by Greg Goode
Many visual representations of emptiness depict a calm wide ocean or an infinite blue sky with soft clouds. That captures nicely the ease and tranquility of emptiness. However something is missing – perhaps the exuberant joy and vibrancy that you can find in a place like Times Square in New York City. Empty, yet bursting with life.
Reference
Foucault, Michel (1984). “On the genealogy of ethics: An overview of work in progress”. In: Paul Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
CHAPTER 2 – EMPTINESS TEACHINGS IN BUDDHISM
Even though emptiness is taught in all forms of Buddhism and in some other traditions as well, our approach is inspired by the systemizations of Nagarjuna and commentaries from Chandrakirti, as well as innovations brought about by Tsongkhapa.
About Our Approach
In the many flavors of Buddhism, such as Theravada, Vipassana, Insight Meditation, Mahayana, Zen, Pure Land, Vajrayana, Dzogchen and many more, you can find teachings on various aspects of emptiness – aspects such as interdependence, impermanence and insubstantiality. Each variation of Buddhism places emphasis on different activities, such as Theravada’s emphasis on meditation and Pure Land’s emphasis on faith. In this book, we are relying on the variation usually called “Prasangika Madhyamika,” and we will say more about it below. But first, a few more general remarks.
In our experience, going by the available books, articles, web-sites, dharma centers and teachers, most of the teachings focusing on emptiness tend to be associated with Tibetan Buddhism. And even then there are varieties found in different Tibetan traditions.
The systems known as Dzogchen and Mahamudra are found in the Nyingma and Kagyü schools of Tibetan Buddhism respectively. These systems approach emptiness teaching as a way to eliminate false notions about the self and phenomena, which opens the meditator to thereby experience “the true nature of mind,” which is described to be the union of emptiness and luminosity. And in the Dzogchen system, it is taught that realizing emptiness gives rise to rigpa, a kind of clear-light mental state which is free of grasping and suffering.
Occasionally, Western practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism value meditation as a tool for enlightenment but dismiss emptiness teaching as ineffective or, even worse, as a conceptual obstacle. That is clearly not the view that the Tibetan traditions themselves hold. Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, lineage holder in the Nyingma and Kagyü traditions and prominent teacher in the West, puts it as follows.
Sometimes it is said that we, Karma Kagyü, do not place an emphasis on the Prasangika Madhyamika. This is absolutely untrue. We regard the Prasangika Madhyamika as extraordinarily important.
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche (2002)
Ponlop is here referring to the Prasangika Madhyamika system of emptiness teachings.
Prasangika Madhyamika
The term Prasangika comes from the Sanskrit prasanga or consequence. The term Madhyamika is the Sanskrit term for intermediate, and refers to an intermediate or middle position between extremes. The purpose of Prasangika Madhyamika is to free the inquirer from the clinging and suffering that is based on attachment to various kinds of extremes, such as existence and non-existence, life and death, right and wrong, pure and impure.
The method of Prasangika Madhyamika is based on the philosophical system of Nagarjuna, a second- and third-century Indian philosopher who has become extremely influential in the course of Buddhist thought. Prasangika Madhyamika doesn’t seek to promote philosophical views or make claims about how reality is in itself. Instead, it analyzes the claims made by other views, and draws out the various consequences of those views. The consequences include logical contradictions and other results that are often unintended or unwanted by the proponents of the views being examined. A Western example is known as reductio ad absurdum or reduction to absurdity. The idea is this: if you learn that a view you hold leads logically to some sort of contradiction or other absurdity, this is a red flag. Logically speaking, something needs to change.
In Prasangika Madhyamika, the idea is that when you are faced with the inevitable and unwanted consequences of your views, you will be able to become free of those views.
The Use of Logic in Madhyamika
Even within the Prasangika system, not all scholars agree on how to interpret the approach to liberation. There have been disagreements at many times in the history of Madhyamika interpretation. One issue that has attracted recent scholarly attention is the place of logic and rationality in Madhyamika. Many of the Madhyamika texts and commentaries contain contradictions and logical paradoxes. Disagreements arise over what to make of them. Here are several examples.
So, the views “I existed,” “I didn’t exist,”
Both or neither,
In the past
Are untenable.
Nagarjuna (1995) 27:135
By their nature, [...] things are not a determinate entity. For they have only one nature, i.e. no nature.
Nagarjuna (1995)6
Statements like these are of pivotal importance in Prasangika Madyhamika. But how should we understand and utilize them? What do they have to do with the goal of becoming free of views, clinging and suffering? Are statements like these supposed to nudge us towards mysticism or an irrationalist mental state? Are they just bad logic? Most recent scholarship has not favored these three options.7
In fact, two other influential interpretations have recently earned the attention of Buddhist scholars. We may call them the logical approach and the literary approach. Both approaches are defended on historical and text-critical grounds. Both approaches are argued to be able to free the practitioner from all views, but the approaches work in very different ways.
