The teachings on
emptyness (Sanskrit sunyata or shunyata) find their most articulate
development in the Kadampa branch of Mahayana Buddhism (Madhyamika
Prasangika). To the Kadampa Buddhist nothing exists 'inherently' or
'from its own side'. All phenomena exist in dependence on three
things -
(i) their
causes,
(ii) their parts, and
(iii) their imputation by the mind of a sentient being.
And the sentient
mind is NOT a physical construct or epiphenomenon of matter . The
mind is clear and formless and has the power to know phenomena in a
qualitative way [KELSANG GYATSO 1992], and hence give meaning to
them.
To Kadampa Buddhists
all things are totally empty of any defining essence. Consequently
all things have no fixed identity ('inherent existence') and are
are in a state of impermanence - change and flux - constantly
becoming and decaying. Not only are all things constantly changing,
but if we analyse any phenomenon in enough detail we come to the
conclusion that it is ultimately unfindable, and exists purely by
definitions in terms of other things - and one of those other
things is always the mind which generates those
definitions.
Kadampa Buddhism
regards the persistent delusion of 'inherent existence' as a major
obstacle to spiritual development, and the root of many other
damaging delusions. One of these delusions is the materialist
belief in an objective reality existing independently of mind. By
asserting that the universe exists inherently as a brute fact,
materialism denies that subjective experience has any relevance to
or influence on the universe, or indeed any existence at
all.
The delusion of
inherent existence is deeply ingrained our our culture. It was
embedded into western philosophy by the Greek philosopher Plato,
who was born about sixty years after Buddha's death.
Plato's view of reality is that for any class of objects there is a
defining ideal form which is fixed, permanent and unchanging. All
physical instances of objects tend to be imperfect. For example the
wilting, mildewed roses in my garden are imperfect instances of an
ideal rose which exists in a perfect realm of eternal forms. It is
only by reference to this authoritative 'specification' that my
mind is able to identify and name the transient physical phenomena,
which 'participate' in the ideal form's attributes.
Buddha died in 483
BC. Plato was born in 428 BC. Yet it is most unlikely that Plato
was aware of his predecessor's teachings. In those days there was
little contact between Greek and Indian philosophy. This had to
await the eastward advance of Alexander the Great around 328 BC.
The first recorded contact between Greek civilisation and Buddhism
is the conversation between the Greek King Milinda of Bactria, and
Nagasena, a Buddhist chariot dismantler [CONZE 1959].
Empty vehicles
King Milinda was a Greek and an experienced soldier who thought he
knew a chariot when he saw one. But Nagasena demonstrated that if
Milinda's chariot were gradually dismantled - knock a spoke out of
a wheel here, a plank off there, then a bit of the frame and so on
- there was no way for Milinda to decide at exactly what step in
the procedure he should stop imputing 'vehicle' and start imputing
'heap of firewood'.
Nagasena said this
was because the chariot had no power to define itself from its own
side. Nor was there any ideal chariot form 'in the sky' which
engaged and disengaged with the timber at definite stages of
assembly and disassembly.
Milinda's mind was
the only thing that could make the distinction between vehicle and
firewood. And there were no logical rules, stepwise procedures or
decision trees for Milinda to decide when to cease imputing one
thing and impute another.
As with chariots, so
with cars. Everyone knows what a car is. A car is an assembly of
parts. But what makes those parts into a car is surprisingly
difficult to pin down. At what stage on the production line do the
components finally become a car?
Does it temporarily
cease to be a car when it's in for repairs and the gearbox is
several yards away from the rest of the vehicle? Is my car still a
car when I wake up one morning to find it supported on bricks with
the wheels missing?
Or, could I say that
the essential feature of a car is that it performs the functions of
a car? So does it cease to be a car when it won't start? And does
it return to the state of being a car when I cure the problem by
spraying the electrics with moisture repellent? Does the true
essence of being a car therefore reside in an aerosol
can?
Emptiness of natural things.
Maybe we can rescue Plato's ideas of the inherent existence of
perfect forms if we assume there is a strict demarcation between
man-made and natural objects, with the former existing in
dependence upon the 'judgement' of the observer, but the latter
existing 'from their own side'. For having come to accept that
man-made things such as chariots and cars owe some of their
existence to dependence on our mind, we may suspect that this is
somehow because they are originally products of the human mind - as
first conceived by the designer.
We find it more
difficult to accept the natural things in the world, such as
flowers and trees are dependent upon our minds. A rose would smell
as sweet by any other name. A rose bush is a rose bush is a rose
bush, and is different in its inherent nature from a plum or a
cherry tree. There is no continuum between these three species and
thus no necessity for our mind to make a judgment of the
borderline. But is this really the case?
Leaving aside nightmare genetic engineering scenarios of
octophants, elepuses and all stages in between, we may consider
that there is (or was) a continuum of form between all living
things. If we were to examine the fossil records of the ancestors
of cherry trees and plum trees we would find that they diverged
from one common ancestor. Looking back through the fossils we would
seen a continuous gradation of characteristics from the ancestors
of the cherry to to the ancestors of the plum, leading back to a
time when they were indistinguishable. But the decision as to where
ancestor ended and plum or cherry began would be totally arbitrary.
And if we were to trace the common ancestor of the cherry and plum
we would find convergence with the ancestors of the rose,
strawberry, raspberry etc. What Darwin did for creationism he also
did for biological Platonism - the biological species concept does
not encapsulate any underlying truth [BROOKES 1999], and each
individual species is unfindable
The ultimate unfindability of the real nature of all phenomena -
their lack inherent existence, is usually referred to by
English-speaking Buddhists as 'emptiness', which is a translation
of the Sanskrit word shunyata (sometimes spelled Sunyata).
