Nagarjuna’s Game
Nagarjuna
writes: “If
I had a thesis of my own to advance, you could find fault with it. Since I
have no thesis to advance, the question of disproving it does not arise.” In other words,
“If I took a
position, you could disprove (of) it (thereby causing me distress). Since
I take no position, the question of disproof (and the distress that causes)
does not arise.” 1 Nagarjuna
(and who was, possibly, of Brahmin stock, i.e. since he appears to have been
literate) deconstructs – and voids – the positions taken by a variety of
Buddhist sects on each and every significant topic of Buddhist discourse. By
applying Indian 4-fold Logic to incomplete (i.e. deliberately abbreviated)
meaning units, hence a flaky logic, he simply reduces to the absurd (= zero =
emptiness, Sanskrit: sunya) the entirety of
Buddhist (and, by implication of non-Buddhist) meta-physical, physical and
psychological speculation.2 Despite
the inane scholastic gobbledegook produced by the Brahmin 5th
columnist Nagarjuna who, claiming to have no comment to make, nevertheless
either appears to have recommended (like his Vedantin
teachers) the ‘don’t even try’ Middle Way or simply ‘proved’ that distress is
a figment of one’s imagination and that distress ends when the figments of
imagination have been eliminated. For
instance: “Samsara is empty”3 (of abiding substance, viz. atta, the latter
meaning adjunct ‘abiding’ deliberately excluded by Nagarjuna)) “Nirvana is empty” (of abiding substance, viz. atta) Consequently
samsara = nirvana To
wit: 19 Middle Way: “There is not the
slightest difference between nirvana and samsara” (in relation to their
having no abiding substance, which phrase
he omits). Here
Nagarjuna is cheating. By excluding the crucial detail about ‘no abiding
substance’ (or intrinsic nature)4 he can show that nothing exists,
i.e. that there is only emptiness (i.e. Sanskrit: sunja)! Try this flaky
logic: My father lacks (a
coat) My mother lacks (a
coat) Ergo: There is not difference between my father and my mother. More patent
nonsense from Nagarjuna: “Neither from itself nor from another, Nor from both, Nor without cause, Does anything whatever, anywhere arise.”5 So,
how, or from where or from what does anything arise (indeed, ‘emerge’), and
which includes karmic residue? Or does anything, anywhere arise (emerge) at
all. Nagarjuna doesn’t say or suggests so. The Buddha also didn’t say. The
Buddha (or his later followers) did produce a list (of 12 phases or dependent
conditions, all vacuous metaphors) of ‘emerged (from conditions or sub-sets)
phenomena’, starting with ignorance (i.e. avidya, no definition
given) as primary driver. However, he did not comment how ignorance (much
like the Big Bang) arises in the first place and from or in relation to what
ignorance arose. In short, he left the primal (because unending) cause
undetermined, i.e. he remained silent! Nagarjuna
calls his method of deconstruction of position (or view = dharma) Madhayma pratipad, quite
obviously wrongly translated as ‘The Middle Way’. Taking no position, that is
to say, hovering between all positions (i.e. off and in-between extremes,
i.e. this shore >< the other shore or neti-neti) without alighting on
(i.e. attaching to) any one of them cannot be called ‘middle’, specifically
if one interprets ‘middle’ to mean ‘half way’, as in the Golden Mean concept.
Not taking a position means suspending judgement. It does not mean middle. But
there was extremely clever Buddhist method to his seeming madness. Since all
thesis (read: dharmas = positions and so on) are impermanent and
without abiding substance = atta and because they (merely appear (to the
ignorant) to) happen as ‘emerged phenomena’, i.e. as not (because ‘not proper to’ = or
owned, hence controlled) atta (the meaning of atta remaining a mystery) hence causing distress6
(Pali: dukkha), detaching from a position (thereafter all positions,
i.e. Samsara and which are
non-positions) eliminates distress (completely), the latter being the stated
purpose of the Buddha’s endeavour. In
short, Nagarjuna, like the Buddha Sakyamuni before him, takes the Zero (read: emptiness = sunja)
Space (= no stand), the final
internal and external expression thereof being silence (= non-birth, i.e.
