Abandoning All Views: A Buddhist Critique of Belief

Abandoning All Views: A Buddhist Critique of Belief* Rafal K. Stepien / Nanyang Technological University, Singapore I. VIEWS ON ABANDONING VIEWS Na ga (ca. 150–250) is the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Indian ̄ rjuna ̄ Buddhist philosophy and generally taken to be second in importance only to the Buddha himself for the historical development of Buddhist thought. Na ga ̄ r̄ juna’s masterwork, the Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, or Mūlamadhyamaka1 ka rika ̄ ,̄ opens and closes with salutations to the Buddha as one who taught the “cessation of conceptualization” (prapañcopaśamam)̣ and the “abandonment of all views” (sarvadrṣ tipraha n̄ ạ ya), respectively—terms I take to be largely ̣̣ ̄ 2 equivalent. Furthermore, the text contains numerous calls for the complete * I gratefully acknowledge comments received on previous iterations of the ideas presented here, particularly from Dan Arnold, C. W. Huntington, and the anonymous peer reviewers, all of whose insights have immeasurably improved the article. I likewise gratefully acknowledge the Berggruen Research Fellowship in Indian Philosophy at the University of Oxford as well as the Humboldt Research Fellowship at Heidelberg University for enabling completion of this work. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9294-9552. 1 Hereafter abbreviated as MK, or as “MK X:Y ” where “X:Y ” stands for the particular chapter and verse cited. The Sanskrit text is sourced from Mark Siderits and Shōryū Katsura’s book (Na ga Middle Way: Mūlamadhyamakaka rika ̄ rjuna’s ̄ ̄ ̄ [Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2013]), which itself follows the edition by Louis de La Vallée Poussin (Mūlamadhyamakaka rika ̄ s̄ (Madhyamī kasūtras) de Na ga rjuna avec la Prasannapada Commentaire de Candrakīrti [1913; repr., St. Péters̄ ̄ ̄ bourg: Académie Imperiale des Sciences, 1970]) as modified by Ye Shaoyong (叶少勇) (Mūlamadhyamakaka rika :̄ New Editions of the Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese Versions, with Commentary ̄ and a Modern Chinese Translation [中论颂: 梵藏汉合校 • 导读 • 译注] (Shanghai: Zhongxi Book Company, 2011). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 2 Jay L. Garfield is unique among latter-day commentators in drawing attention to this: “There is a startling grammatical and poetic parallel between this closing verse and the dramatic dedicatory verses” ( Jay L. Garfield, trans., The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Na -̄ ga rjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakaka rika ̄ ̄ ̄ [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995], 354). Yet, as will be demonstrated below, Garfield is far from alone in not being willing to draw conclusions quite as radical as Na ga text demands. ̄ rjuna’s ̄ Regarding my translation, technical Buddhist terms in Sanskrit are notoriously slippery; thus, for example, the prapañca in prapañcopaśamaṃ, which I have rendered “conceptualization,” has been translated variously as “conceptual construction” (Garfield, Fundamental © 2019 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/2019/9904-0005$10.00 529 The Journal of Religion abandonment of views and repeatedly uses the tetralemma (catuskot ̣ i)̣ to survey and reject all four of the logical positions open to classical Indian philosophers. Despite these copious, clear, and comprehensive disavowals of views, contemporary scholars typically interpret such statements as referring only to false views (however these may be understood). In this article, I argue instead that Na ga insistence on the abandonment of all views—including ultī rjuna’s ̄ mately his own—constitutes his distinctive means to the thoroughgoing exhaustion (metaphysical, epistemic, and doxastic) characteristic of nirvan̄ ̣a, wherein all views, propositions, theses (drṣ ti, beliefs—are ̣ ̣ paksa,̣ pratijña )—all ̄ abandoned as so many subtle affirmations of an only ever empty self. My arguments for this interpretation will rely on a close reading of Na ga ̄ r̄ juna’s MK and other philosophical works, which I will initially survey for Wisdom of the Middle Way, 2); “conceptual diffusion” (C. W. Huntington Jr. [with Geshé Namgyal Wangchen], The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian Ma dhyamika [Honolulu: ̄ University of Hawai‘i Press, 1989], 205 n. 25), “conceptual proliferation” (Yinshun [印順], An Investigation into Emptiness: Parts One and Two [空之探究], trans. Shi Huifeng [Towaco, NJ: Noble Path, 2017], 44 n. 12); “conceptual elaboration” (William L. Ames, “Bha vaviveka’s Own View of ̄ His Differences with Buddhapa lita,” in The Sva tantrika-Pra san ̄ ̄ ̄ ̣gika Distinction: What Difference Does a Difference Make?, ed. Georges B. J. Dreyfus, and Sara L. McClintock [Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003], 45); “elaboration” (Georges B. J. Dreyfus, “Would the True Pra saṅ ̄ gika Please Stand? The Case and View of ‘Ju Mi pham,” in Dreyfus and McClintock, The Svatantrikā Prasan ̄ ̣gika Distinction, 322); “verbal elaboration” (T. R. V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Madhyamika System [London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955], 348); “discur̄ sive development” (David Seyfort Ruegg, “The Uses of the Four Positions of the Catuskot ̣ ị and the Problem of the Description of Reality in Maha ya ̄ na ̄ Buddhism,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 5 [1977]: 12 [reprinted in The Buddhist Philosophy of the Middle: Essays on Indian and Tibetan Madhyamaka (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2010), 37–112]; and Helmut Tauscher, “Phya pa chos kyi seng ge as a Sva tantrika,” in Dreyfus and McClintock, The Svatantrika-Pra san ̄ ̄ ̄ ̣gika Distinction, 208); “discursive ideas” (Malcolm David Eckel, “The Satisfaction of No Analysis: On Tsong kha pa’s Approach to Sva tantrika-Madhyamaka,” in Dreyfus and McClintock, The Sva tantrikā ̄ Prasan Distinction, 177); “discursive thoughts” (Georges B. J. Dreyfus and Sara L. McClintock, ̣gika ̄ “Introduction,” in Dreyfus and McClintock, The Svatantrika-Pra san ̄ ̄ ̣gika Distinction, 22); “discursive thinking” (C. W. Huntington, Jr., “Was Candrakīrti a Pra saṇ ̄ gika?” in Dreyfus and McClintock, The Svatantrika-Pra san ̄ rjuna’s ̄ ̄ ̄ ̣gika Distinction, 78); “linguistic fabrication” (Chien-hsing Ho, “Na ga Critique of Language,” Asian Philosophy: An International Journal of the Philosophical Traditions of the East 20, no. 2 [2010]: 162); “proliferations” ( José Ignacio Cabezón, “Two Views on the Sva tantrika-Pra saṇ ̄ ̄ gika Distinction in Fourteenth-Century Tibet,” in Dreyfus and McClintock, san The Sva tantrika-Pra ̄ ̣gika Distinction, 301, 302); “hypostatization” (Siderits and Katsura, ̄ Naga rjuna’s Middle Way, 13); “manifoldness” (Anne MacDonald, In Clear Words: The Prasannapada ,̄ ̄ ̄ Chapter One, vol. 2 [Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2015], 17); and “the world of named things, the visible manifold” (Mervyn Sprung, Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way: The Essential Chapters from the Prasannapada ̄ of Candrakīrti [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979], 273). Sonam Thakchoe variously renders it and its Tibetan equivalent spros pa as “conceptual elaboration,” “verbal elaboration,” or “proliferation” (The Two Truths Debate: Tsongkhapa and Gorampa on the Middle Way [Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2007], 107, 227, 88– 89) and further notes that “this term is variously translated as ‘self-reflexive thinking,’ ‘reification,’ ‘falsification,’ ‘distortion,’ ‘elaboration,’ or ‘exaggeration’ ” (Thakchoe, Two Truths Debate, 212–13 n. 444), but he does not specify the relevant sources. The typical Chinese translation is 戲論, which is most closely rendered into English by Inada as “conceptual play” (Kenneth K. Inada, Na ga A Translation of His Mūlamadhyamakaka rika ̄ rjuna: ̄ ̄ ̄ [Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1970], 180). 530 Abandoning All Views evidence in support of my reading. I have restricted myself to the Vigrarika (hereafter YS),̣ 4 and havya vartanī (hereafter V V ),3 Yuktisạstịka ̣ -ka ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ Śūnyata saptati (hereafter ŚS)5 for four reasons. First, I have preferred to con̄ fine myself as much as possible to the MK throughout this article, since this is universally acknowledged as the locus of Na ga most characteristic and ̄ rjuna’s ̄ developed philosophy; the references here to the other three works are meant to buttress my point as to the soteriologically motivated necessity of abandoning all views for Na ga Second, the authenticity of the tradī rjuna. ̄ tional ascription of these works to Na ga is largely unquestioned. Third, ̄ rjuna ̄ these are the most “philosophical” of Na ga works, as evinced by their ̄ rjuna’s ̄ universal categorization by Tibetan doxographers among the “collection of six texts among reasoning” (rigs pa’i tschogs drug). By contrast, the other 3 The Vigrahavya vartanī is extant in the original Sanskrit as well as Tibetan and Chinese ̄ translations. I have primarily relied on the Sanskrit edition by Johnston and Kunst reprinted in Bhattacharya et al. (Kamaleswar Bhattacharya, trans., The Dialectical Method of Na ga ̄ rjuna: ̄ Vigrahavya vartanī, 2nd ed., ed. E. H. Johnston and Arnold Kunst [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, ̄ 1986]) and the transliterated Sanskrit version prepared by Yoshiyasu Yonezawa (“Vigrahavya vartanī: Sanskrit Transliteration and Tibetan Translation,” Naritasan Bukkyo Kenkyujo kiyo ̄ 31 [2008]: 209–333), though I have also referred to the transliterated verses in Christian Lindtner (Master of Wisdom: Writings of the Buddhist Master Naga [Ratna Ling: Dharma Pub̄ rjuna ̄ lishing, 1997]) and the classical Chinese translation by Gautama Prajña ruci (瞿曇般若流支, active ̄ ca. 538–543) in Taisho 32:1631, 13b–23a (Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經, ed. Takakusu Junjirō and Watanabe Kaikyoku et al., 100 vols. [Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–32], accessed at CBETA [Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association 中華電子佛典協會, cbeta.org]). Jan Westerhoff provides a history of the text and its translations (Na ga Vigrahavya vartanī: ̄ rjuna’s ̄ ̄ The Dispeller of Disputes [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010], 4–6). 4 The original Sanskrit text of the Yuktisas ̣ ṭika ̣ -ka ̄ rika ̄ ̄ is largely lost, though Lindtner provides the twelve Sanskrit verses he has identified from various sources (Christian Lindtner, Na ga ̄ r-̄ juniana: Studies in the Writings and Philosophy of Na ga rjuna [Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, ̄ ̄ 1982], 102–19; Master of Wisdom, 174–75). I have had to rely on the English translations from Tibetan of Lindtner (Na ga 102–19, and Master of Wisdom, 72–93) and referred also ̄ rjuniana, ̄ to works by Joseph Loizzo ( Joseph John Loizzo with AIBS Translation Team, trans., Na ga ̄ rjuna’s ̄ Reason Sixty with Chandrakīrti’s Reason Sixty Commentary [New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, and Columbia University’s Center for Buddhist Studies and Tibet House, 2007]) and Fernando Tola and Carmen Dragonetti (On Voidness: A Study of Buddhist Nihilism [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1995]). Although a Chinese translation attributed to Da napa la ̄ ̄ (施護, d. ca. 1000 CE) exists (六十頌如理論, Taisho 30:1575, 254b–256a—Loizzo [Na ga rjuna’s Reason Sixty, 26 n. 8] mistakenly places the text’s end at 265a), reliance on translā ̄ tions from the Tibetan has been necessitated by the observation by Lindtner to the effect that “the Chinese version is usually too inaccurate to be of any philological value. . . . Few are the verses which say what Naga actually had in mind!” (Na ga 100 n. 138). The truth of this ̄ rjuna ̄ ̄ rjuniana, ̄ statement is unfortunately borne out by comparison of Loizzo’s and Lindtner’s English translations from the Tibetan with the Chinese text, as these are indeed often quite disparate. 5 No Sanskrit original of the Śūnyata saptati has been preserved; nor is there a classical Chī nese translation of it. As such, I have relied on the translations from Tibetan found in Lindtner (Na ga 34–69; Master of Wisdom, 94–119), Tola and Dragonetti (On Voidness, ̄ rjuniana, ̄ 72–81), Ram Chandra Pandeya and Manju (Naga Philosophy of No-Identity [Delhi: Eastern ̄ rjuna’s ̄ Book Linkers, 1991], 140–48), and David Ross Komito (Naga Seventy Stanzas: A Buddhist ̄ rjuna’s ̄ Psychology of Emptiness [Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1987], 79–95). Note that, as I am myself unfamiliar with Tibetan, I have refrained from including the Tibetan text of the ŚS and of the relevant portions of the YS ̣ as I would consider this somewhat ingenuous as scholarly practice. 531 The Journal of Religion two texts in this “yukti-corpus” either are not always included in it (Ratna valī) or ̄ face contested claims of authorial attribution (Vaidalyaprakarana )̣ . That these most “philosophical” of Na ga works (if by that term is meant somē rjuna’s ̄ thing like “metaphysical” or “intended to describe reality”) should nevertheless prove irreducibly soteriological in orientation (as per the abandonment of all view-holding) supports my argument as to the ubiquity of such an orientation in Na ga opus as a whole more forcefully than were such an orī rjuna’s ̄ entation found (as indeed it is) in his less abstract, more overtly “religious” (in the sense of “devotional”) works—I am thinking most directly of the hymns of the Catuhstava, the lay ethical precepts of the Suhrllekha, and the practical ap̣ ̣ plications of Madhyamaka principles found in the Ratna valī. Finally, it is nec̄ essary to draw a line somewhere, and the plethora of works attributed to Na gīrjuna renders the dangers of cherry-picking choice verses or passages ̄ more conspicuous than is the case with many another author. In the course of my exposition, I will have occasion to engage with, and hopefully make contributions to, several debates very much alive in contemporary scholarship on Na ga specifically, and in the study of relī rjuna ̄ gion, philosophy of religion, and philosophy, broadly speaking. Since it will soon become clear that my views on Na ga espousal of abandon̄ rjuna’s ̄ ing views stand in contrast to those voiced by many fellow scholars in the field, I take this opportunity both to explain my approach in the pages that follow and to provide it with methodological justification so as to forestall (at least some of) their objections. The first point to note is that this article is primarily a work of “textual hermeneutics” as opposed to “philosophical construction”; one, that is, concerned with “developing an account of the history of Buddhist philosophy” as opposed to “doing Buddhist philosophy.”6 In other words, I am primarily engaged here in the exegetical project of providing a reading of Na ga ̄ rjuna’s ̄ texts, less in the (no less intellectually valid, but methodologically distinct) task of extrapolating philosophical arguments from those texts. This is not to say that I am wholly unconcerned with the philosophical implications of my reading of Na ga on the contrary, I will argue at quite some length ̄ rjuna; ̄ in the section on “Abandoning Na ga Views” below that the interprē rjuna’s ̄ tation I propose makes of him a far more radical and profound thinker than do the competing analyses I cite, which in my view rob his position of its very 6 For this terminology, extended discussion of these differing methodological approaches, as well as discussion of the theoretical pitfalls of attempts to discern “the ‘real meaning’ of texts” (Andrew P. Tuck, Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship: On the Western Interpretation of Na ga [New York: Oxford University Press, 1990], 14), see Rafal K. Stepien, ̄ rjuna ̄ “Orienting Reason: A Religious Critique of Philosophizing Na ga Journal of the American ̄ rjuna,” ̄ Academy of Religion 86, no. 4 (December 2018): 1072–1106. The terms used here are rooted in discussions found in Jay L. Garfield and Graham Priest (“Na ga and the Limits of ̄ rjuna ̄ Thought,” Philosophy East and West 53, no. 1 [ January 2003]: 2 [reprinted from Jay L. Garfield, Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 88]) and Jay L. Garfield (Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy [New York: Oxford University Press, 2015], 320). 