Not this, Not this

The Buddhist "Not this, Not this" By Alex Wayman Philosophy East and West V. 11, No. 3 (1961) pp. 99-114 Copyright 1961 by University of Hawaii Press Hawaii, USA p. 99   INTRODUCTION     Some Western philosophers hold the view that a proposition is meaningful only when it is verifiable. These thinkers are not so naive as to demand that the lowest common denominator of experience verify the proposition. They are willing, of course, to grant that a scientific proposition difficult for the layman to comprehend has been verified by telescopes, microscopes, atom-smashers, and so on, in procedures which the layman has neither the reining nor the opportunity to duplicate. In a comparable sense, the propositions of the spiritual life are verified by a relatively small number of persons who have exceptional faculty and opportunity. These "privileged" few find it difficult, if not impossible, to communicate their experiences to others. This is the case with the states called "mystical." Thus, William James, in his classic Varieties of Religious Experience (Lectures XVI and XVII, "Mysticism") informs us that the mystical state is especially characterized by ineffability and noetic quality. [1] But the Indian teachers long ago evolved an indirect method of teaching these exceptional states. They referred to them in terms which the multitude could understand -- in terms of those ordinary things which those states are not. Even more, they showed how to attain those states by dissociation from what they are not.     The basic postulate of various Indian systems -- certainly of Buddhism -- is that something or some entity is enlightened when free from defiling conditions. Another postulate is that supernormal experiences have a sensory character. In illustration, the Western terminology "Extrasensory Perception" (ESP), popularized by Dr. John H. Rhine of Duke University, postulates five senses, while Buddhist doctrines set forth six sense organs (or 1. There is also much to be said for the contrary view, as expressed by Alfred Jules Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., n.d.), p. 119: "The fact that he cannot reveal what he 'knows,' or even himself devise an empirical test to validate his 'knowledge, shows that his state of mystical intuition is not a genuinely cognitive state. So that in describing his vision the mystic does not give us any information about the external world; he merely gives us indirect information about the condition of his own mind."     p. 100 "powers," indriyas) -- the ordinary five and the mind (manas) itself -- and so there is no place within the Buddhist system for the terminology "ESP". Thus, the Buddhist author Asa^nga writes, And it was said by the Bhagavat with respect to the world of sentient beings, "Monks I see with the purified divine eye, transcending the human [eye], that sentient beings both passing away and being born,...after the breaking up of the body, are born among the gods in the good destiny, heaven world". In that way, the Bhagavat, possessing the eye that sees with direct perception, explained the impermanence of the world of sentient beings. [2] These and other postulates gave rise to questions leading to various philosophical positions. For example, is the enlightened entity always enlightened; or sometimes potentially, sometimes actually, enlightened? Is the enlightened entity a complete buddha by virtue of dissociation from defilement; and, if not, what else must be added? Are subject and object reducible to a common substratum; and, if so, what is the nature of this substratum? Accordingly, a number of Buddhist schools arose and in the course of the centuries engaged in a great variety of philosophical disputes and -- like Western philosophy (for the most part) with religious or theological postulates in the background, expressed or implied. [3]     The present paper, while exhibiting certain positions of both early and late Buddhism, barely treats the differentiated philosophical positions but does present a number of the most important postulates of the Indian Buddhist schools. The approach, leading to a commentary on the Praj~naapaaramita-h.rdaya-suutra, favors certain teachings of the Yogaacaara school. That Suutra succinctly shows the connotation of "voidness" (`suunyataa).     A number of modern writers have maintained that the term "`suunyataa" does not really mean "voidness," or "emptiness." Apparently motivated by a kind regard for Buddhism, they wish to save it from the bad repute of teaching "nihilism." The present writer holds that, when early Buddhist authors used this Sanskrit term, which was translated into both Chinese and Tibetan as "emptiness," they intended this basic meaning. Hence, it is proper to 2. Wayman, Analysis of the `Sraavakabhuumi Manuscript, University of California Publications in Classical Philosophy, Vol. 17 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University California Press, 1961), p.131. 