Nagarjuna and Emptiness and Why Nirvana is Samsara
Madhyamaka looks at everything through the lens of the Two Truths: the conventional or relative truth (vyavahara) and the ultimate or absolute truth (paramartha).
What is valid from the standpoint of the relative truth of our everyday world is not necessarily valid from the ultimate side.
In the final analysis, though, the relative and the ultimate are neither different, nor identical. Nor does one stand independently of the other.
The same can be said of samsara and nirvana.
In Madhyamaka, samsara represents the world of birth and death, the world of suffering, while nirvana represents realization of the ultimate truth, without which freedom from the bondage (bandhana) of suffering is not possible.
As noted above, one sense of nirvana is that of “unbinding.”
In the Madhyamaka-karika or “Roots Verses on the Middle Way,” Nagarjuna says, “If binding, would exist prior to one who is bound, there would be bondage, but that does not exist.”
Binding/bondage belongs to the relative truth.
In the ultimate truth, if binding existed prior to the bondage of a sentient being, then it would have inherent existence.
Yet, ultimately, neither bondage nor anything else has inherent existence (Svabhava, own-being, self), and so release from bondage is not an inherently existent phenomenon either.
This is important because grasping onto the false idea of inherent existence is the primary cause for suffering.
Nagarjuna felt that the term “nirvana” was useful for indicating spiritual release, but only if the term did not refer to something that could be an object for clinging.
A few verses on, he says, “Those who grasp at the notion, ‘I will be free from grasping and Nirvana will be mine,’ have a great grasp on grasping.”
In The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Jay Garfield provides a good explanation of this:
It is [possible] to grasp after nirvana – to reify it as a state and to crave it as a phenomenon inherently different from samsara and as highly desirable since it is indeed characterized as liberation from suffering.
But this grasping onto the end of grasping is itself a grasping and so precludes the attainment of nirvana.
Nirvana requires, according to Nagarjuna, a complete cessation of grasping, including that onto nirvana itself.
While that might seem paradoxical, it is not:
To grasp onto something in this sense requires, inter alia, that one reify it.
By refusing to reify liberation, in virtue of seeing it as the correlative of bondage, which itself is not inherently existent, it is possible to pursue the path to liberation without creating at the same time a huge obstacle on that path – the root delusion with regard to nirvana itself.
If things do not exist in themselves, then from the ultimate truth they are unreal, illusions.
Nirvana, for Nagarjuna, if seen as something inherently existent, is only an illusion that will perpetuate more grasping, followed by more suffering.
There are no real distinctions in Madhyamaka philosophy because all things are considered empty of inherent existence or own-nature.
For samsara and nirvana to be distinct from one another, they would have to be inherently existent things. But they are empty, and within this emptiness, they are without distinction.
Samsara and nirvana are only different in the relative sense, because they designate entirely different things.
Again, in the ultimate sense, there is no difference, because of their emptiness.
Everything is empty, including emptiness.
This many sound like theoretical nonsense, but it has a practical application.
The aim of this thinking is to shatter all dualities and destroy all avenues for grasping.
When we can get past dualistic thinking, that is, seeing only the distinctions, not recognizing the parity or the correspondence between things, then the world opens up for us.
We then see the wholeness of life.
We become whole.
Being whole means to be healthy, and this sort of spiritual health translates into release from the things that bind us to suffering.
It is freedom.
Frederick Streng has written,
"This is a freedom which applies to every moment of existence, not to special moments of mystical escape to another level of being, nor to the freedom attained by priestly activity at a sacred time and place . . .
To know things as they actually are, frees the mind of presuppositions and the emotions from attachments.
Thus this freedom is also a purification process; it removes such evils as hated, fear, greed, or nimiety which accompany attachment."
Without suffering, one can never know release.
As long as we see freedom as something separate from our suffering, we are grasping onto an object, inviting more suffering.
Just as we are related to our karma, we are related to our suffering, and nirvana, our freedom, is also related to our suffering.
If we can understand that samsara “is” nirvana in this way, in each moment, and know that suffering, ultimately related to our goal, is the very tool that allows us to reach the goal, then I think, we are one step closer to where we want to be.
Of course, we need take that extra step of realizing that the goal of freedom is ultimately empty, for as long as we live we will experience suffering in one form or another.
The goal of complete release is an illusion.
There is only the Endless Further.
http://theendlessfurther.com/?p=1339
---
The Mahayana tradition has put a special emphasis on sunyata.
This was necessary, in part, because of the tendency among certain early Buddhist schools to assert that there were aspects of reality that were not sunya, but which had inherent in them their "own-being".
Several important Buddhist philosophers dismantled these theories by arguing for the pervasiveness of sunyata in every aspect of reality. (Nagarjuna was among the most important of these.)
The specific arguments are too complicated for us to deal with here.