532 Abandoning All Views thrust. But it does explain why much of the present article (particularly the section on “Na ga Abandoning Views”) grapples with the precise pur̄ rjuna’s ̄ port of Na ga textual formulations. ̄ rjuna’s ̄ Prior to detailing such textual evidence, however, it is incumbent upon me to explain the methodological justification for my approach. For it is selfevident that merely marshaling passages is of no probative force if the purport of those passages is precisely the point at issue among rival interpretations. Indeed, it would not only be hermeneutically naive for me to take the meaning of a given passage as simply singular, self-evident, and/or authorially intended; it would also beg the question against interpreters proposing alternative readings of certain passages if I were to rely on simply quoting what those passages say. In response to this, I will naturally attempt to justify my use of the passages I adduce in support of my reading ad locum. Here, however, I want only to aver in general terms that the sheer number of these examples does add some weight to my reading, at the very least by forcing the burden of proof onto any interpreter whose reading goes directly against the prima facie sense of these statements. While no passage anywhere self-evidently warrants any particular interpretation, in order to make sense at all it must evidently warrant some interpretation over others; otherwise its infinite polysemicity renders it merely meaningless. Given that both I and the exegetes I mention are avowedly engaged in the exegetical task of interpreting what Na ga said about views (and not just speculating about them ourselves), ̄ rjuna ̄ I see their interpretation(s) as falling on the sharp side of Ockham’s razor by consistently relying on extratextual additions and interpolations. II. NĀGĀRJUNA’S ABANDONING VIEWS The primary source for Na ga views on views, and their ultimate aban̄ rjuna’s ̄ donment, is his major work, the MK. This text contains manifold espousals of the abandonment of all forms of intellectual positionality, which I will now proceed to cite. Having referred to the opening and closing lines of the text above, I can do no better than to cite the opening verses in full. Thetext begins: Not Not Not Not ceasing, not arising annihilated, not eternal identical, not different coming, not going Dependent co-origination As the felicitous cessation of conceptualization This is what the Fully Enlightened Buddha taught I salute him, the best of speakers7 7 MK 0:1–2: “anirodham anutpa dam anucchedam aśa śvatam / aneka rtham ana na ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ rtham ̄ ana gamam anirgamam // yaḥ pratītyasamutpa daṃ prapañcopaśamaṃ śivam / deśaya ma ̄ ̄ ̄ sa ̄ saṃ buddhas taṃ vande vadata ṃ varam.” It is noteworthy that Siderits and Katsura include ̄ 533 The Journal of Religion The simple fact that Na ga begins his major work with an explicit call ̄ rjuna ̄ for the “cessation of conceptualization” is evidence in favor of the importance of this motif in his thought as a whole (that he ends the work on a like note can only strengthen this point). What he means by such a call will, I hope, become clearer as we go on. The text of the MK then proceeds by critically reducing to absurdity a series of positions all in one way or another foundationalist. Thus, for example, having refuted the Abhidarmic classification of space and the other elements (dha tus) as possessed of defining characteristics (laksan ̣ as) ̣ and as such taken ̄ to be ultimately real, in the final verse of MK 5 Na ga bemoans: ̄ rjuna ̄ But those of unenlightened intelligence Accepting the existence or non-existence of things Do not see the felicitous cessation Of what is to be seen8 Siderits and Katsura note in relation to this verse that “the Akutobhaya ̄ [commentary] explains that by ‘auspicious cessation’ [‘felicitous cessation’ in my translation] is meant nirva n̄ a, ̣ which is the cessation of hypostatization.”9 This last phrase recalls directly the prapañcopaśamaṃ used at MK 0 and therefore creates a first direct link in the text between the cessation of prapañca and the attainment of nirva n̄ a. ̣ The final verses of MK 9 constitute another occasion where Na ga ̄ rjuna ̄ makes a radical claim as to the inapplicability of any kind of intellectual positionality to reality, in this case arguing against the nonexistence—as well as the existence—of mental cognitions. Having refuted the claim (characteristic of the Pudgalavada ̄ school of Buddhist thought) that a person must exist as an ontologically prior entity to the act of perception, Na ga ex̄ rjuna ̄ pands his claim to include not only the perceiver but perception itself: Seeing, hearing, and the rest Feeling and the rest If that to which these belong is not found These also are not found10 an explanatory gloss in their translation of MK 0:2b, which is thus rendered: “[. . . for the purpose of nirva n̄ ̣a characterized by] the auspicious cessation of hypostatization.” They further note that: “This verse serves not only as a dedication of the work to the Buddha but also as an announcement of purpose . . . Na ga does not explicitly claim here that this work ̄ rjuna ̄ will help one achieve liberation from saṃsa ra (it is Candrakīrti who says this is the purpose of ̄ the text), but what he does say suggests that this is the intention behind his work” (Siderits and Katsura, Na ga Middle Way, 13). ̄ rjuna’s ̄ 8 MK 5:8: “astitvaṃ ye tu paśyanti na stitvaṃ ca lpabuddhayaḥ / bha va ̄ ̄ ̄ na ̄ ṃ ̄ te na paśyanti draṣtạ vyopaśamaṃ śivam.” 9 Siderits and Katsura, Na ga Middle Way, 64. ̄ rjuna’s ̄ 10 MK 9:11: “darśanaśravaṇa dīni vedana dīni ca py ̄ ̄ ̄ atha / na vidyate ced yasya sa na vidyanta ima ny ̄ api.” 534 Abandoning All Views The upshot of the repeated phrase “and the rest” (a dīni) is that no percep̄ tual acts exist. Crucially, on the Buddhist account, there are six faculties of sense perception, including consciousness as well as the five familiar ones of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. As such, Na ga argū rjuna’s ̄ ment here explicitly includes mental perceptions or cognitions. In the very next verse, he is careful to explain that this act, and the actor purportedly “prior” to it, are not nonexistent (which position would render him susceptible to the “extremist” charge of nihilism) but rather that “the notions of existence and non-existence do not apply” to them: That which is prior to seeing and the rest Or simultaneous with them, or posterior to them— That is not found The conceptual constructions of existence and non-existence do not apply there11 Apart from obviating the charge of nihilism, in this verse Na ga iden̄ rjuna ̄ tifies the very categories structurally primary to ontology (“existence and non-existence”) as “conceptual constructions” and therefore without metaphysical foundation independent of any such conventionally constructive activity. This point will bear richest fruit at MK 24:18, where Na ga ̄ rjuna ̄ equates dependent co-origination (pratītyasamutpa dah with emptiness (śūṇ) ̄ yata m ) , correlative designation (prajñaptir upa da ya), and the middle way it̄ ̣ ̄ ̄ 12 The upshot of this for present purposes is that self (pratipat . . . madhyama ). ̄ Naga unambiguously categorizes even the core metaphysical tenets of his ̄ rjuna ̄ philosophical system (preeminently śūnyata )̄ as conventional designations. It is in MK 13 that the necessity of abandoning any and all such constructions is elaborated. This chapter as whole is concerned with what is composite/compounded/constructed (samṣ krta), ̣ and there can be no denying that, for Na ga all types of conceptual-linguistic construction (prapañca/con̄ rjuna, ̄ ceptualization, vikalpa/dichotomizing conceptualization, kalpana /conceptual ̄ 11 MK 9:12: “pra k̄ ca yo darśana dibhyaḥ sa ṃ ̄ ̄ prataṃ cordhvam eva ca / na vidyate ‘sti na stīti ̄ nivṛtta s̄ tatra kalpana ḥ .” ̄ 12 The verse as a whole states: Dependent co-origination That we call emptiness This, a relative designation Is itself the middle way (yah pratı̄tyasamutpa dah ̄ ˙ śūnyata m ̄ ˙ ta m ̄ ˙ pracaks˙mahe / sa ̄ prajñaptir upa da ̄ ya ̄ pratipat saiva ˙ madhyama ). ̄ Garfield (among others: see, e.g., Dan Arnold, Buddhists, Brahmins and Belief: Epistemology in South Asian Philosophy of Religion [New York: Columbia University Press, 2005], 169) considers this verse to be “the climax of the entire text and [one that] can truly be said to contain the entire Ma dhyamika system in embryo” (The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle ̄ Way, 304). 535 The Journal of Religion construction, saṃjña /notion, as well as drṣ ṭi/view etc.) are saṃskrta. ̣ 13 It begins ̣ ̄ with an unequivocal rejection of all such saṃska ras: ̄ “Whatever is deceptive is false” Thus did the Blessed One say All composite phenomena are deceptive Therefore they are false14 Na ga goes on in the succeeding verses to argue for emptiness as the ̄ rjuna ̄ antidote to such deception, before concluding the chapter in a pellucid rejection of views: Emptiness as the relinquishing of all views Has been proclaimed by the Victorious Ones But those who have taken emptiness as a view They are the incurables15 In this verse Na ga explicitly states that even his most central tenet, emp̄ rjuna ̄ tiness, must not be taken as a view and that anyone who takes even this most refined of teachings as a view is not simply wrong but incurable. Yet perhaps unsurprisingly, the typical gloss on this verse holds that “the ‘views’ in question concern the ultimate nature of reality, or metaphysical theories.”16 This interpretation is buttressed by an extratextual and hermeneutically motivated insertion in Siderits and Katsura’s translation, according to which not 13 For a thorough study of the nuances of these and related terms, see Williams discussed below (Paul Williams, “Some Aspects of Language and Construction in the Madhyamaka,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 8, no. 1 [March 1980]: 1–45). I have rendered prapañca as “conceptualization” and vikalpa (following Ruegg, “Uses of the Four Positions,” 12) as “dichotomizing conceptualization” to bring out both the “close connection between vikalpa in particular and prapañca in Madhyamaka texts,” and the understanding that “basically the concern of vikalpa is with duality” (Williams, “Some Aspects of Language,” 29, 27). It merits mentioning in this context that since Na ga stated ambit, at least here, is whatever is saṃskrta, ̣ the ̄ rjuna’s ̄ question of what exactly the category of conceptual-linguistic constructions he advises us to abandon in that they are inevitably deceptive/false includes (i.e., does this include nonconceptual mental content? Prelinguistic mental content? All mental content?) is textually undetermined. Na ga does not spell out such differentiations (as his intellectual heirs will in ̄ rjuna ̄ fact do), but contents himself with glossing the ambit of abandonment as “all composite phenomena” (MK 13:1c—see next note). For the historical development of the Buddhist philosophical position regarding conceptualization, see Mark Siderits, Tom Tillemans, and Arindam Chakrabarti, eds., Apoha: Buddhist Nominalism and Human Cognition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), and most especially the contributions by Parimal Patil, Prabal Kumar Sen, Georges Dreyfus, and Jonardon Ganeri therein. 14 MK 13:1: “tan mṛs ̣a ̄ moṣadharma yad bhagava n ̄ ity abha ṣ̄ ata / sarve ca moṣadharma ṇ ̄ aḥ ̣a saṃ ska ra s tena te mṛ s .” ̄ ̄ ̄ 15 MK 13:8: “śūnyata ̄ sarvadṛsṭ ị̄ na ṃ ̄ prokta ̄ niḥ saraṇ aṃ jinaiḥ / yeṣa ṃ ̄ tu śūnyata dṛ ̄ sṭ ị s ta n ̄ asa dhya n ̄16 ̄ babha ṣ̄ ire.” Siderits and Katsura, Na ga Middle Way, 145. See also Garfield: “By a view, Na ga ̄ rjuna ̄ ̄ rjuna’s ̄ here means a theory on the same level of discourse at which reificationist-nihilist debates proceed . . . any understanding of emptiness as itself an essence” (Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, 212, 215). 536 Abandoning All Views “those who have taken emptiness as a view” but “those for whom emptiness is a [metaphysical] view” are incurable. The insertion of “metaphysical” reduces Na ga claim here from one pertaining to views tout court to just views ̄ rjuna’s ̄ contrary to Na ga antifoundationalist metaphysics.17 ̄ rjuna’s ̄ Such parameterization of Na ga statements robs them of much of ̄ rjuna’s ̄ their philosophical radicality. Thus, in the present instance, rather than making a bold claim to the effect that view-holding of even the most refined kind is necessarily implicated in the suffering (duh ̣kha) characteristic of cyclical samṣ a ra, appears to merely be stating that metaphysical views ̄ rjuna ̄ ̄ Na ga (i.e., views contrary to his own) are so implicated. In other words, he would merely be saying here that those who he takes to be wrong are wrong—hardly a point worth making at all, let alone as the culmination to an entire chapter. Not only is this philosophically uncharitable, but it goes against the grain of Na ga argument as this develops. For on the basis of MK 13’s rejection ̄ rjuna’s ̄ of composite phenomena as deceptive, it makes perfect sense that Na ga ̄ rjuna ̄ goes on to argue in MK 16 that no such composite can attain nirvan̄ ̣a: That composite phenomena could attain nirva n̄ ̣a This is utterly nonsensical18 Indeed, just as at MK 9:12 it is said that “existence and non-existence do not apply” to actors or acts, so at MK 16:5 it is said that Composite phenomena, arising and ceasing Are neither bound nor liberated19 For to side with one extreme view would necessarily entail the very holding of a view which Na ga is at such pains to abjure. And just to bring the point ̄ rjuna ̄ home that conceptual phenomena of all kinds are to be included under this rubric, and consequently that the holding of a view or concept in mind is tantamount to the grasping at the core of suffersome attachment, Na ga ̄ rjuna ̄ ends this chapter with a rhetorical question withholding any soteriological utility to dichotomizing conceptualization (vikalpa) itself: “Without holding on, I will attain nirva n̄ ̣a Nir va n̄ ̣a will be mine” For those who grasp thus There is great holding on to grasping Where there is no attainment of nir va n̄ ̣a Or cessation of saṃsa ra ̄ 17 See in this light Siderits and Katsura’s further comment to this verse that “to the extent that emptiness gets rid of all metaphysical views, including itself interpreted as a metaphysical Middle Way, 145–46). view, it might be called a meta-physic” (Siderits and Katsura, Na ga ̄ rjuna’s ̄ 18 MK 16:4ab: “saṃ ska ra ṇ a ṃ na nirva ṇ a ṃ kathaṃ cid upapadyate.” ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ 19 MK 16:5abc: “na badhyante na mucyanta udayavyayadharmiṇ aḥ / saṃ ska ra ̄ ḥ ̄ .” 