Topic: How do (one or more) Buddhist thinker we have read this term understand "Emptiness." (My own research topic.
Note: I do not yet know how to properly upload a file so that the "Footnotes" and other format features on words are identical on the blog. Please excuse improper footnotes and critic this paper solely on its content.
Aesthetics and Interpretative Understanding 36: Final paper
Professor and Teaching Fellow: XX-XX
By Bledar Blake Zenuni
Fire, Fuel, Zen and Emptiness: How Nagarjuna and Dogen Employ Language to
Understand Emptiness
Nagarjuna is perhaps the most influential polemicist in all of Buddhism. Not only did Nagarjuna’s precise arguments on Buddhist teachings from the “Two Fold Truth” to the “Noble Eight-Fold Path” deconstruct theories of other competing schools of Buddhism at the time, but his founding of the Madhyamika school helped to achieve an exegesis of a particular type of Buddhism that was both abstract and theoretical in nature. In his Mulamadhyamakakarika, Nagarjuna uses abstract metaphors and terse, succinct verses to expound his teaching of “The Two Fold Truth,” which emphasizes above all that conventional truths do not give one the ultimate truth about existence. Conventional truths are acquired in the world as experienced by the empirical observations and the aggregate of ordinary perceptions, whereas ultimate truth is realized in the attainment of wisdom, which produces non-attachment, and the freedom of Nirvana. In his verses in “Mulamadhyamakakarika” Nagarjuna uses the deconstructive function of emptiness as the ultimate truth, arguing emphatically that to understand the causation of suffering, or dhuka, one must accept that all phenomena of existence are both empty and interdependent, constantly in flux, and that language is not the correct medium for the perception of such phenomena. In the first chapter of the Mulmadhyakmakakarika Nagarjuna argues that causes and conditions are empty of inherent existence or essence, but one cannot deduce this conclusion through language because words are linked with conventional truths, and, by extension, directly linked with the dukha of samsara and death. In other words, Nagarjuna uses words and language to deconstruct arguments against his Two-fold truth while urging audiences to accept emptiness as the ultimate truth and to denounce relying on words in their practice and understanding of Buddhism. Nagarjuna asserts that language belongs in the realm of conventional truth, and holds no relation to understanding the ultimate truth. From Dogen’s perspective, however, language should not be used as a deconstructive force to to propitiate and control audience into accepting emptiness as the ultimate truth because such a function lacks a dynamical, dialectical relationship with the worldly truth. Put another way, language should not be denounced because it belongs to the realm of worldly truth, rather is a form of expression of one’s own innate Buddha-nature. In Dogen’s school of Zen, the substance of the universe is essentially one and the same with the Buddha. Language, therefore, is not used to deconstruct worldly experiences and to assert that empirical observations result in emptiness. Rather, it is used to include the reconstructive function of emptiness with respect to worldly truth, “whose core in the Buddhist scheme lies in dependent origination.”[1] The different methods by which Nagarjuna and Dogen use language seem to suggest that Nagarjuna and Dogen are at odds with each other in the function they believe the two-fold truth serves in Buddhism. However, both Nagarjuna and Dogen employ language as agents to expound their ideas: Nagarjuna uses words as expedient means to arrive at the “middle way,”—where worldly phenomena and the ultimate truth that are constantly changing and in flux with each other—and Dogen uses language as a way to penetrate the dukha, conveying the message that all sentient beings use language as a means of expression of the “ultimate truth.”
Nagarjuna theory of the Two-Fold truth states that Buddha’s teachings of dharma, or the accumulation of all good and evil deeds, is based on two truths: the “conventional truth” and the “ultimate truth.” The conventional truth states that the aggregate of all our perceptions is based on empirical observations in the worldly realm, whereas the ultimate truth is the realization of “emptiness,” by the acceptance of all worldly phenomena as empty of substance and essence. The Madhyamika school explains the concept of emptiness through the related concept of interdependence: all phenomena are empty of “essence,” or svabhava, implying that they have no intrinsic independent reality apart from the causes that led to their origination in the first place. By implication, this means that language itself is interdependent on other phenomena, making it empty in itself. In Mulamadhyamakakarika, Nagarjuna concerns himself with how to understand emptiness of phenomena, in particular the emptiness of inherent existence of all phenomena in nature. When Nagarjuna uses language to argue that emptiness is the ultimate truth, he means that “no phenomena exists inherently, that is, in virtue of being a substance independent of its attributes and in virtue of having an essence, but that does not mean that all phenomena are nonexistent tout court.”[2] Nagarjuna’s development of the two-fold truth is a result of his use of language to convey that we cannot make sense of the idea of a thing’s nature since it is deconstructed into not having any intrinsic worth. Nagarjuna extrapolates this logic to argue that emptiness itself is empty of inherent existence. As such, language is a tool for Nagarjuna to convey to his audiences not that the acceptance of emptiness and change is a way to account for the Four Noble Truths, nirvana, Budha-hood, and all other fundamental Buddhist soteriological conceptions. “Thus, according to Nagarjuna, all things indicated by words—including emptiness, the Buddhist ultimate truth—are without intrinsic nature, because they are in fact substantiated by the objectifying power of words.”[3] In one of his verses, Nagarjuna goes on to:
“I, without grasping, will pass beyond sorrow. /
And I will attain nirvana, one says./
Whoever graps like this has a great grasping.”[4]
Nagarjuna’s implications are two-fold: first, one who has realized emptiness has realized the ultimate truth and will attain nirvana; second, the ultimate truth is a subtle realization that cannot be conveyed by language. Nagarjuna further implies that one’s usage of words is a form of “grasping,” and as one uses language to understand the ultimate truth, this leads to a positive reinforcement of further grasping. If language is a way of “grasping,” and attachment in the worldly realm, then this begs the question: how is one to teach the ultimate truth? Nagarjuna chooses to resolve this dilemma by employing another Buddhist soteriological term: expedient means.
