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ETHICS AND THE SUBVERSION OF CONCEPTUAL REIFICATION IN LEVINAS AND SHANTIDEVA

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William Edelglass



Shantideva’s Bodhicarya AvatAra employs a multiplicity of ethical strategies.1 It contains elements comparable to virtue ethics, consequentialism, and stoicism. With Levinas, Shantideva shares a concern for the moral dimension of the self-subversion of conceptual reification. My purpose in this chapter is to show that Levinas’ ethics, in addition to traditional moral theories,

can provide resources for sketching the contours of some Indian Buddhist texts, such as the Bodhicarya AvatAra. Because this project runs the risk of displacing \antideva’s own thought, by way of introduction, I defend a limited use of Western moral categories in the interpretation of Indian Buddhist ethics. Contemporary Western moral philosophers typically distinguish three kinds of theorizing about ethics:

metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Metaethics is constituted by an inquiry into the source, nature, and meaning of moral principles. Normative ethics, implicitly or explicitly grounded in metaethical accounts, distinguishes between morally appropriate and inappropriate action. Applying the results of metaethics and normative ethics to specific areas of moral concern, such as medicine,

business, the environment, sexuality, poverty, or war, applied ethics recommends right behavior for particular situations or roles. Indian Buddhist traditions are rich in texts devoted to normative and applied ethics, but, for the most part, they lack

philosophical reflection on the status, meaning, and origin of morality. While Indian Buddhists do make interesting moral distinctions, between natural and artificial precepts, for example, such distinctions are not subjects of philosophical reflection or debate. Instead of theorizing on moral concepts,


then, most Indian Buddhist writings on ethics are descriptions, prescriptions, narratives, or meditations on virtuous behavior. Faced with the absence of metaethical reflection, Western scholars interested in formal investigations of Indian Buddhist

moral thinking construct their object of inquiry. Western philosophers working on Indian Buddhist analyses of language, perception, truth, or existence can compare their object of inquiry with Western theories because in these areas both traditions ask

similar kinds of questions. Ethicists, however, do not have this option. Instead, ethicists analyze descriptions of precepts, perfections, narratives, or practices to disclose the moral reasoning which they believe justifies ethical theory and

praxis in Indian Buddhist traditions. Description and analysis, then, results in the construction of a moral theory never explicitly articulated in Indian Buddhist texts.2 Elucidating the moral


reasoning implicitly justifying Buddhist ethics enables interpretations that employ Western moral categories. Scholars pursuing this approach have most often regarded Buddhist morality as a form of eudaimonistic virtue ethics, but also, on occasion, as a type of

consequentialism or deontology. Analyzing Buddhist texts and practices with the help of Western moral theories is heuristically helpful, for it highlights general structures of Buddhist ethics. Moreover, without employing Western moral categories in the interpretation of [[Buddhist

texts]] it would not be feasible to situate Buddhist moralities in the academic discussion of ethics. Nevertheless, the construction of a metaethical theory “implicit” in Buddhist traditions runs the risk of obscuring the very morality under investigation. This

is especially true with projects that aim at providing the moral structure for a multiplicity of traditions, or even Buddhism in its entirety.3 Against such projects, Charles Hallisey argues, “there can be no answer to a question that asks us to discover which family of ethical theory


underlies Buddhist ethics in general, simply because Buddhists availed themselves of and argued over a variety of moral theories” (Hallisey, 1996, 37). Indeed, a single text, such as \antideva’s BodhicaryAvatAra, often employs a plurality of moral theories, drawing on one or another depending on the

particular context. \antideva’s ethics in the BodhicaryAvatAra initially appears to be a kind of virtue ethics. The text presents a path towards a particular telos, which \antideva believes to be the proper end of all sentient beings. The realization of this path is made possible through the cultivation of virtues, the six traditional perfections (pAramitAs) of the bodhisattva. \antideva emphasizes the importance

of cultivating proper habits over time, and argues that good action is intrinsically satisfying. Moreover, he insists, there are no rules that can cover all situations. Thus a prudent agent who is skillful (kau}alya) in strategy, method, or means (upAya), if motivated by compassion,

ought to perform those actions which are generally proscribed if they will diminish suffering in the world. Despite these resemblances to virtue ethics, the


