japlady@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Rebecca Radnor) (05/18/91)
Dear student of a fully enlightened one,
As I recall from an earlier posting you are a student of Tibetan
Buddhism. This tradition is, in my estimation, one of the most developed
form of mahayana buddhism in terms of lineage, doctrinal interpretation,
meditation, and so on. As far as it being an authentic transmission of
Dharma from India, there is good reason to believe it is so (many well
known interpreters use Tsong Khapa's commentaries for studying Indian
Madhyamika). The fully enlightened status of your teacher I won't
challenge, given the long and established lineages of the various branches
of Tib. buddhism.
Given the above, I cannot for the life of me understand your
essentially 'essentialistic' view on buddhism. The great sage Tsong Khapa
inhereted the Prasanga branch of Madhyamika and one of the fundamental
texts for Tib, buddhist monks is Candrakirti's Madhyamaka-avatara. The
whole teaching is geared toward uprooting the twin fallacies of nihilism
and eternalism (the latter seems to be your view). If this is your chosen
tradition, why do you hold both a dualistic and an eternalistic view?
I'm sure your response will be that "I don't", but in fact you do.
First of all you talk about being aware of thoughts, that there are many
ever changing thoughts and a singular self that is watching this
'thinking'. Immediately there is a dualism here: 1) there is the
separation between the subject and thinking, 2) there is the assumption
of the division between permanence/impermanence, and 3) singular/plural.
These are all a product of our dicotomous conceptualization (vikalpa), and
the goal of Madhyamika (and yogacara for that matter) is to free us from
this erroneous thinking. In fact, for Candrakirti the ultimate goal of
madhyamika is to bring to complete rest all forms of mental elaboration
(see ch. 1 of the Prasannapada); he even equates the state of no-mental
elaboration with nirvana in his treatise on nirvana. The issue here is;
can you conceive of a subject w/o an object, change w/o the concept of
stability, the one w/o the many? According to madhyamika one can only
conceive of something in relationship to what it is not. For instance,
Nagarjuna discuses this by analyzing the thing characterized and the
characteristic, stating that you cannot have one w/o the other.
Since, in your own words you are not fully enlightened, why do you
assume your experience of an unchanging 'self' watching thoughts is real?
Could it be that the grasping of an illusory self is so ingrained that it
distorts all experience, even in meditation? Your own tradition states
that even in deep sleep the attachment to a false self is fully operative.
If you insist on asserting a self how could this do anything but distort
any teachings you recieve? In western culture there is a pervasive fear of
losing foundations especially the foundation of 'self'. Any philosophy
that questions the 'self' is looked upon with suspicion, if not hostility.
You have to understand that the whole concept of an individual self is a
western cultural construct, and that any words equivalent to self in other
cultures (e.g., Eastern)
has a different meaning. That is why western philosophy struggles with the
problem of solipsism and "Asian" thought doesn't.
As far as the issue of 'self' in madhyamika is concerned one should
always keep in mind Nagarjuna's use of the tetralemma or fourfold
reasoning: All phenomena are not,
1) existent
2) non-existent
3) both existent and non-existent
4) niether existent nor non-existent.
Nagarjuna claims that any of these standpoints results in a contradictory
view, and that the 'fifth' stance is no-stance (or in Candrakirti's
interpretation the non-arising of mental elaboration). This is why for the
Madhyamika the important point is not to entertain any metaphysical notions
(e.g., atman, brahman, etc.) but to ruthlessly examine ALL of our
preconceptions.
Does madhyamika (including its Tibetan form) deny self? Yes and no.
Yes because it claims there is not ony no self, but more importantly no
self-essence (nihsvabhava-the most important doctrine in madhyamika). No
because the whole enterprise of arguing for or against a self is based on
the ignorance of the interdependece between self/other. I.e., we are
argueing about conceptual ghosts.
After this long winded reply, you will probably respond by saying the
true spirit of buddhism (or truth, etc.) can only be by contact with a
truly enlightened being, and not by theorizing; my advice to you is your
own, stop trying to find SELF in everything and really listen to your
teacher. In fact, you might want to take your views (some of your own
postings) and ask your master to discuss them-- and LISTEN CAREFULLY!
I'm not saying he and I have the same views; far from it, he is fully
enlightened. But I do find it very odd (more than odd) that a student of a
prasanga-madhyamika lineage is seeking (more like asserting) an absolute
self.
J.C. c/o japlady.