Tags
Abhidhamma, Buddhaghosa, Candrakīrti, conventional/ultimate, Dan Arnold, Madhyamaka, Mark Siderits, Milindapañhā, Śāntideva, Tom Tillemans
Buddhists have never agreed on an overall metaphysics. They have long agreed that prajñā – accurately seeing things according to the ultimate truth – is hugely important, but they differ greatly on what that ultimate truth is. The Theravāda Abhidhamma view says everything is ultimately reducible to smaller parts; the Madhyamaka says it’s ultimately just emptiness; the Yogācāra says it’s all mind; Chinese Huayan and Tiantai views have their own trippy takes.
It recently hit me, though, that there’s actually a huge point of metaphysical agreement among all the Buddhist schools: huge enough to mean that this disagreement about the ultimate isn’t what matters most to them. And that’s on the point I discussed last time: namely that what really matters in Buddhist metaphysics isn’t so much the nature of the ultimate. Rather, it’s breaking down the conventional!
On that point there is a major continuity across Buddhist tradition. Between the different major philosophical schools of Madhyamaka, Abhidhamma/Theravāda and Yogācāra, there is huge disagreement about how to characterize ultimate truth. But what they don’t disagree on is that conventional truth is merely conventional, it’s in some respect illusory – in ways that change our understanding of all of it. They all agree that we have to see through conventional reality; they just disagree as to what we have to see through it to. It’s when we treat merely conventional reality as ultimately real that we get into trouble, and we get attached to it.
The self is the most obvious such conventional illusion – but it’s only the most obvious one. Theravāda texts like the Milindapañhā – the earliest text I know of to use the conventional/ultimate distinction – say the self is a mere convention, only its parts are ultimately real. But they also say the same thing about chariots and other medium-sized dry goods. In Theravāda as in Madhyamaka, our everyday conventional understanding of reality is full of error, and not just about the self.
So the Buddhism scholar Mark Siderits is wrong when he proclaims that only non-self, and not emptiness in general, is the metaphysical idea that really saves us from suffering. (At least unless the anātman, the “selflessness”, in question is the selflessness or essencelessness of all things and not merely human persons – in which case emptiness is what we mean by non-self, in the Madhyamaka context anyway.) Non-self is merely the most prominent case of ultimate truth – of the deconstruction of the conventional. The self is broken down, like everything else. And that breakdown, of self and other, gives you the power of nonattachment.
The (to me anyway) startling conclusion from all this is that at some level you can actually leave the nature of ultimate truth out of the picture: the most important metaphysical point for Buddhists really isn’t how you characterize (or don’t characterize) ultimate truth. Rather, the key is to break down conventional truth, to see it as merely conventional. The mere is huge! It is essential that the Theravāda philosopher Buddhaghosa indeed uses “mere” (matta) to refer to the conventional. That mereness, that only-ness, is central to both his Theravāda Abhidhamma and to Madhyamaka: the recognition that the conventional is only conventional, is what liberates us! The endless metaphysical debates in Buddhism are an answer to the question of: well, if reality as we normally understand it isn’t ultimately real, then what is? But that question is parasitic on an existing and more important answer, that medium-sized dry goods like chariots and persons and onions are not ultimately real, that they are mere, and that that mereness matters.
All of that, in turn, answers an important question asked by Buddhologist Tom Tillemans in his “Madhyamaka Buddhist Ethics”: “does the Madhyamaka anti-realist philosophy that all things are empty of intrinsic nature make any difference to discussions about what people ought to do and why?” (354) It doesn’t make an ethical difference in the context of Tillemans’s original question: that is, it doesn’t make a difference from other Buddhist schools. But it does make a big difference from non-Buddhist ways of seeing the world, in which the everyday things are real and we need to care about them.
The difference between emptiness and other Buddhist conceptions of ultimate truth doesn’t make a big practical difference. What does make a difference is recognizing that conventional truth is merely conventional, is unreal, illusory, in a really significant sense. Thus crucially, contra Chicago Buddhologist Dan Arnold, the Madhyamaka philosophy of Candrakīrti and Śāntideva is not “deference to the conventional”. For Madhyamakas as for other Buddhists, the conventional is not just mere, it is deeply flawed – something we need to loosen our attachment to.
To be not ultimate is to be essenceless, suffering, impermanent, impure – it is to be characterized by the four illusions at the heart of Candrakīrti’s ethical vision. That’s what it means to speak of ultimate truth at all, even if we then say (as Siderits and Arnold do) that “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth”: it’s to see the conventional as merely conventional – as Buddhaghosa says, despite claims to the contrary. The conventional self is actually no self, conventional happiness is actually suffering, the conventionally permanent is actually impermanent, the conventionally pure is actually impure.
