Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Nature
DOUGLAS S. DUCKWORTH
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Duckworth, Douglas S., 1971– author.
Title: Tibetan Buddhist philosophy of mind and nature / by Douglas S. Duckworth. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018010436 | ISBN 9780190883959 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190883973 (epub) | ISBN 9780190883980 (online resource)
Subjects: LCSH: Buddhist philosophy. | Buddhism—China—Tibet Autonomous Region—Doctrines. | Madhyamika (Buddhism)
Classification: LCC B162.D83 2019 | DDC 181/.043923—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018010436
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
For my dear mother and mothers everywhere
Acknowledgments
Those who have contributed to this book are too numerous to enumerate. Yet I would like to acknowledge some of them here. A big thanks goes to the late Aku Rapkyé, Chökyi Nyima Rinpoché, Drupön Thinley Ningpo, Jeffrey Hopkins, Khenpo Sherap Dorjé, Khenpo Tsültrim Dargyé, Thrangu Rinpoché, and Tulku Nyima Gyeltsen for teaching me about topics in this book and more. Also, feedback on drafts of this book were invaluable, including the input of Marcus Bingenheimer, José Cabezón, George Cardona, David Carpenter, Ryan Conlon, Catherine Dalton, Thomas Doctor, Georges Dreyfus, Jay Garfield, Jeffrey Hopkins, Gerd Klintschar, Karin Meyers, Gail Stenstad, Rolf Truhitte, and Philippe Turenne. I wish to thank them all. Paul Hackett’s Buddhist Canon’s Research Database has also been a wonderful resource for my work. Elizabeth Callahan and Marcus Perman also assisted me in locating Tibetan texts. Research for this book was enabled by a Humanities and Arts Research Program Grant, as well as a College of Liberal Arts Research Award, both from Temple University.
Introduction
This book is a thematic survey of Tibetan Buddhist thought. It provides a theoretic framework to introduce a wide range of intersecting ideas. With many informed studies and translations of Tibetan traditions now available in English, I feel that the time is right to survey the intellectual terrain of Tibetan Buddhist thought with a wide-angle lens. What follows is my attempt to provide this lens and to map the terrain both descriptively and creatively. I do not base my framework around particular schools or sectarian traditions, but attempt to focus on issues and themes that structure the philosophical conversations within and among the schools. While doing so, I draw freely from European and American philosophical traditions to engage with and elaborate upon Buddhist thought and practice in Tibet. A central theme of Tibetan philosophy I draw out is the intertwining of mind, language, and world.
Understanding Buddhism in India is fundamental to understanding Buddhism in Tibet. Tibetan Buddhists played an essential role in preserving Indian Buddhist culture, not only by carrying on the traditions of study and practice from India into the present, long after their demise in India, but also by preserving Indian Buddhist texts in translation. Most Buddhist texts of the mature era of Indian Buddhist literature (fifth to eleventh centuries) are no longer extant in any language other than in Tibetan translation. Buddhist texts and traditions entered the Tibetan plateau from India from the eighth to eleventh centuries, just before living Buddhist traditions died out on the Indian subcontinent under the weight of Muslim incursions. After the eleventh century, Buddhist monastic institutions in India were left in rubbles, and Buddhist popular traditions came to be assimilated into Hindu traditions.
TibetanBuddhistPhilosophyofMindandNature. Douglas S. Duckworth, Oxford University Press (2019). © Douglas S. Duckworth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190883959.003.0001
Given the importance of the Indian subcontinent for Tibetan Buddhism, I begin with a fair amount of discussion of Indian sources. The first chapter begins by looking to Nāgārjuna, an influential second-century Indian Buddhist thinker, and his articulation of emptiness and interrelation. Emptiness is the ultimate truth in Mahāyāna Buddhism: the truth which, when known, sets you free. I highlight how the ultimate truth in Mahāyāna Buddhism comes to be interpreted along two main lines: as indicative of an inconceivable reality or as an absence of intrinsic nature. The former interpretation characterizes what comes to be known as “MindOnly” in Tibet (or Yogācāra), while the latter characterizes Madhyamaka, “the Middle Way.” These two traditions represent competing interpretations of the ultimate truth and the Perfection of Wisdom (prajñāpāramitā) Sūtras. Further, Tibetans hold Mind-Only and Madhyamaka to represent two main schools of interpretation elucidated within the two “great chariot traditions” (shing rta chen po) of Mahāyāna Buddhism. While Tibetans use these terms to characterize distinct strands of interpretation of the meaning of the Buddha’s message, we should keep in mind that these terms do not refer to individual schools or bounded canons of texts.
