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Mahāyāna Buddhist Philosophy-Class Notes EAS
468 L. Priestley Carr
Hall 405 Tues., Thu. 3-4 One other
commentary that has survived in Chinese is by “Pingala”.
Kumarajiva says that this commentary, which he
translated to go along with the verses of Nagarjuna,
is by “Blue Eye” Qingmu (Chingmu)
青目. One of Kumarajiva’s pupils
explained in the introduction to the translation that the original name in
Sanskrit was (transliterating the Chinese) Bian Jie-luo or, in a different version, Bian
Luo-jie. Scholars wonder at what Sanskrit this
could be a transliteration of. Pingala is the best
guess, meaning tawny. 青can mean dark blue eyes, but not tawny. Robinson thinks
the character for blue was the mistake for pure 清, which would give the name
Pure Eye, or Vimilaksana. This is ingenious but
when you go to the reconstructions of ancient Chinese pronunciation, Bian (modern Mandarin) ended in “n”, not “m” as we would
expect if it was translating “Vimilaksana”.
There were syllables ending in “m” available. The Chung Lun 中論 (Discourse on the Middle) is almost the same as the Akutobhaya. Kumarajiva apparently was not happy with this commentary
but he had nothing better to offer. Perhaps he "modified" it as he
was translating it. According to Seyfort Ruegg, the last part of the Buddhapalita
commentary is also remarkably like the Akutobhaya (the earlier parts
are quite different). Perhaps Buddhapalita started
out with the Akutobhaya,
modifying as he went along, but he never got finished, and so sections of Akutobhaya-like
commentary were attached to his name. Or, perhaps the last part got lost and
someone tacked on the Akutobhaya.
This is wildly speculative, but it’s a possibility for consideration. These
similarities should not surprise us overly much: commentators were happy to
build on earlier commentators in many cases. The more controversial the
verses, the more dissent and variety in the commentaries. Chapter 18 The Self Verse 1 The aggregates are
the constituents of our beings as individuals, or at least the basis for our
recognition of ourselves and others as persons. They
consist of 1) matter/physical body, 2) feeling (pleasant, unpleasant,
neutral), 3) perception/ideation (reflecting different aspects of the meaning
of the term), 4) mental forces/volition and other kinds of dispositions,
emotions, the dynamic part of our mental being, and, lastly, 5) consciousness.
What we have here is a standard Buddhist critique of the self as something
identical or not with the aggregates. If it were the aggregates, it would
disappear from moment to moment, and, for most ancient Indian prejudices, a
changing self was not a self. If it were not the aggregates, then you would
not be able to identify the self with such and such a body, feelings, etc. For
many of the early Buddhists, and for all of the Mahayanists, the fact that
you can't identify the self with the aggregates and that you cannot
differentiate the self from the aggregates is evidence of its unreality. The Pudgalavadins thought that the self was mysterious; it
was not just the aggregates, but also not different from them. There was thus
a substantial number of Buddhists at the time who thought the self was “real”.
Doctrine of non-self aside, the Pudgalavadins were
numerous and thought they were just as Buddhist as the rest. The argument
here (18:1) is not a specifically Mahayana argument. All Buddhists at the
time—including Pudgalavadins (who would draw
different conclusions)—would have been able to accept it. Verse 2 This again is
pretty standard. If there’s no self, then there’s no basis for possession,
acquisition, craving, hence no basis for the source of suffering. All you
need to do to bring suffering to an end is to accept that fact. With no self
and nothing pertaining to it, there cannot be any idea of I
or mine. There can be no possessiveness or egocentricity. The Buddhist criticism
of other ancient Buddhist schools of philosophy/religion, or of any religion
with an ethical component that insists upon a “self” or a “soul”, is that the real problem lies in the assumption that
the self is real. A main goal of religion is surely to reduce or transform
selfishness; but for the Buddhists it is the attachment to the idea of a self
that provides a basis for the production of suffering. For the Pudgalavadins, on the other hand, the self real but essentially
not definable, not determinate. This group also thought that their interpretation
also led to the extinction of suffering and the abandonment of selfishness. Verse 3 Priestley thinks,
following Candrakirti, that this verse is a
response to an implicit opponent, who said something like: “You say that
there is freedom from I and mine, so there must be a self that is free of
these.” This verse is on this reading a response saying, “A person without I
and mine isn’t a person at all, he or she doesn’t exist. Anyone who sees
someone with any idea of I or mine doesn’t see correctly, doesn’t see the
reality of the situation.” This reasoning would have been acceptable to all
except for the Pudgalavadins. Clarification: when Nagarjuna says that the one without mine and I doesn’t
exist, it doesn’t mean we cannot talk in terms of someone free from these I
and mine, it doesn’t mean that there’s an empty chair where the person is
supposed to be claiming not to have I and mine; it means rather that there is
no real person there, no entity with the same status as the dharmas (their
status is that they have independent, real existence). What we call “persons”
are in some way related to or dependent on the aggregates, and “person"
and "self" are ultimately just labels to refer to a complex and
constantly changing system. Why is Nagarjuna presenting all this? Who would not agree with
him thus far? Perhaps this chapter is especially directed at the Pudgalavadins. They would not say that just because a
person lacks I and mine that person does not exist.
