's path.  They have been discussing the meaning of the experience of coming into existence.

'This has come to be,' lord -- thus by right insight he sees, as it really is; and seeing it in this way he practices revulsion from it, and that it may fade away and cease.  He sees by right insight continual becoming from a certain sustenance, and seeing that in this way as it really is, he practices revulsion from continual becoming from a sustenance, and that it may fade away and cease.  From the ceasing of a certain sustenance that which has come to be is liable to cease -- so he sees by right insight as it really is, and seeing that in this way, he practices revulsion from that which is liable to cease, and that it may fade away and cease.[5]

                To see for oneself the nature of existence is also expressed by another famous early sutta.  It is found in the Majjhima-nikâya:

This was said by the Lord:  "Whoever sees [dependent co-origination] sees dhamma, whoever sees dhamma sees [dependent co-origination]."  The five groups of grasping are generated by conditions.  Whatever among these five groups of grasping is desire, sensual pleasure, affection, catching at -- that is the uprising of anguish.  Whatever among these five groups of grasping is the control of desire and attachment, the ejection of desire and attachment -- that is the stopping of anguish.[6]

In like manner, when we consider the Mâdhyamika view and practice of enlightenment we want to understand that this is a religious orientation whose goal is release from suffering, and we want to remain in contact with the concrete religious goal in both the content of Mâdhyamika and our procedure for understanding it.[7]

                For example, we might profitably recall the Jâtaka story about the wandering ascetic. 

                The future Buddha was sitting talking with the disciples when a wandering ascetic came to debate him.  As the ascetic approached, the future Buddha asked:  "Will you have a drink of Ganges water, fragrant with the scent of the forest?" 

                The ascetic replied:  "What is the Ganges?  Is the sand the Ganges?  Is the water the Ganges?  Is the hither bank the Ganges?  Is the further bank the Ganges?"

                But the future Buddha said to him:  "If you take exception to the water, the sand, the hither bank, the further bank, where can you find any Ganges River?"

                The wandering ascetic was confounded and rose up and went away.  When he was gone, the future Buddha began teaching the assembly that was seated about.  He spoke the following stanzas:

What he sees, he does not wish for,

But something that he does not see;

I think that he will wander long,

And what he wishes, not obtain.

He is not pleased with what he gets;

No sooner gained, it meets his scorn.

Insatiable are all wishes!

Those who are wish-free, therefore, we adore![8]

                This concern with concrete experience and everyday existence -- a concern clearly evident in the teachings of the Buddha -- continued in the Mâdhyamika understanding of existence.  The basic Mâdhyamika notions of emptiness, dependent co-origination, and the two-fold truth should be understood in reference to what they mean for releasing human beings from pain. 

                In understanding the religious meaning of these concepts, we want to try to avoid two extremes in interpretation.  (1)  The first is that the Mâdhyamika orientation to life is simply the product of a certain social-cultural pattern of experience; if it were, then a study of cultural history would be the dominant clue to the meaning of emptiness.  (2)  The other extreme that we want to avoid is to consider the "content" of emptiness as something external to its realization in the concrete experience of Nâgârjuna during his time and culture, or in the particular cultural experience in which we find ourselves today.[9]  The hope here is that "emptiness" can be understood as a contribution to vital change and transformation in everyday life, including all the limitations and possibilities of which we are aware.  In this sense, spiritual life is seen as integrating the perfection of wisdom with technology, communication, and the economic and political spheres of existence.  If we take seriously the claim that things arise in a co-dependent way, then it becomes important to obtain coherent and corroborating experience from as many different sources in our daily lives as possible.  Because of this, it is appropriate to appeal to psychological studies, to studies of physics, to history, to social sciences, and to philosophy to uncover the meaning of the emptiness doctrine.

                The negative dialectic that we find in Nâgârjuna can be seen as part of a spiritual discipline that helps to release people from their fantasies.  If emptiness is true, then it must apply to our own most immediate experience.  In later lectures we will examine how the very conditions which constitute the limitations of our experience can be transformed into a new possibility of release.  In this way we can begin to understand how the essential problem is not the "elimination" of particular forms, or persons, or historical contexts; rather it is a problem of using the forms found in the particularities of the moment -- of the mountains, the fresh air, of the various sights, of each other -- as being the means whereby we can perceive further than ever before.  Thus, the particular form of existence that we experience as "ourselves," living in a modern technological society, being the particular men and women that we are, having the kind of intellectual training or lack of it that we have -- none of these are in themselves the particular problem.  The basic problem will be something like the wandering ascetic who could not accept a glass of Ganges River water without getting into a debate which bound him further to his thirst.  What we want to see is that every conscious experience is an interpretation of oneself in an environment, whether we are aware of it or not aware of it.  There is indeed a historical and cultural character, a biological and neurological conditioning process, pervading every human experience, even the most profound religious awareness.  In that context, which is the reflective apprehension of the dependent co-origination of things, we can begin to grasp several ways of becoming aware that all things are empty.