Nagarjuna’s verses on fire and firewood illustrate that worldly truth and the ultimate truth are in flux with each other, in a changing system and the medium of language is but an expedient means to understanding the blaring paradox that all phenomena are both simultaneously empty of essence and interdependent on aggregates of other phenomena. To understand this paradox, Nagarjuna sets up his metaphor on fire and firewood with the following verses:
“So, if one thinks that/
That which is burning is fuel/
If it is just this,/
How is the fuel being burned?”[5]
This implies that either the process of burning is identical to the fuel being used, or different, or overlap and are both different and the same. If they are different, then there will be no fire, and if they are the same, then fire and fuel will burn side by side, with fire not requiring the fuel. Nagarjuna follows this verse with another:
“And, if fire and fuel/
Preclude each other/
Then fire being different from fuel/
It must still be asserted that they connect.”[6]
Fire and fuel are thus interdependent, in that they are “different, but connect.” But does this mean that they are dependent upon a third source? Whether or not this is true is irrelevant, since these verses illustrate that in themselves, fire and fuel are empty, but when they’re interdependent they function as fire and fuel should function in the worldly realm. By extention, this applies to all phenomena in the worldly realm. What Nagarjuna has accomplished in theses verses is to convey that language has no intrinsic worth in itself, since the full meaning emptiness cannot be understood through it. However, it can function as an expedient means to illustrate metaphors and analogies of the how two
-elements such as fire and fuel could be understood as both empty in themselves and interdependent with each other.
Moreover, Nagarjuna takes it as a fundamental philosophical task to provide an understanding of what Buddhist philosophy refers to as pratiyasamutpada—dependent coorigination. For Nagarjuna, pratiyasamutpada is the nexus between phenomena in virtue of which events depend on other events, “composites depend on their parts, and so forth.”[7] In Mulamadhyamakakarika Nagarjuna expounds on this idea:
“All things lack entitihood, since change is perceived/
There is nothing without entity because all things have emptiness/
If there is no entitihood, what changes?/
If there were entity, how could it be correct that something changes.”[8]
Nagarjuna’s use of language is extremely subtle in this verse. He argues that all things lack “entitihood,” and all change is perceived. By implication, the change that is perceived must therefore be the changes in the interdependence of all things interacting with each other in the worldly realm. As one Buddhist scholar writes: “given that phenomena depend upon their conditions for their existence and given that nothing answering to an essence of phenomena can be located in those conditions and given that there is nowhere else that an essence could come from, it follows that phenomena that arise from conditions are essenceless.”[9] But given that we are arguing that phenomena are essenceless through the medium of language, language itself is not essenceless, rather it is a tool, an agent, or a catalyst for the realization of the ultimate truth that all phenomena as essenceless. Nagarjuna writes the following verse to convey an understanding of the truth of dependent arising:
“We state that what is dependent arising/
That is emptiness/
That [i.e., dependent arising] is dependent upon convention/
That itself is the middle path.[10]
Therefore, Nagarjuna uses language as an expedient means to convey his two-fold truth, which is really theory of change, seeking to understand the middle way. The middle way is a constituent of several variables: emptiness as the ultimate truth, all phenomena are dependently arisen, all phenomena are interdependent. Language is an expedient means to understanding how the middle way functions in terms of these two variables.