They would say such a person does exist, neither different from nor identical
to the aggregates. At any rate, Nagarjuna seems to
be facing “in several directions”, dealing with a diverse audience. Later in
this chapter, when Nagarjuna asserts that the
aggregates do not exist, we will be dealing with doctrines that only the Madhyamikans would have accepted. One more reason that Nagarjuna may have had the Pudgalavada
in mind is that he deals with the metaphor of fire and fuel in several
places. This metaphor was a favorite among the Pudgalavadins
for explaining the relationship between the self and the aggregates. Verse 4 This is still
pretty standard. Externally and internally=with reference to other supposed
selves and with reference to oneself. (Or: externally, with reference to dharmas in
general). Appropriation is one of the factors in the 12-fold dependent
origination. Upadana
has the tone of taking possession of something that doesn't really belong to
you. We appropriate the 5 aggregates by identifying them with ourselves, or
feeling they belong to us (my body, my feelings, etc.). This appropriation,
this grasping in our awareness of the 5 aggregates and of anything that
relates to them, is what keeps us going on the cycle of death and rebirth.
However, upadana
also is used for what Aristotle would call the material cause. The wood is
the material cause of the desk. The thing made out of a material that takes
on a certain shape has “appropriated” the material. So the 5 aggregates are upadana in the
sense that they are what we hold onto, what we seize, as a self. They are,
however, also the constituents of what seems like a self but really isn’t a
self. Another point is that the support of anything can be called upadana. The
fuel for a fire can be called updana. The fire appropriates the fuel for its support.
This makes fire and fuel a great way of visualizing the relationship between
the apparent self and the aggregates. It serves the Pudgalavadins
very well, who say that the fire and fuel are not the same thing but are also
not separable; you can’t have the self without the aggregates. The fire is
not made of the fuel as a cart is made of its components (a very common image
for other schools, not for the Pudgalavadins, who
were more fond of the fire and fuel image), but yet you cannot get the fire
without the fuel. The process of dying and being reborn can then be thought
of as putting down the old lot of aggregates and picking up a new lot of
aggregates. The contrast the Pudgalavadins would draw is between a) a cart that exists
conventionally through what to it is the other nature of its constituents,
the material dharmas,
where there’s nothing there really besides the dharmas, and b) the fire, where
you have something that does exist as a reality and yet is inseparable from
the fuel that supports it. Similarly, for them the reality of the fire is
somehow beyond the aggregates yet not separable from them; there are two real
things existing in an indeterminate relationship with each other. This kind
of indeterminate relationship for Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu is evidence of unreality. An interesting area
is what the force of all these examples is. Do arguments from analogy have
any power at all? They cannot prove a point, but they can serve as an
illustration, as a model (like the several ways time can be spatialized—images give us a way to think about
abstractions). Verse 5 Here we enter a
different area, which non-Madhyamikas would not
accept. “Deeds” is karma, though
not just any ones. Only volitional, voluntary deeds that have some moral
significance (which most volitional activity does) count as karma. Afflictions are that mass of various
attitudes and tendencies which are conducive to wrong deeds, the deeds that
bring unfortunate consequences. When there is no longer karma and the afflictions klesas that lead to karma,
then there is release from suffering and rebirth. Deeds and afflictions are
from imaginings vikalpa.
It’s a little odd to have this word in the plural, but it’s referred to with
a plural pronoun in the following line. Imaginings is not a particularly
clear translation. Perhaps “constructive imagination” would be better. It
seems to be the generation of apparent entities which become the basis of
afflictions, the misguided attitudes, etc. that lead us to bad karma. Those are from
differentiations, from prapanca.
This is a very interesting verse, one of the few times that Nagarjuna talks about anything like this. Perhaps it’s
not all that clear. We’re going based on Candrakirti’s
explanation, which is thankfully reasonably clear. He explains the
imaginings—especially the idea of the self and what pertains to it—as those
misconceptions that generate suffering. The imaginings probably include svabhavas. For
“differentiation”, Candrakirti just gives a list of
pairs of things like agent and action, knower and known. What Candrakirti thinks imaginings are is the recognition of
diversity and especially dyadic relationships in this whole vast continuum in
which we find ourselves and of which we are a part. When there is emptiness,
differentiation vanishes or ceases. Nagarjuna is
working towards the vanishing of differentiation, the vanishing even of the
basis (svabhava)
for notions like self and not-self and the dharmas. |
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