Question?

[Frank Maiello]

Kartik wrote:
>
> I believe S.Radhakrishnan and others have understood the complete negation
> of Nagarjuna to be a parallel to the advaitic "neti, neti". But Cheng says,
> "But perhaps Nagarjuna's negation is quite different from Upanishadic
> negation.
> The latter assumes the existence of an inexpressible essential substratum, and
> the main aim is to describe, by negation, an absolute which cannot be
> expressed.
> The Madhyamika negations do not assume an inexpressible essential substratum,
> nor is their purpose to describe, by negation, this reality, rather to deny
>                                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> that there can be such a reality."
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>

This hits the philosophical nerve, raw and direct.  I always regarded the
Buddhist way as an uncompromising assault on the judgemental Mind.  Which is
why, from the start, Buddha was *silent* when questioned about the soul or God.
The subsequent Madhyamika school's professed denials don't necessarily imply
that the 'ultimate condition of What IS' is literally shunyata in the classical
definition of the word.  Their attitude was adopted as a means to neutralize
the typical force of the Mind's insistence to judge, categorize and suffer.

Also: Nirvana, by definition, alludes to the flame of the ego-Mind having
been extinguished.  Any "denial that there can be such a substratum reality
(Brahman)" doesn't imply that at the foundation of Being lies a void; neither
should any Buddhist [including a Zen] translate such an idea to embrace the
experiential ultimatum of a void.  Only in an abstract intellectual sense can
such a condition theoretically exist.  A wave of samadhi will expose what's
what.  The idea that we might call it the absolute or not, is meaningless.

>
> Nagarjuna is the "negator par excellence" :-). He's not merely an agnostic.
> He rejects theism, atheism and agnosticism!
>

So does ajata advaita!  [Theistic] Isvara is merely a temporal component in
the [impossible] kriyashakti outbreath of Brahman [which, in turn, is beyond
theism, atheism and agnosticism].

>
> Of course, there's always the problem of how there can be any knowledge of
> such an absolute. For the knowledge itself must be eternal, in which case we
> must either have that knowledge eternally or not at all...
>

Can the eye see the eye?  The real 'I' is itself jnanadrsthi, manifesting as
jnanabhavana.  Its very awareness-essence is the continuum of ananda.  Doing
life time without inquiry we get sucked into myriad confusions/delusions...on
the other hand, if we question the source of the nonsense, we discover the
unknowable we ever are: beyond the comedy of judgements.

praNaam.