Part II, Chapter 8: Overall Assessment: Claim and Function¶

Part I's three chapters presented Madhyamaka soteriology in its strongest form through the five questions. Part II's preceding seven chapters offered criticism truth by truth. This chapter gathers the judgments. Following the method set out in Introduction, Chapter 1, it separates the level of claims from the functional level and examines Madhyamaka's answers question by question. The arguments for these judgments appear in the chapters indicated and will not be repeated here. The same format of conclusion will be used for the traditions that follow. This chapter also adds a section of formal assessment, drawing its evidence from the audit of the same argument's premises in Volume 1, Essay 18, rather than from the functional level. This section is unique to the present essay; the other traditions have no comparable material to add.

“Madhyamaka Part” in the title refers to this whole essay, Essay 2. The claim in the fourth row is “knowing and seeing things as they are, carried through to the end,” retaining both knowing and seeing.

The truth of suffering

At the level of claims, the truth of suffering remains unchanged. The three characteristics of suffering, impermanence, and nonself are untouched; suffering is still what must cease (Part I, Chapter 1). At the functional level, the examination in Part II, Chapter 1 shows that this “unchanged” preserves the name while changing the substance. Suffering's location moves from formations into view. The dimension in which “the continued existence of the aggregates is itself suffering” is silently deleted—in the baseline's terms, nirvāṇa without remainder loses its soteriological necessity. Suffering is redefined as the product of imposing the view of intrinsic existence on the stream of experience. The nonduality of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, the bodhisattva path's prolonged stay in saṃsāra, and the demotion of arhatship to an intermediate station all take this relocation as their structural premise. The center of liberation thereby shifts from transformation of the stream of experience to completion of right view. The problems in all the later links can be traced to this step, and this step was never argued for.

The truth of origin

At the level of claims, ignorance is made precise as the view of intrinsic existence. This is Madhyamaka's most ambitious contribution to the early diagnosis, and is indeed a philosophical achievement. At the functional level, the examination in Part II, Chapter 2 shows that the view of intrinsic existence resides at the reflective level, whereas the craving and appropriation diagnosed by the baseline operate pre-reflectively. Three test cases—infants, animals, and those who have lost the capacity for reflection—show that a pre-reflective sense of self does not depend on post-reflective self-grasping. In becoming more precise, the diagnosis also departs from the level where suffering actually operates. Locating the root of the disease in a reflective judgment and relocating the truth of suffering are two sides of the same move.

The truth of cessation

At the level of claims, conceptual proliferation ceases, nirvāṇa too is empty, and saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are nondual. Here this volume's most favorable judgment of Madhyamaka should be set down; the full argument appears in Part II, Chapter 3. Early Buddhism kept silent about “what nirvāṇa is.” By negating the grasping that takes “nirvāṇa to be a really existent object that can be realized,” Madhyamaka may, in its own self-understanding, come closer to that silence than any later positive description of nirvāṇa. The tendency to objectify nirvāṇa did arise later, and at the level of claims Madhyamaka resists rather than advances it. But this judgment has limits. At most, “the nonduality of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa” can prove that any nirvāṇa posited as a concept shares saṃsāra's lack of intrinsic nature. The nirvāṇa guarded by silence and never objectified—the noncontinuation of the aggregates—lies outside its argument's scope. Nor does “both lack intrinsic nature” itself cancel the conventional distinctions that conventional valid cognition is entitled to establish (Part II, Chapter 3).

At the functional level, however, objectification returns through another door (Part II, Chapter 3). “Direct realization of emptiness” becomes an accomplishment that can be pursued, marked out, and certified. What is objectified is now the event of “seeing emptiness” itself, in place of nirvāṇa. The operational content of the truth of cessation changes from “cessation” to “direct realization,” altering in nature with the relocation of the truth of suffering. Once the stream of formations is no longer called suffering, cessation is no longer that stream's stopping, but another way of looking at it. In later circulation, “the nonduality of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa” is conventionalized into the identity reading “saṃsāra is nirvāṇa.” Volume 1 has a chapter analyzing how this dissolves the motivation to practice: see Volume 1, 5.6, “Slippages in Argument in Prajñā and Madhyamaka Texts.”

The truth of the path

At the level of claims, the mechanism has the same structure as the Four Noble Truths: right view dissolves ignorance and thereby removes the conditions of suffering. Madhyamaka also understands itself as following the old path of “knowing and seeing things as they are” more thoroughly than the śrāvaka path (Chapter 1). At the functional level, there are three difficulties. First, the direction of effort veers back from indirect cultivation toward direct confrontation (Part II, Chapter 4), while the content involving cultivation is mostly borrowed and its effects cannot be attributed to the view of emptiness itself. Second, there is the tension between “no thesis” and the normativity of the direction of practice (Part II, Chapter 5). The defense of conventional valid cognition refines the problem without removing it. Third, the success or failure of the entire mechanism depends on accomplishing an epistemic act, and that act is separated from the actual level of suffering by the mismatch identified in Part II, Chapter 2.