                (1)  The epistemological:  The first general area of our discussion will be the question of how we can know anything.  Here we will try to understand that the very words that we use to communicate knowledge or emotions are both vehicles for engaging with each other and limitations for such an engagement. 

                (2)  The psychological:  Human beings have an enormous potential for enhanced living.  They can gain access to new capacities and develop or re-develop old ones by releasing themselves from habits of perception and sensitivities.  A major aspect of the Buddhist understanding of the human being -- whether it is from the suttas, from the abhidharma, from Mâdhyamika, or later developments -- is that there are various processes of consciousness; there is a recognition that an expanded attitude is necessary in order to be released from the habits and limitations of experience.  The actualization of an expanded attitude means that one can be psychologically de-habitized, de-programmed, de-conditioned, non-automatized.  Openness to new experiences allows for access to unused capacities; and we must remember that unused capacities are seen within the Buddhist context to be self-imposed restrictions.  Such an openness requires the development of experiental skills that open inner doors and gateways to new vistas, that build bridges and runways into spaces that were previously inaccessible due to fear or ignorance.

                (3)  The ethical:  The third general area that we will explore is the practical, social and inter-personal dimension of our daily lives.  If emptiness has any significance to us it will also pertain to social and institutional forms that seem to be so coercive in their impact.  This includes education, the institutions of law and justice, government, family life, and economic processes. 

                (4)  The ontological:  The fourth area is the understanding of emptiness as an expression of the nature of existence.  This is sometimes called ontology, the study of the way things really are.  The notion of dependent co-origination can be seen to correlate with a number of recent studies in physics as well as studies in perception that are followed by the natural and social scientific communities.  If we perceive the world not as a pile of building blocks or as little entities laid upon each other, causing each other to change particular form, we will get a new vision of the very existence we live in.  It will mean that the basic concept of reality will be "co-dependent relationships," "energies in tension," "systems of experience," "matrices of interacting energy."

                The attempt to understand Mâdhyamika as a religious expression is something that is automatically "self-involving".  This means that the historical expression, the concepts, the ideas, the discussions about the meaning of various terms, are more than just guides for knowing what somebody else once thought or used as a basis for life.  What we need to see is the possibility that these concerns involve us as individuals, as a community and society.  This is true of all religious phenomena.  In the very constitution of our existence, these forms attempt to reflect the most profound and hidden reality in which we participate.  Engagement with these sorts of things is powerful, for it can radically alter one's own life.  It is both dangerous and potentially enhancing.[10]

                When we can engage ideas or concepts as religious phenomena, we are dealing with the basic matrix of assumptions that people have for meaning.  This matrix of axioms, concerns, and processes of awareness make specific questions of value, of self-identity, and of meaning possible.  To deal with the content of religious experience is something like dealing with the notion of "color".  If we view "color" simply as a word that is in a dictionary and then relate it to other words, we will not realize that the reality of color is a mode of perception that is presupposed by our visual experience.  As such a mode of awareness, it is the very basis for experiencing specific colors rather than an item discovered within a vocabulary.  Some terms stimulate a profound awareness about the nature of experience, other terms indicate something which is an inference from our experience.  All this talk, however, about a concept or series of concepts should not divert our attention from the fact that throughout the four areas of our discussion, we are going to probe different processes of awareness as fundamental conditioning factors for how human beings participate in the arising of their own experience and existence.

                In summary, a person who understands religious life in terms of its power to transform life will be concerned both with the specific cultural forms and with what is true or real in one's own life.  The ultimate dimension of religious experience refers to the reality in which all things, including ourselves, participate.  We are aware of that ultimate dimension when we live within an extraordinarily deep sensitivity to life or formulate a profound strategy for our actions.  Such a process of deciding what is real and what is significant for us is central to the approach we will take to understand the formulation and meaning of Mâdhyamika Buddhism.

LECTURE 2:  LANGUAGE AND INSIGHT[11]

                Nâgârjuna begins his treatise Fundamentals of the Middle Way with the following stanzas:

Never are any existing things found to originate from themselves, from something else, from both, or from no cause.

There are four conditioning causes:  a cause, objective support of sensation, "immediately preceding condition" and, of course, the predominant influence -- there is no fifth.

Certainly there is no self-existence of existing things in these conditioning causes; and if no self-existence exists, neither does "other-existence."

The efficient cause does not exist possessing a conditioning cause.  Nor does the efficient cause exist without possessing a conditioning cause.  Conditioning causes are not without efficient causes.  Nor are there conditioning causes which possess efficient causes.

Certainly those things are called "conditioning causes" whereby something originates after having come upon them.  As long as something has not originated, why are they not so long "non-conditioning-causes"?

There can be a conditioning cause neither of a non-real thing nor of a real thing.  Of what non-real thing is there a conditioning cause?  And if it is already real, what use is a cause?

If a basic phenomenon (dharma) occurs which is neither real nor non-real nor both real-and-non-real, how can there be a cause which is effective in this situation?

