aflatun wrote:Coëmgenu wrote:aflatun wrote:Great posts, thank you for the lucid explanations. Despite all of that, isn't it true that Nagarjuna does not ascribe inherency or existence to Nirvana?
Nāgārjuna does not ascribe inherency to hypostatizations of Nibbāna, which includes almost all views and inferences that one can try to make about Nibbāna. Nāgārjuna does not deny the inherency or unconditionedness of Nibbāna:
That which when dependent or conditioned comes into and goes out of existence,
that, when not conditioned or dependent, is called nirvāṇa.
(Mūlamadhyamakakārikā XXV)
In short, anything that is conditioned is considered not Nibbāna in the text, including "conceptions of Nibbāna", which are mental formations, not Nibbāna itself.
aflatun wrote:EDIT: I can't make sense of a view of what is beyond cessation being conditioned by Nirvana, unless it means the view is conditioned by one's ideas, reifications, etc, of Nirvana, not Nirvana itself, if you'll permit that way of putting it (which is problematic!)
Views of what is beyond cessation are conditioned by "notions" of Nirvana, which in turn is conditioned by "Nirvana" via the Buddha, they are simply misconceptions of the Buddha's teaching, yeah, thats what is being said, at least by my reading of the text.
I'll look up some of the commentaries and see if they have different insights.
Thank you for the swift response. I'm not being a nitpicker here, just wanted to be clear. I asked about inherency specifically because I'm clear on his assertion that Nirvana is unconditioned, that's quite unambiguous. But I don't see him calling Nirvana existent or inherent (in your quote for example), and I think the distinction is important. What do you think?
I'm still doing some research to see what other people more informed than I have said on the issue, but I think that my own meagre surface-level reading of the opening dedicatory quatrain of the Mūlamadhyamikakārikā might be of at least some minor merit in determining what the ultimate stance of Nāgārjuna is on the subject of true unconditioned Nibbāna devoid of hypostatizations and ignorance, or at least will offer an uninformed amateurs take on the issue.
I think that Nāgārjuna identifies hypostatization as the key feature of samsara, and ultimately a direct consequence of the root of suffering: ignorance. I think that Nāgārjuna identifies hypostatization to be a constant condition of samsaric existence, and perhaps the most pernicious of fetters, because it is ultimately linked to self-conception, particularly the proliferation of diverse self-conceptions subject to causal conditionality. I think this is evident in the meaning of the word that is being translated as "hypostatization".
The word Nāgārjuna uses, which is translated as "cessation of hypostatization" is
prapañcopaśama. This is a compound word consisting of "
prapañca" which refers to "profilerations/increases/reinventions" (source
1,
2) and
apaśama, meaning
cessation.
Consider the opening dedicatory quatrain of the Mūlamadhyamikakārikā:
anirodham anutpādam anucchedam aśāśvatam |
anekārtham anānārtham anāgamam anirgamam ||
yaḥ pratītyasamutpādaṃ prapañcopaśamaṃ śivam |
deśayāmāsa saṃbuddhas taṃ vande vadatāṃ varam ||
I salute the Fully Enlightened One, the best of orators, who taught the doctrine of dependent origination, according to which there is neither cessation nor origination, neither annihilation nor the eternal, neither singularity nor plurality, neither the coming nor the going of any dharma, for the purpose of nirvāṇa characterized by the auspicious cessation of hypostatization.
(Mūlamadhyamikakārikā, Siderits translation)
The english translation is a bit ambiguous here, due to the grammatical complexity of the long opening sentence, preserved in a form of alliterative rhyme designed to ease the memorization process of the work, which was originally oral literature. The ambiguity in the English translation relates to if the grammatical clause "for the purposes of nirvāṇa characterized by [...]" relates solely to "the coming [or] going of any dharma" or if it is the completion of the incomplete clause "the Fully Enlightened One, [...] who taught the doctrine [...]". My own meagre and insufficiently amateur linguistic analysis of the Sanskrit, however
tentatively suggests that the structure of the sentence is "I salute the Fully Enlightened One, [...], who taught the doctrine of dependent origination, [...], for the purposes of nirvāṇa characterized by the auspicious cessation of hypostatization." The material omitted in that quotes is descriptive linguistic adjuncts designed to describe the subject of the dependant clause "who taught the doctrine of dependent origination". This is evident because
pratītyasamutpādaṃ prapañcopaśamaṃ are both marked in the accusative case, marking them as the object of the phrase "
yaḥ pratītyasamutpādaṃ prapañcopaśamaṃ śivam", the subject of which is "
deśayāmāsa saṃbuddhas taṃ vande vadatāṃ varam" (I salute the Fully Enlightened One, best of orators, who taught). If anyone here is a Sanskrit buff it would be good to have a second pair of eyes look over that though, the grammar of the passage is somewhat impenetrable to non-specialists like myself.
A rendition that more accurately preserves the Sanskrik word-order, but is less easily intelligible for an English-speaker, of the opening quatrain might have been:
anirodham anutpādam anucchedam aśāśvatam |
anekārtham anānārtham anāgamam anirgamam ||
yaḥ pratītyasamutpādaṃ prapañcopaśamaṃ śivam |
deśayāmāsa saṃbuddhas taṃ vande vadatāṃ varam ||
Neither cessation, nor origination, neither annihilation, nor the eternal,
Neither singularity, nor plurality, neither the coming, nor the going,
The doctrine of dependent origination, for the auspicious cessation of hypostatization,
I salute the Fully Enlightened One, the best of orators, who taught [this].
Many times in the text Nāgārjuna equates the realization of liberation, or at the very least a vital step in that direction, with the cessation of hypostatizations. I think that from the perspective presented in the Mūlamadhyamikakārikā, it might be considered that the only way to non-hypostatize Nibbāna is to completely realize it (Nibbāna itself), or rather, it might be argued that the only way to non-hypostatize Nibbāna, to not form false mental construction(s) of it, might be the very experience of Awakening itself, of Cessation itself. The opening dedicatory refrain frames Nibbāna as the cessation of hypostatization, or rather, it is said therein that hypostatization-cessation "characterizes" Nibbāna, the cessation of hypostatization being the cessation of proliferations, and that is something that should be analyzed in light of the Pāli tradition. I am not altogether sure if Nāgārjuna thinks that it is possible at all to non-hypostatize Nibbāna until it has been fully realized, hence his critique of hypostatizations of Nibbāna.