Also, what Tibetans refer to by the terms “Middle Way” and “MindOnly” can be quite different, with usages that are highly charged within specific contexts of sectarian traditions and preferred interpretations of one’s own school. In order to dislodge these terms from a single tradition’s interpretive claims, for the purposes of this book I will use them differently. In my usage, “Mind-Only” highlights a particular phenomenological style of interpretation and orientation to contemplative practice. I use Madhyamaka, “the Middle Way,” to highlight a critical orientation and deconstructive ontology. These terms, and the “schools” associated with them, are highly contested and polysemic, yet I appropriate them as a heuristic and to convey an intimate relationship between two intertwined trajectories of interpretation. I feel that the problems I create by continuing to use these terms, with the distinctive meanings I have assigned them, are less severe than the problems of avoiding them altogether or narrowly constraining them to definitions tied into a single sectarian tradition’s interpretation.
With the interplay of these two trajectories I attempt to sustain a tension between two contrasting readings of Buddhist thought, as both are viable and widely attested interpretations of Mahāyāna Buddhist literature and practice. One reading is commonly found in the works of academic philosophers attuned to ontological analyses and the Madhyamaka
tradition of the Geluk (dge lugs) school of Tibetan Buddhism. Another interpretation that I keep in play is a phenomenological reading that appeals to the irreducibility and inexpressibility of the lived world as experienced. I use “phenomenology” to represent this latter trajectory of interpretation, and while it may not be a perfect fit, the style of doing philosophy in phenomenological traditions clearly resonates here, and certainly shares a family resemblance with an important dimension of Mind-Only, which I shall highlight in chapter 1.
The relationship between these two orientations, of Madhyamaka and Mind-Only, or ontology and phenomenology, reiterates some of the problems and popular associations of a contrast between stereotypical “analytic” and “continental” ways of doing philosophy. That is, these two modalities are imperfect and simplistic caricatures of a complex and internally diverse relation of ideas. I take them to be co-constituted, like the first- and third-person perspectives on the world and the methodologies that grow out of these ways of reflection. In other words, what I characterize as ontological and phenomenological orientations are two dimensions of how a single individual relates to what is meaningful and true.
In chapter 2 I consider the ways that Madhyamaka and Mind-Only can be seen to offer distinct depictions of the world, framed in terms of a relationship between ontology and phenomenology. I suggest that the perspectives offered by ontology and phenomenology can be understood as taking their starting points in object-oriented and subject-oriented modes of inquiry, respectively. Mind-Only highlights the subjective orientations to a world; Madhyamaka undermines the finality of any object-ive world picture by highlighting the contingency of all object-ifying constructions. I show how these perspectives are mutually entailed, and thus can be seen to share a common ground.
I have struggled with how to convey these two orientations, for “Madhyamaka” and “Mind-Only,” along with its closely allied “Yogācāra,” are problematic and polysemic terms. Another alternative I considered was to represent the two orientations I aim to convey exclusively with the terms “ontology” and “phenomenology.” Yet since this book is primarily rooted in Buddhist thought, rather than discuss Buddhist ideas solely in foreign terms imported from another culture, I opted to keep Buddhist terminology. Also, “phenomenology” is just as polysemic as Yogācāra, so it does not solve the dilemma in the end. I have also thought about this issue with another pair of terms, “constructivism” and “realism.” While these terms are relevant to this topic, they both fall into ontological orientations,
and both trajectories of thought I am concerned with participate in each side of a constructivist-realist dichotomy; they are not actually distinct, but intertwined. For these reasons, rather than introduce a neologism, I continue to use “Madhyamaka” and “Mind-Only,” following the Tibetans, to flag two orientations of interpretation that are entangled in such a way that each one supplements the other.
After aligning the axis of this book around these two orientations, in the next three chapters, I touch on mind, language, and world as a loose thematic framework. I begin with a theory of mind and a closely paired notion— self- awareness ( svasa ṃ vedana )— in chapter 3. I show that the status of self-awareness is a wedge issue between the descriptive ontology of Madhyamaka and the phenomenological orientation of Mind- Only. Awareness can be understood as Janus- faced; it does “double- duty” as subject and object, as internal and external. This hybrid structure sets the stage for what I call objective idealism a world in which perceiver and perceived take place in an internal relation. With the term “objective idealism” I aim to represent how subject and object are simply polarities within a higher structure that transcends (and includes) this duality. While the language of substance and idealism is anathema to Madhyamaka, the interrelation of perceiver and perceived I wish to convey is not an ordinary subjective idealism; here there is no internal subject reigning over objects, the relata are not separate and relation itself is internal and not a real (external) relation. Thus, without an external world, there can be no internal world either (nor a world in between). The nonduality I seek to convey is not only the stuff of metaphysics, but also exemplifies the creative interplay of inner and outer worlds.