BodhicaryAvatAra also possesses elements characteristic of consequentialism and stoic morality. With utilitarians, \antideva is primarily committed to the alleviation of suffering. While \antideva does at times insist on the positive value of suffering, this positive value is inevitably

justified through a calculation that will lead to an overall diminution of suffering.4 Moreover, in calculating suffering, the suffering of the self does not take priority over the suffering of the other. However, \antideva differs from classical utilitarianism in rejecting the idea that, morally considered, motivation is insignificant compared to consequence. In this respect, the BodhicaryAvatAra resembles Stoic and

Kantian frameworks in which the moral agent cannot be evaluated solely on the basis of consequences in the world. For Kant, everything in the world is governed by natural laws and thus the intention of an individual is not fully responsible for any particular result. Similarly, because \antideva is committed to the notion of dependent origination (pratCtyasamutpAda), he believes that every

event has multiple conditions and no one causal power, such as an individual moral agent, can be fully responsible for an action in the world. For this reason, the perfections that constitute the bodhisattva path are located in the mind and cannot be evaluated on the basis of external consequences: “the perfection is the mental attitude itself” (\antideva, 1995, 34, V.10) and “since I cannot control external

events, I will control my own mind” (ibid., 35, V.14).5 \antideva’s ethics cannot be reduced to any one of these three moral theories it resembles. Nevertheless, such comparative interpretations are fruitful, for they enable us to recognize some contours of \antideva’s ethics. My purpose in reading \antideva alongside Levinas is to emphasize the moral dimension of subverting even one’s own conceptuality, thus indicating

further contours of Indian Mahayana ethics. Emmanuel Levinas is widely regarded as the most significant continental moral philosopher in the later half of the twentieth century. His influence is manifest not only in the revival of moral and religious thought in continental philosophy, but also in the development of a new discourse of the ethical dimension of alterity in literary studies,

anthropology, religious studies, and other disciplines. What does Levinas offer the study of Indian Mahayana texts such as the BodhicaryAvatAra? At first glance, it would appear, very little. Levinas is informed by Jewish and twentieth-century continental traditions. \antideva and the religious intellectual culture in which he studied and practiced is scholastic, marked by the

debates that dominated the later centuries of Indian Buddhist monastic education. \antideva and his interlocutors are informed by Indian epistemology, and accept, in one form or another, some formulation of Buddhist doctrine and practice. Thus they reject the monotheistic God and the substantial self, ideas which are radically altered by Levinas – who situates both God and the subject beyond


being – but nevertheless play an important role in Levinas’ writings. Perhaps most importantly, Madhyamikas such as \antideva emphasize that ultimately there is no absolute distinction between self and other, or between other traditional binaries such as samsara and nirvana. Levinas would likely consider this emphasis on overcoming alterity to be a totalization, and thus violent appropriation of the singular,

different, Other. Moreover, Levinas’ commitment to the preservation of difference appears to be precisely the reification and absolutism that \antideva finds implicated in the mental defilements that cause suffering. Finally, for Levinas, ethical subjectivity is the traumatism of a

responsibility too great to bear, a persecution, a violence to the self. For \antideva, ethical subjectivity is characterized by the sweetness and flourishing of liberation from mental defilements. Thus, it would be naïve, if not a totalizing act of interpretation, to insist that Levinas and \antideva are somehow making the same claims. There are other differences between \antideva and Levinas, but also some significant


resonances.6 Both thinkers are committed to a radical, asymmetrical ethics in which the moral subject serves the other without seeking reciprocity. Their ethics are characterized by a generosity without recompense. In Levinas’ language: “The word I means here I am, answering for everything

and for everyone” (Levinas, 1974, 114). In \antideva’s language: “As long as space abides and as long as the world abides, so long may I abide, destroying the sufferings of the world.


