Nonduality and Compassion in Buddhist Thought

What do Buddhists mean by “emptiness"?”

Link to the Original Essay

In Buddhism, undifferentiated concepts of emptiness, nonduality, and the ultimate are often taken to mean “nonexistence.” This, however, is incompatible with Buddhism’s fundamental ethical principle of compassion. This paper intends to argue that this incompatibility arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of emptiness. In section 1, I intend to layout that emptiness denotes metaphysical nihilism and therefore amorality or immorality concerning compassion. Then, in section 2, I will demonstrate the fallaciousness of this view by arguing that emptiness truly means dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) and that compassion can only be understood, and therefore, enacted from the purview of affectively understanding emptiness in this manner. Furthermore, I shall argue that the core of understanding emptiness in this manner is understanding the nonduality of conventional and ultimate reality. Finally, in section 3, I intend to explain how the view in section 1 is so readily arrived at — specifically, I shall argue that this derives from three factors: (1) literary/structural esotericism, (2) ignorance of emptiness on account of unfamiliarity with meditative/enlightenment experiences, and (3) an active denial of the truth.

Section 1: Default reification’s transformation into metaphysical nihilism

The doctrine of two truths in Buddhism posits two distinct realities.[1] The first is conventional reality. Conventional reality is generally described as the reality of our day-to-day life, where things inherently exist and possess individual essences –and thus, exist by necessity, of their own independent accord, and will do so eternally. (MMK 224)[2] On the ‘eternal’ front, we may not explicitly say this, but we certainly act as if our identity and personal properties –along with the identity and properties of all things — will last forever. We take things for granted and participate in petty disputes –we often flippantly act as if attaining our ends, or discarding what is bothering us, will bring us eternal happiness (eternal happiness that is more real than anything, including the present moment.) Conventional reality is accurately describable linguistically. For instance, I’m sitting in a café, enjoying coffee, and many different objects are also in the café, all distinct from me and one another. I am a subject that is fundamentally different from others (objects for my observation and interaction) who also exist independently. The way things look is how things fundamentally are ontologically — every entity appears to possess an idiosyncratic essence, and everything is taken to really be this way. This is the extreme reification of phenomena — the perspectival starting point for most human views on ontology. (MMK 223) On this view, individual humans possess free will — by willing, individual humans are the sole factor determining the course of their being.

Reality, however, isn’t actually characterized by distinctions, willing, significations, and independently existing entities. Rather, conventional reality is a perceptual illusion preventing us from seeing things’ true (ultimate) nature –that is, their emptiness. Ultimate reality is empty of all phenomena: ineffable, distinctionless, formless, and conceptless. Thus, if what was hitherto reified has been proven deceptive and therein false, reality –at its most fundamental, and thus, truest level — is empty of existence.

The Victorious Conqueror has said that whatever is deceptive is false. Compounded phenomena are all deceptive. Therefore they are all false. (MMK 207)

The various phenomena ultimately have no existence — this is the meaning of emptiness…

All phenomena are the product of deluded vision, like dreams, like flames, like the moon in the water, or an image in a mirror, born of deluded thoughts. (VS 45 & 47) [3]

In these passages,[4] the phenomena of ordinary existence are described as deceptive and ultimately not real. Thus, what we generally take as important, has no real justification for being regarded as important. When one meditates, experiences ensue, in which all phenomena lose their characteristics of conceptuality, existence, and duality –such experiences being most representative of the true nature of things.[5]

One salient implication here is that compassion no longer makes sense. “All persons tremble at being harmed, all persons fear death; remembering that you are like unto them, neither striker nor slay.” (Dhammapada: Chapter 10, Stanza 129) However, “If all of this is empty,” and therefore, no ‘persons’ exist, “it follows that the Four Noble Truths do not exist.” (MMK XXIV 1) Because nothing ultimately exists, suffering and its causes –i.e., the phenomenal world and its characteristic attachments — (Samsāra) do not exist. Likewise, people –sufferers — do not exist. “All conventions would then be contradicted, without doubt. It would be impossible to draw a distinction between virtue and evil.” (MMK 241) All that is, is the voidness of the ultimate. Moral considerations make no sense in light of emptiness –indeed, emptiness nullifies, including taking one’s actions seriously. If things do not exist, living life normally makes little sense. Compassion (a mode of amelioration) on this view is a baseless action towards nonexistent entities and is therefore unjustifiable. What is deceptive is false, and what is false is without purpose, and what is without purpose should be abdicated. Willing-itself has no rational justification in light of emptiness –we will to obtain or discard, but there is nothing to obtain or discard. Compassion requires acts of will –to obtain peace and discard suffering — but since willing is irrational, so too is compassion.

This, in fact, is Schopenhauer’s negation of the will to live.[6] “The will itself has no ground,” (107 WaW)[7] and is the “innermost essence of everything in nature.” (111 WaW) “[The] will constitutes what is most immediate [to] consciousness, but as such it has not wholly entered into the form of the representation, in which object and subject stand over against each other.” (109) That is, whatever occurs in representation isn’t the will as the Kantian thing-in-itself, but its representational manifestations — the will manifests representationally as conatus or ‘the will to live,’ and thus, as suffering. Hence, our impetus for action is groundless. (106–107 WaW) Likewise, the will is the Kantian thing-in-itself –the real reality — and representation is ‘mere’ phenomenon, “and nothing more,” –“only the will is thing-in-itself; as such it is not representation at all, but toto genere different therefrom.” (110 WaW) To truly grasp this, one must negate the will, phenomenally and affectively eliminating the subject/object distinction that characterizes the phenomenal world –a state in which “we are no longer able to separate the perceiver from the perception.” (178 WaW) This is done through the pure contemplation of ‘an object’ –that is, through concentration (dhyana). And because “this consciousness really constitutes the world of representation,” (180 WaW) “time, place, the individual that knows, and the individual that is known, have no meaning.” (179 WaW) Life is driven by “blind impulse[s]” (180, 308–309 WaW) that only serve to make us suffer.[8]

The “will to live” is analogous to Samsara: perceiving a deficiency (196 WaW) results in cravings and the attached pursuit of these cravings. We believe that suffering will cease once we ‘attain’ the craved. Once ‘attained,’ positive affect is briefly experienced and inevitably deteriorates into a new craving, only to repeat this cycle ad infinitum. Insofar as we are willing, “we never obtain lasting happiness or peace.” (196 WaW) Ordinary life –which most of us are doomed to — is pointless and painful striving until we’re dead. (309 WaW) “Just as we know our walking to be only a constantly prevented falling, so is the life of our body only a constantly prevented dying, an ever-deferred death.” (311 WaW) Even if we remove the supposed source of our suffering, believing “that, if only this were removed, the greatest contentment would necessarily ensue” (317 WaW) is delusional, as another form of suffering will necessarily take its place.

