“Buddhist Nonduality, Melbourne, Middle Way, Nagarjuna

A Whole New Way

Perceiving the World

Based on Nagarjuna

(Madhyamika Buddhism)

This thesis has been extensively revamped 29/6/2025

Tony Mortimer

Preliminary Note

The philosophy of the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama approx. 500bc) represents something of a watershed not only in the history of Buddhist philosophy but in the history of philosophy as a whole. He claimed access to no divine wisdom, no unique intuition, no worldly or spiritual authority, and no super-human status of any kind. The philosophy he taught uproots the very beliefs and assumptions so easily resorted to in our attempt to understand the world. Among these assumptions are: the reality of solid fixed objects; the reality of a permanent fixed self in people; the reality of an intrinsic absolute or ultimate; the reality of an afterlife, or of God, or of birth and death, and so on.

This treatise is based principally on Nagarjuna (200 A.D. approx) the founder of the Buddhist Madhyamika school (Middle Way) and he is often referred to as the second Buddha. The original Buddha was Siddhartha Gautama (approx. 500b.c.). Nagarjuna attributes all his knowledge and insight to him. The Prasangika school is very similar. Many of Nagarjuna’s disciples (Chandrakirti 600a.d, Shantideva 800 a.d, Tsongkhapa 1300 a.d) as well as other Sages, teachers and philosophers (both Eastern and Western philosophers) from ancient times through to the present day who share in his view and wisdom are also included in this thesis. When the expression (the Buddha says) is used, this may be referring to Gautama or Nagarjuna or to one of his many learned disciples.

So what exactly did the Buddha (Nagarjuna) say or teach? What secrets did he reveal? Do any of us really know? It is certainly very different to what I had imagined. Fortunately, what he said was recorded and so is available today, but it certainly takes some finding. This treatise should short-circuit the search. It will concentrate on the message, which we may come to see makes a lot of sense. It is the message that has the power to liberate and change, after all, enlightenment is simply a change of mindset. Don’t try to change the world, rather, change your mind about the world. The very same world is samsara or nirvana, dependent upon one’s perspective or attitude. From the perspective of nirvana though, it is a very different world. It is said that nirvana is the clarity and peace that arises when our mental turmoil ends because the objects with which we have been identifying are realized to be empty. The key is to see all things as empty.

In the philosophical environment in which Buddhism evolved, the concept of something inherent, unchanging, stable and permanent was very important. This is the cultural background against which Buddhism was working. The Buddha, with his investigation into the nature of human experience, basically came to the conclusion that something permanent, something inherent that underlies our experience is an entirely constructed concept. The claim of stability, permanence, inherent existence, or something that does not depend on other things, he says, is really just an idea that we project onto our world. Everything is in fact impermanent; which is testified both logically and empirically. So one of the principal insights of Buddhism is that the entire world of our experience, both inner and outer, is fundamentally in a state of constant change, impermanence and flux. Nothing permanent, autonomous or self-contained can be found anywhere, including a permanent abiding “self” in people.

I hope I am painting somewhat an accurate picture of the Buddha’s message. I hope you get answers to your unanswered questions. I also hope you get as much out of this as I did in compiling it. Just to encounter the Buddha’s teachings in one’s lifetime is a miracle in itself. Anyone who applies these teachings, the Buddha says, will be freed from suffering and will attain enlightenment.

For more information: google my blog: “buddhist nonduality, melbourne, middle way, nagarjuna.”

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For details of meetings in Caulfield Nth, contact: Tony Mortimer.

E.mail: tonymortimer15@yahoo.com.au

Phone 0415302827

29/6/2025

Contents

Suffering 7

No Self 11

Dependent Origination 21

The Tangle of Theorizing 25

It’s all in the Mind 34

Nirvana 39

Emptiness 45

Inherent Existence 53

Mental Constructions 61

No Self, No problem 69

Objects 73

The Illusion of Self 77

The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination 83

Anatta (Not-Self) 87

What Happens after Death 92

Words and Language 96

Empty Logic 102

Interdependence 106

Imputations of Mind 118

Substance (Svabhava) 122

The Two Truths 127

Non-origination 133

Non-creation and Non-destruction 137

Cause and Effect 144

No Beginning or End 151

Enlightenment 153

Existence and Nonexistence 156

The Existence of God 159

Impermanence 162

The Emptiness of Emptiness 164

Summarizing the Main Points 167

Final Insights 178

Suffering

In order to break through the solidity of conditioned existence the Buddha made three basic observations, which he called “the Three Marks of Existence”, namely: that all phenomena are impermanent and nothing can be counted on to endure; that it is not possible to find lasting (permanent) satisfaction in mere transitory things; and because everything is impermanent there can be no permanent “self” that abides in people. This is the enlightened perspective. But one who does not perceive these facts will believe that things are permanent or real; that it is possible to find lasting satisfaction in these things; and that there is a permanent enduring self or ego. This is the unenlightened perspective (ignorance) and is the root cause of all suffering.

The Buddha understood that the thing humanity was most concerned about was pervasive suffering. He also knew suffering is not an unregenerate condition; it can be alleviated. Hence, alleviating suffering is his primary goal.

Suffering, the Buddha says, is occasioned by grasping after things, be it the thirst for the pleasant or aversion to the unpleasant. This grasping or desiring, having mere impermanent (transitory) things as its object, will always be frustrated because it can never be satisfied by transitory things. This is similar to the frustration we experience in chasing (grasping) after a mirage of water in the desert falsely believing it will satisfy our thirst. We grasp after things in the world in much the same way. We commit our whole being in pursuit of mere transitory things. Once the imagined existence of things is established, attraction or aversion to perceived things (cyclic existence) inevitably follows. We become trapped in a cycle of craving, attachment, and aversion, constantly chasing after pleasures or avoiding discomfort. Subject to the power of attachment ill will and pride, like addicts, we are compelled to pursue things without freedom to do otherwise. Undertaking this or that activity in pursuit of the appearing phenomena, shrinking from the unpleasant and the grasping after the pleasant, the pain of birth and the terror of death, the frustration of growing old and feeble that causes us great suffering. It is the inability to experience these mere transitory appearances just as they are without blocking or warping our experiences of them that affect us mostly. Even the pleasant things in life are grasped after with an unwarranted desire which overestimates the pleasure they will give, and is accompanied by a constant fear of their loss. Thus beings become bound to their conceptions, bound to objects, and bound to cyclic existence itself, which is samsara.

A principal cause of affliction is the process through which a person falsely perceives reality in unreal (transitory) things feels passionate attractions or aversions to perceived things and then grasps onto them. This state of confusion impels one to actions meant to secure those objects of desire, or alternatively, remove those objects of aversion. This is the basis of afflicted action, which in turn leads to further grasping and desiring. It’s almost as if we attribute the desirability or undesirability as an actual property inherent to the things themselves. To the extent that we are bound by desires and expectations, we are bound to delusion which inevitably leads to disappointment and suffering

The Buddha points out the painful and sad futility of our clinging to objects, people, ideas, experiences and a self that simply cannot be held no matter how tightly they are grasped. With no essential nature, neither our own selves nor the things around us, have any inner handle by which we can grab and hold them. The doctrine of emptiness can help eradicate suffering that comes from grasping at what are but mere empty appearances because it teaches us that there is really nothing to be possessed. Since everything is inherently empty (like empty reflections in a mirror) nothing can be truly grasped. Our continuous and unceasing attempts to satisfy our hunger by acquiring the objects of our desires are doomed to failure from the very onset. The objects do not possess within themselves properties that will satisfy our desire (the eye is not satisfied with seeing, the ear is not fulfilled by hearing, and the mind is pulsating for more) so the desire will, sooner or later, be frustrated. Our frustration arises from and feeds our grasping. We lay schemes large and small to protect and to accumulate. Over and over again, moment after moment we unwittingly fall into this trap, building a prison for ourselves, brick by brick. Trying to take refuge in insubstantial, transient, and ultimately unsatisfying things is a great source of misery for ourselves. We seem to always be in pursuit of some new goal, some new object of desire. The belief that “if only I had this I would be happy”, “If only one had more money”, or “a better job,” or one was more “talented,” “healthier,” “attractive” etc. This craving after unsatisfying things leads us to waste our lives in their pursuit, or leads us to berate and hate ourselves for failing to obtain them

We suffer greatly and unnecessarily, the Buddha says, because we are plagued by ignorant misconceptions of how the world exists. We tend to see ourselves and the things around us as permanent, autonomous, independent entities. Whereas, the Buddha demonstrates that all things are impermanent, contingent and constantly changing. So the path to freedom, he says, is the path of abandoning our ignorant misperceptions. Ignorance is the basis of all faults and afflictions, the root of all of our problems. In this context, ignorance refers specifically to the mind that misperceives: what is unreal as real; what is constantly changing to be unchanging; what is dependent to be independent; what is essentially unsatisfactory to be satisfactory; what is insubstantial to be substantial and what is essentially impermanent to be permanent.

It is said that you become attached to things by the power of an afflictive misunderstanding that causes one to grasp after mere transitory things. This generates attachment and hostility with regard to them. We are positively attached to things (through attraction) or negatively attached to them (through aversion). ‘I like this and I don’t like that’, ‘I want more of this and less of that’, ‘I love this and require it to be content’, ‘I hate this and whenever it happens I am filled with dread and anxiety’. Numerous negative emotions (depression, anger, attachment, fear and ill-will) spring up when our desires are not attained; we are left feeling dissatisfied because ‘I’ doesn’t get its way. Reality cannot be something that fulfils wants or desires.

The Buddha’s “Four Noble Truths” explains the process of suffering, namely: life is permeated by suffering (dukkha); the cause of suffering is desiring (craving) after mere transitory things; there is a remedy to suffering – the cessation of craving and grasping after things; and consolidation of these facts on the path.

Desires are imaginative constructs that value worthless things as full of worth. They are a deep seated addiction that is at the root of all suffering. By desire, the Buddha refers to: craving pleasure, craving material goods, or craving immortality; all of which are wants that can never be satisfied by mere transient things. Desiring or craving things is like craving after a mirage in the desert hoping the “water” will quench our thirst. Understanding the futility of such craving, the Buddha says, puts an end to ignorance. When ignorance ceases, this will cause neither passionate attractions nor aversions to come into play. This will prevent grasping and craving. If one ceases to grasp and crave, then dispositions will cease, and so, suffering cease.

Concluding remarks:

The belief in intrinsic existence of things, whether that be an intrinsic object or an intrinsic self, is the source of primal confusion, the root of vicious attraction and aversion, of all vice, and so of all suffering. Confusion, born of fear, generates attraction and aversion. Our aversion to that which we find distasteful is at bottom a reaction to the fact that it reminds us of our own impermanence and vulnerability. Our aversion is a way of warding off the fear of interdependence – of being out of control, of being subject to the natural laws that issue in our ageing, infirmity, reliance on others, and our eventual demise. When one becomes truly aware of the terror that frames one’s life, this generates the impulse to take refuge and to strive for awakening.

In an ancient Suttra a young disciple Subrahma explains the crux of the human condition to the Buddha. “Always anxious is this mind, this mind is always agitated about problems present and future; please tell me the release from fear.” The Buddha replied: “that root is “clinging”.

We cling to our possessions, our family and friends, to our status and to our very life taking them to be real persisting and lasting entities. To cling to anything is to aim at protecting and preserving it. Yet to make such an attempt is to run smack up against the very nature of everything – their impermanence. To see the truth that all conditioned things are impermanent disintegrating and bound to perish is to turn away from clinging. So if you are feeling disappointed, depressed or anxious, recognize it is impermanent and is thus subject to change so it will soon pass. Though dwelling in the midst of aging sickness and death, there is no fear, no tremor or agitation, no anxiety, no danger from any quarter. One sees security everywhere.

No Self

The Buddha categorically states that there is no permanent “self” or ego in people. Since the body is impermanent there certainly can be no permanent “self” abiding within it. (If there were such a self, it can’t even prevent the disintegration of the very body on which it depends). The false sense of an intrinsic “self”, he says, is at the root of all our problems.

Most of us have a compelling sense of a “self”; a “self” that is permanent like and unchanging. Buddhist thought argues against the very notion of such a permanent “self.” They claim that there is no such thing. … That is, they deny that anything retains its identity over time (this is the doctrine of universal impermanence), and that even at a given moment, there is no unchanging entity as to who we are, and nothing in us that fits this description.

Despite noticing that everything in the world is constantly changing and is impermanent, and despite noticing that thoughts, feelings, perceptions and body sensations change every instant (we are all aging), we want there to be some kind of permanent, unchanging “self” within us that remains the same, something that will survive anything that might happen to our body and mind. So one holds on tightly to this identity of a self or me; either we assume there’s someone in control of this body and mind, or that our awareness, volition, feelings, and consciousness are a sign of something inherently real underneath everything. We may believe this someone we assume is present within us, or will disappear after our death, or that it will continue on in some way, but our conviction that we exist in this real and inherent way remains unshaken.

Of course we exist. We are living beings. We make choices and our choices make a difference for ourselves and others. But at some level, for all of us, we cannot just leave it at that. To be real, to be alive, we feel that we must deep down somehow exist in a solid and independent way. Whereas, the Buddha teaches that we exist contingently dependently and not independently. We exist, but only in dependence on our ancestors, our body parts, our food, air and water. We could not and do not exist otherwise. Rather than seeing things as they are, we superimpose upon ourselves, and on the things around us, a false independent permanent existence, a self-existence, an essential core reality, an essence or a self. That so called intrinsic self, that subject of experience and agent of action, that underlying essence or core (but which Buddhist philosophers argue does not exist) is the self that we all instinctively take ourselves to be, and tenaciously protect and defend. We do not deny we exist conventionally as a person, what we deny is that we exist independently or intrinsically having an essence or core nature. So let us investigate and see if we can find or locate such an inherent self.

For example, if a self exists then we should be able to find it within either our body or our mind. We have to analyze each part to find where the sense of self comes from. You should investigate from the hair of your head down to your toes whether or not any particular part of your body is self. Could the self be the head, the legs, the torso, the skin, the heart, the brain, and so on. None of these body part candidates could be said to be an identical match with the self. Another reason the self cannot be the body or its parts is because the body is unconscious and the self is meant to be conscious. Perhaps then, the self is the mind (such as, feelings, thoughts, perceptions, cognition, consciousness or awareness). But if the self is the mind, then which particular state of the mind is it? The mind undergoes a myriad of states from its birth to its death. Yesterday I was happy, today I am depressed, and tomorrow I may be overjoyed. Which of these states represents the real me? It cannot be all of them, nor can I single out one of them. Likewise, the self cannot be our awareness or consciousness because they are constantly changing like our mind. Perhaps it is something that lies behind the mental states, the locus upon which the mental fluctuations occur. But if this were the case, how could I know it at all, since it would be distinct from my thoughts? On what basis would I be able to convincingly postulate that such a thing existed in the first place? And the self cannot be the combination of its body/mind parts (like an intrinsic “whole” of the parts) because the combination of the encounters the same problems as the individual parts. Finally the body/mind can’t dwell in the self because no self is established.

According to standard Buddhist doctrine the subtlest, deepest, and most dangerous false view held by humans is the belief in a permanent, independent self. Afraid of death and the possibility of our personal nonexistence, we desperately impute and cling to a permanent, unchanging subject or self that is always there. There is something that seems to be me (what I feel as subjectively existing, unchanging and independent), and something that seems not to be me (that which is experienced apart from myself, objectively). The self, or me, is like something in the background, something subjective, not objective. This self or “me” is perceived as a separate entity apart from the body, hence the expressions: my body, my arm, my mind, my suffering, etc. Whatever could be named, say arm, was not me because it was “my” arm. The “my” or “I” seemed to be something different from arm. But where was this “I”? It’s not as though we don’t have a strong sense of it, but no matter where we look, it can’t be found. By contemplating “no self” gives us certainty of its absence.

The view that there is a self in here, in this body, that remains unchanged – even as the body undergoes birth, growing, ageing, and so on; or even after death for some; or perhaps only in this life for others – constitutes the view of a subjective self or “I”. If you were to lose your hand, you still feel “I am the same old me”. That view, that the self remains unchanged, pertains to the stance or position of an inherent self, which factually, simply cannot be found. Thus, maintaining belief in an intrinsic self after analysis is a result of personal discomfort with the idea that reality has no underlying and unchanging self or substance.

Despite our wish to be something lasting, something permanent we can’t help noticing that everything is impermanent and disintegrating. Our bodies are disintegrating moment by moment, right now. And though we desperately wish to believe otherwise, the truth is that beneath our ever changing minds and aging bodies there is nothing eternal, nothing permanent, nothing that remains unchanged. We are caught, as it were, between our sense of self as something unchanging, and the knowledge of the inescapable state of transience or impermanence of everything. As the life story of the Buddha reveals, the Buddhist path was inspired by this very problem, and it offers us a way to resolve it. In fact, the erroneous belief in permanence (inherent existence), whether that be permanent objects and things or a permanent self, has been the root cause of our confusion and suffering all along. The Buddha’s teaching on impermanence serves as a correction to permanence, but once it has done its job one should not cling to impermanence. Reality avoids all extremes: permanence or impermanence, existence or non-existence, samsara or nirvana .

The concept of no-self is of great significance in Buddha’s teaching. There is nothing from our experience – the way we experience life, perceive life, think and communicate – which would give the secret away. There are no hints. Even Sherlock Holmes could not have solved this one. It is completely contrary to what the appearance seems to indicate. What the teaching says is that within this human being, consisting of mind and body, and the mental attributes of feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness, there is no additional entity called self which can be found to exist. There are perception, feelings, personality traits, physical parts such as hands, legs and heart; but no self. It does not sound right. Our experience seems to point back to someone in here, a me, or a self.

Even when people develop high states of meditation, as in India, where there were many different systems of religious teachers, spiritual seekers with their own systems of training of the mind who were very accomplished they simply were stuck on this appearance of a permanent self. There was a centre to all this subjective experience. There was a self, a centre point, someone in there who is experiencing. Therefore, every teaching that came out of India seemed to revolve around this one form or another dealing with this self, Brahman, atman, or ego. In Christianity we have the soul.

So there are many different notions about this core, which is the real me, and everything else are attributes of me – my house, my money, my body, my thoughts or my feelings. The me was the root of all these. So the Buddha in his teaching has burst the bubble and realised for himself that there was really no me, no self, no real point that was a centre, and he taught the teaching of no-self. And he stated it in no confusing terms. He stated very clearly no self over and over again. There is no self to be found in this mind and body, of any form or any shape either in it or out of it anywhere. “No self – full stop.” But no-self does not mean nothing, non-existence, no personality, no person. Of course you are you, the conventional every day person, which is not denied. There is a mind and body, there is a personality, but no self.

The understanding of no self is a well kept secret. The signs are not easy to read. The conditioning is so strong. We have been taught over and over again that there is a real you and that it is within you. You believe it whether you understand or not. However we are fortunate that we have the seeds. The Buddha’s seeds are being planted in our minds. Maybe actually there is nobody there, nobody at home at all. So you can’t forget that now.

In order to catch a thief we have to know who the person is and what he or she looks like. The greatest thief of all is our mistaken sense that self (and all other phenomena) truly exist or inherently exist. We believe that things really exist the way they appear to our senses, as objectively established, as existing from their own side. This, then, is what we have to know in order to catch this great thief, who steals all our happiness and peace of mind. Therefore, we must recognize the false, inherent sense of self before we can start actually refuting or eliminating it.

When we start observing how the false self – the self we have habitually assumed to exist in persons and objects – manifests, we soon discover that it does not exist at all. Before we begin cultivating this understanding, our sense of self seems to be really there, very solid and substantial, but as soon as we start checking we cannot find it. It disappears. If the self truly did exist the more we searched for it the more concrete it should become…we should at least be able to find it. But if it can’t be found, how can it possibly exist?

When someone calls you by your name, by the time you respond there is some kind of concept or picture of yourself that has emerged in your mind. You may not get a very clear or lucid concept of this self, but you do experience some kind of rough imagery of yourself before you answer. This self is something that seems to exist independently of anything else. It’s a sort of solid point, a fixed entity that is just there by itself. It becomes particularly clear when we’re angry or afraid. We can provoke these emotions in contemplation and, while maintaining them, recognize how we conceive our self.

The self seems to exist independent of causes or conditions (like parents, food, water, etc), independent of its parts, and independent of being perceived. The self appears to be inherently existent. Not only does it appear to be inherently existent, we might also actually believe that it exists this way. This appearance and this belief make up the conception of inherent existence. The conception of inherent existence is said by Middle Way Buddhism to be the root of suffering. Moreover, just because we have the conception of an inherently existing self does not mean that such a self exists.

How do we ascertain an inherently existing self? For example, after a swift kick in the shin or a false accusation (or a true one), a very palpable sense of an inherently existing self, arises. Blood and anger might arise, the stomach might get queasy. “How could they do that to me? I’ll show them!” This sense, fired by the pain of indignation, seems to point to a self that is really there, and at the moment, a very offended self. This sense of self (not the insulted-ness, but the self that has suffered the insult) is a sense that feels like I am really there. This sense does not seem like a self that depends on other things. It does not seem to be dependent on the parts and pieces of the body/mind, and it does not seem to be dependent upon being imputed by thought. It seems like one very wronged but very real self. Other examples where we can we ascertain an inherently existing self is that sense of disappointment when our football team loses, or we miss out on the job we wanted, or our political party loses, or we are enraged by incompetent wasteful and unaccountable politicians, dodgy lawyers, and so on. These are examples of aversion to things, but attraction to things also causes us suffering. The happiness we experience is short lived; it is not long before our team loses.

It is said in Middle Way Buddhism that this conception of inherent existence essence or core nature is a misconception. It is a misconception because although things appear to exist in this way (inherently) they actually do not exist in this way. They can nowhere be found. Nothing exists inherently or independently. But this does not mean nothing at all exists. We exist, but dependently, dependent on aggregates, parents, food and so on, therefore, we do not exist independently or inherently.

We all have a valid, conventional sense of self (ourselves as a person)but then we additionally have a misconception of that self as existing inherently. Under the sway of this delusion, we view the self as existing under its own power, established by way of its own nature, able to set itself up. If there were such a separate self, self-established and existing in its own right, its existence should become clearer and clearer under the light of competent analysis. In fact, the closer we look, the more it is not found. This turns out to be the case for all other things as well. The fact that you cannot find an essence or core independent nature means that those phenomena are not self-established by their own power.

The misconception of self in persons, or a core or essence in phenomena, is like when a rope is mistaken for a snake. The snake is merely projected by the force of a mistaken mind. It is easy to understand that there is not the slightest trace of existence of a snake from the side of the rope. The moment that a person thinks that there is a snake where the coiled rope lies, the appearance of a snake arises in that person’s mind. That appearance, however, is nothing but a projection, imputed from the side (mind) of the person. From the side of the rope, there is no snake.

Just like a snake is imputed on a coil of rope, likewise an “I” is imputed or projected onto the body/mind aggregates. In other words, although “clinging to “I” may occur, the object of clinging (an inherently existent “I”) is a mere figment, as non-existent as the apparent snake. Nothing within body and mind (the head, the legs, the skin, the brain, the mind, the feelings) is in even the slightest way the “I”. Nor can we find the “I” outside the body and mind (like a soul or a spirit). Hence, the “I” is merely set up by concepts and imputed upon the body and mind aggregates; it is not established by way of its own entity. Still, the name “I” serves its function conventionally.

One of the first things labelled, and the most troublesome, is my “self”. When we are born, we are given a name, and as we grow up we learn to think of ourselves as things that “self-exist” like the other things that we learn how to name. In this way “I” gain a sense of permanent identity that persists through the various activities I do. Language is intimately involved because it is with language that our sense of self is constructed. Buddhist thought deconstructs our unexamined belief in the reification of language by revealing the contradictions that plague it. Awakening involves realizing that linguistic categories (including the “I”) do not refer to real things. There is no intrinsic entity that corresponds to the label “I”.

The “I” or self exists merely by imputation. It exists by labelling or by terms and concepts superimposed onto the body-mind aggregates from the side of the mind. However, when we consider our own sense of self, we don’t really get the sense of an imputed self; the feeling we have is more as if the self exists inherently. Let me explain how the labelling, or imputation, works. For example: two people may impute contradictory characteristics on the one basis, say John. One might say John is likeable and the other says he is unlikeable. From John’s side he can’t be both; this is a contradiction. This shows that the qualities of likeable and unlikeable do not inhere in John but are merely imputed on John through thought or conceptually from the side of the mind or observer. From the side of John, John does not have these qualities, nor the quality of a self; they are not in John

Everything we perceive, everything we experience and everything we know is mediated through our mind. Nothing can exist apart from the mediation of the mind. The self is no exception. We can only know or be aware of the self through thought or mind. So the self is imputed by thought from the side of the mind. From its own side, from the side of the self, there is nothing out there, nothing independent and autonomous that is completely apart from the mind that we can pin down and point to. When we ask how the self exists in and of itself apart from mind we never find a shred of a thing – in – itself. This is attested by logic and empirical evidence. An independent self cannot be found. The self is nothing more than a conceptual abstraction. It has no intrinsic nature in itself. It exists only by imputation from the side of the mind, somewhat like a self or I in a dream.

However, the self does not present its lack of independent nature to our senses; instead, it deceptively appears to be a real entity established in its own right. We have fallen prey to this deception, we have falsely perceived this imputed self to be a real independent entity; it is our identity, it is who we really are. And so it is this sense of our own self (which factually does not exist, but is imagined to exist) that experiences such things as birth and death, suffering and depression, pride and arrogance, win and loss. We spend our lives protecting and defending this false sense of self through the accumulation of wealth, power, and status, through the pursuit of perfection and self-promotion and through the defeat and humiliation of our rivals. The anxious self, worried about its own insufficiency, is at the root of most human anxiety. Buddhists say everything is impermanent and this impermanence extends to the self. Hence, there is no such thing as a self that could survive death. They argue that we only fear death because we suffer from an illusion of a persistent self: if the self does not exist, it is irrational to fear the death of self.

The sense of self is intimately connected to body identification. We are obsessed with our body, “my” body (what we like or don’t like about our body). This sense of “my” body gives us the false impression of a “my” or “self” in the background that is separate from our body and it is this very background “my” or “self” that we misperceive to be “me”, to be our true reality. We don’t think “we are our body” but rather that “we have a body.” We don’t think that the body suffers but rather that “I” suffers. It is this imagined sense of I or self (a self that exists only in our mind) that is the cause of all our problems. We are habituated that we have this intrinsic quality of “self.” It is a profound and compelling addiction. And on the basis of this addictive illusion we suffer immeasurable torment. What we experience (our fears, our anxiety, our insecurity, our uncertainty, what happens after we die, etc) we misperceive as happening to me, to my “self”, which factually cannot be substantiated or found. So who is it that is born and dies, who is it that wins or loses, who suffers, and who faces an uncertain afterlife? For this reason the recognition of the lack (emptiness) of an intrinsic, independent self is the most important thing we could ever understand. After all, the self does not exist intrinsically from its own side but exists by mental imputation by thought from the side of the mind. It is this imputed (illusory) sense of self that we have unwittingly identified with that is the cause of all our woes. To see the self lacks self-nature, our conviction of its reality begins to wane, along with the suffering and anxiety it engenders. In other words, we have a change of mind. After all, enlightenment or liberation is nothing more than a change of mindset.

Summary:

Since everything is impermanent, the Buddha concluded that there cannot be a permanent self abiding in people. What we take to be a self, according to the Buddha, is simply the body/mind aggregates arising and ceasing. For example, the category of physical substance is an aggregate of earth, air, water, and fire, and the category of psychological tendencies is an aggregate of habits, likes, dislikes, greed, wilfulness, etc. The idea of a “person” is just a convenient way to refer to these five categories and aggregates of elements. It is dispositions and grasping that cause one to see an illusory self in the aggregates. Yet, when examined nowhere would there be found an organ or entity, as it were, which was an actual “self” or “ego” in this dynamic agglomeration of fluctuating elements. The appearance of the aggregates does not necessitate the existence of a “self” nestled behind the aggregates. Thus, he concluded, beings are empty of a self, or “selfless.” He did not say that there was no appearance or experience of a self, but rather, that there was no actual person that can be found to act as a referent for the concept of self. We all use the label self and we all experience a self as an apparent subject of our experiences, but when we look for a substance or essence underlying the aggregates, no actual entity of a self can be found that corresponds to that experience of self. Wherever one looks, within or without, no actual self is found. The key to liberation is not in finding something (a self) but in not finding. To see the deception is to be free of deception.

When a Sage has certainty that people are changing moment by moment (that is, they are impermanent) he or she has certainty of no permanent “self” abiding within them. How can something permanent (a self) abide in that which is impermanent?

Dependent Origination

When the whole of the Buddha’s teachings and all of their implications are not just comprehended, but directly perceived, the goal of the religious quest has been obtained. What is this one truth? Most simply put, it is dependent origination. The Buddha says that the theory of dependent arising is alone sufficient to explain all perceptions of the world. In its most abstract form, the theory holds that: “On the arising of “that” condition, “this” effect arises. On the cessation of “that” condition, “this” effect ceases.” For example; on the arising of the conditions of a seed, water and soil, a tree arises; on the cessation of conditions (say no water), the tree ceases.

Things appear or arise or show up, not through their own causal power, but by way of dependency. Things depend for their existence on other things, and these things depend on other things, and so on. Nothing is self-standing independent with its own nature. There is no first cause or beginning (and therefore no end). A tree, for example, depends for its existence on a seed, water, soil, sun, and so on; fire depends for its existence on the conditions of wood, spark, oxygen and so forth; a person depends for his or her existence on the body/mind aggregates, parents, water, food and air; and so on. Everything is dependent for its existence on something else. Hence, there is no inherent or independent thing, such as the tree, fire, person, or anything else. Inherent existence or independent existence – existence that does not depend on anything else – is incoherent and simply does not exist. Things being dependent and not independent or inherent, explains why we can’t find anything distinct stand-alone or substantial that we can point to and say “this is that thing or object, this is the tree or treeness, this is the self.” Instead, the mind analysing the thing arrives at last at the emptiness of the thing, that is, the thing’s lack of any essential independent nature. Also, the “thing” in question is changing every instant as the conditions change. Hence, things are impermanent, which explains why we can’t pinpoint anything permanent, substantial or inherent.

When we see some impressive object, a mountain or a large new building, we can see how this object arises from causes and conditions. For example, a large school building depends upon earlier people having certain ideas about education. It depends upon a society in which shared values support the work that is done in the building. It depends on money raised by people, and thus upon their work, their economic system. It depends upon people dreaming of this particular school, architects and engineers designing it, people assembling materials, people making the walls one block at a time. The wood in the building depends on trees, which depend on water, earth and light. Without hard work to maintain the building it quickly disintegrates. In other words, the school building is dependently originated all the way down and it is therefore impossible to specify precisely what it is upon which anything finally depends.The school does not have any natural capacity to exist on its own. That is to say, it is empty of any natural power to be there. It would not be there without its underlying conditions. And it will vanish as the conditions supporting it change. The building on first impression does not appear so contingent. It does not show us how it really is. It presents itself as imposing, as though suggesting that it had some natural power to be there. This is true with objects. Whatever is supposed to be substantial is actually nothing but dependent co-origination. At no point does analysis arrive at anything that exists in itself.

It appears as if everything exists through its own “thingness” to be the way it is. However, all phenomena exist interdependently rather than independently. To conceive of phenomena existing in and of themselves through their own core nature is called inherent existence. This is the target to be refuted in emptiness teachings. The absence of inherent existence is referred to as emptiness and when realized, one sees all phenomena as dependently arisen and so empty of an independent nature. If something is empty is to say it arises dependently.

There is no magical or mysterious causal power that causes things to arise and then cease. Things arise dependent on conditions and cease when the conditions cease. For example, fire requires fuel oxygen friction, etc. It does not create itself or endure in itself. Fire exists in dependence on conditions that are not even considered to be fire. For example, fuel is not fire, nor is oxygen. However, if you remove these conditions that fire depends, there will be no fire remaining. Thus they are called conditions. Fire and the conditions of fire are unfindable as things existing in and of themselves. Because fire does not independently exist, it appears under certain conditions and no longer appears when conditions change or cease. For example, if oxygen is removed or ceases, fire ceases. It is not that the fire died because there was never an independent inherently existing thing called fire in the first place. Fire appears dependently, dependent on oxygen and wood, and even when fire is manifesting there is still no actual independently existing entity called fire because it depends on other things. Likewise, there is no actual independently existing entity called self or I, even when the self or person is appearing or manifesting because the self depends on other things (aggregates, parents, food, and so on) so it is not an independent self-contained entity. Hence, there is no actual independent entity called self that is born, endures, and then dies. All that is taking place is the constant arising and ceasing of the “selfless” aggregates. No actual “self” arises or ceases or endures. The self is merely imputed by thought on the aggregates. Just because the aggregates appear does not necessitate the existence of an underlying self.

“Buddhism does not deal with ‘selves’, but underlying conditions.”

Whatsoever arises or appears or shows up does so dependently; dependent on conditions, dependent on its parts, and dependent on thought. A person or self appears dependent on conditions of parents, food, water, air, and so forth; dependent on the body/mind aggregates such as the head, skin, legs, feelings, consciousness, and so forth; and dependent upon being thought of, imputed, or being labelled a person or self. Without thought (mental imputation) we would have no knowledge of such a self.

People commonly believe that they have a separate self that is fixed and unchanging, an inside core that is a me. Despite noticing that thoughts, feelings, perceptions and body sensations change every instant, it is believed that there exists an inner self separate from other things – animals, rocks, rivers, mountains, etc. We believe ourselves to be this free mental thing that stands outside of materiality and causality. So one holds on tightly to this identity of a me and therefore to the mine for fear of grave loss. But there is no separate existence to defend. There is no independent self that is ever separate from the aggregates and everything else. (If there was no great, great, great grandmother, there could be no me). This is why the separate subject “self” is an illusion or false. What we call a self depends upon everything that is not considered to be a self. If even air or water were removed, there would be no self-essence left over. Whatever exists dependently cannot also exist independently or separately. And further, since an independent (inherent) self is false, all that is experienced by the self (thoughts, feelings, consciousness, awareness, birth, death, suffering, fear of what happens after death, etc) is also false, like false dream figures in a dream. Self is merely imputed by thought or mind, a conceptual abstraction, a fiction, and therefore is false. Our identification with this false sense of self underlies our mental torment.

An understanding of dependent origination or emptiness is like seeing the world without the glasses which impute intrinsic existence to things. It is like seeing a world that has no underlying ground but is supported by complex interrelations. In discussing emptiness, dependent arising is the ‘meaning’ or ‘content’ of emptiness. These two ideas, emptiness and dependent origination, support one another and analysis into either will give rise to insight into the other.

Dependently arisen things are but mere appearances. This characteristic of dependent arising is important to remember: When something is dependently arisen it depends on other things so it does not have its own nature and in this sense it does not really originate, somewhat like a reflection in a mirror, a magic illusion, a mere appearance of something that is not really there.

The Tangle of Theorizing

Mere speculation has occupied the minds of philosophers for thousands of years. Faced with the mystery of the cosmos, the spirit naturally tries to interpret what it encounters, and where knowledge is lacking, it will fill the void with speculation or myth. When one surveys even the little that is known of philosophical and religious history, and the successive attempts put forward by reason to account for the world and our experience of it, one cannot but marvel at the sheer inventiveness of the human imagination. In view of the fact that reason and logic seem to work well enough in the conventional day-to-day it is thought it ought to be possible to reason one’s way to conclusions that extend beyond the conventional and empirical sphere (such as the beginning of time, the big bang, what happens after we die, the existence of God, etc). This results not in knowledge but in contradiction. It is a fact that equally plausible and coherent arguments may be constructed upon the same premise only to arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions. One philosopher will propound an attractive thesis to show that the cosmos had a beginning in time; another, with equally persuasive reasons, will prove the contrary. No one has ever succeeded in inventing a rational philosophy that is wholly incontrovertible. A procedure that appears to give us truth in fact produces only theory and opinion. And since, where metaphysics is concerned, verification is ruled out (for example, a beginning, the big bang, eternity, or God, etc, can’t be verified) there is no objective evidence available to compel the assent of all parties, it is clear that, in such a procedure conflict between contrasting opinions is not only inevitable but endless.

It is precisely because the Buddha does not immerse himself in theories about phenomena he is able to discern their true nature (that they lack self-nature) and it is this very discernment that confers liberation. To know things as they truly are is to free oneself from their tyranny. On the other hand, to elaborate theories about phenomena is not only to become engrossed in endless cogitation and verbiage; it is to veil the nature of phenomena even more and to fall even further beneath their spell. One becomes ever more entangled in what can only be productive of further frustration and sorrow. The Buddha declared: ”To hold that the world is eternal or to hold that it is not, or to hold that things truly exist or that they don’t truly exist – is the jungle of theorizing, the wilderness of theorizing, the tangle of theorizing, the bondage and the shackles of theorizing, attended by ill, distress, perturbation, and fever. This is the danger I perceive in these views, which makes me discard them all.”