Recently, these differences engendered an important and fascinating academic conversation. C.W. Huntington published an article (Huntington 2007b) criticizing the logical approach and advocating the literary approach. Jay L. Garfield replied (Garfield 2008) with a defense of the logical approach and a critique of the literary approach. The conversation actually inspired a three-day symposium at Smith College with over twenty speakers, which we both attended (see Smith College 2010).
We will review both approaches briefly.
The Logical Approach
Garfield argues that Nagarjuna uses logic and argumentation to support conclusions that he endorses. He sees Nagarjuna as upholding inference as one of the means of knowledge in the conventional world. Contradictory statements are important tools of inquiry, and they work in different ways. When we interpret Nagarjuna’s texts, we should take contradictions at their full logical strength.8
In matters of conventional truth, logical contradictions can help us abandon the notion of essence, which Madhyamika sees as the root of clinging and suffering. For example, when the contradictions pertain to various phenomena such as cause, motion or the various elements of nature, they can force us to reexamine our assumptions and give up the notion of essence. Contradictions do real work, and they are given strength by our respect for the canons of reason.
In matters of ultimate truth, Garfield sees contradictions as being more complicated. These contradictions are to have a sweeping, global logical force that helps us to abandon all views. He gives this example from Nagarjuna, which we mentioned above:
All things have one nature, that is, no nature.
Garfield regards this statement as a contradiction at the “limits of thought.” 9 We are at the limits of thought here because this statement is elucidating the emptiness of emptiness. This statement doesn’t stand back and talk about a small category of things. It applies to everything, including itself. It is telling us how everything is. And it is doing so by saying that there is no way that everything is. It affirms exactly what it denies: nature, and for all things.
The way we understand Garfield is that we should take this contradiction at full strength. The idea here is not to tweak our assumptions so that we can lessen the contradictory force, or make one side true and the other
side false. We need both sides.
We need the “nature” side because it’s not just an accident that things have no nature. It’s their very nature to have no nature. To be a thing in the first place is to have no nature. So we can’t abandon this side without losing the force of our realization.
We need the “no-nature” side as well. If we abandoned the no-nature side, we would not be realizing emptiness at all. We would be attributing a nature other than emptiness to things. And that was actually where we started before we began inquiring: we thought there were natures to things.
And we can’t abandon both sides together. To do this would be to not realize anything about how things are.
Garfield sees Nagarjuna as one of the major philosophers on the world stage, along with Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein and Heidegger. He takes contradictions at the limit of thought quite seriously, to the point of regarding both sides of them as being true. In fact, Graham Priest, Garfield’s co-author on Nagarjuna and the Limits of Thought (Garfield and Priest 2002), is one of the world’s leading proponents of dialetheism, the view that there can be true contradictions.
The Literary Approach
Huntington agrees with Garfield that Nagarjuna uses logic and the force of contradiction as a tool of inquiry. But for Huntington, Nagarjuna is much less serious about logic.10 He sees Nagarjuna as using logic only in a self-deconstructive, pragmatic way. This kind of use is called upaya, or skillful means, in Buddhism.
For example, when Nagarjuna enters into a discussion, he’ll use logic not because he believes that logic conveys the truth about things, but only because his discussion partner has this belief. The idea is to drive the partner to a contradiction, using the very materials that the partner takes seriously.
And once the contradiction arises, the purpose is not to command rational assent or to reach an endorsed conclusion. Rather, the purpose is to open “a logically indeterminate space between proof and disproof, affirmation and negation, consent and dissent.”11 In this space, you can reach a state of non-abiding that does not land on any of these extremes.
Huntington sees logic as having a deconstructive use only. If we use logic for anything more, “logic can become a dangerous snare.” In fact,
As the crystallized essence of conceptualization, logic tends by its nature to engender the clinging and antipathy associated with reified thought.
Huntington (2007)
So where does the connection to literature come in? For Huntington, reading Nagarjuna’s Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (and presumably other Madhyamika texts) in a literary way is another powerful opening to this state of non-abiding. Reading in a literary way helps sensitize us to “the very features of textuality – symbol, metaphor, polysemy, multivalence – that might lead us ... out of the compulsive desire to deal in certainties.”12 Where Garfield turns to the study of logic, Huntington turns to literary criticism and the philosophy of language. He draws on the work of several writers mentioned in the present book, such as Derrida, Rorty and Wittgenstein.
Could there be a powerful emptiness practice embedded in this literary approach that you, the beginning student, could use?
Yes. In fact, Huntington approvingly quotes from Jeff Humphries’ book, Reading Emptiness (Humphries 1999), that ‘‘truth is in the act, not the content, of reading’’:
I would like to argue that literature is a privileged ground for the realization of emptiness. This is true because in reading literature there is no doubt that one is not dealing with an objective reality. ... To the extent that we read texts as collections of signs that can take the shapes and assume the importance of realities when we read, we directly experience the nature of emptiness, just as we do in dreams. As we realize that texts exist as literature only in the moment of reading, in the same instant in which we come into being with them as readers, we gain a direct experience of the nature of mind according to the Middle Way: the mind is nowhere to be found, neither any one of its parts nor exactly their sum.
