|
|
Mahayana Buddhist Philosophy EAS
468 L. Priestley Carr
Hall 405 Tues., Thu. 3-4 We were considering the paragraph on the second page that begins with
True Suchness. Let’s go onto the next paragraph. Now, in True Suchness,
if it is to be explained, we distinguish two aspects. What are the two? One,
that Suchness is truly empty (kong,
sunya), for it can ultimately manifest reality.
The other, that Suchness is truly non-empty, for it
has its own essence and is endowed with a nature and virtues which are
uncontaminated (wulou, anasrava). So this is true suchness. If we’re going to
talk about it at all, we’ll have to talk of it in two different ways or
aspects, as appearing to us as truly empty, and as truly nonempty. Truly empty
is no surprise. It can ultimately manifest reality, which is to say the thinglessness, the essencelessness
of everything, and also the sameness of everything in as much as nothing is
ultimately different from anything else. This is now straightforward. But
truly nonempty is new. We’ve been led to believe that reality is empty,
period. But now we’re told it’s truly non-empty, for it has its own essence
and is endowed with a nature and virtues that are uncontaminated. Now one
would have thought on the basis of what we’ve studied that the uncontaminated
dharmas, the pure ones, are just as empty as other dharmas, that all dharmas are
empty regardless of their nature. That in some sense has to be true. That
would be consistent with suchness itself being
truly empty. But it seems that there is some sense in which it can be
affirmed that suchness has its own essence, its own
nature, a svabhava, and virtues, moral qualities
that are of course uncontaminated. This is not entirely without precedent in Nagarjuna. Remember the hymn where Nagarjuna
says that tattva
can also be called svabhava,
prakrti,
and many other things as well. And there was that passage from Candrakirti, who is usually dedicated to excluding svabhava from
any accounts of reality. In this passage, he describes the naturelessness of things as the true nature of reality. All
of this is disturbing if we think there is a correct
way to describe reality and various incorrect ways. But when we recall that
there is no correct way because reality is indescribable, it follows that in
some sense, any way of talking about reality that is useful will be correct
in so far as it is useful, and incorrect if we take
that as a real or final description of what reality is. Certainly the
affirmation of all of this samsara as nirvana in
its true nature, as in its true nature being Nirvana, is from a Buddhist
standpoint to a certain extent at least a positive description of reality.
Even though the terms we use for Nirvana are mostly negative, it can be thought
of as something permanent, happy, inherently pure, and so forth. So Nagarjuna is not simply saying nothing exists, that all
of this is somehow equivalent to nothing. He’s identifying it with Nirvana. So
everything is less straightforward even than it might have seemed. It reminds
us that our experience, to the extent that we have the experience, of the
world and ourselves as empty, is not an experience of nothingness, an abyss. Madhyamakas stress that this is not what is being
suggested. It’s something more like an experience of infinity, of infinite
transparency, of everything in a sense dissolving into everything else
without in some sense ceasing to be what it is, something closer to the dharmadhatu 法界 pictured
as the Net of Indra in Huayan
philosophy than sheer nothingness. What about these virtues? One can see how
all of this in its devoidness of causes and
conditions and effects in any real and ultimate sense is describable as asamskrta, as unconditioned, and in that sense as
absolute and is identifiable as Nirvana. But when we talk about actual virtues, particular dharmas
which are somehow supposed to belong to reality as such, and not merely to be
particular bits, facets of reality that we can erroneously isolate and treat
as real—this is something different again. What are these virtues? The virtues of the Buddha. He is understood to be empty like everything else, to have realized
the emptiness of everything, to be identified with the emptiness of
everything. The nature of the Buddha is the same as the nature of the world,
without any distinct nature. While all of us exemplify emptiness, however
unconsciously, the Buddha exemplifies emptiness consciously through his
enlightenment. He embodies emptiness more explicitly than the rest of us do,
because we behave as if we were not empty, as if we were real selves
surrounded by real things, even though such things do not exist, so that
there is a kind of pseudo world of entities, in which we exist and function
as though we were selves. Whereas the Buddha, in his functioning, is
constantly expressing his enlightenment, which his constant awareness,
realization of emptiness. You may have the experience of an active will, but will that be
illusory? To the extent you think of this as a system of real things, then yes.