It is important to assimilate this passage in its entirety. For although it expresses an unambiguous rejection of futile theorizing, it nevertheless indicates a truth that the ordinary conceptual mind is unaware of and this truth becomes accessible precisely when theories are laid aside. It points, in other words, to a reality that avoids conceptual theorizing thought processes, yet, the vast majority of living beings are wholly unaware of it. It is called nirvana (the understanding that things lack a core nature or self-nature). But it is of paramount importance not to regard nirvana as some “thing.” The Buddha suggests that it is a state so subtle and so profound that in the first moments after his awakening he remained silent and declined to teach perceiving that there was little chance of ordinary beings’ understanding him. However, moved by compassion the Buddha, as we know, relented and began his mission for those who might be trained. And in words that resonate down the centuries, he declared: “Open to them are the doors to deathlessness. Let those who have ears throw off their old beliefs.” This refers not only to the belief in the self but to all theories and constructions of the mind, the inventions of philosophy, which operate according to affirmation and negation and the extreme viewpoints of existence and nonexistence. All beliefs and theories falsely attribute intrinsic existence to things. No one, the Buddha affirms, can hold to either of these views and hope to be free. It is necessary to analyze such false trails and, having discovered their inner contradiction, to abandon them. Only then can one progress beyond samsara.

When in a meeting with the Buddha a student asked him for a teaching about the correct view. The latter replied that ordinary beings are used to thinking dualistically, in terms of affirmation or negation. In dealing with themselves and the phenomena that surround them, they think and speak in terms of, “it is” and “it is not.” For example, concerning say the “self”, it is commonly perceived by people as “it is”, that is, that it intrinsically does exist; whereas, if the person dies, the “self”, is commonly perceived by people as, “it is not”, that is, that it intrinsically does not-exist. They take themselves, things and situations to be intrinsically real (existent), or to be intrinsically not real (non-existent). They cling to things, act accordingly, and wander through the transient joys and sorrows of samsara, high and low. But for those who correctly perceive the truth of how phenomena arise, abide, and pass away, the Buddha said, there is no “is” and no “is not.” “That things exist, is one extreme. That they do not exist, is another. But I, the Tathagata (Buddha), accept neither ‘is’ nor ‘is not’ and I declare the truth from the Middle Position.” Without adopting a viewpoint of his own every possible position is exposed as false so the busy restless mind is reduced to silence. Conceptual construction must be stilled if the perfection of wisdom is to manifest; the mind must be brought to the Buddha’s silence for liberation to be possible.

The self-confessed mission of Madhyamika (the school founded by Nagarjuna) is to undermine the misrepresentations of philosophy and religion, the fruit of the discursive mind’s deep-rooted tendency to elaborate theories in an attempt to explain phenomena, both of the outer world of things and the inner world of thought and emotion. But all of them, from the Madhyamika point of view, fall short to a greater or lesser degree, on the one all-important issue: the ultimate status of phenomena. All of them, in one way or another, affirm intrinsic existence to people objects and things. Madhyamika’s emphatically refute intrinsic existence wherever it occurs. Madhyamika is not a philosophy so much as a critique of philosophy. Its task is to examine the attempts of thought that in one way or another asserts “that things are intrinsically real” and to demonstrate its failure. In being a system of pure criticism, Madhyamika has no positive content of its own. Its evolution therefore cannot be assessed in terms of doctrinal elaboration. The history of Madhyamika is, consequently, no more than the account of the system’s relationship with other philosophies. The Madhyamika “shows the stresses and strains to which philosophy was subject down the ages.”

In the intellectual environment in which Buddhism evolved, the concept of something being stable, lasting and permanent was very important. Although the world of human experiences, according to the data of the senses, is constantly changing and in constant flux, traditional religions and particularly Indian philosophers, assert that underlying all this change surely there must be something stable, something permanent, some foundation that it all rests upon.

In the pre-Buddhist Indian world, the word nitya was often used to designate that foundation, that stability. The view put forward in the Upanishads, for example, suggests that within all the changes of the individual being there is a deep part of one’s psyche, called the ātman or the Self, that in some way either underlies or transcends all of the changes that go on moment to moment. They say, if we could only discover this subtle Self in our experience and dwell in it moment to moment, we would manage to overcome the transience of the world and become established upon something eternal and everlasting.

In Indian philosophy there is a sense that all the way out there, at the very limit of this world system, there is something permanent (nitya) from which this world emerged, such as Brahman or God. And all the way in here, deep in the innermost world, there is also something stable, like the soul or true Self. According to the Upanishads these two are not separate, but are two manifestations of the same reality.

This is the background against which Buddhism was working. And the Buddha, with his investigation into the nature of human experience, basically came to the conclusion that something permanent, something inherent that underlies our experience is an entirely constructed concept. The claim of stability, permanence or inherent existence articulated in these traditions is really just an idea that we project onto our world; it is not to be found in actual experience. So one of the principal insights of the whole Buddhist tradition is that the entire world of our experience, whether the outer material world or our inner personal world, is fundamentally in a state of constant change and flux. No permanent self-nature of things can be found anywhere, including a permanent abiding “self” in people.

When the Buddha began to teach, he did not, of course, immediately set forth the truth in all its purity according to the level of his own understanding. He realized that this would have been far beyond the capacity of his hearers. He set forth a doctrine suited to their powers, which was designed to draw them onto the path and foster their spiritual growth. His first task was to wean them away from the gross, naïve understanding of worldly beings: their unquestioning belief in the personal self and the reality of physical objects and mental experiences. He therefore spoke about the five aggregates, the six senses, and their objects and associated consciousnesses, showing, for example, how the human person can be analyzed into form, feelings, perceptions, conditioning factors, and consciousness without the existence of an additional factor called “self”. Despite the ingrained tendency of all sentient beings to assume the existence of a self and to cling to it, analysis shows that, no matter how hard one searches, no self can ever be found. In the same way, by observing the impermanence of physical things and mental events, one can come to an understanding that phenomena, however solid and unchanging they may appear, are in a state of constant momentary flux or are impermanent. On the basis of this insight, one can begin to dissolve the attachment one has to mere transitory things and loosen the fetters that bind one in the round of suffering.

The work begins with a discussion about how things come into being and evolve. Nagarjuna shows that phenomenal appearances, to the contrary, are not independent self-contained entities but arise dependent on other things. It is because nothing exists independently as its own substance nature or process that everything is impermanent. A tree, for example, depends for its existence on its parts, such as branches, leaves and so on; depends on conditions, such as a seed, water, soil, sun, and so on; and depends on someone labelling it a tree (conceptual imputation). Since the tree is dependent on many other factors it is in this sense that the tree is said to be empty, empty of its own independent nature. Whereas, to say that something has real existence in itself is to say that it is an autonomous, circumscribed entity, separate and not dependent on other things. This is, as a matter of fact, how we habitually view things in the ordinary transactions of everyday life. We feel that we are self-contained individuals and relate to other self-contained individuals. We encounter objects, some pleasant, some unpleasant, which we try to acquire or avoid accordingly. More or less complicated situations arise which themselves seem individual and real. We are happy and we suffer. To the uncritical observer, life consists of blocks; it is a collection of individual, discrete realities. But this is an illusion. In its anxiety for reassurance and security, the mind reifies situations and things which it clings to and manipulates in its hopeless quest for lasting satisfaction. In order to expose this procedure as the false trail that it is, the Buddha (Nagarjuna) relentlessly demonstrates the inconsistencies of belief in intrinsically existing things. He shows that the normal “worldview” is in fact riddled with contradiction. Even to say that things are real or that they intrinsically exist implies an unchanging permanent entity, which is absurd, it is not our experience.

It is important to understand, however, that he is not trying to deny our experience in the phenomenal world. That would be absurd; the world-process is all around us constantly, undeniably. The objects of his critique are not the empirical facts of existence that inescapably appear to us but the assumptions that we make about these facts. We think that real things give rise to real things; that real things come into being and pass away. But this notion of real, individual, self-contained entities is something that we impose on the raw material or aggregates. It is a figment of our imagination; in fact there are no real things in this sense. Self-contained entities can never change and can never enter into relation with other entities. The notions of intrinsic entities coming into being, or intrinsic entities passing away makes no sense. Thus Nagarjuna’s first stanza announces: “No things are produced anywhere at any time, either from themselves, from something else, from both, or from neither.” The true status of the phenomena that we experience is not, therefore, that they are real intrinsic unchanging entities coming into existence, but in their relatedness, their interdependence with all other phenomena. This interdependence undermines the notion of individual, intrinsic reality in things; it is the very antithesis of “thingness.” Phenomena, being the interplay of interdependent factors, are unreal. Their interdependence is their emptiness of intrinsic existence. And common things like time, movement, gain and loss, cause and effect (like a seed causes a tree), which we thought to be real inherent independent processes, Nagarjuna demonstrates to be also interdependent and not real independent entities. Nagarjuna’s “karikas” is an astonishing and disconcerting performance, and the reader is forced to acknowledge that what had previously been taken as the straightforward certainties of existence is nothing but a tissue of naïve and ultimately untenable assumptions. The entire worldview commonly accepted to be real by ordinary people, is shown to be completely incoherent. If we follow Nagarjuna’s arguments we can see that the common world view makes no sense. If we think that the things of the world (ourselves included) are as they appear – self-existent and solid – we are not in touch with reality; we are living in a world of mirages. Phenomena appear to be real, but they are insubstantial, dreamlike.

We may be tempted to dismiss Nagarjuna’s ideas as no more than a curious paradox with little relevance to the facts of experience. Life, after all, goes on regardless of the theories of philosophers. Nagarjuna could be right, we may say, but since we all experiencing such dreamlike experiences, why question them? What, finally, is wrong with the way we perceive things? The answer is that there is nothing “wrong” with it; the issue is not a moral one. We are not condemned for being in samsara. To believe that phenomena are solid, real entities is not a “sin”; it is only a mistake, but a mistake with unfortunate consequences. In his first teaching following his enlightenment, the Buddha did not speak, though he could have done so, about the dreamlike nature of samsaric existence. Instead, he referred to a more pressing, less deniable problem, namely, that existence – the samsaric dream – is, as a matter of fact, utterly painful. Beings suffer; they are not satisfied. We cannot deny that our lives are plagued by the ills of birth, sickness, old age, and death, the inescapable accompaniments of existence. It is true that suffering may be suspended by moments of happiness. But these turn out to be fragile and are marked by a transience that renders them, in the larger view, meaningless.

Caught in the dream, unaware that they are dreaming, ordinary worldly beings endlessly try to manipulate phenomena in the interests of security and fulfillment. They do this by trying to create the conditions of material and emotional satisfaction and, if they are religious, by striving to create the causes of happiness in the hereafter, whether in terms of “going to heaven” or of securing a favourable “rebirth” in their future existences. So the happiness, thus produced, may be perceived as good, but it is still samsara. It is still part of the dream; it is not the final answer, not liberation. For samsara to disappear, its cause must be identified and arrested. The Buddha is saying that a lasting solution cannot possibly lie in the reorganization of the dream, in a mere rearrangement of the furniture. A better plan is to recognize our state of deception – the fact that we are dreaming – and to wake up. And to wake from the dream, it is necessary to understand the true nature of phenomena, that is, that they are just like dream images, empty of any intrinsic nature. The misperception that things exist intrinsically is the number one culprit, the source of all our woes.

The very word emptiness is highly disturbing. It carries with it the connotation that everything is denied, nothing is real; nothing makes sense and what is the point in pursuing a spiritual path? The Buddha shows not only that emptiness is compatible with the spiritual path, but that it is the very factor that makes spiritual growth and progress on the path possible. In fact, it is precisely because of emptiness that things can be amenable to change, transformation and evolution. Change is precisely why people live, die, suffer and can be enlightened and liberated. And change is only possible if entities and the way in which we conceptualize them are void or empty of any eternal, fixed and immutable essence. Without emptiness, that is, leaving emptiness aside, the mind that perceives both mental and physical objects is constrained by the noose of attachment toward its object.

The notion that things exist intrinsically is a deep rooted misunderstanding that has blinded us to seeing the real state of things (their emptiness). Intrinsic or independent things (things that don’t depend on other things) not only do they not exist, they cannot even conceivable exist (like horns on a rabbit). Ordinary people misperceive things to be intrinsically real entities. Only awakened beings realize intrinsic nature is illusory. As such, ordinary beings fail to see the true nature of things; their emptiness. Their minds have been suffused with a poisonous clinging to the real existence of entities. They attach to or cling to people, objects or concepts, thus creating expectations that result in disappointment, frustration, and pain when these attachments are inevitably disrupted or cease. Moreover, attachment fuels a ceaseless cycle of craving as they chase after the satisfaction and pleasure linked to these attachments. This is like the futile attempt of pursuing a mirage in the desert hoping the “water” will quench their thirst. They have become addicted to such an attitude, and their habit is exceedingly strong, with the result that it is hard to abandon. Therefore, in perceiving concrete objects, beings are quite unable to discern their true nature, their lack of substantiality. They are overpowered by false discursive thought, which mistakenly takes such objects to be truly existent things. It is for this reason that all living beings fail to perceive the nature of phenomena – that they lack or are empty of intrinsic existence. In exactly the same way, it is by continuously observing a thing that looks the same from moment to moment that the mind is dulled and fails to notice the thing’s momentary or transitory nature. Although people never actually perceive anything as truly existent, for this would run counter to the very nature of phenomena which is their emptiness of true existence, nevertheless, their minds are hampered by their mistaken thoughts and they apprehend things amiss.

When it states that all things are empty, it does not mean that all things are non-existent. It only means that things do not inherently exist, independently and on their own right. We don’t claim non-existence, we merely remove claims for self-existing things. So while all things are empty of inherent existence, nonetheless, things still appear or show up in some fashion. Whatever appears, it is impossible for it not to be empty; and if it is empty it is impossible for it to be nothing. For example, a mirage does appear or show up. Mirages really are mirages, but are not really water, though they might appear to be water. So conventional phenomena really are empty, dependently arisen, nominally real, but are not substantial, inherently existent phenomena, though they might appear to be.

Ordinary people hold things to exist truly and phenomena appear to them in such a manner. Now as to the one who has eliminated ignorance and sees emptiness directly, that one does not entertain true existence and hence, not cling to things as truly existent.

Only by jettisoning the deeply ingrained tendency to search for some essential true existence to things and to our life can we find liberation. This obsessive delusion we have in thinking that we are dealing with truly existent entities or substance is ignorance as all we really have is “a construction of our minds.”

It’s all in the Mind

The Buddha tells us that the objects that we perceive to be “out there” are really only mental imputations (constructions) of our mind. It is important to know this, because our ignorance of this fact, the fact of the insubstantiality of things is the root cause of all our suffering.

Let us demonstrate that the objects and things we perceive to be real solid entities “out there” are really only what we have mentally constructed “out there”. Although things appear to be separate inherent entities, set up out there on their own, they could not exist independent of our mind, or independent of our cognitive and sensory faculties. Apart from our mind we would have no knowledge of things, no knowledge of the world. Nothing can exist independent of our minds. Everything we experience and know is mediated through our minds. This is an important discovery because our search is narrowed down to the key ingredient; the mind. Hence the expression: “It’s all in the mind.”

We can only know things by thought (mind). We only know of a tree by thinking it. Therefore tree is a thought construct. Where is the tree? In the mind (thought). And mind, being a knower of objects, cannot exist independent of objects, and conversely, objects cannot exist independent of mind or the knower of them.

We may think that the mind is in the body, we say, “my mind” (pointing at the head). Actually, it’s the other way around. The mind is not in the body, but the body is in the mind! Even when we are in a body, “our” body, we are not really there if we do not have a mental conception of “body.” We can only truly know our body through our mind. If the matter is well examined, it will be found that all appearances manifest within the mind; they cannot appear elsewhere.

What do we know about our body? We can see it. We can hear it. We can smell it. We can touch it. But, where does seeing occur? In the mind! (Mind includes both sensory and cognitive faculties so without mind we could not see or be aware of anything). Where does hearing occur? In the mind! Where does smelling occur? In the mind! Where does tasting occur? In the mind! Where do we feel touch? In the mind! What we see, hear, feel, and so on, is mediated through our mind. Without mind nothing could exist.

When we think or know of the body, we do so through the agency of our minds. We have never known anything about our body except through our mind. So our entire life, from the very first day, everything we have ever known about our body and the world has happened in our mind. The entire world we see is actually inside of us. It is perceived through our senses and cognitive apparatus and hence is a construction of our mind. Everything in existence is actually just our understanding of it. Things only exist in our mind…..because that’s the only place they can exist. Our ideas of right and wrong, separation and together, love and hate…..everything is in our mind. We may believe people out there, are out there…..but out there is only out there because we see it as such. The objects and things that we perceive to be solid objects out there are really only what we have projected or constructed “out there” by mind. The only way we can experience objects out there is to mentally construct them out there. Objects are aspects of subjects. They are nothing more than a collection of temporary ideational qualities that give rise to an appearance that is ultimately an empty one.

All thoughts and experiences such as – I am happy, I am sad, these are my friends, these are my enemies, I was born, I will die, this is God – are merely constructions of our mind. There are no real entities called friends, birth, death, happy, God, and so on. We literally make it up (conjure) through thought. We don’t discover real entities out there, we only discover what we have made-up. Things appear to us as being full of our imputations. So the world we perceive as a physical reality is actually our mental construction of it. In other words, the appearing phenomena are merely constructions of our mind, just like dream images are a construction of mind. They are not intrinsic real entities but are what we make up. They have no solid intrinsic nature of their own, somewhat like a mirage or a magic illusion, so all talk of substance, matter, form, permanence, inherent existence, essence, or fixed entities, must be abandoned, a radical conclusion indeed.

Suppose for a moment we leave aside any consideration of things from the side of the mind. When we ask: “How do these things exist from their own side? What are they like in and of themselves apart from our mind, apart from any mental, sensory, or cognitive conception of them?” When we ask about how things are in and of themselves from their own side, then we will fail to find anything at all. Our only knowledge of anything is what is mediated through our mind. There are no “mind independent” objects, thoughts, or feelings in existence. Thoughts like: “What are dogs thinking? what happens after death? what are aliens or extra-terrestrials really like?” are examples of us trying to understand things, in and of themselves, apart from the mind of the person viewing them. Hence, such thoughts or questions are futile and unanswerable. There is nothing that is purely objective, nothing out there completely apart from mind that we can pin down and point out. We can only know of things from the side of our mind. Things are but mental constructions of our mind. For example, a self is merely imputed from the side of the mind on the aggregates of the person. Similarly, a table is merely imputed from the side of the mind on the aggregates of the table. This may help explain why we can’t find something substantial with a core nature or essence called table. The table, and all other things, have no solid inherent nature of their own that can be identified but exist only by mental imputation. External phenomena are transient and only exist for us because of our perceptions (mind). Consequently they do not exist outside our mind. Table is simply a name attributed to the conglomeration of conditions coming together that constitutes the aggregates of a table. If one looks for say “table” there is nothing there other than its parts and external conditions operating in conjunction. There is no separate “table”, it can’t be found. Table is simply a name, a concept which the mind imputes on the aggregates. There is no mind-independent table so things have merely mind or conceptual existence. Apart from the mind there could be no knowledge of things. Nothing could appear or be experienced. Consider the Zen koan: “If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one there that hears it fall, does it make a sound?” This question of course makes no sense apart from mind and sense faculties. If mind and sense faculties are removed, nothing makes any sense. So it is a false question and hence, unanswerable.

People, cars, tables and things do exist, but they do not at all exist on their own, independent of our mind or senses. However, they do not present their lack of independent existence to our senses; instead they look substantial and compelling, they look as though they were established on their own, out there. Appearances are delusionary. The delusion, that is the root cause of all suffering, involves seeing things as having just this sort of objective and autonomous existence. This delusion sees things as being set up from their own side, as having their own natural way to be there, to be independent and autonomous. Yet, everything that exists depends on being imputed by our mind, so it is not set up from its own side but from the side of the mind.

Our misperception of things as being inherent independent entities apart from our minds that causes us great suffering. Because these various projections of our minds appear before us as self-existing objects we become attached to the reality of our own projections. We are fooled by our own minds, by our own projections. This causes attraction and aversion to these projections which is cyclic existence or primal confusion. Fortunately, we can change our minds. After all, enlightenment or liberation is a change of mindset; a change in how we perceive things. We don’t need to change the world; we need only change our mind about the world. Recognize things are but mental imputations (like dream images) and not the substantial entities that they appear to be. When this occurs, grasping at things begins to cease, ignorance ceases, and hence suffering ceases. What had previously appeared as samsara now appears as nirvana.

We routinely and innately give our assent to a real external world that exists apart from our minds. This habit is a “pervasive sense that things are real and solid and exist just as they appear.” This “addiction” is what is to be refuted. Another way of saying this is that the most subtle object of negation is the perception that phenomena have “their own way of existing without being posited through the force of mental imputation.” This is the most subtle and pernicious form of ignorance – it is the deepest root of cyclic existence. All of the afflictions that hold us in cyclic existence are built on the misperception (ignorance) that things are distant and cut off from our minds that perceive them.

For example, when we look at objects and things or we experience emotions such as anger, frustration, and so on, we don’t perceive these things as being imputed by mind but we perceive such things as real inherent entities with their own self-nature. We perceive objects, people, feelings, and so on, as real inherent entities. This is what the Buddha calls ignorance. Everything that we experience – friends or enemies, good or bad, winning or losing, birth or death, happy or sad, consciousness, awareness, or even ultimate reality itself – are but mere labels or mere imputations of mind. There are no real inherent entities called friends, winning, birth, death, awareness, or even ultimate reality, hiding behind these perspective labels. Such experiences are somewhat like what takes place in a dream. Dream experiences or dream entities are not real and exist only mentally or by mental imputation. The same applies in the waking state. We see back what we have mentally constructed. Or, what we perceive in the world is our own ignorance.

We can say that what one perceives to be real and self-sufficient of itself and not posited through the power of mental imputation, is called “inherent existence” or “ignorance.” Therefore, the object to be negated is a conception that phenomena (including thoughts, feelings and emotions) have a way of existing in and of themselves without being posited through the force of mental imputation. But nothing exists independent of mental imputation. For example, when we leave aside any consideration of things from the side of the mind and ask: how things are in and of themselves from their own side, our mind is a blank; nothing is found. There are no “mind independent” things in existence. The innate misperception that things, such as – people, chairs, objects, thoughts, experiences, friends, birth, consciousness, awareness, ultimate reality, and so on – do intrinsically exist independent of mental imputation is ignorance and this ignorance is the object of negation. When ignorance is negated we have eliminated an impossible mode of existence (inherent existence) that is misattributed to the object. In this light, experiences, such as winning, losing, friends, consciousness, or even ultimate reality, are seen, not as inherent entities, but as mere mental constructions or mental imputations. This understanding will begin to dissolve the solidity and stress of our experience.

“According to Tsongkhapa, things arise co-dependently with a designating mind. Thus they appear in reality – like a mirage or reflection or dream appears in reality – but cannot be established as existing in-and-of themselves independent of a designating mind.”

“The Prasangikas say that nothing exists from its own side, even to the slightest extent. Everything is imputed, or labelled by mind.”

Nirvana

There may be no single concept in Buddhism which has elicited more confusion and debate than nirvana. Nirvana is often translated as “freedom,” but it actually means “extinction.” A literal translation of “nirvana” is “blown out,” as in the extinguishing of a fire, or, “blowing out” of false thoughts and their concomitant desires. Nirvana is not a state of transcendent eternal bliss, like that of some forms of Yoga in Hinduism, nor sanctified salvation, like that of the Christianity. It is simply the clarity and peace that arises when the objects we have been identifying with and grasping on to are realized to be empty.

The Buddha eliminates various misconceptions about this state of nirvana. Nirvana is not something that can be “attained,” and not something that “arises.” It is also not something that is permanent, and it is not something that can be possessed or relinquished. It is not something that exists, or non-exists. If it were a form of existence, (inherent, unchanging and permanent) then nothing could change and nothing would relate to anything. We know of no such thing. Neither can it be non-existent, for, “wherein there is no existence, therein non-existence is not evident.” The Buddha echoed the clear assertion that nirvana is neither transcendent existence nor posthumous annihilation. It can only be described in terms of a negation, a negation of all our assumptions and conceptual elaborations about it, the disappearance of the fabrications of conceptual thought..

Nirvana is not a “thing”. The fact that nirvana is spoken of as being “realized,” “attained” or “achieved” is not to be understood as implying that nirvana, as a state of freedom, is a “thing” which can be known or possessed. It is simply used as a tool for escaping suffering. But no matter how much one may stress that nirvana is not a “thing” but is a lack of “thingness,” there is much likelihood that unenlightened people would think of it as a concrete goal or a tangible heaven. The only way of reaching nirvana ‘the goal’ is to realise that in the ultimate sense there is no goal to be reached. Nirvana is reality which is voidness.

One substantialist notion was that the bound person partakes of the quality of bondage. Nirvana, then, would be the relinquishing of this nature and the adoption of a new and wholly disparate mode of existence – the freed state. This does not apply. There is not a person who partakes of qualities, and freedom is not a concrete goal that can be striven for. An eternalist soteriology would hold that the state of Nirvana transcends temporality and the one who achieves freedom also becomes eternal. Nirvana is not such, for it avoids the extreme of both eternalism (permanence) and transience (impermanence). It cannot be thought of in terms of arising and ceasing. It is not a “thing” that is obtainable, not a transcendent reality, and not, like the Hindu atman, a pre-existing immanent substratum or a universal consciousness.

Another way of perceiving Nirvana is as follows: The very same world is samsara or nirvana, dependent upon one’s perspective or attitude, for all else remains as it was. When one perceives the constant arising and ceasing of phenomena, one perceives samsara. When all reification is abandoned, that very same world and one’s mode of living in it, becomes nirvana. What this is saying then is that samsara has no thing that distinguishes it from nirvana. Nirvana has no thing that distinguishes it from samsara. That nirvana and samsara are perceived separate is made by the false supposition that they are two self-existent “things.”

To say that the world of suffering (samsara) is equivalent to the highest and most honoured of goals of Buddhism (nirvana) would seem to be flagrant blasphemy. It is only blasphemy from the standpoint of essentialism. If there is a self-nature in either, then the two would assuredly be different. Bondage, as a real thing, would have to be broken free from, and enlightenment, as a true state, would have to be achieved. The tendency to see them as concrete things actually would deny a person the possibility of ever releasing one and obtaining the other. If the samsaric process was real, having self-nature, and if one were bound within that process then one could never leave it. Similarly, if nirvana were a real attribute of which the unenlightened individual were not yet partaking, and if it had an essence, then it could never be achieved. Such a radical separation of Nirvana and samsara severs any possible relationship between them. If this happens, then something bound can never become unbound, and someone who suffers can never hope for release. It is only because both nirvana and samsara, like all other phenomena, are empty of inherent nature that they can be said to be the same. As empty, they can each be said to lack self-nature, and are the same in that neither is real. Because neither samsara nor nirvana is real, both of them are worldly conventions. Inasmuch as Nirvana is dependent upon the conception of Samsara and dependent upon an illusory entity, Nirvana also belongs to the realm of apparent truth.

Nirvana is none other than the non-establishment of anything in its intrinsic being. The Enlightened Ones do not perceive anything that is established in its intrinsic being. They do not apprehend things and their true nature rather they apprehend there are no things, per se. When such entities are analyzed with wisdom they are found to be like an illusory elephant in a magical show; non-existent in their intrinsic being. When one has understood the nature of entities to be unapprehended or without support, this is Nirvana. Since everything is empty, then nirvana is just as empty as samsara and there is no real difference between them. Hence, all phenomena are similar to nirvana because all phenomena are devoid of intrinsic nature.

At this point, the meaning of Interdependent Origination is explained. The origination of entities is not an actual origination. Inasmuch as Samsara and Nirvana, like all other things, originate dependent on other things they are not originated in their intrinsic being, they do not actually come into existence. Therefore, both, that is, Samsara and Nirvana are unoriginated in their intrinsic being. Consequently, it is said in the Middle Way that there is nothing which distinguishes Samsara from Nirvana. The limit of Nirvana is also the limit of Samsara. There is not even the subtlest difference between these two. The term “limit” or perhaps better, summit, means excellence and this in turn signifies most superior. Samsara and Nirvana are one.

The pragmatic value of equating nirvana and the cycle of birth and death is that it demonstrates the attainability of enlightenment. Freedom and bondage are not identifiable things with separate and distinct spheres of influence. To borrow a simplistic view of theism: “if the world comprised one plane and freedom another, then the feasibility of escaping one and attaining the other would be highly suspect.”

The Buddha’s declaration that freedom is the world and the world is freedom demonstrates that enlightenment is readily at hand. One need do no more than shift one’s perceptions to find it. The unpleasant world is one constructed through ignorance, grasping and dispositions. The pleasant (or not unpleasant) world is found simply by understanding the meaning of emptiness and ceasing to reify the phenomenal one. Seen from the unenlightened point, the cosmos is a cycle of birth and death characterized by suffering. Seen from the vantage point of dependent origination and emptiness, the cosmos is an ever-flowing, ever-changing empty process.

The highest awareness which is needed for release from samsara then is not the result of moving from the finite to the infinite but the release from ignorance about the dependent origination of anything at all. Dependently originated things, which include all existent things, are empty (empty of self-nature or independent nature) because they depend on other things. Nirvana, then, is living in full awareness of dependent origination, full awareness of the empty nature of things.

The achievement of nirvana requires dependence, impermanence, and the possibility of change, all of which are grounded in emptiness. The point is that no ascription of any predicate to nirvana can be literally true. For such a predication would purport to be an assertion that nirvana is an ultimately existent phenomenon with a determinate property and there are no ultimately existent phenomena, neither samsara nor even nirvana.

Samsara and Nirvana were demonstrated not for Enlightened Ones, but for ordinary people. Those who do not see the emptiness of all things are attached to the world and that is Samsara. To ordinary people, Samsara and Nirvana, are mutually opposed antidotes to each other; one of them is meant to be removed and the other is to be acquired. But Nirvana (emptiness) is the opposite of worldly existence. Those who see emptiness are not attached to the world and Nirvana. The Enlightened One’s, who perceive the ultimate, neither perceive Samsara nor Nirvana as intrinsic entities. Consequently, for one who has seen emptiness, there is no assumption of either Samsara or Nirvana.

Because nirvana can only be spoken of by contrasting it in some sense with samsara, and because there is no conventionally existent perceptible entity that could serve as a referent for the term, there is the terrible temptation when speaking of nirvana to think that it is an inherently existent thing or state and highly desirable since it is indeed characterized as liberation from suffering.

Nirvana is simply samsara seen without reification, without attachment, without delusion. There is not the slightest difference between samsara (cyclic existence) and nirvana. To distinguish between samsara and nirvana would be to suppose that each had a nature and that they were different natures. But each is empty, and so there can be no inherent difference. But if, as the Buddha argued, Nirvana is simply to see conventional things as empty and not to see some separate emptiness behind them then nirvana must be grounded in the conventional. The conventional is the very gateway to the reality (nirvana). To see the conventional as merely conventional and not to superimpose something inherent or intrinsic on it is what is called nirvana. To be in samsara is to see things as they appear to deluded consciousness (inherent entities) and to interact with them accordingly. To be in Nirvana, then, is to see those things as they are, as merely empty, dependent, impermanent, and non-substantial, but not to be somewhere else seeing something else.

Nirvana does not exclude samsara. We don’t escape from samsara in order to attain nirvana because nirvana is not someplace else. Nirvana is a way of being here. Nirvana arises when there is no distinction of samsara and nirvana.

“Jewel-Seal-in-Hand” says, “To like Nirvāṇa and to dislike the world makes dual. If one does not like Nirvāṇa nor loath the world, then there is no duality, no distinguishing one thing from another. Why is this so? Because if there is bondage then there is liberation. If from the beginning there is no such thing as bondage, who would ever seek for liberation? One who realizes that there is no bondage and no liberation will have no likes or dislikes. This is entering the Dharma-gate of non-duality. . .”

A young disciple asked the Buddha: How do those who have achieved nirvana discern phenomena?

“Young man, those who have achieved nirvana (enlightenment) practice the discernment of phenomena by viewing phenomena as phenomena (or form as form). They do not perceive nirvana as other than form. They do not approach nirvana as other than form. They do not seek nirvana as other than form. They do not attain nirvana as other than form. They do not inspire beings to nirvana that is other than form. They do not see a tathāgata as other than form. They see a tathāgata in this way: ‘The tathāgata is the fearlessness that is the nature of form.’ They do not see the tathāgata as other than the nature of form. They do not see the nature of form as other than the tathāgata. The nature of that which is called form and that of the tathāgata is non-dual. Those who see in that way are engaging in the discernment of phenomena.”

“One should abide in the phenomenal world because this is precisely where emptiness is – in the phenomena.”

Summary:

Nirvana does not mean a change in the objective order, the change is only subjective. It is not the world that we have to change, but only our minds. If the world were ultimately real, no power on earth could change it. The change is in our outlook, it is psychological transformation not an ontological one.

“Nirvana or the absolute viewed through thought constructs is samsara. The world of samsara viewed from the absolute is nirvana itself.”

Emptiness

The most important characteristic of a thing is its dependence on other things and hence the impossibility to exist individually and independently because an independent thing cannot be dependent. This lack of independent identity is the meaning of emptiness.

The Buddha is most famous for his teaching on “emptiness” and “dependent origination”. But first, there is a traditional caveat given to those desiring to study the teachings or reasonings on emptiness. The caveat, which is given in most texts and scholarly commentaries on the subject, warns that emptiness does not entail utter non-existence, or psychological depression. A crucial distinction must be drawn between nihilism and emptiness. The emptiness of phenomena does not imply that nothing exists at all on any level, that there is no path to follow and no ethical values one should abide by. The reason for this is to prevent a nihilistic approach to life and the Buddhist path. It is important to clarify that the Buddha’s philosophy, far from being nihilistic, is in fact tremendously life-affirming. Emptiness does not destroy everyday life but simply perceives its nature as being empty. Thus the ideal is not dissolution of the structures of existence, but to realize that these structures are empty. The teachings on emptiness attempt to show that spiritual progress is possible exactly because things are empty.

All is possible when emptiness is possible. Nothing is possible when emptiness is impossible.

Emptiness is not the annihilation of appearances (the conventional) but the ability to return to appearances, seeing things merely as an appearance. Emptiness brings us back to the world, back with insight replacing confusion.

The word emptiness has powerful negative connotations. It suggests at first, quite the opposite of a liberating spiritual path. It may suggest deadness or nothingness. Emptiness translated does actually refer to some sort of lack or absence in things. But it is not a lack of meaning or hope or existence. It is the lack of the exaggerated and distorted kind of existence that we have projected onto things and onto ourselves. It is the absence of a false essential nature with which we have unconsciously invested everything. It can be quite frightening as we start to have doubts about the lack of essential nature in things. We will feel that things cannot exist at all if they do not exist in the solid way we are accustomed to seeing them.

Consider, however, that if things actually did have a very solid permanent kind of existence, it would mean that those things could never change. If their essential nature was, permanent like, they would always be exactly that. There could be no life, everything would be static and frozen. But such frozen, stagnant, unchanging self-nature in things is precisely what things are empty of. Recognition of this absence of a fixed self-nature in things is referred to as the perception of emptiness.

Empty of what? By understanding what empty things are empty of we gain a more precise understanding of emptiness. So what do you mean by empty? Everything is there: there are the people, and there are their insides, guts and their bones and blood and everything is full of stuff – and the mind is not empty either, it’s got ideas, thoughts and feelings. And even when it doesn’t have those, what do you mean by emptiness? The only thing that is empty is the emptiness of an entity, essence, or independent nature. Emptiness is a negation of self-existence or independent existence. Things still appear or show up but there is no specific entity or core nature in anything. That is emptiness.

In Buddhist terms, synonymous with emptiness which characterizes all of conventional reality, is dependent origination. Dependent origination describes interdependence: No “thing” exists apart from its relationship with other ‘things’, they are, by definition, relative. That is, they only have identity in relation to other things, as a subject has identity in relation to an object (such as a tree). There is nothing which ‘is’ or exists independently. What this amounts to is that no “thing” has a permanent or individual essence (svabhava), there is only this dependent origination. The absence of a lasting individual essence is another way to understand emptiness.

How could there be some “thing” instead of no “thing?”

The Buddha explains that things arise dependent on other things. It is because nothing exists independently as its own substance, nature or process that everything is impermanent. For example, fire is believed to exist as a fundamental element. However, fire is dependent upon and inseparable from countless conditions such as fuel, oxygen, a spark, and so forth. If these conditions are cleared away, or even one of them, such as oxygen, there will be no fire left burning. Therefore, apart from the conditions of fire, there is no fire. Fire is not an independent element but it arises interdependently. It has no essence of its own, no core nature that makes fire hot. It is in this sense that fire is said to be empty, empty of essence. But fire is not empty of appearance or conventional existence; it will burn your finger.

