Wisdom of Dependent Origination as espoused by Arya Nagarjuna

Wisdom of Dependent Origination as espoused

by Arya Nagarjuna

Summary of Chapter 24 of The Fundamental Wisdom

of the Middle Way

Let me begin with my salutation to the Buddha for his quality of the unconditional compassion which arose on the basis of understanding the ultimate reality.

Enthused by Great Compassion,

You taught the immaculate wisdom of reality,

To dispel the perverted views;

To you the Buddha Gautama, I make salutations.

Dhammapada says:

"All phenomena are of the nature of mind;

Mind is their chief and precedes them all.

If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts

Suffering follows him like the cart that follows the horse."

"All phenomena are of the nature of mind;

Mind is their chief and precedes them all.

If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts

Happiness follows him like the cart that follows the horse."

Here we clearly see that the Buddha is pointing to our mind as finally being responsible for happiness or suffering. And He indicated that the same mind which can be described as Buddha nature – the ultimate seed for anyone to become a Buddha – when sullied or defiled by the mental afflictions, the being who is in possession of that mind is referred to as a samsaric being; One is in samsara. Contrary to this, if the temporary defilements are eliminated, this basic nature of the mind becomes awakened. At that point one becomes a Buddha.

The very purpose for the appearance of Buddha Shakyamuni on this earth is to benefit others, to liberate all beings from suffering. And from the concept of the Four Noble Truths it is clear that He is not only pointing to the truth of suffering but also to the truth of the cause of suffering. It is only through uprooting the cause of suffering that the latter can be eliminated altogether.

While in search of the cause of suffering, He points to the ignorance as the final cause. What is that ignorance? The demonic mind which views the self as so truly existent is the ignorance that obstructs us from seeing the reality. This traps us in the vicious pain of samsara.

All suffering began from this demonic mind as discovered by the Buddha. To understand what this demonic mind of ignorance is, one has to understand what the reality is. Given that the ignorance is the one which misconceives the reality, without knowing what the reality is, we cannot know how the ignorance is obscuring the mind from seeing the reality. When coming to the issue of what constitute the ultimate reality, the Buddha, after achieving Buddhahood, remained forty-nine days silent. On the forty-ninth day, the kings of the Devas like Indra and Brahma, descended down on the earth with great veneration and prostrating, asked:

"Oh the Enlightened One! You have achieved Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings. And yet you are not benefiting beings now; you are not giving teachings. The way by which you could benefit the beings the most efficiently is by teaching. You are not doing that. Why is it so? For the sake of the suffering beings, please start turning the Wheel of Dharma."

And the Buddha replied: "You are right. Why I am not teaching is because I don’t see anyone around me who has the ability to understand the profound ultimate reality which I have discovered."

What is this ultimate reality? In short the Buddha's gesture of not teaching for a while is to indicate that the ultimate reality is very profound, and has unfathomable depth. Without knowing this you cannot eliminate the subtlest of the ignorance. Of course there are so many layers of ignorance. It is not sufficient to eliminate the coarser levels of ignorance for the purpose of releasing yourself from samsara altogether. In order to achieve genuine liberation from ignorance and not just from partial ignorance one has to know how the subtlest ignorance operates.

What is this subtlest of the reality?

This whole concept of the suffering and its causes which the Buddha has delineated is so beautifully and comprehensively highlighted and explained by Arya Nagarjuna, the 2nd century great Nalanda Buddhist master, in a single stanza in his 'The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way."

"Ceasing of samsaric karmas and afflictions is nirvana.

Samsaric karmas and afflictions are given rise to by conceptual misperception,

Which in turn is given rise to by the elaboration of grasping at the true existence of self;

The wisdom realising the ultimate reality brings an end to this elaboration."

The next question is; If it is through realizing the emptiness of true existence that the final ignorance is eliminated, what is meant by emptiness of true existence? What is that ultimate reality – this is the question that we need to deal with. Arya nagarjuna wrote 6 treatises, all extensively explaining what this ultimate reality is constituted of.

The debates one witnesses included in the compositions of Arya Nagarjuna, Acarya Santideva and Acarya Candrakirti – the debates between the Madhyamaka school, the school adhering to Arya Nagarjuna versus other schools - helps us to explore and tease apart the extremely subtle nuances involved with the ultimate reality. Not really can it be said that anyone who claims to correctly understand the view of Buddha Shakyamuni can be taken as his view necessarily tallying with that of Arya Nagarjuna's and thus with Buddha Shakyamuni's.

Arya Nagarjuna has not invented any philosophy; he simply unravels the truth which the compassionate Buddha Shakyamuni taught us in order for us to be liberated.

The whole corpus of teachings on ultimate reality is presented by Arya Nagarjuna, the most essential of which is Mulamadhyamakakarika - the Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. The 24th chapter is the one which I chose to be explained here. One will see the gist of the chapter as follows:

The chapter 24 opens with highlighting the opponents' view of true or intrinsic reality, which surely reflects our mundane natural thinking. This is done to get a clear picture of the object to be negated through cultivating the final wisdom, which alone is the gateway to final freedom from all suffering.