According to David Loy the English word emptiness has a more
nihilistic connotation than the original Sanskrit. The Sanskrit
root su also conveys the concept of being swollen with possibility
[LOY 1996]. It is therefore most important not to confuse emptiness
with total nothingness. Emptiness implies the potential for
existence and change. The mathematical analogy of emptiness is not
zero, but the empty set.
The conclusion that
all things are empty of inherent existence and appear only in
dependence on our minds is not an obvious truth. So deeply
ingrained is the idea of inherent existence and authority in
Western culture that even when we have analysed all things as
dependent on causes, and dependent on parts, we still hold back
from the most subtle truth of dependence on mind. We think there
ought to be 'something out there', or someone 'authoritative' who
prevents the real world from being so much dependent upon our
judgement. On first meeting teachings on emptiness the western mind
often suspects it is the victim logical trickery or mere playing
with words. Fortunately it is possible to demonstrate the true and
all-pervasive nature of emptiness by examining the mode of
existence of fundamental particles, the building blocks of all
things in the material universe.
The participation of
the observer.
According to the Kadampa school of Buddhist philosophy all
phenomena exist by dependence on other phenomena, which are
themselves dependently related to other phenomena and so on. No
matter how deeply or far back we search, no phenomenon can ever be
found which is fundamental or a 'thing-in-itself'. Neither the
observer nor any observed phenomenon exist independently, but are
inextricably intertwined. This viewpoint is known as dependent
relationship.
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
[KELSANG GYATSO 1995] states that there are three levels of
dependent relationship:
(1) Gross dependent
relationship - causality - the dependence of phenomena on their
causes.
(2) Subtle dependent
relationship - structure - the dependence of phenomena on their
perceived parts (including aspects, divisions and
directions).
(3) Very subtle
dependent relationship - the dependence of phenomena on imputation
by mind.
All functioning
things exist in these three ways. The very subtle dependent
relationship - existence by the mind's imputation - is the most
difficult one to understand, especially since for most ordinary
phenomena this view of existence is masked by the two grosser
levels of existence. This subtle mode of existence is always
present, but only becomes apparent in those circumstances where the
grosser levels do not dominate.
If we have problems
with the terminology of gross and subtle, we may think of this as
the degree of apparent objectivity of dependent relationship . The
most gross is the most objective and the very subtle is the most
subjective (or participatory) type of dependent
relationship.
The existence of a
thing in dependence of its causes (except in the special case where
we were involved in making it ) appears totally objective and does
not require our participation. The causes of a car are the
geological processes which produced coal, iron and copper ores.
Then the miners, metalworkers, designers, component manufacturers
and assembly line workers who transformed the raw material into the
finished product. Unless we happen to work in one of these
industries, the causal mode of existence does not depend on our
participation.
Existence in
dependence on parts is more subjective. We may view a car as
composed of a chassis, an engine and four wheels. Or we may take a
more detailed view with the engine being seen as pistons,
cylinder-head, carburettor etc. These too can be analysed into
subcomponents, all the way down through atoms of iron and carbon,
to the fundamental particles such as protons, electrons and the
photons which shine from the headlamps.
Our perception of
dependence upon parts is very much determined by how we choose to
subdivide the whole. The mind has to participate by applying
analytical effort to generate the view of existence in dependence
upon parts.
It's when we get to
the final stage of perception of dependence in terms of the
fundamental building blocks of matter that we come up against the
very subtle (most participatory) level of dependent relationship of
imputation by mind. Experiments in quantum physics seem to
demonstrate the need for an observer to make potentialities become
real.
Quantum shunyata
Now, fundamental particles such as electrons and photons do not
have any obvious causes. Either they always have been there or else
they come into existence as the result of random quantum events.
Neither do they have anything in the way of observable parts
(otherwise they wouldn't be fundamental). So when we examine an
electron or photon, we are looking at a phenomenon in which the two
grosser ways of existing are relatively inapparent. As the two
grosser levels are not clamouring for our attention, Kadampa
metaphysics would predict that the very subtle level of dependent
relationship (in dependence of imputation by mind) should manifest
itself.
It is important to
emphasise that the mathematical equations of quantum physics do not
describe actual existence - they describe potential for existence.
Working out the equations of quantum mechanics for a system
composed of fundamental particles produces a range of potential
locations, values and attributes of the particles which evolve and
change with time. But for any system only one of these potential
states can become real, and - this is the revolutionary finding of
quantum physics - what forces the range of the potentials to assume
one value is the act of observation. Matter and energy are not in
themselves phenomena, and do not become phenomena until they
interact with the mind.
REFS.
[KELSANG GYATSO
1992] The First Panchen Lama, cited by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso in
Clear Light of Bliss, 2nd Edition page 146 (London :Tharpa
Publications, 1992, ISBN 0 948006 21 8).
[CONZE 1959] Conze,
Edward (tr) Buddhist Scriptures p 146 ff; (Harmondsworth, UK:
Penguin Books Ltd , 1959)
[BROOKES 1999]
Brookes, Martin, Live and Let Live , New Scientist p 32 -36, 3rd
July 1999.
[LOY 1996] Loy,
David in the afterword to Swedenborg, Buddha of the North , page
104, (Swedenborg Foundation, West Chester Pennsylvania, 1996, ISBN
0-87785-184-0)
[KELSANG GYATSO
1995] Gyatso, Geshe Kelsang, Joyful Path of Good Fortune, 2nd
Edition - page 349, (London: Tharpa Publications, 1995, ISBN 0
948006 46 3)