“Because of emptiness there is appearance. Without emptiness there could not be appearance.”

Since everything arises dependent on other things there are no independent things. Once we know that something is dependent, it cannot be independent. Something can’t be both dependent and independent, so by eliminating one, the other is established.

None of the objects appear to us singularly in an unmixed state but always in conjunction with something else. If something appears, or can be experienced, or can be identified, then its appearance depends on other things so we know immediately it is not an independent entity with its own self-nature. If things had inherent existence then they would be independent so conditions could not produce them and thus they could not arise. If things do not arise independently, they must arise dependently. Whatsoever shows up is but a mere appearance and “a mere appearance” is the true status of the appearing phenomena. Appearances, like reflections in a mirror, lack substance or core nature. If something appears or shows up, recognize that that thing depends for its existence on other things so it lacks, or is empty, of its own, independent, self-nature. Because mountains and rivers are empty is precisely why there are mountains and rivers.

“All phenomena are empty of essence but exist conventionally, interdependently, and impermanently.”

For something to be empty is for it to depend on other things (which are also empty). My appearance as a person doesn’t stand alone. It depends on a body, a mind, parents, air, food, and on being labelled as a person. Apart from all these things, there is simply no person or self to be found. It is not just the person or self that is empty, everything is empty in the same way – rocks, trees, bridges, planets, sentient beings, bodies, minds, thoughts, emotions, memories, truths, standards, certainties, pain and suffering, joy and happiness, afflictive and enlightened states of mind – are without “own-being”, “self-nature”, or “inherent existence” and thus without any underlying essence. They are empty of being independently existent. This is so because all things arise always dependently, not by their own power, but by depending on conditions leading to their coming into existence, as opposed to being. The more closely we look for their essence, the more we don’t find these things.

All form, both coarse as in a tree, and subtle as in thought, depend upon innumerable conditions so they are not the fixed entities that they appear to be. Nothing actually remains the same for an instant. Buddhists deny that anything retains its identity over time (the doctrine of impermanence), and that even at a given moment, there is no unchanging entity as to who we are and nothing in us that fits this description. What is perceived to be an unchanging object is, on the contrary, an instantaneous, indivisible movement of disintegration and formation, even though this transience or impermanence is imperceptible in the short term.

Impermanence means that everything is in change constantly, moment by moment. No thing in fact truly exists as a fixed “thing” at any time. Change is at work every moment on everything. In other words, there is no static moment in “duration” for anything. This is what “impermanence” means: no lasting reality. The very moment that something “is”, is the moment when it no longer “is”; its “existence” is cancelled out. There is no candidate for permanence. That anything appears to change shows that the thing is not self-composed or independently free-standing. If there were such a self-reliant thing, it would be impervious to effect upon it. It would remain as it had presumably been originated, indefinitely, immortally, not depending on anything. We know of no such thing. The abiding soul atman or eternal God figure posited by some schools of thought is, by definition, not dependent upon any element of the world for its existence. The Buddha’s philosophy holds that anything that is not dependent cannot be real. It would either transcend or precede existence, and thus could not exist.

The emptiness of all things lies in the constant flux that characterises the phenomenal world. There are no fixed, static entities in the world that remain the same. No entity retains all of its properties from one moment to the next; no entity endures from one moment to the next. Any identity over time (a continuum) is hence a fiction. The Buddha expressed this view when he said, “the world is a continuous flux and is impermanent”. He also said “It is not possible to step into the same river twice.”

“The only constant is change.”

For the Madhyamika Buddhists, there is no fixed stage upon which the cosmic drama is enacted because the entire cosmos is permeated by a continuity of alterations. Absolutely nothing remains the same for any two successive moment; cells, etc, have changed. Since phenomena lack a nature that remains unchanged through the unfolding of time, they are empty. Phenomena are therefore best characterised not by “being” but “becoming”. For example, we might ask, when does the seed become a plant, and when does the plant become a tree? Once again, we encounter obscurities in our attempts to pinpoint the exact natures of “seedness,” “plantness,” and “treeness,” and these obscurities are, for the Buddhists, proof that there are no such natures or essences to begin with.

Dependent origination simply is the explicability and coherence of the universe. lts emptiness is the fact that there is no more to it than that. When we look for an essence we literally come up empty. Dependence is the very antithesis of essence or intrinsic existence. The analysis never terminates with anything that can stand as an essence.

Since all things are empty, all things lack any self-nature. Self-nature, or essence, is just what empty things are empty of. In fact, all things cannot but be empty; there is no other mode of existence of which they are capable. Since emptiness is a necessary characteristic of things, it belongs to them; it is part of the very nature of phenomena per se. This is an ultimate truth about them.

When it states that all things are empty, it does not mean that all things are non-existent. It only means that things do not inherently exist, independently and on their own right. We don’t claim non-existence, we merely remove claims for inherently existing things. So while all things are empty of inherent existence, nonetheless, things still appear or show up in some fashion. Whatever appears, it is impossible for it not to be empty; and if it is empty it is impossible for it to be nothing. For example, a mirage does appear or show up. Mirages really are mirages, but are not really water, though they might appear to be water. So conventional phenomena really are empty, dependently arisen, nominally real, but are not substantial, inherently existent phenomena, though they might appear to be.

No phenomenon is denied or invalidated by the fact of being empty; it is empty in the very moment of its appearance. Take for example the moon reflected in water. The moon appears while being empty and its emptiness does not necessitate the exclusion of its appearance. If there is no appearance, there is no emptiness, for emptiness and appearance depend upon each other. Emptiness entails appearance; appearance entails emptiness. And the thing that appearances are empty of is intrinsic existence.

One who has understood emptiness through modes of profound reasoning does not cling to phenomena as having true existence, although they appear to exist truly. Ordinary people hold things to exist truly and phenomena appear to them in such a manner. Hence, they are caught up in a quagmire of appearances. This is similar to the perception of people who watch a magic illusion. Now as to the one who has eliminated ignorance and sees emptiness directly, that one does not entertain true existence and hence, not cling to things as truly existent.

Emptiness does not deny the existence of things but says that all things have no intrinsic essence. In other words, nothing exists on its own, divorced or separated from other things. Therefore, everything is interconnected and cannot exist without something else existing. This is the meaning of emptiness and this is dependent arising.

“What is dependently co-arisen that is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation is itself the middle way. Something that is not dependently arisen, such a thing does not exist. Therefore a non-empty thing does not exit.” Nagarjuna.

“If something is dependent on something else to manifest, it is empty and has no self-existence. And if something is empty, it depends on something else to come into being; it cannot manifest on its own. Everything is co-dependent arising.”

“Dependence (relativity) is the main characteristic of phenomena, and that which is dependent (relative) is not real in the highest sense.”

Summary:

Nāgārjuna’s fundamental conception is that all phenomena are empty of intrinsic nature because they depend on other things. Because they are empty they can interact with each other to generate the effect, which, being dependent and impermanent cannot but be empty as well. The myriad things are interdependent, ever-changing, and empty. Significantly, things are empty because they are devoid of any fixed essence or permanent nature. That things are ever-changing also indicates that they are devoid of any fixed identity. Ultimately, we cannot say what things are because they do not exist in and of themselves.

Because things are interdependently co-arisen, the Buddha says that inherently existent things cannot be found so in absolute terms one could say that phenomena as events are ultimately unfindable. This absence or “emptiness of phenomena” is called Sunyata. It is actually quite subtle: there is nothing, not one single thing in the realm of phenomena, that can be either pinned down or grasped in any way. Insubstantiality, ungraspability and complete unfindability are the ultimate characteristics of experienced phenomena. They are utterly pure from the very beginning. They are beyond all conceptual constructs. They are beyond the discrimination of acceptance and rejection and because they have no objectifiable essence they never really come into existence, nor do they go out of existence either. Every phenomenal event is entirely elusive and ephemeral. It is like trying to grasp an image in a mirror.

The yogi or yogini searching for the true nature of things in analytical meditation does not come up with the true existence of anything; he or she realises only emptiness. Emptiness is, therefore, the final nature, the ultimate reality, the mode of being, of all that exists. When one perceives the emptiness of intrinsic nature of a phenomenon, one perceives a nature that phenomenon has, regardless of ones perspective of it. The emptiness of intrinsic nature is the ultimate truth that must be realised on the path to liberation. But it is more than that. It is a lack of difference between entities. Ultimately there is no difference between any two things in the universe because they are all empty.

Inherent Existence

By inherent existence we mean something distinct, something self-established with its own core nature, something not dependent on anything else. All thinking is based on a presupposition that things have self-established natures, it is, after all, almost impossible to talk without at least an implicit nod in the direction of self-nature or inherently existing entities. But Nagarjuna points out that all things depend on other things so there can be no independent inherent entities in existence whatsoever. He taught that inherent, independent entities can never be compatible with dependent arising and emptiness. In fact, real inherent entities, he says, makes no logical or empirical sense whatsoever. In Buddhism, the misperception that things exist inherently is identified as the root error responsible for suffering. Buddhist reasoning completely refutes any notion of inherent existence or intrinsic existence, any kind of clinging to existence whatsoever.

For something to be real or to inherently exist it must be self-existent with a nature of its own, which is not produced by help from anything else. Such a real entity must be permanent, so it cannot arise, change in any way, or cease to be. It would always be there and never perish. So too, it is not created by anything else or in any way dependent on anything else (since it would then not have its own independent reality). Nor can it affect anything else (since that would involve a change). Thus, it must exist by its very own power. In sum, what is real or inherently existing is totally independent of all other things. In short, it must be self-existent.

To affirm inherent existence would be to claim that things are really objectively there existing on their own without help from anything else. They would always be there, permanent, unaffectable, and unchanging. They would never perish. Everything would be frozen, isolated, unchanging and nothing would relate to anything. We could never become enlightened – we would be stuck permanently in our current unenlightened state. Buddhist praxis would be meaningless and suffering (dukkha) could never be ended. But inherent existence is not our experience. Inherent things would not depend on anything else. But everything in this world depends on other things, and everything is in a state of constant flux or change, so how can we claim an inherent unchanging entity exists at all? Inherent existence is an impossible mode of existence (like the hairs on a tortoise) that is misattributed to the object. Further, if such an inherent entity does exist then we should be in a position not only to negate dependent arising of the entity but also to provide evidence of the existence of such an entity. This has not yet been achieved. Hence, we can only conclude that inherent entities do not exist. They are mere mental constructs, a figment of imagination and are unfindable in actual reality. The misperception that things exist inherently (ignorance) is the object to be negated; not the conventional objects themselves.

Things appear to exist in a certain way (inherently) without actually existing that way. A falsity is something that appears in one way (substantial) and exists in another way (empty of substantiality), somewhat like a mirage. It appears that everything exists through its own separate nature or essence that makes each thing what it is, including a “self.” However, all phenomena are without such individual identity. To conceive of people and things existing in and of themselves through their own core nature is called inherent existence. This is the target to be refuted on the path of emptiness teachings. The absence of inherent existence is referred to as emptiness and when realized, one sees all phenomena without an independent essence or self-nature.

We see a cup. Because it appears to really be there under its own steam, independent of causes, independent of its parts, and independent of being perceived, it appears to be inherently existent. Not only does it appear to be inherently existent, we might also actually believe that it exists this way. This appearance and this belief make up the conception of inherent existence. However, just because we have the conception of inherent existence does not mean that it really exists. It is sort of like seeing a snake where there is only a rope. Just because we have the conception of an object does not establish the inherent existence of that object. This reasoning provides a meditative way to look for inherent existence and see that it is not findable. Once inherent existence is clearly seen to be not-findable, the conception of inherent existence will cease and hence ignorance and primal confusion cease.

In the Middle Way teachings, it is said that things do exist conventionally. The conventional existence of the cup is the everyday ability of the cup to hold tea, to be washed and dried, and to shatter if dropped. This conventional cup serves the purpose of a cup even though if it were analyzed with middle way reasoning, it would not be found. The purpose of the reasoning is not applied to refute the conventional, everyday existence of things, such as the teacup, the self that goes to the grocery store, or the car parked in the driveway, or the weather, because conventional existence, according to Middle Way Buddhism, is not the cause of suffering therefore, there is no necessity to refute it. Hence, conventional existence of a thing is not negated, but only the misperception of it having inherent existence. Grasping, contrivance and all artificialities is directly related to the misperception of essence (inherent existence) in things. Without having rationally refuted the inherent existence of an object, its unreality is not established. For example, for beings that don’t allow their minds to investigate the misperception of inherent existence (ignorance), since they do not directly encounter this ignorance, they cannot eliminate that great fault.

Since everything that exists depends on something else to come into existence, nothing can be self-existent. Nothing exists without relying on or being in relationship with other factors or conditions. For this reason, phenomena are not independent and are thus empty of independent existence. When our minds become very familiar with this, when we see that everything depends on other factors and conditions, we will see that phenomena are empty of self-existence. The reason they are not self-existent is because they are dependent. When we become angry, upset, jealous, or excited, or when we crave for or cling to something, the grasping at inherence existence is present. We need to look at the way the “I” appears to us at those times. For example, suppose someone comes along and accuses you of having caused some great harm when in fact you are entirely blameless. At that time you are likely to have a very vivid and strong sense of I. You may think to yourself “I didn’t do that. Why are they blaming me?” At this time you can clearly observe the inherently existing I appearing to the innate I grasping mind. You can also clearly observe the mind grasping the appearance as inherently existent.

The sense of an inherent “I” or “self” is like something in the background, something subjective, like a passive observer. From this perspective it’s not so much that we are the body, but rather, that we have a body. When we are angry we don’t believe our body is angry, but “I” am angry. It is our identification with this false sense of “I” that is the cause of all our woes. It is false because it cannot be found when looked for. The “I” exists only by imagination or imputation. It is this imputed “self” Middle Way refutes, not the conventional person.

In order to be free of the I or self we must first distinguish the object of negation, which is an inherently existing self. What is not negated is the everyday dependently arisen, conventional self. The inherent self must then contain an intrinsic nature that is self-enclosed and logically definable. It must have an essence discoverable upon analysis. The consequence that follows is that this self must be perceivable separate from the aggregates. As this is not the case we conclude that a self (an inherent self) separate from the aggregates, does not exist.

In dealing with the concept of a self that is independent of the aggregates, such as an unchanging self, it is logically impossible to make any meaningful connection between this self and the aggregates. In simple terms, how can an unchanging entity, such as the self, relate to the aggregates which are multiple, momentary, and in constant flux? Furthermore, no such unchanging entity is the object of our “I” consciousness, or natural sense of selfhood, which always relates to either our physical or mental person, such as, I think, my arm, or my thoughts. If such an unchanging self exists it must be observable in our experience. As we do not experience this we conclude such a self does not exist.

When one refutes the object of inherent existence over and over, using the examples of different kinds of phenomena, one will see something new begin to happen. Persons and phenomena will be conceived as conventionally existent but lacking inherent existence. This is the end of the conception of inherent existence and the end of painful and afflicted arisings such as: “How could she do that to me? That is absolutely not permissible! I have done so much for her and this is the gratitude I get!” If these feelings are greeted with even an intellectual, inferential cognition of the emptiness of inherent existence the sense of anger, indignation and suffering will begin to dissolve. To see through the deception of inherent existence is critical because it is the root error that leads to the endless grasping and aversion that underlies all suffering. To pierce this mental fiction is to be unburdened from the view of being a separate, contained self in a world of separate, contained people and things.

The key principle – that all things are empty of inherent existence – actually means that all things are dependently arisen. The very existence of any entity depends on conditions, depends on its parts, and depends on the mind that apprehends it. Without this dependence on these other factors, an entity cannot exist at all. In other words, it cannot exist concretely and independently, in its own right, free of these dependencies. Thinking it can, is like speaking of the horns on a rabbit. Entities have always been empty so they have never truly existed.

Because things are interdependently co-arisen, Buddhist thought says that inherently existent things cannot be found so in absolute terms, one could say that phenomena as events are ultimately unfindable. Not one single thing in the realm of phenomena can be either pinned down or grasped in any way. Insubstantiality, ungraspability and complete unfindability are the ultimate characteristics of experienced phenomena, somewhat like what takes place in a dream.

The lack of an inherent self is explained in the following example . When I was about ten years old my friends and I would throw stones at each other. I came to realize that no matter where a stone hit me (arm, leg or even the head) it did not hit “me” but hit only my arm, my leg or my head. There was no place a stone could land that I thought was truly me. In fact, whatever could be named, arm, was not me, because it was “my” arm. The “my” or “I” seemed to be something different from arm. But where was this “I”? It’s not as though I didn’t have a strong sense of it. But no matter where I looked, it seemed to keep shifting as though it was always in back of me! The inability to find the “I” really did begin to weaken my sense of its reality.

The Buddha emphasizes that the object of reference for our ego-clinging is not the five aggregates but rather the idea of “I” that we entertain; in other words, a false philosophical concept. To illustrate this point imagine, for example, a hiker in the country sees a scarecrow in the distance and thinks that it is the local farmer. The aggregates of the scarecrow is the substantial basis for the hiker’s mistaken idea. The idea “farmer” arising in his mind is due simply to a disposition grounded in past experience and habit. In the moment of illusion when the hiker believes that the farmer is there, it is not that he is detecting something present in the scarecrow, for there is certainly no trace of the farmer contained in it. The farmer is just a baseless illusion which does not in any way abide in the scarecrow. In just the same way, for the Buddha, the illusion of the self has no real basis. The aggregates are only the occasion of a mistaken conception.

Within our everyday, natural existence we do not relate to a metaphysical self, instead, we identify with either one or a combination of our aggregates. For example, if I cut myself I can truthfully say, ‘I have cut myself’. Likewise, if I feel happy I can truthfully say, ‘I am happy’. These are the ways we interact; either in relation to our body or our mind. In relation to the thought ‘I am’ such as in, ‘I am going to eat’, ‘I am happy’, and ‘I remember’, we always relate to either one or a combination of our aggregates. There is nothing in our experience that suggests our natural thoughts of ‘I’ can exist independent of our aggregates (i.e. our body, mind, feelings, perceptions, consciousness). Every time we can accurately say ‘I’ do, feel, think, etc. we are not relating to an inherent entity but to a conventional self that functions in everyday life.

Consider another example. Looking around us, we see distinctive phenomena. As I write this I see a cat (Lily) sleeping on a chair, for example. In the conventional view, the cat and the chair are two distinctive and separate phenomena. Notice the way the English language causes us to speak of the chair and of Lily as if their component parts are attributes belonging to a self-nature. We say the chair has fabric and Lily has fur. But the doctrine of emptiness says; not only are these component parts empty of self-nature, there is nothing intrinsic or inherent that possesses the fur or the fabric.

Insofar as conventional phenomena present themselves as more than conventional as inherently existent, they deceive us. Take for example, the phenomenon suffering. When one perceives suffering to be an inherent entity then one is asserting it is not dependently arisen from conditions. If this is true then suffering would exist inherently in which case, there are no conditions in the absence of which it ceases to exist and hence liberation from suffering is impossible. Likewise, if one thinks that, say racism exists inherently, one will be unable to account for its dependent arising and hence liberation from racism is impossible. The same goes for such things as, anger, anxiety, prejudice and so forth.

The world as it really is is a sea of interdependent interrelated causation. There are no distinct inherent entities. The very discrimination of inherent entities is the result of projecting our conceptual distinctions onto reality. In short, we superimpose “inherent existence” onto what is void of it. We thereby distort reality by seeing it as a mass of distinct unconnected entities corresponding to the discrete concepts that our mind has devised.

Although phenomena undeniably appear, but when examined, no essence or inherent existence of those things can be found. This means that by their very nature, they abide in emptiness, the emptiness of being primordially unborn and unobservable. This is the emptiness that we need to establish. Phenomena are empty or lack inherent identity. They are so designated because when they are investigated by absolutist reasoning, it is precisely this inherent existence that is not found. Again, when we say that something lacks inherent nature, it is because we cannot find and identify this nature. Phenomena are likewise said to be without attributes. They are said to be impossible to define, empty, without self, beyond the extremes of samsara and nirvana, space like, and so on. All this is the same as saying that they lack inherent existence. By contrast, if, on being subjected to absolutist analysis, a thing were found to resist such an investigation, it would necessarily be established as truly existent. But no phenomenon is found to resist such analysis. Phenomena are therefore said to lack inherent or intrinsic existence.

However, intrinsic existence is not understood to be unreal by ordinary persons. Instead, ordinary persons impute intrinsic nature or essence on to conventional phenomena and perceive things as being intrinsically real. Only awakened beings realize intrinsic nature is illusory. As such, ordinary beings fail to see the true nature of things; their emptiness of intrinsic nature. Their minds have been suffused with a poisonous clinging to the real existence of entities. They have become addicted to such an attitude, and their habit is exceedingly strong with the result that it is hard to abandon. Therefore, in perceiving concrete objects, beings are quite unable to discern their nature. They are overpowered by false discursive thoughts that mistakenly take such objects to be truly existent things. It is for this reason that all living beings fail to perceive the true nature of phenomena – that is, their emptiness. In exactly the same way it is by continuously observing a thing that looks the same from moment to moment that the mind is dulled and fails to notice the thing’s momentary nature. Although people never actually perceive anything as truly existent – for this would run counter to the very nature of phenomena, which is emptiness – nevertheless, their minds are hampered by their mistaken thoughts and they apprehend things amiss.

Mental Constructions

Everything we experience is mediated through our minds. Whatever we know or talk about is already a thing as it is known, a thing as conceived by a mind. We cannot talk about or get at things as they are in and of themselves apart from mind or in a way that is prior to any thought or conceptualisation. This is because things have no nature in and of themselves apart from mind. If we leave aside our minds and attempt to analyse objects in and of themselves bypassing our minds, we soon realise that there is nothing to which we can point. And it is not simply because we happen to be trapped in a situation where we cannot step out of our skin and take an objective view of the matter, it is because the thing in question, that which we would wish to know is already something of which we are conceiving. When we ask about how things are in and of themselves apart from mind, we never find a shred of a thing – in – itself. We suppose that the world is already and always fully real, independent of our minds, out there waiting to be revealed by the searchlight of consciousness. Our minds are actually collaborating in the creation of the world, moment by moment. The world shows up exactly the way we have constructed it. We don’t discover real objects out there, only what we have constructed “out there” by thought or mind. Hence the expression: “It’s all in the mind.”

Let me explain how the mind is involved in our misperception of things. Generally speaking, the five material sense perceptions and mental perception work together, arising and ceasing moment by moment, and so creating our image of the world. Our sensory and mental consciousness also registers concepts, memories and emotions from the side of the observer and these enter into the representation of the total perceptual field which constitutes our cognitions. Our senses, in conjunction with our mental consciousness, perceive only the mode of appearance of things. The mode of appearance suggests substantiality. The mode of appearance is deceptive; it is not the way things really are. Things appear in one way (intrinsically) but exist in another (they lack intrinsic nature). Things are empty, like reflections in a mirror, or an oasis of a lake in the desert. Our sensory and cognitive instruments are an unreliable witness. We cannot rely on our ordinary sense and cognitive faculties to tell us whether something is or is not empty of intrinsic nature. When we look at a table, even our eyes present an image of something that seems to be set up right there, independent, as though apart from us, apart from our mind. In this regard, a visual consciousness is “not valid in any way,” it is “not a valid cognition”. If our ordinary senses already gave us an accurate picture of the world or of ultimate reality, what would be the point of enlightenment? Everyone would be already enlightened, which is not the case.

Our sensory and cognitive faculties are mistaken about how conventional phenomena exist. They misperceive things as having their own intrinsic nature. Things appear to them as though they were established objectively, independently, from their own side. Our mental or cognitive resources actively ascent to this false appearance, they conceive of things as existing in an exaggerated way, existing in and of themselves. We are hard-wired to see things exactly this way (a collection of self-contained entities). We superimpose intrinsic nature (characteristics, properties, substantiality, etc) on things that lack it. We are literally seeing things that are not there. So the world we perceive as a physical reality is actually our mental construction of it. We have projected a false reality on the screen in front of us. We have misperceived what is essentially fluid, impermanent, ever changing and lacking independent existence to be real, substantial, independent concrete entities that we can interact with. We don’t see the actual world but merely a mental interpretation or representation of it. Since it is merely a mental projection, it can be thought of as something very much like a dream.

So how do appearances come to be so deceptive? For example, sensory contact with the world is a catalyst for the proliferation of perceptions. In other words, what we cognize through sense-data and through the sense-faculties are then perceived or recognized by checking them, as it were, against a memory bank of past experiences so that we can make sense of it form ideas and motivation for various actions. In other words, we see only what we have mentally constructed, not real objects. Because these various constructions of our minds appear before us as self-existent objects, we become attached to the apparent reality of our own constructions. Although our mental construction of the world and things appears to be solid, the physical world itself is not.

What we take for objects of perception (both internal and external) which have certain qualities or characteristics inherent in them (sweet, big, round, green, or internal characteristics like anger, pride, resentment, jealousy, and so on) are actually pervaded by deluded conceptions about those objects and that the qualities or characteristics which we believe inhere in the objects are mentally imputed to them or superimposed on them by the observer from his or her store of memories, presumptions, dispositions, emotions, etc. These characteristics do not inhere in the objects themselves. They are thus not the object of perception but only what we have mentally imputed upon it. Because they are imputed by mind, they lack substance, nothing substantial can be found. For example, consider a picture of Donald Trump appearing in a newspaper. Upon seeing the picture this image may engender mental images in the observers that could range anywhere from “likeable” to “unlikeable” according to their beliefs, memories, emotions, political persuasions, and so on. The characteristics “likeable” and “unlikeable” are mentally imputed on the picture; they do not exist intrinsically in and of themselves. This kind of mental delusion is the root of our suffering.

Buddhist thought shows us the fundamental distortion in the cognitive process which sets the samsaric cycle of “the twelve links” in motion and drags beings through the various realms of existence. This fundamental distortion is the tendency to take an extreme view toward phenomena, that is, to overestimate their natures. This extreme view or overestimation is that phenomena are independent self-sufficient entities which bear their own characteristics independent of a perceiving subject or observer.

Our perception of things certainly feels like it presents an immediate and accurate picture of the world just as it is set-up out there and independent of a subject viewing such things. Yet, our perceptual and conceptual apparatus function as measuring instruments. We do not know the objects of our sensory experience directly or immediately but only through the mediation of our sense faculties and cognitive apparatus (mind). So our immediate experience of the world is an illusion of immediacy. Things appear, not directly, but are perceived through the mediation of our sensory and cognitive factors. Things are but constructions of our mind. They are not real objects “out there”, but only what we have mentally constructed “out there”. Since the objects are false, knowledge of them is also false.

Appearances are deceptive. For example, take the colour red (as in a rose). The colour red seems to exist “out there” intrinsically and independent of our sensory perceptions. Yet bees, who can see infrared and ultraviolet, see something very different to red, and dogs, who see limited colour, see perhaps grey or something else. In other words, there is no intrinsic red out there, things simply appear in the manner in which they are perceived; which varies according to the perceptual apparatus of the observer. The colour red is an illusion of red. Red does not exist in the rose itself but is merely conceptually imputed on the rose from the side of the observer. From the side of the rose, independent of our sensory and cognitive faculties, there is no intrinsic colour red, nor is there an intrinsic rose for that matter. There is no true nature of things as they really are, there is only the way things appear or show up. This is a very different way of perceiving things.

Since the objects that we apprehend appear only subject to the conditions of our cognitive and sensory apparatus, they have no nature of their own. Hence they are not real, but illusions imputed by our minds. We don’t encounter things directly independent of our perceptual apparatus we only encounter illusory imputations of objects, not real objects. We cannot apperceive or experience anything directly. We are not immediately aware of anything, nor can we directly know anything.

We seem to have an immediate and determinate picture of what the world is like, independent of any knowledge or representation of it in thoughts beliefs experiences and assumptions. But that picture is ever elusive to us for we have only different endless mental representations of it. No matter how deeply we may think, we only have another representation of it in thought. Things appear to be stable, concrete things out there but turn out to be constructs of our mind. Our minds have projected a false reality on the screen in front of us. We have misperceived what is essentially fluid, impermanent, ever changing and lacking independent existence to be real, substantial, independent, concrete entities that we can interact with. We don’t see the actual world but merely a mental interpretation or representation of it. Since it is merely a mental projection, it can be thought of as something very much like a dream.

“Our knowledge of the world does not conform to how the world really is; rather, the world as we perceive it conforms to our knowledge or thought or mind of it.” Kant.

Not only are objects illusory but our subjectivity also is present to us only in an illusory fashion. We do not even know our own inner experience. Our thoughts, our perceptions, our feelings, our awareness or our consciousness are just as deceptive as are the external objects. We construct ourselves and our awareness and our consciousness just as surely as we construct the external objects we posit, and confuse our experience of ourselves and our inner states with their nature just as surely as we do our experience of external objects and their nature. Thinking we can know our own cognitive states directly and accurately is a cognitive illusion. All we encounter in our experience (inner and outer) are illusions all the way down; illusory objects, illusory feelings and illusory experiences. Illusion is woven into the very fabric of our experience, as the great Zen Master Dogen articulates.

All our experiences, all the way down, are mediated through our senses or mind. They are not directly experienced but are merely illusory imputations. We have no direct or immediate experience of anything that is not mediated through mind or is not dependent on our mind. If we think we have a true nature and that we can directly know that nature, or know ourselves, this is just another illusion. There is no way things really are; only the way things appear or show up (like the colour red). Everything is groundless empty and interdependent all the way down, and it is therefore impossible to specify an inherent underlying reality upon which anything finally depends. We may think there must be a rock bottom reality or ultimate truth somewhere. But if we look for something real, Dogen reminds us we will never find it. Our insistence that there must be something real, something true, something solid and tangible that underlies our experience, again, is just another illusion. Nothing we experience is encountered just as it is. We don’t even encounter real experiences, only illusions of real experiences. True knowledge can only be the acceptance that there is none, and even this fact is just another illusion.

What all this means is that there is only conventional reality or dependently arisen reality (things arising dependent on other things). There can be no intrinsic “thing” called ultimate reality, a theory describing how things really are independent of our conceptual resources (mind) employed in describing it. All we are left with is conventional truth, commonly accepted practices and conventions. Conventional truth is all we arrive at when viewing the world through our linguistically formed conceptual framework. But we should be wary of denigrating these conventions that incorporates our specific interests and concerns. Denigrating the conventional presupposes that there is a “true” world out there (the way things really are) that is untainted by conceptuality, even if our minds can never reach it. But the very notion of such a ‘way things really are’ is argued by the Mādhyamika to be incoherent. There is no way of investigating the world apart from our linguistic and conceptual practices, if only because these practices generate the notion of the ‘world’ and of the ‘objects’ in it in the first place. Our way of investigating the world is inextricably bound up with the linguistic and conceptual framework we happen to employ. Language is the very gateway to the reality. The seeming veil of language gives us a hint of that which is veiled.

Conventional truth is not a second-rate reality, it is the only reality there is. This understanding puts an end to the futile search for something superior to the conventional, like a transcendent or ultimate reality. Dogen, whose talk entitled “Gabyo” or “Picture of a Rice Cake” explains this. Basically what this talk is saying is that all we experience is mediated through our sensory and cognitive apparatus so we don’t have an immediate or direct experience of anything, only an illusion of immediacy. He likens our experience to encountering a painted rice cake, not a real rice cake. We do not encounter the actual condition of things but only what is mediated through our mind or constructed through our mind. We paint everything, meaning that everything is mentally constructed. All rice cakes are painted; none are unpainted or unconstructed. There is not a single activity that is not painted or not mentally constructed. Life and death, their comings and goings, are all painted pictures; all the things in the world, the empty sky, supreme enlightenment and ultimate reality itself, there is nothing whatsoever that is not a painted picture, a painted rice cake. The ultimate is no less painted than the conventional forms that we experience. In this scenario the idea of an inherent ultimate truth is put under the spotlight. “What is the ultimate truth? There is no ultimate truth.” Dogen is rejecting the idea that the truth of a statement must hang on some ultimate nature of reality, on some “unpainted” rice cake.

This radical teaching is a much-needed corrective to an experience or insight of oneness or direct experience as a privileging of some absolute (unpainted) state. Dogen’s underlying message is that the image of the truth and the truth itself are completely interdependent. All of his teachings manifest this level of appreciation of the non-duality of duality and non-duality. Whether we are talking about the absolute and relative, heaven and earth, good and evil, man and woman, nirvana or samsara; the same applies. The picture is reality, reality is the picture. “Nothing is hidden, all is painted.” We would all benefit from attending to our painting and not be distracted by a craving for the unpainted. In this way, all rice cakes actualized right now are nothing but a painted rice cake. If you look for some other kind of rice cake (an unpainted one) you will never find it, you will never grasp it.”

As the entire world and all phenomena are a painting, human existence appears from a painting, and Buddha ancestors are actualized from a painting. Since this is so, there is no remedy for satisfying hunger other than a painted rice cake. (There are only painted rice cakes; none are unpainted). There is no satisfaction other than painted satisfaction. In fact, satisfying hunger, not satisfying hunger, cannot be attained or spoken of without painted hunger. For now, study all of these as a painted rice cake. To enact this ability is to actualize the painting of enlightenment.

Conclusion:

Primal confusion is the notion that things have their own way of existing – inherently and independently – without being posited through the force of mental imputation. But this is a cognitive illusion. Take, for example, the case of an imaginary snake that is mistakenly ascribed to a rope. If we leave aside how it is imagined from the perspective of the mind that apprehends a snake, and try to analyse what the snake itself is like in terms of its own nature or its own side, its features cannot be analysed in as much as a snake is simply not present in that object. It is similar with regard to all phenomena. When we analyse the objects in and of themselves apart from the mind analysing them, asking, “what is the manner of being of these phenomena?” we find that they are not established in any way.

It is not that things have some reality of their own which we, unfortunately, cannot ever seem to get at because we cannot step outside ourselves and adopt a “Gods eye view”, rather, it is that the mind co-creates everything that exists. Nothing exists except as a conceptual imputation.

The understanding that we cannot directly know anything at all eliminates ignorance about the reality of things. This brings about the cessation of ignorantly grasping at illusions of intrinsic existence.

No Self, No problem

Before we can contemplate life without a self we first need to be convinced that there is in fact no self. People tell you to “just be yourself.” But what if you don’t know who that self really is? More confusing yet, what if there’s no such thing as your “self?” If that strikes you as crazy, you’re not alone! Most of Western philosophy centres on the concept of the self, including such notable ideas as Rene Descartes’ seventeenth century assertion, cognito, ergo sum – “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes believed that humanity is defined by thinking and this in turn assumes a stable, continuous self who thinks. But does that singular “I” or “self” really exist? Where Western philosophy explicitly assumes that it does, Eastern philosophy, and particularly Buddhist philosophy, makes no such assumption. Upon investigation, an intrinsic independent self (a self that can be identified separate and apart from the body/mind aggregates) cannot be found and therefore they conclude does not exist. All human suffering, they say, can be attributed to the illusion that it does exist. Furthermore, they say that appearance of the aggregates does not necessitate the existence of a “self” within them. If we look for such a self, trying to pinpoint an essence, something objectively real that exists as a valid referent of the term or concept “self”, we will fail to find anything at all.

The Buddhist doctrine of no-self (anātman) simply aims to deflate the grasping ego and thereby undermine anxiety and live more peaceful lives. Therefore, the teachings of the Buddha have one core purpose: to eradicate dukkha, a Sanskrit word often translated as ‘suffering’, but perhaps stronger than this; is all of life’s dissatisfaction, disappointment, unfulfilled hopes and unhappiness. One of our most prominent and damaging misconceptions about reality and that causes us great suffering, the Buddha thinks, is our confused notion of ‘self’. Belief in a permanent self, he says, is the most dangerous and pernicious of all errors, the most deceitful of delusions

Although the Buddha clearly affirms the concept of no-self, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what the Buddha really means here. The Buddha explains that the referents of ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘self’, don’t really exist in the way we think they do; that is, as real, permanent, unchanging, inherent entities. Why does the Buddha hold this position? Because, when you think about it, no part of us ever stays the same: we are changing every second of every day, our thoughts, desires, moods, memories, the hair on our heads, the nails in our fingers and toes, the cells of our bodies — all is in flux. According to the Buddha, ‘self’ refers not to some permanent substance; it’s simply a convenient way to refer to the myriad, ever-changing aggregates and processes that, collectively we call ‘self’.

This is similar to what we call “tree”. The word “tree” refers not to some permanent substance; it is simply a convenient way to refer to the aggregates (trunk, branches, leaves, and so on). Take the individual parts away and no “tree” remains. So it is with the self, the Buddha thinks. We use individual names and pronouns like ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’, ‘self’ and we may think that in using such words we are referring to an individual, persisting entity. But when we strip away the body parts, no ‘I’ or ‘self’ is left over.

A famous Buddhist text that illustrates this thinking is the analysis of a chariot by 7th Century Sage, Chandrakirti. Instead of analysing a chariot we will analyse a car. So what is it that makes a car a car?