537 The Journal of Religion What becomes of saṃsa ra? ̄ How is nir va n̄ ̣a to be dichotomously conceptualized?20 Having already spoken of “emptiness as the relinquishing of all views” at MK 13:8, Na ga here applies a like analysis to even the conceptual formā rjuna ̄ tion of—and ineluctably consequent attachment to—the desire for soteriological liberation. Indeed, we see here that Na ga considers even the os̄ rjuna ̄ tensibly benign formation of a desire for an end to desire (“the so-called paradox of liberation”)21 to be actually malign—precisely insofar as it is the formation of a conceptualization. Na ga brings out the necessity of abandoning conceptual-linguistic ̄ rjuna ̄ elaboration altogether in order to liberate oneself from karma-creating action and defilement in the course of his analysis of the self in MK 18. There, he states unequivocally: With the cessation of action and defilement there is liberation Action and defilement arise from dichotomizing conceptualization These from conceptualization But conceptualization is extinguished in emptiness22 As Siderits and Katsura comment slightly later in this chapter, while all [Buddhists] agree that hypostatization [conceptualization] lies at the root of the problem of suffering, only Madhyamaka appreciates that it is not just hypostatization [conceptualization] concerning “I” and “mine” that is problematic. The realization that all things are devoid of intrinsic nature is required in order to bring to a halt our tendency to see ultimately real entities behind what are merely useful concepts.23 I would only add that, on Na ga analysis, all concepts (notions, posī rjuna’s ̄ tions, views, beliefs)—howsoever “useful” they may be—turn out to be impediments. This is so for the simple reason that reality, whose realization is the sum goal of the Buddhist endeavor, is devoid of them: Not dependent on another, peaceful Not conceptualized through conceptualization Without dichotomizing conceptualization, without distinction This is the nature of reality24 Contrary to the predominant scholarly interpretation, it would therefore be incoherent in the extreme for Na ga to allow the holding of any view. ̄ rjuna ̄ 20 MK 16:9–10: “nirva sya anupa da ̄ my ̄ ̄ no ̄ nirva ṇ ̄ aṃ me bhaviṣyati / iti yeṣa ṃ ̄ grahas teṣa m ̄ upa da namaha grahaḥ // na nirva ṇ a sama ropo na saṃ sa ra pakarṣ a ṇ a m / yatra kas tatra saṃ sa ro ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ nirva ṇ̄ aṃ kiṃ vikalpyate.” 21 Siderits and Katsura, Na ga Middle Way, 169. ̄ rjuna’s ̄ 22 MK 18:5: “karmakleśakṣaya n mokṣ aḥ karmakleśa ̄ vikalpataḥ / te prapañca t̄ prapañcas tu ̄ śūnata ya ṃ nirudhyate.” ̄ ̄ 23 Siderits and Katsura, Na ga Middle Way, 200. ̄ rjuna’s ̄ 24 MK 18:9: “aparapratyayaṃ śa ntaṃ prapañcair aprapañcitaṃ / nirvikalpam ana na ̄ ̄ rtham ̄ etat tattvasya lakṣyaṇ am.” 538 Abandoning All Views Reality, after all, is on his understanding wholly—not partly—“without dichotomizing conceptualization, without distinction”; the realization of it must therefore necessitate the complete abandonment of what is ultimately seen to be unreal, said only “for the sake of instruction”: “Empty” should not be said “Non-empty” too should not be said Likewise with “both” and “neither” These are said for the sake of instruction25 This verse follows from the rhetorical question in the preceding one in which Naga asks: ̄ rjuna ̄ How can the Tatha gata, empty ̄ Be conceptualized through what is empty?26 In this passage, then, Na ga yet again states, without qualification, that ̄ rjuna ̄ conceptualization of any kind is constitutively inadequate to the task of attaining liberation, and should consequently be abandoned. As he goes on to declare a few verses later: Those who conceptualize the Buddha Who has passed beyond all conceptualizations and is unvarying They all, afflicted with conceptualizations 27 Fail to the see the Tatha gata. ̄ The state of Buddhahood/Tatha gatahood is therefore one which is “beyond ̄ all conceptualizations.” Not only does Na ga not qualify this statement, ̄ rjuna ̄ but he explicitly uses the nominative plural sarve to designate any holder of any position; such a one, on this account, “afflicted with conceptualizations (prapañcahatah̄ ),” ̣ is far from attaining enlightenment. In MK 25, Na ga returns to the topic of nirva n̄ ̣a, to which the chap̄ rjuna ̄ ter as a whole is dedicated. MK 25:21 includes an uncharacteristically qualified statement as to views: Views as to what is beyond cessation Or what ends or what is eternal Depend on nirva n̄ ̣a The end, and the beginning28 25 MK 22:11: “śūnyam iti na vaktavyam aśūnyam iti va ̄ bhavet / ubhayaṃ nobhayaṃ ceti prajñaptyarthaṃ tu kathyate.” 26 MK 22:10cd: “prajñapyate ca śūnyena kathaṃ śūnyas tatha gataḥ .” ̄ 27 MK 22:15: “prapañcayanti ye buddhaṃ prapañca tītam avyayam / te prapañcahata ḥ ̄ ̄ sarve na paśyanti tatha gatam.” ̄ 28 MK 25:21: “paraṃ nirodha d dya ca ̄ anta dya ̄ ḥ ̄ śa śvata ̄ ̄ ś̄ ca dṛsṭ ạ yaḥ / nirva ṇ ̄ am apara ntaṃ ̄ pūrva ntaṃ ca sama śrita ḥ . ” ̄ ̄ ̄ 539 The Journal of Religion At first sight, this verse seems to limit the kinds of views Na ga is dealing ̄ rjuna ̄ with, at least here. Indeed, this verse, like MK 25:17–18, refers to the “unexplicated points” (avya kr the Buddha refused to answer with ̣ ̄ tavastu) 29 anything but silence. Yet in the verses that immediately follow, Na ga ̄ rjuna ̄ makes clear that he is denying that any and all views could pertain to nirva n̄ ̣a. He calls upon classic negative tetralemmata to do so, rhetorically asking: All things being empty What is infinite? What is finite? What is both infinite and finite? And what is neither infinite nor finite? What is identical? What is different? What is eternal? What is non-eternal? What is both eternal and non-eternal? And what is neither?30 The upshot of these reiterated questions is to negate the ostensive force of any purported description of nirva n̄ ̣a. In the very next verse (the final one of the chapter), Na ga expands his deconstructive critique still further, ̄ rjuna ̄ to embrace all views and teachings, all acts of cognizance, whatsoever: The cessation of all cognizance The felicitous cessation of conceptualization Nowhere for anyone was any teaching Taught by the Buddha31 If this is not an unambiguous rejection of conceptual-linguistic construction of any kind, including even the very teachings of the Enlightened One, then I am at a loss to conceive what could be. Were there any doubt as to the soteriological import of Na ga crī rjuna’s ̄ tique, the fact that he devotes the entire next chapter to describing the origination and the cessation of the twelvefold causal chain of suffering should 29 Ruegg provides useful summaries of the loci classici in which these points appear, as well as of the classical and current literature explicating, as it were, their unexplicatedness (“Uses of the Four Positions,” 58 n. 4). For discussions of how these relate to Na ga see, e.g., Murti, Central ̄ rjuna, ̄ Philosophy of Buddhism, 36ff., and Gadjin Nagao, Ma dhyamika and Yoga ca ra: A Study of Maha ya ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ na ̄ Philosophies, trans. Leslie S. Kawamura (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 35–49. Meanwhile, Paul Fuller is clear that according to the early Buddhist textual sources, “To negate questions of the avya kata [Skt. avya kr ̣ type, we do not find the ‘correct’ questions to be asked, ̄ ̄ ta] or the correct answers to be given, but a completely different attitude is proposed. When rightview replaces wrong-view it is one order of seeing replacing an entirely different order of seeing, for at the stage of stream-attainment all views are abandoned” (The Notion of Ditthi ̣ ̣ in Therava da ̄ Buddhism: The Point of View [London: Routledge Curzon, 2005], 124; emphasis in the original). 30 MK 25:22–23: “śūnyeṣu sarvadharmeṣu kim anantaṃ kim antavat / kim anantam antavac ca na nantaṃ na ntavac ca kim // kiṃ tad eva kim anyat kiṃ śa śvataṃ kim aśa śvatam / ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ aśa śvataṃ śa śvataṃ ca kiṃ va ̄ nobhayam apy atha [ataḥ ].” ̄31 ̄ MK 25:24: “sarvopalambhopaśamaḥ prapañcopaśamaḥ śivaḥ / na kva cit kasyacit kaścid dharmo buddhena deśitaḥ .” 540 Abandoning All Views surely put paid to it. In MK 26, Na ga charts a parabola according ̄ rjuna ̄ to which he first explicates (in MK 26:1–9) the arising of the twelve causes (nidanas) constitutive of suffering (duhkha) along the cycle of dependent ̣ ̄ co-origination (pratītya samutpada), only to then descend (following the ̄ volta at verse 10) the other arc toward the cessation of ignorance and of all the other consequent factors of samṣ aric ̄ existence: Thus does this entire mass of suffering Completely cease32 It is with this conclusion to MK 26 that Na ga leads us to his final topic; ̄ rjuna ̄ the one to which the entire text thitherto has been leading: views (drṣ ṭi). ̣ The bulk of MK 27, the final chapter, is devoted to surveying and rejecting views as to selfhood as per the standard Buddhist doctrine of no self. It is only in the two very final verses of the MK as a whole that Na ga brings in ̄ rjuna ̄ his own notion of emptiness so as to deny that any view can really be held by anyone at all: So since all existents are empty Where? To whom? Based on what? Could there be views As to eternity and the rest?33 If one has understood universal emptiness aright, one cannot hold any view, for one has realized the emptiness of oneself. Indeed, in the very final verse of the MK, Na ga goes a step further to propose that the teaching of the ̄ rjuna ̄ Buddha, including notably the teaching of no self itself with which he has foregrounded it, is itself to be abandoned, together with all views whatsoever: For the abandonment of all views He taught the true teaching By means of compassion: I salute him, Gautama34 This is the culmination of the entire text; the verse Na ga composed ̄ rjuna ̄ and chose to place as the end-marker of his major work. In it, as I will argue more extensively in the section on “Abandoning Na ga Views” below, ̄ rjuna’s ̄ Na ga having passed from analyzing the emptiness of purported ̄ rjuna, ̄ 32 MK 26:12cd: “duḥ khaskandhaḥ kevalo ‘yam evaṃ samyag nirudhyate.” MK 27:29: “atha va ̄ sarvabha va śūnyatva ccha śvata dayaḥ / kva kasya katama ḥ ̄ na ̄ ṃ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ saṃ bhaviṣyanti dṛsṭ ạ yaḥ i.” The “rest” (a dayah ̣) recalls the similar term at MK 9:11 (regarding ̄ which, see above), and here refers to the other lemmata of the tetralemma, as per MK 27:28. As for the relationship between the doctrines of no self and emptiness, I can only agree with Nagao, who states that, for the Ma dhyamika, “Śūnyata ̄ is actually a revival of the teaching of ̄ anatman, an expression of its true meaning” (Ma dhyamika and Yoga ca ̄ ̄ ̄ ra, ̄ 170). 34 MK 27:30: “sarvadṛsṭ ị praha ṇ ̄ a ya ̄ yaḥ saddharmam adeśayat / anukampa m ̄ upa da ̄ ya ̄ taṃ namasya mi gautamaṃ .” ̄ 33 541 The Journal of Religion selfbeings (svabha vaśūnyata ), ̄ ̄ and on from even the holding of emptiness as a view (śūnyatadr s t i), finally attains to what may be called the emptiness of views ̣ ̣ ̣ ̄ (drṣ ṭiśūnyata ), to which “the abandonment of all views” (sarvadrṣ ti-̣ ̣ ̣ ̄ according 35 praha n̄ ̣a ya) ̄ follows. Moving on from the MK to Na ga other works, that all things are ̄ rjuna’s ̄ empty, including Na ga own views, is also apparent from the Vigrā rjuna’s ̄ havya vartanī, a source for Na ga philosophy second in importance only ̄ rjuna’s ̄ ̄ to that of the MK. It is surely noteworthy—though unremarked in the secondary literature—that this text both opens and closes, in its first and final verses, with explicit reference to “all things”: If the selfbeing of all things is not found anywhere Your statement, lacking selfbeing, cannot refute selfbeing ............................................ For whom there is emptiness there are all things For whom there is no emptiness there is nothing at all36 Na ga responds to his opponent’s argument as voiced in VV 1 with the ̄ rjuna ̄ rejoinder that: If my speech is neither in combination with Nor distinct from causes and conditions Then the emptiness of beings is established Due to their lack of selfbeing37 In other words, Na ga here explicitly includes his own statements as ̄ rjuna ̄ within the ambit of emptiness, and thus one of the “all things” devoid of own-being. There is thus no reason to propose a distinction between the emptiness of things (in the domain of ontology) and the emptiness of statements or views (in the domain of epistemology) by means of which to allow the latter to be true/real (satyam) in a manner somehow superior to, or at 35 I elide here the distinction already noted by Ruegg (“Uses of the Four Positions”) and reiterated by Garfield (Empty Words, 58; Jay L. Garfield, “Turning a Madhyamaka Trick: Reply to Huntington,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 36 [ June 2008]: 524) between drṣ ṭị and darśana, according to which the latter denotes a nonconceptual mode of “direct awareness” (Garfield, Empty Words, 58). While Garfield is right in stating that “neither Na ga nor his ma dhyamika ̄ rjuna ̄ ̄ followers ever deny the value or possibility of śūnyata -̄ darśana, (view of emptiness), though they are critical of the very idea of śūnyata -̄ drṣ ṭi”̣ (Garfield, Empty Words, 58), he too brackets the distinction in his discussion of the necessarily conceptual nature of view-holding. 36 VV 1: “sarveṣa ṃ cet / tvadvacanam asvabha vaṃ ̄ bha va ̄ na ̄ ṃ ̄ sarvatra na vidyate svabha vaś ̄ ̄ na nivartayituṃ svabha vam alam.” VV 70: “prabhavati ca śūnyateyaṃ yasya prabhavanti tasya ̄ sarva rtha ḥ ̄ ̄ / prabhavati na tasya kiṃ cin na prabhavati śūnyata ̄ yasya.” This final verse clearly echoes MK 24:14: “All is acceptable for whom emptiness is acceptable / Nothing is acceptable for whom emptiness is not acceptable” (sarvaṃ ca yujyate tasya śūnyata ̄ yasya yujyate / sarvaṃ na yujyate tasya śūnyaṃ yasya na yujyate). It has become customary (and, according to Garfield, preferable [Engaging Buddhism, 62]) to translate svabha va ̄ as “intrinsic nature” in contemporary English-language scholarship. Given the thrust of my argument as this emerges in what follows, I have preferred the etymologically closer renderings “own-being” or “selfbeing.” 37 VV 21: “hetupratyayasa magryaṃ ca pṛthak ca pi ̄ ̄ madvaco na yadi / nanu śūnyatvaṃ siddhaṃ bha va na m asvabha vatva t.” ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ 542 Abandoning All Views least different from, the former. Indeed, this passage of the VV in reference to the interlocutor’s first argument culminates in the famous disavowal of theses or propositions (pratijña )̄ announced in VV 29: If I held any thesis This fault would apply to me But I do not hold any thesis So I have no such fault38 This is doubtless the most celebrated, and commented, verse in the VV.39 In his autocommentary to this verse, Na ga reiterates “I have no thesis” ̄ rjuna ̄ (na mama kacid asti pratijña ). And as if that were not enough, he goes ̄ ̄ on to refer explicitly to “the emptiness of all things” as applying to linguistic elements such as names (nama) and theses (pratijña ): ̄ ̄ [Opponent:] If things were without selfbeing Then the name “lack of selfbeing” Would be without being For there is no name without an object [Na ga ̄ rjuna:] ̄ The emptiness of all things Was established earlier This criticism therefore Is of a non-thesis40 As Westerhoff rightly observes in his commentary to VV 59, “as Na ga ̄ rjuna ̄ asserts a thesis of universal emptiness, it should be clear that the constituents of language are subsumed under this as well.”41 Of course, theses, as themselves constituents of language, fall under the same rubric, which problematizes Westerhoff’s characterization of Na ga verse as asserting ̄ rjuna’s ̄ a thesis, particularly in the light of VV 63: I do not negate anything There is nothing to be negated Therefore you malign in saying “You negate”42 38 VV 29: “yadi ka ̄ cana pratijña ̄ sya n ̄ me tata eṣa me bhaved doṣaḥ / na sti ̄ ca mama pratijña ̄ tasma n naiva sti me doṣaḥ .” ̄ ̄ 39 Westerhoff calls it “one of the most puzzling verses in the entire text” (Na ga ̄ rjuna’s ̄ Vigrahavya vartanī, 63). ̄ 40 VV 9: “yadi ca na bhavet svabha vo ̄ dharma ṇ ̄ a ṃ ̄ niḥ svabha va ̄ ity evam / na ma ̄ pi ̄ bhaven naivaṃ na ma VV 59: “sarveṣaṃ bha va pūrvam / ̄ hi nirvastukaṃ na sti.” ̄ ̄ na ̄ ṃ ̄ śūnyatvaṃ copapa ditaṃ ̄ sa upa lambhas tasma d ya ̄ ̄ bhavaty ayaṃ ca pratijña ̄ ̄ ḥ ̄ .” This is perhaps a good place to explain to the unacquainted reader that the VV is arranged such that the opponent’s objections are listed in verses 1–20, followed by Na ga rejoinders in the remainder of the text. ̄ rjuna’s ̄ 41 Westerhoff, Na ga rjuna’s Vigrahavya vartanī, 107; emphasis in the original. ̄ ̄ ̄ 42 VV 63: “pratiṣedhaya mi na haṃ kiṃ cit pratiṣedhyam asti na ca kiṃ cit / tasma t̄ ̄ ̄ pratiṣedhayasīty adhilaya eṣa tvaya ̄ kriyate.” 