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Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience and then proceed to make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.
Suffering and its Cause Nagarjuna has now analyzed almost all of the elements into which the Abhidharma subdivided reality. Only one percept has not yet been mentioned. This is duhkha, the all-encompassing universal suffering. The Buddha spoke of "three marks of existence": impermanence, soullessness, and suffering. Impermanence and soullessness are descriptions of the ontological status of phenomena, and suffering is the consequence of these for the individual. The next two sections of the karika discuss, first, the nature and origin of suffering itself and second, the dispositions which cause all phenomena to be experienced as suffering.
Buddhism does not see duhkha as just a regrettable fact of life that must be accepted. This would be simple pessimism. Since Buddhism is preeminently a soteriology, the fact of suffering is exploited to spur the unhappy individual on to the proper goal of nirvana.
FOOTNOTE: Santina, 31-33 The Buddha was very clear that one must have a proper understanding of suffering and its origin if one is to utilize this understanding and ultimately escape from suffering. Nagarjuna examined all the possibilities of the cause of suffering, namely self-causation, other-causation, both, or neither, and found that none were tenable. The result of considering suffering to be self-caused would be that one person acts in a way that causes suffering, and then this same person experiences the suffering. This would mean that the same person existed in at least two separate moments, which would lead to the belief in eternalism. If suffering is considered to be caused by another, then there would not be a firm connection between an act and its consequences. This could lead to a denial of moral responsibility. A further objection to both of the above is that any distinction between the agent and the suffering caused by the agent's act would allow for there to be a person existing separate from suffering. Who is this person who can exist unsullied by duhkha? asks Nagarjuna.
FOOTNOTE: karika XII.4,6 Finally, if caused by both, then the above difficulties are just compounded, and if caused by neither, then it would be deterministic and nirvana forever unattainable. When a disciple asked the Buddha if suffering is self-caused or is caused by another, the Buddha did not answer "yes" or "no" to either question. He merely remarked, in answer to each, "one should not put it that way."
FOOTNOTE: Kalupahana 1986, 45 To preclude the false and harmful beliefs mentioned above, the fact of suffering was neither explained nor explained away. The only important thing is its eradication, which is indirectly the subject of the next section.
Nagarjuna examined briefly in section six the nature of passions like lust and hatred, or passionate attraction and aversion, and demonstrated that they are dependent upon the one who grasps. This proves that the constraining passions are ultimately illusory and can have no real claim on the one who understands them. An understanding of this dependence paves the way for the possibility of freeing oneself from the passions and discovering nirvana. He examines the nature of dispositions once again in section thirteen, "Examination of Dispositions," but with a different emphasis. Whereas in the earlier section he focused on the dependence of the dispositions on the subject, here he explains in greater detail why the dispositions can have no independent reality.
FOOTNOTE: The importance of this section is hinted at by the difficulty the Buddhist tradition has had in naming it. Most interpreters have entitled it "Samskara-pariksa," the analysis of "Dispositions" (Kalupahana) or "Conditioned Elements" (Streng), even though the term samskara appears in the chapter only once. The Tibetan texts gave it the title "Tattva-pariksa," analysis of "Truth," though the term tattva does not appear in the chapter once. Sprung's title of "The Absence of Being in Things" may be the most accurate, for the terms "sunya" or "sunyata" appear in half the verses. However, since this debate is too involved for the context at hand, Kalupahana's translation is accepted here.
This section, at eight verses in length, is one of the shortest in the karika. However, it is one of the most important examinations of the entire treatise. The dispositions have a unique place in the Buddha's ontology, for they hold a very influential place in his two formulations of reality, i.e. dependent arising and the aggregates of personal existence skandhas). As the second link in the chain of dependent arising, dispositions are that which, conditioned by ignorance, bring the world into existence. In the five categories comprising the individual, dispositions both shape the personality and condition rebirth.
In placing this discussion immediately after the one of suffering, Nagarjuna apparently had in mind the Buddha's "three marks of existence," impermanence, suffering, and soullessness. The Buddha's exact wording here is important. He did not indiscriminately ascribe these marks to all aspects of existence. Specifically, he said "All conditioned things are impermanent. All conditioned things are suffering. All phenomena are soulless."
FOOTNOTE: Kalupahana 1986, 218 An implication of this is, not that conditioned things are not soulless, but that not all phenomena are suffering.
