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Primarily discussing "Reasoning: The Sixty Stanzas" and "Emptiness: The Seventy Stanzas," by the 2nd century Indian Buddhist Nagarjuna.
This is a 32-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 44-minute episode which you can buy at partiallyexaminedlife.com/store or get for free with PEL Citizenship (see partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership). You can also purchase the full episode in the iTunes Store: Search for "Partially Nagarjuna" and look under "Albums."
Is the world of our experience ultimately real? If not, does it have something metaphysically basic underlying it? For Nagarjuna, the answers are "no" and "no... well... not that we can talk about."
Mark and Seth are joined by guest Erik Douglas to discuss metaphysics, causality, the possibility of remaking your perceptual habits, why someone who believes that all is empty might still want to act ethically, and how to deny a claim without affirming its equally dubious opposite.
Look at this document for our primary texts plus a couple of others that we mention; we also skimmed Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way. Secondary sources are discussed here.
End song: "Nothing in this World" by by Mark Lint and the Simulacra, recorded partly in 2000 and partly just now.
An ethical note – there was an important point that was edited out of our conversation for the podcast, which I will try to relate here in brief. Seth’s questions were seeking the roots of ethics in {Nagarjuna’s] Buddhism, and whether there was anything beyond conventional reasons to behave virtuously. In response, I recounted a tale from [Vajrayana/Tibetan] tradition that seems to get at something like a trascendent ethics.
There was a master with two disciples who emparted the following teaching: Enlightenment will be found in spontaneous action. The first student went off and proceeded to practise this teaching for many years by meditating and being a virtuous monk. The second went off and took this teaching to mean that he should do whatever he wanted (spontaneously): he formed a gang of thugs who went about raping and pillaging nearby villages. Several years passed and the master called them back to see what they had learned. They both come back and demonstrate what they had learned and done. The master said the first was right and the second was wrong (though neither were “enlightened” at that point). In response, the second killed the master in spontaneous anger.
For this act, he was (putatively) reborn as a scorpion in his next life and proceeded to go through numerous lives in hell and so on. However, here is where the story get’s interesting.
As the second student is reborn in different realms, he continues to apply this teaching of “spontaneous action” – let us bracket the issue of how he recalls to practice this, it is his “karma” – but he continues to do so in a conventionally “evil” way. Eventually, he is reborn in the realm of the gods (a very fine and refined realm that is in a way closer to Buddhahood than the other realms), and here he again applies this teaching and proceeds to enslave the beings of the entire realm as well as all the neighboring ones. He becomes of a cosmic tyrant (I am omitting the horrific details for brevity) and is soon on the verge of dominating the entire cosmos.
At this points, the Buddha(s) are provoked to action because of the cries of all the sentient beings suffering due to this monstrous being who was once the second student of the master (who along with the first disciple had since become enlightened). At this, they decided to act (begging all sorts of questions of intention and so on), and the first student went and had an epic faceoff with the second student and succeeding in humiliating the latter brought about a spontaneous awakening in him (whereafter he was then one of the terrible Buddhas you get to meet when you die in the Bardo)
Okay, I am omitting a lot of details and there are several points to the story as a Buddhist teaching, but with respect to finding a sublime ethical foundation for Buddhism, it seems to say the following:
1. Enlightenment/Nirvana etc. are beyond the dualism of good and evil.
2. There are many ways to get good with Buddha, some of them conventionally “good” and some “bad”.
3. However, it is NOT anything goes- through karma; in a way, your chances at winning the liberation lotto are influenced accordingly.
4. This cashes out as how long your trip in Samsara will be, for example.
5. And it will involve a lot more suffering on your part if you engage in this sort of karma producing action.
Of course, these are not apparently universals — so we are left with an ethics that is empty (but not non-existent).
My top vote for an upcoming episode is Quine.
Keep up the good work, guys!
Erik–
Thanks for elaborating on this here. In the discussion, the story was quite long and a little convoluted and the only thing we got out of it was that ‘you can be a complete jerk and still achieve enlightenment’. We were well past hour #2 by that point, so I think we were all a bit tired, so I tried to preserve the main point but cut down on the story for time.
Obviously there is more to it than that, which you point out at the end of this post. Perhaps, rather than relating the story, you could find and post a link to a source text with a full version of it?