543 The Journal of Religion Na ga here again invokes the equivalence of things and statements in ̄ rjuna ̄ terms of universal emptiness; linguistic elements such as theses and propositions—be they affirmative or negative—must fall under the sway of emptiness on pain of positing an extra-empty (that is, svabha vic) entity. It should ̄ be clear from this that, were Na ga rjuna to hold on to a thesis, howsoever rē ̄ fined or “ultimate,” he would thereby undermine the entire thrust of his insight into universal emptiness. It is all too easy to treat emptiness in Na ga ̄ r̄ juna’s thought as a thesis, but this would be to treat it as another answer to the question “What is reality?” Na ga refuses to have his non-position be ̄ rjuna ̄ classed alongside other positions as just another position. He deals with this misunderstanding explicitly in the following verse: [My] statement renders the non-existent known It does not negate43 This is a matter to which we will return in the following section; for the moment, let us continue detailing the textual evidence. Despite being a relatively short text, the Yuktisas ̣ ṭika ̣ -ka ̄ rika ̄ ̄ likewise contains several references to the abandonment of all views. Following a dedicatory verse, Na ga text begins with an encomium to detachment from ̄ rjuna’s ̄ all positions: Those whose enlightened intelligence Transcends being and non-being, is groundless They know the profound and imponderable Meaning of “condition”44 In his concluding remarks against the claim that svabha vic ̄ entities originate or cease, Na ga further states: ̄ rjuna ̄ Those who know Dependent co-origination Abandon origination and cessation Cross the ocean of existence of views45 A hermeneutically unmotivated reading of these verses clearly shows Na ga ̄ r̄ juna to be espousing a groundlessness beyond the ocean of views as characterizing those of “enlightened intelligence . . . those who know.” Given this, Na ga goes on to provide his longest sustained verse passage against ̄ rjuna ̄ holding to views: 43 VV 64cd: “atra jña payate va ḡ asad iti tan na pratinihanti.” ̄ YS ̣1: “astinastivyatikra nta buddhir yeṣa ṃ / gambhīras tair nira lambaḥ pratyaya rtho ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ nira śraya ̄ ̄ ̄ vibha vyate.” See also Lindtner, Na ga rjuniana, 103, and Master of Wisdom, 73; Loizzo, Na ga ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ rjuna’s ̄ Reason Sixty, 119; Tola and Dragonetti, On Voidness, 34–35. 45 YS ̣ 23. See Lindtner, Na ga 109, and Master of Wisdom, 81; Loizzo, Na ga Reā rjuniana, ̄ ̄ rjuna’s ̄ son Sixty, 122; Tola and Dragonetti, On Voidness, 37. 44 544 Abandoning All Views It is strange indeed That those who rely on the path of the Buddha Advocating universal impermanence Should yet cling to things with arguments When analysis reveals That neither “this” nor “that” is found What sage will argue For the truth of “this” or “that”? Woe to those who posit An independent self or world They are gripped by views Such as “permanence” and “impermanence” For those who posit selfbeing Of dependently co-originated things How can views not arise Such as “permanence” as to those things? Those who accept dependently co-originated things As being like the moon in water Neither true nor false Are not gripped by views As soon as one affirms Views—painful and malignant—arise Which produce attachment and aversion And the arguments that spring from them That is the cause of all views Without it defilements do not arise Therefore when this is understood Views and defilements cease46 There is no ambiguity here as to Na ga feelings regarding views: he sees ̄ rjuna’s ̄ them as obstructions regardless of the position they espouse. Whether one clings to permanence, impermanence, or any other “this” or “that,” one is nevertheless gripped by, and thereby afflicted with, defilement. Indeed, views and defilements emerge in the final verse quoted as so mutually entwined as to arise and cease concomitantly. This is why, as Na ga goes on to write, ̄ rjuna ̄ Great ones hold no thesis Are beyond dispute 46 YS ̣41–47. See Lindtner, Naga 113–15, and Master of Wisdom, 87–89; Loizzo, Naga ̄ rjuniana, ̄ ̄ rjuna’s ̄ Reason Sixty, 124; Tola and Dragonetti, On Voidness, 39. For YS ̣ 41–42, 45, see also C. W. Huntington Jr., “The Nature of the Madhyamika Trick,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 35 ( June 2007): 109 ̄ n. 11. Note that “view” translates “drṣ ti” ̣ ̣ throughout, though the original Sanskrit text for this passage only exists for YS ̣ 46–47: “ragadveṣ odbhavas tīvraduṣt ̣adṛsṭ ị parigrahaḥ / vivada ̄ ̄ s̄ tatsamutthaś̄ ca bhava sati // sa hetuḥ sarvadṛsṭ ị̄ naṃ ̄ kleśotpattir na taṃ vina ̄ / tasmat̄ tasmin ̄ bhyupagame ̄ parijñate ̄ dṛsṭ ị kleśaparikṣayaḥ .” 545 The Journal of Religion For those who hold no thesis How could there be an opposing thesis? In holding any standpoint at all One is seized by the writhing snakes of defilement They alone are liberated Who hold no standpoint47 Surely a more unambiguous denunciation of view-holding would be difficult to write. Moving on to the Śūnyatasaptati, we find only one instance of the Sanskrit ̄ term drṣ ṭị in the reconstruction from Tibetan proposed by Lindtner. Tellingly, this occurs in the very final verse of the text: Upon understanding dependent co-origination The nets of bad views vanish Pure, one attains nir van̄ ̣a By abandoning attachment, ignorance, and aversion48 The appearance of the term here translated as “bad views” (kudrṣ ṭi)̣ could well lead one to propose that Na ga at least here if not elsewhere, is es̄ rjuna, ̄ pousing the abandonment of false, as opposed to all, views. Yet the context makes clear that what Na ga means by kudrṣ ṭ ị is nothing other than ̄ rjuna ̄ sarvadrṣ ṭi—all views. The verse states that the nets of bad views vanish upon ̣ understanding dependent co-origination, at which point one becomes pure (alipta), the defilements (kleśas) are abandoned, and nirva n̄ ạ is attained. Now, dependent co-origination has been described in preceding verses as equivalent to emptiness,49 which itself characterizes “all expressible things” as well as nirva n̄ a. ̣ 50 As such, to understand dependent co-origination is to understand emptiness, which is to understand all reality—be it conventionally expressed (vyavaha ra) or ultimate (parama rtha). Ignorance (avidya )̄ is ̄ ̄ consequently defined by Na ga as that which arises from any of the four ̄ rjuna ̄ (that is tetralemmic) positions; in other words, as that which stations one at any position at all as to reality: 47 YS ̣ 50–51. See Lindtner, Na ga 115–17, and Master of Wisdom, 89; Loizzo, Na ga ̄ rjuniana, ̄ ̄ rjuna’s ̄ Reason Sixty, 125; Tola and Dragonetti, On Voidness, 40; Huntington, “The Nature of the Ma d̄ hyamika Trick,” 109 n. 11. 48 ŚS 73. See Lindtner, Na ga 69, and Master of Wisdom, 119; Tola and Dragonetti, On ̄ rjuniana, ̄ Voidness, 81; Pandeya and Manju, Na ga rjuna’s Philosophy, 148; Komito, Na ga Seventy Stanzas, ̄ ̄ ̄ rjuna’s ̄ 95. The Tibetan term Lindtner proposes as equivalent here to the Sanskrit drṣ ṭị is lta ṅ an (lta ngan). 49 See ŚS 68, at Lindtner, Na ga 65, and Master of Wisdom, 117; Tola and Dragonetti, On ̄ rjuniana, ̄ Voidness, 80; Pandeya and Manju, Na ga rjuna’s Philosophy, 147; Komito, Na ga Seventy Stanzas, ̄ ̄ ̄ rjuna’s ̄ 94. The verse recalls MK 24:18, cited above. 50 See ŚS 2, at Lindtner, Na ga 35, and Master of Wisdom, 95; Tola and Dragonetti, On ̄ rjuniana, ̄ Voidness, 72; Pandeya and Manju, Na ga Philosophy, 140; Komito, Na ga Seventy Stanzas, ̄ rjuna’s ̄ ̄ rjuna’s ̄ 79. Lindtner gives abhidheyabha va as the Sanskrit for “all expressible things” (Na ga 35). ̄ ̄ rjuniana, ̄ 546 Abandoning All Views In understanding reality Ignorance, which arises from the four erroneous judgments, ceases51 It is on this basis that Na ga ends his text at ŚS 73 with reference to the ̄ rjuna ̄ “nets of bad views.” The state of utter purity spoken of in this ultimate verse is introduced in the penultimate in terms of the peace (śanta) concomitant ̄ with the “teaching that is without support”: Who faithfully seeks truth Who logically abides by this principle [of dependent co-origination] Relies upon the teaching that is without support Abandons both existence and non-existence, attains peace52 In context, this peace can only (or at least most straightforwardly) be understood as concomitant with the cessation of all views. I I I . A B A N D O N I N G N Ā G Ā R J U N A ’ S V I E W S In the preceding section, I have provided the textual sources in support of the interpretation of Na ga abandonment of all views I am propound̄ rjuna’s ̄ ing. Textual sources, however, are amenable to all manner of interpretations, such that even ones that appear to go directly counter to the letter may claim to go straight with the spirit of the text. As such, in this section I will argue against the prevailing interpretive stance on the grounds that my own renders Na ga philosophical project both more coherent and more interesting. ̄ rjuna’s ̄ That is, I propose a reading that takes Na ga at his word to be not only ̄ rjuna ̄ more philologically responsible but also more philosophically charitable. It is the sense I now propose to make of Na ga philosophy that I take to ̄ rjuna’s ̄ clinch the philologically informed reading I have adumbrated heretofore. Before surveying the critical literature on this issue and elaborating my position in contradistinction to it, I want to reiterate what I take to be the ŚS 62ab, at Lindtner, Na ga 63, and Master of Wisdom, 115; Tola and Dragonetti, On ̄ rjuniana, ̄ Voidness, 79; Pandeya and Manju, Na ga rjuna’s Philosophy, 147; Komito, Na ga Seventy Stanzas, ̄ ̄ ̄ rjuna’s ̄ 93. Note that Lindtner gives viparya sa as the Sanskrit equivalent of the Tibetan phyin ci log, as he ̄ also does at ŚS 9 and 17 (Na ga rjuniana, 63). Viparya sa and phyin ci log both convey the sense of ̄ ̄ ̄ epistemic error or delusion. At ŚS 23, however, Lindtner gives viparyaya (sic: viparya ya) ̄ for phyin ci log (Na ga 45). This Sanskrit term, however, does not necessarily convey any negative ̄ rjuniana, ̄ import. Franklin Edgerton defines it simply as “contrariety, the being opposed (of signs, omens);” that is, as referring to tetrachotomies (i.e., all oppositional views: quaternary rather than binary/dichotomous in the Indian context on the basis of the four, not two, positions possible in argument) in general (Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary, vol 2: Dictionary [1954; New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2004], 491). I thus call attention in passing to the incorrectness of Lindtner’s proposed Sanskrit reconstruction at ŚS 23, which should be viparya sa ̄ rather than viparya ya. ̄ Note also in this context that MK 23 as a whole is dedicated to the analysis of viparyasa, ̄ which declines to give forms such as viparyayah ̣ (nominative singular) at MK 23:13, 14, 16; viparyayah̄ ̣ (nominative plural) at MK 23:6, 17, 18, 19; and viparyaya (with nirodhana t̄ to form an ablative singular) at MK 23:23. 52 ŚS 72, at Lindtner, Na ga 67, and Master of Wisdom, 119; Tola and Dragonetti, On Void̄ rjuniana, ̄ ness, 81; Pandeya and Manju, Na ga rjuna’s Philosophy, 148; Komito, Na ga Seventy Stanzas, 95. ̄ ̄ ̄ rjuna’s ̄ 51 547 The Journal of Religion supremely noteworthy fact that, among all the instances I have cited in which Na ga espouses the abandonment of views, in not a single one ̄ rjuna ̄ of them is this statement parameterized so as to confine its purview to “false” views or “views as to svabha va” alone. As I have shown, even the one occur̄ rence of the term kudrṣ ṭị (bad or false views) at ŚS 73 is, in context, found to be equivalent to sarvadrṣ ṭị (all views). And the one place wherein Na ga ̄ rjuna ̄ appears to qualify the purview of the views he is dealing with to “Views as to what is beyond cessation / Or what ends or what is eternal” (MK 25:21ab) has been shown, again in context, to entail “The cessation of all cognizance / The felicitous cessation of conceptualization” (MK 25:24ab). Despite this, parameterization for the sake of “rescuing” Na ga from ̄ rjuna ̄ the alleged philosophical absurdity of abjuring all views has been an extremely common hermeneutic strategy. Since VV 29 is taken to be the locus classicus of Na ga (non)position, a great deal of this scholarly effort ̄ rjuna’s ̄ has gone in to interpreting this verse. The stakes are the familiar ones of absurdity and/or paradoxicality, for, as Frits Staal puts it, “unless this statement itself is not a proposition, we have a paradox here.”53 But it is Dan Arnold who sets out the dilemma facing the exegete most lucidly: “the characteristically Ma dhyamika claim not to have any thesis forces . . . [an] inter̄ pretive choice: One can take it at face value and convict the Ma dhyamika eī ther of self-referential incoherence or of making a vacuous statement, or one can work to understand “thesis” as specifically referring to some particular kind of thesis.”54 It is no surprise that the latter strategy of modification or parameterization has been the almost ubiquitous strategy of contemporary exegetes, on the understanding that taking the Ma dhyamikas at their word ̄ forces one to “convict” them of incoherence or vacuity. In relation to VV 29, Jan Westerhoff shows himself to adopt just such a strategy in claiming that “what Na ga wants to say here is that he does ̄ rjuna ̄ not have any thesis of a particular kind.”55 He explains that “the insertion of such modifiers is often necessary when interpreting Madhyamaka texts.”56 Given that the text itself exhibits no such modifiers, one can only conclude that their insertion is “necessary” so as to maintain an antecedently concluded reading.57 Likewise, Jay L. Garfield and Graham Priest state that 53 Frits Staal, Exploring Mysticism: A Methodological Essay (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 45. 54 Arnold, Buddhists, Brahmins and Belief, 133. 