Understanding MAdhyamaka - 2

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NAgArjuna is probably the most important logician in Indian philosophy

because, it is he who provides a logical explantion of how the world

can be real as well as unreal. This is the key which would give logical

explanation to the theory of the Upanishads, that the world is but

Brahman itself and not anything apart from it.

 

The Dialectic

 

As said before schools envisaged the world as made up of individual

souls and matter or souls and atoms or only atoms or nothing at all.

The NyAya school had even analyzed the means of knowledge through

which reality could be known.

 

NAgArjuna mainly questions what we call as knowledge. For whatever

we know of the world is dependent on our knowledge of it. He analyzes

the validity of this knowledge.

 

NAgArjuna opens up the MAdhyamaka ShAstram with an attack on causality.

A thing is neither self-caused (SAmkhyan position), nor caused by

external conditions (HinayAnists), nor caused by both itself and

external conditions (JainAs), nor neither caused by itself nor external

events.

 

The seed gives rise to the sprout. But without sunshine and water and

other favorable climatic conditions it could not have sprouted. But

external conditions itself will not do, else even a stone will also

sprout with the aid of sunshine and water. So is it that it was both

self-caused and also aided by external conditions? For the conditions

to act upon it, the seed needs to exist. But without the conditions,

how did it come into being in the first place? ie the seed itself

couldn't have come into being without the external conditions. So which

came first? So even self-caused plus aided by external conditions is

ultimately not intelligible. To say it was neither self-caused nor was

it aided by external factors would mean that sprouts could come out of

anywhere! So causation is an ultimately meaningless concept and hence

empty or shUnya.

 

If you say something changes, what's it that changes? If the thing

itself didn't change, then what's it that changed? The moment the

slightest change occures in a thing, it is no more the original thing,

but a totally new thing. So how can it be said that the thing changed,

when it doesn't exist anymore? And again when something has ceased to exist,

is it right to say then that it is no more? For then there's no point of

reference to that claim. The exact moment when a thing changes to something

else is beyond knowledge. We see a thing and the next moment we see a

totally new thing. Even here how could something come out of nowhere?

 

If it is said that something which constitutes the core of

the thing's being remains unchanged (*if* something like that can be

identified), then that itself is the thing and not that which changed.

But again, if there's even something like the essence of things, which

remains changeless, then being the true nature of things it will not

allow change at all. So the whole world would remain without change.

 

So production and destruction are ultimately meaningless concepts.

 

Plus all knowledge of change requires a prior knowledge of a thing before

the change and knowledge of the thing's current status as a changed thing.

Prior knowledge requires the use of memory, which makes it representative

knowledge. But representative knowledge being a thing of the past is

unreliable and not reliable like presentative knowledge as one gets in

direct perception. This is approved even by the NaiyAyikas and the

Miimaamsakas. So change is beyond knowledge and the conception of it empty

and hence shUnya.

 

We say desire is the root cause of all misery. For desire to be, there

must be a desirable thing. But for a desirable thing to be, it needs to

be desired. So which came first? The desire or the desirable thing?

The existance of one depends on the other. Remove one and the other

cannot exist. As one depends on the other they can neither be simultaneous

nor can they be totally apart. Though it seems like they are dependent

originated, we still do not know the exact nature of the relationship

between them.

 

Desire and the desirable thing are unintelligible and our conception

of them is only of practical value. Since they are not things in

themselves they are empty or shUnya.

 

We see with our eyes. If vision is the inherent quality of the eye, it

should be able to see itself. But it doesn't. How can that which cannot

see itself see another? Again, for a seer to see, the seer needs to be

different from seeing i.e he needs to be of a different nature than

vision. Else you cannot say that they're two distinct entities - seer

and seeing (if they're of the same nature they'll be one entity). But

then if the seer's different in nature from seeing, how does he see?

 

The same is the case with the rest of the senses. The self and the

senses exist only in relation to each other. Neither can be perceived

in itself.

 

Plus if the Self can exist apart from the senses, can't the senses

likewise exist by themselves without the Self? So what's the need to

postulate a Self beyond the mind and the senses?

 

Are they one or are they different? We do not know. Hence the Self

and the senses are all shUnya.

 

Likewise a substance without attributes is as meaningless as

attributes without a substance. Each exists only in relation to the

other.

 

Using similar logic he shows the unintelligibility of concepts like

time, motion, agent and action etc. All these are concepts which

are ultimately meaningless and hence shUnya.

 

Next he explores language.

 

We call something gold. But gold is just a word. If it had been named

silver we'd right now be calling it silver instead of gold. If you say

it is a metal, metal too is just a word. What you call gold, is called

so because of certain properties - like lustre, malleability,

conductivity etc. Plus the application of it i.e it can be used to make

ornaments etc are the factors which make the concept of gold.

 

But what's it in itself?

 

We simply do not know. Our knowledge about an object based on its

attributes and its application or use to us. But we do not know what the

thing in itself is. Likewise the case with all objects in the world.

Absolute objective ontological knowledge is an impossibility.

 

Similarly subjective knowledge doesn't go beyond one's sex or position

in the family or society or the organization one works in. For what do

we know of ourselves other than our name, being a man or a father or a

software engineer? What we're in ourselves we've no idea. (Actually

NAgArjuna makes no such psychological arguments. His arguments are

primarily objective logical ones. But the above argument is the

subjective implication of the previous objective one).

 

What we know of the world is only a conceptual construction which is not

ultimately intelligible. Concepts sustain other concepts. All things exist

only in relation to something else and there's nothing by itself. And even

the relationship between things which seem to be dependent originated is not

clear.

 

It's in this sense that NAgArjuna says that everything is shUnya and that

the whole world is like an illusion or mAyA. Language and reason are

themselves the veil (samvritti) which shields us from the truth.

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