From: KLEINSCHMIDT@MCCLB0.MED.NYU.EDU
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Attack on Nagarjuna reduced from wild to mild
Date: 30 Jul 92 17:56:03 GMT
Organization: ----

Attack on Nagarjuna reduced from wild to mild.

Madhyamaka Buddhist soteriology may have worked for me.  As I said in my 
postscript to "Wild attack on Nagarjuna" a few days ago, after struggling 
nonstop for several hours trying to understand some of the key ideas of 
Madhyamaka thought, I all of a sudden had a deeper insight into what 
Nagarjuna and his followers may have been trying to say.  In this posting, 
I'm trying to explain what this insight was.

For some years now, I have accepted the idea of absence of self in the 
person (the original Nikaya Buddhism doctrine of anatta).  I have examined 
this notion in meditation, and it does seem to be true to me.  The Buddha 
deserves to be included in the pantheon of great thinkers for this idea 
alone.  Before I did this investigation, my naive sense of self was that of 
something very close and seemingly concrete whereas all the other goings on 
(dharmas) in my consciousness seemed more distant, mere outcroppings or 
appendages to this seemingly solid and central self.  Upon close inspection 
this sense of self evaporated more and more until a state arose in which it 
practically was absent.  What was left was a quiet mind, with little moving 
in it, but a mind that seemed to be very spacious or filled with space.  Or 
rather, the primary experience was one of clear, alert space within which 
the mind was an object.  I like to call this clear space "pure awareness".  
The absense of self in such a quiet state was quite convincing.

As to the residual events of consciousness arising (faint and fleeting 
images, distant inner voices, external noises, bodily feelings, 
propioreceptive input, etc.), these things seemed to be quite incidental 
and uninteresting, evanescent wisps passing through this clear space.  
Consequently, it seemed absurd to assign much solid reality to these 
residual dharmas and to posit the idea of svabhava (self-nature, own-being, 
independent existence, existing through its own power rather than that of 
another thing) possessed by these dharmas, as did the Buddhist abhidharma 
philosophers against whom Nagarjuna reacted.  To reiterate, the issue of 
whether there is a personal self or not, seemed extremely interesting and 
important to me.  However, more peripheral things such as residual 
conscious events (call them second class dharmas) occurring in a state of 
stable quiet meditation, and even more so, external things that existed 
entirely independently of me (such as a tree on the grounds outside of my 
window - things that are also called dharmas by the abhidharma people), 
seemed to be of an entirely different character than the cluster of dharmas 
making up a personal self.  They seemed to be much more objective, 
thinglike, impersonal.  Hence, I thought that it was absurd to put these 
things into the same class as our well-known, ever-cherished (but illusory) 
personal self.

Combine this skeptical attitude toward the Buddhist levelling of what to me 
seemed to be clearcut differences between subject (personal self) and 
external objects, with my overall rejection of the theoretical stance of 
abhidharma Buddhists to carve up all reality (not just physical reality) 
into presumably more or less equivalent dharmas (to me, a rather nebulous 
category), and you will see how my critical attitude toward the Madhyamaka 
arose.  Not only did I think that these basic premises were untenable but I 
further disagreed with their practice of making these tough-to-delineate 
entities (dharmas) objects of logic, i.e. setting up syllogism-like 
arguments and derive proofs of existence or non-existence from them.  I 
explained that more extensively (although perhaps in a somewhat muddled 
way) in my long posting "Wild attack on Nagarjuna".  I still feel that the 
pseudo-logical quality of the Madhyamaka way of reasoning is a very serious 
problem.

Anyway, this was the starting point for my diatribe.  I found the practice 
of logically or ontologically atomizing the entire universe (internal, i.e. 
consciously experienced, as well as external, i.e. physical and independent 
of persons) into qualitatively equivalent dharmas ludicrous.  I still feel 
that way, from an objective point of view, and I bet everyone here would 
have the same feeling.  After I had finished writing and editing my 
article, I relaxed my attitude of a total unacceptability of the concept of 
dharmas for a moment and thought "Well, what if for a moment I accept the 
notion of dharmas and assume that all the dharmas are alike and I pay some 
more attention to those previously uninteresting residual dharmas."