Chandrakirti asks: Are the seats that are the car? The answer is no. Is it the wheels, the engine, the windows that are the car? No. Then is it all the parts combined that are the car? No. Is there anything outside the car that is the car? Still the answer is no.

Thus, we can find no independent separate entity (like ‘carness’) that is called ‘car’. Just as ‘car’ is nothing in addition to all its parts, so the ‘self’ is nothing, no extra thing, in addition to its aggregates or parts. Like car, self is simply a convenient fiction, a shorthand reference for the many different parts (mental and physical) that make us up. Its existence is based in convention, rather than in some persisting underlying entity. And given there is no essence in a person that can be found, there is no necessity for something to be essentially a subject of experience.

So we exist in a conventional sense; we just aren’t what we think we are in an ultimate sense. “Self” is a constant flow of various factors or conditions coming together. When we refer to individuals, we are actually referring to various factors or conditions coming together (parents, food, water, air, aggregates, mind, and the label ‘self’). There is no additional factor called self. Self is simply a name which is used to label the coming together of these various conditions. And these conditions are also dependent on the coming together of other conditions. In all cases entities are found to be empty. And the mind (consciousness) also is empty. In fact, all things in the world – mental and physical – are empty or lacking inherent existence.

Reflecting on his own sense of self, David Hume, philosopher, who had insight into ‘no-self’, writes: “For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call my “self”, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch ‘myself’ at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.”

The upshot is that while thoughts and feelings exist, there is no separate ‘self’ or ‘I’, no separate person, experiencing those thoughts and feelings. We do not have an additional experience of the self on top of other experiences. There is no persisting self, nothing about us that remains the same at all times. The self is just a convenient way to refer to the aggregates. However, if we start believing the self is actually real — some kind of independent, persisting substance as opposed to a convenient fiction — the danger is that it encourages us to view everything through its lens; we feel so intimately connected to this self. We are driven by the core thought “I am most important”, my happiness is paramount. We then judge reality only by how it impacts this fictional self, which leads us to develop certain attachments and aversions. ‘I like this and I don’t like that’, ‘I want more of this and less of that’, ‘I love this and require it to be content’, ‘I hate this and whenever it happens I am filled with dread and anxiety’. Numerous negative emotions (depression, disharmony, anger, attachment, dissatisfaction, jealousy, pride, and ill-will) spring up when our desires are not attained; we are left feeling dissatisfied because ‘I’ doesn’t get its way. Worse still, we become hung up on the fact that our enduring self will one day end. “We” will one day die. And this spirals into existential suffering.

Self is a false belief which has no reality and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, desire, craving and attachment. We become enslaved by the self’s demands, which traps our thoughts and feelings in ego. We view the world through the lens of desire, which creates attachment and aversion. And as the world is fundamentally transient and rarely accords with the hopes and desires we place on it, bad things happen to our sense of self, and good things always end. We base our lives on the assumption that we have a permanent self and then suffer when our mortality shows this assumption to be false. As long as we continue to view reality through the lens of illusory self, as long as we continue to grasp for things we imagine this ‘self’ wants, we set ourselves up for perpetual suffering.

Buddhism aims to fix our misconceptions of our identity not by showing us the ‘correct’ identity, but by claiming that we do not have an identity at all. Self is an imaginary false belief which has no corresponding reality. Our belief in it is the root cause of suffering.

Buddhism rejects the idea that there is any unitary self that persists throughout the lifespan. They argue that what we are is a continuously changing array of five psycho-physical aggregates (the physical body, sensation, perception, intellect, and consciousness) without an inner core or inner self. The aggregates are here for only an instant before causing a different series of aggregates to arise in their place. None of these momentary parts is a self and none of them lasts from one instant to the next. There is not and cannot be a “you”. Any concept of a distinct, personal identity is an illusion, and it is this illusion that leads to all the suffering and pain in the world.

Buddhism also advocates the impermanence of all things and this impermanence extends to the self, as well as objects, consciousness, awareness, and so on. Such impermanent existence could not, therefore, possess any perpetual, sustaining substance or reality in it, including a self. In this cultural framework, there is no such thing as a self that could survive death. The illusion of a persisting self, they say, underlies our fear of death. Buddhists argue that we only fear death because we suffer from an illusion of a persistent self: if the self does not exist, it is irrational to fear the death of self. Once we recognize that there is no self that persists across the lifespan, fear of death should be alleviated and this should lead to changes in practical attitudes towards both ourselves and others.

Objects

We live in illusion. The world does not exist the way it appears. Appearances are deceptive. Our sensory, cognitive process delivers a view of life as a landscape of independent objects. There is a felt sense that things are somehow really there, solid, independent, separate from us and somehow casting themselves towards us. This creates the illusion of subject/object duality. Things seem to be self-sufficient and independent of everything. Language is involved in this reification, deepening the sense of an independent identity in what is named.

Our experience of the world is populated with a wide range of phenomena – like physical objects, emotions, and people – all of which appear to be substantial entities that exist in a very real sense. For example; I am here, you are there, the tree is over there, this is my body, etc. The relationships between these things seem clear; we maintain rigid distinctions between them, and we conceive of them as separate and independent phenomena, each deserving its own ontological ground. This form of realism is founded on the notion that all phenomena possess at their core some essence, some immutable substance in which the phenomena’s intrinsic identity is contained and which serves as the bearer of whatever attributes the phenomena displays.

This assumption, while seemingly common sense, is understood in Buddhist thought as the deepest and most tenacious delusion to plague the human mind. It is a natural misconception that is hard-wired into us. Both external and internal phenomena seem real, solid and substantial. They deceptively appear to have their own independent natures, yet, when we search for the real state of their existence, their essence, we find that all phenomena, everything from galaxies to atoms, to people and their thoughts and suffering, are ultimately empty of the identities we ascribe to them. There are no core natures hiding behind these things and their characteristics. Likewise there is no core entity, like “selfness” hiding behind the aggregates; nor is there a core entity called “weatherness” hiding behind wind blowing, sun shining, etc. Phenomena do not exist as independent entities that can be isolated and understood, but rather as momentary forms whose existence is entirely dependent on their relationships to other phenomena and the conceptual labels we impute upon them.

For example, let us investigate, say a tree, and see if we can find an inherent nature or essence of the tree. Could the leaves be what we call the tree? No one would say the leaves are the tree. Then perhaps the branches, the fruit, the bark or the trunk is the tree. No, they would not constitute the tree. And if we penetrate into the tree, everything will stubbornly remain divisible into something smaller. If we look at the wood we find that it breaks down into its cells, the cells break down into molecules, the molecules break down to atoms, and atoms break down to halves, then quarters, and so on and on.

After such a descent, how can we say that there is anything which we can call a tree? We have found nothing of substance to bear this label. Instead we have found an infinitely complex series of relationships and interdependencies: the tree only exists in terms of its parts, those parts only exist in terms of their parts, and so on ad infinitum. With no essence that we can find we can conclude that the tree does not exist inherently and is thus empty. This is not to say that the tree does not exist at all, for clearly there is some form to be perceived, but it is to say that the “treeness” of this form, its supposed identity, is merely an arbitrary and artificial concept which we have foisted upon it. The tree exists only in dependence on other things. If one looks for the tree essence, there is nothing there other than its parts and external conditions operating in conjunction. There is no separate essence called tree; it can’t be found. Tree is simply a name, a concept which the mind imputes on the aggregates. There is no mind-independent tree. So the tree has merely mind or conceptual existence.

Objects of every kind, apples, cars, people and subtle mental objects such as thought, feelings and sensations, can conventionally but not ultimately be identified or located. An object can only be designated by labels such as tree, table, self, and so forth. There are no actual entities hiding behind these labels, such as, treeness, tableness, or selfness. The more closely we look, the more we don’t find these things. No independent objects or entities can be found to exist, no self-established things. None of it is truly there. To conceive of phenomena existing in and of themselves through their own core nature is called inherent existence. This is the target to be refuted on the path of emptiness teachings. This is the primary argument of emptiness teachings. Without having refuted the intrinsic existence of an object its unreality is not established. To see through the deception of inherent existence is critical because it is the root error that leads to the endless grasping and aversion that underlies all suffering.

Of course the same line of reasoning is not limited to trees but applies to all phenomena. Even immaterial things like emotions are empty since they are never found without relations to other things. Anger requires a subject, an object, the particular causes that brought it about, and the mind that experiences it. There is no such thing as pure anger blazing on its own. The relationships that define phenomena are likewise empty because they rely on the objects they relate to in order to exist. No real thing can ever be isolated and identified

Yet, the vast majority of us spend our entire lives experiencing the world as inherent. We conceptualize it as being composed of distinct, independent phenomena which can be isolated and understood non-relationally as entities which exist inherently by their own natures. We are aware of the various causes that bring these phenomena about, and the other phenomena with which they interact, but we perceive sharp discriminatory borders between them and understand them as separate and coherent concepts. Yet this can be disputed using the example of a seed. There is no fixed boundary between the existence of a seed, the tree to which it gives rise, a piece of wood from that tree, and a table fashioned therefrom. Any designated entity is but an arbitrary stage carved out of a vast continuum of interdependent phenomena. And we cannot say at what stage a thing becomes a thing. For example, imagine in my hand I hold a small heap of sand. One by one I pick up individual sand grains and throw them into a river. At what point does this heap cease to be a heap? If at some point you say the heap is no longer a heap and I add single grains of sand back, at what point does it resume its status as a heap? This example illustrates the point that the ‘heapness’ of the sand is dependent upon mental and linguistic construction; the heap does not exist in any substantial way in objective reality.

We can apply this analysis to our tree and begin to pluck off leaves and saw off branches. So when in our process of sawing off the branches does the tree stop being a tree? The difficulty in pin-pointing a universal essence which we can unequivocally identify as “treeness” is one reason for believing there is no such essence to begin with. This implies that what we take to be things that exist in their own right are actually empty of any such inherent existence. In fact, if things did have inherent existence, the more they would be scrutinised the clearer they would become. But as the example of the tree shows, the opposite seems to be the case, namely, the more something is analysed, the vaguer it gets, until it is lost altogether.

Perceiving things in terms of inherent existence creates great ontological problems. This is not surprising because inherent entities are not real (like the hairs on a tortoise) they are nothing more than mere mental imputations. The seed and sprout example illustrates this point. If we perceive an inherent seed producing an inherent sprout, at what point does the seed become a sprout? No one can say. This is a strong indication that the sprout and all other objects are not something which arise and exist objectively or inherently. It indicates that human beings do not passively experience phenomena, but that the content of our experience is something which is conceptually designated by thought or by mental imputation. Designation is, in the basic Buddhist sense, the application of an image and a term to a selected object of experience. The moment mind validly decides that the object “seed” is no longer a valid basis for the term “seed,” it labels the term “sprout” and that object becomes a sprout.

The Illusion of the Self

We all know the power of visual illusions to trick the mind into perceiving things incorrectly but the most powerful illusion is the sense that we exist inside our heads as an integrated, real, unchanging, coherent individual or self. Buddhist’s endorse the doctrine that there is no such self (ānatta). They claim that the “self” is not simply a false idea but a fundamental illusion, an illusion that is constructed in our mind. This illusion, the Buddha says, is the underlying basis for suffering (dukkha) and whose dissolution is necessary for liberation.

The illusion of self, Buddhism tells us, is a mistaken interpretation of experience. The root of this “mistaken interpretation” involves mistaking a set of impermanent psychophysical aggregates and processes (material form, sensory perceptions, feelings, emotions and consciousness) for a permanent thing (self). The point is that we wrongly assume that these fluid contingent ever changing psychophysical aggregates and processes must necessitate the existence of a fixed static entity (a self or “I”) that experiences them. But the conventional term person or self is simply a convenient label used to account for the sum of these contingent psychophysical processes. We then mistake the mere label “self” to be a substantial, unchanging, independent and unitary entity with an essential core and is the subject of my experiences while yet distinct from them, and which is also the agent that controls my actions, desires, and thoughts, the one part of the person that must always exist as long as the person exists. What we intuit or feel, all of what appears to our consciousness we misperceive as mine, a sense of ownership and that is observed and controlled by me. This is called the “I” sense or the phenomenal sense of self. The belief that we have such an inherent self is, for Buddhism, a primordial cognitive illusion.

The purpose for denying a self in Buddhism is based on freeing us from dukkha, often translated as suffering, but which is better understood as a sense of unsatisfactoriness which pervades human life, an existential unease which continues to exist even in moments of pleasure and joy. For Buddhism, the proximate cause of this suffering is craving and attachment, which, in turn, is generated by the belief in self, a self that craves things. Thus, the possibility of freeing ourselves from dukkha requires that we extinguish this belief and whatever illusions are bound up with it.

A criterion for something to qualify as a self is that it must be permanent. We think of the self as unchanging, that stays the same, that is always there, like the me at age ten is the same me at fifty. But this criterion (permanence) cannot be fulfilled, since, for Buddhism, everything is impermanent, and this includes the body/mind aggregates that constitute the person. None of the aggregates either individually or collectively are permanent. Questions like the following are asked. Is the body a self? Are our sensations and feelings a self? Are our thoughts, intentions, or desires a self? Is our awareness or consciousness of these processes a self? The answer to all these and other similar questions is no, since each of these physical or mental processes is constantly changing and the basic criteria for being a self is that it be permanent, unchanging. The question is then asked, can the totality of these processes be a self. But here again, the answer is no, since the totality of these physical and mental processes are also constantly changing. Furthermore, if there were such a self, it can’t even prevent the disintegration of the very body on which it depends.

Having established the self is not the aggregates, could the self be something beyond the aggregates, something detached that witnesses the aggregates. In traditional Brahmanic (Hindu) thinking, this is the ātman, the true self, something which transcends the aggregates, like a detached witness. But when we investigate, no such transcendent entity, true self, detached witness, or Atman can be found or observed. Philosopher David Hume noted: We do not, through introspection, directly observe a self which is separate from the stream of our experiences. He says: when he looked within all he ever found were particular mental contents, each of them fleeting and never an enduring substance that has them. He concluded that it is just the relations among those mental events that make us invent the fiction of the self as an enduring subject of experience. The only possibility then of affirming such a detached witness is through inference or assumption. Such an inference would take the form of arguing that while the self cannot be directly perceived within experience, it is something which we must assume in order to account for our psychophysical experiences.

One of the main forms of inference which is thought to establish the existence of a “self” arises from the need to explain the apparent continuity of the stream of psychophysical experiences (form, thoughts, feelings, sights, sounds, perceptions, consciousness, etc). If there is no substantive agent behind the stream, what is it that keeps the stream going? The Buddhist answer is to be found in the doctrine of dependent origination. “When this arises, that comes to be; when this ceases, that ceases.” The doctrine maintains that all phenomena are dependent for their existence on other phenomena and they in turn depend on other phenomena in a complex causal chain. Everything that exists is dependent for its existence on other things that exist.

Consider the example of fire. When fuel oxygen and a spark arise, fire comes to be; when one or more of these conditions cease, say oxygen ceases, fire ceases. But there never was an autonomous inherent independent entity called “fire” in the first place, even while it was manifesting and burning our finger, because fire is dependent on other factors (fuel, oxygen and a spark). Hence, fire it is not an independent autonomous entity. This explains why we can’t find an independent unchanging entity called fire. Fire can manifest without the need to posit a distinct autonomous independent entity called fire.

Likewise we can’t find a real independent unchanging entity called self because, like fire, self arises dependently, dependent on other factors, such as a body, parents, and so on. So even when the psychophysical aggregates of the person are appearing or manifesting no independent entity called self can be found. The stream of psychophysical aggregates and processes can manifest without the need to posit an independent self, such as an agent in the background who controls the stream. For example, the stream of psychophysical aggregates and processes is kept going by such factors as: a healthy body/mind complex, suitable food, water, air, shelter, a stable and safe environment, and so on. In other words, the “stream” is kept going by the causality of the conditions or processes themselves. The body can be there and can operate in a very intelligent fashion without there being a “self” involved in the experience. Form, such as the form of the body; as well as intelligence (consciousness) are part of the stream of psychophysical aggregates. Thus, to explain the stream there is no need to posit a self or “I” behind the stream that keeps it going. Since the stream of experience can be explained without positing an inherent self, we can conclude that there is no inherent self. Such an agent “self” or “I” is superfluous, an additional entity for which there is no need.

The need of a self or “I” that witnesses such mental and physical processes over time still seems to be a compelling argument of the existence of a self. For example, how does the memory of the pleasure which an object gave me in the past engender a desire when I encounter that object in the present? Does this not require a unifying observer or a static unchanging subject of my experiences which remains constant throughout the changes that the person undergoes, like me at age ten is the same me at fifty? It seems like memory is experienced by an inherent unchanging me. Here again the doctrine of dependent origination provides the answer. Memories, that are perceived to be “mine”, are in fact part of the psychophysical processes. There is no need to posit an entity a self or me that remembers. Likewise, there is no need to posit a self or me that perceives that desires or experiences. Thus, the Buddhist answer to the problem is that the need for an observer self, a unifying agent, is the product of a powerful illusion that mistakes the conventional psychophysical aggregates and processes of a person (form, sensory perceptions, feelings, emotions and consciousness) to be an autonomous, independent entity called self. All that we experience right now is the sum total of these processes, but without a self. There is no “selfing” glue which binds these processes together.

The important point here is that the psychophysical processes or aggregates are all interrelated and are constantly changing to create the experience of being “me” or self in a purely conventional sense. The point of saying that the term “person” or “self” is a conventional designation is that we have, for the sake of simplicity and social convention, a single term “self” which refers to the totality of psychophysical aggregates and processes. We then wrongly assume that the use of the term “self” entails that there is an inherent single entity (agent or self) separate and apart from the psychophysical aggregates to which the term refers. Such an hypostatized “self”, to Buddhist’s, is the object of refutation, not the conventional everyday person.

Part of the stream of psychophysical aggregates and processes “form, sensory perceptions, feelings, emotions and consciousness” is the mind aspect or “consciousness or awareness.” Hence, there is an awareness or consciousness of life events, which is part of the psychophysical processes. But that awareness does not mean that there is a separate self or subject or agent who is aware or who is conscious. Such a subjective self is only assumed to exist. And further, when we look for such a self, nothing can be found. There are perceptions and experiences, but no self.

Philosopher David Hume says: “For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call my “self”, I always stumble on or are aware of some particular perception or other – hot, cold, big, wet, pleasure, hardness, stress, etc. I never can catch my “self” at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.”

What we experience through the sense faculties, such as: hot, wet, stress, anxiety, pleasure, and so on, makes us invent the fiction of “self” as a real enduring subject of these experiences. The belief that there is such a self is not only a false belief but an illusion, an illusion that is difficult to shake. The belief will strongly resist any logical arguments or evidence to the contrary. For example, despite credible arguments that refute the existence of the self being demonstrated (for one thing, such a self cannot be found or identified) these arguments will be strongly resisted and even if the arguments are accepted intellectually the belief will tend to reassert itself.

The belief in self is a prominent factor that motivates our desires and wish-fulfilments. For example, consider the wish or desire that we continue to exist eternally and immortally, as many religions advocate. But the wish or desire for immortally, and in fact all our other wishes or desires, such as our wish for liberation, our wish for knowledge, our wish for pleasure, and so on, serves not to liberate but to reinforce the illusion of self, a self who wishes and desires. This results not in freedom but bondage. Realizing one’s mortality radically undermines our wish seeking enterprises (like our wish for immortally) and along with it, the very self that wishes.

Concluding remarks:

Although our beliefs, wish-fulfilments, desires and craving are part of what makes up the stream of psychophysical aggregates and processes, these processes are misperceived as self, as pertaining to self. So our wish or desire for eternal life, enlightenment and freedom, infers an “I” or self that experiences these wishes. So our wishes, even our wish for enlightenment, our wish to be free of suffering, our wish to become one with our true nature, and so on, are motivated to satisfy our desires. But reality cannot be something that fulfils wishes or satisfies desires. Wishes, desires, wants and craving serve only to reinforce the illusion of self that wishes and desires. Wishes and desires entrap us in ego.

“Desire, know I thy root.”

The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination

As the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama, 500b.c.) sat under the Bodhi tree on the night of his full awakening he discovered the fact of the mutual contingency (dependence) of all existent things. His new found knowledge of dependent arising describes the ontic status of the universe (dependence), its mode of creation (dispositions conditioned by ignorance) and its future fate (the appeasement of dispositions which reverses the cycle of arising). The path of dependent arising is to examine each of the twelve links (indicated below) for oneself, discover how they are conditioned, how they arose, and how they can cease. One who follows this is guaranteed to appease ignorance and suffering.

The twelve links of dependent origination provide a detailed description on the problem of suffering, and also its reversal the cessation of suffering. This is a tool, it is not an ultimate description of the evolution of the universe. The twelve links are: ignorance, mental formation, consciousness, name and form, the six senses, contact, feeling, craving, clinging, becoming, birth, aging and death. The theory holds that: “This is, because that is; this ceases, because that ceases”. Ignorance is the first ‘link’ in the chain. Ignorance is the belief in an actual self-nature, identity, essence or intrinsic existence in people and things. Because there is ignorance there are mental formations; because there are mental formations there is consciousness; because there is consciousness there is name and form; because………etc. Once the chain of dependent origination is set into motion it then perpetually builds upon itself.

It is said that you become attached to things by the power of an afflictive misunderstanding (ignorance) that causes one to grasp after mere transitory things. This generates attachment and aversion to things, the root source of cyclic existence and hence, all suffering. The following example describes this process.

On seeing a form with the eye, one has likings for certain feelings and aversions for others. One abides with mindfulness of the body. One follows the path of agreeing and disagreeing and experiences whatever feeling that arises – pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Delighted and pleased with those [pleasant] feelings one appropriates them. This arouses interest in those feelings. That interest for feelings is craving. From craving there arises grasping, from grasping there arises becoming, from becoming arises birth, from birth arises old age, sickness, death, grief, lamentation, unpleasantness, displeasure and distress. Thus arises the complete mass of suffering (dukkha).

The Buddha seems to feel that the key to alleviating suffering is to remove ignorance. Ignorance (the false belief that things exist intrinsically) can only be eradicated, he says, by seeing things as empty of intrinsic existence. When all things are seen as being empty one can form no dispositions about them and will cause neither passionate attractions nor aversions to come into play. This will prevent craving. If one ceases to crave, then dispositions will cease, and so suffering cease. The following describes this process, the reversal of the twelve links.

On seeing a form with the eye one does not become desirous for pleasant forms, or averse to disagreeable forms. One does not abide with mindfulness of the body. Having abandoned the path of agreeing and disagreeing, one experiences whatever feeling that arises – pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral – just as it is. One is not delighted or pleased with those feelings and does not appropriate them. Interest in those feelings ceases. With the cessation of interest, craving ceases. With no craving there is no grasping; with no grasping there is no becoming; no becoming, no birth; with no birth, there is no old age, sickness or death, no grief, lamentation, unpleasantness, displeasure or distress. Thus ceases the complete mass of suffering.

The Buddha taught that the world and things having ignorance (the belief in intrinsic nature in things) as its condition, consequently originates from ignorance. It is ignorance that causes one to construct dispositions, passionate desires and craving and so, indirectly, it is ignorance, as a condition, which has the power of bringing the entire phenomenal world into manifest existence. Therefore, the duration of the entire phenomenal world is the consequence of ignorance as its condition. If the condition for its continuation does not exist, it will be destroyed. Therefore, when the cause of the existence of the world (ignorance) is extinguished, cyclical existence will be extinguished.

The unreality of the world is also said to manifest due to imagination, likened to a child that is born lives and dies in a dream. This is why many adepts are explicitly clear that dependent origination is synonymous with a lack of origination, because phenomena that originate in dependence on ignorance as a cause, never actually originate at all. Take, for example, the phenomena called self. The self merely “appears” as a result of our inability (ignorance) to recognize its dependent nature (it depends on other things, a body, parents, food, etc) and thus is empty of independent existence. “Appear” being the operative term because if we understand that the perception of identity results from a failure or ignorance to recognize a lack of essence in phenomena, then it is equally understood that the misconception of identity is a “mere appearance” and thus nothing is ever truly “created” at any point.

When we perceive identity in people and things we are only ever relating to our own ignorance, like seeing a rope in a dark room and mistaking it to be a snake. The snake merely “appears” as a result of our failure (ignorance) to recognize the rope (the absence of a snake). The snake never actually originates or is created at any point in time and when we recognize the actual nature of the alleged snake, we see it never originated in the first place. Likewise, people and things never actually originate in the first place.

We can apply this argument even to the apparent eternity of the universe, galaxies, etc. Just because we perceive the universe to be eternal and never ending does not mean it actually exists this way. Its seeming eternity merely appears as a result of our inability (ignorance) to recognize its genuine nature as empty insubstantial and illusory. This is what dependent origination means. Phenomena only appear to originate in dependence upon our ignorance. Regarding their actual nature, they are empty. Ignorance, it should be noted, is not a real power, for the world it brings into existence is but a phantom.

“Whatever is dependently originated does not truly arise. What originates dependently is unoriginated! What is dependently created is uncreated.” Nagarjuna:

“That which originates due to cause and conditions appears dependent upon [certain] conditions and disappears when the conditions are absent. How can it be understood to exist?”

Since the Buddhas have stated that the world is conditioned by ignorance, why is it not reasonable to assert that the world is a result of conceptualization? Again, the world as the effect of mere conceptualization means that as the world is not established substantially, the world is mentally constructed, just as one constructs the idea of a fairy city. No matter how beautiful a fairy city may appear, it is not as it appears, therefore it is not real or genuine. Therefore, when it is examined in this way, the world of cyclical existence, which originates from the cause of ignorance, is not established actually. Then the unbearable city of cyclical existence is surely a product of delusion.

Because the world of cyclical existence which appears like an illusion is difficult to reverse, it is the source of many woes, and because it is difficult to recognize its true nature inasmuch as it is obscured by ignorance, it is called unbearable or terrible. It is a cause of error. Therefore, if there exist error, mistaken views and the like, the world exists, but if there is no error, the world does not exist.

When a mirage is mistaken for a lake, it was not cognized certainly, since it was constructed or imagined by ignorance. Likewise, the world does not exist substantially because, like a dream, it depends upon other factors and conditions. Anything which depends upon conditions to exist is not established intrinsically. Therefore, the world of cyclical existence, which depends on ignorance as its condition, is not substantial or real.

Anatta (Not-Self)

What is the self? The self is regarded as the thinker of all one’s thoughts, the doer of one’s deeds and the director of the body organism generally, a kind of background substratum. Some say the self is a soul, or a body, or a mental state. Looking more closely, the self is seen as something distinct from both our body and mind, as essentially unchanging, as a unifier of our diverse beliefs desires and sensory impressions, a sense of ownership, a centre or first person perspective, and as an agent that makes the decisions that shape our lives. Buddhist philosophers have offered a different, surprising answer. There is no persisting self; nothing about us that remains the same at all times. This view regards self or me as a continuously changing array of five psycho-physical aggregates (the physical body, sensation, perception, intellect, and consciousness) without an inner core. If we look we do not find such an inner core. This denial of an intrinsic self or core nature is known as anattā or not-self.

Anattā doesn’t deny you exist, deny you have a personality, or imply you shouldn’t have an “ego.” It does not claim that there are no human beings or that the person who delivers your mail is really a robot or a ghost. Rather, anattā is a denial that your existence is some sort of deep special fact, a unified persisting being separate-unto-itself, and unchanging who continues to exist from one moment to the next.

Specifically, we think that our self has some sort of essence. The essence of something is its core defining characteristic without which the thing could not exist. If our self has an essence, then this essence is what makes us, us. If you lose your essence, there is no longer any you. But as long as your essence exists (whether that essence is a body, a soul, a mental state, or something else), you exist.

According to anattā, the idea of an essential existing self is mistaken. Rather, the self is just the collection of constantly changing features, like the physical parts of your body and the sensations and perceptions that make up our mental life. There is nothing else about us that persists through these changes. All we are is a series of changes.

“In any given moment or succession of moments we can observe a flux of sensations, sounds, smells, thoughts, images, memories, but no self. Meditation reveals a world of sense objects and a process of thoughts and feelings, but nothing solid we can call a self.”

The no-self theorists thus agree with philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), who argued that our sensations never include a distinct sensation of the self. Hume says we experience particular sensations, like the taste of a carrot or the sound of thunder or the warmth of a fire. But Hume and the no-self theorists claim that we only ever experience these particular states or sensations, we do not have an additional experience of the self on top of these other experiences.

He writes: ”For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch my “self” at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.”

This point is illustrated using examples such as: “I see”, “I think”, “I am happy”, “I am hot”, “I am short”, “I am white”, “I am black”, “I was born”, “I will die”, “I am suffering”, “I am anxious”, and so on. Conventionally this is correct, of course. But we believe these experiences to be intrinsically real, and even more so, we believe the I or me that experiences these things also to be intrinsically real. I is perceived to be a real, autonomous, independent, permanent entity; it is me, it is who I am. And it is this innate sense of I or me that we believe that sees, that thinks, that walks, that is white, that was born, that will die, and that suffers. These experiences are therefore misperceived as happening to oneself, to me or I, and this is a great source of confusion.

The belief that there is some core essential self that persists throughout our lives is so interwoven into our thinking about ourselves that it is taken for granted. Arguments to the contrary, will be strongly resisted. Language is used to reinforce such belief in a self. For example, language creates sentence structures, such as, “I walk”, which serves to reinforces the sense of an “I” or self that walks. Thus, we take the “I” or “self” to be a subject separate from the processes to which it is connected (walking) and an entity which initiates and controls these processes.

Buddhism however, claims such an autonomous, independent I or subject of experience does not exist. They demonstrate that such an I is very much dependent for its existence on many other things. Foremost, the I is dependent on a body. Without a body there can be no sense of I. And the body in turn depends on parents; depends on its parts such as legs, arms, heart, blood, brain and mind; and depends on conditions such as food, water, air and so on. Therefore, Buddhism concluded there can be no permanent, autonomous, independent I or self in existence whatsoever. This is verified by the fact that no such permanent, independent I can be found. When we search, looking for such an inherent I, we find only impermanent conditioned body parts that are dependent on other parts, but no self-existing independent “I” can be found. Also, the fact that everything is impermanent excludes any possibility of a permanent I existing. An independent permanent “I” is not actually real in the specified sense. The I is merely a convenient fiction, a name referring to the conventional, ever changing, impermanent, selfless aggregates. We can conduct our everyday lives from the perspective of this conventional person without asserting an autonomous, self-existent I or me.

Buddhism does not deny that we perceive a conventional person. It would be silly to say that we do not feel a sense of something that it is to be ‘us’. There is the conventional, ever changing, dependently arisen aggregates, such as form, sensation; perception; volition and consciousness, but no permanent essential self. There is nothing about our experience that necessitates there being an essential permanent unchanging self. It is possible for us to experience without there being an unchanging subject doing the experiencing. Experience is part of the psychophysical aggregates and processes. But there is no separate autonomous essential experiencer. It is the Madhyamika view that any notion of essence or self-nature should be jettisoned on account we can’t find such an essential self?

However, Buddhism does not deny the conventional ‘I’, the feeling of self we all have, as long as it is empty of essence. They only deny an essential, intrinsic ‘I’. Since a fixed intrinsic I makes no sense, Buddhism hints at a conventional I, that is, the feeling of a sense of I. They are not disputing that we have a sense of I but argue that this does not constitute anything that should be termed an inherent I or ‘self’. ‘Self’ necessarily has connotations of permanence and inherent existence.

A foundational doctrine of Buddhism is that of “interdependent origination” which holds that everything arises in dependence upon multiple causes and conditions. No separate or independent entity can thus be admitted. Another mainstay of Buddhism is the principle of emptiness. Emptiness refers to the absence of inherent essence of phenomena and to the absence of a self in people.

Buddhism dialectical method does not provide any positive definitions of reality, but assumes the task of dismantling all other philosophical positions, and in particular, the notion of a subjective I. It shows the impossibility of abstracting an observe, I. They eliminate the notion of subjectivity by maintaining that the constituents of phenomenal experience (body/mind aggregates) do not amount to a personal self, just like the constituents or aggregates of a coil of rope in a dim area do not amount to a snake. All that exists is an interdependent and impermanent flow of change or becoming which excludes any possibility of a permanent inherent self.

Consider another analysis. If the self exists intrinsically then the self is either the same as the aggregates or different from them. This covers all sensible alternatives. If it were the same as the aggregates then these aggregates would be that self. Referring to this self would be unnecessary. Further, the self is meant to be unitary, but the aggregates are plural. And if the body suffered pain so would the self, which is absurd. Next consider if the self is different to the aggregates. If it is, we should be able to strip away all of the aggregates so that the “self” could be found and identified apart from the aggregates. But of course it can’t. We can only conclude that an inherent self does not exist.

Summary:

We are hard-wired to believe that what we perceive in the world is occurring to me. Experiences, thoughts, mental states and consciousness are thus interpreted as occurring to an I or self and this dualism is extensively supported by the use of language structured in an intentional way giving rise to phenomenal experience, such as: “I am thinking”, “I am sick”, “I am happy”. Non-dual philosophies assert not a subjective idealism, but the lack of any subject or I involved in the perceptual process. Given there is no self-nature in a person there is no necessity for something to be essentially a subject of experience.

The innate sense of self is activated, confirmed and intensified in the course of everyday experience and this is in turn grounded in the unexamined conviction that the external world is intrinsically real. This produces clinging. The self as the object of innate ego-clinging is no more than a designation. “What is it that we are clinging to?” Beings fixate on an imagined self and apprehend the objects of this self as “mine.” This self is the manifestation of ignorance; it appears as long as it is not examined. It does not exist in and of itself. It is no more than a misconception and misconceptions are subject to correction.

What Happens after Death

The Buddha (Shakamuni Gautama) made quite clear the fact that the Tathagata (an enlightened one) has not “gone somewhere” in answer to his disciple Vaccha’s persistent questions regarding the nature of the Tathagata after death. (It should be noted that what happens to the Tathagata after death and what happens to an ordinary person after death is the same because the nature of an ordinary person is no different to the nature of a Tathagata). In answer to the question then, the Buddha offered the analogy of “fire”.

“What think you, Vaccha? Suppose a fire burning in front of you was to become extinct, please tell me in what direction has that fire gone: east, or west, or north, or south?’ What would you say?” “The question would not fit the case, Gautama.”

The point is that a fire depends on certain elements for its existence, such as wood, heat, and oxygen. When these elements are no longer present, the fire does not leave, as such; it just ceases to exist. Similarly with the Tathagata; when the body, is spent, then the Tathagata ceases to exist. But there is no transcendent realm or nirvana in which s/he goes. That is, the Tathagata has “gone,” but has not gone some “where”.

An immediate question followed. “Then what happened to the Tathagata?” He obviously existed at one point, and now he doesn’t, so where did he go?” The Buddha’s answer is startling: “It is not assumed that even a living Tathagata exists or does not exist.” Just like when fire is extinguished it does not go anywhere, east, west, north, or south, similarly the Tathagata does not go some “where”, like a heavenly realm or a state of sanctified bliss. The Tathagata does not disappear only to reappear elsewhere, but is simply no longer. It is not that the Tathagata (the freed one) ceases to exist, for he never assumed he existed in the first place. That is, nothing goes out of existence; nothing ever existed in the first place.

In answer to the question above, then, is that nothing happened to the Tathagata. His nature did not change when he attained nirvana for he could not even be said to have existed before it. The only thing that changed was his subjective understanding. His actual nature did not change.

An even more startling conclusion follows from this. If his nature did not change, then the world of suffering “samsara” must not be different from the world experienced by the freed person (nirvana). This is exactly what the Buddha concludes. “Samsara has nothing that distinguishes it from nirvana. Nirvana has nothing that distinguishes it from samsara.” There is no transcendent reality, no unique state of freedom experienced by the enlightened one. The worlds experienced by the one bound by suffering and the one freed from suffering are not different worlds. Nirvana does not mean a change in the objective order. It is not the world that we have to change, the change is only subjective, not an ontological one. Nirvana is nothing more than a shift in understanding the world and a new way of reacting to it.

However, the Buddha is quick to say, this does not mean that the cycle of life-and-death (samsara) and freedom are the same. If they were simply declared to be identical, then there would be neither the experience of suffering nor the experience of release from it. Although samsara and nirvana are not different, they are nonetheless experienced differently and are not simply one and the same.

Nirvana is not another realm or dimension but rather the clarity and peace that arise when our mental turmoil ends, because the objects with which we have been identifying are realized to be empty. Things have no reality of their own that we can cling to, since they arise and pass away according to conditions. Nor can we cling to this truth.

lt is also possible to grasp after nirvana; to reify it as a state and to crave it as a phenomenon inherently different from samsara and as highly desirable since it is indeed characterized as liberation from suffering. But this grasping onto the end of grasping is itself a grasping and so precludes the attainment of nirvana.