Whatever suffering is in store for the world, may it all ripen in me” (\antideva, 1995, 143, X.55–6). At the heart of Levinas’ ethics is a substitution for the other, an excessive responsibility for the other which elects the moral subject as a singular subjectivity. At the

heart of \antideva’s ethics is the exchange of self and other that liberates the self from self-cherishing, opening the mind to the suffering of others. And Levinas and \antideva both situate the locus of morality and ethical subjectivity in compassion. According to

Levinas, compassion is the “supreme ethical principle” and the “nexus of subjectivity” (Levinas, 1991, 94). According to \antideva, compassion for the other is the deepest and truest desire of the self, liberating the self from a defensive, fortresslike subjectivity. In

this chapter I am interested in one specific resonance between Levinas and \antideva, namely their shared concern with the moral dimension of conceptual reification. For Levinas, ethics, the welcoming of the Other, requires a self-subverting discourse which does not exclude or

assimilate alterity. According to \antideva, ethics requires the deconstruction of objects we perceive and conceive. This deconstruction, \antideva argues, liberates us from the attachments which result both in our own suffering and disregard for the sufferings of others.

Levinas, with his commitment to “unsay the said” of his own discourse, and \antideva, with his account of the lack of inherent existence of all things, including emptiness itself, argue that ethics requires the deconstructing one’s own discourse and conceptuality.


II Emmanuel Levinas describes two kinds of alterity: the other (autre) that is constituted by consciousness, and the absolutely Other (Autrui), who signifies a meaning (le sens) outside intentional horizons. According to Levinas, I absorb what is other as food and drink, as the elements that sustain

me, and that I transform through my work. The conversion through work and nourishment of what is other constitutes the satisfaction, enjoyment, and sustenance of the prelapsarian innocence of need, in which the self, anxious for its existence, nourishes itself. In contrast to the other (autre), the Other (Autrui) resists all attempts at assimilation or conceptualization. The difference between the self and the Other cannot

be recognized against a common foundation of similarity, or ordered in a system at a higher genus; there is no third term that could introduce reciprocity or commensurability. Levinas argues that the sole meaning of the Other, the expression of the face, is the ethical command, the call of moral obligation. The face of the Other, signifying outside cultural context, is the


source of ethics. And this ethical meaning, Levinas claims, is the horizon for all meanings. This is why Levinas insists that “ethics is first philosophy.” According to Levinas, the dominant traditions of Western philosophy have consistently obscured the absolutely Other. Despite the vigorous debates that indicate plurality and multiplicity within these traditions, Levinas argues, they share a belief that thought possesses a

privileged access to alterity. Through rational methods and procedures, beings are gathered, encompassed, and assimilated, primarily as objects of knowledge. The relationship of knowledge constituted by a knowing subject and an objectified other strips the Other of its singularity. Subsumed under a category, the Other is absorbed into the projects and concerns of the self. This intellectualist project is motivated by the ideal of leaving nothing exterior to thought. The ideal of totality animates rationalism, empiricism,

[[[realism]]]], and idealism; it is expressed most explicitly, perhaps, in Hegel’s Science of Logic: “truth is complete only in the unity of identity and difference” (Hegel, 1812, 414). Levinas sees the appropriating, autonomous subject at work from the Parmenidean identity of thought and being, through the Socratic teaching of maieutics, the Cartesian cogito, Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception, the

Hegelian identity of Reason and the Real, Husserlian philosophy as egology, and Heideggerian Dasein. In the autonomous philosophy of totality, Levinas claims, the Other person is displaced by a theme; even the interlocutor is replaced by an idea. Conceiving the Other as an object reducible to an abstract individual that functions as the bearer of a general meaning in a system, Levinas argues, subsumes the ethical inviolability of the Other. For Levinas, the responsibility of the philosopher is to respond to the

transcendent priority and singularity of the Other.

The Levinasian philosopher, however, appears caught in a dilemma. For, thinking the Other, writing the Other in a philosophical text, appears to treat the Other as a being in the world, and thus constitutes the very totalizing activity Levinas critiques. Jacques Derrida

remarks on this tension between Levinas’ philosophy and his language in “Violence and Metaphysics,” where he claims, “Levinas in fact speaks of the infinitely other, but by refusing to acknowledge an intentional modification of the ego – which would be a violent and totalitarian act for him – he deprives himself of the very foundation and possibility of his own language” (Derrida, 1967, 125). Levinas came to regard the ontological discourse of Totality and Infinity as a betrayal of the non-phenomenal rupture of Being (Levinas, 1963, 295;