When I did that, I realized that unwittingly I actually still attributed to 
these "second-class" dharmas a certain degree of substantiality and 
independence, i.e. a kind of concrete self-nature.  This made me understand 
how the non-Madhyamaka abhidharma psychologists had been led to postulate 
svabhava in all dharmas.  Further, when I then adopted Nagarjuna's 
viewpoint of refuting svabhava in the dharmas, and took a closer look at 
these dharmas, his viewpoint all of a sudden made sense.  The naively 
imputed solidity in these residual dharmas evaporated just as it had, so 
many times before, for the sense of "personal self", and they became 
completely transparent, evanescent, insubstantial, almost non-existent.  
Yet the immediate experience of space-like pure awareness was still there, 
completely unchanged and unchangeable.  There was nothing substantial and 
individual there anywhere, and yet there was one thing very clear and 
concrete there, i.e. pure awareness, the apparent ground of all 
consciousness.

When I realized the emptiness of these residual dharmas, it felt as if the 
floor had suddenly dropped a foot.  Simultaneously, an intuition arose of 
the enormous implications of such a viewpoint.  Most of our experience, 
thoughts and notions would be completely empty, in the sense of having no 
true content or independent existence, only fleetingly coming into 
existence through interdependent causation.  The only thing that really 
exists then is just this chain of antecedents and consequents.  The 
individual packets in this chain (i.e. these would be the dharmas) cannot 
be thought of as having any true existence.  They would be as insubstantial 
as the logic state of a computer as it goes through a step in executing a 
program.

I basically accept Nagarjuna's notion of conventional and ultimate truths.  
Conventional truths are just that: the conventions, mores, established 
practices of language and social interaction in a given culture, the whole 
artifact of a given culturally defined version of samsara (e.g. our North 
American hell).  These truths one has to accept but one doesn't have to be 
deluded by them (being deluded by them is the definition of living in 
samsara).  The important thing is whether one can rise to the level of 
ultimate truth, i.e. the true reality.

I realized that if one sees the truth of the emptiness of all dharmas, the 
mind all of a sudden becomes very clear and supple.  It is pervaded only by 
space-like pure awareness and there is no more true division into subject 
and object.  That duality simply disappears.  There is then a lucidity, a 
clear seeing, an imperturbability, a spontaneous and natural functioning.  
Most importantly, there is then a capacity for simultaneously perceiving 
both ultimate truth and conventional truth.  I.e. one can go through the 
world and vote, pay taxes, yell at one's kid, go through a romance, and all 
the rest of the conventional things, and yet see them all as empty even 
while one despises or enjoys them (all the while seeing the aversion or 
attraction also as empty).

All of this came in one surprising intuition, with all the pieces in place, 
and I'm just teasing them apart now in a linear, sequential, discursive 
fashion.  In other words, I suddenly found myself in substantial accord 
with Nagarjuna, or so it seems.  Moreover, all of the ideas discussed above 
formed one consistent whole in which everything was logically 
interconnected.

The scientist in me who would like to construct an objective theory of 
mental functioning, a theory that would give rise to testable predictions 
and suggest reproducable experiments, still is severely critical of the 
basic assumptions in Nagarjuna's system and of his technique of 
argumentation.  But maybe his system should not be viewed as an objective 
scientific theory (that's the way I looked at it).  Maybe it should be 
viewed as a vehicle for liberation.  It may eventually turn out that _all_ 
theories of mind are more or less metaphorical.  I increasingly get that 
impression from the ones that are being cooked up presently, e.g. looking 
at cognitive models, neural network models, artificial intelligence 
approaches, perceptual filter models, Wiener analysis approaches etc. etc.  
Maybe all these metaphors are more or less equivalent, including all the 
ancient ones (e.g. Nagarjuna).  None of them may be any closer to the truth 
than any other.  Maybe the entire notion of an objective truth about the 
mind that can be rigorously formulated in a self-consistent theory is 
mistaken.  

If by contrast Nagarjuna's system is viewed as a path to liberation, then 
it doesn't have to be "correct" or "true".  The only thing that counts is 
whether it works.  In my case, something worked for me.  I suddenly had an 
experience of a totally different way of looking at the world.  And when I 
try to verbalize it as I do now, it seems as if most of the cryptic and 
seemingly paradoxical descriptions of Nagarjuna's school are quite 
appropriate.  E.g. the world can truly be experienced as empty but since it 
is being experienced within an intensely real inner space of pure 
awareness, i.e. since there is still something there, closer than one's 
skin, this is not the same as nihilism.  Also, there is a single unity of 
experience, not a duality of subject and object.  There is a very clear, 
natural, uncluttered mind, there is nothing there that needs to be grasped 
at or defended as belonging to a self.  There is no self.