3. A possible exception, not discussed in the present article, is the doctrine of apoha of the Buddhist logicians. Cf. Satkari Mookerjee, The Buddhist Philosophy of Universal Flux (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1935), pp. 119-120: "The word 'cow' only engenders a conceptual image of the reality 'cow, ' but as this conceptual image has a self-identity distinct from that of other concepts, its distinctive character is felt and distinction means negation of what it is not." However, it occurs to me that this doctrine may rest upon the Cittamaatra ("Mind-Only") school position that the world is really mind (or mental substance, citta), and hence that the yogin, contemplating an image as a single area of thought, with cessation of other thoughts, has the object present in its true (because truly mental) form.     p. 101 translate the term into English as "emptiness," "voidness," or "vacuity." This is not to deny the connotation of an unexpressed factor, hinted at by negation of the expressible, just as a mystery is suggested by a deserted village.     It remains to say that a celebrated source of the "not this, not this" idea is the B.rhadaara.nyaka Upani.sad (IV.v.15), which belongs to the period immediately preceding the time of Gautama Buddha: "That Self (AAtman) is not this, it is not that [this] (neti, neti). It is unseizable, for it cannot be seized; indestructible, for it cannot be destroyed; unattached, for it does not attach itself; is unbound, does not tremble, is not injured...." [4] Strictly speaking, this passage is not setting forth an indescribability of the AAtman. [5] Indeed, Radhakrishnan's translation [6] reads, "That self is (to be described as) not this, not this." In other words, the AAtman is there described by negatives -- in terms of what it is not.   THE MIDDLE PATH     The story of the Buddha's life shows that before attainment of enlightenment (bodhi) he, as a prince, was occupied with sense gratification and that later he spent six fruitless years of austerities. Then he returned to a moderate amount of food [7] prior to his forty-nine days of meditation beneath the bodhi tree.     In his first sermon, called "Suutra Setting into Motion the Wheel of the Law," he spoke of two extremes, one "whose application is wholly concentrated in pleasure and lust" and the other "whose application is in mortification of the self," and he spoke of a middle path avoiding those two extremes, which tends to quiescence, supernormal faculty, [8] illumination, and nirvaana. This middle path he explained as the Eightfold Noble Path. [9] Thus we see that the Buddhist path begins and continues with a "not this, not this." Later 4. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore, eds., A Source Book in Indian Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 88-89. 5. As, for example, claimed in ibid., p. 77. 6. S. Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upani.sads (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953), p. 286. 7. In Buddhism, there are four kinds of food: morsel food (coarse or subtle), (sense) contact, volition, and perception; cf. Sa.myutta-nikaaya, Part II ("Nidaana-vagga,"), Paali Text, p. 98. Since the future Buddha's austerities were of a mental as well as physical nature, we may assume that he returned to a moderate amount of all four kinds of food. 8. In the Paali scriptures there are six supernormal faculties -- magical powers, divine ear, knowledge of another's mental make-up, divine eye, remembrance of former existences, and extinction of the fluxes; cf. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary (Colombo: Frewin & Co., Ltd., 1950), pp. 2-3. 9. Dines Andersen, A Paali Reader (London: Luzac & Co., 1935), pp. 66-67.     p. 102 we shall see that this is also the case with the Buddhist goal, whether it be nirvaana or Buddhahood.     Naagaarjuna writes: "Who expounded voidness, dependent origination, and the middle path, with one and the same meaning,..." [10] In the same work he says: Whatever the origination in dependence on entities That is voidness; And that origination occurs in dependence Because it has no "own origination" (svabhaava). [11] Presumably applicable is the discourse to Kaatyaayana [12] where the twelve-membered formula of dependent origination is set forth as the middle doctrine that avoids (the doctrines) "Everything exists" and "Everything exists not." Naagaarjuna refers to this discourse in his Madhyamaka-kaarikaas (XV. 7).     The earliest Yogaacaara standpoint is set forth in the Madhyaanta-vibha^nga, a work which Asa^nga is supposed to have received from the future Buddha, Maitreya, in the Tu.sita Heaven. The first two verses of the first chapter read: There is the imagination of unreality (abhuutaparikalpa); In it there is no duality [of subject and object]. There is voidness in it; And it is in that [voidness]. Therefore everything is explained as Neither [exclusively] void nor [exclusively] non-void; By reason of the reality (sattva) [of the imagination of unreality], the non-reality [of duality], and the reality [mutually of voidness and the imagination of unreality], That is the middle path. [13] The Madhyaanta-vibha^nga further teaches that the "imagination of unreality" constructs dependent origination as well as the duality of subject and object and teaches that liberation is achieved by eliminating this duality. According to the commentary, "That is the middle path" means avoiding the extremes of only voidness or only non-voidness.     It is plain that the Yogaacaara disagrees with the previously delineated 10. E. H. Johnston and A. Kunst, "Vigrahavyaavartanii of Naagaarjuna," Melanges chinois et bouddhiques, IX (1948-1951), 151:     ya.h `suunyataa^m pratiityasamutpaada^m /     madhyamaa^m pratipada^m ca /     ekaartha^m nijagaada ... 11. Ibid., verse 22. 12. Sa^myutta-nikaaya, Part II ("Nidaana-Vagga"), Paali Text, p. 17. 13. Susumu Yamaguchi, ed. and trans., Sthiramati, Madhyaantavibhaaga.tiikaa (Nagoya: Librarie Hajinkaku, 1934), Tome I, pp. 10, 15. The expressions within brackets are based upon the commentary.     p. 103 Maadhyamika stand of Naagaarjuna as regards the theoretical formulation of the path. Furthermore, in philosophical contrast with the Maadyamika position, this Yogaacaara treatise does not hold that dependent origination has the same meaning as voidness or as the middle path. The latter school maintains two principles throughout: [1] voidness, on the absolute side, and [2] imagination of unreality on the phenomenal side. Naagaarjuna apparently holds that the two (although he may use different terminology) are merely aspects of the same thing.     A similar problem arises in `Sa^mkara's Vedaantism: Is the power of illusion (maayaa) distinct from Brahman? [14]     The foregoing raises the question, "Does that theoretical difference between the two schools affect the practical 'treading' of the path in the form of the Eightfold Noble Path of early Buddhism or in the form of the six perfections of Mahaayaana Buddhism?" The answer appears to be that there is no necessary practical difference. Naagaarjuna says, "Everything is valid for the one for whom voidness is valid." [15] Voidness here is the great principle of efficiency. Likewise, in the Madhyaanta-vibha^nga (I. 17-19), the persevering bodhisattva is voidness. However, it cannot be denied that Naagaarjuna is difficult to understand, and his primary stress on "voidness" may well have contributed to a one-sided appreciation of this doctrine. The Yogaacaara's equal emphasis on the "void" and the "non-void" seems more clearly to justify in a theoretical way all six perfections of the bodhisattva, and to discourage the one-sided emphasis on the sixth perfection, the insight that "sees" the void. To bring our some of the implications, we should touch briefly upon the buddha bodies.     A buddha is said to have the three bodies called the Dharma Body (dharmakaaya) and the two kinds of Formal Body (ruupakaaya), the Body of Enjoyment (sambhogakaaya) and the Body of Transformation (nirmaanakaaya). In the bodhisattva section of his Lam rim chen mo, Tsong-kha-pa (1357-1419), founder of the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism, quotes many sources to show the necessity for both insight (praj~naa) and the means (upaaya); and in his reform of the Buddhist Tantras, his S^ags rim chen mo, he shows their relation to the Buddha bodies with these words:     Regarding that, profound comprehending insight accomplishes the Dharma Body, and broad means the Formal Body; and insight unfurnished with the means or the means unfurnished with insight cannot accomplish either of the two bodies. Therefore one 14. If we regard the two ultimate entities as distinct, the cardinal idea is that at the "limit" of the meditative process there are two entities, even if inseparable (with the meditator himself excluded). 15. Madhyamaka-kaarikaa (XXIV, 14a-b) : sarvam ca yujyate tasya `suunyataa yasya yujyate /.     p. 104 must not be unfurnished with either the means or insight: this is the general tenet of the Mahaayaanist. [16]     In the bodhisattva teachings, the "means" indicates the first five perfections, namely, giving, morality, forebearance, striving, and meditation. In Tsong-kha-pa's S^nags rim chen mo, the "means" is shown to indicate also the ma.n.dala (magic circle containing the symbolic palace) in which initiation takes place. In any case, the "means" constitutes the best of the phenomenal aspects.     