Chapter 4 turns to language. I show how many philosophical disputes revolve around linguistic disputes, prompted by competing conceptions of language. I also discuss the relation between concepts and percepts. Here again we can see the collapse of yet another dichotomy—like the one between ontology and phenomenology, subject and object—as percepts and concepts are interdependent. While a dichotomy of percepts and concepts is central to the epistemological edifice of proponents of Yogācāra such as the seventh-century Indian, Dharmakīrti, I show how this dichotomy falls apart in two main ways: conception collapses into perception (with nondual self-awareness in Mind-Only) and perception collapses into conception (with the thoroughgoing conceptuality of radical contingency and universal mediation emphasized in Madhyamaka). In both cases, we see
the collapse of a percept-concept dichotomy, and language plays an important role in shaping both sides of this apparent divide.
In chapter 5 I consider the contemplative traditions of tantra. While mind (gnosis) and speech (mantra) are undoubtedly important in this context, too, here we also turn to the body (deity). The body, like speech and mind, exemplifies another intertwining, as it too is both perceiver and perceived. The body is the organ of the universe, the flesh of the world, and the dynamic substance of objective idealism. The objective idealism I have in mind here is not a simplistic notion of subjective idealism,1 but the irreducibility of the relationally constituted whole. This nonduality is a dynamic unity that comprises everything—the uni-verse (one and many). It is not a static, metaphysical absolutism, but one that is participatory; it is enacted in the contemplative practices of tantra, as well as Mahāmudrā and the Great Perfection (rdzogs chen), the culmination and transcendence of Tibetan tantric traditions. These traditions can be seen as performances of this nonduality, fostering freedom through re-cognition and creative enaction, while undermining sedimentary, reified conceptions of mind and nature (that delimit and/or superimpose the way the world is and must be).
In four appendices I include translated excerpts from Tibetan texts that illustrate and expand upon some of the issues I raise in the chapters of this book. Each translation represents a distinctive tradition and genre of philosophical writing, and demonstrates to some extent the diversity and complexity of Buddhist philosophical literature. It is also noteworthy that all four of these texts represent a part of a living Buddhist culture; each of these texts can be found among texts currently studied and practiced in different Tibetan Buddhist communities across Asia today. This goes to show that the Tibetan Buddhist philosophy represented here is not only a vibrant and diverse tradition, but a living one, too.
In what follows, I take a broad view of what I see to be some of the most important philosophical issues at stake across Tibetan traditions, and try to avoid getting too bogged down within an exegesis on any particular tradition. This approach is admittedly ambitious and invites real dangers
1. On the difference between subjective and absolute idealisms, see Fredrick Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–1801 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 370–372. For a discussion of “idealism” in Yogācāra, see Mario D’Amato, Maitreya’s Distinguishing the Middle from the Extremes (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 20–23.
of overgeneralization (when fine-grained particularities are ignored) and superimposition (when personal preference overshadows an impartial description). Yet a thematic overview like this also can enable some insights into Tibetan forms of Buddhism that may not be visible when any single tradition is considered in isolation.
It is needless to mention that my interpretation of Buddhism is inflected by the European and American traditions I have inherited, but I should also acknowledge that the interpretation I offer here is influenced by the legacy of a nineteenth-century tradition stemming from eastern Tibet that has been called the “Gemang (dge mang) movement,” named after the place where it flourished.2 In contrast to an allegedly “nonsectarian movement” (ris med) that is antagonistic toward the Geluk tradition or incompatible with it, the Gemang movement is marked by an integration of Geluk and Nyingma (rnying ma) traditions of scholarship and practice in a way that they are configured to be mutually illuminating. That is to say, this Gemang tradition is neither tied to Geluk sectarianism nor to a sectarian identity built upon what is incompatible with the Geluk school. Rather, it is characterized by hybridity and integration, with an eye on practice.