55 Westerhoff, Na ga Vigrahavya vartanī, 64; emphasis in the original. ̄ rjuna’s ̄ ̄ 56 Westerhoff, Na ga rjuna’s Vigrahavya vartanī, 64 n. 30. ̄ ̄ ̄ 57 Tellingly, Westerhoff justifies his use of such modifiers by referring to their extensive use in the Geluk school founded by Tsong khapa Lozang Drakpa (1357 –1419). But Arnold acknowledges that premodern Geluk interpreters “had a particular stake in defending the canons of dialectics and debate,” and therefore “typically qualif[ied] Na ga claim—for example, suḡ rjuna’s ̄ gesting that the kind of ‘thesis’ Na ga thus disavows is only that kind of thesis that is thought ̄ rjuna ̄ to presuppose the sort of ‘essence’ (svabha va) that it is Na ga business to reject” (Buddhists, ̄ rjuna’s ̄ ̄ Brahmins and Belief, 261–62 n. 12; emphasis in the original). Garfield is even more forthright in 548 Abandoning All Views “Na ga reply [at VV 29] does not deny that he is asserting anything. ̄ rjuna’s ̄ How could he deny that? Rather, he asserts that his use of words does not commit him to the existence of any convention-independent phenomena (such as emptiness) to which those words refer.”58 Despite Garfield’s stated intention elsewhere “to take very seriously Na ga insistence on exactly what ̄ rjuna’s ̄ 59 he says” (not to mention his, Priest’s, and Westerhoff’s often highly sophisticated philosophical constructions based on Na ga this is a clear in̄ rjuna), ̄ stance of an evidential exegetical fallacy according to which the evidence presented by the text itself is deliberately skewed so as to support a foreclosed philosophical presupposition.60 stating that Geluk authors starting with Tsong khapa “simply argue that when Na ga speaks ̄ rjuna ̄ of relinquishing ‘all views,’ he means ‘false views,’ or ‘all views according to which things are inherently existent’” (Empty Words, 47—also quoted in Thakchoe, Two Truths Debate, 98). He rightly notes that, contra the Geluk insistence on the need for inserting qualifiers, for the Nyingma school and its prominent proponent Ngog blo ldan shes rab, “Na ga means just what he ̄ rjuna ̄ says. The central teaching of Madhyamaka is that one should relinquish all views, and that if Madhyamaka becomes a philosophical view, one has fundamentally missed its point” (Garfield, Empty Words, 48). I thus follow (1) Douglas Duckworth in pointing out that the Geluk position should not be used incautiously insofar as it “differs sharply from other forms of Buddhist thought not only in Tibet, but elsewhere in the Buddhist world” (“Gelukpa [dge lugs pa],” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2014 edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stan ford.edu/entries/gelukpa/), and (2) Tom Tillemans (“How Do Ma dhyamikas Think?: Notes on ̄ Jay Garfield, Graham Priest, and Paraconsistency,” in Pointing at the Moon: Buddhism, Logic, Analytic Philosophy, ed. Mario D’Amato, Jay Garfield, and Tom Tillemans [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009]) and Constance Kassor (“Is Gorampa’s ‘Freedom from Conceptual Proliferations’ Dialetheist?,” Philosophy East and West 63, no. 3 [ July 2013]: 399–410) in maintaining that, even according to a rival Tibetan commentator such as Gorampa Sonam Senge (1429–89), “if a Ma dhyamika commentator adds that kind of ultimate parameter and thus gives a nonliteral ̄ interpretation of Na ga negative statements, he has in effect denatured the whole ̄ rjuna’s ̄ Na ga rjunian dialectic to the degree that it will no longer be able to accomplish its (religious) ̄ ̄ purpose of quieting philosophical speculation and attachment—and irenic quietism, or complete ‘freedom from proliferations’ (spros bral, Skt. nisprapañca), is, for Go rams pa [i.e., ̣ Gorampa], the main point of the Ma dhyamika’s negative dialectic” (Tillemans, “How Do ̄ Ma dhyamikas Think?, 93–94). For extended and sophisticated further discussions of Gorampa’s ̄ position as opposed to Tsong khapa’s, see Thakchoe, Two Truths Debate; and José Ignacio Cabezón and Geshe Lobsang Dargyay, Freedom from Extremes: Gorampa’s “Distinguishing the Views” and the Polemics of Emptiness (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2007), esp. chap. 3. 58 Garfield and Priest, “Na ga and the Limits of Thought,” 98; emphases in original. ̄ rjuna ̄ 59 Jay L. Garfield, speaking at “Madhyamaka & Methodology: A Symposium on Buddhist Theory and Method” (Smith College, April 23–25, 2010). As Garfield has already averred: “For Na ga generally, the dGe lugs to the contrary notwithstanding, says what he means. ̄ rjuna ̄ And, in the verses in question [i.e., rejections of view-holding in MK 27:30 and MK 13:8], nothing forces the kinds of implicit qualifiers that often are contextually forced” (Empty Words, 48; emphasis in the original). 60 The same applies to Ruegg; see, inter alia, “Uses of the Four Positions”: “What Na ga is ̄ rjuna ̄ saying here, then, is surely not that he is not uttering a meaningful sentence (something that would be not merely paradoxical but quite absurd), but rather that he is not propounding a proposition claiming probative force concerning the (positive or even negative) own being (svabha va) of any thing. Whatever other logical problems may arise in connexion with Na ga ̄ r̄ ̄ juna’s procedure in this respect, there would appear to be no paradox here at all” (49–50), and David Seyfort Ruegg, Three Studies in the History of Indian and Tibetan Madhyamaka Philosophy: Studies in Indian and Tibetan Madhyamaka Thought, Part 1 (Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2000): “there appears to be no paradox in a philosopher’s stating ‘I have no thesis (postulating a self-existent bha va)’, for this sentence is not ̄ 549 The Journal of Religion Now, Garfield and Priest may well respond that they are channeling Garfield’s own earlier article titled “Emptiness and Positionlessness: Do the Ma-̄ dhyamika Relinquish All Views?,”61 in which he presents an argument for abjurations what he calls a “nonassertorial understanding”62 of Na ga ̄ rjuna’s ̄ of view-holding. The position Garfield elaborates there and throughout his prodigious written corpus as a whole is richly nuanced, and I certainly do not intend (nor am I able) to delve into its every aspect here, not least since the striking internal coherence of Na ga philosophy (which Garfield ̄ rjuna’s ̄ has covered exhaustively) entails that untying one thread inevitably leads to fraying myriad others.63 But suffice it to observe for present purposes that Garfield appears to be inconsistent insofar as in the just-mentioned article originally published in 1996, he maintains that “Madhyamaka philosophy must be understood as, in the end, positionless”64 unqualifiedly and that “Na-̄ ga rjuna does sincerely claim to assert no proposition, not merely to assert no ̄ inherently existent proposition,”65 while in the remainder of his published work on the topic he nonetheless insists upon adding just such qualifiers. Thus, in attempting to explicate Na ga unqualified abjuration of con̄ rjuna’s ̄ ceptualization at the very outset of the MK, Garfield immediately calls upon Candrakīrti to buttress his own position, taking Candrakīrti to be taking Na-̄ ga rjuna to be saying (merely) that “the Ma dhyamika philosopher will make ̄ ̄ no positive assertions about the fundamental nature of things”66—a qualifier absent from Na ga root text. Garfield then proposes that this already qual̄ rjuna’s ̄ ified rendering of Na ga “claim must be qualified in several ways,”67 ̄ rjuna’s ̄ first and foremost on the basis that “we must take the phrase “the nature automatically equivalent to ‘I have no philosophical thesis (of any kind)’ (i.e. no darśana, va da, ̄ etc.). And no logical inconsistency need then exist between Na ga statement in VV 29 ̄ rjuna’s ̄ to the effect that he has no pratijña ̄ and the actual procedure of this philosopher, and of other Madhyamikas, who in effect set forth a philosophy (darśana, va da, siddhanta)” (132), ̄ ̄ ̄ and “Formally speaking, Naga rjuna’s statement ‘I have no pratijña ’ [at VV 29] may look to us like ̄ ̄ ̄ a (semantic) paradox . . . [However,] it seems possible to understand it not as a first-order utterance in the object language but as a second-order metalinguistic one stipulating that none of the Ma dhyamika’s statements is to be taken as a thesis positing/presupposing/implying the exis̄ tence of an entity having self-existence (svabha va)” (220). ̄ 61 Garfield, Empty Words, 46–68; originally published in Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion 1 (1996): 1–34. 62 Garfield, Empty Words, 52. 63 In speaking of internal coherence, I extrapolate from Richard T. De George’s discussion of ethical theory to refer simply to the extent to which the elements of a philosophy “cohere with each other” (“Ethics and Coherence,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 64, no. 3 [November 1990]: 39). As for external coherence, which on De George’s model is to be understood as the extent to which the elements of a philosophy cohere with “general experience, knowledge, and beliefs” (“Ethics and Coherence,” 39), Na ga philosophy is dis̄ rjuna’s ̄ tinctly (and, as I go on to argue, consistently) incoherent in that it goes radically against the grain of the inveterate human tendency to reify; indeed, even to hold such things as beliefs. 64 Garfield, Empty Words, 51. 65 Garfield, Empty Words, 56; emphasis in the original. 66 Garfield, Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, 100; emphasis added. 67 Garfield, Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, 100. 550 Abandoning All Views of things” [which is, again, absent from Na ga very seriously.”68 In the ̄ rjuna] ̄ 2002 article coauthored with Priest, moreover, Garfield specifies that “the views that one must relinquish are views about the ultimate nature of reality.”69 And although he subsequently acknowledges (in his highly influential response to Huntington70) that “as one who has argued strenuously for taking Na ga avowals of rejecting all views, and of positionlessness seriously, ̄ rjuna’s ̄ I am sensitive to the charge of now saddling him with a view, a position,”71 nevertheless Garfield goes on to argue that “Na ga in his insistence that ̄ rjuna ̄ Madhyamaka not be taken as one more drṣ ṭị is emphasizing that this really is the rejection of any view regarding the fundamental nature of reality.”72 But views “about the fundamental nature of things,” “about the ultimate nature of reality,” or “regarding the fundamental nature of reality” are not all views, and the point is that it is all views that Na ga rejects. ̄ rjuna ̄ For as demonstrated above, when Na ga rjuna states “I do not hold any thē ̄ sis (pratijña )” ̄ at VV 29, he does not qualify this absolute with some relative clause limiting its scope. He does not, for example, state “I do not hold any thesis that proposes a svabha va ̄ (but I do hold a thesis that does not propose a svabha va).” Similarly, when Naga states that “those who have taken ̄ rjuna ̄ ̄ emptiness as a view / They are the incurables” at MK 13:8, he does not qualify this “view” in any way. And finally, the final verse of the entire MK (27:30) pays homage explicitly to Gautama as one who “For the abandonment of all views / . . . taught the true teaching.” In attempting to propound a philosophically charitable interpretation of these and all of Na ga kindred ̄ rjuna’s ̄ statements which does not denature them, I propose that, for Na ga ̄ rjuna, ̄ views—or positions, propositions, beliefs . . . indeed, all “discursive development (prapañca) and dichotomizing conceptualization (vikalpa)”73—are mental reifications metaphysically equivalent to and epistemically causally constitutive of the self. By “equivalent to” I mean that they are just as invalid, as empty, as are the svabha vic ̄ substances normally taken to ground existence; and by “constitutive of ” I mean that the process by which such views are constructed is itself at least partly responsible for the false belief in any such substance (including the self). Indeed, I have consistently used the term “hold” of a position or view as a deliberate strategy intended to bring out the relation—for Na ga ̄ rjuna ̄ inevitable—between what may be called the holding of and the holding onto positions/views/beliefs. As evinced at MK 16:9–10 and MK 18:5, for 68 Garfield, Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, 100. Garfield and Priest, “Na ga and the Limits of Thought,” 51; emphasis added. ̄ rjuna ̄ 70 Huntington, “The Nature of the Ma dhyamika Trick.” ̄ 71 Garfield, “Turning a Madhyamaka Trick,” 523. 72 Garfield, “Turning a Madhyamaka Trick,” 525; emphasis on “any” in the original, emphasis on final phrase added. 73 Ruegg, “Uses of the Four Positions,” 12. 69 551 The Journal of Religion example,74 there is a direct and reflexive relationship between these; the holding of a view is never innocent, is always a commitment, and therefore necessarily involves one in attachment (upa da thereby reinforcing one’s ̄ na) ̄ enmeshedness in the wheel of saṃsa ric ̄ rebirth. Holding is always also clinging. There is no such thing as a completely objective position; one that would entail no subjective affirmation but would be affirmed, rather, with utterly detached neutrality. As such, the holding of a view is inextricably entwined in the holding onto views.75 Even relatively unquestioned views (what are typically called “assumptions”) such as logical or physical “laws” necessarily entail a hermeneutic framework within which to function; one that is typically ontologically substantialist, and consequently affirmative of what for Na ga ̄ r̄ juna is a metaphysically false, and soteriologically harmful, view of reality. It is in this relationship between holding and clinging that the realms of metaphysics and epistemology converge upon soteriological concerns. For, to put the matter another way, to affirm one’s view is always also to affirm oneself. In affirming a view or belief—even a belief in no self or emptiness— I affirm my affirming self, and my belief in turn affirms me in my belief. Such a reflexively affirmatory relation is reflexively reificatory; I affirm my belief as true, and am affirmed by my (holding of my) belief as real. For to affirm a belief is to affirm it as a given, while in being affirmed my belief affirms me to me as its giver. I am unable to believe without affirming my belief as something ; and my belief is unable to be believed without its believer being affirmed as someone. This helps to explain why, despite averring that Na ga “is writing with ̄ rjuna ̄ 76 specifically soteriological goals in mind,” Garfield’s efforts to restrict Na -̄ ga rjuna’s multiply reiterated and utterly unqualified abandonment of views ̄ 77 or to the to a merely “technical sense of proposition in the sense of pratijña ,” ̄ 78 relatively inconsequential domain of semantics, do undermine (contra Garfield’s own protestations) the soteriological thrust of Na ga Madhyā rjuna’s ̄ maka, based as this is on the universal baselessness constitutive of emptiness. 74 Both MK 16:9–10 and MK 18:5 are cited above. As A. Charles Muller observes, “the concept of ‘grasping’ in Buddhism (Skt. gra ha; ̄ Chi. qu 取, zhi 執) is often a virtual synonym for drṣ ṭị ” (“An Inquiry into Views, Beliefs and Faith: Lessons from Buddhism, Behavioural Psychology and Constructivist Epistemology,” Contemporary Buddhism 19, no. 2 (2018): 7, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14639947 .2018.1442134. 76 Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, 105. 77 Garfield, Empty Words, 66; emphasis in the original. 78 See, for example, “For the question whether Na ga really advocates relinquishing all ̄ rjuna ̄ views [at, e.g., MK 27:30 and MK 13:8] is in fact semantic: is it possible to understand the words Na ga utters to claim that he is not expressing propositions?” (Garfield, Empty Words, 51–52); ̄ rjuna ̄ “The claim to assert no proposition [at VV 4 and 29] is a semantic claim that is bound up with the claim that language, like all other phenomena, is empty (Garfield, Empty Words, 56); and “[Na ga argues for the claim that he has no pratijña ̄ in the context of a debate about semantics ̄ rjuna] ̄ in Vigrahavya vartanī ” (Garfield, “Turning a Madhyamaka Trick,” 524; emphasis in the original). ̄ 75 552 Abandoning All Views For while Garfield correctly notes that Na ga understanding of emptī rjuna’s ̄ ness as itself empty relies on its being treated “on a cognitive par with other nominal entities” since “all linguistic and conceptual activity is implicated simultaneously in ontic constitution and assertion,”79 I would argue that he fails to follow this insight through to its conclusion, or at least appears to vacillate on just how far to go. In addition to the inconsistencies already mentioned, Garfield’s apparent vacillation on the topic is evident from his forthright declaration that “for the arhat who directly realizes emptiness . . . there is no view to be expressed,” only to specify “where a view is something that can be given assertoric voice,”80 or by his subsequent acknowledgment on the one hand that Na ga statements “must be understood as pure ̄ rjuna’s ̄ denials” and his immediate undercutting of that very “purity” on the other hand by the qualification that these are “denials that phenomena, including emptiness, have any nature—showing the way that things are when seen per impossibile, sub specie aeternitatis.”81 But a locally qualified denial is no longer pure in the sense of universal. Besides which, to claim that Na ga aban̄ rjuna’s ̄ donment of all views is “impossibile” undermines the entire thrust of the prasaṅ gic dialectic, which is to see reality (certainly not “sub specie aeternitatis”!) sub specie veritatis—as utterly, unqualifiedly empty. In other words, it is to see reality aright, “through direct, nonconceptual consciousness.”82 For while Garfield is perfectly right to say that once we have “transcend[ed] that [conventional] standpoint, no matter what we try to say, and no matter how carefully we hew to a via negativa, we can say nothing at all consistent with the via media Na ga is determined to limn,”83 Na ga point as to the univer̄ rjuna ̄ ̄ rjuna’s ̄ sality of emptiness (or, to put it another way, as to the ultimate unity of the conventional and ultimate) is precisely that the transcendence of the conventional into the ultimate is simultaneously the pervasion by the ultimate of the conventional—indeed, to dispense with hierarchy altogether (or archē 79 Garfield, Empty Words, 271 n. 27. With reference to the ontic implications of emptiness and its assertion, Garfield goes on to say that Na ga “is a recognition of the inability ̄ rjuna’s ̄ to make assertions from a nonperspectival perspective, together with the recognition that perspectives are ontologically determinative” (Empty Words, 66), which ties in nicely with his earlier assertion that “essentialism is virtually built into the grammar of our language” (Empty Words, 49). For a sustained and thoroughgoingly radical argument to the effect that “the law of non-contradiction (henceforth LNC) is incoherent in the absence of an essentialist ontology,” with especial reference to the Chinese Tiantai Buddhist school founded by Zhiyi (智顗, 538–597), see Brook Ziporyn, “What Does the Law of Non-Contradiction Tell Us, If Anything? Paradox, Parameterization, and Truth in Tiantai Buddhism,” in The Philosophical Challenge from China, ed. Brian Bruya [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015], 253. Ziporyn elaborates that “‘Real entity’ and ‘LNC’ are two alternate descriptions of the same idea: a real entity is just defined as whatever accords with the LNC. The Buddhist rejection of any fixed and unambiguous boundaries for any single entity is also a rejection of the LNC” (266). 