FOOTNOTE: Neither may this be interpreted to mean that phenomenal things are permanent. Admittedly, this is confusing. Likely the Buddha just used the formulation that "all phenomena are soulless" to be more comprehensive--- had he said "all conditioned things are soulless," one would not be prevented from erroneously seeking a soul residing outside of the conditioned things. cf. Rahula, 57-58. If the Buddha were to have said that all phenomena are suffering, he would have been promoting an unreserved pessimism, for there is no escaping phenomena while alive. By saying that all conditioned things are suffering, he was showing a way to escape from suffering while in this life. A person may be a part of the phenomenal world but not regard it in a way that creates suffering, i.e. not seek reality in conditioned things. One needs only an understanding of this unreal nature of things, which will allow one to give up the grasping thirst for existence and the passions inspired by experience. This, in turn, will pacify the dispositions, and most suffering will be avoided.
FOOTNOTE: Etymology provides an intriguing coincidence: the root of the English word "passion" is the Latin pati, "to suffer." The cause of all of this self-entrapment is a lack of proper understanding. "The dispositions depend on ignorance," the Buddha said, and "the entire mass of suffering thus comes into existence."
FOOTNOTE: Ramana, 111 The key that Nagarjuna holds to all of this is that he can clarify the nature of the passions and dispositions, which will help to dispel the ignorance which causes duhkha.
The aggregate of dispositions is of crucial importance, for it is this aggregate which, more than any of the other four, flavors the character of the whole bundle. In terms of the human individual, dispositions are most directly responsible for giving shape and uniqueness to the personality. The importance of this aggregate and the frequency of Nagarjuna's reference to it warrants further elucidation of its nature. The first three aggregates provide for the material world, sensations of it, and the resultant cognizing of sensation called perception. For example, the first aggregate may be an object, the second aggregate senses the light reflecting from the object and reports the frequency of the light, and the third aggregate identifies that frequency as "blue." The fourth aggregate is a mix of attitudes, habits, emotions, passions, and thoughts which cause the person to react to this perception, e.g. ``I like blue.''
This is also the place where, if one is not careful, such preferences and attitudes can lead to grasping. These dispositions are what turn an otherwise passive receiver of perceptions into a conceptualizing and acting individual. These four all provide first an awareness of the external world and then reactions to it. The fifth and final aggregate, consciousness, is not a sort of higher result arising from the first four, for the internal mental life is found in the fourth aggregate. Rather, consciousness is a term for the all-pervading awareness which makes possible sensations, perceptions, and dispositions.
A quote from the philosopher William James, while written in reference to a different tradition, is nonetheless one of the clearest and most cogent expressions of the function and importance of the dispositions this author has yet found.
FOOTNOTE: Kalupahana 1986, 48 The key is to use dispositional preferences without being used by them. Nagarjuna's section here offers explanations and guidance about how one is to do this.
To help to pacify, or break free from the clutch of the dispositions, Nagarjuna introduces here his famous concept of emptiness, sunyata.
FOOTNOTE: Emptiness was first mentioned at the end of his fourth section. In that context, however, it was mentioned for a different reason and may have even had a different meaning. Cf. pp. 148f. First, he repeats his negation of the possibility of real change. "Neither change of something in itself nor of something different is proper. The youth does not age nor does an aged person age."
FOOTNOTE: karika XIII.5 An entity cannot both have a real identity and experience a change. If, in the example, the person were youthful, then he or she would partake of no agedness and thus could not remain a youth and still age. If the person were aged, then it would be ludicrous to say that he or she ages. This would be tantamount to saying, for example, that a red thing turns red: real change would not have occurred. The solution is to say that all existent things have no self-nature, svabhava. Substances do not have attributes---they are "empty." Nagarjuna seems to feel that removing the possibility of holding false beliefs is the best way to preclude dispositional grasping and the suffering concomitant with it. If one understands that all things are empty, then ignorance will be removed, the dispositions will lose their foundation, and "the entire mass of suffering" will go out of existence.
Identity/Difference: Self-nature vs. Association of Distinct Elements Nagarjuna has devoted the majority of the first thirteen sections to examinations of each of the elements into which the Abhidharma classified reality and some of the causal and dependence relations between these elements. The problems he has with most of these elements boil down to the fact that they cannot be considered in isolation. When any element is seen as being in some way independent, logical paradoxes result. In section fifteen he addresses the root cause of these problematic theories, which problem is the assertion of self-nature, svabhava. Before tackling this pivotal issue, though, there was one last point he wanted to clarify.
