RELS  Handout 13.1: Perfection of Wisdom, Madyhamaka and Yogacara

 

I.                     Perfection of Wisdom Tradition (Prajnapararmita)

 

A.     Texts (composed between 200 BCE and 600 CE–and attributed to the Buddha).

 

1.  Mahayana texts that feature the Bodhisattva ideal.

2.  Emphasize the notion of sunyata or emptiness.

3.  Make seemingly contradictory claims (e.g., the perfection of patience is not a perfection, etc.) and seems to contradict earlier and essential Buddhist teaching.

4.  Central Prajnaparamita texts:  The Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra.

 

B.      Interpretation:  Contradictions can be resolved by recognizing that the texts are about transcending ordinary knowledge in order to achieve a higher wisdom.  This is done in a 3-fold process:

 

1.  Construction:  A “conventional” truth that points to a reality beyond itself.

2.  Deconstruction: Reference to an external reality is negated.

3.  Reconstruction: The original statement is restated conventionally, this time with a view to direct insight into the truth of interdependent arising.

 

C.      Diamond Sutra:  Emphasizes the rejection of self-existence and essential being, while advocating the Bodhisattva ideal and mindfulness.  Even the enlightenment of a person is not understood as the awakening of a separate individual.  The truth of interdependent arising thus penetrates all reality.

 

D.      Heart Sutra: The focus here is on sunyata, emptiness.  The celestial Bodhisattva, Avalokita achieved enlightenment and overcame dukkha  by realizing that things and persons are empty of self-existence, permanence or essence.  This was probably intended to counter the Sarvastivadin view that makes interdependent arising a “secondary truth” about the organization of self-existing dharmas.  The Heart Sutra thus reestablishes the primacy of interdependent arising.

 

II.                   Madhyamaka

 

A.     Overview:  The “middle way” between eternalism (the view that reality is comprised self-existing essences) and nihilism (the view that nothing really exists or more precisely nothing has meaning, value).  The attempt to counter substantialist views of Hindus, Jains, and some Buddhists.  The view is dominant in Tibetan Buddhist thought and has had a profound influence in the development of Zen.

 

1.  Reality is a dynamic process; there are no absolutes (absolutes are themselves mental constructions).

2.  Two pillars of Madhyamaka thought:

1.        Emptiness

2.        Reconciliation of higher truth of direct experience with the lower truths of conceptual understanding.

 

3.  Emptiness is not only theory, but also practice.

 

B.      Nagarjuna’s Philosophy

 

1.  Method:  Basically two stages [1] Show that absolutist views of reality lead logically to contradiction. And [2] provide an explanation in terms of emptiness and interdependent arising.  Basic structure:  Let S be anything, esp., causality, self, motion.  Let E be the property of essential self-existence.  Either S has this property or it doesn’t.  The assumption that S has the property leads to absurdity, so S doesn’t have P.  However S can be explained in terms of emptiness.  Yet emptiness is not a something to cling to either.

 

2.  Causality (refutes the idea of a self-existing cause):   There are 4 possibilities [1] An effect is self-produced.  Can’t be true because a causal relation is between 2 things, and on this proposal there is only one. [2] An effect is essentially different from the cause.  This possibility is unsatisfactory because it cannot explain how essentially independent things could in principle be causally related.  Furthermore, if the effect is essentially different, that it cannot exist as effect prior to its production.  How then could anything e causally related to it (a relation entails the existence of at least two things)?  [3] An effect both produces itself and is produced by another.  This is just a conjunction of  [1] and [2}, and if either or both conjuncts are false, then [3] is false. [4] Reject causation altogether, which seems prima facie absurd.

 

3.  Causal Conditions: While causality cannot be understood as inherently existing, causal conditions are nevertheless intelligible:

 

a.        Efficient Conditions

b.       Percept-Object Conditions

c.        Immediate Conditions

d.       Dominant Conditions

 

4.  Motion: Motion is not to be understood as an entity. If it were it must be either [a] identical the thing moving or [b] different.  If [a], then an object motion is numerically nonidentical to the object standing still.  If [b], motion could occur purely, without any objects being moved at all.  Thus, instead of view motion substantially, it should be viewed relationally, dependent on certain conditions.

 

5.  Self:  Self is either [a] identical to 5 aggregates or [b] separate.  If [a], since each aggregate is constantly changing, there can be no personal identity.  If [b], changes in, say, consciousness, have nothing to do with the self, and the self is in principle unknowable.

 

6.  The Buddha:  A similar analysis reveals to selflessness of the Buddha.  This means the Buddha is empty, but if so, then is the real Buddha unknowable?  Here Nagarjuna invokes the two truths principle (conventional and ultimate).  Conventionally speaking, there is no Buddha, the true Buddha is beyond words and concepts.

 

7.  The Noble Fourfold Truth: The 4 Truths, Emptiness, Buddha, and Nirvana are understood as conventional truths.  These are “views” not to be mistaken for ultimate reality or truth.  Emptiness = Interdependent Arising  = Middle Path.