Schopenhauer’s solution to this is to negate the will to live — suppressing all impulses and motives (382 WaW) by remaining the meditative experience of the ultimate indefinitely and enacting extreme pacificism upon one’s inevitable re-entry into the ordinary world. (198 & 380 WaW) “Nature, always true and naïve, asserts that, if this maxim became universal, the human race would die out.” (380 WaW) Total solitude is the most favorable condition for facilitating this mode of consciousness, as this is a state without impetus for willing. (203 & 208 WaW) Suffering is based on willing, and willing is baseless, so negating the will to live reflects an understanding of such null grounding — but it is also a state where one is not suffering. Thus, the incentives are clear: negating the will to live eradicates suffering, and it allows us to no longer act in a way that reflects fundamental ignorance and denial. One must enter into such a state of non-willing that even suicide is impossible, for suicide is an act of will. (398–402 WaW) Willing of any sort reflects ignorance or denial regarding the nonexistence of all things. Thus, one must disengage. Within Buddhist texts themselves, this is seemingly endorsed:

The man of value is the one who has nothing to do. (29 LC)[9]

As to…the practice of having nothing to be sought, worldly people are in a perpetual state of delusion; everywhere, they are covetous and attached, which is called seeking. The person of insight awakens to reality: Principle is the obverse of the conventional; quiet mind and practice no-action; forms follow the turnings of fate; the ten thousand existences are thus void; wish for nothing. (10–11 BA)

The mind’s not being connected to anything is liberation. (BA 19)

This seems especially notable in the Yogācāra. For Vasubandhu, “all external appearances are merely ideal and originate from potentials for experience carried in the mind.” (129 TOT)[10] The world consists of mental projections –apart from that, nothing exists. No objects exist apart from the mind, and therefore, there is no such thing as external reality –things may seem to exist as external to the mind, but such seemingness is merely the delusory product of the mind. Thus, it isn’t just that everything is mind: everything which appears is a projected construction of mind that is deceiving and false. Others only exist conventionally on this view, and thus, others do not really exist. “All this is perception-only, because of the appearance of nonexistent objects, just as there may be the seeing of nonexistent nets of hair by someone afflicted with an optical disorder.” (SW 161)[11] All ‘events,’ on this view, are “metaphor[s] for a transformation in a consciousness series.” (SW 183) This view is akin to a modified version of Daniel Dennett’s Cartesian Theatre, where perception is akin to an internal movie theatre, in which reality is projected onto a screen for the subject to apprehend: except, for Vasubandhu, what the screen projects isn’t really there –there are no objects — and there isn’t any locus (subject) of the mind that’s watching the screen.[12]

For Vasubandhu, all “non-meditational states are constructed.” (SW 184) The meditational state is one of total non-perception, and apart from this, everything is a false construct of mind –meditational states are transformational in the sense that they unveil this fact to the meditator. “Whatever range of events is discriminated by whatever discrimination is just the constructed own-being, and it isn’t really to be found.” (SW 189) The only real reality, on this view, seems to be “when consciousness does not apprehend any object-of-consciousness.” (SW 189) That is, just as Schopenhauer suggests, maintaining a mode of subjectivity that is neither willing nor attached to any concepts: that is, idleness as resting in the unity of perceived and perceiver. Vasubandhu, seemingly anticipating Schopenhauer, looks as if he’s saying that conventional reality as such is the source of suffering and that being situated in “consciousness-only” void of these illusory mental projections is the antidote to such suffering. “It is revolution at the basis, the ending of two kinds of susceptibility to harm.” (SW 189) As such, because dualisms are the sources of suffering, unless one is “situated in ‘consciousness-only,” then “the residues of a ‘dual’ apprehension will not come to an end.” (SW 189)

Further, “if anything appears, it is imagined. The way it appears is as duality. What is the consequence of its nonexistence? The fact of nonduality!” (TOT 131) Thus far, all ‘nonduality’ denotes is nonexistence and absurdity. This is a comprehensible passage embedded within a text that is, logically speaking, full of contradictions –i.e., propositions in conjunction with their negations, which are logically false in all cases; and such contradictions are seemingly equated to the conventional reality. (TOT 132: Verses 12–16) The objects of conventional reality are, in their conventionality, contradictory –ultimately, they’re nonexistent projections of mind. Despite this, Vasubandhu states that if you come to understand “the fundamental nature of reality” that “the sage will benefit him or herself and others.” (TOT: 134 Verse 37 & 38) However, it’s unclear how it follows from the ultimate nonexistence and apparent absurdity of all things that any benefit can come about for anyone. Compassion, that is, is incoherent on this view. I can only be compassionate (1) if I exist and (2) if others exist, and neither can be the case if everything is ultimately nonexistent and apparently absurd. Liberation is non-perception, and non-perception is the phenomenological erasure of conventionality. Hence, instead of being compassionate, what is rational on this view is, as Schopenhauer suggests, denying the will.

This view readily lends itself to the idea that reality consists merely of “dream-objects, nothing to take seriously.” (TOT 150) Now, considering the pessimism that naturally accompanies viewing the world nihilistically in this manner, how can morality be justified? “How can we seriously express compassion for these nonexistent entities?” (O’Leary 64)[13] Does this not permit us to act in any way we choose? Historically, it has been perceived as such: “Consider the following poem in a sixth-century treatise from the Hsin-hsin Ming by the Third Ch’an Patriarch, Seng-ts’an (d. 606):

Be not cancered with right and wrong

The conflict between right and wrong

Is the sickness of the mind.” (ZAW 252)[14]

Likewise, consider Vimalakirti’s instructions to the Buddha’s disciple Upali to not pardon two monks for their offenses, for “their offense by its nature does not exist either inside them, or outside, or in between” (VS 47) due to the purity of mind which said monks possess. This is to say, whatever their ‘offenses’ may have been, these could not have truly been offenses because, insofar as one is acting from the purview of emptiness, one cannot, by necessity, do any wrong. Victoria also examples the seventh-century Ch’an text, the ‘Treatise on Absolute Contemplation,’ according to which “killing is evil only in the event the killer fails to recognize his victim as empty and dream-like. On the contrary, if one no longer sees his opponent as a ‘living being’ separate from emptiness, then he is free to kill him.” (ZAW 252) When morality is nullified by its fundamental nonexistence, violence can be perceived as permitted. In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, Shakyamuni Buddha “tells how he killed several Brahmins in a previous life to prevent them from slandering the Dharma. Once again, this is said to have been done out of compassion for the slain Brahmins, that is, to save them from the karmic consequences of their slander.” (ZAW 276) On the above reading of nonduality, therefore, what follows is either passive or active nihilism, not compassion:

Nihilism. It is ambiguous:

A. Nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism.

B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism. (WTP 17–18)[15]

And in either case, it is the “most extreme form” of nihilism, as it is “the view that every belief, every considering-something-true, is necessarily false because there simply is no true world” (WTP 14) on the basis of “the highest values [devaluating] themselves.” (WTP 9)

Section 2: Confusion, Compassion, and Nondual Awareness

However, nihilism does not by necessity arise out of the principle of nonduality as found in Buddhism. If the true nature of emptiness is properly (affectively) understood, nihilism cannot, by necessity, arise –neither in the beliefs we have about the nature of reality, nor in the attitude we bring to bear in each given instance of our lives. What arises instead a metaphysical middle-way between nihilism and reification. “To follow the middle way is neither to assert in an unqualified way that things exist, nor in an unqualified way that things do not exist.” (MMK 223) This middle way is a phenomenological transformation resulting from meditational experiences. The process of acquiring such transformations is ineffable, itself arising from ineffable experiences. This phenomenological transformation entails modes of comportment that necessitate compassion, cognitive fitness, impartiality, serenity, a lack of fixation on identity, and non-attachment –a nondual awareness within conventional perception. Phenomenal reality is not denied existence, but instead, is seen for what it is: empty of inherent existence, and thus, wholly interdependent.