                This work by Nâgârjuna continues on and on with such detailed analysis of many standard Buddhist key terms.  In order to see the religious significance of that analysis, we must ask ourselves why he goes to all this bother?  The answer is simply that the Buddha's path, which Nâgârjuna also claimed to follow, rests on knowing the nature of existence, its arising and dissolution.  This means that one should know the true facts of how earthly life, including one's own self -awareness, are formed.  It also means becoming sensitive to how one produces the images and concepts by which we know anything.  At the same time, the perception of the truth about life requires the development of an attitude which is calm but not slothful, which is vigorous but not agitated, which is insightful but is not attached to mental fabrications such as theories and doctrine.  The detailed analysis of causal conditions as we find in the first chapter of Nâgârjuna's Fundamentals of the Middle Way is an expression of the concern to overcome ignorance, to avoid the illusory judgments that seem so habitual and prominent in daily life.

                The role of cognition, of perception, and of emotional responses to sensation is seen early in the Buddhist tradition and continues into the Mâdhyamika school.  You will recall the first verses of the famous text, the Dhammapada, where the Buddha is recorded as saying:

We are what we think,

Having become what we thought.

Like the wheel that follows the cart-pulling ox

Sorrow follows an evil thought.

And joy follows a pure thought,

Like a shadow faithfully tailing a man.

We are what we think,

Having become what we thought.[12]

                The Buddha's path was meant to be an elimination of suffering.  This is a suffering caused by often unrecognized impulses arising from social, psychological and physical experiences.  The living process of common everyday existence is seen as a burning fire fed by the fuel of actions that are based on involuntary desires and anxieties.  These desires and anxieties themselves are conditioned by the way people think, perceive, and experience life in terms of their own selfhood.  The enlightened person, the one who is truly awake to the nature of one's process of becoming-in-existence, knows that without getting behind the apparent form a person will just create more chaos.  Without avoiding the habits of thinking and feeling that bring about fear and anger, there will be only continued suffering.  As long as there is a concern only to improve an illusory self or to seek after illusory happiness a person will continue to be disappointed.  Part of the problem is that there are deeply ingrained patterns of guilt, restlessness, self-hatred and apathy which lead a person to reinforce patterns of experience that lead to suffering.

                The helplessness that so many people feel from the driving forces which compel them have to be recognized -- according to the Buddhist view -- as being produced by one's own ignorance and desire.  Desire to attain short-term, illusory goals, which is the same thing as compulsive behavior, is dependent on ignorance (avija or avidya) in which one fails to view the impermanence and substancelessness of existence. 

                In the Buddhist view human beings are driven by unconscious motives; but unlike many contemporary psychologists, Nâgârjuna regarded these motives as controllable.  These unconscious motives which cause suffering are prominent not only among psychotics but among all unenlightened human beings -- which means most of us.  If we want to be free from suffering we have to see how we are constructing the bondage which we feel we are in.  This bondage includes our wants, interests, strivings, and desires; and the Buddhist path requires insight into their conditioning causes.  As you know, however, if you have read about Nâgârjuna's claim that all things are empty, these conditioning causes also are regarded as empty.

                Our purpose in this lecture and the next chapter is to explore why a perception of the emptiness of causes and actions is an important religious concern.  Briefly, we can say that the basic religious problem is to come to terms with the mental and emotional attachments that lead to more pain in the flow of existence.  By bringing the nature of this pain before the mind, the attachments which arise in relation to the illusory awareness of our existence can be eliminated.  The person who knows the source of his or her anger, the source of his or her fear, the source of his or her ambiguities can correct the problem.  As the energies that we use in craving after certain desires are dissipated, our minds discriminate less and less between things as if they had self-sufficient importance or value.  By recognizing that all conditioned phenomena are empty of self-nature, we empty the binding energies through which we lose the power to become enriched.  When insight dissipates false images of expectations and desires, the heat of greed and hate are cooled.

                The attachments that cause suffering arise from ignorance.  This ignorance is something more than a lack of information or an inaccurate description of something.  It is systemic; that is, it is inherent in the very system or procedure that one uses to know life.  It involves not being aware of the power that images, words and concepts have to bind a person to them.  The insight that frees one from this process is also a releasing energy whereby one is no longer caught -- or one no longer catches oneself -- in the conceptual net and the expectations of one-to-one correlations between a word and some non-verbal referent.

                We can begin to see the problem that Nâgârjuna was dealing with when we recognize a fairly simple thing:  our words and language can generate the expectation of entities that are totally nonexistent.  Human beings can use language in such a way that the words can be meaningful while at the same time they are mere fabrications of the mind.  We can, for example, refer to a square circle, or to the son of a barren woman, or to the horn of a rabbit.  We can extend a notion of a particular thing to a generalized notion.  For example, we can extend the awareness of a single, concrete human being to "humanity."  Or we can extend the notion of a "good" act to "perfect goodness."  Or we can create new notions that do not refer to direct experiences by negating a general principle such as "limitation" or "finitude" and thereby derive the notions of "unlimited reality" or "infinity."  These words that indicate immaterial verbal entities are meaningful expressions since they share with other expressions certain grammatical properties and leave us with an impression of some possibility.  This turns out to be a very curious thing when we recognize that many other terms or words function by pointing out objects or calling objects to our attention.  Words seem to carve out remembered experience by defining and manifesting general forms or characteristics of the world to us.  A name is said to indicate something or a term specifies something.  Thus, if I say the word "egg" you can immediately have an image of an egg in mind.  My guess is, however, that if we would go around a room to see what the image of the egg is which you have in mind by drawing it on a piece of paper, we would have almost as many images drawn as we have people in the room.

