Nagarjunas philosophy as presented in the maha prajnaparamita sastra (51)

REALITY the real nature of all that is ; it is the nature that no entity ever leave s ; the many unique, distinct entities are different among themselves as many, b u t as the real, in their real nature, they are undivided But as the comprehemion that the unconditioned is the ground of the conditioned i s one in which there is s till the distinction of the one fro m the other, it is not the comprehension of the ultimate truth ; it is still the mundane truth It belongs to the determinate nor wholly a confined to who cling to the level which is not exclusive of it Those to the indeterminate commit to extremes To seize the determi­ nace as itself the ultimate is to commit the e rror of eternalism, whi l e to imagine that the indeterminate is wholly exclusive of the determinate is to commit the errqr of negativism ; the latter view amounts to the imagination that a literal abandoning or even an annihilation of the deter.minate is the necessary condition to realize the indeterminate These exclusive views conceive the determinate and the indeterminate as separate from each other As the two are essentially different, so they think, they should be entirely separate Actually, in the "essential nature of things" there is the difference of mundane and ultimate The mun­ dane nature is called the essential nature only by convention Certainly it is not meant as an absolute truth To imagine that thing s are ultimate and self-existent in their unique and distinct natures is to commit the error of eternalism But this is not to deny the unique and distinct as essential in the mundane truth ; it is to deny the imagined ultimacy and absoluteness with regard to them determinate as well as those who cling the error of exclusiveness ; they cling (In the ultimate truth) all things are siinya, devoid of their own natures ; the re is no individual, no "I" and ("mine" ) And yet (in the world) ditioned by causal factors, there are the four fundamental physical elements as well as the six sen ses And each of these ten elements has its own (na tu re and) capacity ; it can come into birth (as the result of the cooperation of its c a us al facto rs) and can bring into birth (in its turn other things, itself functioning as a causal factor for their birth) And ev e r yo ne of these has its own function, for example, earth can hold 25 NAGARjUNA'S PHILOSOPHY things and water can moisten things.-In this way everything has' its own (nature and) function.2 (444b) While tathatii as the mundane truth means such natures of things as impermanence, relativity, non-substantiality, devoidness of selfhood, tathatii as their ultimate nature means the unconditioned, unborn dharma One comprehends that in the universal reality there is nothing that is determinable either as permanent (or as impermanent,) and one abandons even these comprehensions (In the ultimate realization,) all such modes of intellection come to an end This is the universal reality, the same as NirvaI).a, the unborn and the unextinct dharma, which ever remains in its true nature and is never subject to birth (and death) Water, for example, is cold by nature and it becomes hot only when ftre is added to it With the extinction of ftre, the heat of the water also becomes extinct and water returns to its original nature and remains cold as before The mind using all the diverse modes of intellection is like the water getting ftre The extinction of all modes of intellection is like the extinction of ftre The original nature of mind, the tathatii, is like the coldness of water This is tathatii It eternally remains in its fundamental nature Um'l';W{1) For such is the very nature of things (299 a) Speaking with special reference to the human individual, while the determinate being, the organism worked out by the self-conscious per­ son as the expression of his very being, is a system of events which to­ gether constitute his "self," if one imagines that, being determinate, one is essentially other than and therefore completely separate from the indeterminate dharma, one would commit the error of misplaced ab­ soluteness, for that would amount to thinking that the determinate self is one's real self, one's ultimate nature This is to miss the true import of the sense of the unconditioned ; this is to make reality altogether irrelevant to man The wise who rise above exclusive clinging under­ stand the conditioned as well as the unconditioned ; they understand 54 REALITY also the conditioned as itself in its ultimate nature the unconditioned reality, the Nirvar;ta The kinds of tathata: Two kinds: Thus we have broadly two kinds of essential nature; the one is relatively essential which is also essentially relative, and the other is the ultimate essence of all that exists From the standpoint of the ultimately essential, the relatively essential is so only in name ; it is only the mundane truth; but it is false to deny the relative­ ly essential even in the mundane truth Both these kinds of essential nature, the relative and the ultimate, are admitted as the two kinds of tathata by the farer on the Middle Way The Siistra calls one the mun­ dane and the other, the transmundane The tathata (the true nature) of things is of two kinds, the specific nature (4HHH ) and the real nature (t.'m) The specific nature is like the hardness· of earth, the moistness of water, the motion of wind, etc.