While I try to steer away from adopting a single sectarian voice on Buddhist thought in this book, to a certain extent the “Gemang movement,” like my academic training, has shaped the way I represent this subject matter. I acknowledge that the kind of hybrid tradition that informs my interpretation and methodology may be no more objective or valuefree than any other; nevertheless, I believe (with Gadamer) that the influence of some tradition is necessary when any standpoint is taken on a subject matter. That said, contortions, distortions, and creations inevitably take place when a methodological lens is used to convey a domain of knowledge. It is my hope that what is enabled by my approach outweighs the problems that this methodology introduces.
In this book I aim to communicate important facets of Tibetan tradition neither by parroting it nor by standing over it with domineering academic hubris. Rather, my agenda is to convey a way to think about (and with) Tibetan Buddhist philosophy of mind and nature. In outlining these aspects of Buddhist thought, I do not censure my own perspectives on the material and also draw freely from a range of Indian, European, and 2. E. Gene Smith, Among Tibetan Texts (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001), 23–24.
American philosophical traditions to explain and elaborate key issues in Buddhist Tibet. To date there is no such overview of Tibetan philosophical culture, as most scholarly texts and translations of Tibetan thought are embedded within the structure of a particular sectarian tradition. I aim to provide an alternative way to access the subject matter so scholars and interested nonspecialists can relate to Tibetan thought outside the confines of a single sectarian voice or a one-dimensional philosophical stance. This book is intended as a bridge, both for Buddhists who seek to enrich their knowledge in conversation with Northwestern European and American philosophical traditions, and for those more familiar with these philosophical traditions to engage with Tibetan Buddhist thought.
Nonspecialists can use this book to gain a perspective on Tibetan philosophy, a place from which to find points of departure and threads of conversation from the intellectual worlds they inhabit. Specialists, on the other hand, can use this book to contextualize their particular areas of expertise. They may also feel compelled to highlight places that fall out of this frame, fill it out, or provide alternative frameworks to challenge or supplement the one I offer here. This book is a first step, not the last, to framing Tibetan Buddhism philosophically, and I hope readers will dig further into studies on topics that I outline here in broad strokes.
Between Construction and Immediacy
I pay homage to the best of speakers, the perfectly awakened one who taught dependent arising—the pacification of conceptual constructs—without ceasing or arising, not annihilated nor eternal, neither coming nor going, and neither different nor the same.
n ā g ā rjuna, prologue to Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā)
Introduction
A key question in philosophy—and one that drives two predominant strands of Buddhist thought—is the question of immediacy: is there anything meaningful that is nonlinguistic and nonconceptual or is everything that is meaningful mediated by language and concepts? The way this question is answered is tied into fundamental assumptions about the world. Exposing these presuppositions is critical to the interpretation of key Buddhist notions such as emptiness and liberation. One interpretation stresses the ways in which every act of knowledge is mediated, and is vigilantly suspicious of ideas about nonconceptual content. Another highlights the centrality of nonconceptual content, foregrounding an unconstructed, nonconceptual ground within or upon which conceptions necessarily take place.
Buddhist philosophy falls on both sides along this spectrum (and in/between). On one end, emphasis is placed on the contexts in which concepts permeate experience, such that the status of reality is only ever conventional or contingent; there is no ultimate story about the reality we inhabit and that is the meaning of the ultimate truth—emptiness. At the other end, emphasis is placed on meditative contexts in which ultimate reality is known in a way that is inconceivable and not bound to TibetanBuddhistPhilosophyofMindandNature. Douglas S. Duckworth, Oxford University Press (2019). © Douglas S. Duckworth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190883959.003.0002
any conceptual system; ultimate truth can be experienced, but is beyond thought. The difference between the two polarities of this spectrum is that an ultimate reality tends to be denied at one end whereas it is affirmed at the other. A contemporary analytic philosopher, Mark Siderits, aligns the latter interpretation with “realism,” arguing that the distinction between these two interpretations is the difference between Yogācāra realism and Madhyamaka anti-realism:
It is important to understand that the view that ultimate reality is beyond conceptualization is itself a variety of realism. From this it follows that the claim that there is no such thing as the ultimate nature of reality is not equivalent to the claim that reality is beyond conceptualization. The difference here is, I claim, just the difference between the Madhyamaka and the Yogācāra conceptions of emptiness.1
These competing interpretations of ultimate truth represent the views of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra.