                The fact that words refer to general classes of things and to specific phenomena leaves us with the fascinating question of whether the term, e.g. "egg" as a general classification, has a meaning because it refers to some essence that pertains to each of the images that we have or whether the term is meaningful simply because we have learned to use the term in a certain way.  As in Western schools of philosophy, there were in India some schools, e.g. the Nyâyâ school, that held that universals, like "egg-ness," which referred to a common element in all eggs, had as their universal reality some kind of objective basis or characteristic.  The Buddhists, on the other hand, held that "universals" or general class terms are fictions, but they can be objects of propositions and can serve as subjects in order to function in popular, conventional communication.  For the Buddhists, the fact that the general term "egg" could be used knowledgeably by a variety of people whose specific experiences could be quite different indicated that they fabricated certain ideas and notions in order to communicate key easily identified aspects of specific experiences.  They did not agree that the general property that can be specified as "egg-ness" is some timeless objective reality which is present in all individual eggs.  For the Buddhists a general term simply distinguishes a particular class of items from another class of items.  It does not indicate that there is some kind of universal reality that is found in multiple forms.  By focusing on exactly these problems of the formation of ideas and human expectations that words identify and give form to certain perceptions and aspects of our experience, the Buddhists were pointing out how many people, unaware, were being pushed in a particular direction by the very language and assumptions of language that they thought were helping them understand their existence.

                The issue of identifying objects in our common experience, however, is not simply a matter of the use of language.  It also is related to the question of what we really perceive when we see something.  There is a common view that human beings directly perceive physical objects -- that is, material things -- which are external to themselves.  For example, we talk about seeing a tree, a chair, a building, or another person, and then act and talk as if these things existed as such.  Thus, visually and in other ways we act as if properties such as color or form or weight belong to, or reside in, things that are external to us. 

                Similarly, most of us act and feel most of the time as if we were centered "selves."  We experience life as "belonging" to a "person."  For example, I can remember things that happened to "me", but I cannot remember things that happened to other people even though they may have entered my sphere of experience by talking to me or by responding to me when I saw them or touched them.  This experience tends to separate the identity that we feel as an ego, an "I" or "me," from other people; we distinguish between ourselves as if we were entities separate from our environmental experience, both physical and social.

                Already the earliest Buddhist suttas contain the recognition that this naive-real sensitivity to things must be questioned.  By "naive reality" I mean regarding things as if they existed as material entities, or ourselves as independent entities.  The assumption about naively real physical things was called into question with the doctrine of the anatta, that is, non-individual soul.  The individual person was seen to be not a single thing or an essence that had a variety of changing forms throughout life, but was an interaction of various factors -- factors that belonged to what we would call internal and external phenomena. 

                While in our daily conversations, we may say things like, "I see that chair," or, "I see that tree," the Buddhists from the beginning suggested that it was not the case that a material body or entity saw or perceived another material body or entity.  Rather, perception is actually a construction, or mental-emotional-physical synthesis that includes memory, inference, sensation, and synthetic apprehension through consciousness.  Any perception was seen as a combination of various factors; for example, one classification included the following three factors:  the object of sight, e.g., a tree, the sensitivity of the eye (that is, the power of sight which in physical terms we correlate with the eye and the optic nerve), and an act of sight-consciousness.  The tree or chair as a datum of experience should not be mistaken for some kind of external entity as such, or as a "whole."  What we actually perceive are instantaneous energy-moments which we integrate into our experience that is also based on memory and inference; when we have sensation of dark brown length and green splashes on top, we interpret this as a tree.  With a bit of reflection, we can see that when we perceive an object, we actually perceive only a part of it, only one side of it, and then we have to extend from our imagination, memory, or inference the other sides and interior as well as the function and purpose of what we perceive.

                The recognition that human experience is a complex of interacting factors that are both internal and external to what we normally call "a person" led later Buddhists -- the Abhidharma masters -- to analyze the sutta material in light of their own meditation experiences by formulating and classifying various factors that we would now call psychological and physical factors of experience.  Since they did not affirm a permanent essence within the person or a real general thing which we call the object of perception, they recognized only a changing conglomerate of material, mental, and psychic factors of experience called dharmas.  These factors, they claimed, interact to form the experienced world as we are aware of it in everyday living.  All objects of perception or ideas are seen to be without independent bases of existence.  Rather they are seen to arise in an interdependent or co-dependent way.  The "arising of existence" which generally is also the arising of turmoil -- because it is influenced by illusion -- comes through these interdependent and reciprocal forces (dharmas) which find their roots in a person's ignorant clinging to the objects that "he" or "she" unwittingly is fabricating!

