Part II, Chapter 1: The Truth of Suffering: Is Suffering in Formations or in View?¶

The three chapters of Part I presented Madhyamaka soteriology in its strongest form. This chapter begins the critique, proceeding in the order of the five questions: suffering, origin, cessation, then the path in two chapters, one testing the direction of effort and the other the source of norms. Verification follows, then a judgment on attachment closes the functional analysis, before an overall assessment. Each chapter keeps to this volume's rule: first give Madhyamaka's strongest defense of itself, then judge.

This chapter tests the question furthest upstream. Part I, Chapter 1 presented Madhyamaka's own account: the truth of suffering remains as before, with the three characteristics unchanged. We will now show that this “as before” preserves the name but changes the reality. Without saying so or arguing for it, Madhyamaka relocates suffering from “formations” into “view.” This relocation is the hidden premise of its entire mechanism of liberation.

1. Suffering in the baseline: a predicate applied to formations

First establish the baseline securely. It need only be invoked here, not restated; Introduction, Chapter 2 gives the full account. First, the standard for the truth of suffering is set by the suffering of formations: “All formations are suffering” (sabbe saṅkhārā dukkhā). Suffering is a predicate applied to conditioned activity itself. Because formations are impermanent, they cannot be relied on or provide fulfillment. This structural deficiency does not increase or decrease with one's state of mind. Second, this judgment is encoded unchanged in the two-stage structure of the truth of cessation. When the influxes are exhausted, mental suffering ceases immediately: one is not struck by the second arrow. This is nirvāṇa with remainder. But the aggregates' continued existence is itself still subject to the suffering of formations. Suffering ends completely only with nirvāṇa without remainder (parinirvāṇa), when the aggregates no longer continue. Half the weight of the truth of suffering rests on this second level. Suffering is not just “feeling distressed”; it is the unreliability of conditioned existence as a whole. If the truth of cessation reaches only its first stage, it remains incomplete. Everything tested below concerns this second level.

2. Suffering in Madhyamaka: a concept to be analyzed

The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā devotes Chapter 12 to the “Examination of Suffering,” and its treatment deserves attention. It opens with four alternatives: “Made by oneself, made by another, made by both, or made without cause: suffering is spoken of in these ways, but as an effect it is not so.”¹ The whole chapter tests four possibilities for “what produces suffering”—self-production, production by another, by both, or without cause—refuting each by reductio. It concludes that suffering lacks intrinsic nature and is empty because it arises dependently.

This operation is entirely consistent within Madhyamaka's framework, but we must be clear about where it puts suffering. Suffering here is a concept to be analyzed, a topic that can be tested by the four alternatives, rather than an experiential given to be observed. The early tradition observes suffering phenomenologically—contemplating feelings as suffering. Madhyamaka analyzes suffering conceptually—suffering cannot be found. Part I, Chapter 1 called Madhyamaka an epistemological enterprise; it is already one at the truth of suffering.

To be clear, the analytical conclusion that “suffering lacks intrinsic nature” does not itself automatically conflict with “all formations are suffering.” Madhyamaka can perfectly well say that suffering can cease precisely because it lacks intrinsic nature, the approach taken in the “Examination of the Four Truths.” The problem comes with the system's next step.

3. The system requires suffering not to be in formations

Three pieces of structural evidence show that Madhyamaka's system requires suffering not to belong to formations themselves.

First, the nonduality of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. Chapter 25 of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā concludes that there is not the slightest difference between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra (Part I, Chapter 1). If this conclusion is to hold, suffering cannot be a property of the stream of formations itself. If the stream of the five aggregates is itself suffering, there is a real, definite difference between saṃsāra, in which that stream continues, and nirvāṇa, in which it ceases; nonduality cannot be maintained. Conversely, if suffering is merely the product of imposing the view of intrinsic existence on the stream of formations, nonduality follows naturally: the same stream of formations is no longer suffering once grasping at views is exhausted. (What the conclusion of “the nonduality of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa” itself proves, and the scope of its argument, are examined in a separate section of Part II, Chapter 3.)

Second, the practical structure of the bodhisattva path. Bodhisattvas willingly remain in saṃsāra for countless eons to liberate sentient beings. If the truth of suffering holds with its early force—conditioned existence as a whole is unreliable and its cessation should be sought—this choice is difficult to understand soteriologically. It becomes intelligible, even admirable, because it tacitly assumes that bodhisattvas who see emptiness can be within the stream of formations without suffering. Suffering must already have been relocated into view for a long stay in saṃsāra not to amount to a long stay in suffering.

Third, the demotion of arhatship. As Part I, Chapter 1 explained, the śrāvaka's exhaustion of the influxes becomes incomplete liberation in Madhyamaka's classification. If suffering's cessation is the endpoint, exhausting the influxes is completion. Declaring it incomplete amounts to admitting that this system's endpoint is no longer defined by “the cessation of suffering.”

4. The second level deleted

Combining these three pieces of evidence, the actual content of Madhyamaka's truth of suffering can be stated as follows: suffering is the product of the view of intrinsic existence, and the conceptual proliferation and grasping it drives, imposed upon the stream of experience. When the view ends, suffering ends; the stream of formations itself cannot be called suffering. This position fully absorbs the baseline's first level: mental suffering arises from grasping, and ceases when grasping is exhausted. That level is entirely compatible with early Buddhism. But it deletes the second: the aggregates' continued existence is itself suffering. This level of the suffering of formations has no place in the Madhyamaka framework, nor can it have one, or neither the nonduality of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa nor the bodhisattva path could hold. In the baseline's terms, nirvāṇa without remainder loses its soteriological necessity within this system.