1991, 197). In Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1981), Levinas seeks to break free from the spell of ontological language. He sets out to describe and practice a language that maintains openness to alterity, that refrains from subsuming all meaning to ontology, that resolves the antagonism between the theory and practice of his previous texts. This resolution appears in Levinas’ development of his earlier distinction between the said (le Dit), and the


saying (le Dir). His practice of a non-subsuming discourse is seen in Levinas’ self-subverting activity of “unsaying the said.” The said, according to Levinas, is the coherent, thematized discourse that conforms to the structures of grammar, logic, and narrative. The said is the totalized language that identifies meanings with clarity. The Other, however, always outside any possible horizon of systematic structures, ruptures the

said with theoretical incoherence, indicating the saying beyond the said. The saying is not the communication of information or the expression of consciousness. According to Levinas, the saying is the very incommensurable presupposition of the said, a mark of the transcendence that overflows all possible grammars. Levinas describes the saying as an upsurge of communication, a hospitality, an exposure, a sincerity, a welcome of the Other. “Saying bears witness to the other of the Infinite which rends

me, which in the saying awakens me” (Levinas, 1986, 74). Without apology, offering without reserve, without thematizing, the saying finds voice in the said, but leaves only a trace. In Otherwise than Being Levinas describes a reduction, not from the natural attitude to the phenomenological attitude, but from the said to the saying that is otherwise than being, beyond ontology. Like the phenomenological reduction, the Levinasian reduction does not unveil a wholly new realm or a supernatural reality. It does not indicate a mystical “somewhere else” that could

be opposed to the said, or dialectically totalized. Instead, Levinas argues, the reduction indicates diachrony, the possibility of a language that is at once the saying and the said by which it is betrayed. This possibility is realized in the unsaying of the said, a discourse of openness and welcome that does not dominate the Other, a discourse Levinas finds in poetry and prophetic speech.

Conceptualizing the otherwise than being, the philosophical response to the Other, betrays the saying in the said. “In this betrayal,” Levinas writes in Otherwise than Being, “the indiscretion with regard to the unsayable, which is probably the very task of philosophy, becomes possible” (Levinas, 1974,

7). In articulating propositions and coherent arguments, Levinas claims, philosophy betrays the subject to whom it is responding. Rupturing the coherent structure of theses and arguments, essence and totalities, unsays the said, and discloses the otherwise than being. The deconstructive act of self-subversion, in Levinasian ethics, is thus a moral response to the Other.


III Instead of grasping and assimilating alterity to constitute identity, according to Levinas, ethical

subjectivity is elected as singular through the call of moral responsibility. For \antideva, ethical subjectivity is similarly a reversal of the grasping of identity and objects that characterizes the consciousness of one who causes

suffering to self and others. Ultimately, \antideva argues, this grasping is caused by a fundamental ignorance that ascribes substantial existence to the self and passing phenomena. “Seeing things the way they really are” (yathAbhEtadar}ana), according to \antideva, uproots

grasping and the suffering it causes. Thus, the penultimate chapter of the BodhicaryAvatAra is devoted to the perfection of wisdom (prajñApAramitA), and begins with the claim that everything which has preceded this chapter constitutes a preparation (\antideva, 1995, 115, IX.1). With the proper preparation of the cultivation of moral concern (the


perfections of generosity, moral discipline, patience, and vigor) and mental tranquility (the perfection of mental absorption), \antideva argues, meditation on Madhyamaka wisdom neutralizes ignorance and attachment. The most significant doctrine of Madhyamaka wisdom, according to \antideva, is the lack of inherent existence (svabhAva) of all phenomena. \antideva’s emphasis on

emptiness as the central insight of Buddhist philosophy is derived from Nagarjuna, who is credited with founding the Madhyamaka School.7 According to Nagarjuna, “For him to whom emptiness is clear, everything becomes clear. For him to whom emptiness is not clear, nothing becomes clear” (Nagarjuna, 1995, 69, XXIV.14). “Empty” (}Enya) and “emptiness” (}EnyatA) were important terms in pre-Mahayana Abhidharma philosophy.