While the objects, instead of being intrinsically real, they are lacking intrinsic nature. However there is a whole set of philosophical schools which proposes the idea of intrinsic reality. They raise the qualm that if there is no intrinsic reality, then existence cannot be posited. In the absence of existence, the action of arising cannot be posited, which is well refuted by our direct experience of the world where we see plants growing from seeds and suffering arising from their respective causes. It shows us the fact of how the truth of suffering is given rise to by the second truth - the truth of the cause of suffering. And the truth of cessation coming forth because of the truth of the path leading to it. As the positive factors arise, the negatives diminishe. So this process of arising and diminishing of the negativities is not possible, in the eyes of the opponents of Arya Nagarjuna if there is no intrinsic reality at all. This is their qualm.

They further argued Arya Nagarjuna, that if there is no phenomena of arising or diminishing, how then can one account for the Four Noble Truths which is the principle teaching accepted by all followers of the Buddha. If one does not accept the Four Noble Truths, how can one account for the practitioners of these Four Noble Truths? Without the practitioners of the Four Noble Truths, how is Buddhhood accounted for which is the highest goal aimed at by the practitioners.

In summary, the proponents of intrinsic reality argue against Arya Nagarjuna that while claiming to be a Buddhist, he denigrates Buddhism in real sense; He is further criticized for not accepting Three Jewels for refuge, the Four Noble Truths and also the functionalities of all things as they are.

Arya Nagarjuna responded by saying: "The qualms you raised against me are not because I have the flaws, rather they reflect your own inaptitude; You failed to understand the following three points:

1)      the purpose of understanding emptiness.

2)      the nature of emptiness - Ultimate Reality.

3)      the meaning of emptiness.

Arya Nagarjuna explains the three points as follows:

1)      The purpose of understanding emptiness:

He reiterates that it is finally to eliminate this demonic egoistic ignorance which misperceives things to be intrinsically real and which gives rise to all the mental agitations, irritations, suffering, pain and anxiety. As long as one believes in things as existing truly or from the object's side, there is always a tendency for one to react to the object. When one believes things to exist objectively and when the object appears to be attractive, one cannot control ones mind from going after it. This is attachment. And when one sees the object as being disgusting from the object's side or intrinsically, then one cannot control ones mind from running away from it.  This is aversion. Arya Nagarjuna says that the very purpose of meditating on emptiness, gaining the wisdom of emptiness is, to eliminate all these negative emotions - attachment, aversion and so forth. But as long as one has a belief that objects exist intrinsically - from the object's side, there is no way that one can eliminate the subtlest of ignorance and thus the negative emotions.  

2)      The meaning of emptiness:

Arya Nagarjuna says:

Whatever is dependently originated,

Is taught to be empty of true existence.

That being dependently designated;

This is said to be the Middle Way.

What he is implying here is that emptiness should not be thought of in terms of nihilistic voidness. Instead it is to be understood from the other side of the coin - which is dependent origination. What is meant by emptiness? It means emptiness of independent existence. When you negate independent existence, what is implied is dependent existence. Emptiness, thus, does not mean nothingness. It instead means dependent origination or dependent existence. Which means everything coming into existence by dependence on other factors. It does not infer nihilism, instead implies fullness of so many other factors upon which the object is dependent. Things are there; functionalities are there; functionality connotes something is changing from one phase to the next phase. Things are changing; causes giving rise to results; it happens only if there is dependency where the results depend on the causes. Thus emptiness of independent existence should not be read as nothingness, rather as dependent existence. Arya Nagarjuna summarizes this pointed by saying:

There is no phenomena which  is not dependently originated;

There is no phenomena which is not empty of true existence.

This is the meaning of emptiness as interpreted by Arya Nagarjuna.

Different schools interpret dependent origination - pratitya samutpada - in different ways. Broadly speaking, there are three levels of the understanding of dependent origination. His Holiness the Dalai Lama so beautifully captures the three levels of the understanding of dependent origination as follows.

a)      Dependent origination of dependence on causes and conditions. Any result, for its coming into being, necessarily depends on it's causes and conditions preceding the object.

b)      Dependent origination of dependence on parts. Here the dependence may not be in sequence. The whole which depends on its parts for its existence is simultaneous with the parts on which it is dependent. For example the auditorium that we are in presently arose dependently from its parts like the roof, the walls, the floor and so forth. The auditorium simultaneous exists with its parts.

c)      Dependent origination of dependence on mere designation. Things exist through mere subjective imputation; things come into existence through dependence on our subjective mind which perceives them. It is dependent origination of dependence on the mind that designates things. This third level has great resemblance with modern physics of the theory of relativity as well as the theory of quantum mechanics. This reflects the subtlest level of dependent origination, the understanding of which alone has the power to eliminate the final ignorance.

3) As for the nature of emptiness, Arya Nagarjuna is implying that emptiness should not be thought of in terms of solid object but in terms of inexpressibility in words and thought, whose bare nature is beyond conceptuality. On that level, it transcends the conventionality. He explains 5 natures ascribed to the ultimate reality such as the utterlessness of emptiness in words and so forth.

Conclusion:

Arya Nagarjuna concludes by mentioning that contrary to things being dependently originated and empty of independent existence, if they do exist independently, it then denigrates dependent origination, which has the implication that results are not dependent on causes. In which case causation cannot be posited. Without causation, there is no arising and disintegration. It in turn leaves one unaccountable for the Four Noble Truths. Thus  the Three Jewels cannot be posited. In which case one can not be a Buddhist oneself.

Witnessing the rigorous flow of the debates between the two sides, one then slowly unfolds the beauty in the spontaneity of Arya Nagarjuna's view of dependent origination; while rejecting all degrees of intrinsic and independent existence, espouses the full breath of the functionality of the world and going in total conformity with the day-to-day experience of life.