80 Garfield, Empty Words, 53 81 Garfield, Empty Words, 66. 82 Garfield, Empty Words, 269 n. 16. 83 Garfield, Empty Words, 58. 553 The Journal of Religion altogether),84 their utter interpenetration and/as inter-identification. The via media turns out to be the via omnia. Indeed, Garfield’s unwillingness to countenance the universal ambit of abandonment goes hand in hand with his insistence on maintaining a clear distinction between conventional and ultimate truth.85 Yet in this context it is crucial to note that Na ga ultimate abandonment of conceptualizā rjuna’s ̄ tion in toto necessitates the abandonment of all distinctions, and with them the very distinction between ultimate and conventional.86 The abandoning of all views and the collapsing of the two truths are two sides of the same coin. Na ga is clear about this, as it is precisely in the culminating ̄ rjuna ̄ verse of the book of the MK specifically devoted to nirvan̄ ̣a that he speaks of “The cessation of all cognizance / The felicitous cessation of conceptualization”87—a conclusion prefaced by the unreserved inter-identification of realms: Between saṃsa ra ̄ and nirva n̄ ̣a There is no difference at all Between nirva n̄ ̣a and saṃsa ra ̄ There is no difference at all What is nirva n̄ ̣a’s limit That is the limit of saṃsa ra ̄ 84 In the final words of his piece, Garfield equates “the relinquishing of all views” with “an archē beyond discourse” (Empty Words, 68). This is dead wrong, on whatever sense of “archē” we choose to take: “origin, beginning” (the relinquishing of all views is the end of all discourse); “power, authority” (it is exhaustion); or “rule, order” (it is deconstruction). In short, the abandonment of all views—that is, the attainment of enlightenment—amounts to anarchy in the strict sense that, contrary to the fundamental posit of ancient Greek philosophy, there simply is no first principle. To understand Na ga to be positing “an archē beyond discourse” is therefore effectively to ̄ rjuna ̄ smuggle in old Theo by the (heavenly) back door—a consequence that Garfield may well not have intended (indeed, that may well horrify him) but that remains a consequence of his claim nonetheless. That the absence of ultimate metaphysical ground is what enables all conventional discourse—indeed, all conventions determining imputed “orders” of “things”—to function is the upshot of Na ga further move (most perspicuously elaborated in MK 24) to the effect ̄ rjuna’s ̄ that only universal emptiness enables the intertwining of local functionalities constitutive of the world. 85 See Garfield, Empty Words, 269 n. 16: “Moreover, a distinction must be drawn between knowing conventional truths and knowing ultimate truths. For it is central to any Buddhist understanding of the epistemological viewpoint that the nature of one’s consciousness and cognition changes dramatically in enlightenment. Whereas in saṃsa ra ̄ one knows objects conceptually, and they appear to one as inherently existent substantial entities, in nirva na ̄ one knows things as they are, through direct, nonconceptual consciousness. Our account of what it is to relinquish all views, as well as our account of the status of emptiness, what one knows when one knows the ultimate, will have to respect this distinction.” 86 This point is well made by Perry Schmidt-Leukel (in “Nirva n̄ ̣a as ‘Unconditioned’ (asaṃskrta) ̣ and ‘Transcendent’ (lokottara) Reality,” Japan Mission Journal 70, no. 3 [Autumn 2016]: 175–76), who despite this nevertheless appears to want to retain a hierarchical distinction between them in claiming that, for Na ga “nirva n̄ ̣a is not reduced to the level of saṃsa ra, ̄ rjuna, ̄ ̄ but, on the contrary, saṃsa ra ̄ is elevated to the level of nirva n̄ ̣a” (Schmidt-Leukel, “Nirva n̄ ̣a as ‘Unconditioned,’” 174). 87 MK 25:24ab. This and preceding verses are cited in full above. 554 Abandoning All Views Between them is not found Even the slightest difference88 Given all this, every drṣ ṭ i,̣ paksa, ̣ pratijña ,̄ prapañca is to be abandoned not only on some putative ultimate reality transcendent to all views, propositions, theses, and conceptualizations, but on the only kind of ultimate Na-̄ ga rjuna recognizes: ultimate-cum-conventional, where the very distinction ̄ between ultimate and conventional has been done away with as yet another dichotomy constitutive of illusory conceptual proliferation. In the conceptual construction of one’s worldview (or perhaps I might more aptly say “of one’s world”), therefore, the role of conceptualization (prapañca) and/as dichotomizing conceptualization (vikalpa) is crucial. As Paul Williams states, “the use of ‘vikalpa’ [in the Madhyamaka]—as expressed by the divisive prefix ‘vi-’—is to place emphasis on the creation of a referent through the ability of language to partition and create opposition, to divide a domain into mutually exclusive and contradictory categories.”89 It is thus precisely in the activity of dichotomizing conceptualization that referents— that is, the myriad things of the world—are constructed.90 While Williams is right to locate this definitive function of vikalpa in the domain of language, for language (at least as ordinarily understood and used) is indeed consistently dichotomizing, I prefer to speak here of “belief ” as an umbrella term 88 MK 25:19–20: “na saṃ sa rasya nirva ṇ ̄ ̄ a t̄ kiṃ cid asti viśeṣaṇ aṃ / na nirva ṇ ̄ asya saṃ sa ra ̄ t̄ kiṃ cid asti viśeṣaṇ aṃ // nirva ṇ a sya ca ya koṭ i ḥ koṭ i ḥ saṃ saraṇ a sya ca / na tayor antaraṃ ̄ ̄ kiṃ cit susūkṣmam api vidyate.” 89 Williams, “Some Aspects of Language,” 27. See also 25, where he suggests that for a Ma dhyamika entities do not “exist” but “inexist.” Regarding the prefix “vi-”, it is perhaps ̄ worth noting that it is also called into service at MK 24:9, where vibha ga ̄ is used to designate the act of distinguishing between the two truths (conventional/saṃvrtị and ultimate/ parama rtha). ̄ 90 Eviatar Shulman makes this point as follows: “Rather than conceptuality being an attempt to define and understand reality, Na ga sees conceptuality as responsible for the ̄ rjuna ̄ creation of reality. Things are not objectively ‘out there,’ but are brought into being by ideation” (“Creative Ignorance: Na ga on the Ontological Significance of Consciousness,” ̄ rjuna ̄ Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 30, no. 1–2 [2007 (2009)]: 165). Of course, this positive account of the “creation of reality” must be leavened, in Na ga sys̄ rjuna’s ̄ tem, with an acknowledgement that there is no “reality,” no “being,” no bha va/svabha va, crē ̄ ated at all, which is why Shulman continues: “Moreover, once things are proven to be brought into being by the power of ideation, that ideation itself is realized to be unreal as-well, since it perceives objects which are not really there. Emptiness is said to be the play of unreal conceptualization perceiving unreal objects” (“Creative Ignorance,” 166). For further elaborations of the potential correspondences between Na ga Madhyamaka and Yoga ca ideal̄ rjuna’s ̄ ̄ ra-style ̄ ism, see Eviatar Shulman, “Na ga rjuna the Yoga ca rin? Vasubandhu the Ma dhyamika? On the ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ Middle-Way between Realism and Antirealism,” in Madhyamaka and Yoga ca ra: Allies or Rivals?, ̄ ̄ ed. Jay L. Garfield and Jan Westerhoff (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); and Jonathan Gold, “Without Karma and Nirva ṇ ̄ a, Buddhism Is Nihilism: The Yoga ca ̄ ra ̄ Contribution to the Doctrine of Emptiness,” in Garfield and Westerhoff, Madhyamaka and Yoga ca ̄ ra. ̄ For Gold, “The fact that our words cannot reach beyond the horizon of the expressible is not an ambiguous Madhyamaka leaning within Yoga ca it is the core Yoga ca ̄ ra; ̄ ̄ ra ̄ contribution to the interpretation of the Maha ya ̄ na ̄ doctrine of emptiness” (“Without Karma and Nirva ṇ ̄ a, Buddhism Is Nihilism,” 240). 555 The Journal of Religion for the various technically nuanced expressions present in the literature pertaining to the holding of a doxastic and/or epistemic propositional attitude because I want to emphasize precisely that holding, rather than the linguistic expressing, of whatever is so held.91 Without going into a fully fledged theory of mind and/or of language, and without insisting overmuch on any structural primacy to belief (as the intentional locus of a given propositional attitude) over language (as the verbal expression of that propositional attitude), I am thus arguing that, for Na ga the practice of dichotomizing ̄ rjuna, ̄ conceptualization (vikalpa), and indeed of conceptualization (prapañca) / conceptual construction (kalpana )̄ more broadly, is causally implicated in (false, deceptive) ego construction.92 This particular point does not seem to me to be revolutionary. Indeed, it is already prefigured in the twelve nida nas or causal chains of the wheel of ̄ dependent co-origination espoused by the Buddha. In this classical formulation, composite mental formations (samṣ ka ra) ̄ are founded upon delusion (moha) or ignorance (avidya ), ̄ and lead to the arising of discerning consciousness (vijñana). This last term, be it noted, is also formed with the divisive prefix ̄ 91 For support for my use of the English term “belief ” in this context, I cite Muller: “In Buddhism, the connotations of ‘view’, as a translation of the Sanskrit drṣ ṭị (from the root √drṣ ̣ ‘to see’) are often virtually the same as what we understand by the modern English word ‘belief,’ especially when used in the negative sense of ‘erroneous view’ (mithya -dr ̄ ṣ ṭi;̣ xiejian 邪見)” (“Inquiry into Views, Beliefs and Faith,” 3). The very negative connotation of drṣ ṭị as mithya -dr ̄ ṣ ṭ i,̣ of 見 as 邪見, in the Buddhist tradition at large, is itself eloquent evidence in support of reading Na ga stated disavowal of all views as a disavowal of, precisely, all views. Muller goes on ̄ rjuna’s ̄ to characterize the broadly Buddhist view of views as one maintaining that “in their place as cognitive activities, they are not purely cognitive, as there is inevitably some kind of desire involved. Thus, no matter what, the expression of a view is seen to be an expression of some kind of craving” (“An Inquiry into Views, Beliefs and Faith,” 11; emphasis in the original). To this I would only add that not only is “the expression of a view . . . an expression of some kind of craving” but also that the holding of a view is, irrespective of its expressive status, a holding of some kind of craving. 92 The debate as to what is typically referred to in the philosophical literature as the primacy of the “intentional” or the “linguistic” has been amply carried out by Chisholm, Sellars, and many others. As my stance on this point is tangential to my broader argument here regarding the mutually reinforcing nature of (self )being and belief, I prefer not to wade into these deep waters here, though I hope in passing that what I say about Naga (non)stance may be of value ̄ rjuna’s ̄ to professional philosophers generally familiar with the narrow ambit of Western philosophical thought alone. To the extent that ultimates apply in history, the concept of “intentionality” in this sense dates back, ultimately, via Husserl to Brentano. As for the relationship between conceptually contentful belief and its linguistic expression, I follow Mario D’Amato in that “I take it to be a relatively uncontroversial claim that the use of language requires conceptual thought, unlike the much more controversial claim that thought is determined by language (a strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)” (“Why the Buddha Never Uttered a Word,” in Pointing at the Moon: Buddhism, Logic, Analytic Philosophy, ed. Mario D’Amato, Jay L. Garfield, and Tom J. F. Tillemans [New York: Oxford University Press, 2009], 52 n. 8). Finally, I see Parimal Patil’s assertion that “generally . . . Buddhist philosophers do not accept the idea that propositional content and propositional attitude or even content and force are independent” (“Constructing the Content of Awareness Events,” in Apoha: Buddhist Nominalism and Human Cognition, ed. Mark Siderits, Tom Tillemans, and Arindam Chakrabarti [New York: Columbia University Press, 2011], 16 n. 40) as support for my contention that, for Naga to hold a view (irrespective of its content) is in̄ rjuna, ̄ eluctably to be involved in karmically determined and determinative activity. 556 Abandoning All Views “vi-,” and standardly opposed in the primary Buddhist literature to jñana— ̄ liberating (i.e., nondivisive) knowledge or gnosis. So, without realizing that views (drṣ ṭ i), are ̣ like all things (sarvam dharmam), including the self (atman), ̄ empty (śūnya), we entangle ourselves in attachment (raga) and aversion ̄ (dvesa) ̣ with regard to them on the basis of that primal ignorance (avidya )̄ which ascribes substantial existence to them, and thereby fall prey to the three poisons (trivisa) ̣ or afflictions (kleśa) constitutive of saṃsa ric ̄ suffering (duh ̣kha). Indeed, as T. R. V. Murti eloquently summarizes, “the root cause of duhkha, in the Ma dhyamika system, is the indulging in views (drṣ ṭi)̣ or imag̣ ̄ 93 ination (kalpana ). ̄ Kalpana ,̄ (vikalpa) is avidya ̄ par excellence.” 