But it is important to appreciate that understanding absolutely everything as sunya could imply that even those things most revered by Buddhists (such as the arhant ideal and the rules laid down in the vinaya) were empty.
Mahayanists tended to argue that members of the Hinayana traditions were attached to their ideal forms as if they were not sunya.
To some extent, sunyata is an extension of the concepts made explicit in The Three Flaws.
All things being impermanant, nothing can be seen as having an independent, lasting form of existence.
And this is, in essence, what sunyata is all about.
Strictly speaking, sunyata can be defined as "not svabhava".
The concept svabhava means "own being", and means something like "substance" or "essence" in Western philosophy.
Svabhava has to do with the notion that there is a form of being which "is" and "exists" in a form that is not dependent on context, is not subject to variation, and has a form of permanent existence.
As such, the "soul" as understood in Abrahamic religions would have svabhava. God would certainly have svabhava. The Platonic forms (such as those described in the allegory of the Cave) would have svabhava.
Certain abhidharma teachings conclude that the building blocks of reality have such svabhava.
But Mahayana philosophers like Nagarjuna concluded that sunyata is the fundamental characteristic of reality, and that svabhava could be found absolutely nowhere.
One of the images used to illustrate the nature of reality as understood in Mahayana is The Jewel Net of Indra.
According to this image, all reality is to be understood on analogy with Indra's Net.
This net consists entirely of jewels. Each jewel reflects all of the other jewels, and the existence of each jewel is wholly dependent on its reflection in all of the other jewels.
As such, all parts of reality are interdependent with each other, but even the most basic parts of existence have no independent existence themselves.
As such, to the degree that reality takes form and appears to us, it is because the whole arises in an interdependent matrix of parts to whole and of subject to object.
But in the end, there is nothing (literally no-thing) there to grasp.
The flip side of sunyata is pratitya samutpada.
They are two sides of the same coin.
They mean the same thing, but from two different perspectives.
To the extent that sunyata is a negative concept (i.e., not svabhava), pratitya-samutpada is the positive counterpart.
Pratitya-samutpada is an attempt to conceptualize the nature of the world as it appears to us, not (as with sunyata) by saying what the world is not, but by characterizing what is.
I would say that pratitya-samutpada is probably just about my favorite religious-philosophical concept from within the traditions of the world. It is wonderfully subtle, and Buddhist philosophers have developed it beautifully.
As mentioned above, this concept is understood in two quite different ways in Theravada and Mahayana thought.
In Theravada dependent co-arising (usually designated by its form in Pali, paticca-samuppada) is understood as a logical-causal chain which illustrates in a linear fashion the preconditions of suffering that can be analyzed and eliminated according to a strictly codified pattern of behavior. (Wrong! it is not linear!)
In Mahayana, on the other hand, which emphasizes the emptiness of things, dependent co-arising as a concept is used to clarify the nature of sunyata by showing that all things that appear to have independent, permanent existence are really the product of many forces interacting.
Thus, in Mahayana it is stressed that all things are dependently co-arisen, because their seemingly independent existence really depends on the coming together simultaneously (the co-arising) of the various parts and forces that go into making them up.
As such, pratitya-samutpada is more a metaphysical concept in Mahayana, and it is nonlinear inasmuch as it attempts to picture a universe in which all things are inextricably linked in a cosmic wholeness that cannot be unwoven into independent threads or pieces.
It may seem that the articulation of such ideas "tends not to edification", or that it resembles absurd philosophical speculation such as "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
However, the study of these (and other) philosophical concepts has typically been linked with practices that train Buddhists to release themselves from attachment to or striving after "things" that might seem to offer some lasting sort of satisfaction.
One of the most basic forms of attachment is the mind's tendency to grasp after objects of thought and perception as real (i.e., as having svabhava), and this tendency is reinforced in ideas that we have about the world.
The use of philosophical reasoning to deconstruct such misconceptions (as they are understood within Buddhism) is a powerful vehicle for eliminating seeds that can eventually grow into very serious obstacles in one's orientation to the world.
Among the most important applications of these ideas with Mahayana has been to expose the emptiness and the co-dependently arisen qualities of even Buddhism itself.
Mahayana claims itself to be an important vehicle to liberation, but it also points to its own provisional character.
Mahayana does not see itself as an end, but as means to an end.
That end is liberation, enlightenment, and an end to suffering.
However, as with all religions, there is a tendency for the religion to reinforce itself as real, as an end in itself, within the minds of its adherents.
The philosophical traditions of emptiness and dependent co-origination are important correctives to this tendency.
There is an important saying within Zen: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."
When people come to see the Buddha as a being to be revered merely for the sake of piety itself, or when Buddhism itself becomes the chief focus of its practitioners, then it is time to "kill the Buddha", to point to the emptiness and provisional quality of Buddhism itself.
Source
