- Metaphysics or Metapraxis -
With his book, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way,” as translated by Jay L. Garfield, Nagarjuna makes one of the greatest contributions to Buddhist Philosophy. His text not only inspired new traditions of Buddhist practice, but did so in a matter that seems to blur the lines between metapraxis and metaphysics. In this essay, I will show the philosophical context to which Nagarjuna is responding, describe how he is doing both metaphysics and metapraxis, and finally, I will briefly reveal the chief tenets of his work.
Like the traditions that precede him, Nagarjuna is responding to the teachings of the Buddha, hoping to properly interpret his word and ultimately achieve liberation from suffering. Clearly, this continues to be the cause of much debate. It was said that the Buddha gave no absolute guidelines to his followers, that he had no teachings about how everyone should practice.[1] Furthermore, throughout the Buddha’s sutras, we hear the rejection of the idea of an eternal, independent, or substantial ‘self’. [2] It is my personal belief (and what seems to be Garfield’s as well) that Nagarjuna has desperately tried to keep these two sentiments in full view.
This South Indian Buddhist philosopher began writing in second century C.E. to respond to Abhidharma schools of Buddhism that he found disagreeable. Such schools were practicing in ways that seemed to violate or abandon the spirit of the Buddha by proposing fixed religious practices and, to some degree, proposing the idea of an inherent self or essence. The earliest disciples of Buddha (the ‘First Council’) immediately began living in accordance to a monastic vinaya, and despite their understanding of anātman, they eventually ascribed an inherent and essential quality to dharma (svabhāva) [3]. To Nagarjuna, these two aspects were absurd, and seemingly, the very tenets that the Buddha hoped for his followers to avoid. Not only was Abhidharma literature trying to establish normative guidelines [4], but now dharma had two contradictory characteristics: a permanent substance and impermanent properties. For Nagarjuna, the misinterpreting of Buddha had gone too far.
Nagarjuna, too, was nonetheless an avid follower of the Buddha, and equally concerned with the soteriological as any other Buddhist. Having a soteriological orientation “requires the practitioner to develop a deep insight into the nature of his/her own mind,”[5] and dharma is precisely the relation between our mind and the world beyond ourselves—it is our duty towards other things/people, and it is the conventions we create to understand such attitudes. For this reason, the Nikāya[6] Monks were right to see the need to be clear with their understanding of dharma.[7] Unfortunately, their understanding of dharma was not only contradictory, but Nagarjuna insists that it was just plain wrong. Despite this philosophical lacuna, the Abhidharma Buddhists believed so deeply in the regimented processes of meditation offered by their tradition, that suddenly Nikāya Buddhism looked more like an ortho-praxis methodology, which was precisely the kind of praxis the Buddha wanted to prevent. Ironically, the many different Abhidharma schools thereof were in disagreement. This is the special case where Nikāya Buddhists had an improper understanding of the world, which in turn led to an improper basis for meditation. What was needed was a clear understanding of dharma, specifically its arising and cessation. Nagarjuna gives us this. He gives us a definition of dharma that is consistent on the metaphysical level, and suddenly we have a Mahayana tradition that practices meditation, but not as a fixed path.[8]
The Nikāya tradition was clearly developed for metapraxis—as it was a tradition built from an assumption of dharma and focused on the practice of meditation for the achievement of nirvana. However, I believe that these Abhidharma traditions were in disagreement because there was no binding metaphysics to ground their understanding of dharma. No metaphysical definition of dharma was available because fundamentally, they were unable to understand the way the world works. Nagarjuna gives us such a definition. I understand that the fundamental issue for the Nikāya monks and for Nagarjuna is not knowledge of the world, but rather, liberation from suffering and knowing the proper ways to meditate. This is chiefly a concern of metapraxis. However, Nagarjuna needs to reconstruct our understanding of dharma, and all phenomena in the world for that matter, and this is to root the praxis on metaphysical grounds. Hence, Nagarjuna is doing both—one for the sake of the other. The question becomes, ‘how does Nagarjuna reconstruct the Nikāya understanding of dharma?’