A General Picture of Nonduality and Compassion in Buddhism

Emptiness and nonduality do not amount to nonexistence. In each case, they represent a mid-way point between reification and nihilism. What does this mean? The meditative experience is the experience of emptiness. That is, one can see that concepts such as dualities, inherent existences, independence, essences, and permanence, as being wholly nonexistent. Nothing exists as they ordinarily appear to –that is, as independent, conceptually-bound essential, and necessarily existent. How, then, do things appear? This is not an answerable question, for nothing is assertable from the ultimate perspective. (MMK 101) Nonetheless, the meditative experience isn’t sustainable indefinitely –“to guard against their disciples’ becoming attached to the sitting posture, Zen masters incorporate mobile zazen into their training…monks usually sit for an hour and a half in the morning and for about two to three hours in the evening.” (TPZ 27)[16] Thus, we see that the injunction to remain idle because of emptiness is false. “If you are in turn attached to voidness, you are one whom the Buddhas cannot transform.” (BA 14)[17] However, what can be spoken of is conventional experience, which is affectively/phenomenologically altered following meditative experiences, where now, the phenomenal world becomes equated with emptiness. The meditative experience of the ultimate unveils the nonexistence of how things appear in conventional reality. Emptiness, as it is the impermanence and interdependence of all things. “Whatever 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 nonempty thing does not exist.” (MMK 69) “This impermanence, [Nāgārjuna] will argue, entails their nonexistence from the ultimate standpoint.” (MMK 101)

Following meditative experiences, one must re-enter the ordinary world; however, one does not re-enter it with a pre-enlightenment perspective. Rather, by necessity, the phenomenology of the conventional is altered following meditative experiences. “The middle path of conventional existence leads to engagement in the world without attachment.” (BA 14) The process by which meditative experiences subliminally inform one’s ordinary experience is ineffable. However, it consists of the implicit understanding of the nondual nature of all things, amounting to reflexively engaging with compassion towards others (e.g., helping others gain similar experiences to the ones which spurred you to help them). This likewise entails an engaged relatedness in the social world and one’s immediate tasks, characterized by cognitive vitality, non-attachment, and a lack of identity fixation. (ZES 266)[18] Hence Sariputra’s castigation by the Goddess for his fixation on his identity as a Buddhist. (VS 83–92) Consider, for instance, physical exercise: let’s say you’re on a run, and the distinction between yourself and the activity of running vanishes –that is, the distinction between the agent and the action is no longer apparent. The run goes great because the pains generally associated with running fall by the wayside in one’s awareness. It is a state in which “the practitioner himself realizes that delusion has arisen, then, relying on Dharma, he gazes and brings about its exhaustion.” (BA 20) That is, one gains a cognitive aptness for thwarting delusory –thus, suffering-inducting — cognitive habits through meditative experiences, and necessarily replacing them with new ones –ones that entail a non-attached engrossment with the present. Most of us, by contrast, are so wrapped up in our thoughts, causing a sharp distinction between agent and action to appear that we quit our run before it even begins.

Or, more relevantly, in passing someone on the street crying out in pain, following meditative experiences, one, in theory, will be more likely to reflexively come to their aid. By contrast, prior to any such experience, we are more likely to simply pass by such a person in need of help because of our individualistic-essentialist egocentricity — we may say to ourselves, ‘well, this is going to make me late.’ Moving away from this latter mode of being as one’s primary manner of taking up with the world into something more akin to the former what originates primarily from enlightenment experiences. Through periodic states of meditative non-relatedness, one gains insights into the true nature of reality, which positively alters one’s comportment and well-being in ordinary experience. One is resolutely ready for spontaneous activity after such experiences, as opposed to hampered by paralysis by analysis regarding what is, fundamentally, nonexistent–our attachments, which do not exist in the manner that compels us to become attached to them. “Just act ordinary, without trying to do anything particular. Move your bowels, piss, get dressed, eat your rice, and if you get tired, then lie down.” (LC 31) Even the banalities of life become enhanced: “If you want to walk, walk. If you want to sit, sit. But never for a moment set your mind on seeking Buddhahood.” (LC 26) Thus, conventional reality is not nihilated but experientially improved through grasping emptiness.

Consider, for instance, being in a romantic relationship: you know it isn’t going well, and every ounce of your being is telling you to leave. The sort of agency that is said to obtain following meditative experiences will allow one to simply move on in this instance, rather than closing off the horizon of possibilities of action based on unsubstantiated distinctions (e.g., thoughts such as “what will my parents think?” or “what will my friends think?” or “I am afraid of being alone” –i.e., baseless obstructions to spontaneous agency.) “This understanding of enlightenment emphasizes enriched sociality and a flexible readiness to engage, not avoid, life’s fluctuations in fortune and essential impermanence.” (ZES 263) Thus, enlightenment is not simply the transcendence of ordinary experience: it’s periodic transcendence that transforms ordinary experience, enhancing it through reflexive non-attached and compassionate engagement. (ZES 267) Hui’neg characterizes it as thinking and acting without attachment to thoughts and actions. “Never under any circumstances say mistakenly that meditation and wisdom are different; they are a unity, not two things.” (PS 135) Only conventionally are wisdom and meditation different: the phenomenological transformations which follow meditative experiences signify such wisdom –that is, the subsequent mind of the meditator is still a meditative one, as marked by wisdom. And Nagarjuna refers to it as the nonduality of agent and action. In disentangling oneself from presuppositions that limit one’s agency –namely, the conditioned egocentricity of individual realism — one is freer in states of uncertainty to act. (ZES 276)

The Madhyamika

The Madhyamika view of emptiness, as expressed by Nagarjuna, is the emptiness of self-existence or inherent nature or ‘essence’ as it’s defined in Western thought. “Nagarjuna holds that everything that exists[19], exists in dependence on other things. That is, everything is empty of self-being, or more tersely, just empty (śūnya). In this sense, everything has the same ontological status.”[20] According to Bhāvavieka, “all phenomena are devoid of an inherent nature, that is, a nature that they have independently.”[21] On this view, everything –all dharmas — are inherently empty of such independent natures. And “since everything depends on some things, there is no ultimate ground to reality.” (Priest) One might take this to mean that ‘nothing exists’ and therefore, ‘nothing matters.’ This, however, is an erroneous interpretation; the idea that nothing inherently exists simply means that the concepts ordinarily attached to objects are not intrinsic to those object — they depend for their existence on the myriad of things which they are not, and in themselves, apart from such things, they do not exist. (W 111)[22] This, however, shouldn’t be misconstrued as a form of idealism –or, really, any other widely-held Western metaphysical category, such as realism. Nagarjuna neither posits the existence nor nonexistence of the external or internal world. Instead, Nagarjuna posits a ‘middle-way,” where “everything [is taken to] have the same kind of ontological status.” (Priest)

Such emptiness at the ultimate level necessarily negates any dual notion in its duality. No preference is given to any particular duality when discussing their ultimate nonduality –without exclusion, everything is nondual, including concepts central to the corpus of Buddhism, such as suffering Nirvana, Samsara, and the four noble truths. These notions are not wholesale rejected, but rather, the idea that they exist of their own accord is rejected. “There is not the slightest difference between cyclic existence and nirvana.” (MMK XXV 19) Suffering and peace, respectively, are not self-generated or independent from one another: they co-dependently arise — there can be no suffering without peace, and there can be no peace without suffering. That is all one might mean when one says that Nirvana is empty, and Samsara is empty. And to affectively comprehend this view is Nagarjuna’s highest goal (paramartha-satya), as “for him to whom emptiness is clear, everything becomes clear. For him to whom emptiness is not clear, nothing becomes clear.” (MMK XXIV 14) Such ‘clarity’ is the abovementioned compassionate and engrossed engagement in the ordinary, as the four noble truths and the eightfold path must fall under the “everything” that becomes clear in the face of emptiness. Nondual awareness –that which rejects “both the extreme of nihilism as well as the extreme of postulating substantial entities” (W 116–117) — is liberation on the Madhyamaka view.