According to the Abhidharma literature, the phenomena that constitute human beings, trees, and other sensible objects are indeed empty of self; they are conceptually constructed. But these gross objects that populate our world of sensation are constituted by

ultimate constituents that exist inherently. For, fbhidharmikas asked, how else could the gross phenomena appear?8 Nagarjuna’s thought is an extension of the Abhidharma analysis of phenomena, for he claims that not only sensible objects, but all their constituent parts as well, are empty of intrinsic being. Previous

Buddhist philosophers had agreed that all phenomena and their ultimate constituents arise based on causes and conditions. Nagarjuna, however, argues for the identity of dependent origination (pratCtyasamutpAda) and

emptiness of inherent existence. Thus, according to Nagarjuna, in addition to sensible phenomena, their constituent parts and even the primary phenomena of Buddhist philosophy and practice, including suffering, the Four Noble Truths, samsara, nirvana, and the Buddha, are all empty of inherent existence. \antideva maintains Nagarjuna’s radical commitment to emptiness. But what is emptiness for \antideva? And

when an object is said to be empty, what, exactly, is it lacking? According to \antideva, emptiness refers to the non-substantiality (niTsvabhAvatA) that is ultimately left upon complete, critical analysis of an object.9 Indian logicians generally distinguish between negation which in its negating affirms the existence of


something else (paryudAsa), and negation that carries with it no positive implication and thus leaves only absence (prasajya). According to Madhyamikas such as \antideva, the former is only a “relativenegation, and leads to one of two extreme ontological


positions: either existence is negated, and nihilism is affirmed, or, nihilism is negated and absolutism, or eternalism, is affirmed. But Madhyamaka negation is an absolute negation, a thoroughgoing application of emptiness as a method to liberate the

practitioner from reifying concepts. Thus there is no affirmation, either of existence or non-existence, or of any propositions (pratijñAs) or views (dWXYis). \antideva is not claiming that the objects we experience do not exist in any way. Rather, they do

not possess “inherent existence” (svabhAvasiddhi). The fundamental conceptual error we make is to impute inherent existence to the object when it is empty of inherent existence. Thus \antideva’s account of wisdom is oriented towards an awareness of the mind’s tendency to latch on

to objects that are merely conceptual constructs (prajñAptimAtra). Objects do exist, but precisely as mentally imputed dependent designations (prajñaptir upAdAya). Emptiness, then, is not non-existence. Nor does emptiness refer to some mysterious transcendent

reality, Kantian noumenon, or Heideggerian Being, as some Western scholars have believed. Indeed, \antideva would reject Levinas’ insistence on an irreducible alterity that resists all analysis. For \antideva, emptiness is simply the lack of [[inherent

existence]] of mental and physical phenomena. Emptiness is always the emptiness (}EnyatA) or absence (abhAva) of a particular object, a reified, conceptually constructed phenomenon. Thus emptiness itself is dependent on the condition of the object to be analyzed, and is itself

empty of inherent existence (}EnyatA}EnyatA). “When there is no perception of something falsely projected as existent, there is no understanding of the non-existence of that entity. For it follows that, if an entity is not real, the negation of it is clearly not real” (\antideva, 1995, 129, IX.139).10 For this reason, \antideva insists, there is no infinite regress of


analyses of emptiness: “When the thing which is to be analyzed has been analyzed there is no basis left for analysis. Since there is no basis it does not continue and that is said to be Enlightenment” (ibid., 126, IX.110). \antideva’s Cittamatrin interlocutor wonders how insight into the [[emptiness

of phenomena]] leads to liberation (\antideva, 1995, 118, IX.30). Conceptual reification, because it causes passionate attachment and the defilements which destabilize our minds, is, \antideva argues, the deepest source of our suffering. Because we mistakenly ascribe [[inherent

existence]] to our own selves, we are overcome with self-cherishing. Because we mistakenly ascribe inherent existence to objects, we are overcome by attachment or repulsion. According to \antideva, wisdom recognizes that any object can be deconstructed until one is left with

the emptiness of emptiness. Even conceptual and verbal expressions of emptiness run the risk of reification, for we could be tempted to regard emptiness itself as an inherently existing characteristic of phenomena. Thus wisdom is manifest in the

selfsubversion of one’s own words, perceptions, and concepts. For \antideva, only this kind of self-subversion neutralizes the cognitive and affective defilements that result in suffering for the self and insensibility to the suffering of others. In the BodhicaryAvatAra, the deconstructive self-subversion of conceptual reification makes possible the compassionate response to the suffering other.