There is little doubt that there was and is more enthusiasm in some quarters for the doctrine "perfection of insight", with emphasis on voidness, than for the doctrine "the means attended with insight, " with equal emphasis on practice and voidness. Comparable to this in Hindu terminology would be a greater leaning to knowledge (j~naana) than to works (karma). Hence, we find `Saantideva quoting the Sarvadharmavaipulya-sa^mgraha-suutra as follows: [17] Maitreya, this attainment of six perfections of the bodhisattvas is for complete illumination. Regarding that, those men of delusion will say this: "A bodhisattva should train himself only in the perfection of insight. What has he to do with the remaining perfections?" They think that any other perfection should be disparaged. Regarding that, what do you think, Invincible One; did the King of Kaa`si [18] have poor insight, who save his own flesh to the hawk for the sake of the pigeon?" Maitreya replied, "O Bhagavat, he did not!" The Bhagavat spoke, "Maitreya, when I, engaged in the bodhisattva practice, accumulated the roots of merit associated with the six perfections, was there any injury [to me] by those roots of merit?" Maitreya replied, "O Bhagavat, there was not!" The Bhagavat spoke, "You also, [19] Invincible One, arrived at the perfections of giving, morality, forbearance, striving, meditation, and insight in sixty aeons for each perfection. Regarding that, those men of delusion will say this: "There 16. S^nags rim chen mo, Peking ed., A Catalogue of the Tohoku University Collection of Tibetan Works on Buddhism (Sendai: The Seminary of Indology, Tohoku University, 1953), No. 5281. 16a-5: / de la zab mo rtogs pa.hi `ses rab kyis chos kyi sku da^n / rgya che ba.hi thabs kyis gzugs kyi sku sgrub pa da^n / thabs da^n bral ba.hi `ses rab da^n `ses rab da^n bral ba.hi thabs kyis sku g~nis sgrub par mi nus pas thabs da^n `ses rab ya ma bral ba dgos so zes pa .hdi ni theg pa chen po pa spyi.hi grub pa.hi mtha.h .ho/. 17. `Siksaasamuccaya, C. Bendall, ed., Bibliographie-Buddhica, Vol. I (St. Petersburg, 1902) (photomechanic reprint, `s-Gravenhage, 1957), 97.6, ff. The first "regarding that" of my translation renders "tat," correcting the text's "ta^m." 18. He is better known as King `Sibi. For the Buddhist version of the story, written in the form of a Jaataka, see Etienne Lamotte, Le Traite de la grande vertu de sagesse (Louvain: Bureaux du Museon, 1944), Vol. I, pp. 255-256. As the present writer has discussed the Hindu version, "Studies in Yama and Maara," Indo-Iranian Journal, III (1959), 115-116, it becomes especially clear why that king did not have poor insight: through his perfection of giving he defeated Death itself. 19. The meaning "also" does not appear to be recognized for the Sanskrit "taavat," and the translation here is due to the Tibetan "kya^n." The implication is that Maitreya went through the same process as Gautama Buddha. This is the usual meaning of the epithet of the Buddha, "tathaagata," "Who has arrived the same way."     p. 105 is enlightenment by a single method, namely, by the method of voidness." They will be impure of conduct.     The composers of the Mahaayaana literature could well have quoted to the defenders of what are now called the Pali scriptures ("original" Buddhism): "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Also there arose a number of Mahaayaana scriptures called "Embryo of the Tathaagata" Suutras, which teach that every sentient being has hidden within him the "Embryo of the Tathaagata," or the Dharma Body. [20] These particular Suutras became quite influential in China. Consistent with the viewpoint of the Mahaayaana Suutra quoted above, the reason that the embryo is generally "hidden" is that the multitudes are unregenerate in the Buddhist sense: they refuse to adopt the best phenomenal aspects.     In any case, the "middle path," which really led nowhere, was difficult both to tread and to discuss. In the course of time, it was mentioned less and less -- was it understood more and more? -- and Mahaayaana Buddhism wrote extensively about the six perfections and about the means and insight.   THE THREE GATEWAYS TO LIBERATION     In Buddhist phraseology, there are three gateways to liberation (vimok.samukha): the undirected (apranihita), the voidness (`suunyataa), and the signless (aanimitta) gateways. It will be noted that all three names are negations. There are different explanations of this triad in the various Buddhist schools. Here the Yogaacaara explanation is followed as a preparation for the interpretation of the Praj~naapaaramitaa-h.rdaya-suutra.     The Mahaayaanasuutraala^mkaara (by author or authors unknown) is authoritative in the Yogaacaara school as well as in Tibetan Buddhism generally. It sets forth [21] that the four aphorisms of the Buddhist doctrine are taught by way of the meditative sessions [22] (upani.sad state) of those three concentrations (samaadhis). That is to say, the aphorisms "All the forces (sa^mskaaras) are impermanent" and "All the forces are suffering (du.hkha)" are taught 20. There is no essential difference between the teaching that every sentient being has the Dharma Body and Tsong-kha-pa's teaching that insight, when attended with the means, accomplishes the Dharma Body. The crux is the meaning of "having" something. Do the living beings "have" life? 21. Text, pp. 148-149. 22. Among the various exp