Nirvana, like everything else that is named, is an empty concept. If nirvana is a truly existing reality that does not arise or pass away, then there is no way for us to get there. Nor is it a state superior to samsara. Letting go of the ways of thinking in which we are normally stuck allows us to experience the world as it really is. Nirvana does not signify the annihilation of thought but the annihilation of grasping at such thoughts. This, “the end of conceptual elaborations” is how the Buddha refers to nirvana. “Ultimate serenity is the coming-to-rest of all ways of ‘taking’ things, the repose of named things.”

The cause of the whole sphere of confusions and misunderstandings about the nature of nirvana or freedom is the human tendency to speculate and theorize. Grasping at such speculation and theorising causes the aggregates to continue coming together in life after life, grasping for self-assertion, for sense-fulfillment, and for continued existence. Were there not this tendency, then one would never perceive transitory phenomena as enduring in the first place, which would prevent one from developing passionate attractions and aversions regarding phenomena. Without such passions, the dispositions, graspings and cravings would not develop, and thus suffering would not come to be. Without these passions, one would not create the concepts of eternal life, existence or nonexistence, samsara or nirvana, buddha or sentient being, heaven or hell, friend or enemy, pleasant or unpleasant, infinity of the universe, and so on, concepts which the Buddha repeatedly refused to discuss. When one completely and utterly ceases to grasp onto theories, words and perceptions, speculation comes to an end, and dispositions are “blown out.” This is nirvana.

Since the Tathagata has become enlightened by virtue of having released the tendency to grasp, he no longer believes that there is a truly existing “self” comprising him in the present, and so he knows that he will not exist after death, either. It is only the misguided drive to attribute reality to the objects of grasping, the grasping itself, and the one who grasps that embroils the ignorant person in the tangle of existence theorizing. It is only this misguided person, firmly insisting that a Tathagata ‘exists’ or “does not exist,” who ascribes a present or posthumous existence to the Tathagata. That is, even though the Tathagata no longer falsely believes that he exists it is still possible for those who do imagine he exists to attribute an existence to him. This existence would be on the grounds of the inherent existence of the aggregates and some view about the relations of the self to the aggregates. The Buddha explains that these people are seeing nothing more than a figment of their imaginations. “Those who generate obsessions with great regard to the Tathagata, all of them, impaired by obsessions, do not perceive the Tathagata.”

Another theory was that the soul which is unenlightened partakes of the quality of bondage, and, when this soul becomes free, then its essence shifts to now partake of the quality of freedom. The Buddha explains clearly that the nature of the Tathagata is identical to that of any other person, and it has neither the “quality” of bondage nor the “quality” of freedom. There is no self to be found in either the bound or the freed person; both are composed of nothing but the selfless aggregates, and there is no real self which can be thus qualified. “The Tathagata is neither the aggregates nor different from them. The aggregates are not in him; nor is he in the aggregates. He is not possessed of the aggregates.” This definition of the Tathagata is no different than that of any and all persons. The existence of a self in the Tathagata is denied for the same reasons that it is denied in any person.

There is a saying in Buddhism, “A Buddha is an awakened sentient being. Sentient beings are unawakened Buddha’s.”

“Everyone has been a Buddha from the beginning.”

Words and Language

Although words and language are deceptive and inadequate in describing the ultimate nature of things, nevertheless, they serve a useful purpose conventionally and so should not be discarded. Many teachers, however, start with the assumption that reality cannot be explained in words and tend to disregard words altogether. But such an excuse is accepted too easily and so questioning thinking and enquiring on the path is put to an end.

What does language actually do? What is the nature of meaning? How can something so deceptive and inadequate, none-the-less, be useful in the pursuit of truth? Language is always associated with conceptuality, with reification that implicates some reality behind the words, so language is always regarded as deceptive, as in need of transcendence. Indeed language is deceptive and is another aspect of that complex fiction called samsara, the cycle of confusion (attraction and aversion) that generates the mass of difficulties that is our life. But language is also indispensable, more than just a necessary evil. It is the very ladder that enables one to climb out of this sea of conceptual and afflictive difficulties. Language can be used non-deceptively to the extent that we are not taken in by the “picture that holds us captive.”

The Usefullness of Language:

The goal of Buddhist philosophy is liberation from suffering. But liberation can only be achieved by insight into the ultimate nature of things, their emptiness. But this insight can only be gained through reasoning, and hence through language and thought, which can only be interpreted literally at the conventional level.

The whole of Nagarjuna’s philosophy presupposes the perception of conventional things and their phenomenal reality. Conventional discourse does not posit any claims over and above conventional existence itself because all that can be shown to exist, exists on the conventional level, which includes language and thought. All language directed at the conventional world is merely a useful instrument, as nothing in the conventional world literally exists as it is described in language. Language does not refer to real things. The presence of a name does not mean the reality of the named.

We do not have to pass over into silence despite the limits of language, nor refrain from conventional or conceptual thinking. In fact, to explain emptiness, the ultimate nature, one must use words and concepts and explain such things as interdependence, impermanence, and so forth. And all of these are purely conventional phenomena. Conventional truth must be affirmed and understood. A true “silence” a silence that has the requisite sense, a sense that no speech can convey – has that sense only when it becomes a kind of speech. Speech need not be transcended, only deception by it.

In searching for the ultimate meaning some schools point to the insignificance of words language and mundane existence, and instead, seek for a reality that transcends words and the mundane. For example, one denigrates words by asserting reality cannot be accessed by words. This falsely assumes that the label “reality” is some “thing” that does truly exist, and further, that it can be accessed (transcendentally) beyond words or beyond mind. Nagarjuna tries to discourage looking for some transcendental dimension by assuring us that whatever meaning there is to one’s existence can be and must be found within the confines of our human world or empirical existence, which once again includes words language and mind. Nagarjuna had no choice but to explain his insight into the nature of reality in philosophical terms, theories and language. Language was a necessary limitation. Nagarjuna’s brilliance lay in his ability to explain things so clearly, and then to build such effective safeguards against excessive philosophizing into his system, thus avoiding all conceptual extremes.

Conventional truth is necessary to point the way to the ultimate goal. Language and concepts must be utilized. Once the goal is in sight, relative truths must be abandoned. It is at this stage that one perceives all things to be devoid of self-nature and empty of reality and one realizes that the ultimate truth is itself not really a “truth.”

Nagarjuna recognizes the conventional nature of language and says that his ultimate category, “emptiness,” should not be understood as anything other than a convention. The term “emptiness” does not stand for a transcendent metaphysical reality whose meaning we can grasp by apprehending the reality behind the name.

Furthermore, there can be no such thing as ultimate truth, a theory describing how things really are, independent of our conceptual resources (mind) employed in describing it. All we are left with is conventional truth, commonly accepted practices and conventions. Conventional truth is all we arrive at when viewing the world through our linguistically formed conceptual framework.

The deceptive nature of words and language:

Words and language are certainly deceptive and are quite misleading. Words implicate inherent existence but everything exists merely conventionally or dependently. Nagarjuna warns: words do not refer to inherent things. Words have no meaning of themselves and the meaning of a term is not the object for which it stands but depends on conditions or circumstances. If the conditions differ, the meaning of the word would be different and might even be lost. The Buddha might conform to worldly linguistic usage and say: me, you, house, nirvana, but there are no extra linguistic realities that stand behind these terms or labels. “Words have no essence. Whatever is expressed by them is also without essence”. And how do we know this? By words and language. Words still serve an essential role.

Our basic delusion is the taken-for-granted distinction between things. Deceived by language, we divide up the world into nouns and verbs, subjects and predicates. We understand the world as a collection of separate things, interacting in external space and time. Take the example “John walks.” ‘John’ and ‘walks’ are inseparable, but by separating the two words, one begins to imagine that something called ‘John’ exists independent of “walking” and that ‘walking’ exists independent of John. In fact, grammatically we are compelled to separate nouns from verbs, adjectives from nouns, adverbs from verbs, etc, but these linguistic distinctions of words conceal the actual inseparability of ‘John’ and ‘walks’. Once John has been separated off, it is a short step to positing an unchanging, inherent identity that is John, that is, his ‘essence’ or self. Furthermore, having separated ourselves from the events that happen to us, including illness old age and death, we then anticipate with dread the inevitable fate that awaits our individual selves.

Most philosophers agreed that if words do not correspond to objects, they are thought to be unreliable and false; only if they correspond to objects are they thought to be reliable and true. This claims that the meaning of a word is an extra-linguistic object for which it stands and consequently that a word is meaningful only if it stands for an object. For example, we ordinarily think of language as literal. It cannot be, since, given that all things are appearance only, there is no literal underlying reality to which such words might refer or match. Since there are no literal real things (only illusions) all reference to things must be merely figurative. A word is used figuratively with regard to something which is not there. The presence of a name “car” does not mean the reality of the named. A car is so named by taking into account its parts, like wheels, engine, etc, it does not mean that the word car refers to some intrinsic entity. That sentences bear some special relation to an intrinsic object is simply to misunderstand. For example, there is no ultimately real thing named snow, there is no ultimately real thing named cat; the properties of white and being on the mat are unreal. The pretence language that has to somehow mirror the world or deliver truth is just that, a pretence, a deception to be seen through, not one in which we should participate.

Buddhist thought says: if you seek a thing through a name (a tree) in the thing there is no actual “tree” that matches the name. If you seek a name through a thing in the name there is no actual thing that matches the name. Therefore names do not match actuals and actuals do not match names. The meaning of a word lies not in an object or referent but in context or circumstances. If the context changes, meaning also changes. For example, the meaning of the word, say God, depends on the conditions or context in which the word is used, which may range anywhere from God being perceived as a loving forgiving father figure to an all-powerful deity who is to be feared and who punishes evil. Linguistic words, whether that be – God, self, tree, birth, death, beginning, friends, enemies, suffering, moon, earth, or the “big bang” – there is no underlying actual or entity, nothing substantial that can be identified that matches these words or labels. Thinking that there are actuals that match names or labels is conceptual speculation. Metaphysical systems are fabrications that misconceive the role of language in relation to the world.

Nagarjuna’s dialectic aim was to show that words, language, and so on, that are used by people to describe and explain the true nature of things, are really empty. But philosophers often fail to see the empty nature of those concepts and believe that they stand for some “thing”. If we know, there must be some “thing” which we know. If we err, we must have made an error in some “thing.” Nagarjuna’s teaching has been given not to let people “know” some thing or some absolute reality. Wisdom or “prajna” is not the knowing of anything substantial or real in the world. In a strict sense it has no knowing or knowledge. To know is to search for something real in the world or the mind. Prajna avoids this kind of knowing. It is an insight that all things known and the knower of them are empty. They depend on each other so both are empty. Emptiness is a device to cure the disease of conceptual thinking by showing that all things, all words and linguistic phenomena are empty. This makes one realise that metaphysical questions of the world are absurd and hence frees one from metaphysical speculation.

Language still serves a useful purpose. There is no reason to replace everyday language with a more precise technical language that helps avoid misrepresenting the nature of things. In using language one cannot avoid using words that apparently commit one to accepting the presuppositions upon which language rests. It is the task of the middle way philosopher to expose those presuppositions as untenable, to see that language is not grounded in realities, that words used in sentences have no referent, but is purely conventional. Words can liberate or they can bind.

According to Nagarjuna’s Mādhyamika view of truth there can be no such thing as some intrinsic ultimate truth; a theory describing how things really are independent of our sensory conceptual and cognitive resources employed in describing it. (And this includes words and language). All one is left with is conventional truth, truth which consists in agreement with commonly accepted practices and conventions. These are the truths that are arrived at when viewing the world through our linguistically formed conceptual framework. But we should be wary of denigrating these conventions that incorporates our specific interests and concerns. Denigrating the conventional presupposes that there is a “true” world out there (the way things really are) that is untainted by conceptuality, even if our minds can never reach it. But the very notion of such a ‘way things really are’ is argued by the Mādhyamika to be incoherent. There is no way of investigating the world apart from our linguistic and conceptual practices, including words and language, if only because these practices generate the notion of the ‘world’ and of the ‘objects’ in it in the first place. Our way of investigating the world is inextricably bound up with the linguistic and conceptual framework we happen to employ. Language is the very gateway to the reality. The seeming veil of language gives us a hint of that which is veiled.

Empty Logic

Emptiness is used to describe the arisen existents “the empty.” Only if these things are seen as “empty” can everything be “pertinent,” that is, can one formulate coherent and valid thoughts about reality. The fact that all arisen things, as well as the process of arising, are empty is encompassed by the theory of “emptiness.” This theory is comprehensive, encompassing any and all other concepts by virtue of showing how any description of reality must ultimately itself be negated and thus be empty. Only if one includes the notion of “emptiness” in one’s worldview can one’s theory be relevant. As a method of negation, then, emptiness is like the diamond, an incisive and effective tool. It does not merely refute false concepts but it refutes them so comprehensively that the ball is in the opponent’s court, so to speak. After emptiness has shown the falsity of wrong views, like essence and self-nature, its job is done and negation itself must be negated.

Emptiness is not a theory which the Buddha invented, nor even one which he clarified. Emptiness is just the description of the way things are, that is, impermanent and without essences or self-natures. It is only the opposites of emptiness that are concepts. That is, metaphysical theories like self-nature, permanence, the soul, Atman, Brahman, Pure Awareness, or God, are concepts that require definition and defending by those who hold them. Emptiness requires no defending.

Emptiness is empirically evident, in the sense that non-empty things are not empirically evident. That it is empirically evident is only a manner of speaking for it is explained that emptiness is not a “thing” which can be defined and perceived. Rather, it is a lack, as, for example, one can speak of the concept of darkness even though it is nothing more than a lack of light. The term used frequently is “perceives.” What is perceived is the absence of self-nature or essence in things, and an awareness of this absence is referred to as the perception of emptiness.

“The Perfection of Wisdom taught that emptiness is a fact of reality that is indirectly perceived by virtue of inherent things not being perceived.”

The main reason for declaring things to be without self-nature essence is empirical. Self-nature simply is not observed. Logic leads to the same conclusion. The logical argument of emptiness is this: “The nature of reality is dependently arisen; that is attested to by the Buddha, by observation, and by logic. A thing that is not dependently arisen is not evident,” Nagarjuna declares. “If things are dependently arisen, then they are phenomenal appearances but not real entities.”

This idea of emptiness is not nothingness, for it does not deny that things do, in some way, exist. Rather, emptiness is the denial of an essential self-nature or essence. “All phenomena are empty (it is of essence in this sense that they are empty) but exist conventionally, interdependently and impermanently.” On the other hand, to say that if something exists inherently, it does so in virtue of having an essence and hence, cannot interact or change or pass out of existence. This would entail the absurd position that everything is eternal. The very concept of an inherently ęxistent entity at all, is incoherent.

The Buddha charges that self-nature or essence theories are incoherent and render liberation impossible. It is the philosophy of emptiness that makes possible all change and growth and nirvana itself. It is only the fact that things do not have an immutable essence that makes them able to change, interact and condition new events. It is also only the fact that the defilements and suffering are empty of self-nature that makes them susceptible to eradication. If there were self-nature in things, then defilements would be eternal and suffering inescapable. Emptiness is not only the description of dependently arisen things rather, emptiness is the very thing which makes dependent arising and hence the entire phenomenal world possible. Emptiness is a positive theory and the very means to help fellow humans.

One might ask: “if all things are empty how can one fulfil one’s hopes and desires?” The Buddha says: when one comprehends emptiness truly, one ceases to cling to desires for the things one would desire are shown to be empty and thus not desirable; one would cease to grasp and cling for the pleasant things which one would want to hold onto for they are seen as unreal; one would cease to form false theories and concepts about reality for emptiness precludes the tendency to theorize; and, finally, one would have an incentive to appease suffering, for, being empty, suffering is susceptible to change and hence, can be vanquished.

Emptiness demonstrates relativity and provides a sort of anti-theory on which the rational faculty can focus. Were there no dependently arisen things, there would be no theory of dependent arising. Further, even though these things are empty they are at least phenomenally real; if they were not, there would be no theory of emptiness, for there would be nothing on which to base it. The whole of Nagarjuna’s philosophy presupposes the perception of everyday things and their phenomenal reality. It is vital that one following his philosophy understand that emptiness, every bit as much as the things it describes, is relative.

The Buddha taught that dissatisfaction (dukkha) is rooted in attachment to identity and permanence. That is, through mind or thought we project into the world of changing processes the illusion of substantial persisting unchanging entities we call “objects.” We are positively attached to things (through attraction) or negatively attached to them (through aversion). We create expectations that result in disappointment, frustration, and pain when these attachments are inevitably disrupted or lost. We are unhappy because we desire that the world be something that it is not.

Desire is one of the chief causes of bondage. Desiring pleasure, the mind reifies the apparently pleasurable things in the hope of thereby possessing them and preventing them from ceasing. Fearing death, the individual reifies the apparent existence of life itself. We wrongly believe that the things we desire are permanent or real, we become attached to them, and then we suffer when they reveal their impermanence or transience. Desires are, indirectly, the cause of bondage. Desires are always desires for some “thing” and if the object of the desire is subject to flux, then the desire will, sooner or later, be frustrated. “Desire, know I thy root.”

Suffering basically comes down to misperception: we enjoy something because we find it pleasurable (insofar as it makes us fleetingly happy) and we subsequently cultivate attachment to the pleasure, and then erroneously to the object. Owing to our attachment to this pleasure and the object of pleasure we then try to replicate and reproduce this pleasure, pleasure which we have already said is necessarily fleeting and impermanent (it does not last). So we are dissatisfied; the world never gives us what we want.

An old sutra explains. When touched with a feeling of pain an ordinary person sorrows, grieves and becomes distraught. As one is touched by that feeling, one is resistant. Any resistance-obsession with regard to that pain obsesses one. So one seeks escape through sensual pleasure. Why is that? Because the ordinary person does not discern any escape from pain aside from sensual pleasure. As one is delighting in sensual pleasure, one is obsessed with the feeling of pleasure. One does not discern, as it actually is present, originating and passing away.

Now, a well-instructed wise one, when touched with a feeling of pain, does not sorrow, grieve or become distraught. No resistance-obsession with regard to that painful feeling obsesses that one. So there is no need to seek relief through pleasure. As that one is not delighting in sensual pleasure, no passion-obsession obsesses that one. That one discerns, as it actually is present, originating and passing away. This is the difference, this is the distinction. For a learned wise person who has fathomed the Dhamma, desirable things don’t charm the mind, undesirable ones bring no resistance. One’s acceptance and rejection are scattered, gone to their end, do not exist.

Interdependence

The Buddha taught the doctrine of “dependent arising” which sees the world as fundamentally interconnected. He also taught that the world is in a constant state of flux, and that there is no true self. The “I” that we experience is in reality the result of a multitude of causes and conditions coming together. The Buddha understands the world’s transient and impermanent nature to mean that nothing has its own independent existence. If people existed in complete independence from other phenomena and had an unchanging essence they could not come into being (we require a cause, such as our parents), nor could we ever grow or have new experiences. People would either always be in a state of suffering or always in a state of happiness (or some other state), and that those that are not already Buddhas could never become one. But everything is “empty” meaning things don’t cause or define themselves, but arise and cease depending on other things. Dependent arising is what we use to establish emptiness. Everything exists by depending upon something else therefore everything is empty of its own self-nature or its own essence. We are dependent on our ancestors, our parents, food, sunlight, etc. In fact, without a great, great, great grandmother we would not exist. So we do not exist independently or intrinsically.

Humans are seen to possess a fundamentally different nature from the rest of the world but are instead dependent upon it. Without the conditions of air, water, earth, minerals, plants, the sun, a moon, ad infinitum, neither consciousness nor any human characteristic could appear, including culture, language, human society, and its interrelations. Everything is interdependent with no individual core to be found. Things lack, or are empty, of inherent existence. Inherent existence – a stand-alone type of existence, independent, and not relying on or not dependent on any other factors – simply does not exist. Yet we have been ignorantly imputing such inherent existence to things, people, and mental events all our lives. We have invested our trust and confidence in something that does not even exist.

Nothing can exist independently because everything is dependent on other factors and conditions. For example, I am born dependent on parents. I also depend on the body/mind parts and I am dependent on being labelled by name and concept. Without a label I could not exist. So I cannot exist independently (inherently) as it appears. Devoid of any independent or substantial nature my existence is possible only because it is dependently arisen.

Interdependent co-arising means that all phenomena arise due to the combination of a vast and incalculable array of fluid and ambiguous interdependent and interrelated conditions. It is the ever changing relationship of things which engenders infinite potential and possibility. Anything and everything can and does arise. Interdependence undermines the notion of independent reality. Interdependence is the antithesis of “thingness”.

Without some “thing” how can some “one” exist? Without some “one” how can some “thing” exist?

The Buddha here emphasizes the correlativity and interdependence of subject and object. Subjectivity only emerges when there is an object. Pure subjectivity is a contradiction. Moreover, the idea of an object with no subject is contradictory. The very concept of being an object is that of being the object of a subject. For instance, a seer (a subject) could not exist without the seen (an object). Therefore there is no actual independent seer of things for a seer cannot itself see apart from an object that is seen (such as a tree). In other words, a subject “I” needs an object “a table” in order to be a subject, and vice versa. Both are inseparable mutually dependent and thus both are empty, empty of independent nature. The consequence of this conclusion is far-reaching. If seer and seen, and other dialectic pairs, arise only in mutual dependence, as the Buddha taught, then all talk of real, independent entities must be abandoned, a radical conclusion indeed. The Buddha’s doctrine of interdependence shifted the emphasis from one of static “being” to one of dynamic “becoming.”

We cannot say how or what anything is except by making reference to other things. The determination of a thing or object is only possible in relation to other things or objects, especially by way of contrast. For example, “short” exists only in relation to “long”; “one” is dependent on “many”; light … is seen to exist on account of darkness; truth is seen to exist on account of falsehood. When good is present, evil comes to be and when evil comes to be, goodness arises; when life is present, death comes to be, when death is present life comes to be; when truth is present falsehood comes to be; where there is recognition of right there must be recognition of wrong; where there is recognition of wrong there must be recognition of right; where there is recognition of serenity there must be recognition of anxiety; where there is recognition of anxiety there must be recognition of serenity; where there is recognition of insight there must be recognition of ignorance; where there is recognition of ignorance there must be recognition of insight.

Things come into being only in dialectical relation to each other, and neither can be isolated and examined separate from its dialectical component. If you experience things in the world in terms of one side of the pair, you will experience things in the world in terms of the other side as well. If some things seemed like they truly exist, then other things will seem like they don’t truly exist. You will experience your own self to truly exist and fear that one day you will not truly exist. Emptiness teachings show how none of these pairs make sense and free you from experiencing yourself and the world in terms of these opposites. A state in which such opposites are no longer seen as dualistic, is “the middle way.”

The very existence of any entity depends on causes and conditions, depends on its parts, and depends on the mind that apprehends it. In other words, it cannot exist concretely and independently in its own right free of these dependencies. Consider thoughts that arise in our minds; there is not a single thought that can arise on its own, that can decide to come into existence. Thoughts can arise only when many causes and conditions come together to produce them. For example, thought depends upon perception and other characteristics, like an object that is thought about, such as a lake. So thought depends on the lake and is therefore empty of its own nature.

Nagarjuna says: “There is nothing whatsoever that is not dependently arisen.” He said this because anything that can be known comes about unerringly and undeniably as the result of preceding causes and conditions. If something arises in dependence on something else, it necessarily follows that it must be empty, empty of independent nature. Therefore, Nāgārjuna continued by saying, “There is nothing whatsoever that is not empty.”

All the phenomena of samsara and nirvana appear due to the coming together of causes and conditions and at the same time as they appear one cannot find the slightest trace of their actual intrinsic existence. They are appearances that are empty of any substantial essence just like the reflection of the moon in the lake but just like the reflection, their emptiness of intrinsic nature does not prevent them from appearing vividly when the proper conditions come together. The fact that an object without inherent existence is able to appear and be perceived illustrates how empty phenomena are able to manifest. Their emptiness does not stop them from having an effect. This is the truth of dependent arising, the union of appearance and emptiness. It frees one from the extreme of realism, because it does not superimpose true existence onto things where there is none; and from the extreme of nihilism, because it does not deny that things appear due to the coming together of conditions.

Dependent arising means that the perceived object, the perceiving subject and knowledge are mutually interdependent. The reality of one is dependent upon others; if one is false, the others must be false. If the self is false, so are the thoughts and experiences of the self, false. When a rope is perceived as a snake, the perceived object, the snake is false. The perceiving subject and knowledge of the external object must also be false. If the object lacks intrinsic nature so does the perceiving subject lack intrinsic nature. So what one perceives within or without is illusory. Therefore, there is nothing, neither mental nor non-mental, which is real. Take for example the mind as the perceiver. The mind itself lacks inherent existence or independent existence (it depends on a body), therefore, all that is perceived by the mind (tables, friends, enemies, birth, death, and so on) likewise, lack inherent existence. Following this logic: what lacks inherent existence (the mind) cannot be used as proof of something else (a tree, a table, birth, death, suffering, etc) as having inherent existence.

Appearances and experiences have no self-essence. For example, dreaming of an elephant while asleep is brought on by various conditions and seems real for the person while dreaming. Searching for the elephant and other visions that arose in a dream when awake would be absurd, a meaningless endeavour since there never was an elephant to begin with. Similarly, searching for the inherent existence of the appearing phenomena is futile since there never were any inherent entities in the first place. Everything that arises is a mere appearance with no own essence at all. In a final analysis, no ultimate statement can really be made about phenomena since everything is empty of its own self-nature.

The understanding of dependent origination is the most powerful means of arriving at the knowledge of emptiness. When, as a result of engaging in deep analysis, we fail to find the intrinsic reality of the object of our focus, we do not conclude from this that the object in question does not exist at all. Instead, we deduce that since our critical analysis has failed to find any inherent, independent existence of the object, its existence or appearance must be understood only as dependent arising. Therefore a genuine understanding of emptiness (emptiness of independent nature) must really take place.

Emptiness is simply a shorthand way to express the interdependence of all things. Nothing has any “self-existence” or “self-presence” because everything is dependent upon everything else. Emptiness is “the exhaustion of all theories and views.” Making it into a metaphysical theory is like grasping a snake by the wrong end – look out! The Buddha emphasizes that the meaning of emptiness itself is relative; having used it to let go of other concepts and theories, we should let go of emptiness too.

When meditating on emptiness, we do not realise the non-existence of something that previously existed. Rather, meditating on emptiness involves realising the non-existence of something that has never existed. Inherent existence (like the horns on a rabbit) has never existed. Therefore, meditation on emptiness does not destroy inherent existence because things never have been truly existent. There is nothing whatsoever being removed from objects either because they never were truly existent or inherently existent. Nor do we add something new, such as emptiness, onto an object that previously was not empty. It is not the case that previously the object was not empty and now we are making it empty. Phenomena are not made empty by emptiness, the phenomena themselves are empty. Ultimately there is no entity of which emptiness is predicated. And things are not a product of emptiness. Emptiness produces no product.

“For one to whom emptiness is clear, everything becomes clear. For one to whom emptiness is not clear, nothing becomes clear.” Nagarjuna

The moment we reflect upon our understanding of the emptiness of inherent existence that very understanding will indicate that things still appear, or exist, but dependently. It is almost as if when we hear the word ’emptiness’ we should instantly recognise its implication, which is that of existing by means of dependent origination. It is difficult to see the emptiness of things, but is easier to see they are dependently arisen. Because they are dependently arisen they are empty of independent nature. The understanding of emptiness, therefore, is said to be that in which one understands emptiness in terms of dependent origination. There is not a single thing that is not dependent so there is not a single thing that is not empty.

The Buddha asserts that the dependently arisen is emptiness. Emptiness and the phenomenal world are not two distinct things. They are rather two characterizations of the same thing. To say of something that it is dependently co-arisen is to say that it is empty. To say of something that it is empty is to say that it is dependent. What is dependent is empty and what is empty is dependent. Because of emptiness there is appearance. Without emptiness there could not be appearance. Though empty, phenomena appear; though they appear, they are nonetheless empty.

The mutual interdependence of phenomena shifted the emphasis from beingness to becoming. That is, whereas the Hindu philosophies found the essence of the universe in a substantial “standing under” ground of “true being,” the Buddha recognized no substantial essence of the universe. He saw all in terms of process, flux or change. Change is evident, but there is not some “thing” that changes. Change is the only thing that can be seen as having any degree of certainty or reality. The only constant is change.

Emptiness also applies to the self. “No-self” is the polar opposite of the “self” hypothesis. The self-hypothesis maintains that each of us are essentially separate from everything else, based on an essence. No-self maintains the opposite: we do not contain an individual essence and thus are not really separate from other phenomena. My sense of “self” depends on a body, a mind, parents, air, food, and on being labelled as a “self.” The label “self” is just a convenient way to refer to the body/mind aggregates.

Given that phenomena depend upon their conditions for their existence and given that nothing answering to an essence of phenomena can be located in those conditions, and given an essence could not come from elsewhere, it follows that phenomena that arise from conditions are essenceless. But if you perceive the existence of all things in terms of their essence (inherency), then this perception of all things will be without the perception of conditions and dependency. This is the absurd viewpoint of things arising without depending on other factors or conditions. The consequence of this is to overlook or confine to the background the causal conditions that are actually at work in giving us the world that we have.

Summary:

Reality, in one word, is the principle of relativity (interdependence). It is the essential dependence of things on each other. Phenomena are devoid of independent reality. Since there is no element of existence which comes into manifestation without conditions, therefore there is no-thing which is not devoid of independent existence.

Phenomenal or empirical reality is a realm of relativity in which an entity is devoid of independent reality. Birth, old age, death and all the miseries of phenomenal existence arise in dependence upon conditions and all these miseries cease in the absence of these conditions.

Not a single thing in the world exists in its own right; nothing has an independent reality of its own. There is only mutual dependence between entities, which means, in other words, that entities are devoid of independent selfhood. Everything in the world is dependent upon the sum total of its conditions. Everything is constituted by everything else. The world is not a conglomeration of things. It is simply process and things are simply events. A thing by itself is nothing at all. This is what is meant by the emptiness of all things.

The world, as it really is, is a sea of interdependent interrelated causation. There are no distinct independent entities. The very discrimination of distinct entities is the result of projecting our conceptual distinctions onto reality. In short, we superimpose “self-existence” or “independent existence” onto what is void of it. We thereby distort reality by seeing it as a mass of distinct unconnected entities corresponding to the discrete concepts that our mind has devised. Such discriminations cause attachment and aversion and the resulting afflictions. Recognizing the interrelatedness of everything dispels such vicious attraction and aversion and along with it conflict and fear.

Views

The thrust of Nagarjuna’s teaching is not to create another viewpoint but to negate all viewpoints, thereby destroying all speculation about reality. He held that all theorizing and speculation on reality leads not to knowledge but to illusion.

Perceiving reality in any particular biased viewpoint necessarily creates an “other,” the opposite from which it is distinguished. We cannot help being attached to our view and reject others. A view, because of its restriction, inclination and determination, carries with it duality, the root of saṁsāra, from which attachment and aversion and all vices spring up.

What we mean by “view” could be our religious, political, cultural or metaphysical persuasions; or global issues like global warming; or social issues like racism, gender concerns, inequality, and so on. Every view contains contradictions or, at best, consists of a label that obscures the reality. The Buddha does not advocate a withdrawal of a view or resistance to express a view or put down all views. He does make explicit that views do not contain an inherent and unquestionable truth or reality. A “true” view, he says, is not a view in itself, rather the absence of views. A true view is actually as empty as a wrong view. Hence, there is no inherent truth to a view.

When one asserts one’s viewpoint to be real or true this causes attachment and ill will to arise. Here, the term attachment refers to attachment to one’s own position. The term ill will refers to our attitude toward those who hold a different view. This attitude is called “terrible” because the consequences of it are extremely unpleasant and difficult to bear. Moreover, it is terrible because it damages ones mental continuum and is difficult to escape. What is the attitude in question? It is none other than the grasping of views.

If there exists grasping of views, so then there occurs the wish to demonstrate the facts which are accepted by oneself and the desire to defend the facts that one accepts, and also, there occurs the desire to debunk what is accepted by others if it is contrary to one’s own view. Therefore, the disputations which arise from the grasping of views arise from the basis of the inclination to accept views.

The acceptance of views is the basis from which attachment, disputations and all discriminating conceptions arise. Once discriminating conceptions are present, then the afflictions which are born from adherence to views will occur. Attachment to one’s own view will lead to pride and arrogance. Ill will toward the views of others will occur in its turn. (Ill will or aversion to another’s view is also grasping a view). Fuelled by inclinations and likes, views produce afflictions.

Holding fast to a view automatically causes an enemy to arise and confront that view. For example, if it is important for me to live a pure life (however I understand purity) then I will also be preoccupied with impurity; that is, with avoiding it. We cannot feel that we are good unless we are fighting against some evil, ironically, often creating more evil in the process. Likewise, if it is important for me to be fair, then I will also be preoccupied with unfairness; that is, with avoiding it, ironically, often creating more unfairness in the process. If it is important for me to be non-racist, then I will also be preoccupied with racism; that is, with avoiding it, ironically, often creating more racism in the process. If I have a strong preference for winning, such as my football team winning, then I will be preoccupied with loss; that is, with avoiding it, thereby creating more loss (loss in my mind) in the process. If I have a preference for nirvana, then I will be preoccupied with samsara; that is, with avoiding it, thereby creating more samsara in the process. What I resist persists.

Far enemies and near enemies:

The enemy that arises to confront our view can be classified into two categories; the far enemy or the near enemy. Far enemies are often very obvious because they seem to be the total opposite of the beneficial qualities we are intending to cultivate. For example, the far enemy of good is evil; the far enemy of loving kindness is hatred. Near enemies, on the other hand, tend to be subtle because they appear similar to the beneficial qualities on the surface. Its only upon closer examination we discover they are not the same. Near enemies often involve elements of insincerity or even hypocrisy. Take the example friendliness. The far enemy of friendliness is its exact opposite, such as ill will or hatred, which is unmistakable in ourselves and others. We can spot this aversion fairly quickly and apply the appropriate antidote. The near enemy of friendliness is attachment or partiality – this is harder to spot. We extend our friendliness to those close to us and those we like, but not so much to those not so close and those we don’t like. This is egocentric friendliness or partiality masquerading as loving kindness. Such friendliness is based on “what I can get out of this” or “what benefits me.”

Near enemies are subtle. For example, the near enemy of appreciative joy might be exhilaration or an over the top feeling of exuberance. Compassion has near enemies as well, which includes sympathy, despair and pity (as though others are disadvantaged, unfortunate, separate or “less than” in some way). Sorrow is a near enemy to compassion. It feels like empathy but can paralyze making us feel that we can’t make a difference. The near enemy of equanimity is callousness or indifference or partiality. True equanimity is one that is free of the poisons of attachment and aversion. It embraces those we like and don’t like, the agreeable and the disagreeable, pleasure and pain.

Whatever views we actively pursue – even pursuing noble views or ideals concerning injustices, inequality, unfairness, racism, and so on – if we pursue such ideals (viewpoints) from a place of anger or hatred or from an egocentric point of view where the primary goal is to benefit me, such pursuit serves only to feed t enemies such as, anger, hatred, ego, pride, arrogance, contention and confusion.

The remedy to enemies, near and far, the Buddha tells us, is to see all things as empty, including our viewpoints or preferences. When views are seen as empty, or not real, then attachment to them can be removed. When one has removed attachment to views one can then remove grasping at views. Here, by grasping, is meant the appropriation of views; that is, making views one’s own. Once this attachment this appropriating tendency is removed then attachment to what is desirable, aversion to what is undesirable, attachment to views and attachment to disputation can also be eliminated. One comes to a state of freedom, for nothing has been established as “one’s own position.” Without one’s own position, winning is just as empty as losing, nirvana is just as empty as samsara, and so there is no real difference of winning and losing, nirvana and samsara. This is the Buddha’s good medicine to overcome the sickness of attachment, conflict and erroneous views. But if we still hold a preference for say winning, that is samsara even when we win. Whosoever has grasped on to a view will be caught by the deceiver; the serpent of the afflictions. Those who have not grasped a view will not be caught. This is the real state of things.

Nāgārjuna had written that he has no thesis to advance, nor hold any position or have any viewpoint of his own. He had also written that he apprehends no objects at all and therefore has no need to affirm or deny anything therefore he need not supply any reasons to justify his stance. And he claimed that a person who makes no claims – either that anything exists (is) or does not exist (is not), or that things are true or false – cannot be refuted. He does not put forward counter positions in opposition to the claims of other philosophers, rather, he merely exposes the absurdity or contradiction implied in an opponent’s argument and argues only until the other philosophers realize the inadequacy of their positions and become silent. He need not construct formal arguments because he has no viewpoint, no position to defend. If he had put forth arguments then he would have opened himself up to endless disputation, flaws and all kinds of idle chatter. He avoided putting forth formal arguments that a persistent opponent might take as an invitation to debate.

Nagarjuna states: “If I had any position, I thereby would be at fault. Since I have no position, I am not at fault at all.”

He also says: “By taking any standpoint whatsoever, you will be snatched by the cunning snakes of the afflictions. Those whose minds have no standpoint will not be caught.”