What about the return to the ordinary? According to Nagarjuna, comprehending emptiness affectively (fully) unveils the nondual nature of conventional and ultimate reality–that is, the illusoriness of the duality implicit in verbalizing conventional and ultimate reality. What are the relevant implications of this ‘particular’ nonduality? Before Nagarjuna, the traditional conception of the doctrine of two truths made a sharp distinction between conventional reality and ultimate reality, subordinating the former to the latter in terms of importance and reality. (58 WCBS)[23] This sharp distinction, however, lends itself to nihilating the conventional entirely. But, “Buddhists could not simply deny the truth of the commonsense view or the reality of entities we encounter in everyday life: if they did, they couldn’t give any significance to the Buddhist path to awakening, since the path presupposes such commonsense entities as people, suffering, and its causes.” (59 WCBS) If we’re to solve the problem of suffering –if we’re to be compassionate — reifying the so-called formless ultimate and nihilating the conventional isn’t just counterproductive: it is also inconsistent with the logic of nonduality. If every distinction is really nondual, the conventional/ultimate distinction must be too. “Without a foundation in the conventional truth, the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved.” (MMK 68) The fundamental error is to view ultimate and conventional reality as ontologically different. (MMK 319) To do so would be to reject emptiness itself, and “If emptiness itself is rejected, no action will be appropriate. There would be action which did not begin, and there would be agent without action.” (MMK 317) All of empirical reality –constituted by impermanence and interdependence — would become unaccounted for if emptiness were false, and therefore, so too would the impetus for any action. It is, indeed, through the ineffable perspective of the ultimate where this is initially apprehended, but this can only be done through a foundation in the conventional –the coherence of this proposal, however, would be nullified if conventional and ultimate reality were indeed distinct. This makes sense of efforts to facilitate enlightenent experiences, such as formal meditation and koans -for these actvites are initially enacted convneitonally to apprehend the ultimate. Thus, anuttara-samyak-sambodi (the highest perfect wakening) is the affective understanding of the nonduality of the ultimate and the conventional –it is the pre-requisite to compassionate engagement.

In chapter 9 of the Vimalakirti Sutra, each Bodhisattva gives special attention to particular nondualities as “[the] way one may enter the gate of nondualism.” As the Lotus Sutra notes, however, there is but one “Great Vehicle principle of emptiness” (LS 186)[24] –that is, one gate of nondualism — as opposed to many lesser ones, under which all lesser vehicles fall. This doesn’t suggest that there is only one way of obtaining this principal insight –otherwise, skillful means would be incoherent — but rather, there is one principle insight. Vimalakirti’s silence following each Bodhisattva expresses the inadequacy of their proposals for the gate. Rather, Vimalakirti’s silence encapsulates all of these nondualities, representing the fundamental nonduality of conventional and ultimate reality –the former, being characterized by speech, and the latter, by silence, unified in the communicativeness of Vimalakirti’s silence. This is mirrored in the MMK: while myriad dualities are shown through reductio arguments to not be possible, in each case, this rests on the nonduality of the two truths: “Those who do not understand the distinction drawn between these two truths do not understand the Buddha’s profound truth.” (MMK 68) If the emptiness of this distinction is unclear, nothing, including the emptiness of other distinctions, is clear. (MMK 69) Giving special weight to lesser nondualities is to do so to exclude others, giving way to confusion. In grasping the nonduality of the ultimate and the conventional, no ‘lesser’ nondualities are excluded from the analysis and resultant experiential manifestations.

Emptiness, therefore, isn’t a negative term. To say that nothing exists inherently is to say that, of all the things that exist, the only thing which they are lacking is independent existence. If one looks closely at empirical reality, the dependency of all things is evidenced everywhere. “Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.” (Heart Sutra) Consider, for instance, the paper which this essay is printed on: as Thich Nhat Hanh puts it, the paper is a cloud: for, a cloud rained, which then gave nutrients to soil, which then allowed a tree to grow; the paper is also grain, for the woodworkers who cut down the tree ate wheat bread in order to fuel their physically laborious efforts to cut down the tree to make it into this paper. (TOS 30–33)[25] The ultimate and conventional are both real, and ontologically equal: therefore, “though he practices concentration and insight as methods to the way, in the end, he does not sink into tranquil extinction –such is the practice of the bodhisattva.” (VS 74) The nonduality of conventional and ultimate reality justifies a return to the ordinary. If, on the one hand, ultimate reality was reified, and the conventional negated, as was demonstrated in section 1, the Schopenhauerian response becomes coherent. On the other hand, if conventional reality is reified, and the ultimate negated –as is the case the unenlightened masses — there still wouldn’t a rational basis for compassion. The reification of conventional reality affirms distinctions, essences, permanence, inherent existence, and thus, egocentricity, attachments, craving, and their accompanying suffering. It would be to say that there is no dependent origination –and purely from an empirical perspective, that is absurd. “The empirical reality of things, on Nāgārjuna’s analysis, is not denied by asserting their emptiness.” (MMK 102) Quite the contrary, in fact: if reality isn’t empty, — if, in fact, there is a distinction between conventional and ultimate reality — then and only then, will empirical reality be denied. That is, the reification of the conventional is a reductio ad absurdum (MMK XXIV 1 –the precepts of Buddhism are made abusrd), and the reification of the ultimate is a reductio ad nihilum. “Fallacious refutations” of emptiness, which “are like a man who has mounted his horse and has forgotten that very horse” (MMK XXIV 14 &15) derive from either extreme. As Westerhoff notes (W 117), emptiness does not negate the functionality of things. There are, on this view, not two realities, but “only one reality, the reality of dependent objects,” (Priest) and two different perspectives on it, each of which is mutually informative. Being engaged in the world of conventionality is, at bottom, no different from engaging in the world of the ultimate. If we view these as distinct, “the resultant life would be static, detached, and utterly meaningless.” (MMK 180) Returning to the running analogy: it is much harder to simply run when the activity of running is viewed as something distinct from yourself. And so too with everything else: we fail to meaningfully connect with others when we view them as distinct and thus unequal, and we fail to abide by moral considerations when we see ourselves as independent from others, and such considerations, etc. If we do not recognize the nonduality of conventional and ultimate reality — which is fundamentally the nonduality of all nondualities — we will be bound to view ‘disparate’ nondualities dually, giving preference to some at the exclusion of others. “The goal of Madhyamaka philosophy is liberation from suffering. But that liberation, on Nagarjuna’s view, can only be achieved by insight into the ultimate nature of things…but this insight can only be gained through [the conventional.]” (MMK 298)