Moreover, there is a simultaneous presence of ultimate and conventional 
reality.  Maybe that is what Nagarjuna meant by the identity of samsara and 
nirvana.  It further makes sense to equate samsara/nirvana with 
pratityasamutpada, as he did.  Finally, the statement makes sense that in 
the realization of emptiness enlightenment is realized.  I did indeed feel 
enlighted for a brief time.  A light went on inside.  I saw that these 
ideas have vast implications and could turn one's world upside down.  My 
mind was very clear and peaceful and stood in awe of this experience.  
Also, because of this clarity and simplicity of mind and my temporary 
ejection from the ordinary self-centered chaos of my mind, I could see the 
world clearly and objectively.  I felt as if I was outside of my ordinary 
skin, and I could relate to the world non-defensively and compassionately.  
Finally, I could see how in such a state the well-known and much discussed 
bodhisattva virtues would arise naturally.  In other words, it seems 
plausible to me now that by realizing the truth of emptiness, liberation is 
attained which is exactly what Nagarjuna claimed.

So I have revised my judgment on Nagarjuna and the Madhyamaka.  This 
intellectual approach may indeed be a vehicle to enlightenment for 
intellectually inclined people.  I believe now that I was missing the whole 
point of the Madhyamaka system.  Needless to say, I need to verify my 
interpretation now.  This may not be an easy matter.  I wonder if this 
whole argument made any sense to anyone on the net, and if anybody has a 
similar view.

There was another interesting thing that I learned.  I would still be in my 
state of fussing and fuming over this "Madhyamaka BS", rejecting it on 
scientific grounds and getting nowhere if I hadn't decided, just for the 
hell of it, to accept and start to think through the implications of this 
set of ideas, on their own terms, flawed as those may be.  This "flawed" 
vehicle then propelled me to a point of intuitive understanding that seems 
extraordinarily important to me now but that I probably would not have 
reached through my scientific critique.

I used to cherish my intellectual independence, and for the past several 
years felt suspended in a limbo, in an intellectual crisis of a sort.  I 
had realized the staggering amount of indoctrination and brainwashing that 
we are exposed to as we grow up and wander through life; this is the major 
cause of our pitiful state of living in samsara.  Being highly sensitized 
to this, I tried to understand my mind without any crutches, without any 
support from any preexisting conceptual system.  I thought, I will start 
from ground zero, and through meditation study my mind on its own terms, in 
its own unadulterated state, uninfluenced by anyone else's theories.  I 
have become increasingly convinced that this is impossible; one can't 
escape brainwashing, be it gross or subtle.  I certainly got nowhere, and 
this has been driving me crazy.  Now I think that the solution may be to 
accept some degree of indoctrination (a flawed vehicle), go along with it, 
hopefully get to a point of a deeper understanding of one's mind, and then 
purify the mind from the inside out.

To state this differently, if I hadn't said to Nagarjuna "OK, I will act 
like a sheep, and I will think the way you want me to think, just for now", 
I wouldn't have had the insight that I did indeed derive.  Miraculously, 
Nagarjuna's ancient vehicle got me somewhere.  I have read a lot of 
expositions on emptiness, and I used to sneer at the plodding, mechanical 
prescriptions of how one is supposed to meditate on emptiness, step by step 
("Here, do this, and when you have arrived at the "correct" understanding 
of this stage, then do that, and after that stage, "correct" understanding 
provided, do that, etc. etc.").  These prescriptions haven't changed a bit 
from the days of Tsongkhapa to the days of the 14th Dalai Lama; if you've 
seen one of these treatments, you've seen them all.  I used to take this as 
evidence of lack of originality and of a mere regurgitation of arbitrary 
doctrines invented by ancient, unassailable authorities.  I feel somewhat 
chastened now, thinking that these meditation schemes may not at all be 
like communist indoctrination manuals but rather may be effective upaya.

Enough of all this.

Jochen
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern