Nice excerpts shared by Nafis.
John Tan: "This is very good and has a flavour of what I meant 👍"
John Tan: “Sentient beings in ignorance tend to seek truly existent entities to attribute causal efficacy to them. In their confusion, they wrongly conclude that since conceptual constructs do not exist inherently, they lack causal efficacy and significance. This view is inverted and in fact contradicts our daily experiences of how things function.The mind that grasps at substantiality fails to comprehend how phenomena, being empty of inherent existence, can still function and possess causal efficacy. This failure arises because the "framework of essentiality" obstructs the "logic" that only phenomena empty of inherent existence can arise dependently and thus have causal efficacy.”
Book: Candrakīrti's Introduction to the Middle Way: A Guide (OXFORD GUIDES TO PHILOSOPHY SERIES) by Jan Westerhoff (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Candrak%C4%ABrtis-Introduction-Middle-Way-PHILOSOPHY/dp/0197612334
Excerpt:
Emptiness does not mean nonexistence
6:107 The opponent is concerned that if, according to Candrakīrti, everything is empty, and nothing ever really arises on the basis of any substantially real causal relation, even at the level of conventional reality, then all things turn out to be nonexistent even conventionally, like a round square, or a barren woman’s son. But since it is absurd to say that everything is nonexistent in this way, we have to conclude that some things are not empty.
6:108 However, even if all things are empty, this does not imply that we cannot differentiate between empty existent and empty nonexistent things. Consider the case of optical illusions. The visual phenomena that sufferers from optical illusions perceive (floating hairs, duplicate objects, mirages in the desert, etc.) are all equally illusory. But this does not mean that each is associated with every ophthalmological condition. The sufferer from floaters sees falling hairs, but no duplicate moons, and no sons of barren women either. In the same way, even though all things are empty, the roles they play relative to our perceptual faculties are not simply interchangeable: sons and squares do appear to them, but sons of barren women and square circles do not.
While there is a reason why specific things, but not others appear to those afflicted by optical illusions, and why specific things, but not others appear to ordinary beings afflicted by ignorance, this is not something the Mādhyamika is particularly interested in. Their aim is to get beyond these erroneous misconceptions, and to do so it is not necessary to understand all the specificities involved in the respective causes bringing them about. Moreover, when looking for the reason why specific things appear to the optically deluded, or to beings deluded by ignorance, we need to ask these beings, to which these appearances do indeed appear, and not the clear-sighted, or highly realized practitioners, to which they no longer appear. The source of the structure of conventional reality is to be found at the level of conventional reality, not at the level of ultimate reality.
6:109 In fact it is not even necessary to ask one suffering from vitreous floaters why he sees hairs, and no sons of barren women. Ubiquitous illusions familiar to anybody (dreams, mirages, reflections, and so forth) produce quite specific perceptions, but not others, even though the perceptions are all unreal. The hot sand in the desert produces the image of a shimmering lake, but no image of the son of a barren woman, even though lake and son are equally nonexistent. If all nonexistent objects are on a par, as the opponent suggests, then the son of a barren woman should actually be perceptible (as some nonexistent objects are), or all nonexistent objects should be equally imperceptible (as the son of a barren woman is).
6:110 There is no conflict between things being on the one hand insubstantial, illusory, and lacking existence ‘from their own side’ and, on the other hand, appearing vividly to our perceptions. While there are some things of this kind that do not even appear to perception (like sons of barren women, or triangular rectangles), not all are like this, and for this reason the opponent’s claim in 6:107, that because everything is empty and causally unproduced by any substantial causal relation, everything must fail to appear, is not true.
6:111 A barren woman’s son is obviously ultimately unreal, but he is also unreal at the level of conventional reality, since he does not appear in anyone’s perception. He is a mere description, and an inconsistent one at that. The same holds for hairs perceived by sufferers from floaters (they lack ultimate and conventional reality), the latter not because they fail to appear perceptually (they do) but because they only appear to a very restricted number of people afflicted by an ophthalmological condition. Their existence is not generally acknowledged by the world, unlike tables and chairs, for example, which lack ultimate, but possess conventional existence.
It is important to note that Candrakīrti here aligns existence by intrinsic nature with the ontological status of sons of barren women: both fail to exist ultimately and conventionally. This is usually regarded as a clear statement of the Prāsaṅgika interpretation of Madhyamaka, according to which Madhyamaka does not support an appearance/reality distinction in relation to entities with intrinsic natures.105 It is not the case that such entities exist conventionally, and fail to exist ultimately, rather they are wholly nonexistent at both the conventional and at the ultimate level.
6:112 Candrakīrti presents scriptural support for the claim that all things are pacified from the outset, intrinsically extinguished, and un-arisen. He interprets this as saying that there was never any time when things existed with intrinsic nature or were produced by a substantially real causal relation (e.g., prior to the realization of emptiness), nor is there any perspective from which they exist or are produced in this way (e.g., the perspective of the ordinary unenlightened being, as compared to that of the enlightened being). Intrinsic natures are neither something that first exists, and is then removed as the practitioner advances temporally from a time when he has no direct understanding of emptiness to a time when he does, nor is it removed when the practitioner advances in terms of levels of understanding from seeing the world in terms of conventional truth to seeing the world in terms of ultimate truth. All things are at all times and from all points of view devoid of intrinsic nature and therefore empty.
6:113 The difference between a barren woman’s son (which is ultimately and conventionally nonexistent) and a pot (which is ultimately nonexistent, though conventionally existent) is that the latter is accepted to exist by common consensus, and thereby forms part of ordinary interactions and exchanges between people. While there is not anything in the pot that exists with intrinsic nature, and therefore needs to be taken seriously at the level of fundamental ontology, pots are embedded in the network of conventions in a way that mere thought-constructions like sons of barren women are not, and it is this embedding that endows them with conventional reality.
In his autocommentary Candrakīrti points out that this picture does not change substantially when we consider the pot’s constituents, that is, the different bits of matter that constitute it. The Madhyamaka position is not that the pot, being only conventionally real, is a conceptual construction superimposed on these constituents, which are ultimately real (as the Ābhidharmikas argue), but that the same analysis is to be applied at the level of the constituents (and the constituents of the constituents—all the way down):106 these too exist only nominally, playing a specific role in our network of conventions, but are not grounded in any substantially real entities.
Benefits of realizing dependent origination
6:114 However, given that Candrakīrti denies substantial causal production at both the ultimate and the conventional level, how do we account for ordinary instances of causation, such as seeds producing sprouts? He responds that even though all the four kinds of causal production have been previously refuted, this does not rule out cause and effect arising in dependence. An important feature of this notion of dependent origination is the mutual dependence exhibited by the entities related by it. The scriptural sources Candrakīrti presents in his autocommentary illustrate this by reference to the mutual dependence of long and short, act and agent, and so on. The underlying view of origination is therefore quite different from the conceptions of causation Candrakīrti refutes, where causal powers are always taken to reside in specific objects, forming part of their intrinsic nature. But if any (or indeed all) objects are mutually dependent in this way, their causal powers cannot be intrinsic, because intrinsic properties cannot themselves depend on other properties. The notion of dependent origination thereby charts a middle course between a total absence of causal regularities in the world on the one hand, and the foundation of causal powers in the intrinsic natures of the causal relata on the other. Things arise in a structured manner at the level of conventional reality, but there is no ontologically weighty basis, either conventionally or ultimately, providing the ultimately real foundation of this arising.
6:115 Given dependent origination, all alternative theories Candrakīrti has so far examined turn out to be deficient, since they either assume the existence of some entity outside of the network of dependent origination (causal agents that have their causal nature in and of themselves in the case of the first three kinds of causal production) or clash with the observation that things arise in an ordered manner (in the case of the fourth kind, the absence of causal relations). Only the theory of dependent origination, Candrakīrti argues, is able to provide insight into the fact that no entity is able to ‘stand on its own’ while at the same time accounting for the fact that the way entities support each other and bring each other into existence is structured, not chaotic. In the same manner, dependent origination undermines a whole set of metaphysical views that either try to ground the world in some ultimate ontology or deny the presence of regularity, structure, or order anywhere in the world. Some examples Candrakīrti mentions include the view that some entities last forever, or that all objects, by their intrinsic nature, are only of a momentary nature, the view that some entities exist substantially, or that the view that everything fails to exist even at the level of conventional reality.
6:116 Once the idea of intrinsic natures has been refuted, none of these metaphysical views which presuppose such natures can be maintained, as there can be no fire without fuel. Once we realize that no entity exists ‘from its own side’ but that all things can only exist in a network of dependence relations involving mental entities, our own interests and concerns, those of others, and material entities,107 the desire to locate the ‘core’ of individual objects, their intrinsic nature, their haecceity, their svabhāva dissipates. As such, theories that ‘things as they are in themselves’ will continue to exist indefinitely, or will at some point be irretrievably destroyed, are objectively divided into mental and physical things, are intrinsically good or bad, and so on, will lose their explanatory appeal. Like a medicine applied to those suffering from floaters makes the appearance of hairs go away, without affecting in any way the nature of the imaginary hairs, so the view of dependent origination leads to the disappearance of metaphysical views committed to entities that are what they are, independent of their being perceived, or being conceptualized, or indeed independent of other things, without in any way changing the way things exist.
6:117 What keeps beings trapped in cyclic existence are conceptual constructions, and liberation is achieved through the elimination of these constructions. The term ‘conceptual construction’ does not refer to just any kind of reason-based mental activity, but specifically to the mental construction of substantially real entities with intrinsic natures. Since such entities do not exist, there are only their representational simulacra in the mind, and the attachment to them as if they were more than mind-made fictions causes the continuity of saṃsāra.108 These conceptual constructions are eliminated through the kind of analysis Candrakīrti has described so far, which shows the nonexistence of the types of substantial entities that form the object of metaphysical theories previously discussed.