93 Murti, Central Philosophy of Buddhism, 271. As Murti also states: “the essence of the Ma dhyā mika attitude . . . consists in not allowing oneself to be entangled in views and theories, but just to observe the nature of things without standpoints (bhūta-pratyaveksạ )” ̄ (209); “It is the contention of the Ma dhyamikas that the final release is possible only through Śūnyata —by the giving up of ̄ ̄ all views, standpoints and predicaments (269); and “A view, because of its restriction, determination, carries with it duality, the root of saṁ sa ra” ̄ (270). Candrakīrti’s (ca. 600–650) Madhyamaka vata raka rika ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ 6:119 is an eminent example of a classical Madhyamaka primary source making this point explicitly: “Attachment to one’s view and likewise aversion to the view of another is itself evidence of reified thinking. When one sets aside attachment and aversion and conducts an analysis [of all views], he will soon find liberation” (Huntington, The Emptiness of Emptiness, 201 n. 26; Tibetan text also transliterated, with insertion by Huntington). Regarding Candrakīrti, Huntington also states: “When Candrakīrti goes so far as to say that Bha vaviveka is not really a Ma dhyamika at all, but rather a Logician (Ta rkika) ‘taking ̄ ̄ ̄ the side of the Madhyamaka school out of a desire to parade the extent of his own dialectical skill’ [citing Huntington, “Was Candrakīrti a Pra saṇ ̄ gika?,” 82], he is drawing attention not simply to the methodology of logical analysis but to the motivation of the Logician, who is driven not by selfless compassion but rather by a self-serving need for certainty rooted in rational conviction—a form of clinging no less seductive now than it was some two thousand years ago in ancient India” (“The Nature of the Ma dhyamika Trick,” 125–26; emphasis in the original). ̄ Meanwhile, Jonathan Gold’s study of Vasubandhu (fourth–fifth century), a distinctly nonMa dhyamika adherent of the Sautra ntika Abhidharma and Yoga ca ̄ ̄ ̄ ra ̄ schools at various times, has him too affirming that “the root, mistaken ‘view’—the view of self (satka yadr ṣ ṭi)—is implicit ̣ ̄ in all other views, all unenlightened perspectives . . . So every ‘view’ participates in this false view of self ” (Paving the Great Way: Vasubandhu’s Unifying Buddhist Philosophy [New York: Columbia University Press, 2015], 138); and “all doctrines, even Buddhist doctrines, are potentially dangerous for their capacity to reify self-construction . . . the key value in Maha ya ̄ na ̄ [is] the freedom from views, the freedom from egotistical self-construction that comes of seeing things one way, our way” (175). Gold also proposes to read Dharmakīrti (sixth–seventh century), who was at the least Yoga ca not through what amounts to the Geluk view initiated by Tsong khapa, fur̄ ra-inclined, ̄ ther propounded by Chaba Chökyi Senge (1109–69), and (on Gold’s analysis) informing Dan Arnold’s interpretation of Dharmakīrti (Dan Arnold, Brains, Buddhas, and Believing: The Problem of Intentionality in Classical Buddhist and Cognitive-Scientific Philosophy of Mind [New York: Columbia University Press, 2012]), but rather through the lens of an opponent of the Geluk reading such as Sakya Paṇ ḍ ita Kunga Gyeltsen (1182–1251), for whom “every conceptual cognition based on perception is not only subject to doubt, it is mistaken, because every conceptual cognition is mistaken” ( Jonathan C. Gold, “A Review of Brains, Buddhas, and Believing: The Problem of Intentionality in Classical Buddhist and Cognitive-Scientific Philosophy of Mind by Dan Arnold,” Philosophy East and West 64, no. 4 [October 2014]: 1052; emphases in the original). Returning to Na ga this is perhaps the aptest moment to cite the eloquent analysis of ̄ rjuna, ̄ Janet P. Williams: “In summary, the marks of Na ga apophasis are as follows: a rejection ̄ rjunan ̄ of dualism as based on the views of own-being, inconsistent with the Buddha’s teaching of dependent co-arising; a consequent application of radical negation to both the affirmative and negative 557 The Journal of Religion The necessary implication of this point is that only through what is nirvikalpa can we reach nirva n̄ ̣a.94 Given that the attainment of nirva n̄ ̣ic liberation is the teleological end of the entire Buddhist enterprise, and given that for Na ga “They alone are liberated / Who hold no standpoint (YS ̣ 51, cited ̄ rjuna ̄ above), it is of the utmost relevance to note that descriptions throughout the Buddhist tradition of nirva n̄ ạ and of the Tatha gata who has attained it invarī ably characterize them as “profound, immeasurable, unfathomable,”95 or with any number of like terms designed to convey their sheer inconceivability. Therefore, I do not consider the conceptual difficulty (even impossibility) of conceiving what such wholescale abandonment of views would consist of to constitute an argument against my reading Na ga as espousing it. On ̄ rjuna ̄ the contrary, our very inability to conceive this I see as yet further evidence in favor of my interpretation, for were we able to conceptualize nirvan̄ ̣a (taken here precisely as the nonconceptualizable), it would no longer lie beyond the very mental bonds its attainment is explicitly meant to sever. In elaborating how such abandonment of all views is supposed to function, allow me a silly analogy. Let’s say Na ga had written a work of cū rjuna ̄ linary theory replete with claims that we must abandon all curries, admonitions to cease consuming any spicy saucy dishes, and dismissals of those who take even his own most distinctive recipe to itself be of a curry as incurables. Of course we could work through every instance of such statements, interpreting him to only mean “vindaloo” here or only “rogan josh” there, but what the text would actually say in every case would just be “all curries” or some equivalent phrase. Now, my analogy falls down because we can easily conceive of living without curry (however bland that might be), but we find it extremely difficult (if not downright impossible) to conceive what living without views would be. Indeed, the refusal on the part of the preponderant bulk of exegetes to take Na ga statements to this effect serī rjuna’s ̄ ously, the dismissal of them as self-referentially incoherent or vacuous, is eloquent testimony to this difficulty. For as we have seen, the radicality of Na ga claim to hold no claims leads many commentators to reject off̄ rjuna’s ̄ hand the possibility that he denies asserting anything at all (recall Garfield and Priest rhetorically asking “How could he deny that?”). Admittedly, the abjuration of all positionality is a radical (non)position, and one that appears aspects of any binary; an undermining and dismantling of all views as tainted by dualisticdiscriminative thinking; and establishment of ‘no-view’ or ‘no-standpoint’ as the ideal; the application of this apophatic recoil from views to ontology: the Absolute, the Tatha gata, neither ̄ exists nor does not exist; and, finally, an epistemological scheme which both affirms human discourse as true and denies it an absolute purchase on truth” (Denying Divinity: Apophasis in the Patristic Christian and Soto Zen Buddhist Traditions [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 48). 94 To put this in terms used by Murti, ontological descriptions of reality are “negations of the real” in that the real “is essentially indeterminate (nirvikalpa, nisprapañca)” (Central Philoṣ ophy of Buddhism, 271). 95 Bhikkhu Ña ṇ ̄ amoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans., The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nika ya ̄ (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995), 593. 558 Abandoning All Views to fly in the face of the apparently indubitable existence of positions, propositions, and oppositions expounded or denounced by Na ga through̄ rjuna ̄ out his works. Yet Na ga work is replete with claims that fly in the face ̄ rjuna’s ̄ of the (typically substantialist) presuppositions generally taken as “common sense,” so it will hardly do to dismiss his abandonment of views (or indeed his consistent and comprehensive rejection of any and all forms of foundationalism) on these grounds alone. Moreover, Na ga is well aware of the ̄ rjuna ̄ difficulties concomitant with taking him at his word; as we have seen, he explicitly and repeatedly states that this teaching is extremely hard to swallow (like some curries after all!).96 The point I am making here is reminiscent of that made by Jonathan Gold in his reply to Dan Arnold: Granted, any tradition that claims that all of our conceptualizations are, in an important way, false, is asking that we change the rules of the language game in which we ordinarily understand how meaning and reference operate. We are asked to read such expressions as merely pragmatic, as not affirming any essential nature, as figurative, sous rature. This is not how words seem to work, including the words that express these ideas. But we are being asked to look at things in a new way. And it is not an appropriate response to a proposed rule change to say that to accept it would be against the rules.97 For his part, Arnold had charged that “altogether to abandon the commonsense view of the mental, as Lynne Rudder Baker puts the point, ‘would be to relinquish the point of view from which the idea of making sense makes sense.’”98 More generally, Arnold confesses that, if it involves the abandonment of all views, then “I do not see what sense the idea of Buddhahood makes; indeed, it seems that nobody could make sense of this apart from assent to the Buddhist tradition’s testimony to its possibility.”99 But it is surely incumbent upon scholars of Buddhism to take seriously positions forcefully iterated 96 See, e.g., MK 5:8, 13:8, 16:9, 22:15, 25:24 and YS ̣ 1, 23, 41–47, all quoted above. Jonathan C. Gold, “Reply to Dan Arnold,” Philosophy East and West 64, no. 4 (October 2014): 1067–68. Gold’s reading of Yogaca ̄ ra ̄ is in turn reminiscent of Paul Fuller’s understanding of early Buddhism: “Although such assertions as the four truths may counter the views of other philosophical schools, I would argue that for them to be samma -dit ̣ ̣ [Skt. samyag-drṣ ṭi], ̣ for them to be ̄ thi right, they could not themselves be views at all. It is in this way that they are right-views. They may counter incorrect propositions, but they are not intended to be ‘correct’ propositions in the usual sense of the term. They are right, samma ,̄ precisely because they cannot be an object of attachment. Though they are termed ditṭhi, ̣ it is precisely because they do not share the unwholesome aspects of miccha -dit t hi [mithya -dr s ̣ ̣ ̣̣ ̄ ̄ ̣ ṭi,̣ wrong-view] that they are termed samma -dit ̄ thi. The four truths may then correct and counter views, but as propositions, they are not intended to be held as miccha -dit ̣ ̣ are held, but to reflect a detached form of cognition. It is right view, ̄ thi samma -dit t hi, which implies this different order of seeing” (Notion of Ditthi, ̣ ̣ 2). ̣ ̣ ̄ 98 Dan Arnold, “Response to Jonathan Gold’s Review of Brains, Buddhas, and Believing,” Philosophy East and West 64, no. 4 (October 2014): 1064. Arnold’s reference is to Lynne Rudder Baker, Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 173. 99 Arnold, “Response to Jonathan Gold’s Review,” 1065; emphasis in the original. 97 559 The Journal of Religion and reiterated throughout the Buddhist traditions, even if (or especially when) they “make sense” not according to the interpreter’s imported intellectual paradigms but to (what are thus seen to be) radically other “rules.” And that the various classical Buddhist thought traditions of South, East, and North Asia have taken the abandonment of all views seriously (i.e., as a position that makes sense within the parameters of the Buddhist path—or rather, as its end—even if it makes sense only, precisely, as the end of all such making sense) has been convincingly shown. Thus, Paul Fuller (whose treatment remains the most comprehensive) states unambiguously that “the aim of the path is not the cultivation of right-view and the abandoning of wrong-views but the relinquishment of all views, wrong or right. . . . The early texts do not understand right-views as a correction of wrong-view, but as a detached order of seeing, completely different from the attitude of holding to any view, wrong or right.”100 He goes on to refer to the facts that what he calls the “no-views understanding” he finds well attested in the Palī canon “has been termed ‘Proto-Ma dhyamika’ by Luis Gómez,” and that “Richard Hayes has ̄ used the term ‘doxastic minimalism’ to describe this understanding within Buddhist thought.”101 My references above to Vasubandhu, Dharmakīrti, and Candrakīrti among Indian Buddhist philosophers, and to Sakya Paṇ ḍ ita and Gorampa among the Tibetans, is evidence of substantial and sophisticated philosophical elaborations there of this “transcendence of all views.”102 As for East Asia, Charles Muller’s article on the topic argues that the Chan, Seon, and Zen schools of China, Korea, and Japan, respectively, became “almost completely absorbed in the non-abiding in views above all other practices,”103 and also provides numerous examples of the varied efforts to undermine view-holding of any kind in the East Asian strands of Yoga ca ̄ ra ̄ and Tatha gata-garbha thought, to which the Sanlun and Tiantai traditions explic̄ itly heir to Na ga could well be added. ̄ rjuna ̄ Of course, I am not claiming that Na ga (or any other Buddhist ̄ rjuna ̄ thinker), asks us to dispense with any and all view-holding in our as-yetunenlightened conventional worldly interactions. Arnold is right to aver that “it is only as conventionally experiencing subjects that we can understand any is the very point of claims at all.”104 But this is to neglect what for Na ga ̄ rjuna ̄ the path; that is, to reach its end, to go from laukika to lokottara and thence abandon the distinction itself, to turn us from “conventionally experiencing 100 Fuller, Notion of Ditthi, ̣ ̣ 1. Fuller, Notion of Ditthi, in the ̣ ̣ 3. Fuller’s references are Luis Gómez,“Proto-Ma dhyamika ̄ Pa li Canon,” Philosophy East and West 26, no. 2 (April 1976): 137–65; and Richard Hayes, ̄ Dignaga on the Interpretation of Signs (Dordrecht: Springer, 1988), 52. 102 The passage from which these last words are taken is worth citing in full: “In other words, to say that one has right-view is to say that one has no-view. The consequence of achieving right-view is that one does not hold any views. The aim of the path is the transcendence of all views” (Fuller, Notion of Ditthi, ̣ ̣ 2; emphasis in the original). 103 Muller, “An Inquiry into Views, Beliefs and Faith,” 12. 104 Arnold, “Response to Jonathan Gold’s Review,” 1064; emphasis in the original. 101 560 Abandoning All Views subjects” to come-gone Tatha gatas—even if, as per Arnold, “what a Buddha ̄ knows is simply that ordinary experience does not require—indeed, that it is inconsistent with—the idea that there is something that we ‘really’ to understand this truth, to attain realization, is preare.”105 For Na ga ̄ rjuna, ̄ cisely to dispense with views propounding certain truths, certain conceptualizations of reality. What Arnold describes as “the commonsense view of the mental” is simply not adequate to the enlightened mental state, which (whatever else can or cannot be said about it), cannot hold or “understand any claims at all” in anything like the same sense that the rest of us hold or understand them.106 Views (all views, without exception) thus turn out for Na ga to be hin̄ rjuna ̄ drances. His prasaṅ gic deconstruction is consistently designed to clear the ground, as it were, of all supposed supports (metaphysical, epistemic, and doxastic), and thereby to open the Ma dhyamika’s mind to prajña ̄ (an etymō logical brother of jñana), the enlightened awareness of emptiness.107 As ̄ Christian Lindtner says, “prajña ̄ performs its task in the systematic intellectual endeavour to demonstrate that the ja la ̄ [net] of prapañca [conceptualization] is empty, that it lacks ‘objective’ foundation (cf. YṢ, 25–27 etc.). This is achieved by bringing to light that asti and na sti ̄ [being and nonbeing] hypostasized by the activity of vikalpa [dichotomizing conceptualization] do not appertain to reality (tattva).”108 In short, “there really is no dharma 109 or bha va ̄ to fix one’s mind upon as support,” and thus upon which to 105 Arnold, “Response to Jonathan Gold’s Review,” 1065. A full treatment of the relation between conventional view-holding and its ultimate abandonment is obviously beyond the scope of the present paper. Suffice it for present purposes, then, to cite what I take to be an apt and accurate summary by Muller: “the Buddhist approach [to changing one’s views] operates from two distinct levels. The approach of the first level in Buddhism . . . [is one in which] Buddhist practitioners are led to adjust inaccurate and unworkable understandings of such matters as causation with a more accurate view of causation, or of reality. This is called the ‘conventional’ approach, in Sanskrit a laukika, or saṃvrtị standpoint. The second level takes a far more radical and transcendent position (in Sanskrit lokōttara or parama rtha), wherein the active effort towards the creation of a replacement view to which to ad̄ here is seen as futile, since it is precisely the reification of the view that is problematic, and not necessarily the content. Thus, rather than advocating a change in one’s view (e.g. from improperly understood causality to properly understood causality), the problematic nature of views in themselves is emphasized, and thus, a significant portion of Buddhist discourse—most prominently in schools such as Madhyamaka or Zen—but also to be found in a wide range of works of various Buddhist schools, directly advocate the practice of not lingering in any view” (Muller, “An Inquiry into Views, Beliefs and Faith,” 10). This “two level” approach is in some ways reminiscent of the distinction proposed by Garfield between “the ordinary philosopher . . . [who] can be the subject of cognitive states such as beliefs whose direct object, via conception, is emptiness,” and “the arhat, who directly perceives emptiness as it is unmediated either by apprehension of (other) conventional entities or by conception” (Garfield, Empty Words, 52). 