Thus, to return to the question of primacy –which required getting clear on nonduality and emptiness — when Manjushri asks Vimalakirti how it is possible to be compassionate to living beings in light of emptiness, the simple answer is through understanding the nondual nature of all reality, one necessarily comports themselves compassionately in the world. A true understanding of emptiness does not nullify the conventional –and thus, does not nullify living beings. Living beings exist, but they exist dependently on all other things, and “moral reflection must take all of these dimensions of dependence into account.” (EB 3)[26] Following meditative experiences that unveil the ultimate/conventional nonduality arises upeksā, which “dislodge[s] the sense that the world revolves around us or even the sense that the events in our immediate environment revolve around us…it allows us to detach from egocentric involvement with the world, [and] to care about what happens per se, not about its impact on us.” (EB 12)

Egocentricity, as derived through ignorance or denial of truth, lends itself to non-compassionate behavior. Viewing individuals as totally self-generated is the necessary precursor for regarding individuals as the locus of blame. The true nature of emptiness, however, permits no such locus. Likewise, to view things as not empty is to view them as permanent. The purpose of compassion is not Mitleid (suffering-with): it is, rather, to assist others in coming to understand the true nature of reality. But if they are permanent, no such assistance will be possible, for this assistance requires a change of perspective and attitude. “If we are not empty, we become a solid, inert block. We cannot breathe, we cannot think.” (35 & 41 TOS) Compassion is grounded in understanding the nature of reality, which consists of other people, of whom understanding is also required. “Though he addresses himself to all living beings, he does so without affection or attachment.” (72 VS) Through understanding reality, one can aid others to understand it through disinterested guidance based on the knowledge of how attuned to the person in question is to the nature of reality. “Understanding all phenomena in one instant of thought is the place of practice because one thereby becomes the master of all wisdom.” (VS 56)

To assist others in such understanding is the crux of compassion, which intuitively arises from our understanding. However, if we are mistaken in our view of reality –for instance, if we view language as fundamentally useless, through attachment to the traditional distinction between ultimate and conventional reality — we will be incapable of being compassionate to others. This is the point of skillful means: living beings are attuned differently to the nature of reality as nondual. Hence, “a voice-hearer should never preach the law when he cannot discern people’s inner capacities.” (VS 44) We cannot have wisdom without skillful means because only a select few individuals will be liberated –which is the problem of giving too much weight to formal meditation. Nor can skillful means work without wisdom, for this denotes attachment to the person to whom you’re being compassionate, which is self-nullifying in the purpose of teaching non-attachment employing unattached methods –and, is a mark of disproportionally reifying conventionality. (VS 71) Rather, wisdom with skillful means takes each ‘recipient’ of compassion as having a unique mind, with unique needs to facilitate enlightenment. This can be nicely compared to mixed-martial-arts: there are fixed ways of training in some gyms. Perhaps a particular stance for striking is deemed the gold standard at gym x. When gym x encounters foreign training modalities –e.g., different stances and the ability to seamlessly switch between them — fixed in their ways as they are, they’ll respond, ‘we do things our way here. That way is wrong!’ But in mixed-martial-arts, there is always right a time and place for all movements, and this depends on the student’s idiosyncrasies and intuitions. Similarly, there isn’t a singular right way in expedient means –which is an act of compassion. There are, that is, many ways to the way, just as there are various stances one may use in any instance of striking. Whatever is appropriate for the situation at hand is what should be used, not some fixed idea as to what is appropriate to do in all circumstances. The wrong way is the way that is intolerent in its fixedness and forcedness.

A monk asked, ‘what is the one word?’ The master said, ‘If you hold on to one word, it will make an old man of you.’ (Green 20; Dialogue 25)

A monk asked, ‘What is the fact of my nature?’ The master said, ‘Shake the tree, and the birds take to the air, startle the fish, and the water becomes muddy.’” (Green 21; Dialogue 30)

Here, we see a plurality of paths to liberating insight. Likewise, there is a suggestion that one should not be attached to any of these particular paths. Therefore, mediation on this view isn’t necessarily formal sitting meditation: it is a frame of mind instead of a distinct activity. To narrow the horizons of possible ways towards attaining the liberating experience isn’t merely to cut off most of humanity from that experience –thus negating the Bodhisattva ideal of liberating all beings — but to narrow such horizons is also to implicitly self-refute the doctrine of non-attachment. “All phenomena are the place of practice, for through them we know the emptiness of all phenomena.” (56 VS)

To “intuitively” act compassionately, I mean here Spinoza’s sense of ‘intuition’: “Given the numbers 1, 2, and 3, no one fails to see that the fourth proportional number is 6-and we see this much more clearly because we infer the fourth number from the ratio which, in one glance, we see the first number to have to the second.” (E2 P40 Schol. 2)[27] For Spinoza, such intuition “proceeds from the adequate [affective] knowledge of the essence of things” (Ibid.), comparing it to a mode of seeing “in one glance.” (Ibid.) This, however, does not mean the essence of particular things but rather the fundamental nature of reality. Grasping the nature of reality, by necessity, through an ineffable epistemic process, provides us an understanding of things that permits us to engage in the world in a new light. Within Buddhism, this new light, in part, consists of the impetus to act compassionately towards others. In other words, in Buddhism, one doesn’t act compassionately because one follows a set of codified moral laws: rather, one acts compassionately because that is the necessary result of a particular understanding. This understanding is not bookish, however. If, for example, I have succeeded in philosophically understanding emptiness through writing this paper, that doesn’t mean I am enlightened. “But the voice-hearer may hear of the Buddha’s Law and powers and fearlessness to the end of his life and yet never be capable of rousing in himself an aspiration for the unsurpassed way.” (96 VS) Rather, this understanding is affective. Consider by analogy two alcoholics: both ‘know’ they need to quit drinking, but one uses their knowledge to quit, and the other doesn’t. The former has affectively grasped the need to quit, whereas the latter hasn’t. Hence, reflexive action seems to underlie such intuitive understanding. As Spinoza might say, through such an affective understanding, one cannot, by necessity, help but want the best for others. (E4P37) In Buddhism, ‘intuitive knowledge’ of the nondual nature of reality generates reflexive compassionate intentions and behaviors: “Because all living beings are sick, therefore I am sick. If all living beings are relieved of sickness, my sickness will be mended. Why? Because the Bodhisattva, for the sake of living beings, enters the realm of birth and death, and because he is in the realm of birth and death, he suffers illness. If living beings can gain release from illness, then the Bodhisattva will no longer be ill.” (65 VS)

Indeed, at times, this process is laid out quite explicitly:

Through bodhi, one cultivates a loving mind, through saving living beings one cultivates a mind of great compassion, through adherence to the correct Law one cultivates a joyful mind, and through one’s grasp of wisdom one exercises an indifferent mind. (60 VS)

The Yogacara Objection: A Brief Rebuttal

The above picture, however, is much less apparent in the Yogacara. If all things are simply subjective, this naturally leads to the assumption that all things are not real. And in some sense, this is what Vasubandhu is proposing. The Yogacara is, in fact, a mind-only philosophy, but mind-only does not mean no-reality. (TOT 128) All this means is that all things which exist, exist dependently on mind. And “arguing that all is mind does not commit us to accepting that all is just my mind.” (W 164) Therefore, the non-solipsistic mind-only picture of the Yogacara, therefore, infers from the behavior of others that their actions are preceded by mental states, despite lacking direct evidence of such mental states. “All the idealist and the realist can hope to achieve is inferential knowledge of other minds.” (W 165) The notion of various distinct minds, on this view, is wholly illusory: everything being mental, there is but one reality that is wholly subjective, which all things depend on. And given that what we call by the name ‘other beings’ display behaviors comparable to ours and that our behaviors are predicated on mental states dependent upon this universal subjectivity, it is fair to infer that their behaviors are also predicated the same thing –that is, oneself and others are of the same nature. Reality ‘among living beings’ is a shared experience of a singular, wholly subjective reality.