Nagarjuna has amply demonstrated that one cannot conceive of things in isolation, because the identity which makes each a separate and distinguishable "thing" depends wholly on its relation to other things. What he has not addressed as fully as he would like is the relation itself. This he does in section fourteen, "Examination of Association." If one asserts that phenomena consist of separate yet interacting elements, then one is left with the problem of how these elements combine, or associate, to produce the phenomena. There is no way for atomistic and fully independent things to associate, for a truly independent thing is non-contingent, incapable of being influenced, and thus not subject to association. Further, if things are distinguishable, then their identity can be defined in isolation. Yet the concept of difference requires dependence. "Different things are dependent upon different things," Nagarjuna says.
FOOTNOTE: karika XIV.5 To say that things are different is to say that they are separate. But, "without a second different thing, one different thing can not exist as a different thing."
FOOTNOTE: karika XIV.7, trans. Streng (italics mine) Since any attempt to differentiate elements or phenomena reduces to absurdity, there can be no such thing as association of these elements. "Neither the associating nor the associated nor even the agent of association is evident."
FOOTNOTE: karika XIV.8 The English language affords an analogy here. The etymology of both ``distinguish'' and ``distinction'' is the Latin distinguere, ``to separate.'' As reality is ultimately whole, by whatever definition, separations have only phenomenal validity. The consequence of this is that there can be no way to declare a phenomenon to be composed of separate but combined elements.
One of the aspects of the Buddha's teachings about which the Buddha was most adamant is also one that proved to be the most unpalatable both to subsequent Buddhists and to non-Buddhists alike. This is the assertion that there is no real soul to be found in the universe. The Buddha was very explicit regarding the doctrine of soullessness:
FOOTNOTE: Anguttara-nikaya- sutta, quoted in Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles H. Moore, eds., A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 274 Notwithstanding, the tendency to believe in the soul seems to have been almost ineradicable, for it arose again and again in a variety of forms. The Theravada, for example, saw every element as being a real entity with a self-nature, svabhava.
FOOTNOTE: Lamotte, 602 While not exactly a form of atman, self-nature was nonetheless not so very different. Even more radical, certain of the Abhidharma commentaries explicitly defined an element in terms of its self-nature, declaring that it is precisely this permanent factor which gives an element its distinguishing identity.
FOOTNOTE: Warder, 323
Self-nature was the great bugaboo of metaphysical speculation, Nagarjuna felt, for it was the assertion of self- nature that made incomprehensible the relations between substance and attribute, subject and object, identity and difference. Thus, the "Examination of Self-nature," though short, is of supreme importance. While svabhava and atman are not exactly the same thing, as theories they faced the same problems. Self-nature, for Nagarjuna, had to be seen as a permanent and substantial identity for, if it were only temporarily the identity of a thing, then it would not truly be that thing's identity. However, this self-nature would have to be uncreated, neither caused nor dependent upon causal conditions (pratyayas). "How could there be a self- nature that is made?" he asks.
FOOTNOTE: karika XV.2 That is, if it were not uncreated then it would be artificial, and an artificial substance is inconsistent with the very definition of substance.
FOOTNOTE: Kalupahana 1992, 165 If there is no self- nature, then neither can there be its dialectical component, other-nature (parabhava), Nagarjuna continues, and thus conceptions based on difference and relation would be nullified.
Another significant corollary of svabhava is that it negates the very possibility of existence itself. This can be illuminated by etymology. Sva - bhava literally means "self - existence," and para - bhava literally means "other - existence." Without sva - bhava and para - bhava, Nagarjuna says, whence can there be existence itself, bhava? The reason for this is that existence, bhava, "is established only when there is svabhava or parabhava."
FOOTNOTE: karika XV.4 Further, "when the existent is not established, the non-existent is also not established," for the non-existent is nothing more than the change of the existent.
FOOTNOTE: karika XV. 5
The issue that Nagarjuna is addressing so doggedly is not simply metaphysical eristics. The consequences for Buddhism are profound, for "those who perceive self-nature as well as other- nature, existence as well as non-existence, they do not perceive the truth embodied in the Buddha's message."
FOOTNOTE: karika XV.6 The Buddha explicitly denied both extremes because, as a belief system, each was injurious for the individual seeking a release from suffering. To say that something exists or has self-nature "implies grasping after eternalism." To say that something does not exist now but once did, or exists now but will not always exist, "implies the philosophy of annihilationism." Therefore, "a discerning person should not rely upon either existence or non-existence."
FOOTNOTE: karika XV.10-11 These two extremes are each deleterious to the moral life: annihilationism because it undercuts responsibility, and eternalism because a firm belief in the self leads to a preoccupation with pleasure.
Bondage and its Cause
Self-hood and its Consequences
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