6:118 It is therefore important to realize that even though Candrakīrti’s “Introduction to the Middle Way” and Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakārikā look like philosophical texts, they are not, at least as long as we assume that the principal aim of a philosophical text is to refute rival positions and to establish one’s own position. Madhyamaka texts, Candrakīrti argues, are not contributions to philosophical debates, but tools to be applied that help their students overcome conceptual constructions keeping them trapped in cyclic existence. They do so by means of reasoning, and thereby also refute other, contradictory theories. But this is a side effect of achieving a far more important cause than argumentative success, the liberation from existential suffering, as the production of ashes is a side effect of boiling water. Scoring dialectical points is not the primary goal of the Mādhyamika’s presentation of his philosophical position. This underlines the claim that Candrakīrti’s previous discussion of the Sāṃkhya, Yogācāra, Jain, and Cārvāka positions is not, or at least not in the first instance, meant to be a contribution to ancient Indian philosophical debates, but is taken up in order to demonstrate how to eliminate conceptual constructions that manifest in the form of specific philosophical views.
6:119 Not only is the successful defense of one’s own position in philosophical debates not the main purpose of Madhyamaka analysis, it would also be quite counterproductive to conceive of it in this way. Defense of one’s own position in a dialectical exchange can provide another source of attachment, attachment to one’s own view, and with it the pride of having defeated the opponent, the fear of being defeated in future encounters, and the reinforcement of the belief in a substantial self that holds the view we regard as our own. Yet these are manifestations and sources of the very form of existential suffering the Madhyamaka analysis is setting out to overcome, so turning the reasoned exposition of the Middle Way into further fuel for this suffering precisely undermines the purpose it is supposed to serve. This point constitutes one aspect of the claim that Mādhyamikas propound no views, made in some of the sources Candrakīrti quotes in his autocommentary. Another aspect is the reluctance to treat the Madhyamaka view of universal emptiness as something that is itself ultimately true.109 The two aspects are, of course, connected: if the Madhyamaka position is not itself ultimately true, attachment to it arising from the desire to align one’s own position with the ultimate truth about reality loses its foundation.
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The key difficulty Candrakīrti sees with non-Buddhist accounts of the self is that they conceive of it as causally unproduced. As for the Buddhists every object is part of the network of dependent origination,111 describing the self as unproduced groups it together with entities like sons of barren women—things that are fully nonexistent.112 Yet nonexistent things cannot carry out any function, and so, in particular, the self assumed by the non-Buddhist cannot act as the basis of our ordinary sense of self. Arguing that there are two types of self, one empirical one, that is reborn and suffers, and forms the basis of our ordinary sense of self, and one transcendent one, that is unborn, permanent, and beyond suffering,113 is unlikely to resolve this problem, for the two selves would have to be either distinct (in which case there is no unitary self), or identical (in which case the self has contradictory properties).
Moreover, the philosophical sense of self which regards it as substantially real, as transcendent, permanent, without qualities or activities and so forth, plays no role in our conventional cognitive, linguistic, or social practices involving selves. As such, besides any worries that the non-Buddhist notion of a self might not exist at the ultimate level, it is hard to see how, given its radical separation from any conventional practices, it could even be regarded as conventionally real.
6:123 Yet if the self is causally unproduced, and therefore nonexistent like a round square, it also cannot have any properties, since properties are had only by existent objects.114 In particular, a nonexistent self cannot have properties like the five qualities ascribed to it in the Sāṁkhya system, or those ascribed to it in other, non-Buddhist philosophical theories.
6:124 A self postulated by schools like Sāṁkhya would have to be wholly distinct from the psycho-physical aggregates, since we know these to be impermanent, as all parts of our body and mind are subject to constant and rapid change, while the opponent’s self is taken to be permanent. However, since we are not in any perceptual or cognitive contact with such a self that wholly transcends features of the psycho-physical aggregates, such as being connected with a body, perceiving, cogitating, and so on, it is not reasonable to believe that there is this kind of a self. The point is not that entities we cannot perceptually or cognitively apprehend cannot exist, but that entities of this type, even if they existed, would be unfit to play the role of a self.
Moreover, if our sense of self was in fact based on a transcendent, permanent entity separate from perception, thought, etc., as postulated by philosophical theorizing, this would fail to explain how the philosophically untrained could have a sense of self. Beings without training in Sāṁkhya or related philosophical systems evidently have a sense of self, a sense of self which cannot be based on the results of philosophical analysis concluding that there is some self-like entity radically distinct from any events we usually consider to constitute our cognitive lives.
6:125 Furthermore, animals and pre-linguistic children, as well as beings born in the other realms included in Buddhist cosmology, arguably have a sense of self, though they have not acquired it through reflection on the existence of a permanent, transcendent entity separate from the psycho-physical aggregates. As such, it is difficult to see how such a philosophical concept of self could provide the basis of the sense of self of beings of this kind.115
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