The juncture between conceptuality and nonconceptuality is a point at which Mind-Only and Madhyamaka meet because this juncture is where the two truths (the relative and ultimate) diverge. Two roads can be taken at this juncture: one that embraces a nonconceptual ultimate and another that denies any concept as ultimate (or any concept of an ultimate). That is, two diverging interpretations of emptiness reflect what is at stake in the issues surrounding constructed versus unconstructed meaning, the nature of experience, and the possibilities and limits of knowledge. Although on the surface these two interpretations are diametrically opposed, this chapter probes the way they can be seen to share a deeper affinity or common ground between them, particularly when they are framed against the backdrop of the Buddhist contemplative practices in which they are embedded.
Emptying Emptiness
A central theme in Tibetan philosophy coalesces around two broad streams of interpretation—construction versus immediacy—which are reflected in
1. Mark Siderits, “Causation and Emptiness in Early Madhyamaka,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 32 (2004): 414n6.
two ways of interpreting the import of ultimate truth. The tension between these two ways of relating to truth, as conceptually constituted (determinate all the way down) or nonconceptual at its core (undetermined and immediate), is reflected in conflicting interpretations of language, another issue that is relevant to this topic. The place of language in the constitution of meaning comes into clear focus when we consider the case of negation. In Buddhist thought, negations (like no-self) have a distinctive role in breaking through stultifying habits of mind, and Buddhists are masters of negation.
Emptiness is a prototypical negation. The ultimate truth of emptiness is at times described as a positive truth to be known, and at times an absence that is known only via negativa, that is to say, by knowing what is not. The difference between a contentful and contentless emptiness can be likened to the ways of knowing silence: as knowing the presence of silence as opposed to knowing the absence of sound. In the former sense, knowledge of emptiness can be said to be knowledge of an ineffable reality. In the latter, the content of knowledge is simply an absence. In both cases, ultimate knowledge of emptiness is not directly describable; yet paradoxically, it is through this knowledge that liberation is presumed a possibility for Buddhists.
An important point in understanding “emptiness” in Buddhism is that it does not simply mean nothingness. In fact, emptiness can carry many meanings. In addition to meaning simply a lack of intrinsic identity (svabhāva), it can also refer to the fact that things are intertwined, in the way that words and concepts are only ever abstracted from, or superimposed upon, a dynamically entangled and inexpressible matrix or field of reality. For instance, we may say (or think), “I am drinking tea.” Yet when we try to discern any discrete element in this sentence (or reality), there is no individual part that can be said to have a real existence in isolation from the interrelated field. For instance, where or when is the action of “drinking”? Is it in the “already drank,” the “moment of drinking” or the “yet to have drunk”? Where is the “I,” the agent of the act of drinking separate from that action?2 And how can a singular agent, or anything else, really exist separately from the multiple constituents of a changing process? As for “tea,” there is no singular tea apart from water and leaves; it
2. For a parallel analysis regarding motion, see Nāgārjuna, Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way (Madhyamakakārikā), chapter II.
is a cultural product, not the underlying nature of reality. The underlying nature of reality is empty. Thinking that such things as “tea” or anything else exists otherwise, as more than abstractions or superimposition, is what the twentieth-century mathematician and philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness,”3 mistaking cultural products for an immediate and unconditioned nature. Reminiscent of Nāgārjuna’s negation of intrinsic nature, Whitehead claimed:
The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of “independent existence.” There is no such mode of existence; every entity is only to be understood in terms of the way in which it is interwoven with the rest of the Universe.4
While seeming to represent the natural constitution of the world, concepts (like “tea”) simultaneously distort and disclose. In other words, concepts disclose a window through which to see the world precisely by limiting possibilities (by delimiting boundaries). Yet the presumed boundaries—such as those between existence and nonexistence, self and other—are not natural categories but are contingent, conceptual constructions. Conceptual constructs allow for stories to be woven out of conceptual threads, but there are no hard and fast boundaries among the things that concepts shape. Concepts may seem to innocently and directly represent what is already there, yet they are always tied to a particular purpose or agenda, and have no independent reality outside of this matrix of relations.
The notion of emptiness constantly undermines any attempt to pin anything down (emptiness included). In one sense, it can work as a purgative, when the view of emptiness (along with all other views) is expelled together with the ignorance that it subverts. We might say in this case that “emptiness empties,” reflecting (or prefiguring) Heidegger. 5 In another sense, the matrix of dependent relationships
3. See Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 64–70, 72.
4. Whitehead, “Immortality,” in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, ed. Paul Schilpp (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1941), vol. 3, 687.