                In order to discuss and specify how each of these factors, or dharmas, arise in experience, there were elaborate classifications proposed in that section of the literature called the Abhidharma Pitaka.  This was not a speculative concern:  the intention was to eliminate the false assumptions that most people have when they deal with their feelings, anxieties, and frustrations.  Originally the Abhidharma literature systematized the tenets found scattered in different sermons by the Buddha as an aid for instruction.  In time it developed a technique of its own for analysis in which the nature of reality and the cause of suffering were organized and classified topically.[13] 

                By way of example, we can look at the classification of names and phenomena found in the Dharmasamganî, according to the headings of the five groups or "heaps" (skandhas) of phenomena.  Under matter we find such dharmas as earth, water, heat, and air; sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch; visible object, sound, scent; taste object, lightness of matter, malleability, accumulation, extension, impermanence.  Under sensation are such factors of experience as happiness, unhappiness, depression, equanimity.  Under perception, there is only one member of this group which is perception itself.  Then, under the group of samskaras, which are impulses or forces, we would find concentration, energy, confidence, self-possession, understanding, right livelihood, wrong theory, wrong intention, self-respect, fear of blame, desire, non-desire, non-aversion, aversion or non-delusion.  Under the group called consciousness we find thought, mind, consciousness of sight, consciousness of hearing, consciousness of smell, consciousness of taste, consciousness of touch, and  consciousness of mind.  There is also an unproduced dharma which is a special form, namely nirodha, which means extinction or elimination (it is equal to nirvâna).

                If we look at the Sarvastivada Abhidharma text called Jñâna Prasthana, we find a discussion of six causes of the arising of phenomena.  These are, for example, a cause being conjoined with something else, or simultaneously existing, or the continuing unchangeable character of some element between two phenomena, or a universal cause which is an innate, morally significant tendency, or the result and instrumental cause.  The concern of this discussion was to explain how a combination of various conditions and forces could combine in any given instantaneous moment to produce the sensations of experience which we call life.  By penetrating into the process of becoming, every monk, as the Buddha before him, could reverse the process of pain and construction and then be released from this continuing process.  To do this it was important to know the marks, or signs, characteristics, and inherent character, the "own-being" (svabhava), of the factors that made up existence and then to contemplate these various characteristics.

                In light of this great concern by the Abhidharma masters for classifying the factors of existence and then contemplating the particular self-existent characteristics, Nâgârjuna's claim that all dharmas are empty of essential characteristics of self-sufficient reality is a dramatic shift in spiritual effort.[14]  Nâgârjuna's first verses, with which we began this lecture, indicate that even the techniques and skills that were used to overcome a naive-realistic sense of the arising of existence could themselves become part of the pattern of thinking in which words functioned as if they referred to self-existent things.  Nâgârjuna analyzed the teaching of the Abhidharma from the perspective that all ideas and all perceptions are constructs that depend on other constructed things.  By formulating his stanzas in direct opposition to the assumption of inherent characteristics and the own-being of particular instantaneous phenomena, he tried to overcome what he felt was the attachment to those factors which were themselves intended to break down naive thinking.  Thus, when he says in verse 3 of chapter two in The Fundamentals of the Middle Way, "Certainly there is no self-existence of existing things..., and if no self-existence exists, neither does 'other-existence,'" he is then declaring that we can fall into a bifurcating way of conceiving the world of "self" and "other" even in the most intense religious practices.  In chapter three Nâgârjuna analyzes the dharma of "seeing" or "vision" as one of the six sense faculties and says:

There is no "seer" with vision or without vision;
Therefore, if there is no "seer" how can there be vision and the object seen?

As the birth of a son is said to occur presupposing a father and mother,
Knowledge is said to occur presupposing the eye being dependent on the visible forms.

Since the "object seen" and the vision do not exist there is no fourfold consequence:  knowledge, cognitive sensation, affective sensation, and desire.
Also, then, how will the acquisition of karma and its consequences [existence, birth, aging, and death] be produced?

                Similarly, in chapter four of The Fundamentals of the Middle Way, Nâgârjuna denies the assumptions of the self-existence of the groups of factors (skandhas) when he says:

Visible form is not perceived without the basic cause of visible form;
Likewise, the basic cause of visible form does not appear without a visible form.

If the visible form existed apart from its basic cause, it would logically follow that visible form is without cause;
But there is nothing anywhere arising without cause.

On the other hand, if there would be a basic cause apart from visible form,
The basic cause would be without any product;
But there is no basic cause without a product.

Just as when there is a visible form, no basic cause of form obtains,
So, when there is no visible form, no basic cause of form obtains.

