NIRVANASHATKAM

[Sankar Jayanarayanan]

Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian <rbalasub at ECN.PURDUE.EDU> wrote:

> >as well as what Buddha was attempting to convey in his silence in response
> >to questions re the idea [and *not* the nature] of atman
>
> Unfortunately, the spoken word of Buddha contradicts this. The pali
> canon is considered to be genuinely Buddha's words and in the kacchAyana
> gotta sutta, his disciple asks him about reality. He replies that "some
> say asti (is)" and some say "na asti" (is not), clearly references to
> vedAntins and materialists respectively. He further says he has examined
> all doctrines and found none of them sufficient and expounds his way,
> viz, the middle path. It would be a great mis-understanding to claim
> that Buddha was saying Atman is beyond words by this. The upanishhad-s
> already said so and Buddha claimed that these were not sufficient.
> Buddha very clearly said that there is no substratum behind the
> illusion. It is very convenient to interpret the "void" as Atman, but
> Buddha makes it clear that is not what he means.
>

This is a bad (mis)interpretation of Buddha. The Buddhist philosophy which
begins with Buddha and proceeds through Nagarjuna and others is *not* an
ontological thesis, but rather a linguistic philosophy. The "void" in
Nagarjuna's writings refer not to a "reality" (as Nagarjuna himself says,
"If one believes these writings to refer to a treatise on reality, he's lost").
The main thesis of Nagarjuna is that the words that we use are *void* of
meaning.

According to Nagarjuna, there are two truths: the vyavahAra and the paramArtha.
Words like "This horse is grazing here" makes sense at the conventional level,
but at the ultimate level, it makes absolutely no sense. Nagarjuna says,"Those
who do not understand the distinction between the two truths, do not understand
the profundity of the Buddha's message."

This is the heart of Nagarjuna's interpretation of Buddha's silence:
that reality cannot be described.

Any way to describe it only results in nonsense.

As Karl Jaspers says in the chapter "Nagarjuna" in his book "The Great
Philosophers" : "The search is for a geniune truth which is beyond the
scope of words."

Richard King says,"Shunyavada is not the correct way to describe this
philosophy, unless it is used to mean that 'All doctrines are Empty' ."
(In the best book on the KArika, "Early advaita Vedanta and Buddhism").

> All advaitins, including our Ramana Maharshi (as shown by my quote)
> clearly belong to the "asti" bandwagon and not otherwise. There is no
                        ^^^^^

Not true of the mADUkya kArikA. There are several passages where the claim is
made that people "cover THAT up" by saying things like "sat" "asat" "sadasat"
and "asadasat."

> need to include the Buddha in the advaitic band-wagon. It is neither
> necessary nor is advaita validated just because the Buddha said so
> (which he clearly did not). Not only that it would make shrI gauDapAda
> and shrI sha.nkara complete ignoramuses for trying to prove the
> fallacies of Buddhism and shrI gauDapAda makes it _very_ clear that he
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> was refuting Buddha.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That is far from being clear. There is nothing whatsoever in the KArikA that
can establish the above claim. And there is way too much to the contrary.

> Instead they could have merely waved hands and
> claimed that the Buddha was an advaitin, just because he was silent on
> some questions. Not only that, it would make complete idiots out of that
> great philosopher nAgArjuna and his commentators dharmakIrti and also
> vasubandhu for spending much of their time proving no substratum is
> required (as opposed to vedAnta). Even a cursory examination of
> nAgArjuna's works will clearly show how it is opposed to vedAnta. Try,
> "The philosophy of the middle way", by David Kalupahana, SUNY press.

Kalupahana tries to Bring out a "new interpretation" of Nagarjuna by presenting
ideas that don't seem correct. He is correct in saying that Nagarjuna's thesis
is that "All this is empty," but incorrect in not observing that the "this" in
the sentence refers to the philosophy of emptiness itself (that no philosophy
can describe reality), which is what Cheng says in his book "Empty Logic" which
I think is a better book on Nagarjuna.

egodust <egodust at DIGITAL.NET> wrote:

> > Whether it is ajAtivAda or otherwise, _every_ advaitin says that Atman
> > is beyond words. So that has nothing to do with ajAtivAda per se.
> > ajAtivAda is that causality does not make sense (as proved clearly by
> > shrI gauDapAdaa) and hence Atman is unborn.
> >
>
> True enough, yet it also asserts "no liberation, no-one to be liberated,"

Which is so very nearly similar to Nagarjuna's own words, which is
"samsAra is nirvANa and nirvANa is samsAra...between the extremities of
samsAra and nirvANa, not the subtlest difference is evident."

What Nagarjuna wanted to say was that seeing differences, (seeing duality)
is not reality.

[..]

-kartik