Admittedly, the Abhidharma philosophers were at an impasse, where they struggled to articulate what actually happens at higher forms of meditation. They knew to meditate on impermanence, but amongst their ‘systematic accounts of dharma’ and ‘divided matrices of experience’ [9], they found it difficult to map out precise ways in which dharma actually change [10]. Furthermore, they tried to fix this problem by coming up with different theories to explain how dharmas interact causally. Nagarjuna will show that the Nikāya Buddhists were mistakenly troubled with trying to understand dharma through causation. He achieves this by showing two things: a) there is no such thing as causal power [11]; it is only the case that conditions constitute everything [12], and b) nothing has an essence; everything is empty, including emptiness itself. These are the major tenets of Nagarjuna’s text, and he basically explains these premises at the onset, and spends the rest of his book showing how every phenomena in the world, including ourselves, is the result of one of the four conditions, and what falls from this is that nothing has inherent existence.
I could delve further into Nagarjuna’s explanations of ‘conditions’ and ‘inherent existence’, but I’ll save that for another paper. I will leave you with one last thought: in this paper, I am proposing that Nagarjuna reconstructs our understanding of dharma, and that this is a metaphysical undertaking. I say this because it deals with the way the universe works, the way we experience phenomena in the world. However, by the time Nagarjuna is done with his metaphysical work, we are left with an understanding that dharma is not only empty, but purely conventional and conditional. That is to say that it is without inherent existence, without essence and surely without ātman. Nagarjuna divides the world into two truths: ultimate reality, and conventional/nominal reality, only to tell us that ultimate reality does not exist (and to think so is our root delusion!). Well, now I am left to contemplate—are we really engaged in metaphysics if ultimate reality is inexperience-able?
This is a question that stumped me for days. But I must maintain that to provide a definitional account of dharma is still metaphysics, and yet, I concede that there is no way to understand what Nagarjuna is explaining without practice. So, I stick to my guns, and insist that in his book, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Nagarjuna engages in both metaphysics and metapraxis in order to restore the tenets of the Buddha to Mahayana tradition, and to rescue practioners from falling victim to a misguided ortho-praxis.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Abhidharma Buddhism, Chp. 2, pg. 41 (following the anecdotal story of the Buddha’s favorite disciple, Ānanda).
[2] “In some of the Buddha’s most important teachings, he rejects the idea of an eternal, independent, or substantial ‘self,’ and develops the idea that a person is composed of a complex inter-relation between five aggregates (skhandha) … ” (Abhidharma Buddhism, Chp. 2, p. 38). This exhibits the Buddhist notion of “anātman,” where there is no hidden or unchanging self. Such an understanding of the self is in direct contrast to the Hindu view, called “ātman”— the existence of an indestructible, eternal soul.
[3] To their credit, I should mention that different Abhidharma traditions differed in their interpretation of svabhāva (for the Sarvāstivādin, dharma had a causal identity that remained throughout the 3 time periods much like ātman [p.55]; whereas, for the Sautrāntika, dharma was simply a ‘continuous flow’ that came in and out of every moment instantaneously [p.59] ), but nevertheless, they agreed that an essential nature of dharma played some role in their mediation regimens.
[4] Vasubandhu reflects this opinion in his Abhidharmakośa, basically saying that liberation entails following a fixed meditative routine, where examining/investigating existents through the teachings of a true doctrine and by way of a particular meditation was the only way to attain liberation (Abhidharma Buddhism, Chp. 2, pg. 46).
[5] The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (FWMW, p. 107)
[6] This is a reminder for me, more than anything, but after the ‘Second Council’, the schisms deepened into two major groups: The Mahāsāmghika (great assembly) which underwent 9 more schisms that led to the Mahayana tradition [Nagarjuna]; and the The Sthaviravāda (monks of great council) that divided into 11 different Abhidharma schools which are all referred to as Nikāya Buddhism.
[7] “Without understanding how dharma arise and cease, how they condition other things, and how they are related through subtle relays of cause and effects, one cannot attain liberation,” (Abhidharma Buddhism, Chp. 2, p. 46)
[8] Or at least, this is what I’m left to assume… I haven’t been assigned any reading that shows exactly how the Mahayana tradition views meditation, or how it suggests reaching nirvana… and clearly the FWMW book doesn’t offer any means for overcoming our suffering/delusion.
[9] Abhidharma Buddhism, Chp. 2, p. 60
[10] Abhidharma Buddhism, Chp. 2, p. 52.
[11] “Neither from itself nor from another,/ Nor from both,/ Nor without a cause,/ Does anything whatever, anywhere arise,” (FWMW, p. 105).
[12] Garfield justly writes, “Nagarjuna, we shall see, argues against the existence of causes and for the existence of a variety of kinds of conditions” (FWMW, p. 104)… Nagarjuna then goes on to explain the four conditions and to show the ways that such conditions constitute all phenomena.