Question?

[Sankar Jayanarayanan]

S. Vidyasankar wrote:

> misconception. Sankara firmly upholds the absolutist brahman/Atman. His
 comment
>  about the
> "SUnyavAdins" is revealing. In the brahmasUtra bhAshya, he says, in effect,
 "to
>  negate the
> perceived reality, without accepting a higher reality as its substratum, is to
>  be a nihilist". Now, of
> course, nAgArjuna would point out that he is not a nihilist, as nihilism is
 yet
>  another view that is
> rejected by him. It is also the other "extreme" that he avoids as much as
>  absolutism. But for any
> vedAntin, including Sankara, not to be an absolutist of some kind is
 effectively
>  being nihilist.

That's true, but maybe Nagarjuna is against formal logic, and specifically
against theories (the "isms"). He doesn't hold a view because all views are
meaningless. As he himself says, "How can you refute me, who doesn't have a
view to cling onto?".

> Absolute is itself defined to be the supreme "Knower"

Knower of what?

Ramakrishnan wrote:

> Here's where gauDapaada disagrees with Nagarjuna. gauDapaada says that no one
> can deny that he exists. This is certainly pratyaksha (self evident). So the
> view that one exists is certainly evident.

I must read the book by David Kalupahana,"Nagarjuna: the philosophy of the
middle way" again, to clarify what Nagarjuna means when he uses the
word "self". If I'm right, by "self", Nagarjuna means,"the seer, hearer" and
so on. If the "seen" object doesn't exist, how meaningful is a "seer"?

> Then what is it that shunyata is a provisionary name for? Even to perceive any
> thing, including the emptiness, there must be an observer. Further, the last
> statement "he who holds ..." can be interpreted in the sense that, asserting
 so
> is itself an absolutist position.

Nagarjuna states,"All this is empty" instead of,"All is empty". This is one
of the most significant statements in his Karika. The latter is the philosophy
of shUyata, but the former cannot be misconstrued that way.

When the Buddha came along, there were many "absolutes" in India. The caste
system was an "absolute". Nobody could go against it. The Sanskrit language
was an "absolute": it was considered a "sacred" language. The vedic
injunctions were an "absolute": all statements in the Vedas were considered
true. Buddha was essentially against all these "absolutes". For Him, all these
were but "conventions" and could *never* be absolute. He rejected the prevailing
caste system, preached his sermons in Pali, and targeted his philosophy
against *statements*, thus demolishing three "absolutes".

Nagarjuna does not want to establish _any_ view. His thesis is that any
statement is ultimately meaningless (literally meaningless). The statement,
"There is an absolute" is as meaningless as,"There is no absolute".

As Karl Jasper says,"The idea is to arrive at a genuine truth which is beyond
all doctrines". So the Vedas, or for that matter, Nagarjuna's own kArikA, is
essentially meaningless. The terms,"shUnyata", "absolute", "good", "bad",
"right", "wrong", etc. are all meaningless. That's his understanding of
Buddha saying,"...to think the thought that is unthinkable, to do the work
that is not doing...".

Every word that we utter, we understand to "mean" something. For instance,
the statement,"Five people are standing here." has five words, all denoting
"something". "Five" denotes a number, "people" denotes an object, "are standing"
denotes an action, and "here" denotes the place. For Nagarjuna, there is no
subject, verb or object, no space, time or cause and effect. He holds that all
these words stand for non-existent entities and are hence meaningless terms.

> That is all fine, but there must be some one to negate, else there can be no
> negation. There is no escape from this. That cannot be negated. This is
 exactly
> where gauDapaada and nagarjuna seem to diverge. I haven't read nagarjuna's
> works to make a postive statement about this. Do you know what nagarjuna says
> shunyata is a provisionary term for?

As I said, Nagarjuna holds ALL terms to be meaningless. But there is always
the question: How meaningful then is a negation? Cheng gives an example: in a
dream, there are two illusory people X and Y. X tries to do something, and Y
prevents him from doing it. Though the action "preventing him from doing it"
is itself illusory, but still, it makes sense to use the term "prevent" in the
context of the dream.

All said and done, language is a powerful tool in helping one to "go beyond"
language. During Buddha's time, there was a man called Sanjaya BelaTTiputta
who maintained complete silence for fear of being contradicted. But Buddha
clearly distinguished his own doctrine from Sanjaya's. For Buddha, language
does help in a way. As Nagarjuna says,"Without using language, the doctrine
is not taught. Without learning the doctrine, one cannot become enlightened."
(paraphrased).

>
> Actually, I find that Zen Buddhism escaped this shunuyata arguments, atleast
> some of the masters like Bassui. Their arguments seem more directed towards
> self-realization.

I think Zen Buddhism follows mAdhamika quite closely (though it has come under
influence from Taoism and other philosophies too). Most zen masters use
language as if they didn't know the proper use of words. Cheng gives two
examples:

1)      A man asks a monk,"What's your name?"
        The monk: "Pen-Chi."
        Man: "Say something more."
        Monk: "I won't."
        Man: "Why not?"
        Monk:"My name is not Pen-Chi."

2)      A man goes to the Zen master and asks him,"Everything returns to
        oneness. What does the oneness return to?"
        The master says,"Once I donned a robe weighing seven pounds."

Pen-Chi's answer is illogical, and the Zen master's reply is odd, isn't it?
But the idea is to break away from formal language. Hence Nagarjuna is often
compared with Wittgenstein, who was one of the great language philosophers
of this century.

One Zen master says,"Void and being are not to be conceived of as two.
This is called the middle way."

-Kartik