                Nâgârjuna then goes on, chapter by chapter, analyzing key notions -- such as the irreducible elements (dhatus), desire and the one who desires, and constructed existence (sanskrta) -- until he also says that even nirvâna, which was classified under the unconditioned factor according to the Abhidharma, is not regarded as having a self-existence or an own-being.  Nâgârjuna says in chapter twenty-five:

There is nothing whatever which differentiates the existence-in-flux (samsara) from nirvâna;
And there is nothing whatever which differentiates nirvâna from existence-in-flux.

Subsequent verses reinforce this denial of every absolute identification:

Since all dharmas are empty, what is finite?  What is infinite?
What is both finite and infinite?  What is neither finite nor infinite?

Is there anything which is this or something else, which is permanent or impermanent,
Which is both permanent and impermanent, or which is neither?

                In summary, then, we can see that from Nâgârjuna's perspective, language and naive experience are themselves possible vehicles for erroneous understanding of ourselves and our experience.  This does not mean that Nâgârjuna himself discarded language or even logic.  It did mean that insight into the nature of things required taking seriously the very processes by which human beings can know anything.  It means that one should always be aware that even the most profound attempts to interpret the meaning of life may lead to an inappropriate fixation on their meaning.  In the next lecture we will look at the process whereby Nâgârjuna hoped to avoid having his hearers focus on the word "emptiness" as if it were a thing-in-itself.

LECTURE 3:  TRUTH AND EMPTINESS

                So far we have focused on the need for deep awareness of how people themselves contribute to the immediate experience of their existence.  How easy it is to have false assumptions!  We have gotten some glimpse of how the Buddhists of ancient India dealt with the issues of the use of language in apprehending the truth.  In the last lecture we dealt with two problems:  (1) assumptions in using language that create false expectations and partial images, and (2) naive realism in the perception of material things.  In this lecture we want to focus on Nâgârjuna's use of the term "emptiness" to indicate the reality of existing things, and then discuss his claim that there are two modes, or two kinds, of truth.  The purpose of looking at the notions of emptiness and two kinds of truth is to learn how they function in Nâgârjuna's purpose to release human beings from false perceptions about themselves and their world.

                When many people hear the claim made in The Fundamentals of the Middle Way that all things are empty, they interpret this as a pessimistic expression.  After all, he claimed that the basic factors of existence (dharmas) -- basic patterns and structures of inter-relations between forces or energies, the constituents of the "objective world" -- are empty.  So it is natural to conclude that there must be nothing good or valuable in life, and that it doesn't make any difference what we think, say, or do.  From Nâgârjuna's point of view, this understanding of emptiness is a total misconception.  He himself was confronted by people who interpreted emptiness as a nihilistic expression, but he tried to make clear that this was inappropriate. 

Emptiness, if dimly perceived, utterly destroys the slow-witted.

It is like a snake badly grasped or a magical incantation incorrectly done. (MMK 24:11)

                At various places in both this treatise and the shorter work Averting the Arguments, Nâgârjuna has to defend himself against the charge of a nihilistic view of life or of an illogical claim which does not stand the rigors of clear analysis.  Let us look at some of the key statements that he makes about emptiness. 

The "originating dependently" we call "emptiness".  This is the designation, "dependence on"; it is indeed the Middle Way.  (MMK 24:18)

                Here we see that emptiness is equated with dependent co-origination.  It is also equated with the designation or idea that existence arises while being dependent on other things; and all of this is then equated with the Middle Way.  Already here we see what we will elaborate further on in this lecture:  that emptiness is not seen as a thing, but as a process of release; it is a procedure which is the "middle way."  Nâgârjuna is also very clear, however, that emptiness is not just another theory, not just another viewpoint.  the designation "empty" itself cannot be taken as a thing in itself.  This we see in the following two stanzas:

If something would be non-empty, something would [logically also] be empty,
But nothing is non-empty, so how will it become empty?

Emptiness is proclaimed by the victorious one as the refutation of all viewpoints,
But those who hold "emptiness" as a viewpoint -- [the true perceivers] have called them "incurable." (MMK 13:7-8)

Here we see that emptiness is not a thing, nor is it an idea.  Thus, anyone who takes the notion of emptiness as something that is marked off from what is not empty is not understanding it in its most profound meaning. 

Whoever argues against "emptiness" in order to refute an argument,
For him, everything, including the point of contention, is known to be unrefuted.

Whoever argues by means of "emptiness" in order to explain an understanding,
For him, everything, including the point to be proved, is known to be misunderstood. (MMK 4:8-9)

This leads to the conclusion that nothing can be absolutely of the nature of emptiness or non-emptiness if these terms are assumed to refer to non-relative entities.

One should not say "empty," nor "non-empty,"

Nor both, nor neither;

The purpose for the designation is [only] for communication.

(MMK 22:11)

                The communication then is not seen so much as a description of the way things really are, but as a catalyst to reorganize the thinking and feeling processes of those who are confronted with the inadequacy of any word to describe or designate the co-dependent reality of things coming in and going out of existence.