-in this way everything has its own nature The real nature is that which one finds to be their ultimate nature after an examination of (every one of) these specific natures This ultimate nature is that which cannot be seized, that which cannot be denied and that which is free from all errors (ofimagination) (E.g., the hardness of-earth cannot be held to be its unconditioned nature.) Examining earth in the light of un­ conditionedness, it is found that no specific nature of earth could be found to be unconditioned In truth earth is siinya Sunyata is the ultimate nature of earth Just the same is the case with the specific nature (5J1J m) of all things.3 (297b-C) Levels of comprehension : That the true nature of things ever remains unaltered by one's subjective fancies is the basic import of ((tathata.'" And this is true as much of the mundane as of the ultimate nature of things And a right understanding of the mundane itself ·reveals, leads to the ultimate truth First while analyzing the distinct natures of things the wayfarer understands that apart from riipa there is not another element called birth This is to deny the ultimate separateness and the sel��ontained25 NAGARJUNA' S PHILOSOPHY ness of elements This is itself the revelation of their essential nature as becoming, change, relativity and contingency This is to �ay that they are sunya Sunyata as the mundane truth of things means this nature of ch ange and rel ativity , and in this na ture , things are one, indistinct, undi­ vide d, while a s sp ecifi c forms of bec oming they are distinct, many, and diffe rent It is this realization of the sunya-nature , the non-sub s tantial and dep endent nature of things again that directs the mind to their ground , viz , the indeterminate dharma, with which as the ground the many things appear as i ts pheno menal diversifications� and which they themselves are in their ultimate nature The ultimate truth of things is the undivided being It is in this way that the denial that rupa etc are not anything substantial and self-natured leads one to the further realiza­ tion that they are themselves the unborn dharma in their ultimate nature It is in! this way that rupa itself when truly seen, enters the status of non­ duality.s Rupa e tc (fM��) are the objects of the experience of common peo ple while the tatkata (tm) of things is their ulti ma tely real nature (1r;f§), the reality that is not false and deceptive (�bf[�), and this is the obj e ct of the experience of the sages Rupa etc are composite things and are therefore unreal They are the objects in which common people fare thro ugh i magin ative constructions (}L�·ffl.tt;W 7tgIJff � ) It is there­ fore that they are unreal (bf[�) The y are not as such real ( �llPiiktzo) It i s only when the truly real nature of rupa is comp rehended that one is said to know their ultimate reality But then, it is only in relation to Tupa etc., that the name " tathata" " the real nature" is derived ([l;I��it ffl.tzo�) It is therefore said that the realization of the indeterminate dharma is not apart from the determinate entities When truly com­ prehended, the determi nate entities, rupa etc enter in to tatltata (Atzo'P ) ; there all things are of one nature devoid of particular na tures ({;!f-fl'l �A).6 The kinds of tathata: Three kinds: Sunyata as the rejection of absolute­ ness in reg a rd to the specific and determinate takes one from the anal y­ sis and appreciation of the unique n ature and function of every dis­ tinguishable el eme nt to the re a li zatio n of itS essential relatiVity And 256 REALITY iiinyata of siinyatii as the rej ection of absoluteness in regard to the con­ ditionedness of the conditioned takes one from the co mp rehension of the relativity and non-substantiality of the sp ecific and determinate to the realization of their ultimate truth as the undivided being In the lig ht of this considera ti on one can dis ti n guish three kinds of essential nature, the lower p ro gres sively leading to the higher by cancelling the notion of the ultima cy of itsd£ The first consists of the specific, de ter­ minate, distinct nature of everything, the second, of the non-ultimacy of these sp ecifi c nat ures, the rela tivity or the conditionedness of a ll that is de terminate, and the third , of the ultimate truth, the undivided being as the ultimate reality of all that is The Sastra thus distinguishes three kinds of tathatii, the lower (T), the middle (1:j:I ) and the superio r (1:) Drawing this distinction, the Siistra says: Again, in the world, everything has nine kinds (of characters) ; I ) Everything has its vastll (B), "substance," stuff; ) Eve ry thin g has its dharma (�), characteristics ; e.g., although both the eye and the ca r are constituted of the fo ur fundamental physical clements, still , only the eye can the seeing and not the ear ; aga in , c.g., fire can o nly burn things and not moisten the m ; ) Everything has its own power ()r cap acity (fJ) ; e.g., fire has the capacity to burn and water has the capacity to moisten things ; 4) Eve r y t h ing has its own cause ([JJ) ; ) Everything has its own conditions (&) ; 6) Everything has its own consequences (�) ; 7) Everything has its essence, essential nature ('Ii ) ; 8) Everything has its own li mi ta tions (mUll ) ; and ) Everything has its own way to o pe n up an d communicate (�ii niJ!).7 (298c ) Whenever anything is bo rn, says the Siistra, it has all these nine fac­ tors.8 That every thing in the world has all these factors is called the worldly, inferior tathata That all these f c tors ultimately return to change and extinction (��MW!l4�i1iJ(), this is the middle t