Buddhist thinkers may express a thesis pedagogically, what they deny is that “they have any thesis that involves real existence or reference points or any thesis that is to be defended from their own point of view”. The nature of the Buddhist system is the deconstruction of any system and conceptualization whatsoever, including itself.

Imputations of Mind

As with our inveterate desires and fears it is through the effect of habitual tendencies ingrained in us from beginningless time that we experience the appearances of bodies, possessions, places, and so forth. But ordinary people naïvely fail to recognize these things as projections of their own minds. They consider that the mind is here and the object over there, and they imagine that there is a gulf separating the perceiver from the perceived object, which they assume to be real. But this is just as if they thought that an elephant seen in a dream is an extramental reality and not the mind’s projection. It is not how things are. The reality of extramental objects is no more than an imputation or imagination and is illusory.

The recognition that phenomenal appearance are but the play of the mind itself is a means of discovering how beings fall into samsara and how they can be liberated from it. Due to the fact that various misguided habitual tendencies have been deposited upon the mind, the unbroken continuum of samsara occurs as different kinds of dreamlike appearance. Knowing that everything is a projection of mind, we can change our mind. On the other hand, to say that the world of appearances is not a projection of the mind necessarily implies the belief that it is caused by something else. And since this involves the assertion that beings are bound in samsara or delivered from it through causes other than their own minds (like God, Brahman, or some divine creator) it will doubtless cause one to fall into non-Buddhist tenet systems. It is therefore established that if there is no external creator and no external world, extramental objects are but the mind’s self-projection. Consequently, the knowledge that phenomena are the mind’s projection gives rise to a firm and certain understanding of how the samsaric process is set in motion and how liberation from it is to be achieved.

If one accepts that phenomena are the projection or manifestation of the mind, a true understanding of the actual mode of being of the conventional is achieved, as well as understanding how beings enter the samsaric process or turn away from it. If one examines phenomena, which are the deposit of mental habituation, they are found not to exist. (They don’t inherently exist as mind either). However, they appear incontrovertibly within the forum of our experience. This cannot be denied. Reasoning based on phenomenal evidence proves that they are merely mental appearances, the mind’s projections or the mind’s self-experience.

Given the correct functioning of the sense faculties, perception is “somewhat” accurate; it is only in the process of conceptual assessment that mistakes occur. For example, consider the stock example of a rope mistaken as a snake. For our minds, what exists (the rope) appears like it doesn’t exist, and that which doesn’t exist (the snake) we think does exist. So it is completely opposite. Reality and the way things appear to us is totally opposite. This very subtle hallucination occurs not only with the illusory snake but in our everyday perception of things. For example, consider a tree. While the tree is impermanent, it appears as permanent; while it depends on the parts, it appears existing alone; while it is dependent on causes and conditions (soil, water, sunlight, etc) it appears existing independently with its own self-nature. Even though it exists merely imputed and labelled by the mind it appears back to one’s mind as though it is not just merely imputed by the mind, but something more than that, something beyond that, something substantial, something additional to what is merely imputed by the mind. This very subtle thing (intrinsic existence) is what doesn’t exist, what is not there (something extra to what is merely imputed by the mind). It is something which doesn’t exist on, for example, a tree, the merely imputed tree. This is the object to be refuted (intrinsic existence) this slightly extra, addition to what is merely imputed by the mind. Identifying correctly the object of negation is crucial.

In reality there is only emptiness (emptiness of the snake and emptiness of the tree); the emptiness we have to realize to cut the root of samsara, the ignorance. We have to realize this very subtle delusion (intrinsic existence), this false view, for what it is, and then see that it doesn’t exist. It exists nowhere. It is empty. So, what is not there? It is the merely labelled tree appearing back as a real intrinsic tree from there. The very subtle false view of the object to be refuted, according to the Madhyamaka, arises when the tree appears back as though it is not merely imputed by mind. It is good to use this phrase: “not merely imputed by mind.” This will help you to come to know the very subtle object to be refuted. That is what we have to realize is empty. Only then can we be liberated from samsara.

In exactly the same way the “tree” appears so does the “I” appear. The merely labelled “I” appears not merely imputed by the mind that labels or imputes it, but as though it is something independent or real from there, from the aggregates. But the “I” is totally non-existent (like the snake in the rope), it exists nowhere. The same applies to the aggregates, the body, the mind, everything that appears back not merely imputed by the mind. As well as form, sound, smell, taste, tangible objects, all the senses and all the sense objects, all the rest of the phenomena, objects, good, bad, friends, enemies, birth, death, virtue, karma, etc, all of which are merely imputed by the mind but appearing back not merely imputed by the mind. Further, all these things appear to our mind to be independent of our mind, even though it is a creation of our own mind. So all phenomena that are merely imputed by the mind, appearing back to our mind as though they are not merely imputed by the mind; all this is totally hallucinatory, totally empty. All these appearances we can say, is just in the mind, which is another way of presenting what is hallucination. It is one way of getting the idea or feeling of what is hallucination. Since everything – what is called “this” and “that” – is all imputation coming from the mind, given by the mind; it means that everything is merely imputed by the mind. Therefore, nothing exists from its own side (i.e. everything is empty of inherent existence or empty of its own existence). There is no “I” existing from its own side as an independent entity. We have to realize this very subtle hallucination, this false view, for what it is, and then see that it doesn’t exist.

Summarizing:

When we analyze the objects and the “I” in and of themselves and ask, ‘what is the manner of being of these phenomena from their own side we find they are not established in any way that they can be understood in and of themselves apart from the mind of the person viewing them or apart from being posited through the force of a mental imputation. Thoughts like: “What are dogs thinking; or what happens after death; or what are aliens or extra-terrestrials really like?” are examples of us trying to understand things, in and of themselves apart from the mind of the person viewing them. Hence, such thoughts or questions are futile and unanswerable.

We can say, therefore, that what we perceive exists objectively and intrinsically in terms of its own essence, without being posited through the power of mental imputation, is called ignorance. Therefore, the object to be refuted is a conception that phenomena have a way of existing in and of themselves as solid real discreet independent entities, apart from being posited through the force of mental imputation. We need to recognize the object to be refuted within our own experience. The very subtle false view of the object to be refuted arises when the object in question appears back as though it is not merely labelled by mind but it exists as a real intrinsic substantial entity. The fact is, that objects and things are but mere imputations of mind, yet they appear back to us real solid entities and “not merely imputed by mind.” The self also is a mere imputation of mind, yet it appears back to us (our untutored mind) as if it is not a mere imputation of mind. That things are as they appear, “as real discreet entities with their own self-nature or essence,” is the object to be negated. To the awakened ones who know that objects, things and the self are but mere imputations of mind, these appearing phenomena and the self, are no longer perceived in terms of being real intrinsic entities. So they are not bound by things or bound by a self. Ignorance has ceased. Ordinary people, however, don’t allow their minds to investigate the misperception of self. Since they do not directly encounter ignorance, they cannot eliminate that great fault.

We routinely and innately give our assent to a real external world that exists apart from our minds. This habit is a “pervasive sense that things are real and solid and exist just as they appear.” This “addiction” is what is to be refuted and abandoned. Another way of saying this is that the most subtle object of negation is the perception that phenomena have “their own way of existing without being posited through the force of mental imputation.” This is the most subtle and pernicious form of ignorance – it is the deepest root of cyclic existence. All of the afflictions that hold us in cyclic existence are built on the misperception that things are distant and cut off from our minds that perceive them. To see this deception is to be free of deception.

Substance (Svabhava)

The philosophical position Nagarjuna advocated denies the ontological reality of substance, inherent existence, being, self-nature , or essences. Nāgārjuna means by substance, or inherent existence, any entity which is independent which has its own self-nature (svabhāva), which is not produced by causes and conditions and so is not dependent on anything else. If such self-nature is true then one should be in a position not only to negate dependent arising of all things, but also to provide empirical evidence for the establishment of a metaphysical substance called self-nature. This has not yet been achieved so its assertion must be pure metaphysical speculation. So rigorous was Nagarjuna’s logic in refuting self-nature, inherent existence or substance that a whole school, the Madhyamaka, was founded on the basis of his arguments.

The core claim of Madhyamaka is generally acknowledged to be that nothing in the universe has any svabhāva (inherent existence). Many scholars have now adopted the translation “intrinsic nature” for svabhāva, but it has also been rendered at various times as “essence”, “substance”, “own-being”, and “intrinsic existence”. If something had svabhāva, then it would be possible to fully understand that thing’s nature as it is in itself, independently of any relations it might bear to anything else, and independently of the conceptual or linguistic activities of sentient beings. Mādhyamika teachers argued that nothing could possibly have svabhāva as just described. If something did have svabhāva, it would be permanent, unchanging, and independent; and Buddhists argue that nothing in the world has these qualities. Instead, everything that arises in our experience, or could so arise, is impermanent, constantly changing, dependent on causes and conditions, and understood within a conceptual framework (mind). We cannot say or think how or what anything is except in relation to other things. Thus, everything is empty of intrinsic nature. In the Madhyamaka, this claim is taken to be equivalent to the statement that nothing can exist at the ultimate level of truth; instead, everything that exists, does so at the conventional level. Conventional existence is the only kind of existence that anything has or could have.

The lack of intrinsic nature is illuminated using the analogy of a mirage. A mirage is deceptive – it appears in one way (to be real) but exists in another (to be unreal). Furthermore, a mirage is something that exists only from a certain point of view, from the perspective of a particular conceptual schema – an imputed existence from the side of the observer and not in a robustly objective way “from its own side”. In the same way, phenomena exist imputed from the side of the observer and not from the side of the phenomenon. Hence, phenomena lack self-nature. Recognition of this lack or emptiness is the remedy to svabhāva.

When we carefully examine a phenomenon we find that the basis of its presumed existence as an independent entity (inherent existence) is unfindable, and yet, the phenomenon does arise or appear in dependence on other conditions or factors. Hence, phenomena are devoid or empty of inherent existence or independent existence. It is not said that they are devoid of conventional existence, which is how they appear to the ordinary person. Yet when we look for something inherent, it simply cannot be found. For example, when we analyze a car, we find no “essence”, no “car-ness”, but only parts that in turn are also empty of “essences.” So too, more generally, when we analyze any of our experiences and any object that we experience, we find only impermanent, conditioned phenomena. Hence, inherent existence is not established. The concept of an inherent entity is a mental construct; it is a figment of imagination; it is unfindable in actual reality.

“Things are produced from various conditions and hence have no self-nature. If they have no self-nature, how can there be such things?” Nagarjuna.

Madhyamaka’s assert that even though phenomena do not arise intrinsically or inherently they do arise dependently, and we contend that dependently produced things are like reflections, not produced inherently. Madhyamika’s analysis focuses only on those who search for the inherently real referent. What we are refuting here is the perception that things and events are established by means of their own-being (essence). We do not however negate the existence of conventional things, like chairs and so on, which are dependently originated. In this way the Madhyamaka idea that things do not arise, or are not found, is to be qualified as meaning that they do not arise inherently or essentially. But they do arise dependently.

To reject the dependent reality of the conventional undermines the very possibility of truth and thus it undermines all Buddhist teachings regarding bondage and liberation. However, Madhyamika’s also accept that conventional truths (the appearing phenomena) can obscure or veil the ultimate since for most people these phenomena appear as inherently real or true. This is like a mirage which appears to be inherently real but can also be deceptive (since it appears to be what it is not).

Sentient beings are habituated by a deep internal delusion that causes them to experiences the world in a false and distorted way. This habit is a “pervasive sense that things are real and solid and exist just as they appear, which we have become habituated and addicted to for a millenium. This “addiction” is what is to be refuted and abandoned. Another way of saying this is that the most subtle object of negation is the perception that phenomena have “their own way of existing without being posited through the force of mental imputation.” It is an ongoing process of mentally imputing independent reality and inherent existence to what is perceived.

The main complication in thinking of things as independent is self-nature (svabhāva). Anything that is dependently arisen must be without self-nature or substance, incapable of being isolated and, ultimately, not even real. It was in the light of these self-nature theories that the Buddha responded with this teaching of relativity. If all things are dependently arisen then they are not arisen independently on their own. If not arisen on their own, then they cannot be said to exist on their own.

It is not simply that ‘we’ perceive ‘things’ incorrectly – it is all empty. The perceiving ‘I’ and the ‘things’ – the very categories of self and other, subject and object – these are empty illusions. This extends, naturally, to the realm of language and thought: “…every rational theory about the world is a theory about something unreal evolved by an unreal thinker with unreal thoughts”.

The appearing phenomena that we perceive, feel, understand and react to, is nothing but a temporary construction which changes as different conditions change. This means that our suffering, anxiety, depression and confusion are not fixed and can be changed as well. That is why madhyamaka’s say that all our troubles are empty; empty of entity.

The theory of emptiness is not sterile or independent of human interests and concerns but is intricately bound up with such interests and concerns. If there were no human minds who mistakenly read the existence of svabhāva into phenomena which lack it, there would be no point in having a theory to correct this. It is only due to our erroneous view of things that the theory of emptiness is required as an antidote against superimpositions of intrinsic nature wherever it arises.

Dependent origination is the idea that there is no objective, mind-independent reality that is accessible to us. This contrasts with the essentialist metaphysics of the Hindu self (ātman) and ultimate reality (Brahman) which held that there is a true and universal omniscient reality and that it is possible to come to know this reality. Madhyamaka’s argued instead that what we make of reality inevitably depends on the cognitive structure of our mind, rather than on anything we can identify as fundamental, innate, essential or intrinsic. There is no escape from the conventional, no firm foundation we can reach beneath the world of appearances. Indeed, we are stuck with our cognitive inheritance, which gives us our world of appearances. Our coming to this realization—akin to Wittgenstein’s idea of dissolving confusion—has profound implications for us. As our illusions fall away, we begin to regard ourselves as contingent beings inextricable from a reality that we shape and which in turn shapes us, rather than as beings able to detach ourselves and discover our true and universal reality apart from everything else.

Nagarjuna’s rigorous analysis of phenomena reveals the incoherence of the idea that there is a self in persons and that this “self” possesses an intrinsic nature or an eternal unchanging essence that does not depend on anything outside itself. The self, Nagarjuna tells us, is our own conceptual construct. The problem with this understanding of the self is not only that it is erroneous, but it causes us to suffer. But if I self-exist, how can I change? How could I die? How could I have been born? This is the simple contradiction that Nagarjuna uses to deconstruct self-being.

Nothing exists independently but exists only in relation to other things so that one cannot speak of anything understood as being intrinsic, eternal, permanent and immutable. That things do not have an intrinsic nature, however, just implies their impermanence or dependence on other things.

The cause of the arising of our afflictions is the perception of entities or own-being. So long as it exists, the afflictions will continue to be present. Ordinary people who are attached to entities are deceived by their own minds. But those who are wise in regard to entities see that entities are impermanent, deceptive, empty, insubstantial and wholly vacuous. They have the nature of momentary destruction, that is, the absence of substance, essence or permanency. Nonetheless, for ordinary people, entities appear to intrinsically exist. Therefore, like illusion, entities are deceptive factors. Such factors cannot endure for long. Impermanence, therefore, is the very nature of entities. Because they are without essence, they are called empty, and as they are without substance, they are insubstantial. Through seeing entities in this way, the wise one sees them as vacuous. The term vacuity means empty.

We must conclude from experience that everything is empty of self-existence and thus nothing is actually real in the specified sense. No positive argument is needed to establish emptiness (śunyatā) – it is simply the automatic consequence of self-existence not being established. That is, the emptiness of things follows automatically and thus does not need its own supporting argument.

“Self-existence –substantial and nondependent; Dependent arising–insubstantial and of dependent nature; how, without contradiction, could these two ever come together?”

Only by jettisoning the deeply ingrained tendency to search for some ‘essential’ self-existent nature to things can we find liberation. This obsessive delusion we have in thinking that we are dealing with ‘self-existing real entities is ignorance as all we really have is “a construction of our mind.”

The Two Truths

The Two Truths are: the ultimate and the conventional. Conventional truth refers to our everyday perception and understanding of things such as saying: that the sky is blue, that fire burns, that dark clouds foreshadow rain and that an object with four legs and a top is called a table. The ultimate truth is the emptiness of those things. The ultimate truth, of say the table, is the emptiness of the table.

Conventional truth:

Conventional truth is our agreed upon identification of things and how they work, and this understanding directs our worldly activities. It includes what is called valid cognition because it is able to distinguish conventional truth from conventional falsehood. For example, there are consequences in distinguishing a snake from a rope and that sense of being right matters. If there was no reliability to our everyday assessments our activity would be senseless.

To exist conventionally also involves the understanding that since all phenomena depend upon other things they cannot substantively exist. For instance, an apple is produced in dependence upon the conditions of clouds, water, soil, sunlight, air, seeds, ad infinitum. So what is an apple really? An apple is a useful and valid description of what can be relatively and conventionally designated, but cannot ultimately be identified because an apple depends on other things. The same goes for all other things. Since conventional phenomena depend upon other things they cannot have an essential nature or existence of their own.

Ultimate Truth:

Ultimate truth, on the other hand, may be described as the perception of the empty nature of phenomena. The Buddha’s know that everything depends on something else so they know there has never been an inherent object or entity that can be apprehended. They see nothing new or different to others but they know directly and incorrigibly that all the elements of experience are dependent upon one another and upon the nature of the perceiving mind and are therefore empty of their own nature. This is the perception of emptiness and thus the perception of ultimate truth.

The ultimate nature of things, like a table, is its emptiness of inherent existence. Emptiness is the ultimate nature of conventional things. Emptiness is the ultimate nature of the table; emptiness is the ultimate nature of the self; emptiness is the ultimate nature of anxiety, of suffering of death, and of each and every thing that exists. This is because when an analytical mind asks, “What is this table really?” and searches deeply it fails to find any core or essence of being in the table, hence, its emptiness.

Emptiness is an absence, a negation of inherent or independent existence. Ultimate analysis does not negate the conventional but sees the conventional as merely conventional. It is the superimposition of inherent existence on the conventional that ultimate analysis targets. When objects cannot be found from an ultimate perspective, it means that they do not inherently exist, not that they do not conventionally exist and in a way that works in everyday life.

When inherent existence is globally negated through ultimate analysis, conventional images do not then disappear but no longer deceive. There is no need to withdraw from objects for they are directly and immediately recognized as empty or illusory-like. Whatever form appears, that is empty; whatever is empty, that appears as form. When emptiness arises as an appearance, we are confident that everything (all appearance) is empty.

Ultimate truth does not point to a transcendent reality but to the transcendence of deception. It is critical to emphasize that the ultimate truth of emptiness is a negational truth, a negation of inherent existence in things. In looking for inherently existent phenomena it is revealed that they cannot be found. This absence is not findable because it is not an entity.

Ultimate truth is not something positive or affirming because this implies an existent “thing”. Since it can’t be “existent” far less can it be “non-existent”. Therefore, the question of applying any other concept to it does not arise because all concepts depend on these two (existence or not existence).

The ultimate truth – that is, truth concerning the highest goal – is that phenomena do not arise or cease or come into being. The conventional transactional truth, on the other hand, is that things do come into being and that their arising is conditioned. Conventional truth can be understood as a kind of screen, an obstacle that stands in the way of seeing the ultimate truth, their emptiness. Conventional truths are actually delusions that, if believed, prevent one from attaining the wisdom that is capable of leading to nirvana.

The transcendence of primal ignorance is not the transcendence of the conventional but the transcendence of deception by it. Ultimately, since all phenomena, even ultimate truth, exist only conventionally, conventional truth is therefore all the truth there is. This is an ultimate truth. To fail to take conventional truth seriously as truth is therefore not only to deprecate the conventional in favour of the ultimate but to deprecate truth per se. If we disparage the conventional we have no ethical world left.

All language directed at the conventional world is to be merely a useful instrument as nothing in the conventional world literally exists as it is described in language. Language implicates intrinsic existence, but everything exists merely conventionally. On the other hand, the language directed at the ultimate indicates a reality, but does so figuratively, for the ultimate is inexpressible. The “meaning” of this language is to be taken seriously, but not the language itself.

The direct perception of emptiness depends upon conventionally designated phenomena to discover that they are empty. The emptiness of the table (its ultimate truth) depends on the table. No table, no ultimate truth. Conventional truth is the ladder by which the deceptive structure of its own conceptuality is ultimately undermined. Conventional truth provides the conceptual force necessary to subsequently perceive the ultimate emptiness of phenomena. Ultimate truth is not more than phenomenal emptiness. If ultimate truth was the entire truth, then nothing could be said to exist at all as all there would be was an absence, a negation. This would take us to the affliction of nihilism. That is why it is so important to identify the object of negation to be only the inherent existence of phenomena, not their conventional existence, and to recognize ultimate truth as an absence, an absence of inherent existence. Liberation requires a well-reasoned path.

Nagarjuna asserts that the dependently arisen is emptiness. Emptiness and the phenomenal world are not two distinct things but two characterizations of the same thing. Even though both the phenomenal world and the self are empty it should be clarified that Nagarjuna does in fact acknowledge the value of our everyday common sense understanding of the world. One should abide in the phenomenal world because this is precisely where emptiness is; in the phenomena. Awakening brings us back to the world, back, but with insight replacing confusion.

What Nagarjuna intends by the doctrine of emptiness is to expose the real nature of things for without it we could not attain genuine enlightenment. Inherent nature does not exist at all; not even conventionally (like the horns on a rabbit). To assert intrinsic reality to phenomena, Nagarjuna suggests, is not only philosophically deeply confused, it is contradictory to common sense. Common sense neither posits nor requires intrinsic reality in phenomena, so it sides with emptiness.

Emptiness is Ultimate Truth:

If we are to use the term “ultimate truth,” it is the emptiness of all things. Even emptiness exists on the conventional level as it does not exist in-and-of-itself. In this way, emptiness is not some type of essential essence or ultimate reality that can be grasped on to. There are not two spheres of reality, one ultimate and one conventional, but two faces of the same world. There is only one world, the world of our everyday experience. Everything, including this written thesis, has only nominal truth. As soon as anything is identified it can only be a conventional designation as nothing can truly be located or pointed to.

It is said: there is a Buddha, there is delusion, there is realisation, there is birth and death, there are sentient beings – these are conventional truths. As the myriad things are empty of an abiding self-nature, there is no Buddha, no delusion, no realization, no practice, no birth, no death and no sentient beings. These are ultimate truths.

To assert that things are empty is not to assert that they are non-existent, but to assert that nothing has an essence or intrinsic identity. To see the world in terms of independently existent phenomena is a fundamental metaphysical error. Conventionally there are people, dogs, tables and chairs, and each of these things has countless properties. Ultimately there are no such things and no such properties. The ultimate truth is that everything is empty, that nothing is ultimately real, not even emptiness. It too, is only conventionally real. To be dependently originated, to exist in dependence on conditions in relation to other things and to have an identity dependent on conceptual designation is what it is to be empty. When we consider things carefully, that is how everything is.

Emptiness is only the emptiness of empty things, not a self-subsistent universal. It, too, is therefore merely conventionally real. The conventional reality of things is their emptiness, and hence their ultimate reality. Ultimate reality is just as empty as conventional reality. So ultimate reality is no more real than conventional truth, but is just a different way of looking at the same thing. Ultimate reality is hence only conventional reality. The ultimate is what the conventional really is; the conventional is the way the ultimate appears. And so the two truths, the world of dependent arising and its emptiness, are identical.

To take emptiness as ultimately real and everything else as merely conventional would create an unrepairable dualism. Emptiness would be reified as a privileged ultimately existent phenomenon and conventional reality would be deprecated as a second-class existence, as illusion. We would then be stuck with an inaccessible real world and an illusory world we are condemned to inhabit. Emptiness is not an alternative to existence, but an analysis of existence.

Emptiness is the lack of essence of the conventional, it is no more than that. Seeing the conventional as conventional is to see it as it is ultimately. Nagarjuna makes a similar move with nirvana and draws a most startling conclusion. Just as there is no difference in entity between the conventional and the ultimate, there is no difference in entity between nirvana and samsara; nirvana is simply samsara seen without reification, without attachment, without delusion.

Since all phenomena exist only conventionally, conventional truth is all the truth there is – and that is an ultimate truth. The ultimate and the relative are not two different sets of reality posited against each other. In the ultimate one cannot find any distinctions; even the distinction of ignorance and knowledge.

It is the tendency of ordinary people to seize at things (the conventional appearance of things) as if they will satisfy our longing of something ultimate. The Buddha points out that the ultimate nature of things is their emptiness or insubstantiality. When this dawns, one’s longing for the ultimate finds its real meaning and fulfilment. One is thus not bound forever in one’s own ignorance.

Non-origination

It must be stressed that non-origination does not imply absolute non-existence, nihilism or that nothing matters. Conventional existents are not denied, only their status as inherent entities. The purpose of demonstrating the illusory or empty nature of things is so we cease imputing intrinsic existence where there is none.

The deepest spiritual truth is one in which the arising of questions becomes impossible when it is realized. Once one has this answer, all else is self-revealing. This answer, the sages tell us, is that not anything has ever been created or originated from the very outset.

“Neither from itself nor from another, nor from both, nor without a cause does anything whatever anywhere arise“. Nagarjuna.

“Not anything has ever actually come into existence, nor goes out of it. What lacks origination, by itself, lacks existence or emergence; and having lacked emergence, it lacks disappearance or destruction or non-existence”. Chandrakirti.

Where there is not anything from the start there is not any actual entity which can arise. The appearing phenomena are like a mirage of a lake in the desert. The “lake” never came into existence in the first place. Also, this is similar to a coil of rope in a dim area mistaken for a snake. The “snake” never existed in the first place. Not knowing the empty nature of things we are prompted to ask: How wide is the lake? How deep is it? Is the snake poisonous etc? These absurd questions are similar to questions such as: “Who made the world?” “How do we contact God?” “What happens after we die?” They are based on an erroneous supposition that something has come into existence, that an entity has come into existence, or that God has come into existence. They are not real questions, hence, they are unanswerable. Also, the very framework of self-inquiry (Who am I?) is another false question based on unfounded pre-suppositions. The question already presumes a purest identity. The enquiry serves to strengthen the framework of duality and inherent existence by assuming there is a true reality behind and transcending all phenomena that can be found if searched for.

Since nothing has originated from the start, what does this say of a genesis or a beginning, or of God as the creator, or the Big Bang theory, or what happens to us after we die, or end time apocalyptic theories? On analysis, when all phenomena are empty, what can be gained and what can be lost? What world of living beings is there, and who will really die here? Who will come into existence, and who has gone out of existence? From where can our problems and suffering appear from?

With not any “thing” ever originated this does not mean that the universe has somehow always existed. “Non-origination” means that a universe itself has not come into existence. In other words, the view of “non-origination” says that the universe itself cannot be truly existent. It is like a fairy city or a dream, non-originated in its intrinsic being.

“Every theory about the world is a concept about something unreal evolved by an unreal thinker with unreal thoughts.”

When we view some phenomenon as an effect, say the world, we are prompted to wonder “What was its cause? But this assumes that cause and effect is an ultimately true reality. Cause and effect is conventional (like the cause of hot weather produces the effect of dehydration) it is not an ultimate reality. From the ultimate, not any “thing” has ever been originated or caused. From this stance it becomes clear that an empty cause can be the cause of nothing more than empty effect.

“Things have always been empty; never, not ever, anything.”

“How could there be some “thing” instead of no thing?”

That which has arisen dependently on this and that conditions has not arisen inherently or independently. What has not arisen inherently, (substantially) how can it literally be called arisen? And what has not arisen, how can it be said to cease? The perceiving and conceptual reifying faculties of the individual are illuminated, not by the arising and ceasing of things, but by their non-arising and non-ceasing. This pair shows that the existence of things is illusory, no essence can be found, and hence any imputations of inherent existence to them are false.

So the idea is to fail in finding that ‘core’ or ‘essence’ which makes a thing that ‘thing’ because when we fail to find that essence we have the potential to realize that there never has been a thing in the first place. The ‘thing’ was only ever a misconception. Intrinsic things simply cannot be found. If you realize the non-arising of things then you simply know that everything that appears is unreal, like a dream, nothing being created or destroyed, nothing coming or going, nothing actually ‘there’… yet illusory appearance manifests due to conditions coming together.

Not anything in the universe exists entirely on its own; all products and events are within a pattern of dependent arising. Even dependent arising is without ultimate reality since there are not real things which can arise, even dependently. If there were anything in the universe which had arisen entirely on its own it would not be subject to any causes or conditions (such as aging or decay) which would result in its removal; it would be immortal. We know of nothing in the universe which is inherent, immortal or does not change.

Summarizing:

The Samdhinirmochana Sutra says: “The World-honoured One turned the wheel of doctrine for those setting out in all the vehicles [teaching] that all things have no-essence, no arising, and no passing away, are originally quiescent, and are essentially in cessation. This turning was the most marvelous and wonderful that had ever occurred in the world.

“The definitive teaching is that all phenomena never arose” Nagarjuna

“There is a reason for stating in the scriptures that all phenomena are not produced and do not cease. It is because there are no entities which are truly established.” Gyel-tsab.

“All arising is like the arising of an illusion. The world has arisen due to imagination. Not having originated it cannot be destroyed.”

There has never been an apparent object to apprehend. It has been this way before these things appeared to be existent. From an illusion that does not exist, something seemingly real becomes evident. What seems to be “existent” is actually an absence of existence. Buddhahood is actually an absence of Buddhahood.

Dependently originated forms can seem to exist, and then, because they do not actually come into existence, can seem to go out of existence. They appear to exist because “we” see them and name them as such. What does exist? Not anything exists beyond the appearance of existing. An illusion is “real” as an illusion, but it is not real beyond its appearance of being real.

“Whatever originates dependent upon “this” and “that” does not originate in its intrinsic being. How can what is not originated in its intrinsic being be called originated? Therefore, nothing at all originates and nothing at all ceases.”

When a magical illusion is supposed to originate, or is supposed to be destroyed, one who understands its illusory empty nature will not be deluded. However, the worldly, who are infatuated by ignorance about it, will be greatly affected emotionally.

There is that sphere wherein is neither earth nor water, nor fire nor air, neither the sphere of infinite space nor of infinite consciousness nor of nothingness, nor of ideation nor non ideation, where there is neither this world nor a world beyond nor both together, nor moon, nor sun. I say, “it” neither exists or does not exist; neither is or is not; neither we see it or don’t see it; neither we know it or don’t know it, It has neither duration nor decay; there is neither beginning nor establishment; there is no result and no cause; there is neither coming from it or going to it. This verily is the end of suffering.

As Ninakawa lay dying, Zen Master Ikkyu visited him. “Shall I lead you on?” Ikkyu asked. Ninakawa replied: “I came here alone, and I go alone, what help could you be to me?” Ikkyu answered: “If you think you really come and go that is your delusion. Let me show you the path of no coming and going.” Ikkyu revealed it so clearly that Ninakawa smiled and passed away.

Non-creation and Non-destruction

A mirage appears but is empty, likewise, phenomena appear but they lack intrinsic nature. Hence the Buddha speaks of the non-origination of anything in its intrinsic being. All Interdependently Originated phenomena, which are like a mirage, are non-originated in their intrinsic being. And how can what is non-originated be destroyed?

Those who possess the unobstructed knowledge of the Buddhas who have seen complete Enlightenment and known reality in all its aspects are not affected by the alternatives of origination and destruction. They saw that phenomena originate only in dependence on other phenomena, they do not originate in their intrinsic being. In proclaiming Interdependent Origination they avoided the supposed origination and destruction of entities. This is the only cause of seeing rightly.

Those yogins and yoginis who have known precisely the meaning of Interdependent Origination see neither the origination nor the destruction of anything. Therefore, nothing at all originates and nothing at all is destroyed. “Origination, duration and destruction are demonstrated to be like an illusion, a dream and a fairy city.”

Now if one says that when two things are dependent, one upon the other, neither of them is established, and further recognizes that they have no origination and destruction in their intrinsic being, then this is a description of Interdependent Origination. Moreover, this is also accepted by the exponents of Emptiness. “Wherein there is no origination, therein destruction is not evident.” Those who comprehend the profound nature of Interdependent Origination have avoided the extremes of origination and destruction.

If an entity were existent without depending upon another entity, it could be seen to exist in its intrinsic being. The wise do not apprehend anything that is established in its intrinsic being. (There has never been an object to be apprehended). When such entities are analyzed with wisdom, they are found to be like an illusory elephant in a magical show, non-existent in their intrinsic being. Whatever is non-existent in its intrinsic being and whatever is unoriginated is called Nirvana. Thus, when one has understood the nature of entities to be unapprehended, this is Nirvana. Nonetheless, the wise who perceive the ultimate, neither perceive Samsara nor Nirvana. Consequently for such, there is no assumption of either Samsara or Nirvana. Nirvana is none other than the non-establishment of anything in its intrinsic being.

When what is originated from the condition of ignorance is analyzed, no perception at all of either origination or cessation occurs. When there is no perception of the origination or cessation of volitions, dispositions, desires, suffering and the rest, perfect supraknowledge arises. Then Nirvana is achieved in this very life. Then, in this life, one is beyond sorrow and has done what had to be done.

However, those who are deceived with regard to the nature of appearance are taken in by its fascination. When a magical illusion is supposed to originate, or when it is supposed to be destroyed, one who knows about it is not deluded, but one who is ignorant about it will be greatly affected emotionally.

Ignorance is not simply the absence of knowledge but the direct opposite of knowledge; a destructive denial of the truth. Ignorance takes things to be something that exist as they appear. Ignorance implicitly conditions the way we see the world. This unwarranted exaggeration of the way things exist (intrinsically) is extremely pernicious because it allows other afflictive emotions – desire, hatred, jealousy, anger, and so forth – to bite into our minds.

Conventionally, form originates, feeling originates, suffering originates, and so forth. Consequently, it may be supposed by someone that origination exists. Then, alas, such a one has entered the wrong path. The wise person whose intelligence conforms to the facts through analytical reasoning knows that what is not originated in its intrinsic being cannot be called originated at all. When an originated entity exists, the duration of that entity is the consequence of conditions. If the conditions for its continuation do not exist, it will be destroyed. Therefore, when the cause of the existence of the world (ignorance) is extinguished (in one’s mind) one obtains peace and Nirvana.

Despite origination and destruction not existing in their intrinsic being, the Buddha taught the world Interdependent Origination. Origination and destruction were taught by Him intentionally, that is to say, with a purpose in mind. It is said that through knowing origination, destruction is also known because origination is the foundation or basis of destruction. Further, through knowing destruction, one can penetrate the significance of destruction, that is to say, its impermanence. Whoever finds oneself within the burning flames of the transitory three spheres of existence but wishes to escape from this situation will surely be freed by the knowledge of Interdependent Origination. If such a person penetrates the truth of non-origination and non-destruction, he or she can realize the profound truth of Nirvana by means of this understanding.

Those who know that Interdependent Origination is well clear of origination and destruction cross the ocean of worldly existence that is born of views and dogmas. One who strives to understand Emptiness will surely cross the ocean of existence by means of the great vessel of Emptiness. Those who fear Emptiness are not able to avoid falling into the two alternatives of origination and destruction. Ordinary people, who have the notion of origination and the substantiality of entities, are flawed by the erroneous views of existence and non-existence and thus they are deceived by their own minds. Because they conceive of things in terms of origination, they cannot realise what is without origination because that contradicts the ordinary fixated mind. Because they conceive of things as substantial, they cannot realise that which is insubstantial (emptiness) because that challenges the notion of there being solid inherent objects.

Ordinary people, literally individual people, are so called because they are born individually in accordance with their afflictions and their actions. Those who grasp at the view that a substance or essence abides in entities possess the notion of the substantiality of entities and therefore the notion of a self or substance in things. They are controlled by and are subject to the afflictions that are generated by the erroneous views of origination and destruction. They become attached to entities which they consider pleasant, while in regard to entities which they consider unpleasant, they produce aversion or hatred. Their conduct is therefore determined by the afflictions. In this way, ordinary people who are attached to entities are deceived by their own minds. Therefore, the vision of the true reality of entities (emptiness) is obscured from such ordinary people.

It is said, just like the rungs of a water wheel there is no beginning (origination), therefore, the Buddha did not proclaim a beginning, then, as there is no beginning, there is also no end (destruction). If there were a beginning, then definitely a view would also be adopted. But whoever accepts Interdependent Origination holds that beginning and end are not originated in their intrinsic being.

The Sage sees the whole world of conditioned cyclical existence as similar to a magical illusion. Ultimately, he apprehends nothing at all. Whatever be the nature of entities, he is not deluded by the alternatives of a beginning (origination or birth) and end (destruction or death). Such a yogin or yogini is not subject to erroneous views. Others, like the unwise, who are attached to illusory appearances, give up the path of the knowledge of insubstantiality. Those who impute the origination and destruction to people and things fail completely to understand Interdependent Origination in which there is neither beginning, middle or end. Whatsoever originates dependent upon this and that does not originate in its intrinsic being. How can what is not originated in its intrinsic being be called originated?