5. In his essay, “What Is Metaphysics?” Heidegger said, “the nothing nothings.” See English translation in Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 105.
In his characteristically abstruse and provocative way, Heidegger also claimed that “science wants to know nothing of the nothing” (98).
that is the world itself can be understood as emptiness, signifying the indeterminate nature of any discrete thing. The meaning of dependent origination also involves the mind and language’s inability to pin down anything with an intrinsic nature ( svabh ā va ), a truly independent essence. The closer you look, the harder it is to determine what you are searching for. This is not only a problem that Heisenberg pointed to on the quantum level (with the uncertainty principle), but also pertains to any level of such analysis.
Moreover, relation is only possible when there are separate things, but since a single, independent identity fails as reality, relation does too. That is, relationships imply difference, and there can be no real difference (or sameness) when nothing has any real (independent) identity. Since things are not really separate, in the final analysis they cannot even be said to be related because a real, concrete relation implies at least two things and reality is not (even) one! In short, emptiness and interdependence cannot be reduced to any isolated component of a complex network of relations; the concept of emptiness is empty, and the concept of relationality is relational, too.
Emptiness Enframed and Unenframed
While there are many different interpretations of the import of emptiness among Buddhist traditions, for our purposes I will begin by outlining two, which I will refer to as the “enframed” and “unenframed” interpretations, respectively.6 These two interpretations follow the distinct interpretations offered by Gorampa (1429–1489), an influential Sakya (sa skya) scholar, and Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), the forefather of the Geluk tradition.7 These two figures represent two prominent streams of Madhyamaka thought in Tibet. In order to introduce the difference between their interpretations, I will use the logical form of the tetralemma—the four alternatives of existence, nonexistence, both, and neither—as a model. Framing negation through the four alternatives of the tetralemma is a device that is
6. The “enframed” and “unenframed” interpretations of emptiness are further discussed in Douglas Duckworth, “Madhyamaka in Tibet: Thinking Through the Ultimate Truth,” Critical Review of Buddhist Studies 20 (2016): 171–197.
7. For a discussion of the difference between these two interpreters on the negation of the tetralemma, see Constance Kassor, “Gorampa Sonam Senge on the Refutation of the Four Extremes,” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 22 (2011): 121–137.
commonly used to express the meaning of emptiness, and two trajectories of interpretation come into clear focus when we consider the interpretations of emptiness in this way.
I will first lay out the unenframed interpretation, which directly challenges the ability of a conceptual or linguistic system to adequately account for emptiness. Then I will describe the “enframed” interpretation, which seeks to forge an interpretative structure within which emptiness can be clearly apprehended and described. This distinctive feature of the enframed interpretation clearly contrasts with the unenframed interpretation, for which emptiness acts as a purgative and all attempts of systematic enframement within the structures of language and concepts fail.
The negation of the first lemma is a negation of existence. As the first negation, this is the most important, particularly given the fact that for Buddhists, holding on to reified notions of things like selves is what binds us to suffering. Thus, the denial of the true existence of such things is paramount. It is significant that the denial of the first lemma of existence is effectively the same in both the enframed and unenframed interpretations of negation. This is a shared feature despite the differences in what are otherwise divergent interpretations.
To deny existence in the context of an ontological analysis in Madhyamaka is to deny that there is an intrinsic identity in things. As Śāntarakṣita, the eighth-century scholar who visited Tibet from India, begins the verses of his Ornament of the Middle Way: “All entities—asserted by Buddhists or otherwise—lack intrinsic nature because ultimately they are neither one nor many, like a reflection.”8 When anything is analyzed in terms of its essence, there is nothing singular, independent, or enduring found at all. Thus, everything is said to lack intrinsic nature, appearing like an illusion, reflection, or a dream.
In the negation of the second lemma, it is not just existence, but nonexistence is denied as well. In the unenframed interpretation, this is because things are not simply nonexistent; they are not really nonexistent either. In other words, the denial of nonexistence means that nonexistence is no more real than existence, as Nāgārjuna said, “If the existent is not established, then the nonexistent is not established either.”9 The fact that nonexistence is denied is one reason why Madhyamaka is not a nihilistic
8. Śāntarakṣita, Ornament of the Middle Way (Madhyamakālaṃkāra), v. 1. 9. Nāgārjuna, Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way, XV.5.
view that embraces the reality of nonexistence. Illustrating this denial with an example, Śāntideva, the eighth-century Indian author of the celebrated Way of the Bodhisattva, stated, “Thus, when a child dies in a dream, the thought ‘he does not exist’ counteracts the thought that he does exist, but it too is false.”10 In other words, a dream where the child you never had dies is not a real child’s death: if a child (existence) was never really born, there is never a real death (nonexistence), either.