107 For the equivalence of enlightenment and emptiness, see, e.g., Yinshun: “In general, the synonyms for nirva n̄ ̣a can all be called ‘empty’ [śūnya]” (An Investigation into Emptiness, 233 n. 19, and more generally 225–35). 108 Lindtner, Na ga 271. ̄ rjuniana, ̄ 109 Lindtner, Na ga rjuniana, 272. ̄ ̄ 106 561 The Journal of Religion construct a doctrine (mata) or view (drṣ ṭi). ̣ The adequate propositional attitude toward it, therefore, is one that is neither propositionally contentful nor attitudinally oriented at all.110 All of this goes some way, I hope, toward rebutting Arnold’s claim that “Ma dhyamika arguments are (apparent claims to the contrary notwithstand̄ ing) offered in defense of a particular truth-claim—that is, these arguments are not simply methodological or ‘therapeutic’ exercises that are equally compatible with just any ontology or metaphysics; rather, they fundamentally aim to make a point about how things exist.”111 The “apparent claims to the contrary” must be taken seriously. If Na ga (and Candrakīrti) had meant ̄ rjuna ̄ to say that he was eschewing only certain claims (rather than claims as a whole), surely that is what he would have said. Instead, he explicitly espouses the abandonment of all claims. It is not that his statements “are equally compatible with just any ontology or metaphysics”; rather, they constitute the abandonment of all ontologies and metaphysics, in short of all belief paradigms through which reality is viewed and hence distorted, not seen simply “as it is,” in its “suchness” (tattva). As for Arnold’s statement that “these arguments are not simply methodological or ‘therapeutic’ exercises,” it is unfortunate that he does not spell out what exactly he means by, and what is or are the scope/s of, “methodological” and “therapeutic.” Judging from the context, I understand him to imply that such exercises are opposed to properly metaphysical endeavors; that they, unlike the latter, are not interested in making truth claims per se, or indeed at all. But at the risk of making a rather sweeping claim, I aver that no Buddhist qua Buddhist, “fundamentally aim[s] to make a point about how things exist,” that is, fundamentally aims to make a metaphysical truth claim. The overriding—or, to use Arnold’s term, fundamental —aim of Buddhist discourse, be it in the Buddha’s own sūtras, the philosophical śastras, the poetic ka rika ̄ s, ̄ or any other genre, is avowedly not metaphysical but soteriological; that is, it is aimed at liberation. Buddhist philosophers such as Na ga “make a point about how things exist” not fundamentally ̄ rjuna ̄ 110 See also in this regard Muller’s insight: “Regarding the state of viewlessness, a question sometimes arises as to whether the Buddhist lokōttara approach to Right View implies simply not lingering in views, or if it means having no views at all. The answer to this is that the two are the same. Viz., if the defining character of views is none other than reification, then not reifying any views is the same thing as not having any. . . . Any view at all is by its nature a rigid reification, an empty shell or a rigid wall, that functions to obstruct the function of the naturally free-flowing Buddha mind, preventing it from adapting to the free-flowing, fluctuating world” (Muller, “An Inquiry into Views, Beliefs and Faith, 11). 111 Arnold, Buddhists, Brahmins and Belief, 137. Arnold reiterates this position at various points in his book, as for example when he writes: “But this claim (‘there is no such thing as the way things ‘really’ are’) is itself a properly metaphysical claim. That is, the Ma dhyamikas Na ga ̄ ̄ rjuna ̄ and Candrakīrti should be understood as making a universally obtaining truth claim to the effect that the way things really are really is such that we can never identify something ‘more real’ underlying existents and our experience thereof” (120; emphasis in the original). 562 Abandoning All Views but only insofar as that point is effective; otherwise, they would be engaged in precisely the kind of vacuous, sophistical “eel-wriggling” that the Buddha disparaged on the grounds that it only served, and serves, to bind its practitioner more tightly in the grip of (self-)affirmation. In this sense, the authorial intent of Buddhist philosophical texts such as the MK is not primarily zetetic but protreptic; indeed, zetetic only insofar as protreptic.112 In other words, these texts seek to instruct the reader/practitioner as to the means toward detachment from irreality in the form of conceptual elaborations such as “self ” and “truth.” The deconstruction of such fictions and consequent description of reality as it truly is (i.e., devoid of them), even where this deconstruction and description comprises the bulk of the text, is subservient to this ultimate end.113 It is telling that Arnold neglects to deal in this context with the centrally important (certainly for Na ga and ̄ rjuna ̄ the Ma dhyamikas) concept of “expedient means” (upa ya). As is abundantly ̄ ̄ clear from his multiple formulations to this effect, Na ga considers ̄ rjuna ̄ his philosophical enterprise as being wholeheartedly soteriological in intent.114 Rather than constituting “a properly metaphysical claim . . . a universally obtaining truth claim,”115 Na ga central teaching (of dependent ̄ rjuna’s ̄ co-origination as emptiness) is meant to disabuse one of suffering by enabling one to proceed along the Buddhist path toward unadulterated vision of reality (unadulterated, that is, by any and all conceptual lenses). In other words, Na ga (together with his fellow Ma dhyamikas) conceives of his ̄ rjuna ̄ ̄ own enterprise as valid only insofar as it proves soteriologically efficacious, not insofar as it merely “make[s] a point.”116 To put this another way, Na ga would certainly agree with Arnold’s ̄ rjuna ̄ characterization of his position as one that considers the positing of a svabha vic ̄ essence “fundamentally incoherent”; indeed, much of the MK and VV in particular are devoted to reducing such a position to absurdity. However, on my reading Na ga considers views and theses (i.e., belief pō rjuna ̄ sitions of any sort) as themselves svabha vic. That is—and to again use Ar̄ nold’s position as a foil—Na ga agrees that arguments (positions, ̄ rjuna ̄ 112 See in this context the distinction Huntington (The Emptiness of Emptiness , xii–xiii) proposes between “systematic” and “edifying” philosophy, and the “protreptic hermeneutics” of which Jonardon Ganeri speaks (The Concealed Art of The Soul: Theories of Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and Epistemology [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 116 n. 28). 113 I am thus in full agreement with Huntington’s understanding of the Ma dhyamika’s end as ̄ one “not accomplished by arguing against one view as ‘wrong’ and in favor of another as ‘right,’ but by demonstrating through any available means that the very fact of holding a view—any view—keeps one enmeshed in an endless cycle of clinging, antipathy, and delusion. If the Ma dhyamika cannot be understood in this way—if we insist on interpreting these texts as a ̄ set of answers to epistemological or ontological questions—then we have missed the point” (The Emptiness of Emptiness, 15; emphasis in the original). 114 The textual sources are too many to enumerate here, so I leave their discussion to future work. 115 Arnold, Buddhists, Brahmins and Belief, 120. 116 Arnold, Buddhists, Brahmins and Belief, 137. 563 The Journal of Religion views, theses . . .) “fundamentally aim to make a point about how things exist;” in so doing, arguments are indeed “proposed as true.”117 It is just that, for something to be true, that something must be.118 Being, however, is precisely what Na ga critique refutes, since for Na ga there is no way ̄ rjuna’s ̄ ̄ rjuna ̄ that “things exist,” for no things really do “exist.” Propositions of any kind satisfy, in other words, the ontological criterion: like the prama n̄ as ̣ or epistemological warrants on which they rely and which they validate, metaphysical positions (indeed, positions of all kinds, for all positions implicitly if not explicitly make metaphysically “absolute presuppositions”)119 “must surely be counted among ‘all existents.’ ”120 As such, it is a mistake to claim that “the Ma dhyamika claim contradicts a truth-claim”121 made by others: the Ma d̄ ̄ hyamika does not make a claim and consequently does not contradict any other such claim—Na ga deflects this criticism explicitly at VV 29. For ̄ rjuna ̄ the Ma dhyamika’s prasan gic critique does not propose or construct but only ̇ ̄ deposes or deconstructs. One cannot agree with it, for as soon as one has, one has reified it into a fixed position amenable to agreement and disagreement, and hence to the whole range of epistemic criteria according to which truth claims are judged.122 As such, and to adapt the point made by Gold above, Na ga is seen to agree to the rules of the game, as it were, accord̄ rjuna ̄ ing to which theses posit things, but simply to reject playing it. The thread linking Arnold’s, Westerhoff’s, and many other such critiques (modern and premodern) of the Madhyamaka claim to be not making any claims (or for that matter Garfield’s technique of smuggling appropriately qualified views in by the back door despite avowing their complete abandonment) may be termed “thesism,” that is, the view that the Ma dhyamikas are ̄ proposing a thesis after all, which each critic then criticizes on the basis of some alternative thetical paradigm. Arnold is forced to argue for Na ga ̄ rjū na’s and Candrakīrti’s propounding a thesis so that he may go on to distinguish this thesis from that of their “not sufficiently reductionist” Ābhidha rmika forebears.123 But although much of what Arnold and the other ̄ scholars I mention here say as to the content of the Ma dhyamikas’ (provī sional) theses124 is, to my mind, highly insightful, I believe that they fail to 117 Arnold, Buddhists, Brahmins and Belief, 137; emphasis in the original. I am again reminded here of Ziporyn’s point that “there is an implicit ontological essentialism embedded in the literal application of the copula” (“What Does the Law of NonContradiction Tell Us,” 268). 119 Arnold, Buddhists, Brahmins and Belief, 140. 120 Arnold, Buddhists, Brahmins and Belief, 145. 121 Arnold, Buddhists, Brahmins and Belief, 137. 122 See in this regard MK 16:9–10 cited in the section on “Na ga Abandoning Views” ̄ rjuna’s ̄ above. 123 Arnold, Buddhists, Brahmins and Belief, 166. 124 In speaking of “provisional theses,” I may be taken to subscribe to the distinction Ruegg proposes between “a first-order utterance in the object language . . . [and] a second-order metalinguistic one” (Ruegg, Three Studies, 220, cited above). I hope it should be clear from 118 564 Abandoning All Views grasp the truly radical nature of the Ma dhyamikas’ project, motivated as this ̄ latter is by a soteriological push toward something beyond the bounds of reason. For the enlightened state—to the extent I feel qualified to say anything about it at all—is surely a state radically different from that of the saṃsa ric ̄ rjuna ̄ ̄ delusion in which we—alas—are all involved. This is why Na ga resorts, as he must, to explicitly paradoxical formulations when describing nirva n̄ ̣a, the Tatha gata, etc. In order to help us get there, to attain to such ̄ radical liberating insight, Na ga must use appropriately radical tech̄ rjuna ̄ niques; techniques that have traditionally been classed under the general term prasaṅ ga or deconstructive critique. In order to be completely successful, prasaṅ ga must deconstruct all theses—on this Na ga is repeatedly ̄ rjuna ̄ explicit (see the section on “Na ga Abandoning Views” above), and ̄ rjuna’s ̄ to interpret him nevertheless as espousing the application of prasaṅ ga only to the limited scope of theses affirming svabha va ̄ or the like is philologically disingenuous and philosophically uncharitable. Of course, in order to arrive at such a thorough-going athesism, Na ga ̄ r̄ juna must systematically deconstruct particular theses through the application of specific prasaṅ gic critiques. These function provisionally as theses but—as with the famous boat in the Lotus Sūtra, which one should discard once having reached the farther shore—they should not be hauled along after having served their purpose. In other words, once the upa yic ̄ effect has been attained—the particular thesis deconstructed—one should abandon the prasaṅ gic deconstruction in search of the next thesis to be deconstructed. Otherwise, one is liable to take the prasaṅ gic deconstruction of theses itself as a thesis; a danger Na ga was acutely aware of and which, ̄ rjuna ̄ as we have seen, he describes colorfully at MK 13:8 as characteristic of the “incurables.” It is thus of the utmost importance to realize that prasaṅ ga, the deconstruction or discarding of theses, should not be construed as itself a thesis. The prasaṅ gic method is that of metathetical critique: a critique of theses qua theses, including those it uses to critique theses. For any species of thesism necessarily impedes one from nirva n̄ ̣ic liberation. Given all this, Na ga “point about how things exist” is only “true,” as ̄ rjuna’s ̄ per Arnold, provisionally. The theses espoused by Na ga though theses ̄ rjuna, ̄ (or perhaps theses), are only functional within the overriding Pra saṅ ̄ gika project of the abandonment of theses/views. As such, they can legitimately only be called theses in a provisional sense, and preferably not at all if we are aiming to avoid the confusions concomitant with apparent self-contradiction. For by calling them theses (pratijña )̄ or views (drṣ ṭi)̣ uncritically, interpreters both misconstrue the force of Na ga prasaṅ gic critique and facilitate ̄ rjuna’s ̄ my further arguments, however, that I see Ruegg’s qualification of the latter as “stipulating that none of the Ma dhyamika’s statements is to be taken as a thesis positing/presupposing/implȳ ing the existence of an entity having self-existence (svabha va)” (emphasis added) as neither textually ̄ nor philosophically justified. 565 The Journal of Religion the (unfair but unfortunately common) criticism of the Ma dhyamikas as il̄ logical and/or/because incoherent. If I have to use a given means so as to arrive at a given end, that does not mean that I take the means as an end. Theses, for Pra saṅ they ̄ gikas, are nothing more than expedient means (upa ya); ̄ do not possess any validity in themselves (nothing does). In other words, they are not to be believed, for they are nothing (are functionally useless) if they are not means toward the abandonment of belief itself. 566