According to Garfield, “the emptiness in question is the absence of subject-object duality, not the lack of essence or inherent existence.” (176 EW)[28] More accurately, however, the Yogacara gives special precedence to the analysis of subject-object non-duality. This does not nullify the emptiness of essences and inherent existence or anuttara-samyak-sambodi as resting in the nonduality of conventional and ultimate perspectives. Rather, it simply colors the analysis in subjective terms. Things (percepts) exist, but they do not exist in how they appear to –that is, as self-existent entities residing in an external world, apart from the mind. (TOT 136) When Vasubandhu says of things that they’re nonexistent, he is referring to them in their duality and objectivity –that is, as independently existing objective entities, nothing exists. (TOT 137) Now, existent things –of which none are objective, and all are subjective — are composed of three natures: “existence and nonexistence; duality and unity; freedom from afflictions and affliction.” (TOT 140) As Garfield notes, Vasubandhu characterizes these three natures as distinct and identical. They are distinct only in language as a method of skillful means. Apart from this, however, the differences between them are merely apparent, semantic, and perspectival. At bottom, no such dualities exist. And this extends to the doctrine of two truths, as it does for Nagarjuna. “External objects are nonexistent. But their conceptual construction by the mind is real. That construction, being itself purely mental, is not dual…the emptiness in question is the absence of subject-object duality, not the lack of essence or inherent existence.” (176 EW) On this view, then, to say that anything is distinct from subjectivity is delusional. Hence, there is a subjective idealism of a sort going on. In light of this, how can we be compassionate to what, on this view, are merely illusory projections of the mind?

This, in part, rests in the nonduality of the three-natures (a tripartite subjectivized version of two truth doctrine), and by extension, “the inseparability of wisdom and compassion.” (W 153) “The other dependent nature is conceptual: it arises from conditions. The consummate is the eternal nonexistence of the former in that.” (177 EW) The consummate nature, that is, is the total lack of duality and concepts, which one may experience during meditation. The imagined nature represents our ordinary experience: that is, phenomena that appear to have inherent existence. In its dual appearance, it does not exist. “The other-dependent is attached to convention.” (TOT 133) The other-dependent nature consists of the visual percepts of experience. So, for example, I have in front of me a laptop: the laptop as an inherently existent entity of the external world for which I, the subject, take as my object, is its imagined nature, whereas its other-dependent nature is the causal flow of the experience of the laptop, as dependent, apart from the concepts which conventionally characterize it. There is a percept, that is, but not a piece of information technology: “a psychological episode brought into and sustained in existence in dependence on numerous conditions.” (EW 147) The consummate nature is simply the fact that, in this percept, there isn’t a laptop: there isn’t, that is, an entity that exists independently of the mind out there in the external world. Delusion on this view is when we take such percepts to be the objects of a subject and when we reify the ordinary concepts which are ascribed to said mental constructions –namely, dualistic concepts.

Now, the non-conceptual apprehension of the consummate is attained meditatively. “On leaving meditative equipoise, however, the ‘subsequent pure knowledge’ arises. This is a conceptual cognitive state, which takes as its object, not the consummate nature but the transcendental awareness of the consummate achieved in meditation.” (EW 178) This entails a fresh perspective on conventional reality, colored by insights into the nature of mind/reality. The illusoriness of phenomena, that is, can be grasped within the conventional, as opposed to only from within the meditative experience. “These states of awareness enter the ordinary epistemic domain only through their causal impact on subsequent, more ordinary states that then take the transcendental states as their objects, transforming the way we experience the ordinary world, by infusing that ordinary experience with an understanding that we all we experience is illusory.” (EW 181) Hence, we too have here a negation of the Schopenhauerian response to emptiness: engaged relatedness in the ordinary is present in the Yogacara, rather than the erroneous assumption that, because reality is mind-only, indefinitely residing pure conceptionless experience must follow or, worse, that ‘nothing exists’ must follow. Nevertheless, just as in the Madhyamaka, such residing would undermine the precepts of Buddhism, as this would be a form of attachment. Likewise, staying in sitting meditation would make compassion towards others impossible, which is also counter to Buddhism’s precepts. The nonduality of the three natures in the Yogacara is the subjectivized counterpart to the nonduality of ultimate and conventional reality: without it, engagement in the conventional world is unjustified, and therefore, so too is compassion.

Considering verses 37 and 38 of the Trisvabhāvanirdeśa, compassion must be part of what intuitively follows from such meditative equipoise within the subsequent pure knowledge of the true nature of reality. In these verses, it is said that understanding the fundamental nature of reality (i.e., the nonduality of the three natures and two truths), “the sage will benefit [themselves] and others.” This is exemplified in the account of Asanga, who, after an act of great compassion, can directly see Maitreya. “This event underlies the importance of compassion for bringing about the kind of crucial shift in perspective that is essential for progress on the meditative path.” (W 153) Compassion and wisdom, that is, dependently co-arise with meditation. Compassion, wisdom, and meditation, that is, are fundamentally no different. Meditative experiences, unveiling the nonduality of the three natures (two truths), permits one to bring this understanding into the conventional perspective, reflexively enabling compassionate intention and behavior, signifying moral and spiritual progress.

Section 3: Confusions Regarding Nonduality

Nihilistic readings of nonduality arise for several reasons, some of which are banal and others philosophically interesting. The banal part is literary. For instance, Vasubandhu’s Trisvabhāvanirdeśa “is full of unexpected rhetorical and philosophical turns and is structured [to] reflect the ontological and phenomenological theory it articulates.” (TOT 130) This too can be said of Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika: “The treatise itself is composed in very terse, often cryptic verses, with much of the explicit argument suppressed, generating significant interpretative challenges.” (MMK 87) The “method of reductio ad absurdum is the methodological core” of the Mulamadhyamakakarika. (MMK 88) Such reductios, however, are not explicitly stated, and thus, it often appears as if Nagarjuna is endorsing a nihilistic or absurdist metaphysic, through contradictory verses. One basic habit of mind is to regard contradictions as patently false. This is developed through causes and conditions that are dualistic in nature, orienting the intelligibility of all things in a way that resembles psychological ‘splitting,’ but concerning logical possibility. In this context, this means that either something exists, or it doesn’t: there is no in-between –thus, anything uttered about the nonexistent is therefore, contradictory (for speaking about something assumes its existence), and hence, false in all cases. Emptiness, as misunderstood, is the idea that nothing truly exists, and thus, all experience and anything we say about it is false. And as Garfield notes, such phenomenological splitting –as “not simply the absence of knowledge, but ..denial of the truth” — is essentially our cognitive default (EB 22), making misunderstanding these texts inevitable. However, as evidenced in section 2, saying things that are empty –full stop — is misleading. Yet, these texts often do so –this is, in fact, why Thich Nhat Hahn re-translated the Heart Sutra: “Instead of saying ‘That is why in emptiness, there is neither form, nor feelings, nor perceptions, nor mental formations, nor consciousness,’ I have formulated the line as follows: ‘That is why in emptiness, body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness are not separate self-entities.” (TOS 20)

