How Experiential Realization Helps in
Liberation
Sam said...
"What interests me nowadays is the complete and total
termination of the taints, clinging, karmic propensities, the
complete and total termination of suffering."
I totally agree. I hope to see your future posts regarding this and
how the experiences and realizations so far have been or will be
useful for this.
(Excerpt)
Nagarjuna's Critique of the Dharma
In chapter XXIV of the Karikas, NAgarjuna continues his attack on
the Abhidharma philosophers by analyzing the Four Noble Truths, and
argues that-like causality, impermanence, suffering, and
bondage-they, too, are "empty." The problem of this chapter needs
to be seen against the background of the preceding section. If the
Abhidharma views of causality are "empty," as Nagarjuna says they
are, and if causality is a central feature of Buddhist praxis, then
Nagarjuna seems to undermine everything that is vital to Buddhism.
He begins chapter XXIV by expressing the Abhidharma position in the
following way:
If all of this is empty,
Neither arising nor ceasing,
Then for you, it follows that
The Four Noble Truths do ont exist.
If the Four Noble Truths do not exist,
Then knowledge, abandonment,
Meditation and manifestation
Will be completely impossible.
p.571
If these things do not exist,
The four fruits will not arise.
Without the four fruits, there will be no attainers of the
fruits.
Nor will there be the faithful.
If so, the spiritual community will not exist.
Nor will the eight kinds of person.
If the Four Noble Truths do not exists,
There will be no true Dharma.
If there is no doctrine and spiritual community,
How can there be a Buddha?
If emptiness is conceived in this way,
The three jewels are contradicted.
(Garfield 1995, p.67)
In the passages above, the Abhidharma opponent is saying that if
Nagarjuna is right about "emptiness," then the very practices that
make Buddhism soteriologically efficacious will be destroyed. That
is, if it is true that the Four Noble Truths are "empty," then
there is no such thing as the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha,
no such thing as impermanence, "non-self," and nirvana, and the
practices that supposedly lead to liberation will be destroyed.
Nagarjuna responds to the opponent by saying that he has
misunderstood "emptiness":
We say that this understanding of yours
Of emptiness and purpose of emptiness
And of the significance of emptiness is incorrect.
As a consequence you are harmed by it.
(Garfield 1995, p.68)
Because the opponent has taken "emptiness" to signify the
nonexistence of the Four Noble Truths, he is "harmed by it"-in
other words, he sees "emptiness" as destructive. But his reason for
thinking of "emptiness" in this way is that he thinks that a
"correct" meditation on causality, the aggregates, and the Four
Noble Truths is necessary for liberation.
Nagarjuna responds to this assumption by reversing the tables and
saying, in effect, that it is not "emptiness" that destroys
practice, but the very idea that such things as causality, the
aggregates, and the Four Noble Truths are "inherent," essential, or
necessary:
If you perceive the existence of all things
In terms of svabhava,
Then this perception of all things
Will be without the perception of causes and conditions.
Effects and causes
And agent and action
And conditions and arising and ceasing
And effects will be rendered impossible.
(Garfield 1995, p.69)
p.572
Nagarjuna goes on to say that the reason essences militate against
causal conditions, arising, ceasing, agency, and so forth is that
the idea of essence entails independence, and if things are by
nature independent then it is impossible for them to interact
causally. If this is true then there is no "dependent arising," and
without "dependent arising" it is impossible to make sense of the
ability to cultivate a virtuous life. In other words, without the
process of change the whole idea of cultivating the "fruits" of a
Buddhist life is rendered nonsensical. Nagarjuna responds by saying
that Buddhist praxis must be "empty" if we are to make any sense of
the Four Noble Truths:
If dependent arising is denied,
Emptiness itself is rejected.
This would contradict
All of the worldly conventions.
If emptiness is rejected,
No action will be appropriate.
There would be action which did not begin,
And there would be agent without action.
If there is svabhava, the whole world
Will be unarising, unceasing,
And static. The entire phenomenal world
Would be immutable.
If it (the world) were not empty,
Then action would be without profit.
The act of ending suffering and
Abandoning misery and defilement would not exist.
(Garfield 1995, p.72)
Nagarjuna has thus shifted the debate. Whereas the Abhidharma
thinker begins with the assumption that a "correct" meditation on
the Dharma is a necessary prerequisite for liberation, Nagarjuna
undercuts this by saying that if one takes the Dharma as essential,
that is, as necessary, then the very essence of Buddhism is
undermined. Like the first chapter on causation, Nagarjuna is
reminding the Abhidharma philosophers here about nonattachment. The
Four Noble Truths are supposed to be medicinal "rafts" that help
specific sentient beings overcome their attachments, but if one
becomes attached to the practices of nonattachment then one has
missed the entire point of Buddhism. Thus, Nagarjuna says that the
Dharma-which includes causation, impermanence, suffering, bondage,
and liberation-is "empty."