Nagarjuna's Emptiness/Lewis

[Guest guest]

L-a1: In emptiness, as Nargarjuna has it, materiality,

Impermanence are referents, they are things, conventional realities.

They too are mental creations needing pacification. All are pacified in

it. All,including, emptiness, a provisional conventional conceptual

device.

 

P-b1: This is what you said in another post today: " Emptiness is not

hermeneutics, interpretations, a word and idea game played on the

Internet or in language and philosophy in one's head. It is practice

and living in daily life and there are outcomes, consequences in it.

 

P-b1: Of course, you are deluding yourself, that that is how Nagarjuna

'has it.' That is only how Lewis has it. Lewis can only guess at

Nagarjuna's meaning.

 

L-b1: Yes, I may be deluded. However, your assertion is only an

assertion of my delusion. Please read Nagarjuna, demonstrate to me how

my understanding is deluded and different, so I may lose this delusion.

You assert it, please demonstrate your assertion.

 

 

L-a2:No thing does not refer to nothing. It is not equivalent to

nothing. " No thing " refers to form, appearance. Form or appearance, in

Nagarjuna's meaning, is always unnamed, undefined, unknown, not

understandable......It is no thing. Ummon's reference to " things " may

refer more precisely to form, appearance, not " things as inherently

self-existing entities. " If the latter is his meaning, it is a gross

misunderstadning of Nagarjuna.

 

 

P-b2: I see no discrepancy between the two.

 

P-b2: What are ou referring to?

 

 

L-a3: When you say " materiality " remains Pete, you may be referring to

The form or appearance. However, it seems hard for you to release

naming

form, appearance as " materiality, " of making form, appearance an

" it, " which is a named, defined, known, understood in all the ways that

it can be a " thing. " And in doing so, excluding all that is the " it "

you

have created.

 

 

P-b3: I'm not more creative than you, Lewis. Using words is creating

worlds.

 

Since you use ten words, maybe twenty for each I use, you are

a veritable Jehovah. We write and talk because we like it, that we talk

about the emptiness of words and yet talk so much is laughable.

Materiality is just a word to point to that generic unknown which

seems to exist. When we come to the end of pointing, we, briefly pause,

and then began pointing again toward things which are not there.

Compulsive pointers that we are.

 

L-b3: Pete, I do not point anywhere, especially to a " generic unknown

which seems to exist. " For me there is no thing beyond words. So

pointing to some thing beyond words for me is an absurdity. Where are

very different in that, I imagine or is that not the case?

 

P-b3: I once was waiting for a train and there was this madman

frantically pointing in all directions and muttering to himself, while

he walked back and fore along the platform. He kept doing this

oblivious of anyone else around. While his back was turned, I placed a

dollar on the floor right on his path. On coming back he spotted

the dollar, he stopped gesticulating and muttering, and picked the

dollar up, bought a pack of cigarettes, lighted one with evident

delight and resumed his passing, muttering, and gesticulating. That

dollar restored him to sanity for a minute or two!

 

 

L-b3: Glad I don’t point at all except within words. As per your

example, a madman points to nothing, to unseen unknown things which

seem to exist.

 

 

L-a4: So, emptiness is not akin to impermanence or materality as

these are matters of created content.

 

 

P-b4: So says, Lewis, placing the word emptiness above all others

as he creates a special content for it. Very funny. Where shall I

place the dollar for you? We all know what impermanence means, Lewis,

we feel it in our bones as moments slip away.

 

L-b4: Yes. That is precisely the point of emptiness as a processual

analytic. It is a conceptual device used on all other conceptions first

and then itself in the endas said immediately below. In my reading of

Nagarjuna, it was designed with that purpose.

 

 

L-a5: Emptiness is a device used. It is not a contemplative device.

It is thing used for dealing with all things and concepts and in that

it

is, I am sorry to say, not equivalent to any other thing. It eats and

digest things, and then it eats and digests itself. It is never eaten

and digested by other things except itself and is never equivalent to

other things in any way. That is how Nagarjuna made it to be, to serve

his soteriological purpose of ending attachment, fixation, obsession,

psychosis to " things " -- " suffering " -- in human affairs.

 

 

L-b5: Check through the whole Budhhist. I do not have to preach

Nagarjuna’s soteriological enterprise for it is plain for all to see

and understand. Now based on Buddha’s and Nagarjuna’s

teaching, some Buddhists believe they have all the answers for the

deluded believers in the supernatural and superstititon. Zen’s history

of conjuncture and affinity with political authority, military power,

the martial arts, social class, ‘high and aristocratic " culture and

other heirarchical institutions is bred from a direct interpretation of

the Buddha’s and Nagarjuna’s closure on all views, as has done

Christianity, and other religions, with knowing it all, having it

right, being on top, seeing as it is. Do not put on me what the

" Buddhists’ have managed to do on their own for over 2000 years. I use

the device as it seems clearly designed to do and discard it as it goes

and not as a " Buddhist. " As Nagarjuna says in conclusion of his main

treatise, the Mulamadhyamakakarika:

 

" I bow down to Gautama, whose kindness holds one close, who revealed

the sublime dharma in order to let go of all views. "

 

If you can demonstrate the contrary to the above, I would appreciate it

greatly.

 

Pick up your dollar, Pete. I do and cannot point to unknown and unseen

things beyond words. For me, there are no things beyond words and all

that is interwoven with them. How about you?

 

Lewis