Such “interpretative challenges” that manifest as metaphysical nihilism are not trivial within Buddhism. Consider chapter 7 of the Vimalakirti sutra. When asked by Manjushri how Bodhisattvas regard living beings, Vimalakirti responds by saying –among other things — “as a conjurer looks on the beings he conjure up… as forms seen by a blind person… as sights in a dream after one has awakened.” (VS 83) Naturally, Manjushri responds in a way that resembles the first section of this essay: with a sense of doubt that anyone can be compassionate to others if they regard them as such. “If the Bodhisattva looks on beings in this way, how can he treat them with compassion?” (VS 84) Prajnaparamita Sutra presents this as the problem of chief importance for the Bodhisattva, considering that maha-karunā (great compassion) is their fundamental task. (O’Leary 64)

The nature of this confusion is in the interpretative backdrop one brings to bear when engaging with these texts — one that reflects little or no experiential familiarity with meditative experiences –(Samadhi or Zazen, say). Barring such experiences, unless one has –whether through birth or sheer luck — a particular –inexplicable — aptness for understanding the nature of reality,[29] these experiences are the only means we have for truly understanding emptiness. Consider, for instance, experiencing a bad breakup –perhaps you were in a relationship for several years, deeply in love, and under the impression that your spouse was too until they abruptly announced otherwise. This experience brings with it an affective understanding that simply cannot be acquired through being told about what it is like to have a bad breakup or merely reading about what it is like. Similarly, being told that all things are empty without the requisite experiences and resultant phenomenological changes are bound to bring about confusion. Our default opacity regarding the fundamental nature of reality, that is, leads to confused readings, such as the view of emptiness as metaphysical nihilism. This opacity derives from “ideologies, beliefs, opinions, and points of view, not to mention the factual knowledge accumulated since birth (to which we attach ourselves).” (TPZ 35) That is, the causes and conditions which inform our default understanding of reality distort our ability to grasp the nature of emptiness adequately. The reified presuppositions accompanying this default phenomenology are so entrenched in dualities –and thus, are so readily taken in as fully representative of reality — one doesn’t even approach emptiness in terms that will allow one to access its true nature. One, instead, will approach it as an object for which a subject is to interrogate –which is a priori self-refuting. Thus, when approaching the question of compassion in light of the emptiness of all things, the attitude brought to bear on this situation is one that takes for granted an ontological individualism. (EB 3–4) This is why “Zen students are normally not given the book of problems called Jujukinkai, which deals with the ten cardinal precepts from the standpoints of the Hinayana doctrines, the Mahayana, the Buddha-nature itself, Bodhidharma’s view, and Dogen’s view, until the very end of their training, when their enlightenment and zazen power have deepened and matured.” (Kapleau 18) Without such attunement, one is bound to desire the true understanding of these texts due to the default false interpretive backdrop of one’s phenomenology, as if there are objects that a subject can grasp. (VS 76) This is echoed in the Vimalakirti Sutra: “Ah, Purna, you should first enter into meditation before expounding the Law to that person.” (VS 43) While this is an injunction for the instructor to meditate first rather than the student, it is for the same reasons: the Dharma is bound to confuse people unless one’s professing it is informed by their attunement to it. This is what is part of what Garfield calls developing a moral phenomenology, where one’s interpretative backdrop is informed by asking “how [one’s] actions are relevant to solving our collective problem — the omnipresence of suffering.” (EB 8) Phenomenological changes after meditative experiences entail a priori approaching the world with “no morally significant distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding actions.” (EB 8) Moral development, therefore, is not simply adhering to laws, abiding by duty, or developing a consequentialist ethic: rather, it is the cultivation of perceptual and cognitive skills that add to “the project of leading a life that is a solution to, rather than reinforcement of, the problem of universal suffering.” (EB 11)[30] Plainly speaking, then, compassion derives in Buddhism from a revolution in one’s chronic attitude.

Our default egocentric attitude, which remains leaning on distinctions, produces erroneous views –which compound. One such erroneous view is identity fixation. “‘Why try to brush off the flowers?’ ‘Such flowers are not in accordance with the Law.’” (VS 87) Sariputra, in this instance, is demonstrating a fixation on his identity as a Buddhist and attachment to its formal laws, and this is because his awareness of the flowers is dual, rather than informed by samadhi: “Don’t say the flowers make no such distinctions. You in your thinking have made up these distinctions, that’s all.” (VS 87) Because of Sariputra’s attachment to his identity, he deviates from nondual awareness and relatedness. And through such deviation, fear of birth and death –itself (i.e., of one’s self), and the death of his identity as a Buddhist — is made manifest, which leads Sariputra to suffer in his fear: “Just as evil spirits can take advantage of a person beset by fear, so because you disciples are fearful of the cycle of birth and death, the senses of form, sound, smell, taste, and touch can take advantage of you.” (VS 87)

Such advantage by ‘evil spirits’ happens because abdication of nondual awareness results in fear manifesting as identity fixation. And as evidenced in Brian Victoria’s Zen at War, almost every instance of violence historically perpetuated by Buddhists was driven by identity fixation and the fears that naturally accompany it. In some cases, fixation on the identity of ‘Buddhist’, and in others, identity fixation manifested as an alliance with ethnic nationalism, such as in Imperial Japan. Insofar as we fail to inform our ordinary life by understanding emptiness as acquired through samadhi — the nonduality of ultimate and conventional reality, that is — we deviate from the path of compassionate engagement in the world. Such deviations might lead to passive nihilism, as in the case of Sariputra, whose spirit, as Nietzsche put it, is manifestly in decline. Or, such deviations might lead to active nihilism, as in the historical examples of violence.

Despite how misleading Buddhist texts may appear, their structure intends to expose a certain habit of thought to combat nihilism. “Vimalakirti…deliberately employ[s] expressions that he knows will seem paradoxical or shocking to [representatives of Hinayana thought.] It is his method of jarring them, and readers as well, out of their habitual modes of thinking.” (11 VS) They’re designed to expose the fact that we tend to orient ourselves by default in an egocentric manner by demonstrating the flippant in which nihilistic readings of Buddhist texts are arrived at, marked both by ignorance and denial of truth. “The sense that the world does revolve around us — that we as subjects stand at the center of the universe — is, as we have seen, a central aspect of the Buddhist conception of self-grasping…it is the foundation of a set of what Peter Strawson (1962) called ‘reactive attitudes.” (EB 13) Nagarjuna analogizes this with the man accusing him of stealing his horse when he is actually riding the horse. (MMK 301) “You have presented fallacious refutations that are not relevant to emptiness. Your confusion about emptiness does not belong to me… When you foist on us all of your errors, you are like a man who has mounted his horse and has forgotten that very horse.” Such foisting is, on this view, the natural response to the doctrine of emptiness –not only to reflexively interpret it as nihilistic but to impose this interpretation unto Buddhism itself.