Thanks,
–seth
Is Buddhism the way to 21st century enlightenment?
http://fora.tv/2010/06/17/Matthew_Taylor_21st_Century_Enlightenment_Animated
What did Kant say about ‘the good/pleasurable’ and our aims and desires (I think it came up about 3/4 in the linked vid)?
It’s interesting to try and connect the Eastern concept of Enlightenment with the historical movement in the West known as “the Enlightenment,” but I personally don’t think the metaphor will give us much in this case. The bizarre disassociation that we describe on the Nagarjuna episode, i.e. that we can train ourselves to no longer connect conscious moments and so no longer break down the world into physical objects or other conventional entities, is not something that science has “in the last 20 or 30 years” as the narrator on the vid you linked to, in any way confirms. Speaking less specifically about Buddhist Enlightenment, I think that the option to identify ourselves with larger environmental reality has always been there, and there’s no intellectual trend specific to the present that makes this “the next move” for us (in the Hegelian movement-of-history sense).
Hey,
Thanks for the podcast. I thought it was a very interesting/thoughtful discussion.
For me in particular, i felt it dragged in the beginning. (because i’m a mahayana buddhist) but around the 40 min mark it really became interesting.
There’s about a billion points i’d like to touch on, which is good. It just means there was a lot of substance. Of course i’m not going to touch on all of them, or really on any of them. As i got shit to do. LOL
I especially thought Seth made some excellent points about the failure of language and concepts to explain the “non-conceptual”.
For me, part of where i think the conversation breaks down ( not breaks down, but atleast, annoys a buddhist such as myself) is when you guys got into questions about the denial of the laws of reality. (gravity, physics, floating buddhas from south park) and when you got into questions about ethics and morality. (why be good, when you can be bad).
I think, as Seth pointed out a few times, those types of questions are based on the affirmation of a standard or normative reality.
A question like “why be good, when you can be bad” implies that there is a difference between being good or bad. That there is a tangible understood benefit (even if it’s not being expressed) inherently involved in the posing of such a question.
“why drink coke, when you can drink pepsi”
Suggests that coke and pepsi are different. So again, even acknowledging a question like that, sort of defeats the reason behind the answer to it. Atleast, when the conversation is taking place in the “conventional or normative” world.
The same is true, about the questions about physics. Atleast in my opinion. Nagarjuna doesn’t and isn’t suggesting that if you don’t acknowledge the laws of physics, or the passage of time, that you can float around and never age.
What he is arguing, is that there is no you to age. And no you, for the laws of physics to apply to. Not that gravity isn’t preventing you from flying off into space, but that gravity and space and you are all essentially the same thing. That the concept of laws of physics are equally the same as the laws themselves.
I think it’s very important to remember that, like one of you guys said….when discussing things like this, there does come a point where you ultimately have to fail in order to do so…….as in order to describe something, you have to describe what it’s not. And with this philosophy, that’s exactly what you’re trying to avoid.
For example, enlightenment. Nagarjuna talks about enlightenment and guiding beings to it…..but that’s only as a vehicle to bring about a change in people. Clearly Nagarjuna would say, that enlightenment is no different from non-enlightenment. That nirvana is samsara.
Another way of looking at that, would be that everyone already is enlightened. Or not enlightened….that we’ve got the freedom to see things either way, that both are equally false or true. That it’s not important to attach to the idea that one is enlightened or not enlightened, as that idea is equally as false or true as any other idea. I think part of the problem here, is trying to prove a definite. Our minds work, by seeing/proving distinctions. But according to Nagarjuna’s logic, these distinctions themselves are actually both distinct and not distinct.
From what i gather from your discussion…..all 3 of you understand pretty much exactly what Nagarjuna is saying. Atleast between the 3 of you, everything was pretty much covered.
I think the only difference is, that the concept is alien to you. That you don’t confidently accept his reasoning, because it so greatly differs from your own.
Like for example, i think it was Seth who pondered what would happen if this philosophy was a societal norm. Asking: “what would happen if everyone thought this way, why would anyone do anything” i.e. farm
But i think, it’s also important to examine what leads to asking such a question.
Because, i would answer the question: “if everyone thought this way, why would anyone not doing anything” i.e. farm
Which if you’ll notice, is structured much like Nagurjuna’s examples and many seemingly contradictory examples in Zen.
