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Mahāyāna Buddhist Philosophy—Class Notes EAS
468 L. Priestley Carr
Hall 405 Tues., Thu. 3-4 Tuesday, October 1, 2002
End Time of Nāgārjuna LP reminded us of the test dates we had decided on last class: Fall
term: Spring
term: LP also revealed the due dates for essays: Fall
term: Spring
term: He said the late penalty for essays would be 1% per week. As this wasn’t a journalism course, punctuality wasn’t essential, but he cautioned that after several weeks the penalty will start to bite significantly into one’s mark. All term work (the only kind in this class) is due by faculty regulation the last day of classes. Still on Second Verse LP said the phrase “still on” would be heard a lot in the course, although some passages would be reviewed faster than others. Continuing with the second verse of chapter one from the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, LP noted that in the last class he had discussed the first two conditions of four. The verse reads, “The conditions are four: the cause, the object, the immediate and the dominant.” LP said that the immediate condition is the dharma that immediately precedes the dharma that is produced. Vasubandhu said that only mental dharmas qualify as conditions. The Sarvāstivādan account of causes and conditions, which the Sautrāntika Vasubandhu is often criticizing in his Abhidharmakośa, is “amazingly complex,” says LP. LP suspects that that the “tangled mess”of the Abhidharma was created by “moderately clever monks had too much time on their hands.” Ordering up the Sutras Unlike, say, Aristotle, who relied on previous Greek philosophy and his own logic to come up with an account of the universe, the Abhidharmic agenda was to reconcile contraditions in the sutras and provide an account of how any given term was used. This exegetical agenda was designed to provide an explanation of the sutras. Generally, what’s not in the sutras is not in the Abhidharma, although over time this ordering of sutras explored the more philosophical implications of the Sarvāstivāda agenda. These implications included issues of the nature of time and nirvā,na as unconditioned. Vasubandhu and his Sautrāntika crowd did not believe that the asa,mskrita [check diacriticals] dharmas existed, so neither would nirvā,na, a position as startling as Nāgārjuna’s. Seedy Metaphors According to the Sarvāstivāda crowd, a seed producing sprouts is in fact a succession of dharmas, newly created from moment to moment. Because this is not a mental dharma, there is a degradation or change in the dharma produced over time. Mental dharmas, by their nature, are clearly momentary. The exact status of physical phenomena depended on the school—but generally all dharmas were seen as conditioned. In order to explore these issues, a philosophy of the nature of temporality developed. LP is not sure that the early schools were entirely aware of all the problems they were getting into. Immediate Conditions and the Illusion of Continuity So the immediate condition is the physical condition, a mental dharma that disappears just before the next mental dharma appears. This theory is meant to explain the continuity of mental experience despite the momentariness of mental conditions. A student asked, then how long is a moment? It sounded rather ridiculous. LP agreed: “It’s ridiculous… and self-contradictory.” He feels Nāgārjuna was taking a new approach in moving towards a Zeno-like view of the moment as the temporal equivalent of the mathematical point. LP paraphrased Henri Bergson [a French philosopher who lived from 1859-1941]: We have an extraordinary tendency to spatialize our thoughts about time, and hence avoid the truly interesting issues about time. A student asked if experience should not be a sufficient proof for the nature of time. LP replied that we can say perception is illusion. Some philosophers do indeed take that approach, although he takes a dim view of philosophers who just leave it at that. It’s not enough to say that something is an illusion. We also have to indicate how the illusion arises and the significance of this illusion. Furthermore, LP does not believe that all of our perception can be an illusion, as perception is what we start out with. Dominant and Not-so-dominant Conditions This brings us to the last of the four conditions mentioned in the second verse. LP says that the most sources he’s read, and the most obvious interpretation, is that the dominant source is the direct cause of what is produced. But the complication is that Vasubandhu reports the Sarvāstivāda had a different take on it. He says that it’s the sixth hetu—the kāranahetu [check diacritics for “hetu”]—which is any and all dharmas apart from the dharma that originates. It’s possible that Nāgārjuna is commenting on a Sarvāstivāda position that, for instance, nirvā,na is a cause of a seed’s sprouting because it isn’t impeding this sprouting. However, it’s possible even Vasubandhu would dispute this interpretation. This makes LP wonder how much Nāgārjuna was actually addressing the Sarvāstivāda position. Nothing in the text of this verse contradicts the Sarvāstivāda position, but if LP thinks the dominant condition is in fact meant to be the specific cause of the event. For instance, in the chain of dependent origination, for instance, craving leads to attachment, and attachment leads to becoming. Why would the Buddha bother to say that attachment creates becoming if nothing else gets in the way? However, LP admits, “I haven’t gotten to the bottom of it myself.” Cause vs. Condition Eisel suggested that LP was unnecessarily “problematizing” the issue by discussing conditions as if
they were causes. Eisel said Nāgārjuna
was talking about conditions not causes. LP replied that Eisel’s comments
made sense. However, the first condition described in the verse—a verse
characterizing Nāgārjuna’s opponents—mentioned the cause condition. LP added that Vasubandhu would say that the fourth condition was also
causal. And Nāgārjuna is not offering an alternative
system. Besides, whether
it’s a cause or a condition, Nāgārjuna is
trying to shoot it down, so learning more about the Sautrāntika
or Sarvāstivāda positions should clarify
what Nāgārjuna’s own position is. LP called the Sarvāstivāda position “patched together from
bits and pieces” and it was “remarkably complex.” Eisel agreed that Sarvāstivāda
doesn’t make a lot of sense, but elsewhere Nāgārjuna
is disputing the causal approach. An Agreeable
Crowd LP replied that Nāgārjuna never completely repudiates any of
the opposing positions he chooses to represent. This is why, LP
said, claims that Nāgārjuna is offering a
critique of the Abhidharma are misguided. LP doesn’t believe that either Nāgārjuna or the Prajñā-pāramitā (Perfection of Wisdom) crowd had any problems with Abhidharma. They were just trying “to go beyond the wisdom of the Abhidharma,” he feels. Eisel reaffirmed his position
that there is a fundamental clash between the Abhidharma
camp and Nāgārjuna’s. LP noted this
reaffirmation, and said that this issue was sure to come up again. Unofficial notes by |
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