                From the above quotation we can see how the claim that all things are empty intends to be a spiritual insight that cannot be reduced to a viewpoint.[15]  One of the most dramatic ways of expressing this insight was through the negative dialectic that pervades The Fundamentals of the Middle Way and the shorter work Averting the Arguments.  The insight, as we will analyze in the next two lectures, is more a process of viewing the world than a particular proposition about the world.  Here we want to focus on the dialectic as the way of articulating, or communicating, the claim that all things are empty.  We see that Nâgârjuna makes full use of logic in his negative dialectic.  This does not mean that the negative dialectic is simply a destructive force which cleared the ground for a positive formulation of reality; nor is it simply a dissipation of the error surrounding some presupposed essence that then eternally remains.

                The dialectic itself is a means of knowing the truth.  It is a movement, a process, which moves from notion to notion.  By negating a presumed meaning of a term or by avoiding a conclusion, by requiring the acceptance of the opposite of a certain claim as well as the claim, the negative dialectic moves the experiencer to a more comprehensive perception, which is at an ever more removed level from the naive realistic view of existence.  Any concept, for example -- "conditioned existence" -- is pressed by the negation until it becomes indistinguishable from its opposite -- in this case, non-conditioned existence.  From this it is clear that concepts are useful very often for naive realistic experience, but for analysis of the relationships between things and for experiencing the things of the world as a process, concepts are seen to be only relatively significant.  At the same time, as we have said before, Nâgârjuna uses language and logic, which means that despite the limited usefulness of language it is still a means whereby life, together with an awareness and sensitivity to the depth dimensions of experience, can become richer in content and more comprehensive in scope.

                In denying the counter-thesis as well as the thesis in this negative dialectic, Nâgârjuna seeks to establish a way of apprehending oneself and the world that is less and less prone to positing a self-existing essence in anything.  Thus, the dialectic continually leads from concept to concept without finding the reality of life capsulized in an absolute concept.  The process of the negative dialectic is a way of avoiding the superimposition of an absolute onto the flow of experience.  This flow -- that is, the emptiness, the inter-relatedness of everything to each other -- is known by the self-negating character of logical inference.  This self-negating character avoids grasping after a supposed essence of changing existence.  Thus, the dynamics of the dialectic is itself an effective force for realizing the emptiness of things.  We might still ask, "Can the dialectic, then, be regarded as a principle of relativity, thereby becoming a dynamic absolute corresponding to some kind of eternal essence?"  No, the dialectic is never an independent force or first cause.  It operates only in relation to phenomenal, or ideal, entities.  It is a spiritual answer, a medicine, to the problem of grasping after self-existent entities.  It is a means of quelling the pain found in existential becoming that results from longing after an eternal reality.

                A negative dialectic which avoids asserting that something is, or is not, or is both, or is neither, is sometimes used in some religious traditions as a way of destroying logic and language in order to perceive in an entirely different way.  Sometimes interpreters of Mâdhyamika have seen the negative dialectic to function in this way.  I think that this is not the entire story for Mâdhyamika.  The power of the dialectic is not simply the removal of illusion -- especially if one presumes that by removing an illusion, some kind of self-existent reality will emerge.  Rather, the negative dialectic both continues and destroys the activity of discriminating, of defining, and inferring.  In this way Nâgârjuna will say that the highest truth exists because it is dependent on everyday activities while yet transcending and purifying them.  Rather than simply rejecting all use of reason and logic because it often binds human beings when they perceive their experience, Nâgârjuna uses them to reform people's thinking.  There is no unchanging, inherent quality that requires all logical use to be illusory.  Rather it can be used to free people from pain and greed when it is not misused.  Logic becomes a tool to break open the linguistic fetters with which logicians and common everyday people have bound themselves.  When this happens, as Nâgârjuna intends with the negative dialectic in these texts, then its effect is to dissipate the illusory self-existence of entities rather than to multiply attachment to more concepts for logical relationships.

                We might also ask the opposite questions about Nâgârjuna's use of logic.  If we are affirming that he does not simply destroy logic, we should also ask whether his use of logic has the same limitations as other claims about the nature of existence.  Since every viewpoint is empty of self-existence according to Nâgârjuna, is not his own denial of self-existence an empty proposition?  His opponents argued that indeed it was; and he readily agreed.  However, Nâgârjuna maintained that the supposed victory of such an argument results from faulty reasoning.  In his short work Averting the Arguments, he takes up the problem directly.  In verses twenty through twenty-nine, he rejects the opponent's claim that his own denial constitutes a use of words as if the words had self-existent power.  He argues that in his denial of self-existence he does not have to assume what his opponents assume, namely that the words themselves have meaning because of self-existence.  Rather, he claims, both his opponents' claims and his own denials do not have self-existence.  They both exist on a level of conventional truth -- they are empty.  His own denial is equated with a phantom who destroys another phantom.  He ends his argument with a verse:

If I would make any proposition whatever, then by that I would have a logical error;
But I do not make a proposition; therefore I am not in error.[16]

