Madhyamika Refutation of the Non-Buddhist Dogmas

Being an anti-dogmatic discipline to the core, Madhyamika teaches that any unexamined assertion must be taken with a skeptical frame of mind. Anything that gets accepted at face value, without examining the solidity of the offered conclusion, is a good candidate for the Madhyamika brand of dialectic investigation.

Dogma usually springs from two sources: either a sample of the untutored perception is taken for granted, or the authority of some sacred scripture gets taken for granted.

There are three categories of typical Non-Buddhist dogmas that need to be examined:

1. Materialist worldview
2. Substantialism
3. Modal worldview
   
   

The Materialist View

For materialists, the only reality is what appears to the raw perception. According to their way of thinking, all things and events we are able to perceive are based on the materialistic grounds.

By adopting this worldview, materialists only accept direct perception, while rejecting inference, as a source of valid knowledge. Thus, when asked about past and future existences, for instance, they express their disbelief. They do not accept the possibility of past lives, nor the possibility of future lives. The reason for this is that such states are not directly perceived by the senses, and consequently there is no evidence for them. If a common person cannot directly perceive past or future lives, where would the evidence that such things exist be?

Madhyamika Refutation Of The Materialist View

To this conviction Madhyamika presents the following question:

Is this non-perception of past and future existences a direct perception or not?

If it is not a direct perception, on what grounds then can the materialists decide whether those unperceived things exist? The materialists have established that, according to their rules, direct perception of an object furnishes the only grounds for belief in the existence of that object.

If, on the other hand, the materialists answer that this non-perception of past and future existences is a direct perception, that gives rise to a completely new problem. If it is possible indeed to directly perceive the non-perception of something, then it follows that even a nonexistent thing is directly perceived. And the moment the nonexistent thing gets directly perceived, and according to the materialist rules, the nonexistent thing becomes existent.

Thus, the existent and the nonexistent things meld into a single irrational something, which cannot withstand any analysis, nor can it support the materialist thesis.

However the materialists choose to answer the question whether non-perception is a direct perception or not, they invalidate their own system. We are therefore forced to reach the conclusion that their fundamental rationale is based on pure unexamined dogma, or, put another way, their system is based on completely irrational grounds.

More to come...