ADVAITA-L Digest - question?

[Sankar Jayanarayanan]

Sincerely sorry for opening up a topic on Buddhism. I read a few books on
Buddhism mainly to see if there was any ground for the charge that Advaita is
"veiled" Buddhism, and also to check whether the people who claimed that
Shankara was a "crypto-Buddhist" could prove their assertions. Especially
Sri Ramakrishna saying ,"The path that Buddha established is not different from
the Vedic path of knowledge" surprised me even more.

I'll try to make this my last email on this topic.

What I'm writing here is from so many books, many of which are contradictory!
So I'll just quote from a specific book (or paraphrase it).

Ramakrishnan wrote:

> Isn't that itself a view, I mean "don't have a view to cling to"?

(MMK : mUla madhyamaka kArikA.)
MMK (13.8) "The Victorious Ones have announced that emptiness is the
relinquishing of all views. Those who are possessed of the view of
emptiness are said to be incorrigible".

I think the "relinquishing of all views" is a fair way to "define emptiness".
(That's just my opinion, and Cheng may agree with that).
The last verse of the MMK is,"I reverently bow to Gautama who, out of
compassion, has taught the true doctrine in order to relinquish all views."
                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I think the "purpose" of the "doctrine" is summed up. I just want to point out
that Nagarjuna's thesis is closer to a language philosophy (that of
relinquishing views) rather than a specific metaphysics dealing with
reality, etc. as is normally thought (though there are many books saying that
it all "boils down to" a language-philosophy, I have come across many others
devoted to Nagarjunian metaphysics)

>
> Here you again. How do you know that the seen object does not exist? All you

There are elaborate "proofs" Nagarjuna gives for this. Essentially, he says
that for an "object" to exist, it must have "svabhaava" (self-nature). But in
that case, an "object" can never undergo change (which is otherwise saying that
it loses its "self-nature"). Losing self-nature is something which Nagarjuna
dismisses as not possible, for such an "object" is not evident. In a sense,
he is an empiricist too : he "proves" a lot from experience.

MMK (13.3) "Because of the perception of change, the absence of self-nature
of existents is [recognized]. Because of the emptiness (shUnyataa) of
existents, there is no existent without self-nature".

> can say is that the seen object has no reality apart from you, i.e., there is
> no way of distinguishing objects seen "outside" and "inside" (waking and
> dream). This is the only way we can say "jagat mithya", i.e., ascribing a
> special reality to the world, apart from you, is "mithya". A seer is certainly
> meaningful, since there must be someone to deny the "seen", otherwise you get

If the "seen" is non-existent, how then can there be a "seer" for the word
"seer" to have meaning?

MMK (3.5)"...one should admit that a seer is explained by [the analysis of]
seeing itself."
(3.6) "A seer does not exist separated or non-separated from seeing..."

> into a contradiction. Can anybody deny that he exists? No, not without getting

I don't know what is meant by "anybody". :-) Nagarjuna seems to say that
the "seer" is non-existent apparently because of the word "seer" (as above)
being a subject in seer-sees-seen.

> So is there anything _not_ empty?

I wasn't able to find the above verse "all this is empty" exactly, but here's
something close:

MMK (13.7) "If there were to be something non-empty, there would then be
something called empty. However, there is nothing that is non-empty. How could
there be something empty?"

The above says that "nothing is non-empty", leading to "All is empty".
But it's not so simple, I guess, for the translator has explained in a full
page why that's not the case, and I don't quite follow him.

[snip]

> I should point out here that gauDapaada also says that what is accepted by the
> vedas and what is also deduced by reason is alone correct. Thus, he declares
> statements about creation as illustrations for novices.

Sorry. I should have understood that this is not the forum to discuss the
middle way. My sincere apologies. Let this present email be my last regarding
the matter.

>
> > 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.
>
> I can't follow what you are trying to say :-).

I guess what he's saying is that the "middle way", the "negation" etc. are
themselves "empty" (shUnyataa : please don't ask me what this is - I just have
no idea as of now what Nagarjuna means when he says,"shUnyataa").

Again, I'll just quote Cheng,"According to mAdhyamika, language is like a game,
and our debate whether x is y or x is not y is like a magical creation.
Suppose there are two men created by magic. One does a certain thing and the
other prevents him from doing it. In this case the action and the prevention are
equally illusory, yet it makes sense to say that one prevents the other.
Similarly, according to Nagarjuna, his own words are empty, like things created
by magic or illusion, and yet he can refute the essence of all dharmAs. His
negation is not a negation of something real. Nagarjuna argued : "Just as a
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magically formed phantom created by its own magic could deny a phantom created
by its own magic, so could negation and refutation." "

> I can give another example:
>
> A man was talking about shunya, and how everything is shunya etc. The Zen
> master whacks him on his head with a pipe. The man gets angry and the master
> observes, "If every thing is empty, where did the anger come from?".
>
> Clearly, a pointer to "realize" the self.

There are others:

The master asked,"I have a thing which has neither head nor tail, neither
name nor word, and neither back nor face. Does anyone know what it is?"

The disciple stated : "That is the essence of the Buddha, my Buddhahood."

> a whack on the head (all from various Zen stories). One can break away from
> formal language only when "realized".

One can break away from formal language => realized.
Probably a play on the word "can". But I think I see your point.

> The last statement above is according to masters, who I have
> faith in, and certainly not by experience. So breaking away from formal
> language is quite an impossibility and indulging in such a thing by making
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Perhaps you meant : possible only on realization?

-Kartik