If everyone thought as Nagarjuna, farming (which in Seth’s prop. takes on a negative connation most likely do to the fact it’s hardwork) would actually not be negative. It would be neutral. Farming wouldn’t be seen as better or worse than say, being a playboy photographer.
My point is, that with language and thought, so ingrained in our way of thinking….it’s important to question our notions, especially when using those notions to dissect/study concepts that are foreign to us. Especially concepts that belie the idea of notional thinking.
Like for example, the other day i had a similar conversation with a friend. The conversation basically boiled down to me saying “nothing matters”……and him saying back to me “well if nothing matters, then neither does talking to you” as my friend stormed off angrily.
Now what i would of pointed out to him, if he stayed LOL…..is that if nothing matters, then it doesn’t matter that nothing matters. It’s not a bad thing (which since it made him angry, he obviously felt it was) that nothing matters, nor it is a good thing. If things truly don’t matter, then they don’t matter.
But, the notion of “matter” in most people, including myself, appears to be a quality. If i matter, then i’m important. If someone matters to me, i take their call. etc….. It’s hard to divorce that reason, when thinking philosophically about the idea of “matters”.
The same is true, very especially true…..when dealing with Nagarjuna’s philosophy. Since he spends a great deal of time, denying the importance or matter of everything. Whether it’s space or time or ethics or what constitutes existence itself.
Since much of his philosophy is counter-intuitive, or atleast is seemingly beyond everyday logic/experience….i think there is a danger of approaching such a philosophy and unintentionally misconstruing it or atleast bending it to fit into already familiar modes of thought.
Anyways, i thought it was a really cool discussion and all three of you came across as some pretty intelligent mf’ers. I look forward to perusing this site.
: )
Thanks, Mike! We appreciate the input!
I’m currently listening to your podcast on Spinoza part 1.
And i fail to see how Spinoza really differs in substance from Nagarjuna.
I see how in style, they differ. But basically, Spinoza refers to emptiness as god, whereas Nagarjuna refers to emptiness as not emptiness and not not emptiness.
But essentially, Spinoza’s overall view is the same as Nagarjuna’s.
Spinoza just came from a more religiously constrained or enforced culture/society.
So i guess i’ll find the answer to this question when i get to the end of part 2……but are you as skeptical of Spinoza as you seem to be of Nagarjuna?
I think you put it pretty clearly here, and I just can’t get my head wrapped around this part of the Eastern philosophies we’ve studied. I have grown up in a culture of texts, where things are said and demonstrated. It seems Buddhism is more like a discipline. In other words, you can read about working out and know anatomy, etc. but if you don’t go the gym, you don’t build muscle.
Thanks for the validation and “Yep”
I wasn’t giving farming a negative connotation. My point was that being enlightened seems to lead to teaching, reflection, meditation, and being ‘satisfied’ with the way things are. So I was asking, if everyone was enlightened, who would do the work needed to keep society alive (i.e. producing food). Erik pointed out in response that you can be enlightened and still farm, make shoes, etc.
I’ll get to your Spinoza comments shortly.
–seth
It’s a little unfair to use this, since Zen postdates Nagarjuna significantly, but there’s a well-established Zen maxim that, “Before enlightenment, cut wood, carry water. After enlightenment, cut wood, carry water.”
This gets into the East/West division, where Western religions are very much about “bodily” transcending material reality, but Eastern ideas are much more about clarity of sight. Erik got into this a little when he pointed out that evil can be enlightened. There’s no claim that knowledge will automatically beget behavioral guidelines, in the way that the Abrahamic Big Three do, where knowledge of God is supposed to strike you with such awe that obedience and submission are a natural consequence.
In the Western world, someone with intimate knowledge of God just does not do evil. Indeed, it’s an important point that most conceptions of the Devil require some fundamental misunderstanding of God, because evil cannot comprehend good. This ultimately percolates down to the American fundamentalist viewpoint that, if you just read the Bible, you’d become a fundamentalist of exactly the same beliefs and behaviors as the one preaching it despite rampant evidence to the contrary. (Then you get into the curse of knowledge and the problem of sin and issues of free will and that’s like… several essays. In short form, I guess, innocence (read: ignorance) makes sin impossible. But at this point, it’s getting into a Gordian knot’s worth of justification.)