Now there is something important that the Sideritses and Arnolds see about the Madhyamaka Buddhist perspective: namely that in Madhyamaka there’s something inert about ultimate truth. Nothing happens ultimately; the action is in conventional, it’s where we can actually do stuff, can actually be liberated. But the Madhyamaka point is that you need to see conventional differently – not merely seeing it as not-ultimate, which can sound like the correct seeing doesn’t make much difference, but as impermanent, non-self/essenceless, suffering. (Again, that part holds true for Theravāda Abhidhamma and for Madhyamaka, and very likely for Yogācāra as well.) The presence (or presence-absence, whatever) of ultimate truth means that you can no longer see conventional truth the way you normally would have.
So I realize my biggest problem with Siderits and Arnold isn’t with their catchy line “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth”, per se. There is a certain way in which that claim is a reasonable way to characterize Madhyamaka. What’s absolutely wrong is to then say, as Siderits does, that that claim does little to liberate us! However you characterize the ultimate truth – even if it’s in terms of saying that there is no ultimate truth – seeing the ultimate truth as it is, and seeing the conventional in a way that is broken down rather than merely accepting the conventional in the way it appears to us, is central to getting liberated. That is what prajñā – the liberating metaphysical insight – is. It is right view, the correct seeing that gets you out of suffering.
I agree, which is unsurprising if your title is true.
A sentence above that struck me is: “Nothing happens ultimately; the action is in conventional, it’s where we can actually do stuff, can actually be liberated.” While this sentence still contains metaphysics that some Buddhists would dispute, something like the latter part of the sentence is emphasized in Zen as well.
Zen Buddhist priest and Kyoto School scholar Eshin Nishimura used the term “transcendence into the senses” to emphasize how awakening happens in the (so-called “conventional”) realm of the senses, inverting the typical Western meaning of “transcendent” (“Transcending the buddhas and patriarchs: awareness and transcendence in Zen”, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 12(2/3), 1985, 193–205):
I saw the comment by David Chapman on Substack that expressed disagreement with the post above, rejected the two truths, and made a vague reference to “some Dzogchen texts”. I’ve read some Dzogchen texts, so I can provide a precise reference to what I take to be a common Dzogchen view of the two truths, in Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo’s Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle: Dzogchen as the Culmination of the Mahāyāna, trans. Dominic Sur, Boulder: Snow Lion Publications, 2017, page 166:
Longchen Rabjam (1308–1364) said something similar in “The natural freedom of mind” (trans. Herbert V. Guenther): “The absolutely real has nothing to do with ‘absolute’ or ‘relative’ truths.”
But both of these Dzogchen scholars, in the same texts where we find the statements quoted above, have typically Buddhist discussions of illusion. So they do discuss breaking down the conventional, as Amod phrased it, at some point in their texts. It’s just that they encourage us to go beyond that to perhaps what we could call breaking down of breaking down the conventional, which is similar to Nishimura’s Zen view that I cited above. These Dzogchen and Zen thinkers noticed that many of us have a natural tendency to want to break down the conventional, but this easily becomes another mental obstruction that itself needs to be broken down. In both Dzogchen and Zen, if I’m not mistaken, this breaking down of the breaking down is also sometimes expressed in terms of original enlightenment.
Right, I think that there’s often a huge amount of paradoxicality to it – not really in the Theravāda/Abhidhamma approach, but to some extent in Yogācāra and definitely in Madhyamaka. Emptiness is itself empty; you have to be careful not to get too attached to nonattachment, and then be careful not to be too careful.
I’m just curious, because I know little of Buddhism’s connection with metaphysics. Come to that, I’m further uncertain of any theological tie(s) with metaphysical matters, unless one considers the alleged water-to-wine allegory, and, loaves with fishes banquet. I was fascinated with Jung. His theory around synchronicity(ies) stretched my consciousness immensely—I daresay, Jung’s notion(s) were my initiation to the concept of consciousness, and, I dareagainsay, we remain as babes in the woods,therewith. I never met a Buddhist I did not like. That is beyond the point, admittedly. I’m not even sure now what that POINT is. Getting back to water/wine;loaves and fishes. These *miracles* seem metaphysical to me,which would point to the metaphysicality of theological beliefs.
There are more circularities than we can count. Yet, still, we try to count, hmmmm?
The chariot is interesting. I wonder. Was it always A tool of warfare or, at some times, a common conveyance for those not desiring saddle sores? just asking…
You said that like people and other things, the chariot pictured is only conventionally real. One of my assertions and declarations says reality(ies) are contextually real, that is, there hundreds of them, and, their strength of association rests upon their advocacies: contextual realists claim reality is whatever they say it is. Therefore, one contextual reality will be in opposition to another, such as that held by a cabinet level official who is opposed to a proven healthcare procedure, vaccination, because of his own IMPs (interests, motives and preferences). Or, as has been said, he doesn’t care to be confused with facts because his mind is already made up. His contextual reality is cast in iron. No amount of persuasion or reasoning, is likely to change that. Because of his authority to hire and fire, he is dangerous to national health and public welfare—matters which his position has responsibility to assure. He reports to an executive, with whom his IMPs align. In this sense at least, the conventional=the contextual, seems to me.
Third line of my comment(s): “There ARE hundreds of them…” I did not edit the ARE word. Had no reason, inasmuch as it provided context. Just wanted to clarify…
Thanks!
PDV.