Language functions as a medium of expression in Dogen’s “Oneness of Enlightenment.” “Enlightenment, from Dogen’s perspective consists of clarifying and penetrating one’s muddled discriminative thought” to attain clarity, depth, and precision in and through our language in discriminative thought itself.[11] But in this case, language is not an expedient means to understanding, and eventually accepting, the ultimate truth of the emptiness of all phenomena. Rather, language is the fabric of all existence. It is a form of expression for both sentient beings. Language is thus a medium of expression, guiding one to enlightenment or vision seeing as one is able to clarify and obliterate, through expression of language or thought, his ignorance to realize the Four Noble Truths of Dukha (suffering is a part of life), Samudaya (there is a cause to suffering), Nirodha (there is a way out of suffering), Magga (the path that leads out of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path). A particular example that illustrates the use of language as a medium of expression is the episode of “The Sound of the Valley Streams:”
The sounds of the stream are [the Buddha’s ]long, borad, tongue
The sights of the mountains are his pure body,
Eighty-four thousand gathas throught the night,
How can I expound them [to others] someday?”
The language that Dogen uses in this verses is at first non-existent, for he says “how can I expound them to others someday?” However, the above verse remarkably illustrates that Dogen’s view of language is deeply grounded in his notion of temporality. His reasoning that everything is temporally related, and that we make sense of the our Buddha-nature, which is innate in all beings, through expression. In the above episode, the protagonist, Su Tung- p’o is overcome with awe so much so that he cannot find a way to “expound,” the majesty of what he is experiencing. What Dogen suggests, is that the insentient beings, or the stream and the mountains, are expressing themselves to Su Tung- p’o through their Buddha-nature. They are a part of enlightenement and are communicating to Su Tung- p’o in boundlessly majestic ways that does not involve language since it is not a part of their faculty. It is now the task of Su Tung- p’o to communicate what was expressed to him by the selfless insentient beings. Dogen goes on to indicate that only when Su Tung- p’o is equally selfless will he be able to utilize his medium of expression, language, to communicate to others what has been expounded upon him. Dogen thus focalizes language as the agent of liberation from samsara and the end to all dukha.
The analysis on the language of Dogen and Nagarjuna leads one to conclude that Dogen and Nagarjuna are at odds with each other on their articulation of emptiness. Nagarjuna seems to suggest that emptiness is a deconstructive force, leading the audience to accept the fact that all empirical phenomena are fleeting, superficial, and peripheral. Moreover, Nagarjuna uses language to argue that understanding the relation between emptiness and the dependent origination of all phenomena is in fact the middle way. For Dogen, it’s quite the opposite; he employs language as a means to understand examine emptiness as a deconstructive and a reconstructive force by perpetually causing change and and expounding all phenomena as inherently empty and inherently possessive of the Buddha nature. To Dogen, you yourself are the valley streams and the mountains, all phenomena is you and you are a part of all phenomena, with the two truths as the two foci in the realization process of one’s buddhahood. However, a deeper look at The Treaties on the Middle suggest that Nagarjuna’s emptiness does not “suffer from a self-imposed, restrictive soteriology of ultimate truth,”[12] that is, worldly truth is not all together ignored in explaining how to realize one’s Buddha nature, rather both truths work in a deconstructive and reconstructive way, like two waves, acting in a reconstructive and deconstructive way to meet at one single middle point, a node, signifying the Middle Way. Nagarjuna’s understanding of emptiness is in turn seen as a theory of change, seeking to understand the causes and conditions to the question of cause and effect. What wider implications can this understanding have? Surely, Nagarjuna makes it clear that language belongs in the realm of worldly truth, but that does not mean that it is excluded from the ultimate truth. Nagarjuna states the following:
“ The Buddha’s expounded the dharma by means of two truths/
Worldly Truth and the Supreme Truth/
Without the reliance on verbal expressions, the Supreme cannot be expounded/
Without grounding in the supreme, Nirvana is not realized.
As is the case for Dogen, so is it for Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna and Dogen are both not absolutists in their use of language in that it is not empty of “essence,” but an integral part of the bodhidharma of human beings who are capably of employing its usage for understanding worldly phenomena and, in the case of bodhisattvas, using it as an expedient means to get others to understand the ultimate truth. For all of its limitations, for both Dogen and Nagarjuna language is able to function (whether by expression as seen in the Sound of the Stream episode or by expedient means to recruit the audience to the Middle Way), as potent agent of salvation from samsara. In other words, language plays an intrinsic part in understanding emptiness, and by, extension when one accepts emptiness of all things, he one is freed from attachment, then ignorance, and then liberated from the twelve links of conditionality and the dhuka.
Bibliography
Hee-Jin, Kim, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking: A Reflection on His View of Zen, Chapter 3, “Negotiating Emptiness,” Chapter 4, “The Reason of Words and Letters,” Chapter 5, “Meditation as Authentic Thinking,” State University of New York, New York, 2007.