The world of cyclical existence is an error consequently it is not appropriate to consider the world of cyclical existence as existing in truth. Now, it may be asked, if indeed there is no cyclical existence then how is it that its reality appears in various forms? The wise do not perceive it in various forms. For them, cyclical existence has only a single character, i.e. emptiness. In emptiness, there are no various forms. Ordinary people deluded by the sleep of ignorance perceive various forms as if in a dream. Whatsoever appears to the worldly as real is false for the wise. The world of cyclical existence is not established substantially, but rather by ignorance. It certainly springs up from the cause of the seed of ignorance. (Ignorance is the belief in the intrinsic existence or reality of things, or, ignorance fails to see the empty nature of things). Therefore, it is said that beginning, middle and end are to be rejected and that origination, duration and destruction are absent. So the world of cyclical existence, which originates from the seed of ignorance, is like a dream, without essence. If it were not originated from the seed of ignorance, then when subjected to examination an essence would be found. However, when objects are examined, an essence can’t be found. Whatever has no essence, but contrary to fact appears as if it had an essence, does so by the power of ignorance.

Therefore, the world of cyclical existence, like a dream, is not real. When it is examined in this way the world of cyclical existence,which originates from the cause of ignorance, is not established actually. Then, the unbearable city of cyclical existence is surely a product of delusion. The world of cyclical existence which appears like an illusion is difficult to reverse. Although it is the source of many woes and because it is difficult to recognize its true nature inasmuch as it is obscured by ignorance, it is called unbearable or terrible. But those who are free from ignorance see it to be like an illusion. The city of delusion experienced by ordinary people is seen to be mere illusion by the wise. Because ignorance is like delusion, the world of cyclical existence is not substantial.

Therefore, there exists nothing which is not like a dream or illusion. The worldly who are infatuated by ignorance follow the current of their desires. Therefore, the whole world of sentient beings from Brahman down,without exception, fail to see the truth. Consequently, they are whirled powerlessly in the great whirlpool of cyclical existence agitated by the wind of error. Therefore, without doubt, whatever is real for worldly, like objects, feelings, a self, atman, Brahman, etc, who follow the way of cyclical existence, is false for the wise. They understand that cyclic existence is also non-originated in its intrinsic being, like a dream.

The Buddha explains that emptiness (the understanding that nothing arose in the first place) should not be taught in the beginning to those whose intellects are not purified. First, they should be taught conventional truth; that there are people, objects, mental states and a world. Then dependent origination should be taught, that is, that these things depend on other things, and hence, are empty of independent nature and so are not originated in their intrinsic being. So emptiness should not be taught initially to those whose minds are not matured, but later on.

Failure to recognize non-origination is called ignorance. Ignorance is always surrounded by the retinue of the afflictions of attachment and so forth. Failing to go beyond ignorance things are imagined because of erroneous views. The world having ignorance as its condition, consequently originates from ignorance. Therefore, since ignorance is a condition (ignorance mentally imputes intrinsic existence to things) why is it not justifiable to regard the world as the effect of mere conceptualization. Again, the world as the effect of mere conceptualization means the world is not established substantially but is constructed by conceptualization. Therefore, if there exist error mistaken views and the like, the world exists, but if there is no error, the world does not exist.

If the world existed in its intrinsic being, that is, if it existed substantially, then it would not be dependent upon cause and conditions. In that case, it would not be created. Further, if the world were established substantially it could not change its form. In that case, it cannot be eliminated.

If when analyzed what are called “this and that” are not perceived, what wise man or woman will argue that “this and that” are real? Thus, all conditioned factors: form, feeling, consciousness and so forth, which participate in Interdependent Origination, they are not originated in their intrinsic being. The characteristic mark of whatever is not originated in its intrinsic being, it is not perceived. This is an ultimate truth of things; their non-arising.

The conceptions of truth and falsity depend upon entities. However, the appearing phenomena that participate in Interdependent Origination are not essentially entities, but appear like a reflection. Therefore, they are not real. When one has realized that such entities are not real, then attachment to them can be removed. When one has removed attachment to entities, one can then remove grasping at entities. Here, by grasping is meant the appropriation of entities, that is making entities one’s own. Once this appropriating tendency is removed, then attachment to desired objects, attachment to views and attachment to disputation can also be eliminated.

Whosoever apprehends concrete and unchanging objects will be lead to clinging and suffering. Such unskilled persons, fixated on objects, conceive of an essence of things and then generate attachment and hostility with regard to them. They will be caught by the deceiver – the serpent of the afflictions. Those whose minds have not apprehended an objective position will not be caught. If there exists no perception of entities, then there would be no apprehension on the part of the mind. Therefore, those who have no mental perception of an objective position (an entity or substance) are not caught by the vicious deceitful, serpent of the afflictions. Those who perceive form etc. in their intrinsic being, although they think they can abandon the afflictions, cannot in fact do so.

If entities are perceived (apprehended) as intrinsic real things, the presence of the afflictions like attachment and the rest without doubt, cannot be removed. If those entities (objects, etc) remain agreeable to the mind, it will be difficult to remove attachment to them. On the other hand, if they are found not to be agreeable, then it will be difficult to remove the consequent attitude of aversion toward them.

As children are attached to a reflection, perceiving it to be true, so the worldly are trapped in the prison of objects. Just as children who are not conversant with the conventions of the world, when perceiving a reflection, believe that they are apprehending objects that exists substantially and become attached to them and pursue them. Similarly, the worldly who are ignorant are attached to the belief that entities which are born from the power of delusion are true or real. The worldly are infatuated by ignorance and follow the current of their desires. Led by inclinations they commit their whole being to the pursuit of such entities. Attracted by the imagined existence of entities and subject to the power of attachment, ill will, pride and so forth, they pursue them, like children, without freedom to do otherwise. Undertaking this or that activity in pursuit of their object they become trapped in the prison of objects, that is Samsara. But the wise who have understood entities to be non-originated in their intrinsic being certainly do not fall into cyclical existence because of the afflictions of attachment and so forth.

Cause and Effect

By cause and effect we mean that “the cause” is an event that brings about something else “an effect”. Conventionally we say that a seed is the cause of a tree (the effect); or that parents are the cause of a child; or that the cause of germs results in the effect sickness; or the cause of hot weather results in dehydration; or the cause of virtuous behaviour results in the effect of favourable karma. Nagarjuna does not refute conventional cause and effect but he emphatically refutes inherent cause and effect, that is, that an inherent independent real seed causes or produces an inherent independent real tree. Nagarjuna challenges the notion of inherent cause and effect or inherent production, but not conventional cause and effect. He argues that all phenomena lack inherent existence, meaning that nothing exists with its own nature essence or being. He refers to this lack as emptiness. Since all phenomena are empty of inherent nature any causal process could not involve inherent entities either. He points out that it is impossible to explain the relationship between a cause and an effect and to relate substantial independent entities.

His approach is to consider the various ways in which a given entity or object is caused to come into existence and then to show that none of them is tenable because of the absurdities that would be entailed. He used “the Four Errors”, “Catuskoti” or “Tetralemma” as the main logical apparatus to investigate causal production. In the case of something that is regarded to be a real effect of a real cause, then there are four possible means by which the effect could come into existence. It must be either: self-caused; caused by another; caused by both of these; or uncaused. Nararjuna refutes each of these four positions and argues that causal production is really impossible.

“Neither from itself, nor from another, nor from both, nor without a cause, does anything, whatever, anywhere arise.” Nagarjuna.

Self-causation:

For a thing (an effect) to be produced from itself is illogical because then cause and effect are essentially identical and nothing is really produced. Also, once something exists (self-caused) with its own particular identity it is pointless for it to arise or reduplicate once again. Why say that something “arose” after it was already existent? Saying something arose from itself destroys the language of cause and effect that tells us something has changed or has become different from what it was. And since it already exists, nothing new has occurred, there is no change from the cause to the effect, which means that nothing was ever really “caused” at all which defeats the very idea of cause and effect. Also, if a thing causes itself it is the subject and the object at the same time; which is impossible. And further, things can’t arise from themselves because we can’t pinpoint a core nature or essence from which things arise. If something arises from itself, it would not arise dependently or interact causally, which is impossible. And further still, if something (a tree) could arise from itself it would not need an environment, a seed, sunlight, soil, water, and so on. And finally, the Hindu model which asserts Brahman as the ultimate “source” of all phenomena encompasses all the pitfalls and contradictions of self-causation.

Other causation:

If a cause is inherently different from an effect how could it produce the effect? How can anything be produced from something that it is inherently different and separate from? That would be magic. The relationship is lost, then anything could be produced from anything, cause and effect lose all meaning. A cow might arise from a horse.

Moreover, should a cause and effect co-exist; how could one be defined as a “cause” and the other as an “effect?” Also, if a thing is caused by another, it has the “other” as its substance and nature. Further still, to explain production by way of an independent causal property is to beg the question of what caused the cause.

Both self-causation and other-causation:

The third option (the cause is both the same and different to the effect) is a contradiction, and also, the difficulties of the first two options are compounded.

Neither self-causation nor other-causation:

This amounts to uncaused, but happens by mere accident. Also, “a thing caused by no cause” is a contradiction in terms and hence makes no sense. If something can come from no cause, anything can be the cause of anything else. Anything could arise anytime and anywhere. In this theory everything would be random and unpredictable. No one would have a clue as to what was happening and why.

Since causal relations cannot be established, it makes no sense to say that all things are “causally related” and that there is a “necessary connection” between cause and effect. Therefore, the four alternatives of causation (cause and effect) are doomed to failure. They are wrong views and must be rejected outright. It is unintelligible to hold that real events are caused. One can only conclude that the very ideas of causality, and of arising and perishing, cannot correspond to reality. Causality and arising and perishing are essential for describing conventional existence. Nagarjuna did not deny that from the practical conventional point of view all things (effects) appear to be produced from causes. What he did deny was that this causal principle can be proved and that it is ultimately real and true.

Nagarjuna argued that intrinsic cause and effect activity is not established and there is not even the slightest so-called production that can be observed. He concluded that things do not really arise at all. Following this logic we might therefore conclude that all the apparent goings-on in the world, the apparent interrelation of causes and effects, is somewhat like what takes place in a dream.

The more one tries to respond to Nāgārjuna’s objections as to the truth of intrinsic cause and effect the more one finds oneself proposing hypostatic explanations. Nāgārjuna’s method is precisely the ferreting out of those hidden presuppositions that reveal themselves through our compulsion to propose these explanations. By revealing them and recognizing them to be incoherent and insupportable one ceases clinging to them and they thus cease to act as hidden compulsions and proclivities so that the suffering and anxiety they engender are brought to rest.

People might argue that although causal relation or causality cannot be established on rational or logical grounds it can be established by experience. For example, when we examine the empirical facts we see, for example, that a tree (the effect) is caused or produced from a seed (the cause), hence convincing us that a causal relationship between the two really exists. But when we examine, we cannot even isolate or demonstrate something that is representative of an inherent seed or something that is representative of an inherent tree so how can we establish a really existent relationship between two non-existent entities? The notion of causation and production has only been assumed to exist but is yet to be proven. Any “empirical” justification of the principle of causation assumes the very principle it tries to prove.

Causation was used to describe both moral and physical phenomena. When the principle is enunciated as a moral law it means that there are good deeds and rewards for them; and there are bad deeds and punishments. The principle of causality or production was believed by early Buddhists to be “objectively”, “necessarily”, “eternally”, as well as “universally” valid. But Nagarjuna argues that the “necessary connection” between a good deed and a reward and between a bad deed and punishment or between an inherent cause and an inherent effect has all the contradictions of “other causation” and therefore is to be rejected.

Rather than point to explicit causes that bring about their effects through some enigmatic power, Nagarjuna appeals to the various underlying conditions to explain the effect without ascribing the conditions any active causal involvement in the process. For example, fuel, oxygen and a spark are the “conditions” necessary for fire, but none of these conditions has the power within them to cause fire; such as wood causing fire. Another example: a seed, fertile soil, steady sunlight, and a strong water supply are the “conditions” necessary for the growth of a tree, but none of these conditions are inherent causes in the sense that they exert some power to provoke the tree’s growth. The condition, say soil, does not have power on its own to provoke the tree’s growth; nor does the condition of, say a seed, have power within itself to cause the growth of the tree. If you place a seed in your hand for a millennium it will not turn into a tree. Regularities and logical consistency of conditions, (a seed, water, soil, sunlight, etc) are what count, without attributing inherent causal powers to these conditions. When the effect (the tree) is investigated we do not discover an entity (called tree or treeness) either existing in itself or in its conditions. We can only appeal to regularities of conditions emptily nestled within countless other regularities, but these conditions do not exist as independent causes.

Nagarjuna’s fundamental conception of causality is that all participants in the causal nexus are empty of intrinsic nature because they depend on other things. Because they are empty (or dependently arisen) they can interact with each other to generate the effect, which, being dependent and impermanent cannot but be empty as well. That things are ever-changing also indicates that they are devoid of any fixed identity. Ultimately, we cannot say what things are because they do not exist in and of themselves.

Nagarjuna’s famous Stanza from The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, states: “When this is, that is; when this ceases, that ceases.” However, many people interpret this principle as saying: “When this inherent cause is, that inherent effect is; when this inherent cause ceases, that inherent effect ceases.” This view gives inherent status to “this” and “that” in the formula as referring to real inherent independent causes and real inherent independent effects; which early Buddhists seemed to follow. Whatever exists, exists because of a real inherent cause producing a real inherent effect. This view, which entails the absurdity of fixed entities, is contradictory to or at least incompatible with the empirical phenomena that things are subject to causal change. Consequently it is unintelligible to use fixed, inherent entities to explain the true nature of things. Whereas, Nagarjuna’s dependent arising, an essenceless interdependent movement, avoids contradiction and explains change.

Addressing inherent causation or inherent production challenges an ingrained perspective in which phenomena are believed to be inherent fixed entities. We can instead recognize that our attempt to land on explanations grounded in inherent entities with causal power leads to dead end inquiries with questions and answers rooted in the belief in solid, fixed, final truths rather than interdependence and relativity. For example, let us say we want to investigate the cause of suffering. The aim of the Buddha’s Dharma is not to find the cause of suffering or to have a conceptual understanding of any causal phenomenon, but rather to see that all things, including suffering and its cause, are empty, and hence to cease all conceptualization. So, when someone wanted to discuss the cause of suffering with the Buddha, he remained silent.

‘Is suffering made by itself?’ The Buddha kept silent and did not answer. If suffering is not made by itself, is it made by other?’ The Buddha still did not answer. Is it then made by itself and other? ‘The Buddha still did not reply. Is it then made by no cause at all?’ The Buddha still did not answer. Thus as the Buddha did not answer these four questions, we should know that suffering is empty.”

The Buddha’s verbal teachings are merely instruments to assist people in eliminating conceptualization so that they may be “empty” of all intellectual and emotional attachments. Once one realizes this “empty” nature of the Buddha’s Dharma, one will have abandoned conceptual speculation of everything. However, if one is attached to causality and insists on speculating about the cause of suffering, one cannot see the Buddha’s Dharma.

So how do we explain the apparent production of things in the world then? A tree, for example, arises dependent on favourable conditions (a seed, water, sunlight, soil, etc), and ceases when the conditions cease (no water). But the tree, being dependent on innumerable other conditions, is not a real intrinsic independent entity that has been “really” caused to come into existence. And its conditions are also dependent on innumerable other conditions, so they also are not real intrinsic entities. Since the tree is not arisen on its own, then it cannot be said to exist on its own. Since it doesn’t exist on its own it is not truly arisen (somewhat like what takes place in a dream). The issue is not the things in themselves – the tree, suffering, global warming, and so on – the issue is the misperception that these things are real intrinsic entities (effects) that are produced by real intrinsic (causes). We are fixated (hard-wired) to believe that things (effects) are real; that the tree is real, that suffering is real, or that global warming is real. Yet these things depend for their existence on other things so they are not intrinsic real entities that have been “caused” to come into existence. This is not to negate their status as conventional entities but only to negate their status as intrinsic entities, that is, that they exist independent of other things. The key is to see all things (the effect, the cause and the causal principle) as empty of intrinsic nature.

“As for the content of wisdom, it is the realization that no phenomena come into being. All things, ideas, events, etc., are ’empty,’ they don’t cause or define themselves but arise and cease due to conditions.”

Conclusion:

We can only conclude that an actual causal agent that causes real entities to come into existence cannot be substantiated. Therefore, an actual origination or an actual arising of anything at all cannot be established. Such arising or origination is like the illusory arising of an oasis in a desert. No actual entity arose or originated in the first place, just appearances of impermanence. And because no actual entity arose or originated in the first place no actual entity ceases or goes out of existence.

All confusion and all affliction in the world boils down to the cause of apprehending entities. When dependent origination is seen the substantial nature of entities ceases to be perceived because whatever originates dependent upon something else is essentially not originated.

Ordinary people, however, imagine substantial origination. They become attached to this imagined substantial origination and become confused and afflicted. To free them from this affliction, the Buddha said, that whatever is dependently originated does not really originate.

No Beginning or End

The process of dependently arising phenomena is beginningless. There is no first cause (or beginning) because every factor is dependent on some other factor. If it had a beginning then there would be one thing which came first which thing would then be the originating cause of the entire subsequent chain. It is not that a beginning is hidden in immemorial time, nor that it is inaccessible due to having been set in motion by a transcendent power, rather, a beginning (something that does not depend on anything else) is simply inconceivable. Without a beginning, neither can there be said to be an end to the process. Whatever arises dependently cannot have its own nature. This is why nothing truly begins or ends, why nothing is born and nothing dies. When asked about the beginning, The Great Sage said that “nothing is known of it”.

The Buddha says it is not even appropriate to speak of the ultimate beginning or end of an individual life-span, for they cannot be “real.” If birth were real, then three undesirable options would arise. If birth preceded the entity of death, then there would be a birth without old age and death and all arisen things would be immortal. If death is inherent in birth, then something will be dying at the same moment it is being born. Finally, if it is flatly stated that birth and death are separate, then no born things will die and the things that die will never have been born. Because birth and death do not exist on their own one can in no way speak of origins or ends, the prior and posterior.

Whatever our situation in the world it has its own conditions and those conditions had to have their own conditions, etc, nothing in the cycle of existence occurs without causes and conditions to bring it into being. We can therefore never find an “original cause” that would constitute the beginning of cyclic existence, because if there were one, it would have arisen without conditions itself, which is impossible. Nowhere is there a single original cause (the big bang, God, Brahman, etc) that has the power to produce everything. Thus, there was no actual point when the world began and how could something that never began ever end? Without a beginning or an end, how could there be any period of time in the middle? Since it has neither beginning middle, nor end, the world does not truly exist. It is like a magical illusion.

The Buddha spurned discussions of beginning and end both because the only important things to worry about are those now, and also because ultimate beginnings and ends are not evident and hence inconceivable. In fact, time itself cannot be established. Time is not a unitary concept but is divided into three components – past, present and future. Past, present and future time, again, are devoid of independent reality inasmuch as they exist only relative to each other. (Note that an inherent “present” moment is also impossible since it is defined in dependence on a past and future). Hence, time too is a construction of imagination which is devoid of objective reality. Furthermore, time cannot be considered to be a self-existing thing that is somehow not dependent on other existing objects. The timespan or age of a tree, for instance, depends on the tree. So time itself cannot be independent. It is defined by its relation to such objects. Disassociated from phenomena, time is impossible. Since phenomena do not exist ultimately or inherently therefore time too is unreal. And time is not a self-existing substratum or arena in which equally independent things endure or independent events occur. Since time lacks self-nature or reality there is no intrinsic time when one was born, endures, and when one dies.

As to ultimate beginning or end, the Buddha stated that it is not evident and hence inconceivable. Such a view presupposes one can talk coherently about the beginning or end of the world, or beginning or end of personal existence, or to be able to speak of a future time where nothing exists, or of the end of time, or of a definite moment when the self ceases to exist whereas before it had existed.

Since all things arise dependently (they depend for their existence on other things) they cannot have their own nature so they don’t truly arise. Therefore, nothing truly arises (or is born) in the first place. And what is not born cannot cease (or die). Since birth and death do not exist therefore one can in no way speak of origins or ends, of effect and cause, or of the entire life process itself. What does this say of the existence of former (antecedence) states, such as past lives, and so on; and to the existence of later (subsequent) states, such as future lives, reincarnation, heaven, hell, and so on? Furthermore, who is it that is born and dies, who is it that goes to heaven or that reincarnates?

Enlightenment

The greatest hindrance to enlightenment, the Sages tell us, is our misperception that things exist in an intrinsic self-sustaining way. By intrinsic existence we mean something real and substantial having its own core-nature or essence; something permanent and unchanging; something independent that does not depend on other things. Buddhist reasoning completely refutes any notion of existence, any kind of clinging to existence whatsoever. They challenge the very notion of such intrinsic independent existence by demonstrating that all things depend for their existence on other things. For example, fire depends for its existence on fuel, oxygen and a spark; a person depends on parents, a body, food, shelter, and so on. So they conclude there can be no independent things in existence. Independent unchanging things can in no way arise, therefore, if things arise, they can in no way be independent and unchanging. Things arise dependently not independently. Things lack independent nature or intrinsic nature; somewhat like dream figures that lack substance. Failure to see this lack of intrinsic nature in things is the root cause of our unenlightened state.

Appearances are deceptive, things appear to be substantial intrinsic entities, when they are not. We have fallen prey to this deception. We have falsely assumed that a mere appearance of things equates to real existence of those things. But when we examine these things, like a tree, looking for something independent with its own core nature that we can point to and single out, nothing can be found. It can’t be found because things depend on other things; they lack independent existence.

Enlightenment is not a tangible goal, it is the recognition of an “absence” or “lack”, the lack of any essence or intrinsic nature in the appearing phenomena. This lack (emptiness) is indirectly perceived by virtue of intrinsic things not being perceived. It is like realizing that something we are looking for (our car keys) are not there in their usual spot (the top drawer) and right then directly perceiving the lack or absence of our car keys. An awareness of this lack is precisely the enlightenment perspective. Enlightenment then is not the finding of some “thing”, like a bliss state or peace or even God, but rather it is the insight that no such intrinsic “thing” can be found. So enlightenment is purely a negation, a negation of the existence of any essence, or core nature in things. Enlightenment, then, is not in “finding” but rather in “failing to find”. This is not nihilism but is wholly positive and life-affirming. The Sages know that nothing exists intrinsically that can be isolated out. They do not “apprehend” things and their true nature, rather, they apprehend that there are no things, per se. What seems to be “existent” is actually an absence of existence. What seems to be enlightenment is actually an absence of enlightenment. Understanding the empty nature of things provides one with a certain sort of power, not power to construct, but power to refrain from constructing. This puts an end to conceptualizing and theorizing.

Emptiness, the absence of inherent nature, is the true status of the appearing phenomena. This is attested by logic and empirical facts. Inherent existence of things simply cannot be found. In fact, the true status of things (ultimate nature) is that they are but mere empty appearances, somewhat like the appearance of a mirage of a lake in the desert. And further, the “lake” never actually arose or came into existence in the first place. There never was a lake, just a mere empty appearance (a light refraction pattern). This is also similar to the example of a coil of rope mistaken to be a snake in dim light. The snake merely “appears” as a result of our failure to recognize the rope (the absence of a snake). The snake never actually originates or is created at any point and when we recognize the actual empty nature of the alleged snake then we see it never originated in the first place. Likewise, the appearing phenomena never actually arose from the outset. Things are but mere appearances, like reflections in a mirror, and not real entities. Hence the reason we can’t find an essence or core nature of such things. The non-origination of things (the absence of intrinsic nature) is the ultimate nature of those things. A great secret is greatly apparent.

We perceive the world and things to be inherent entities because we are unaware (ignorant) of their actual empty nature. This fundamental error has corrupted our whole way of seeing the world. Because we see things in such an exaggerated substantial way, things appear that way. The world reflects back to us our own ignorance. So what we are looking at in the world is our own ignorance. Things appear as a result of our inability (ignorance) to recognize their genuine nature as insubstantial and illusory. Everything we see, everything we think, everything we experience, everything we do and everything we label we misperceive to be real entities. Hence things appear as such. Our ideals, our friends, our enemies, our anger, our suffering, our birth, and our death, that we grasp at is an indication of our conviction of the reality of such things. We are aware of objects and things, we experience anger and suffering, we gravitate to our friends and are averse to our enemies, we welcome birth and dread death, and so we erroneously impute reality to such entities as awareness, anger, suffering, friends, enemies, birth and death, as well as a someone, a “self”, who is aware of or who experiences such things. Awareness, to some, is attributed ultimate reality.

Perceiving things as inherent fixed entities is a great source of confusion and suffering. The Buddha challenges the notion of such inherent fixed entities by showing how this would exclude all possibility of change. Instead, he makes the argument that everything arises dependently without attaining its own nature, thingness or essence so all talk of independent fixed entities, essence, beingness, or self-nature, must be abandoned. This shifts the emphasis from that of static fixed “being” to one of dynamic “becoming.” Without independent fixed nature, change is possible and hence liberation is possible. Change is the key. Change is at work every moment on everything. In other words, there is no static moment for anything. This is what impermanence means: no lasting reality. That things appear to change shows that those things are not permanent free-standing entities. If there were such a self-reliant thing it would be impervious to effect upon it. It would be eternal, frozen and unconnected to anything. It would remain as it had presumably been originated, indefinitely, immortally. We would be trapped eternally with no avenue of escape. But this is not the case, change is at hand. If you are feeling disappointed, depressed or anxious, recognize it is impermanent and is thus subject to change so it will soon pass.

The notion that things “exist” inherently or intrinsically is a deep rooted misunderstanding that has blinded us to seeing the real state of things (their emptiness). We have been seduced by the mere impermanent appearance of things in the hope we can find lasting satisfaction in these things. This is like hoping the “water” in a mirage will quench our thirst.

Existence and Nonexistence

For a thing to exist inherently is for it to exist independently without help from anything else. To affirm inherent existence (eternalism) is to affirm that things are really, truly, objectively there. To really be there, it would never have been able to come into existence or pass out of existence. It would then be unable to change or respond to conditions. It would be fixed and frozen and unrelated to other things. For a thing to be inherently non-existent is for it to not exist in any sense at all; not even conventionally or dependently. To deny existence altogether is to fall to the extreme of nihilism. If a phenomenon can’t be “existent” far less can it “non-existent”. To assert non-existence you must have a base, an existent entity to begin with that could become non-existent. This is not the case. Therefore, the question of applying any other concept to it does not arise because all concepts depend on these (existence or not existence).

Middle Way philosophy is neither nihilistic or essentialist. Things neither absolutely exist nor absolutely do not exist. If things existed absolutely, they would have their own nature and would not be dependent upon causal conditions, which is absurd. And if the existence of things were absolutely unreal, there would be no change or motion in the universe, yet myriad things are perceived to arise, change and move. Middle Way is the middle path between the two extremes.

A popular theory is that something non-existent can turn into something existent. For example, you might think that the effect, such as a sprout, was formerly non-existent but is made anew into something existent by causes such as a seed. It is not so. Since existent and non-existent are mutually contradictory, they could never combine on the basis of a single entity. There are no phenomena that were formerly non-existent and later changed into something existent; or that were existent and later changed into something non-existent. Thus, there is neither coming into existence nor cessation. Therefore, this entire world does not arise or cease.

Conventionally, effects appear based on causes. Prior to the gathering of their causes and conditions, they did not appear, and now, when the causes and conditions are assembled, they do. For example, the conditions of a seed, water, fertile soil, sunlight, etc, produce a sprout; or the conditions of fuel, oxygen and a spark produce a flame. The mind relates these two stages to one another, and then there is the conceptual statement: “This did not exist before but now has arisen and exists!” or “This existed previously and then it died did not exist.” Phenomena or conventional entities simply appear by the force of dependent origination (dependent on causes and conditions) but there are no existent phenomena whatsoever that transform into non-existent ones, nor non-existent phenomena that transform into existent. Ultimately, nothing arose in the first place, so there is nothing to appear, and nothing that is lost. Existent and non-existent phenomena never existed from the start.

We can apply this understanding to the existence of former (antecedence) states, such as past lives, and so on; and to the existence of later (subsequence) states, such as future lives, reincarnation, heaven, and so on. The Buddha explains: When the right conditions come together phenomena appear; when those conditions cease, so does the phenomenon cease. There is no speculation of an antecedent state (past life) nor a subsequent state (reincarnation) nor the transformation of something existent into something non-existent or non-existent into existent, of any going or coming, arising or ceasing, increasing or decreasing. When it is known that arising enduring and disintegrating are devoid of true existence it will be understood that “existing” and “non-existing” are also devoid of true existence. The arising of effects is simply the undeceiving appearance of dependent origination and when analyzed as to whether it is existent or non-existent, it is not established in any way whatsoever but is just like a mirage.

For example, seeing the mirage of an oasis in the desert and taking it to be real, you would hurriedly go to that oasis because it appears to exist. You would be elated that there is water which is not far away. Upon getting closer you would realize that the oasis is just a mirage and it would dissipate. It is not that the oasis (lake) once existed before and then ceases to exist. Your conviction of an existent oasis was based on a deluded cognition; there never was an oasis. Upon realizing that, the notions of existence and non-existence cannot actually apply to anything. The oasis was a figment of confusion, a hallucination. It now cannot possibly actually exist or not exist.

When we recognize that the oasis is a mirage, the misconception of an oasis is immediately liberated and it is directly known there never was an actual oasis in the very beginning. This is not a negation of something that once existed before and then ceases to exist by negation. Rather, the oasis never existed. All things are like that. They appear due to the cause of ignorance (ignorance is the belief in intrinsic existence of something) and abide as long as ignorance remains. When ignorance is dispelled, the object is known to be non-arisen.

And finally, concerning the “self”, the Buddha’s teaching of “no self” has been misinterpreted as the Buddha reifying the non-existence of the self. To interpret the Buddha as teaching the non-existence of the self is as bad as the tendency to reify a self in the first place. Thus, while the Buddha have made known the conception of self and taught the doctrine of no-self, he never spoke of some “thing” as the self or as the non-self. The teaching of no-self (anatman) is a dialectical device used to counteract the tendency to believe in the self; nothing more.

Quoting from the Stanzas: “Moreover, these sentient beings must have discarded all arbitrary ideas relating to the conceptions of a personal self, objects and a universal self because if they had not their minds would inevitably grasp after such relative ideas. Further, these sentient beings must have already discarded all arbitrary ideas relating to the conception of the non-existence of a personal self, objects and a universal self. If they had not, their minds would still be grasping after such ideas. Therefore, every disciple should discard, not only conceptions of one’s own selfhood objects and a universal selfhood, but should discard also all conceptions and all ideas about the non-existence of such conceptions because the ‘self’ is not a homogenous quality or capacity which can truly exist or not exist.”

The Existence of God

The Madhyamaka’s deny anything self-existing, transcendent, noumenal, creator or God. There is no room for an inherently existing creator or God in madhyamaka’s argument for the emptiness of all things. Besides, on analysis no inherently existing creator or God can be found empirically, logically or by fact.

Consider, for example, the proposition “whether or not God exists”. Madhyamaka’s do not assert that the existence of God is false, but that God’s existence as the creator is unintelligible because it leads to certain absurdities or contradictions. If God created all things, then who created God? Not God himself because nothing can create itself. Also, if God was created by “another” God would not be self-existent. Moreover, if God had a cause and came from another then the burden of proof of the existence of God is transferred in its entirety to this other, then this other would come from still another. There would be an infinite regress.

As to the existence of God it is neither theistic nor atheistic. It is not theistic because madhyamaka’s do not assert God exists, and it is not atheistic because they do not assert God does not exist. They merely state God cannot be conceived of as existing. Christianity begins with the assumption of Gods existence and that religious knowledge is knowledge of him. Madhyamaka’s do not assume God’s existence and do not believe the assumption of an “Absolute” is necessary for wisdom.

The assumption that God exists, is the fallacy of, “begging the question”, meaning, that an argument smuggles its conclusion in among its premises. Here is a stock example: “Of course God exist, it says so in the Bible. And everything in the Bible is true since it is the word of God.” This argument begs the question by including a premise, “the Bible is the word of God”, that presupposes the truth of the conclusion, “God exists”. It is fallacious because you can’t prove that the conclusion, “God exists”, is true by using evidence that assumes it is true. Another assumption: “The thought arises; what an incredible universe! It must have been made by an incredible maker. Hence, it was created by God.” Such an assumption is yet to be proven; it is not fact but fiction.

Madhyamaka’s denial of theism does not entail atheism. For madhyamaka’s, if theism is unintelligible, then so is atheism. If the assertion that there is a God is non-sensical then the atheist’s assertion that there is no God is equally non-sensical. When the existence of God is not established, the non-existence of God is also not established because for the non-existence of God to be established the existence of God must first be established, which it is not. Furthermore, by positing non-existence of God we indirectly assume the quality of existence of God. That is, non-existence of God is assumed to be an existent entity.

In ruling out atheism as well as theism, madhyamaka’s position may seem to be agnostic. In a sense, this is true because both madhyamaka and the agnostic refrain from assertion. However, in the agnostic view we do not know whether or not God exists. It is an attitude of doubt and despair, but for madhyamaka’s they do know that the question of whether or not God exists is unintelligible. It is an attitude of conviction and certainty. Further, it is characteristic of agnostics to hold that the existence of God is possible; there is no good reason either to believe or disbelieve. So the Agnostic does not deny that the question “whether or not God exists” is a genuine question, but according to madhyamaka’s, all statements about the existence of God involve absurdity, and they might go further and declare agnosticism untenable because if a statement about the existence of God is unintelligible, then it is unintelligible to doubt as well as to affirm.

Madhyamaka’s rejection of the concept of a noumenon or God does not imply that they accepted the empirical as real. Empirical reality is also unintelligible. However, logical positivists hope to convince us that the empirical data is the only reality we can accept. It is then maintained that God does not denote any empirical entity and is a pseudo term. All statements about the existence and nature of God are not empirically verifiable and hence are meaningless. By contrast, madhyamaka’s philosophy hopes to free us from making any ontological commitments whatsoever, even to empirical phenomena. For madhyamaka’s sense experience is as empty as transcendental reality. God is a pseudo term not because it denotes no empirical object, but rather because the concept itself leads to absurdity or contradiction. From madhyamaka’s stand point, logical positivism (empirical reality) would be a new metaphysics, and thus ruled out.

Finally, the question: “Who created the world?” This is not a genuine question. We assume it is a “who” (some kind of entity) that “creates” the world. We assume that the world is “created,” and so we assume that there is also a “Creator.” The idea itself of a Creator or of a Source is highly problematic. What would be the Source of such a Source?

Impermanence

We assume there is a permanent essence of “me” that inhabits our bodies throughout our lives and perhaps even beyond. But the Buddha taught that all permanence is an illusion that, in time, can only lead to pain and disappointment. He says that all phenomena arise dependently, meaning they arise in relation to other factors and conditions. This dependent arising implies impermanence as things are not static or self-existent but are subject to change, decay, and death as the underlying conditions change.

According to the doctrine of Dependent Origination, life is a continuous process of change (impermanence). But despite the overwhelming evidence of impermanence we want things to be permanent rather than changing. Failing to accept the changing nature of reality is seen as one of our greatest mistaken views. It causes us to suffer by making us cling to things, cling to our sense of self and cling to pleasures as if they’ll always stay the same. To cling to anything is to aim at protecting and preserving it. Yet to make such an attempt is to run smack up against the very nature of everything; their impermanence. Whatever comes to be must pass away. Maybe sometimes we get what we pursue, but it never lasts, and we are dissatisfied again. This perpetual seeking and grasping entraps us in ego.

On the other hand, the Buddha explains that accepting impermanence means being transformed (changed) at every moment. And since there is nothing unchanging, how can there be a permanent self, an unchanging self? Nothing is like that. Our body is impermanent, our emotions are impermanent and our perceptions are impermanent. Our anger, our sadness, our happiness, our hatred and our consciousness are also impermanent. Everything is impermanent so there is no permanence to be guarded against this flux of impermanence.

When we understand that everything is impermanent (transient) we are less likely to cling to possessions, status, relationships, or our own self-concept. We cannot only accept, but even embrace and find joy in the impermanence of ourselves and everything around us. And most relevant, impermanence reveals that the most difficult problems we face (fear, suffering, anxiety, grief, loss, and so on) are also subject to change, thus reducing attachment leading to less suffering and greater freedom to accept change.

Someone once asked Stephen King, the author of Carrie, The Shining, and hundreds of other horror stories, what people are most afraid of and his answer surprised. He didn’t say serial killers, or cancer, or terrorists, or earthquake, hurricane, or pandemic. He didn’t even say death. He said that people’s greatest fear is “change.” Change itself, in all its forms, is what we fear the most.

What the Buddha saw was that it’s not change or impermanence itself that causes us to freak out; it’s our resistance to it. Giving up our resistance to impermanence enables us to accept that everything will change. To see this truth, that everything is impermanent disintegrating and bound to perish, is to turn away from clinging.

