Chapter 4: Conclusion: Returning to the Original Concern¶

The book's conclusion. Mahāyāna's philosophical creations are real achievements in the history of human thought, but the efficacy of its soteriology is a separate question. This volume's criticism draws distinctions; it does not reject.

A review of the criticism

This volume's philosophical criticism of the five soteriologies—Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, tathāgatagarbha, tantric practice, and Pure Land—can be stated in one sentence: each system deepens Buddhist philosophical speculation in its own way, yet each departs, to a different degree, from the standards set by early Buddhism on the three central questions of soteriology: the diagnosis of suffering, the mechanism of liberation, and the verification of practice—and, read together, these departures have a clear direction: self-power is progressively surrendered, guarantees steadily grow, and verification retreats to places increasingly difficult to check. At the theoretical level of soteriology, these traditions have problems that can be clearly identified. The problems deserve serious attention, rather than being bypassed with “skillful means” or “profound and inconceivable.”

The meaning of “original concern”

The term “original concern” is borrowed from Chinese Buddhism. It means the original concern of the Buddha's teaching, his deepest motive for teaching. Traditional formulations of the Buddha's “original concern in appearing in the world” often connect it with guiding beings to recognize suffering and leave it behind. Under the title “returning to the original concern,” this book does not advocate a revival of the past, claim that only the early Pāli tradition is true Buddhism, or call every later development a departure and a decline. It seeks to identify a thread often obscured by the traditions' theoretical expansion: the original concern of Buddhist soteriology is the cessation of suffering, enabling particular people who suffer and are trapped in grasping to find a real, practicable way out. It must be explained that “original concern” here is a criterion established by this book, not a claim of historical fact. There is only one criterion: the cessation of suffering. This book measures the traditions by it; readers are free to establish other criteria and arrive at a different ordering.

This concern has not disappeared as the traditions' theories developed, but it is often buried under layer upon layer of philosophical frameworks and becomes less clearly visible. When practitioners must first master complex consciousness-only theory, Madhyamaka philosophy, or Vajrayāna's inner cosmology to understand what they are practicing, the distance between the theoretical system and concern with suffering is already considerable. When the criterion of liberation shifts from an actual reduction of afflictions to victory in philosophical debate, acquisition of lineage qualifications, or rebirth in the Pure Land at death, the original concern with suffering's cessation has already become secondary in practical terms.

The relation between philosophical criticism and practice

A book offering philosophical criticism of soteriology must explain how such criticism relates to practice. Does it mean that practitioners should abandon their own traditions and return to practice within the Pāli tradition? This reading misunderstands the book's position.

This book holds that the relation should be as follows: philosophical clarity about soteriology is a way of approaching practice, rather than something opposed to it. Early Buddhism already shows this by placing right view first in the Noble Eightfold Path. Clear understanding is the starting point of practice, not an obstacle to it. Practitioners who clearly recognize the theoretical difficulties in the teaching they practice stand in a healthier position than those who believe blindly and never reflect. The reason is that clarity itself belongs to practice, not that criticism itself has value as practice.

Suffering remains

Suffering remains. This is a reality every soteriology must face, not rhetoric. Returning to this reality, to suffering's concrete presence, to the original impetus that led the Buddha to sit down at Bodh Gayā and begin teaching at the Deer Park—this is what the book means by “returning to the original concern.” Theories can be elaborate and traditions diverse, but if all this ultimately fails to bring an actual reduction of suffering, even the most precise soteriology is only a grand narrative, not a true path of liberation.

The opening parenthesis reads “verifiable for oneself in this life: ‘My birth is exhausted.’” The first-person terms matter here. “Performance” names personal enactment (操演). The three phrases below the five systems name parallel tendencies—self-power surrendered, guarantee raised, and verification moved farther away—as the Chinese diagram and Chapter 4 present them; the connecting arrows do not add a sequence of causes.

References¶

(This chapter concludes the volume. For its judgments and sources, see the chapters of the preceding six essays and the notes cited there. No separate notes are provided.)