Cook, Francis Harold, Enlightenment in Dogen’s Zen: Translation of Nine Essays from Shobogenzo, “The Buddha Right Before Us” pp. 17-30, “Kannon” pp. 89-106, State University of New York Press, 1989.
Cook, Francis Harold, How to raise an ox: Zen practice as taught in Zen Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, including ten newly translated essays, New York, Random House Inc, 2006
Nagarjuna, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika, Translated and Commentary by Jay L. Garfield, Princeton
University Press, New York, 2008
[2] Garfield, “Nagarjuna’s Middle Way,” pp. 89-92
[3] Ibid, pp. 93-94
[5] op.cit., “Fire and Firewood,” pp. 123-129
[6] op.cit., “Fire and Firewood,” pp. 123-129
[7] Hee-Jin, Kim “the reason of words and letters,” pp. 62-63
[8] op.cit, Garfield, “chapter XII, ” pp. 220-240
[9] op.cit, Garfield, “chapter XII explanation,” pp. 323-324
[11] op.cit, Hee-Jin, “Dogen on Meditation and Thinking” pp. 64-67.
[12] Hee-Jin p.52
Teaching Fellow's Comments
Professor's Comments:
Teaching Fellow's Comments
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your paper. You successfully engaged with extremely difficult questions in Buddhist philosophy (e.g., What is emptiness? What is Nagarjuna’s twofold truth? What is Buddha-nature?). Your thesis, moreover, is compelling. You suggest that Nagarjuna and Dôgen differ in terms of their understanding of emptiness: the former you describe as deconstructive and the latter reconstructive. This distinction is useful. It perhaps overlaps with the distinction between apophatic and kataphatic discourses on emptiness elaborated by scholars such as Gimello, Gomez, and others. It also touches on a question we considered in our course regarding the Hua-yen school of Buddhism and their positive interpretation of emptiness. Dôgen is very much heir to this tradition. I think your idea of his theory of language as a medium of expression whose very existence constitutes the fabric of reality was really great. In your reading of Nagarjuna, moreover, you touch upon some important ideas: the metaphor of the fire and fuel as an example of his use of language as an expedient means (the same may be said about his use of the tertralemma), the theory of the twofold truth as a response to the problem of using language to teach the ultimate truth of emptiness. The second part of your paper considers a fundamental similarity shared by the two philosophers: their use of language as an expedient means. The example you adduce of Su Tung-p’o’s poem was effective. With respect to Nagarjuna, however, you missed the opportunity to consider his verse on p. 8 as his most explicit statement regarding his own use of language as an expedient means, particularly as it relates to the theory of the twofold truth. Although some passages of the paper lack clarity and could benefit from a closer reading of the texts, you have accomplished a great deal in this short paper. Your insights into the difficult concepts of emptiness, twofold truth, and Buddha-nature demonstrate a subtle understanding of Buddhist doctrine. I hope to read more from you about these important issues in the future. Great job!
Hi Blake,
I just had a chance to read your paper and enjoyed it very much. This is the most lucid student (including both graduate and undergraduate) paper on the nature of emptiness and its relationship to language I've ever read. I liked your comparison of Nagarjuna and Dogen not only because of your very careful reading on the two thinkers, but more importantly of the fact that you approach them through their own ways of using language for religious training and spiritual progress. I read your paper with a personal interest as well. In the 1990s in Japan among the scholarly circles of Zen, there was a well publicized debate on the legitimacy of Dogen's Buddhism. Those who identified themselves as the upholders of "hihan bukkyo" or critical Buddhism, accusedDogen as an "essentialist" because for them Dogen treats Buddha nature as or as if, an eternal and constant substance. They used Nagarjuna to justify their criticism. Those who defendedDogen counterargued, often from a post-colonialist perspective, that Hihan Buddhists were working on a premise that Buddhism in India is the source, and therefor always more legitimate than its derivatives, such as Chinese Buddhism or Zen in Japan. They claimed that Hihan Buddhists contradicts with themselves because if one holds fast to Nagarjuna's claim that all things are neutral in their own nature, it is impossible to presume that any type of Buddhist idea is more essential than others just because it represents a source both historically or geographically. I won't go into the detail of how the debate developed and in the end deteriorated into political and factional strife among Buddhist intellectuals in some quite important Japanese universities. But I thought that if those on both sides of that debate had access to your discussion, their debate would have ended with more academically fruitful outcome. You did an excellent job in your reading of both Nagarjuna and Dogen. You remained sympathetic to both, and at the same time, were able to use one skillfully to illustrate the singularity of the other. I think your paper itself is a manifestation of the virtue of the Middle truth. Congrats on your accomplishment. Hope you are enjoying a nice winter break. I look forward to having more chance to talk with you in spring.
All the best,
Ryuichi |
Copyright, All rights reserved, BlakeZen, 2011.
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