Along with a fundamental ignorance of emptiness, these texts are also designed to expose our natural aversion to serious reflection. The truth of suffering “is obvious to anyone on serious reflection, though one that escapes most of us most of the time, precisely because of our [default reflexive] evasion of serious reflection in order not to face this fact.” (EB 4) And we avoid such serious thought by reflexively interpreting emptiness as a nihilistic metaphysic because attention to the fact of emptiness is what Buddhists mean when speaking about ‘serious reflection.’ Instead of deliberating on such matters, we abide by our default phenomenology –in fear of losing all that matters to us if we do in fact reflect, in good faith, upon emptiness — and react with resentment, feeling as if one has been slighted –further reifying (in bad faith) the conventional.[31] Prior to any enlightenment experience, people tend to think of themselves as having special importance, and one’s actions are almost entirely motivated by this delusion. Likewise, the intelligibility of all things is oriented around this delusion — the idea that I (a subject) have horses (objects) is a way of seeing the world based upon dualistic falsehoods — and thus, we take ourselves to have peculiarly important moral status. “But in this case [that of interdependence and no substantial selves] my reason for removing my own pain is not more pressing than that of removing the pain of other beings; in fact, it is considerably less pressing since the pains of other beings outnumber my own.” (JW 215)[32]

Exposing this reflexive default response to the doctrine of emptiness can demonstrate the truth of emptiness because this response is only partially born out of ignorance of its true nature: that is, this response is also born out of active rejection of deeper truths that we know to be correct –however, these truths nullify the significance of the things which one has been conditioned to give the utmost value to, thus motivating us to reject them. “Our conviction that we are independent agents…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 aging infirmity, reliance on others, and eventual demise.” (EB 23) We all possess this fear, but we are not all aware of it, and the point of these text’s exposing such default attitudes is to generate awareness of such fear to overcome the suffering it necessarily produces. The conventional examples of this are exceedingly common: most of us know about the horrors and consequences of factory farming, yet continue to eat meat, and many compensate for this by using the category of ‘vegan’ as a form of comedic relief; the comedies and materials purchased and consumed in capitalist societies derive from horrific labor conditions in distant countries like China, and yet, when confronted with this fact, complacent rationalizations deflect serious reflection on these matters. Many of us aren’t just ignorant, but rather, are in bad faith regarding emptiness, to our own and everyone else’s peril, as such bad faith necessarily permits the continuation of suffering, which would have otherwise been more likely to be ameliorated upon bearing the burdens that accompany serious reflection. Our aversion to the discipline of spiritual practice, becoming complacent in the wake of a meditative experience, and simple ignorance, therefore, are the causes of misunderstanding emptiness –and thus, are saliently wrapped up in the persisting causes of suffering.

Thus, once we are capable of seeing past our egocentric misery, through overcoming our egocentric habits of mind in the meditative apprehension of emptiness as the dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda), of the ultimate and conventional, not only can we begin to cease suffering, but we can –and will, by necessity — attend to the best of our abilities to the suffering of others through compassionate relatedness and worldly engagement. As Garfield succinctly puts it, “[compassion] is also, on the Mahayana view, the direct result of a genuine [affective] appreciation of the essenceless and interdependence of all sentient beings.” (EB 32) Emptiness, therefore, cannot lead to nihilistic conclusions.

Endnotes

[1] Thakchoe, Sonam, “The Theory of Two Truths in India,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/twotruths-india/>.

[2] Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Translation and Commentary by Jay L. Garfield. (Oxford University Press 1995)

[3] The Vimalakirti Sutra. Translated by Burton Watson. Columbia University Press. (1997).

[4] Among countless others. The Heart Sutra (Jay Garfield Translation), for instance, seems to say that form and emptiness are synonymous and then goes on to describe emptiness as the illusory nature of form. “They have no defining characteristics.” All things, as it seems in The Heart Sutra, such as consciousness in all its facets, the external world, ourselves, and others, do not exist

[5] Siderits, Mark, “Buddha,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/buddha/>.

[6] In Schopenhauerian terms, we can think of “will” as analogous to ultimate reality as empty and “representation” to conventional reality.

[7] Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation. Volume I. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. (Dover 1969).

[8] “All over the world, everywhere, are the people of the Evil One. Who clamor in vain and engage in meaningless arguments. Making false explanations, they teach sentient beings. Talking about remedies, they cure not one disease. The Bodhidharma Anthology: The Earliest Records of Zen. Jeffery L. Broughton. (University of California Press 1999) (ABBREVIATION: “BA. “)

[9] The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi. Burton Watson Translation. (Shambala 1993)

[10] Vasubandhu’s Treatise on the Three Natures (A Translation and Commentary) (Garfield)

[11] Seven Works of Vasubandhu: The Buddhist Psychological Doctor. Stefan Anacker. (Delhi 2005)

[12] Daniel C Dennett. Consciousness Explained, Little, (Brown & Co 1991)

[13] O’Leary, Joseph S. “Nonduality in the Vimalakīrti-Nirdeśa: A Theological Reflection.” The Eastern Buddhist 46, no. 1 (2015): 63–78.

[14] Brian Daizen Victoria. Zen at War. Second Edition. (Rowman & Littlefield 2006)

[15] Friedrich Nietzsche. The Will to Power. (Vintage Books Edition 1968). Walter Kaufmann Translation.

[16] Phillip Kapleau. The Three Pillars of Zen. (Anchor Books 2000).

[17]The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. (Columbia University Press 1967.)

Likewise, see pp. 137. “Deluded people do not realize that this is wrong, cling to this doctrine, and become confused.” (ABBREVIATION: “PS”)

[18] Robert Feleppa. Zen, Emotion, and Social Engagement. Philosophy East and West, Jul. 2009. Vol. 59. pp. 263–293.

[19] My italics.

[20] Graham Priest. Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyakamakārikā. An International Review of Philosophy.

[21] Hayes, Richard, “Madhyamaka”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

[22] Jay Westerhoff.. The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy. (Oxford University Press 2018)

[23] What Can’t be Said: Paradox and Contradiction in East Asian Thought. Y.Deguchi; J. Garfield; G. Priest; R. Sharf. (Oxford University Press 2021).

[24] The Lotus Sutra. Burton Watson Translation. (Columbia University Press 1993.)

[25] Thich Nhat Hanh. The Other Shore: A New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries. (Palm Leaves Press 2017)

[26] Garfield, Jay L. ‘Ethics.’ Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy (New York, 2015; pubd online Jan. 2015). Oxford Scholarship Online,

[27] A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Benedict de Spinoza. Edited and Translated by Edwin Curley. (Princeton University Press 1994)

[28] Jay. L. Garfield. Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation. (Oxford University Press 2002)

[29] An example of such a case can be found in Chapter 10 of the Lotus Sutra.

[30] Care [compassion] is also, on this view, the direct result of a genuine appreciation of the emptiness and interdependence of all sentient beings. Once one sees oneself as nonsubstantial and existing only in interdependence, and once one sees that the happiness and suffering of all sentient beings are entirely causally conditioned, the only rational attitude one can adopt to others is a caring and careful one.” (EB 18)

[31] To ironically quote Schopenhauer, “But we frequently shut our eyes to the truth, comparable to a bitter medicine, that suffering is essential to life, and therefore does not flow in upon us from the outside, but that everyone carries around within himself its perennial source. On the contrary, we are constantly looking for a particular external cause, as it were a pretext for the pain that never leaves us, just as the free man makes for himself an idol, in order to have a master.” (WAW 318)

[32] Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction. Jan Westerhoff. (Oxford University Press 2009)