All our problems, all the different manifestations of pain that we feel in our lives essentially rise from an inability to accept the truth that we and everything around us are in a state of constant transience or flux. When we realize the everlasting truth of “everything changes” and find our composure in it, we find ourselves in Nirvana.

The Buddha reminds us. We should find perfection in imperfection. Complete perfection is not different from imperfection. We should find the truth in this world, through our difficulties, through our suffering. Pleasure is not different from difficulty. Good is not different from bad. Bad is good; good is bad. To find pleasure in suffering is the way to accept the truth of transiency.

The doctrine of impermanence is of a remedial not an ultimate nature; it is only the first door to emptiness. In a relative sense everything is impermanent, but in the absolute sense, nothing is permanent or impermanent.

The Emptiness of Emptiness

Madhyamaka’s reminds us that emptiness also is dependently arisen and therefore is empty. Suppose that we take a conventional entity, such as a table. The table, we find, depends on its parts, it depends on conditions (like a tree, a furniture maker, and so on) and it depends on being labelled a table. So we conclude that it is empty, empty of its own nature or independent nature. But this emptiness is also dependent; it is dependent upon the table. Without a table, we cannot establish its emptiness. So emptiness is dependent and therefore also empty. This understanding saves us from reifying emptiness as something inherent.

To be empty is to be dependently arisen and emptiness is no exception. Ultimate truth (emptiness) is fully dependent upon conventional phenomena to perceive its emptiness. And as entities are ultimately unfindable, emptiness cannot be findable. So emptiness is empty.

To reify the concept of emptiness is a blatant error for emptiness is an idea whose function is to prevent reification of concepts. “Those who are possessed of the view of emptiness are said to be incorrigible.” Since emptiness is not a thing, it cannot be thought of in positive terms. It is the perception of an absence (the absence of the intrinsic existence). To say that things are empty is to say that they dependently exist, that they are essenceless without their own nature or being. Buddhist emptiness is not a universal essence or a source (like the Vedanta philosophy). It is the recognition that phenomena, although they appear to intrinsically exist, such intrinsic existence is unfindable and thus illusory. So again, emptiness is an absence, not a thing. Emptiness teachings resist turning this absence back into an intrinsic entity, which would contradict the insight that everything is empty. When the belief in intrinsic existence is refuted, the emptiness, the groundlessness of all phenomena, is realized. It is like realizing that something you were looking for is not there, and right then, directly perceiving the absence of the object.

The theory of emptiness is intricately bound up with human interests and concerns; if there were no human minds who mistakenly read the existence of intrinsic existence into phenomena which lack it there would be no point in having a theory to correct this. It is only due to our erroneous view of things that the theory of emptiness is required as a corrective.

Emptiness teachings are not about a transcendent reality or truth, but about transcending deception. Emptiness avoids falling into the two extremes of essentialism and nihilism. In essentialism, phenomena are seen to inherently exist and in nihilism, to not exist in any way at all.

Entities arise co-dependently; they depend for their existence on other factors so they are empty of their own (independent) nature. In this sense then, all phenomena are intrinsically empty, unreal and like illusions since they truly are not what they appear to be.

Because all things are dependently arisen, and thus empty of an independent nature, one cannot ultimately identify anything for nothing can be individually located. Again, this is why everything, including emptiness, can only be seen to conventionally exist. Ultimate reality (emptiness) is hence only conventional reality.

Things don’t arise from emptiness or subside back into emptiness. Instead, emptiness is the mode of existence that things have. It means that things cannot be found when looked for closely. Emptiness is not applied to things. That is, things aren’t empty because of something big called “emptiness.” Rather, to be, in the first place, is already to be empty.

Emptiness does not assert a positivist view of reality, but is a refutation of the view that anything could possibly exist inherently or independently. Thus it cannot be refuted because it is not proposing anything. Nagarjuna writes: “If I were to advance any proposition whatsoever, from that I would incur error On the contrary, I advance no proposition, therefore I incur no error.” The negation of intrinsic existence alone is enough to insure liberation from cyclic existence; thus, the conception of intrinsic existence is the subtle form of the obstructions to liberation.

Emptiness is not the real object as opposed to the unreal objects of ordinary perception, not the object that appears when false appearance is shed, and not what is contrasted with other things that are inherently existent. In fact, to the extent that emptiness appears as an object at all, it does so falsely. The best we can then say is that from such a standpoint the words “emptiness is empty” ascribe no property to any object at all. From that standpoint, there is no view to be expressed, nor something to view.

To realize emptiness is to recognize that there can be no essence or core nature in anything. It is to appreciate the negative assertion that as soon as anything is identified it can only be dependently arisen, a mere appearance, as nothing can truly be located or pointed to or singled out as some “thing”, including ultimate truth. What we label “ultimate truth” is merely that; a label. There is no inherent ultimate truth (thing) that stands behind the label. Ultimately, there is no “thing” called ultimate truth.

“What is the ultimate truth? There is no ultimate truth.”

The emptiness of emptiness refutes ultimate truth as yet another argument for essentialism or “thingness” under the guise of being beyond the conventional or as the foundation of it. Nagarjuna recognizes conventional reality and even denies that his “ultimate” category “emptiness” should be understood as anything other than a convention. The term “emptiness” does not stand for a transcendent metaphysical reality whose meaning we can grasp by apprehending the reality behind the name, but to see the conventional as merely conventional. This is an ultimate truth. Reality is not beyond the limit of everyday conventional existence. Instead, everything that exists or arises does so at the conventional level. Conventional existence, on this view, is the only kind that anything could have. Here lies the key to liberation. For to see the deception is to be free of deception, like a magician who knows the magic trick. When one is no longer fooled by false appearances, phenomena are neither reified nor denied.

Summarizing the Main Points

The Fiction of a Self:

It is customary to assume there is a permanent essence of “me” that inhabits our body throughout our lives. And we may believe that at death this essence continues to exist in some form, either in an afterlife or by transmigrating to a new body to live another life. Yet, despite the fact that our mind and body is in a state of constant change or flux, we are habituated to believe in an essential core subject that stays the same that persists from childhood through old age. I exist to the extent that my self exists. For in countless and persistent ways this view creates the need to protect and defend this self against other separate people and things (even lying, cheating, scamming or assaulting) thus creating undue conflict, fear and suffering.

Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism promote very different views about the self. Christianity is strongly shaped with a belief in a soul distinct from the body. The soul is created by God and exists before and after death. To believe in such survival of the soul in this cultural context would suggest a strong sense of personal identity; a self, separate and independent of the body/mind complex.

Hindu culture in India takes the soul as an eternal aspect that is part of the supreme soul, Brahman. Brahman is believed to be present in all living creatures and is reborn in a cycle of death and rebirth. Reincarnation is taken for granted. The self is typically identified with the ātman. While the body/mind may change, the atman remains identical and unchanging.

Buddhist thought, on the other hand, introduces us to the doctrine of “no self.” They don’t say that we have to lose our self, but rather, that we don’t have a self to lose in the first place. They reject the idea that there is any unitary self that persists throughout the lifespan. They argue that what we are is a continuously changing array of five psycho-physical aggregates (the physical body, sensation, perception, intellect, and consciousness) without an inner core or inner self. Self is a fiction. In this framework, there is no such thing as a self that is born or a self that could survive death. The illusion of a persisting self, they say, underlies our fear of death. Once we recognize there is no self that persists across the lifespan, fear of death should be alleviated and this should lead to changes in practical attitudes towards ourselves and others.

According to Buddhist philosophical framework, everything is impermanent and fleeting. There are no enduring things and no essences. Importantly, this impermanence extends to the self, so there is no permanent self that is born or that dies. The self is regarded as an illusion and there is no personal identity from moment to moment. Buddhist practice is aimed at overcoming what is regarded as the instinctive illusion that there is a self. The doctrine of anattā or anātman (no self-nature in people and things) is described as a strategy to dismantle clinging by recognizing everything as impermanent and changing, rather than things having an unchanging fixed essence.

Emptiness (Shunyata):

Nagarjuna offered sharp criticisms of Brahminical (Vedic) and Buddhist substantialist philosophy. He calls into questions certain philosophical assumptions so easily resorted to in our attempt to understand the world. Among these assumptions are the existence of fixed substances, an intrinsic absolute or ultimate, real causes producing real effects, the belief in a fixed identity or selfhood, and the strict separation between good and bad conduct and the blessed and fettered life. All such assumptions are called into question by Nagarjuna’s insight of emptiness (shunyata), a concept which does not mean “non-existence” or “nihility” but rather the lack of autonomous, independent existence. Denial of autonomy does not leave us with a sense of loss of some hoped-for independence and freedom, but instead offers us a sense of liberation through demonstrating the interconnectedness of all things.

Emptiness simply signifies that things have no self-being or essence of their own. Everything arises and passes away according to causal conditions. For Nagarjuna, emptiness refers to the absence of self-existence. It helps pry us free from our attachment to things, and in particular, to our viewpoints, theories and conceptualization.

Emptiness is not independent of human interests and concerns but is intricately bound up with such concerns. If there were no human minds who mistakenly read the existence of fixed essence into phenomena, which lack it, there would be no point in having a theory to correct this.

Nagarjuna’s philosophy can be seen as an attempt to deconstruct all systems of thought which analysed the world in terms of fixed substances and essences. Things in fact lack essence, according to Nagarjuna. They have no fixed nature and indeed it is only because of this lack of essential immutable being that change is possible. This is not a metaphysical view, but the human mind might turn it into such. Emptiness is primarily a soteriological device for eliminating extreme views so that one may be “empty” of any attachment.

Emptiness does not mean that phenomena are not experienced but only that they are devoid of a permanent fixed nature because, like a dream, they are mere projections of our mind. Nor does emptiness describe some transcendent reality, such as Brahman, atman or God. Emptiness simply signifies that things have no self-being or “essence” of their own. Everything arises and passes away according to underlying causal conditions. Emptiness refers to the absence of self-existence or independent existence and not to nihilism. Nihilism is dangerous because then it makes no difference what we do or not, and then there would be no point in trying to follow a spiritual path.

Since ultimately there are no self-existing things there is therefore no emptiness either. Emptiness is itself empty, but it is useful only for pointing out that nothing has self-existence. As with the Buddha’s raft; we need to let go of emptiness too. Nothing has intrinsic nature. “Failing to find” intrinsic nature is itself the ultimate.

“The nature of things is to have no nature; it is the non-nature that is their ultimate nature.” Nagarjuna.

Fixed essence theories:

The Buddha is famous for not answering certain questions. For example, he refused to answer questions about such airy metaphysical ponderings like “Does the world have a beginning or not?”, “Does God exist?” and “Does the self perish after death or not?” These questions are metaphysically misguided. They come from an erroneous assumption that something has come into existence, that an entity has come into existence, that “awareness” has come into existence, or that God has come into existence. They involve incoherent presuppositions and so are not real questions and hence are unanswerable.

Nāgārjuna understood the basic message of the Buddha to be the elimination of all hypostatic theorizations which had been concretized to the point of seeming more real than the conditions from which they had been abstracted. Theorizing or conceptualizing was the enemy of realizing emptiness. The method of Nagarjuna is that he borrows the claims and assumptions of his philosophical adversaries without establishing or even implying a view or theory of his own. This makes his arguments all the more convincing to the opponent than if one simply rejects the opponent’s system altogether. Only by employing their own view against itself could one show up the flaws of self-nature and essence, which they are based on.

The Hindu Brahmans held that things in the world must have their own fixed essence for otherwise there would be no way to account for persons, natural phenomena, or the causal and karmic process. Nagarjuna’s exposes this metaphysical position by demonstrating that the change Buddhism was after was only really possible if people and things did not have fixed essences. If they did, then change would be impossible. Also, we do not experience anything empirically which does not change, and so we can never know of fixed essences in the world about us. Once again, the proponent’s assumption of fixed essence has been taken up in an ingenious way to undermine their own theology.

One is led to the only viable conclusion for Nagarjuna, namely, that all things concepts and persons lack a fixed essence and this lack of a fixed essence is precisely why and how they can be amenable to change and transformation. Change is precisely why people live, die, suffer and can be enlightened and liberated. And change is only possible if entities and the way in which we conceptualize them lack or are empty of any eternal, fixed and immutable essence.

“With emptiness, all is possible; without it, all is impossible.” Nagarjuna.

Because everything is empty or impermanent things are without distinction. Thus, Nagarjuna makes the radical suggestion that if everything is empty then nirvana is just as empty as samsara, and there is no real difference between them. But the metaphysical schools argue that those causes which lead to enmeshment in the worldly cycle of existence (samsara) cannot be the same as those which lead to peace (nirvana). They make distinctions between ignorance and wisdom, between the suffering world of samsara and the purified attainment of nirvana. Nagarjuna abjectly throws these distinctions out the door. “There is not the slightest distinction between ignorance and wisdom (samsara and nirvana) because both are empty of intrinsic nature.”

The non-duality of ignorance and wisdom means that wisdom is not separate from ignorance, but rather, arises from the recognition that both are ultimately empty. It’s crucial to understand that ignorance and wisdom are not presented as opposing forces in a strict sense. Instead, they are seen as aspects of a single process. Ignorance is the initial stage of grasping at inherent existence, the belief that things have a fixed independent reality. This misconception leads to attachment, aversion, and ultimately, suffering. Wisdom arises when ignorance is thoroughly examined and its basis, the mistaken view of inherent existence, is revealed. The realization of the emptiness of inherent existence is the key to overcoming ignorance (samsara) and realizing wisdom (nirvana).

The Buddha (Tathagata) is colloquially known as “the one who came and went”. The name and person of “Buddha” should not serve as the basis and justification of distinguishing between the ordinary ignorant person and the enlightened wise one’s. After all, all change in the world, including the transformations which lead to wisdom, are only possible because of interdependence and interdependence in turn is only possible because the appearing phenomena and things lack any fixed nature and so are open to being transformed. The Buddha himself was only transformed because of interdependence and emptiness and so “the nature of the Buddha is the very nature of the world”. There is not the slightest distinction between them.

Self-nature (svabhava):

According to Nagarjuna, the source of all suffering is the belief in “svabhava” a term that literally means “own being or self-nature”. It is the belief that things exist inherently, independently, and permanently. For Nagarjuna, self-nature or inherent existence is regarded as a conceptual superimposition, something that is projected onto a world of objects that actually lack it. This superimposition or “cognitive default” is rooted in what the Buddha regarded as our tendency to become attached to things reflecting a need for solidity and permanence but forever frustrated by the certainty of death. For Buddhist’s to see “things” as empty of self-nature is to see them as conceptual constructs, dependent on our minds and therefore illusory in the sense of not existing objectively outside independent of our minds.

Self-nature is the insidious nemesis of Buddhist philosophy. A refutation of it was necessary for all false philosophical positions are based on its often subtle influence. Buddhist reasoning completely refutes any notion of self-nature or existence, any kind of clinging to existence whatsoever. Dependent arising is the chief principle by which to refute self-nature.

Having self-nature means to exist independently having its own nature or essence, not brought about by anything else, not dependent on and not relative to anything other than itself, an attribute which always accompanies an object and never parts from it. Whereas, dependent origination states that no “thing” exists apart from its relationship with other “things”; there is no thing which ‘is’ or exists independently. The absence of self-nature or independent nature is a way of saying that things are empty. Emptiness is the closest that the Buddhist’s come to advancing a positive affirmation of anything.

Self-nature is not only imputed on persons and objects but on transcendental realms such as: God, the Absolute, Brahman, extra-terrestrials, aliens, U.F.O’s, ghosts, near death experiences, and so on. But if self-nature of things in the conventional world cannot be established, how can self-nature be established of something “other” than this world, such as God or a ghost or an alien? And besides, we could only know such “other” dimension from this dimension, or from our sensory and cognitive resources, which is purely conventional. There may be appearances of “other” dimensions (a ghost, or a U.F.O.) but such appearances are empty, just like appearances of this world are empty. Positing something “other” is mere speculation.

Nagarjuna refuted self-nature so one could escape suffering and appease dispositions and grasping. But if things had self-nature then dispositions and grasping would themselves have self-nature. Since self-nature is unchanging, then the dispositions and grasping themselves would be permanent unappeasable and eternally binding. One could never break free from them and one’s ability to effect real change would be impossible

Another self-nature theory is found in the Upanisads. The existence of an unchanging, eternal agent perceiver is extended even to “prior to perceptions.” They argue that “prior to perceptions, such a perceiver “is.” The immediate problem with this is that if the subject is said to exist prior to perception then “by what means is it made known?” There is no way to be aware of or even to posit the existence of a subject prior to perception. The analysis shows the impossibility of the subject’s existence independent of any of its perceptions or experiences by virtue of existing prior to them. The consequence of this is broad. “Someone prior to, simultaneous with or posterior to perception is not evident” and therefore neither are the experiences themselves evident.

The Buddha tirelessly taught the truths of emptiness and dependent origination till the time of his mahaparinirvana. But the teachings left several doubts in the minds of the disciples and they began to interpret his teachings in their own ways. Consequently they began to expound the teachings in terms of realism, agnosticism, scepticism, and nihilism. As a result of such clinging, the views of an “eternal self” and “self-nature” began to emerge.

The “Materialist” philosophies of the early period were clear about the reality and function of self-nature. Since causation could be attributed neither to a God nor to an inner soul, they reasoned only inherent self-nature could be invoked to account for it. Thus, self-nature became elevated to the status of a fixed, universal law. Self-nature was perceived to be the only determinant of, and force behind, causation or production.

The Hindu was more transcendental than the Materialist. The Hindu tradition emphasized the spiritual quality of ultimate reality, a corollary of which was that morality is real. One’s action determined one’s fate. The Bhagavad-Gita’s final chapter states clearly that each person has a self-nature which determines his or her duties in life. One can only obtain freedom by properly living out and manifesting one’s svabhava (intrinsic nature).

The Buddhist theory of self-nature is unlike any of the above. Any ideas of self-nature are false and are imaginary beliefs which have no objective ground. Further, the illusory belief in self-hood is the direct cause of craving and greed. “In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.”

On the other hand, the Jains fatalistic determinism would undermine moral accountability; if one’s nature and actions are determined solely by previous karma, as the Jains held, then the motivation of individual initiative is greatly lessened. Further, fatalistic determinism is contradictory to the fact that everything is subject to change. Fortuitism (everything happens by chance) is also untenable because it disregards the fact that things arise, not haphazardly, but by dependence on other things. Then the Realists offered their view. If the soul is not an ultimate entity, then the individual atomistic elements (dharmas) of which the world is composed must be ultimately real.

Another self-nature doctrine popular at the time was that the meditator tries to pierce through the appearance to discover the reality behind appearance. If the meditators are looking for an ultimate reality, besides what is called the appearance, a reality which is superior to the appearance, then the truth is that there isn’t any such thing. The appearance is the reality. The appearance is all that there is and it is exactly as it is supposed to be, that is, devoid of any ‘self-nature’, of any essence; it is empty like a reflection. And any so-called reality behind the appearance likewise is empty. Apart from realizing emptiness the meditators search for the ultimate reality must end up in a quagmire of confusion.

After the Buddha’s death many disciples came to believe that although the physical Buddha was dead, his intelligence and his teachings remained in a form called the “Dharma Body”, the true nature of things. Moggaliputtatissa refuted that a transcendent nature or “buddha nature” is a kind of “thingness” by explaining these are extreme views which side with the self-nature “svabhava” way of thinking and hence militates against the dependent arising or the empty nature of things.

Concluding remarks:

Dependent origination (whereby things lack or are empty of independent self-nature) demonstrates relativity and provides a sort of anti-theory on which the rational faculty can focus. The theory is abstruse and its ramifications vast. In the eyes of Buddhism, the doctrine of dependent arising solves all metaphysical and philosophical problems:

A genesis (origination) is solved because no absolute beginning or birth can be established. Without a beginning, an end can’t be established, so eschatology (the doctrine of end-times and death) is solved. There is no need to predict apocalypses or nihilistic destruction of existence. Things arose, but there was no ultimate cause, and things will cease, but there is no ultimate fate.

Soteriology (doctrine of salvation) is likewise solved; one need not face either a final Judgment day or annihilation but rather one will just face the abandonment of afflicted existence. Since no “self” can be established, who is it that is born and dies, who is it that is rewarded or punished?

Reincarnation is solved with no recourse to a self or entity that reincarnates. Aggregates beget aggregates, but no entity or self reincarnates. Rebirth, on the other hand, means we are “reborn” every instant. Nothing stays the same for an instant, so we are new creations (reborn) every moment. We are different creations from ten seconds ago. We are ten seconds older; cells have changed, etc.

The extremes of eternalism and annihilationism are made reduntant by dependent arising. Nothing is eternal, for, when a thing’s conditioning factors cease, then it will cease. Neither is anything destined to face destruction in non-existence for, as contingent upon other things, it was never independently real in the first place.

Those who have faith in the Buddha’s teachings have understood about it in terms of non-inherent existence. They clarify this for others which helps them to attain enlightenment by abandoning grasping at the apparently true existence of things.

Contemplation:

Consider a person who criticizes you and treats you badly as the kindest and best of friends. Together you are destroying your self-cherishing mind. How unbelievably kind this person is.

When the urge arises in your mind to feelings of desire or angry hate, do not act! Be silent, do not speak!

If you do not treat people with partiality – as friends or enemies – you will be in harmony with everyone.

Conquering enemies only means you will make more later on.

Engaging in a plethora of activities means you will always have more to do.

Understand that negative circumstances are in fact your allies.

If you respond in anger when harmed, does your wrath remove the harm inflicted? Resentment surely serves no purpose in this life.

You desire that the world be something that it is not. So the world never gives you what you want.

Reacting to what others think means you will react more and more.

Give up self-perpetuating plans and projects; there will never be a time when you will cease to be occupied.

The upset you feel over the faults of others is your own projection.

If you are unable to find enlightenment where you are, where else will you find it?

Prefer to be defeated in the presence of the wise than to excel in the company of fools.

Do you think you will be aware of your own enlightenment?

Final Insights

Karma:

Our problem is that we treat karma and its effects as real entities. This is contrary to the Buddha’s declaration that nothing has a substantial existence. However, karma was taught because a denial of it would destroy justification for morality. There was thus a need to affirm in some way the reality of karma by saying that conventionally it produces consequences for human beings. But karma is not a matter of accounts being kept by a cosmic accountant and enforced by the cosmic moral police. There is no accounting kept, and no debit and credit system, either from the causal or the moral point of view. Rather, at each moment we are the total consequence of underlying conditions coming together and our reactions to these conditions. Although the process of karma is evident, the fact that an effect and its cause arise only in mutual dependence means that neither is truly real and neither is karma.

Death:

A good example to show that death is essenceless, empty, and dependently arisen is that of fire. For example, fire appears under conditions of say: oxygen, fuel and a spark. When conditions for fire are no longer present (say no oxygen) we say the fire died. Yes, this is understandable. However, it is not that the fire died because there was never an independent entity called fire even when fire was manifesting. Fire appears dependently, dependent on oxygen, fuel and a spark, so there is no actual independently existing entity called fire. So fire cannot die or cease as an entity that ever existed in and of itself. Likewise, there is no actual independently existing entity called self that ever existed in and of itself. The self depends on parents, a body, food, water, sunlight, etc. Hence, there is no actual independent entity called self that is born, endures for a time, and then dies or ceases. Middle Way avoids the extremes eternalism (the self survives death) and annihilationism (the self is destroyed at death), for there is no self and never has been.

“Just understand that birth-and-death is itself nirvana. There is nothing such as birth and death to be avoided. There is nothing such as nirvana to be sought. Only when you realise this are you free from birth and death.” Dogen.

Death is a natural consequence of the flow of causes and conditions coming together, such as sickness, old age, and so forth. Death, in its conventional sense is a temporary phenomenon, while in its ultimate sense it is an empty interdependent process. Like all other processes, death is impermanent and does not have a fixed, inherent essence.

An understanding of impermanence refutes the idea that separate entities just show up from out of nowhere concretely formed, and then disappear in a final act called death. There are relative differences between birth and death that are of consequence, but that should not lead us to think that birth is the origin of an entity, or that death is the end of that entity.

Consciousness:

Consciousness is commonly viewed as independent from everything else existing with its own essential nature, self-created and altogether privileged. Within non-duality this is often referred to as pure consciousness and is seen as a foundational and transcendent reality, as the essence of everything. Such a perspective does not recognize consciousness as dependent upon other phenomena to appear. For example, consciousness originates dependent upon an object of consciousness (such as a tree), therefore it is empty of its own nature. Without an object of consciousness there is consequently no consciousness. Also, the straightforward recognition that consciousness cannot manifest apart from a body makes the point that consciousness cannot have its own nature. There is no such separate consciousness to which anything appears. When it is seen that consciousness depends upon other things, then consciousness can also be seen as empty, empty of its own independent nature. This understanding advances the refutation of an inherently existent consciousness and correspondingly, the notion that it is privileged over its objects.

Furthermore, since consciousness is not an inherent independent real entity, neither are its objects. The wise, who realize the empty nature of things, perceive the goings on in the world as somewhat like a magic illusion. They are not seduced. But for ordinary people, caught up in the illusion, not only is consciousness a real entity for them, but consciousness also stands as the very evidence and proof that its objects are real inherent entities as well. Therefore, they say, the objects are proved to be truly existent from the evidence of consciousness. The Buddha responds: since consciousness itself lacks inherent existence, how can it be used as evidence that something else (objects and things) has inherent existence?

Consciousness, like all the appearing phenomena, is not a reliable witness to tell us what is true. Our consciousness suggests substantially and inherent nature (even when viewing a mirage) when in fact things are empty of substantially and inherent nature. If our consciousness and sensory apparatus already told us what is true, we would not need a Buddha, a spiritual path, or teaching tools like dependent origination and emptiness to guide us. Everyone would be already enlightened, which obviously is not the case.

Memory:

Memory is always memory of something (like a “lake” we saw years ago) in order to be considered memory. Therefore, memory is not an independent entity with its own separate nature.

Memory is not separate from life events, as if it stores a past. If memory was an independent and fixed storehouse of past experience, memories could not be presently remembered, new memories could not arise and memory would therefore be irrelevant to what was occurring. Because memory does not exist separately but is related to everything else, the process of remembering can conventionally be said to occur.

Memory cannot revive a past event. Memory of the past occurs in the present. To speak of the past or present is relational. What is remembered is not separate from the present. Memory cannot look back upon or revive a past event. Memory of the past is called the present. Emotion “added” to memory (such as anxiety, resentment, regret, etc,) creates the false impression that memory has been revived. But memory is a present day experience. It is not located in a past that is finished.

Memory is not an independent witness reliving life events. Memory arises when conditions come together, such as, objects, places, events, neural activity, and so on, for if you clear away all of these conditions that memory depends upon, there is no independent thing called memory left over.

Memory involves a mental image that makes it appear as “mine.” When I remember something that happened in the past, I do not merely remember it as a past event but as something that happened to me. In fact, my sense that I exist over time is predominantly based on my memory of these events as having been experienced by me.

The key is not to dismiss memory as a total fabrication, but as lacking inherent existence. It is to see its mode of existence as dependently produced and therefore empty of an independent essence. It is precisely because memory is dependently arisen, and therefore empty, that remembering can occur for if memory existed independently it wouldn’t relate to anything.

Free will:

Everything in the world is dependent so there can’t be anything that is absolutely “free”, and this includes the will. The will depends on a person or body, for one thing, hence, there is no intrinsic independent entity called free will. Free will is relative. Also, the notion of freedom is conditional and dependent.

This does not mean the universe is bound by inexorable determinism. Conventionally we use the term “free will”. For example: we exercise free will not to walk in front of a bus. But as to an intrinsic independent “free will”, there is no such thing. It is the intrinsic free will Middle Way targets, not the conventional free will.

Intelligence:

Intelligence is not a static, independent fixed thing. We act intelligently one moment and unintelligently the next. Intelligence is not permanent. At any moment it can be impaired by age, injury, or disease. Intelligence is also not “ours, we cannot take credit for it. It is a function of our parents’ genes, adequate nutrition, gifted teachers, and the knowledge passed on to us from past generations. So there is no reason to cling to it, it is something that is here due to previous causes and conditions. It is the same with other traits; our kindness, our beauty, our courage, our strength. All of it is due to conditions, and will vanish with changing causes and conditions; none of it is ours. We can’t claim it as our refuge.

The Hindu Vedanta model:

According to the Hindu-Vedanta model Brahman or Atman is the highest Reality. Brahman is a single unified eternal truth, pure consciousness, self-originated self-created, unchanging, not depending on anything but itself, it is the subtle essence of everything, the one true reality. The goal of Vedanta is to know the “truly real” and thus become one with it.

The Madhyamika philosophy of emptiness, on the other hand, aims to show that these ontological realities (Atman, Brahman, the Absolute) cannot be established and are really objectified concepts. Any “commitment” to them is an attachment to be eliminated. Truth for Madhyamikas is relative. Everything is impermanent and in a state of constant flux therefore, there can be no fixed, permanent, independent, unchanging Atman or Brahman in existence. For one thing, Brahman depends on a label and on a person imputing the label so it can’t be the eternal, independent reality that it is claimed to be. Its existence is mere assumption.

By denying the reality of an eternal, unchanging inherently existing reality, like Brahman, the Madhyamika’s were subverting one of the most cherished of all concepts in Indian religion. However, since everything is subject to change there can be no unchanging Brahman that exists. It cannot be demonstrated logically, empirically or by fact.

Furthermore, in Hindu terminology, inherent existence (svabhava), which is equated with Brahman (ultimate truth), is described as: “changeless, eternal, self-existing, not originated, and not dependent on something else.” Whereas, Madhyamika’s use the same Sanskrit term (svabhava) and the same definition but their svabhava (inherent existence) refers not to ultimate truth but to delusion. They emphatically refute the reality of svabhava, (inherent existence) in whatever form it appears, whether that be an inherent object, an inherent self or an inherent ultimate reality like Brahman. So the very same definition of svabhava is seen by Madhyamika’s as one hundred percent opposite to the Hindu. The Hindu interprets inherent existence (svabhava) as the ultimate truth (Brahman), while the Madhyamika interprets inherent existence (svabhava) as imagination, the source of all delusion in the world. How can they be the same?

To perceive anything as real (even Brahman or Ultimate Reality) is the perception of inherent existence. The theory of dependent arising necessarily upholds the Buddha’s doctrine of emptiness (there is no independent inherent existence in things) which can never be compatible with inherent existence theories such as, Atman or a witness consciousness, as is often used. Such a “witness”, much like a self, is attributed with inherent existence.

The very fact that Brahman is perceived to have an essence and is eternal indicates that it is necessarily unchanging and indeed unchangeable. So how do we account for change we see in the world? If all existent things are subject to change then we can only conclude that there can be no unchanging Brahman that exists. Change is precisely why people live, die, suffer and can be enlightened and liberated. In virtue of this apparent contradiction, any concept of a permanent inherent essential reality (Brahman) must be eschewed. The Buddha’s theory of dependent arising (the lack of inherent existence, self-nature or essence in things) is alone sufficient to coherently and comprehensively describe reality without any recourse to a theory of Atman or an unchanging ultimate reality. Among other things, Hinduism holds the premise, “Atman exists as self-evident truth”, a concept it uses in its theory of non-dualism. Buddhism, in contrast, holds the premise, “Atman does not exist as self-evident truth”, hence Anatman.

In debate with the Hindu philosopher or other non-buddhist philosophers the issue under discussion is always the true nature of phenomena, which Madhyamika Buddhist’s claim is empty of inherent nature. But for the opponent, the true nature of phenomena entails the belief in inherent existence of something in one form or another (like Brahman or God). The Madhyamika dismisses the reality of inherent existence by reducing its arguments to absurdity, as shown in the examples above.

Madhyamika’s dialectic shows the self-contradictory characteristics of the opponent’s own views. The opponent is hoisted by his own petard, so to speak. What could be more self-convicting than the fact that he is unable even to prove the premise (inherent existence of Brahman or Ultimate reality) on the basis of which he advances his arguments. The only objective was to enable him to see for himself the falsity of this position (inherent existence) and to abandon it so his own argument collapses under its own weight.

Madhyamika’s reject inherent existence of all entities (objects, selves or ultimate reality like Brahman or God). For them, no compromise is possible. All things lack inherent nature so there is no “positive” view of anything, no “affirmation” of the inherent existence of something. But if Madhyamika’s did make a positive assertion about the phenomenon in question this very fact is liable to imply that one agrees in the thing’s inherent existence. So they confine themselves to negative consequential arguments, the reduction to absurdity of the opponent’s position; the absurdity of inherent existence. A consequential argument (reduction to absurdity) is perfectly adequate to the task of refuting the false position.

Skilful means (upaya)

The Buddha’s message differed, in order to accommodate the different stages of development of the disciples. For example, he taught impermanence, no-self and non-existence to counter the illusion that there are permanent things in the world, that a self exists in people, and that there are truly existent entities. These “truths” are keys to open the door to reality. They are not ultimate truths. So don’t attach to impermanence, no-self and non-existence. To the extent they are true or not depends on whether they leave one to clinging or non-clinging. Once they have served their purpose in eliminating clinging they are no longer truths and hence are dispensed with. It would be a mistake to cling to the Buddha’s teachings as ultimate truths. Reality avoids all extremes: existence or non-existence; impermanence or permanence; self or no-self; interdependence or independence; truth or falsehood; attachment or freedom from attachment; suffering or freedom from suffering, hence the “Middle Way”. One should be empty of all truths and lean on nothing.

The Buddha said, “My teachings are a finger pointing to the moon. Do not get caught in thinking that the finger is the moon. But it is because of the finger that you can see the moon.” The aim of Nagarjuna’s dialectical method is to eliminate the conceptual way of thinking.

“Brilliant and intellectual people always abide in the cave of conceptualisation. As they conceptualize, so do they speak.”

The old Zen Master’s had unique methods of getting the students attention when the words were becoming more important than the experience. They resorted to shouting or kicking over the water jug. One Zen Master exhorted his students. “Tell me, what is your true nature? If you say something, I will beat you with a stick. If you say nothing, I will beat you with a stick.”

Lin-chi, ancient Zen Buddhist, famously said, “If you meet a Buddha on the road, kill that Buddha.” To conceive of a Buddha (conceptually) he says, is to be obstructed by that Buddha.

Lin-chi’s teaching was often directed at the “disease” of attachment. Attachment to the Dharma, attachment to practice and rituals, attachment to words, he says, opens the door to the winds of striving, seeking, changing, overcoming, transforming and improving. This brings all the limitations of samsara to the fore.

“There is no Buddha to be sought, no Way to be carried out, no Dharma to be gained.”

Cyclic Existence:

The fundamental delusion of the human condition is grasping and craving. With craving, attachment and aversion naturally follows. In Buddhist terminology this is called cyclic existence or primal confusion and is the root cause of all suffering.

There are many pitfalls in mundane (cyclic) existence, but there is not this truth there. There is mutual incompatibility. Reality could not be like this. There are incomparable, violent, and boundless oceans of suffering. Strength is scanty there; and the life span is short. In hunger, fatigue, and weariness, in sleep and calamities, and in unprofitable associations with fools, life passes by swiftly and in vain. As they live like this, pretending that they are not subject to aging and death, terrible calamities come, with death the foremost. Thus, people are afflicted by the sufferings of cyclic existence and it is appropriate to feel sorrow. The appearance of a Buddha is extremely rare. The flood of mental afflictions is difficult to impede. Ah, there should be great compassion for those adrift in the flood of suffering, who, although miserable, do not recognize their wretched situation.

Today in these uncertain times, as if external threats are not enough to deal with, we discover a still more intrusive source of insecurity which does not stem from outside threats but swells up inexplicably from within. The nature of this hidden anguish is exemplified in an old Buddhist sutra in which a young boy named Subrahma appears before the Buddha and explains the problem weighing on his heart.

“Always anxious is this mind, this mind is always agitated about problems present and future; please tell me the release from fear.” Subrahma was not seeking a prescription that would tide him through his next round of business deals and promotion in his job. He wanted nothing less than total release from fear, and thus the Buddha did not have to pull any punches with his answer. That root is “clinging”.

In ignorance, we cling to our possessions, our family and friends, our position and status; and most tenaciously of all, we cling to a sense of “self.” To cling to anything is to aim at protecting and preserving it. Yet to make such an attempt is to run smack up against the very nature of everything; their impermanence. Whatever comes to be must pass away. It is not only the object of clinging that must yield to the law of impermanence, the subject too, the one who clings, and the very act of clinging, are also bound to dissolve, perish and pass away. The final escape from anxiety and worry is the relinquishing of what we are clinging to or cherish. In the end we have no choice: we must give up all, for when death comes to claim us everything we identify with will be taken away.

This relinquishment of clinging does not come about through the forcible rejection of what we love and cherish but arises from breaking through the dark sleep of ignorance. There is nothing we can truly claim as ours. To see the truth that all conditioned things are impermanent, disintegrating and bound to perish, is to turn away from clinging. This does not leave us barren and empty-handed for without clinging, though dwelling in the midst of aging sickness and death, there is no fear, no tremor or agitation, no dark winds of anxiety, no danger from any quarter. One sees security everywhere.

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