This is the precise meaning of “the same name, a different reality.” At the level of claims, the truth of suffering remains as before, with the three characteristics unchanged. At the functional level, suffering has changed location, moving from formations into view. That move has never been announced, still less argued for. The method of “claims and functions” established in Introduction, Chapter 1 here encounters its furthest-upstream case. The typical earlier pattern was a concept playing the very role it denied. Here it is the prior premise of the whole system whose content is silently rewritten.

The Chinese figure labels each braid as “the stream of the five aggregates”; the individual Sanskrit and English aggregate names are additions in the English figure. In the right panel, it is suffering that is described as the product of imposing a view of intrinsic existence on the stream. The English label “Product of imposing intrinsic existence on the stream” points toward the lens, but the lens itself represents the view. The source heading calls the three lower items evidence that the system needs this relocation of suffering. Item 2 states its necessary condition explicitly: only if suffering lies in view does a bodhisattva's prolonged stay in saṃsāra avoid amounting to a prolonged stay in suffering. In item 3, “cessation” means the cessation of suffering.

5. The relocation is the core assumption's hidden premise

The weight of this relocation lies in its logical relation to the core assumption of the truth of the path. As Part I, Chapter 1 identified, Madhyamaka puts the whole weight of liberation on one epistemic act: “seeing emptiness.” Whether this epistemological optimism can hold depends first on suffering's location. If suffering is in formations, no correction of view suffices to end it. Its complete cessation can only be the cessation of conditioned continuity, and “seeing emptiness is liberation” is logically incomplete. Only if suffering is in view does “seeing emptiness ends suffering” become possible in principle.

In other words, Madhyamaka has defined suffering as located where seeing emptiness can reach it; it has not argued that seeing emptiness can end suffering. The mechanism's viability is guaranteed in advance by redefining the truth of suffering, and that redefinition itself has not been argued for. As the next chapter will show, diagnosing the root of the disease as the view of intrinsic existence and relocating suffering in this way are two sides of the same move.

6. Madhyamaka's defense and this chapter's limits

Madhyamaka has a ready and powerful answer to accusations such as “you deny suffering.” Conventionally, suffering is real, not illusory, and falls within conventional valid cognition. The “Examination of the Four Truths” goes further: only because dharmas are empty of intrinsic nature can suffering, origin, cessation, and the path hold (Part I, Chapter 1). This defense fully answers a crude charge of nihilism, but does not answer this chapter's criticism. Our question is where suffering is, not whether it is real. Saying “there is suffering conventionally” does not answer whether suffering is a property of formations themselves or a product of view. Three structures in Madhyamaka's system—saṃsāra and nirvāṇa's nonduality, the bodhisattva path, and the demotion of the arhat—have already made the choice for it.

The tradition has indeed felt the pressure identified here. One qualification comes first: a tradition's refinement of its own account can be normal theoretical development, not an admission that it is in the wrong. The following constructions can serve as testimony because the precise places they refine coincide with the gap this chapter identifies. Two doctrinal constructions provide evidence. First, whether śrāvakas realize the selflessness of dharmas became a point of dispute within Madhyamaka. In his autocommentary to Madhyamakāvatāra I.8, Candrakīrti explicitly holds that śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas also understand dharmas' lack of intrinsic nature. His reason is precisely the consistency of the mechanism: if liberation must come through seeing emptiness, and arhats are indeed liberated, then arhats must have seen emptiness.² This position preserves the mechanism's consistency at a cost: the arhat's “incompleteness” can now concern only the accumulations of merit and wisdom and the Buddha's attainment, not liberation itself. “The cessation of suffering” and “the endpoint of the path” are formally split into two things—the rearrangement of the goal's structure described in this chapter. Bhāvaviveka and the Yogācāra line take the opposite position: śrāvakas realize only the selflessness of persons. Tibet's Later Dissemination saw centuries of further dispute over this, with Tsongkhapa's line following Candrakīrti, and the older account from the Earlier Dissemination and Mipham's line opposing it. Both sides face difficulties. If śrāvakas are allowed to realize emptiness, another reason must be found for bodhisattvas' long stay in saṃsāra. If they are not, the arhat becomes a counterexample to the mechanism “seeing emptiness is liberation.” Second, the invention of “nonabiding nirvāṇa” (apratiṣṭhita-nirvāṇa): through wisdom bodhisattvas do not abide in the three kinds of existence, and through compassion they do not abide in nirvāṇa. This later concept, which took definite form in Yogācāra treatises and subsequently became common Mahāyāna doctrine, exists to answer “how can one who sees emptiness remain in saṃsāra?” Together with such accounts as “taking birth through the power of vows” and “retaining afflictions to nourish birth,” it makes a specially devised doctrinal place for “being within the stream of formations without suffering.” The existence of these constructions is itself testimony: the tradition clearly felt a gap between the bodhisattva path and the early truth of suffering that required a special engineering project to fill.

This chapter's limits remain the same. It does not assert that Madhyamaka practitioners cannot feel suffering, or that anyone intended this relocation. Its assertion concerns theoretical structure alone: within Madhyamaka's framework, the operational content of the truth of suffering differs from the baseline's, and this difference bears the weight of the entire mechanism. One further point must be made. For this argument's dependence on the premise of rebirth, and why that does not invalidate it, see the section “The Metaphysical Bill” in Introduction, Chapter 2. Madhyamaka and the baseline share this premise; both accept the chessboard. With suffering's location clarified, the next chapter examines diagnosis: when the root of the disease is located in the view of intrinsic existence, which level is actually struck?

References¶

The scriptural evidence for the baseline—the suffering of formations, the simile of the two arrows, and nirvāṇa with and without remainder—is in the notes to Introduction, Chapter 2 and is not repeated here.