This denial of nonexistence overcomes metaphysical nihilism, countering the tendency toward reification for those who substantialize the “reality” of nonexistence. The Indian philosopher Candrakīrti (ca. 7th c.) illustrated this with a wonderful example of a man who went to a store where the storekeeper said, “We have nothing for sale,” and is met with the customer’s response, “Give me some of that ‘nothing!’ ”11 The denial of the second lemma deflects a tendency to reify emptiness into some kind of thesis of metaphysical absence, as nihilists and essentialists are prone to do. Indeed, “the extreme of nonexistence” is just as bad as “the extreme of existence”; in fact it is worse. As Saraha, the eighth-century Indian master, is alleged to have said, “To hold on to things as real is to be stupid like a cow. To hold on to things as unreal is to be even more stupid!”12
The denial of the third lemma undermines the idea that things are both existent and nonexistent, for if each conjunct has been negated individually, the conjunction fails too. Simply stated, if something is not existent nor is it nonexistent, then you can’t have it both ways; it is not both. Yet we may wonder, is the law of noncontradiction, that something cannot be both A and not A, a feature of a system of logic (a mere cultural product) or reality? Different answers to this question are found in competing interpretations of the negation of the fourth lemma, not either.
The denial of the fourth lemma, that of neither existence nor nonexistence, can be seen as simply a restatement of each of the former denials (as we will see in the enframed interpretation) and is consistent with the (presumably) invariable rules of a classical logic (like the law of noncontradiction). It can also be taken to be a repudiation of the whole structure of the conceptual and linguistic project, rendering it doomed from the start
10. Śāntideva, Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicaryāvatāra), IX.141.
11. Candrakīrti, Clear Words (Prasannapadā) commentary on Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way, XIII.8 (D. 3860, vol. 102), 83b.
12. Kongtrül, Encyclopedia of Knowledge (Beijing: Nationalities Press, 2002), 144.
by pointing to the false premises upon which the very notions of existence and nonexistence rest. This latter (unenframed) interpretation points to the way that language is fundamentally inhabited by reifying distortions, specifically when static essences are presumed to be the referents of linguistic signs. That is to say, the denial of neither shows that the notion of neither existence nor nonexistence suffers from a presupposition failure, a vacuous premise, just like the death of the dream-child denied in the second lemma. The negation is like a denial of wife-beating when asked, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” The denial presupposes an unwanted premise embedded within the question—that you did beat your wife (or that you even have a wife). Yet without presupposing the reality of existence or nonexistence (or wives or wife-beating), there is nothing really that a denial of either could be. The limits of language and extra-linguistic reality are issues at stake here, and the unenframed interpretation highlights the contingent and distorting ways of language and concepts.
In contrast to the “unenframed interpretation” sketched above, we find another interpretation of negation in the tetralemma articulated in the Geluk tradition inspired by Tsongkhapa.13 Rather than appealing to the nature of reality as nonconceptual, the “enframed interpretation” appeals to the power of thought. It thus represents the function of negation in the tetralemma differently, whereby the negation of existence and nonexistence toggles between two parameters of value: ultimate and conventional. That is to say, the negation of existence is the negation of ultimate existence (the idea that things exist really or ultimately is negated); the negation of nonexistence is the negation of conventional nonexistence (the idea that things like cups and tables do not exist at all, even conventionally, is negated); the negation of both is simply a restatement of the first two lemmas (the idea that things both ultimately exist and conventionally do not exist is negated); and the negation of neither reiterates this again (the idea that things neither ultimately do not exist nor conventionally exist is negated). In this way, rather than imploding the system by appealing to language and thought’s inability to adequately represent reality, the enframed interpretation appeals to their ability, in terms of formulating a clearly delimited meaning of emptiness: the lack, or nonexistence, of ultimate existence; and a clear delineation of existence: existence means conventional existence.
13. On Tsongkhapa’s interpretation of negation in the tetralemma, see Thupten Jinpa, Self, Reality and Reason in Tibetan Philosophy (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), 38–41.