To the extent that you see all of this as… LINDSTROM: …empty, no. Of course, if you
see everything as empty how you’re going to function is going to be different
anyways. You’re not going to be self assertive if you realize everything is
empty. Your actions will spring from a clear awareness of emptiness, which
involves a clear idea of compassion. But for the rest of us deluded people,
action is always to some extent a product of our notion of self, of our sense
of ourselves as selves, as real and distinct. A Buddha’s actions and
compassion may outwardly look the same as ours, but a Buddha’s compassion is
the volitional realization of universal emptiness. So if the Buddha… …completely exemplifies emptiness, the realization of emptiness, which
is wisdom, bodhi, enlightenment, and compassion, then
the various qualities we think of as characteristic of the Buddha, or of any
Buddha, will be expressions of that wisdom and compassion, which is what the
Buddha is essentially, and this wisdom and compassion will also be the
essential nature of the universe. A person who realizes that nature expresses
it in wisdom and compassion. So the personal qualities of the Buddha,
patience, courage, the various admirable qualities as the Buddha, are not on
the same footing, don’t have the same status as their opposites in ordinary
people. In the Buddha, what we see as his patience is the patience of the
true nature of the universe. We are seeing a facet of reality embodied in the
Buddha. By contrast, our impatience is an expression of our delusion. Our
impatience dissolves into reality when we understand it, but the origin of
that phenomenon is different from the origin of the virtues of the Buddha in
the Buddha. The way that it’s thought of here is like the way nirvana is
thought of in early Buddhism, which initially seems to be a dharma among
other dharmas, but when one truly recognizes what
it is, it turns out to belong to a truly different order of reality altogether.
Nagarjuna’s and the Mahayana’s way of understanding
that is different from Early Buddhism’s. But there’s the same sense where Nirvana
starts out seeming to be a dharma, though an unusual one because it’s asamskrta. But then it turns out to be something
completely different in nature from the samskrta dharmas. LINDSTROM, a student comment. The
patience of the Buddha is of a completely different order from what we
experience as compassion and patience, whereas in our lack of compassion we’re
egoic, but also our construction of what
constitutes compassion is perhaps not really compassion. LP thinks that’s
right. It will be different from most of what we would identify as compassion
in ourselves. On the other hand, we are not absolutely unenlightened. There
is the nature of the mind, which is intrinsically pure,
there is that dimension of reality that we don’t, for the most part,
recognize in our consciousness, so that it can be the basis of glimmerings,
as it were, of Buddha-like compassion. Another student comment, about the
problem of thinking of consciousness as volition. We naturally think of it in
terms of the Buddha’s volition, because compassion for us, for the
most part, is a matter of volition. It does seem to correspond to that aspect of our own functioning. On the other hand, we can’t imagine the Buddha pondering, “Gosh, I wonder if I should be compassionate or not?” The Buddha is compassion, the nature of the Buddha is compassion, so it’s not something that involves a decision. It’s a matter of the nature of the Buddha expressing itself in the Buddha’s action. So in that sense it’s not volitional. It corresponds to wu wei, the philosophy of non-action. Talk the Buddha Talk, Walk the
Buddha Walk A student asked if speech and
action were combined. LP’s guess is that in this case speech is given a higher status than action, because action, while important, in itself isn’t as likely to convey illumination, and the Buddhist function is, above all, to help other people to enlightenment. The various actions are there that can help them do it, but without language, without the play of thought, and the appeal to experience that can begin to show the meaning of these actions, it’s not as helpful. No Marks Moving on: That
it is empty is because of its primordial dissociation from all the
afflictions (ranfa, klesa),
that is, it is free of the distinguishing marks of all dharmas,
since the thoughts of deluded minds are absent from it. So this is referring to the idea that reality as nirvana by nature is undefined, but it’s almost certainly referring to what LP talked about just a few minutes ago: that thought or mind is intrinsically pure. Pure Mind And this is a very ancient idea in Buddhist doctrine, going back to a sutra in the Sravakayana Tripitaka, in the Pali Canon (vol. 1, page 10 of Dialogues of the Buddha), that says the mind, citta, is inherently pure and it has adventitious afflictions or defilements, klesas. The klesas don’t belong to it inherently, they get connected inadvertently, as it were. So if true suchness is the one mind, then the purity of true suchness is also the purity of the one mind. And so suchness as the one mind in its true nature is primordially dissociated from all of the afflictions, from all of the qualities and tendencies of mind that get us into trouble. That “it is free of the distinguishing marks of all dharmas” could be lakshana or amitta, since the thoughts of deluded minds are absent from it. We superimpose “thinghood” on all of this and the reality is not essentially affected by that. True Suchness