absurdness). By not taking a stand (i.e. by not
contending, i.e. interacting because no position is taken),
distress does not arise (i.e.
because all stands/positions are temporary and conditional, hence beyond
one’s control. And that’s the whole Buddhist message and the rationale of
Buddhist practice, to wit, “Take no stand anywhere!” ….. but if
you have to, don’t respond.” The
entire edifice of Buddhist physical and metaphysical, and derived from the
latter, moral speculation rests upon the empty (because meaningless) metaphor atta (usually
wrongly translated as ‘self’), empty itself because the Buddha never produced
a positive and unambiguous description or definition of it. No one knows what
the Buddha meant when he used the term atta.7
Until atta is defined (i.e. a positive
position is taken), all Buddhist reasoning (but not practice) remains
spurious. Giving negative (to wit, neti-neti) definitions to atta leads (and probably is intended to lead) nowhere,
hence to personal emptiness – and relief – resulting from recognition of the
absurdity of the whole speculative enterprise. © 2017 by Victor Langheld, alias Bodhangkur |
1. The mental attitude
of not taking (= attaching to) a position, for instance by remaining silent
(i.e. as in ‘sitting on the fence’) as the Buddha was wont to do, later
applied to the ‘aggregates’ (i.e. the drivers of life) and lived out by
wandering about as a homeless beggar, is the core or ‘heart’ of the Buddha dharma (of distress
elimination). It’s applied fully, as dialectic, in the Diamond Sutra (wherein
all statements are declared to be merely conventional views, i.e. metaphors),
then condensed into the Heart (or Core) Sutra, the latter
being compressed into the simple (Tantric) mantra: “Awakening, gone, gone to
the other shore, gone beyond the other shore, Svāhā
(= Amen!)” 2. Nagarjuna
reduces all seemingly (positive) Buddhist statements to the absurd by
applying the Buddhist emptiness (to wit, anatta) template to
each topic analysed. By so doing he voids any meaning the Buddha dharma might
have had, the politics of morality and ethics apart, and so actually begins
the destruction of Buddhism. The unforgivable error of Nagarjuna however is
the fact that he thoughtlessly takes over key fantasised premisses of
Upanishadic speculation, namely the concepts of atman, karma and the
unverifiable belief that only the eternal is real (i.e. full rather than
empty), none of which had been clearly defined or explained by the Buddha.
The fact that the former notions were left undefined allowed generations of
Buddhist intellectuals wide scope for further speculation, right up to
Candrakirti, Jnanagarbha, Santarksita and a host of
others, including Tibetan scholars. Nagarjuna was a superb academic (and his
abstract speculation academic in the worst sence)
but a lousy Buddhist monk. Had his mind been set on Buddhahood rather than on
demonstrating his intellectual brilliance he would have returned to the
Buddha’s original conclusions and independently retested their validity
against the latest state of the art of knowledge. 3. Better
translated as: the belief in samsara is absurd. 4. The same
happens in the body of the text of the Heart Sutra. See: The Heart Sutra Neither the
Buddha nor Nagarjuna discuss the notion of momentary substance, nor indeed,
what they mean with the metaphor ‘substance’. 5. The real (i.e.
because eternal (so the Upanishad) or ultimate) does not arise. In fact, as
Jnanagarbha claims, as non-sequitur, it cannot be known, And the
conventional, or transient does not arise either because it is unreal. Sadly
no evidence is provided. See the 3 characteristics sutta) 6. Neither the
Buddha nor Nagarjuna actually understood the (biological) cause of suffering,
namely that it happens as a signal indicating biological systems mal-function
resulting in loss of relative survival capacity. The Buddha’s superficial
solution to the causes and ending of suffering was good enough for the
distressed folk of 2500 years ago. Today his view is just silly, save for the
naïve. 7. Like in
European languages, the term ‘self’ (Sanskrit: atta) emerged as a
self-reflexive pronoun. It was later used as a noun to serve as a useful fiction. Out of the blue it
sprang into being in the early Brihadaranyaka
Upanishads as one of three sources of creation, to wit, Prajapati, Atman and
Brahman. Understanding
the genesis of metaphors Buddhism is
a game, like football |
|
|