How can this work? According to Humphries, literature counteracts our tendency to reify things, that is, to take them as fixed and inherently existent. Literature does this by blurring categories in our experience that we take to be inherently distinct windows to the world. Humphries explains:
Literary reading is a particularly effective means of combatting the reificatory error, the tendency to think of perceived objects as permanent and inherently existing, because it first asks us to deliberately blur the distinction between conceptual thought and sense perception. We are asked to perform the former while pretending to be performing the latter.
This does not apply only to reading Nagarjuna, but to any text. To get a taste of the transformational power of reading, just pay attention to its conjuring power, which can conjure new realities, with you included! This can be a very powerful way to learn about emptiness.
Our Take on This
Since this book is not an academic, scholarly effort, but a practical guide to the varieties of (what we’re calling) emptiness teachings, we will not attempt to adjudicate between the logical approach and the literary approach. We are not in a position to explore which is better warranted historically.
Actually, the way we will proceed in this book uses elements from both approaches. Some of our meditations depend on logic and inference. Others take advantage of the literary, figurative aspects of thought and language, such as imagination, metaphor and irony. We feel lucky to have excellent contemporary scholars like Garfield and Huntington to help us approach these subtle issues.
In addition to the logical and literary approaches, we will be using a method inspired by the Tibetan teacher, Tsongkhapa. This method uses introspection to a certain extent. At the same time, it has a reputation for lending itself to a logically coherent, rather than a paradoxical, exposition of the emptiness teachings.
We’ll explain more about this approach later, but for now, let us say a few words about it.
Our introspective approach will focus on trying to isolate precisely the “target of refutation” or the “object of negation” related to some phenomenon. After settling on the target of refutation, we will seek to verify through our meditation and reasoning that it cannot be found anywhere. The target is usually some kind of essence or inherent existence that we believe or feel is there, even though the emptiness teachings tell us that it is not there.
The goal is to refute the target, which helps dissolve the conception we have about it. It’s the conception that is said to cause all the clinging and suffering. The most challenging aspect of this approach consists of coming to understand the very subtle difference between conventional existence and inherent existence.13 Throughout this book, we explore many different ways of clarifying this distinction. The goal is to isolate the conception of inherent existence as it shows up in our thoughts and feelings.
We do not mean to imply that the approach we take here would be endorsed by all the proponents of other Prasangika Madhyamika approaches. We have chosen this method primarily because (as we will show later) it unpacks the notions of inherent existence and dependence in helpful ways, and also because it is supported by a living teaching tradition and a great deal of literature. 14
As you proceed through the book, we encourage you to try both the logical and literary approaches. Try looking at the arguments in this book as logical arguments. Think through them carefully and reap the benefit of being transformed by them. And perhaps on a separate pass, try reading through the material in a literary way. Experience how it has the ability to conjure up realities and reduce the quest for objective certainties, the way a literary genre can.
We believe this book makes a literary reading easy because it presents so many different arguments side by side. The variety itself tends to offer resistance to being subsumed under one logically coherent framework.
In your own study of emptiness, the approach you take will have a lot to do with your interests and temperament. In the old days, a Budd
hist practitioner who was committed to penetrate the deepest secrets of the dharma would often visit different masters and learn what they had to offer. The same seems to be a good approach today.
More on the Various Traditions
With respect to the various traditions, Prasangika Madhyamika, Dzogchen and Mahamudra, there are two things that should be emphasized. One, these traditions and their main realizations are quite compatible, and as forms of Buddhism, they conduct many, if not most, of the same activities. Two, even though these traditions see emptiness as the ultimate truth about the nature of reality, they don’t consider meditation on emptiness to be the sole spiritual activity needed to advance towards the Mahayana goal – full Buddhahood. Instead, meditation on emptiness is conducted within a matrix of other transformational activities. For these traditions, it is the combination of emptiness meditation and other practices that helps achieve their highest goals. That is, it’s the combination of activities that allows emptiness realizations to be nonconceptual and transformational. It is the combination that helps bring about the full enlightenment of a Buddha.
Teaching Matrix
When we use the term “Madhyamika” in this book, we refer to the Prasangika system as articulated by Tsongkhapa. This is a convenient designation only, since we are aware that there are other approaches to Madhyamika. In fact, books similar to this could be written from those other approaches as well.
In any case, what we are inspired by in Tsongkhapa’s presentation is its user-friendly structure for presenting the teachings. It is like a matrix that contains several elements that make emptiness meditations easy to approach. We have found that you don’t have to be a Buddhist to benefit from this approach. You can work it into various other paths.
Here is a quick overview of why we find this system useful.
Conventional and Inherent Existence
The foundation of the path is the recognition that emptiness negates not objects but an imagined status of objects.