                In the same work, Nâgârjuna insists that since his denial does not presuppose an opposite absolute claim, he is not making a proposition.  This is despite the fact that any casual rethinking of the previous verse indicates at least the proposition that "I am not in error" or "I do not make a proposition."  When the opponent further argues that Nâgârjuna unwittingly presupposes an entity in order to deny it, Nâgârjuna answers:

Since anything being denied does not exist, I do not deny anything;
Therefore [the statement] "You deny" -- which was made by you -- is a false accusation.[17]

In the next verse he affirms that his expression is simply a means of conveying information, and that the mechanics of speech which do appear to be like other forms of speech should not be construed to imply a power which negates some metaphysical entity:

Regarding what was said concerning what does not exist:
"The statement of denial is proved without a word."
In that case the statement expresses:  "[That object] does not exist";
[The words] do not destroy [the object].[18]

                The goal of complete unattachment through realizing the highest truth of emptiness, claims Nâgârjuna, is not "a view" and certainly is not the negation of something that exists.  It is rather a catalyst or a process whereby one can become unattached to the very forms that one must use.  In order to be a means of release from mundane experience, this process, this designation of things being related to each other, must be expressed.

                As a verbal expression, this assertion participates in the limitations of mundane speech -- in fact, it capitalizes on the very nature of mundane speech, in the sense that speech operates through the projection of opposites (discrimination) and distinguishes one thing from another by the use of names and words of relationship (especially propositions).  The negative dialectic that is so prominent in The Fundamentals of the Middle Way carries the principle of opposition and discriminating analysis to its limits.  Thereby it indicates that the notions used are simply verbal constructs of empty "becoming."  By criticizing every assertion which intends to bring the "reality of becoming" into the confines of a dogmatic perspective, Nâgârjuna expressed the traditional Buddhist affirmation of the Middle Way which avoids extremes of either nihilism or absolute eternalism.

                The negative dialectic as a way of communicating the emptiness of both words and things is related to another notion which we want to focus on in this lecture.  This is the notion that there are two kinds of truth, or two modes of true perception.[19] 

The dharma-explanation by the Buddhas has recourse to two truths:
The world-ensconced truth (samvriti) and the ultimate truth (paramârtha).

Those who do not know the distribution of the two kinds of truth
Do not know the profound reality (tattva) of the Buddha's teaching.

The ultimate truth is not taught apart from conventional practice,
And without having obtained ultimate truth one cannot achieve nirvâna.  (MMK 24:8-10)

                The affirmation that there are two kinds of truth that are useful in spiritual life is a recognition, I think, that there are two important functions of religious expression.  The first of these functions is to present a correct understanding of human existence.  This means that some formulations, some verbal images, and some uses of language are better than others in guiding people's thinking and experiencing in the most free and unattached manner.  The second function of religious speech is to transform a person's attitudes about him- or herself and the world whereby that person will become free from an illusory self-image. 

                The first function -- that of analyzing the way that the world comes into existence and the way people apprehend this continually changing existence -- is what Nâgârjuna calls the realm of conventional truth or world-ensconced truth.  That there are certain things or ideas that one should know that help clarify the understanding of one's role in existence is made clear when Nâgârjuna writes:

He who perceives dependent co-origination (pratîtya-samutpâda)
Also understands sorrow, origination, and destruction as well as the path.  (MMK 24:40)

Likewise, Nâgârjuna argues for a correct understanding of the Buddha's teaching by appealing to the statement in the Pali suttas (Samyutta-Nikâya 22.90), where the Buddha explains to the disciple Kaccana that the right view is a "middle doctrine" between a belief in a self-substantiated being (eternalism) and a belief in non-being (nihilism).  Nâgârjuna says:

Those who perceive self-existence and other-existence, and an existent thing and a non-existent thing,
Do not perceive the true nature of the Buddha's teaching.

In the Instruction of Kâtyâyana both "it is" and "it is not" are opposed
By the Glorious One, who has ascertained the meaning of "existence" and "non-existence."  (MMK 15:6-7)

Here we see Nâgârjuna's clear concern to interpret the Buddha's teaching correctly if a follower of the Buddha is to have a correct conceptual apprehension of existence.  In this way Nâgârjuna does not hold that all conceptual formulations are equally good or bad.  One must understand the notion of dependent co-origination -- which as we have seen before is equal to the emptiness of all things.

                The recognition that all things are empty, then, does not mean that the advocate of the Middle Way wants to avoid dealing with everyday conditioned existence.  In fact, Nâgârjuna says that unless a person perceives existence as empty, he or she will not be able to account for conditioned and mundane life.  He argues that if a person holds to the notion of self-existence or an inherent character of any particular form, that person will not be able to account for the arising and dissipation of existence.  Therefore, he claims:

You reject all mundane and customary activities
When you deny emptiness [in the sense of] dependent co-origination.  (MMK 24:36)

He confronts his opponents with misunderstanding the notion of emptiness when he says:

Time and again you have made a condemnation of emptiness,
But that refutation does not apply to our emptiness.