IV My use of the term “deconstructive” in this chapter is not meant to characterize \antideva and Levinas as engaged in a common “deconstructive” project. More broadly, I am not interested in arguing that \antideva and other Madhyamikas anticipate deconstructive or postmodern theory. \antideva’s

accounts of dependent origination or the emptiness of emptiness do not imply, prefigure, or mean “the same thing” as Derrida’s “undecidability.” \antideva’s presentation of the two truths (satyadvaya) defends the legitimacy of conventional truth. For, according to \antideva, the

distinction is not between truth and falsehood, but between two truths (satya). Thus, within the conventional truth, \antideva maintains a distinction between what is conventionally true (tathya saUvWti) and what is conventionally false (mithyA saUvWti). The

former would include the truths of natural science and mathematics, as well as the social sciences, and all the propositions that are affirmed through shared linguistic practices. Derridean deconstruction contests claims at the conventional level and,

according to \antideva’s framework, remains at the conventional level. I utilize the term “deconstructive” because, to use another Derridean term, it has been disseminated so widely that it can now refer to the kind of self-subverting strategies employed by \antideva and other Madhyamikas without being limited to Derrida’s methodology.

ly, I have not argued that the BodhicaryAvatAra is a form of Levinasian ethics, or that Levinas and \antideva have the same ethics. Too often, comparative philosophers have exaggerated similarity and neglected difference (Larson, 1988). The broad contours of \antideva’s thought constitute a

contrast as much as, if not more than, a resemblance to Levinas’ work. My purpose in this chapter has been to thematize a Levinasian strategy in \antideva’s ethics, a shared concern for the moral significance of deconstructing one’s own concepts. Interpreting the

multiplicity of ethical strategies and forms in Indian Buddhist moral thought demands a theoretically pluralistic approach that draws on a variety of Western moral categories. Restricting the interpretation of Indian Buddhist ethics to one particular Western moral

category obscures the diversity between and within texts. And restricting the study of Indian Buddhist ethics to Western categories more generally diminishes the possibilities of describing what is singular and unique in Indian Buddhist ethics. But excluding Western moral

categories from the study of Indian Buddhism effectively excludes Indian Buddhist ethics from contemporary academic ethics. Levinas’ work, then, provides only some of the many resources that can help Western scholars in the study of the ethics of a Madhyamaka text, such as the BodhicaryAvatA


Notes


1 I am grateful to Eric Nelson for his thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 2 For a defense of this strategy and how it can provide the moral reasoning that justifies Buddhist ethics, see Keown, 1992. 3 See, for example, Keown, 1992, which is an attempt to provide a

moral theory for all Buddhist traditions. 4 Keown argues that based on purely formal reasons, Buddhist ethics cannot be utilitarian. What is right is defined according to the maximization of the good, which is characterized independently of the right. In Buddhism,

Keown claims, the right and the good are inseparable: “NirvAVa is the good, and rightness is predicated of acts and intentions to the extent which they participate in nirvanic goodness” (Keown, 1992, 177). While Keown’s claim for Buddhist ethics in

general is debatable, \antideva’s ethics is not primarily oriented towards nirvana. Rather, for \antideva, the alleviation of suffering is the highest good. Bodhicitta is significant because it is the primary means for the liberation of suffering, both for the self and the other. 5

Quotations from \antideva, 1995 and Nagarjuna, 1995 include the page number, followed by a reference to the specific chapter and verse. 6 For a careful and nuanced discussion of differences and resonances between Levinas and some Buddhist thinkers, see Pitkin, 2001. 7M adhyamikas, following

Nagarjuna, present their teachings as a mean (madhyama), a middle path (madhyamamArga), a moderate course of action (madhyamA pratipad), between any set of extremes, but most famously between nihilism and essentialism. The term “Madhyamaka” arose

some centuries after Nagarjuna in response to the development of the Cittamatra. Nagarjuna himself employed the term }EnyatAvAdin to describe his own position.


For a contemporary defense of this position see Burton, 1999, especially pp. 87– 121. 9 Tibetan Madhyamikas developed a number of technical terms to describe exactly what was absent in emptiness, includingtrue existence,” “ultimate existence,” “existence by means of an own-characteristic,” “existence from its own side,” “truly established existence,” etc. (Hopkins, 1983, 36). 10 This verse became the locus classicus of Tibetan discussions of the relation between emptiness and the negated object (Williams, 1998, 65).



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