is neither Existence nor Nonexistence It
is to be understood that the nature of True Suchness
is neither existence (youxiang) nor
non-existence (wuxiang), neither not
existence nor not non-existence, not both existence and non-existence,
neither unity nor diversity, neither not unity nor not diversity, and not
both unity and diversity: to state it generally, it is said to be empty
because it is dissociated from all the distinctions made in thought by all
sentient beings with their deluded minds, for apart from their deluded minds
there is really nothing of which it could be empty. So this is pretty well straight Madhyamaka. For those of you who know Chinese you notice that existence is youxiang, non-existence is wuxiang, and the expressions can be interpreted as “having a mark” and “lacking a mark,” or “having a characteristic” and “lacking a characteristic,” which gets us more or less to the same point in any case. But it is intriguing that the way in which abstract nouns are translated into Chinese during the time of these works creates an ambiguity—as seen in the use of xiang. For instance, “blueness” is the characteristic of blue as it adheres in something, something that is blue has the characteristic of blueness. But there are times when one wants to distinguish between blueness and blue as a characteristic, and that is not easily done in these Chinese translations and works of this time. So Hakeda translates it as “mark,” Suzuki from another version translates it the way I have. I think this is more likely but either will work. Empty of What??? “…it is said to be empty because it is dissociated from all the distinctions made in thought by all sentient beings with their deluded minds, for apart from their deluded minds there is really nothing of which it could be empty.” There isn’t anything real of which it could be empty, because anything real is part of the reality and isn’t a thing of which anything could be empty—so it is the illusory emptiness that reality is empty of. And of course reality, if we think of it as a thing, becomes another thing that is empty. And by now you should be getting pretty good at this play of concepts of reality and illusory things. Empty Because It’s Nonempty That
it is empty is because it has been shown that the essence of dharmas is empty, without delusion, and so the true mind
is eternal, constant, unchanging, and filled with the pure dharmas; therefore it is said to be non-empty. And there
are no marks in it to be grasped, for without the objects of thought, it is
associated only with realization (zheng, abhisamaya). LP thinks it’s interesting how the non-emptiness of pure suchness is expressed here. It’s nonempty because it’s been shown that the essence of dharmas is nonempty. STERK: It’s non-empty because it is empty. The essence of dharmas
is true suchness, I think. So it’s because the
essence of dharmas is empty, without delusion, so
the true mind is eternal, constant, unchanging. All of this can be expressed
negatively. It’s devoid of any things which could pass away or arise, that
could change, that could suffer alteration. But all
of this is basically not different from saying reality is nirvana. It’s
nirvana that is eternal, constant, unchanging. It’s only with this statement, it’s filled with the pure dharmas,
that we have something that goes beyond what we find in Nagarjuna’s
hymn. That can be understood as the qualities of the Buddha being from one
standpoint dharmas—facets of reality that we
isolate and regard as having a svabhava—but on the
other hand, their nature in the Buddha is different from our virtues and
vices, our kindness before enlightenment has a dimension of selfishness. Our
indifference and cruelty will proceed completely from our delusion, our belief
in self, craving, so that conventionally a distinction can be made between
two kinds of human qualities. And the human qualities that belong to the
Buddha, that inhere in the nature of the Buddha can then be conventionally—and
all of this has to be conventional—ascribed to reality itself. Some will find
this useful, others will find it a hindrance. LINDSTROM: Presenting the
Defilements A student asked would it be
possible for him (the student) not to present those qualities to the
universe. How about looking at it this way: a Buddha looking at us in one sense sees nothing but purity, doesn’t see any real defilements, is able to see how the nasty qualities in us are in an obscured form the same pure transparent reality that everything else is. For us they’re not like that because we’re deluded, and if we were not deluded then we would not in fact have those obscured mystical manifestations of universal compassion. Compassion Obscured And it seems to LP that the cruelty of someone who enjoys killing is a pretty obscure manifestation of universal compassion, but it is possible to see that as compassion expressed in what for us seems like an extremely distorted form. LP said he did not claim to be able to have the ability to see this. STERK: This is related to an interesting phenomenon noticed in many