I’m not going to claim enough knowledge of Eastern philosophical tropes to say this with absolute certainty, but my impression has been that the clarity of nirvana merely means that your choices have expanded. An evil person is capable of doing a lot more evil, and a good person capable of doing a lot more good. So, to finally bring it back to your point, it’s true that enlightenment lends itself to self-satisfaction and doing-nothing… but there’s an interesting wrinkle of *why* that’s the case.
And it’s the case because an enlightened person sees that farming is not, in fact, the best thing they could be doing. But sometimes it is. And thus you find that virtually no Buddhist monks are averse to getting their hands dirty in the soil. (The same goes, incidentally, for Western orders of nuns and monks.) But there’s nothing about enlightenment that says, “Don’t farm,” nor anything that says, “Teach;” what happens instead is that an unenlightened person has only one choice: farming: but an enlightened person has two choices: farm, or teach. To oversimplify drastically for argument’s sake.
Thus, in a world where everyone has both choices, then those inclined to farm would farm and those inclined to teach would teach, until there is too many of one, but there isn’t a guideline for how to handle that. Which is a lack, but hey, justice in the distribution of needed goods has exactly not been East Asia’s strong point.
short but sweet talk on Buddhism and Heidegger:
http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-claremont-talk-mp3.html
Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way and the secondary sources links are dead.
Thanks. Updated.
It’s a lot easier to wrap your mind around Nagarjuna’s “emptiness” if you read it as analogous to Pyrrhonian skepticism. Wherein you neither affirm nor deny anything extra to “the nature” of phenomena, but simply take them at face-value and suspend judgement on any metaphysical speculation.
As he said in one of his texts:
To say “it is” is to grasp for permanence.
To say “it is not” is to adopt the view of nihilism.
Therefore a wise person
Does not say “exists” or “does not exist.”
Solution to problem at 1:05:00 – According to Dogen (of Japanese Soto Zen), meditation is the primary state in which something like a “deconditioned state” can be experienced directly. However, because we are by definition living in a deconditioned state even if we don’t realize it (since the deconditioned state is the Absolute truth), we can be tapped into it even while building a bridge that will not collapse. That is to say: there is a perfect equivalence between the conventional truth and the absolute truth.
Seth,
Regarding Ethics I think it is helpful to consider the this all geared towards obtaining awakening. To that end, all the ethical behavior guidelines can be seen as rules that help prevent disruptive thoughts while sitting, instead of universal rules that fall out from some internally consistent logical structure.
Very interesting discussion; thanks for doing this episode!
By the way, Mark is pronouncing Nāgārjuna correctly in this episode. Erik seems to have a couple of the syllables reversed. Madhyamaka or Mādhyamika, I think, should have ante-ante-penultimate stress, but I find that hard to pronounce, so defaulting to either penultimate or antepenultimate stress might be conventionally acceptable.
For those who are interested, Thomas Walser wrote the best book that I’m aware of on the historical context of Nāgārjuna and his ideas, Nāgārjuna in Context. An interesting example of the historical background of his thought (not directly relevant to the content you three discussed in this episode) is that we typically think of Nāgārjuna refuting “Hīnayānists”, but Walser argues that Nāgārjuna seems to disagree with the ideas of the (mostly non-Mahāyānist) Sarvāstivāda school, while showing no evidence of disagreeing with the (also mostly non-Mahāyānist) Mahāsāṃghikas.
I have a lot of respect for Nāgārjuna, but I think the main things I find interesting about his work are a) his categorical refutation of all ontological claims; and b) his efforts to encourage and inspire the reader to practice meditative techniques to get certain results. Whether his description of the results seem to make sense to people who haven’t had the experiences he’s talking about, I suspect, is not really the point exactly. When we know nirvāṇa as thoroughly as we saṃsāra, we’ll be in a position to say for sure if his comments about them are accurate. Otherwise, we’re speculating.
Regarding “engaging in disputes” and the related points that came up at the end of this podcast, I would very much recommend this short article by the erudite British writer Jayarava: http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2014/04/thinking-like-buddhist-about-karma.html … this article does not concern Nāgārjuna directly although he say at the beginning: “What follows is my attempt to put aside modernism and analyse the problem from the point of view that I think pervades the early Buddhist texts, but which is picked up on by Prajñāpāramitā literature and to some extent by Nāgārjuna”.