The enframed interpretation uses reason as a tool to construct a system rather than just to deconstruct; it empowers language and thought to clearly convey the meaning of emptiness. In other words, in an enframed interpretation, there is no denial of the whole conceptual framework. Rather, another register of conceptual meaning—conventional existence—is carved out to account for the (empty/illusory) world. Thus, the parameters conventionally and ultimately are added to assertions of (conventional) existence and (ultimate) nonexistence, and the contradiction of affirming both existence and nonexistence is avoided. Moreover, in this interpretation a view is clearly asserted: to exist is to exist conventionally. Emptiness, too, is a thesis about the ultimate nature of reality: nothing ultimately exists and emptiness is conventionally existent (just like this thesis, and any other existent thing for that matter, is conventionally existent). Thus, it represents a clear system of truth.
The four lemmas—is, is not, is both, is neither—are all negated in Madhyamaka, but the import of the negations of the second (not nonexistent) and fourth (not either) lemmas, in the two distinct enframed and unenframed interpretations in particular, exemplifies a pivotal moment in Buddhist theory and practice. These competing interpretations mark the boundary between conceptually framed and nonconceptual interpretations of meaning. That is to say, the different ways that “not nonexistent” and “not either” are interpreted—as conceptually bound denials and/or as an indictment on the entire conceptual project—rest on different understandings of the extension of negation and the function of language in the disclosure of nonconceptual meaning. We will consider further the implications of these interpretations of emptiness next.
Emptiness as Performative and Propositional
Negations and paradoxes crop up in moments of self-reference, when language and minds turn on themselves at their limits, such as we see in attempts to understand and articulate what is inconceivable and inexpressible.14 Such paradoxes reveal important facets of the nature of language, mind, and world. Consider the case of the predication of the impredicable, for instance, as in the statement “Brahman is impredicable.” Nāgārjuna’s
14. See Graham Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Bimal Krishna Matilal, “Mysticism and Ineffability: Some Issues of Logic and Language,” in Mysticism and Language, ed. Steven Katz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 154–155.
infamous thesis in Dispelling Disputes, “I have no thesis,”15 exemplifies this principle as well. Are such statements meaningless (or perhaps deceptively meaningful), or only meaningful statements within certain parameters (e.g., “I have no truly existent or ultimate thesis—but this is a conventional claim”)? Or, are these statements meaningful in a way that they express what goes beyond direct reference?
A relevant point here is the distinction between a non-implicative negation (med dgag, prasajya-pratiṣedha) and an implicative negation (ma yin dgag, paryudāsa). Non-implicative negations do not imply anything else in their denial of linguistic meaning; they merely point to absence. Period. An example of a non-implicative negation is “Don’t drink and drive.” Nothing more is implied here other than a negation. Implicative negations, in contrast, implicate something else beyond what is explicitly stated, for example, “That fat boy never eats during the day,” which implies something unsaid: that he eats at night.
A non-implicative negation has been defined as an explicit negation that does not implicate any phenomena by dint of the negation.16 In the influential Geluk tradition of Tibet, this kind of negation is the ultimate truth of emptiness, which is an absence of intrinsic existence. In contrast, emptiness in Mind-Only-inspired contemplative traditions, such as the Jonang (jo nang), are often said to be implicative negations, since what an ultimate negation implies is not simply an absence, but what is beyond the mind.17 If a negation implies a phenomenon, or any idea like “nonduality,” “unity,” or “wholeness,” it is an implicative negation. The import of a nonimplicative negation, in contrast, is only negation.
The distinction between these two types of negation frames two broad trajectories of Buddhist philosophy in Tibet. One side can be represented by the Madhyamaka tradition of the Geluk school, for which the ultimate truth of emptiness is interpreted as only a non-implicative negation. The other side is represented by Mind-Only and Yogācāra-inflected traditions in
15. Nāgārjuna, Dispelling Disputes (Vigrahavyāvartanī), v. 29: “If I had a thesis, I would have fault; since I have no thesis, I am only faultless.”
16. See Tsongkhapa, Thoroughly Illuminating the Viewpoint (dgongs pa rab gsal) (Xining, China: Nationalities Press, 1998), 536; Künzang Sönam, Overview of the Wisdom Chapter: A Lamp Completely Illuminating the Profound Reality of Interdependence, in Tupten Chödrak (Beijing, China: China’s Tibet Publishing House, 2007 [1993]), 802.
17. See, for instance, Dölpopa, Ocean of Definitive Meaning, 88; see also Duckworth, Mipam on Buddha-Nature: The Ground of the Nyingma Tradition (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008), 58–59.