traditions. If you consider a person with strengths and weaknesses, virtues
and vices, what you find is that the virtues and the vices are the same
qualities in the person, but in the one case functioning with comparatively
little egotism, and in the other case functioning with a great deal of
egotism. A person with nasty qualities may attain enlightenment, and has the
same qualities, but there is a change in the way the basic qualities
function. LINDSTROM: Functional Change What LP is thinking of is not the
change in our view of these qualities but in the change in which these basic
qualities function. If you think of somebody who’s vengeful, and you know is
absolutely determined to cause harm to another person because of some
perceived injury, this person is resourceful in his pursuit of the supposed
victimizer, and directs his energy at harming this other person. But is this person wakes up, gets
over it, realizes that revenge is absolutely stupid, then those same
qualities are still there but work in the service of compassion. True Suchness
as Realization Pressing on: “And there are no marks in it to
be grasped, for without the objects of thought, it is associated only with
realization (zheng 證, abhisamaya).” Time is pressing on. It’s associated only with realization, not with
thought, with vikalpa,
the various constructions that we produce with our sense that there are real
distinct things. True suchness as associated with
realization, where zheng
seems to be the standard translation for the Sanskrit for realization or
intuitive awareness. There’s a famous commentary on the 8000 Perfection of Wisdom
sutra. The title of that is a paraphrase. The words in the title are “perfection”
and “ornament”, where an ornament is something that makes complete. The last
part of the title is Wisdom, prajna, intuitiveness,
so the wisdom that is complete. As for the mind of samsara,
on the basis of the tathatagarbha, there is the
mind that arises and perishes. Shengmie 生滅 is how samsara is
translated, and also “arises and perishes”. And it exists on the basis of the
tathatagarba, which is true suchness,
inherent enlightenment as in some sense at the core of our being. It’s our Buddha
nature, it’s the enlightenment which is intrinsic in
all of our awareness and all that we are. What are described as the unarisen and imperishable and as the arising and
perishing are in harmony, neither the same nor different. This is called the alaya consciousness The unarisen and imperishable is of course
nirvana. The arising and perishing is samsara. Nirvana and samsara are in harmony; they are
neither the same nor different in the sense that samsara
is not in all senses the same as nirvana because it is after all nirvana misperceived,
and samsara for human beings consists of people
like us that are malfunctioning because of our misperception of the nirvana
which surrounds us and which we are. LINDSTROM: A student asked a question
about why we wouldn’t be perceiving this since we’re
not “really” malfunctioning. From a practical standpoint we are. Ultimately we’re neither malfunctioning or well-functioning, or functioning at all. STERK: This is called the alaya consciousness. Like
tathatagarba, this occurs in the Lankavatara sutra and is taken up by the Yogacara school. We’ll talk about what this idea is in
the Yogacara, not necessarily the same as here or
the Lankavatara. It’s usually translated as
storehouse. It’s the consciousness that contains all of the potentialities
for all of our experiences and actually of all sentient beings’ experiences. This consciousness has two aspects that
can encompass all dharmas and produce all dharmas. What are the two? The first is the aspect of
enlightenment. The second is the aspect of nonenlightenment. And the text then goes on to discuss enlightenment and nonenlightenment, but in very general terms we can see
the aspect of enlightenment as encompassing all dharmas,
as the nature of all dharmas, and the nature of all
dharmas is reflected in enlightenment in the
consciousness of any enlightened person. It can perhaps be said to produce
all dharmas, though this needs some thought, in the
sense that as the true nature of all dharmas it is
what constitutes them as anything at all to the extent that they are anything
real. The aspect of nonenlightenment encompasses
all dharmas, because our unenlightened minds take
in everything as seeming existences in seeming relationships. And it produces
all dharmas in the sense that it generates dharmas as illusory entities. But also in the sense that
it is the aspect of our mind through which karma can function to produce
further experience, further lives. That observation gets right into Yogacara, which we’ll talk about next time. Unofficial notes by Darryl Sterk |
|
|
|
|
|