 

8.  Nirvana:  There is no substantial difference between nirvana and samsara. The former is just ordinary life, absent of greed, hatred, and ignorance.

 

III.                 Yogacara

 

A.     Overview: The school was founded by the brothers Asanga and Vasubhandu late 4th c. CE.  The term means “practice of discipline” referring to the path of becoming a Bodhisattva.

 

1.  Primary interests: The practice of paramitas (giving, patience, effort, moral conduct, mediation, and wisdom, in order to overcome dukkha.  The basic impediment to enlightenment = ignorance, so Yogacara seeks explain ignorance in contrast to enlightenment and how these function as a part of human cognition.  This leads them to examine the sorts of consciousness that lead to ignorance and enlightenment.

2.  Like Madhyamaka, Yogacarins accept the concept of emptiness along with the claim of nondifference between nirvana and samsara.  But the Yogacarins emphasize the nature of consciousness that gives rise to both ignorance and enlightenment (and the relation between these two) as well as providing a theory of consciousness that explains personal identity in the context of emptiness.  Thus the emphasis on consciousness in Yogacara is for three classic Buddhist reasons: [I] consciousness is the crucial link between rebirths, [ii] a transformed state of consciousness is associated with nirvana, and [iii] the perceiving mind is that which interprets existence so as to construct a world.

 

B.      Existence and Consciousness

 

1.  Three Aspects of Things (epistemology; compare to Plato’s Divided Line).

 

a.        Object as conceptually constructed (ordinary perception, imagination)

b.       Object conditioned by other things (interdependent arising, etc.)

c.        Object as it is in itself (no conceptual construction at all; subject/object duality is transcended.  Accomplished by direct insight).

 

2.  Nature and Function of Consciousness that gives arise to the Three Aspects.

 

a.        Ordinary Consciousness:  Dualistic subject/object consciousness, conditioned by discursive language.  This gives rise to ordinary and conditioned awareness of objects.

b.       Direct Consciousness: Nondual and nondiscursive, involving no subject/object distinction.  Beyond linguistic description.

 

3.  Eight Kinds of Consciousness: There are six associated with the 6 senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, and thought, plus two “manas” a subliminal “defiled” consciousness, and most importantly, the alaya or store-consciousness).

 

a.        The first seven are “ordinary” in as much as they involve intentional mental states.

b.       The Store Consciousness is actually nonconscious, comparable in some respects to the Freudian unconscious mind.

c.        The Store Consciousness projects all the other forms of conscious awareness leading to our “construction” of a world.

d.       The Store Consciousness is the locus for the planting of karmic seeds and also contains “pure” seeds that represent the potential for each human to realize Buddhahood.

e.        The Store Consciousness helps explain continuity necessary for personal identity.

f.         The 7th subliminal consciousness recognizes the reality of the Store Consciousness but mistakes it for a permanent self.  This is why it is defiled.

g.       The practice of the Bodhisattva is to purify the Store Consciousness through the paramitas. This ultimately allows for the bringing to fruition the pure seeds which are characterized by direct nondiscursive experience and mindfulness (beyond duality; 1st one follows the breath, then one becomes the breathing.).

 

4.  Realism or Idealism?  According to Koller, realism = the thesis that external reality is primary, consciousness is real only relative to the external.  Idealism = the thesis that consciousness is primary, the reality of everything else is dependent on consciousness.  Yogacara has consciousness at the root of both subjects and objects, and thus is, according to Koller, neither realist nor idealist.  It is a middle way.  Is Koller right?

 

C.      Arguments Against Realism (compare to Berkeley)

 

1.  Experience gives us only objects as objects of consciousness.

2.  None of the properties of objects that could constitute evidence for their existence can be shown to exist outside of conscious experience (color and even shape can’t exist abstractly).

3.  Theories that explain the objects of our experience in terms of parts to whole are only positing theoretical entities to explain what we experience; there is no direct evidence for the existence of such entities.

4.  While ordinary consciousness is always intentional – conscious of something or another, this does not imply that the objects in question are mind-independent.

5.  Dreams provide intentional objects without corresponding external material entities.

6.  The best explanation for our experience of objects is that they are projections.

 

D.      Knowledge of Reality – Asanga’s Epistemology.

 

1.  Ordinary Knowledge: Names and verbal desriptions.  This level is quite limited.

 

2.  Knowledge Provided By Reason (Scientific Knowledge) – this is discursive knowledge that includes logical, rational analyses.  It includes thought of essential nature, particularity, grasping wholes, “I,” “mine,” agreeable, disagreeable and neutral.  It too is limited because it reinforces the idea of self and essentialism, and thus is not a useful basis for practice.

 

3.  Knowledge Free of Personal Defilements: The defilements are ignorance, greed, and hatred.  They reinforce self-protection and lack of awareness of interdependent arising.

 

4.  Knowledge Free From Discursive Thought: Through discursive thought, the Bodhisattva can know the selflessness of both self and things.  Transcending this knowledge, which is still representational, is the direct awareness of reality as it is – a middle way between existing and not existing.