Verification

At the level of claims, the path of seeing can be marked out through the architecture of direct realization and the stages of the path, and the tradition is aware of the dispute between direct perception and inference (Part I, Chapter 1). At the functional level, the criterion of certification drifts historically toward skill in argument, quality of commentaries, and scholarly performance (Part II, Chapter 6). With systematization, its threshold becomes increasingly elite and specialized. In the end, the answer to who is qualified to certify that someone “has seen emptiness” points increasingly toward learned institutions and moves ever farther from the cessation of suffering itself.

Attachment

The preface's judgment is that Madhyamaka's attachment is attachment to intellectual activity itself. Part II, Chapter 7 gives its mechanism. “Emptiness too is empty” closes off grasping at conclusions, so grasping shifts to tools and abilities. Skill in reductio, the framework of right view, and the pursuit of direct realization can all become new objects of appropriation, hardest to detect when operating in the name of “breaking grasping.” A word must be said in Madhyamaka's defense here: of the five traditions, it is the most aware of this danger. Both “emptiness too is empty” and the defense through illusory persons show that it saw the problem. But seeing it does not confer immunity. Placing the entire weight of liberation on an epistemic act simultaneously hands new territory for attachment over to epistemological activity.

An entry on the formal side

The preceding seven chapters conducted their examinations at the functional level, drawing evidence from history, mechanisms, and reception history. Here we add a formal entry, drawn from Volume 1, Essay 18. That essay's task was to distill the argumentative core of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā into a theorem and carry it as far as could be defended. Its resulting list of premises has only three categories: four definitions, whose criteria all come from the opponents' own texts; one system of classical logic; and one analytic truth. There is no fourth category, nor any item of scriptural authority as a means of valid cognition. The essay also demonstrated applicability outside the domain: Chapter 8 applies the same derivational machinery to configurations of eternity and creation without changing a step. This book does not argue over labels; it records only this: nothing supporting the argument's validity belongs exclusively to Buddhism.

This list allows us to make one assessment. Not one item that can be entered on it requires Buddhism; not one thing Madhyamaka claims can transform a person has been entered on it. The side of view has been completely formalized; the side of transformation has not a single symbol. This does not mean Madhyamaka has no theory of the path. It does, and Part II, Chapter 4 has already found that most of that content is borrowed. It means that its own core argument can do no work for its own soteriology. If the view of emptiness can indeed liberate, its liberating force must come from something outside the argument, and Madhyamaka has not identified what that is.

Three points must be stated precisely. First, saying that the argument owes nothing to Buddhist materials means it is independent in justification; in origin, it remains a Buddhist product. Second, being philosophical does not make an argument irrelevant to liberation: a philosophical conclusion can in principle carry soteriological weight. Third, this section does not claim that Madhyamaka is wrong about liberation. It claims only that the list of premises has inventoried all the argument's resources, and none concerns the cessation of suffering. Thus, “direct realization of emptiness abandons ignorance” receives no support from the argument. It is an additional assertion and needs separate proof. The dilemma at the end of Part II, Chapter 5 now has a measure: is Madhyamaka a self-sufficient soteriology, or a philosophical framework that must be embedded in an existing tradition of practice to function? Formalization points toward the latter, on the strength of the list rather than the tone of the argument.

This entry does not depend on whether the theorem holds. Essay 18 provides a downgrading clause and three exits. If the theorem holds, it holds as a philosophical theorem, with the resources listed above and no bearing on the cessation of suffering. If it cannot be sustained and is downgraded, the universal “all views of intrinsic existence undermine themselves” cannot be preserved; what remains is case-by-case reductio. Its relation to liberation is weaker than that of the universal theorem: it cannot even guarantee that all views of intrinsic existence can be exhausted, let alone that exhausting them exhausts ignorance. Both exits lead to the same place. In citing Essay 18, this volume therefore does not take on its risk.

Overall judgment

At the level of claims, Madhyamaka carries the Four Noble Truths through most faithfully. It never departs from dependent origination and continually demonstrates that it has the same structure as the four truths; its truth of cessation even comes closer to the early silence than the later traditions do. At the functional level, it transforms a path of cultivation directed toward dispassion into an intellectual undertaking centered on view. The cessation of suffering is not abandoned, but moves from each step of the path to a position behind an epistemological accomplishment. The furthest upstream step enabling all this is the relocation of suffering from formations into view. Is that view sufficient once the relocation has occurred? The formal entry in the preceding section answers: it suffices to support a philosophical theorem, but not a soteriology, because an inventory of its resources contains nothing concerning the cessation of suffering.

This is a structural shift in the center of gravity, not corruption. The paradigm it establishes—bringing an entire soteriology under one philosophical insight—will recur in the later traditions, with different contents for the insight. Yogācāra takes up the paradigm through analysis of consciousness; tathāgatagarbha takes it up through trusting acceptance of buddha-nature. What happens in each tradition as it takes up this paradigm is the subject of the following essays.

References¶

(For the grounds of this chapter's judgments, see Part II, Chapters 1–7 and Volume 1, 5.6. For the formal entry, see Volume 1, Part II, Essay 18: the list of premises is in Chapter 9, Section 1 and Appendix A, Section 10; the demonstration outside the domain is in Chapter 8; the downgrading clause is in Chapter 1. No separate notes are provided.)