Thus we see different practitioners getting 'stuck' at different levels of substantialist beliefs. Less refined ones tend to hang on to the more coarse manifestations of substantiality, such as believing in a separate personhood, etc. More refined practitioners, who manage to get beyond such coarse reifications, usually tend to get stuck at a less obvious impasse. Such advanced practitioners can be recognized as belonging to the 'substantialists' by their afilliation with more sublime concepts, such as Tao, or space, the sky, consciousness, awareness, or mind, etc. All these subtle concepts (i.e. Tao, vast expanse of space, vast expanse of mind, etc.) are only reified substance, masquerading as something non-substantial.
The Buddha, upon attaining the unexcelled perfect enlightenment (samuttara samyak sambodhi), expressed his keen concern regarding these issues. He lamented:
This Dhamma, won by me, is deep, difficult to see, difficult to understand... But this is a generation delighting in sensual pleasure... And if I were to teach Dhamma and others were not to understand me, this would be a weariness to me, this would be a vexation to me(Vinayapitaka, I 3f)
Why Was The Buddha Vexed?
The Buddha knew that it is relatively easy to convince regular, untutored person that his/her ways are deleterious. Most people realize that they're not even close to being perfect.But the person who had spent years perfecting her virtues and polishing her insight may not be so amenable to the suggestion that her ways might actually be ruinous. The Buddha was mostly worried about such practitioners. He knew that all people have this ingrained tendency to search for the Holy Grail, for the Philosopher's Stone. And he also knew that such miraculous stone is merely a fool's gold. In other words, the existence of a wish-fulfilling gem is nowhere evidenced. The search for the primordial substance, so dear to each and everyone of us, is very deleterious for a very simple reason -- it is a colossal waste of time.
And while ordinary people tend to search for this primordial substance in vulgar places (such as material wealth, fame, longevity, etc.), more sophisticated practitioners, who managed to rise above such crass concerns, seek for this substance in exalted areas, such as mind, dharma, nirvana, and such. Because of that, the Buddha knew that such practitioners absolutely won't be able to understand his teaching. He knew that they will consequently choke on something so illusive, so fine grained, that it would be incredibly difficult to get them to realize that they actually have a serious problem.
Nagarjuna's Solution
Shakyamuni Buddha introduced a teaching so radical, that it took a number of generations before the dust could settle and the teaching could be systematized. After several partial attempts at systematizing the Buddha's teaching (i.e. Abhidharma, Prajna-paramita), Nagarjuna was the first master who managed to fully expose the essence of the Buddha's teaching without leaving any unresolved issues.This systematization resulted in the formulation of the Madhyamika school of Buddhist practice. This school is based on the discipline of the Middle Way, beyond the extremes of views. Nagarjuna explained it thus:
If I were to advance any proposition whatsoever, from that I would incur error. On the contrary, I advance no proposition. Therefore, I incur no error.(Mulamadhyamaka karika)
This relinquishing of all views is what constitutes, according to Nagarjuna, the essence of the Buddha's teaching.
I reverently bow to Gautama the Buddha who, out of compassion, has taught the true doctrine in order to relinquish all views.(closing verse, Mulamadhyamaka karika XXVII 30)
This teaching could only be fully understood if the doctrine of Two Truths is mastered. Here is the essence of the Two Truths, as Nagarjuna puts it:
In teaching the Dharma, Buddhas resort to two truths: worldly conventional truth and ultimate truth.Once the significance of the above formulation is fully realized, one cannot help but become free of any substantialist impulses. Nevertheless, regardless how simple the instructions given to us by Nagarjuna may appear to be, in reality this is the most difficult teaching to follow.
The ultimate cannot be taught without resorting to conventions; and without recourse to the ultimate, one cannot reach nirvana.
Because the ultimate cannot be demonstrated in and of itself, beings tend to confuse it with conventional manifestations. And because conventional manifestations cannot be flatly rejected (being the vehicles for realizing the ultimate), deluded beings have tremendous difficulties understanding and adhering to the teaching. Only devout followers of the Middle Way school (i.e. Madhyamika) can avoid falling into the substantialist trap.
Two Truths Vs. Three Truths
Things are far from being idyllic even in the extremely rarefied world of Madhyamika practice. One would think that those practitioners, who had summoned the courage to set their foot on the Middle Way course by relinquishing all views, would cease erring on the substantialist side. Alas, that doesn't seem to be the case.How do some Madhyamikas fall into the substantialist trap? It all has to do with the misapprehension of the Two Truths teaching. The Buddha had taught that all manifestations could be viewed in two lights -- in the correct light, and in the incorrect light. When phenomena are viewed in the incorrect light, we are dealing with the conventional, all-concealing truth (samvrti in Sanskrit). When those same phenomena are viewed in the correct light, we are dealing with the ultimate, indeterminate truth (paramartha in Sanskrit). The all-concealing truth, or truth by consensus, is no different than the ultimate truth, only it is subjectively falsified. The error is entirely epistemological, imagined, and has no ontological status of a really existing entity.
At the same time, the ultimate truth is nothing more than the all-concealing truth after the error of misperception has been corrected. This unity of the Two Truths is at the essence of the Buddha's teaching, and it has been underlined and re-emphasized by Nagarjuna, as well as by many other prominent Madhyamika practitioners.
So, where's the problem then? The extremely subtle issue creeps in when some Madhyamika practitioners get hit by the realization that what this doctrine actually means is that the conventional, consensus-based realm doesn't really exist. It can be best illustrated with the following (classic) example:
Imagine a person hiking in the countryside, who sees a wheat field in the distance. In the middle of the field, he sees a farmer, and decides to ask him for directions. The hiker starts yelling: "Hello, over here! Hey, you, can you hear me?" But the farmer doesn't seem to respond. Getting closer to the farmer, the hiker becomes more and more agitated, getting annoyed that the farmer doesn't seem to exhibit a common decency to reply to his calls. The hiker now gets positively angry with the farmer, and starts marching toward him with the intention to teach him a good lesson in etiquette.
But as the hiker gets closer to the farmer, he suddenly notices that the farmer is nothing more than a scarecrow. All of a sudden, all the pent up drama dissipates in the same manner it tends to evaporate when a person wakes up from a very intense dream.
The farmer who seemingly was the cause of all the fuss and fury, turned out to be completely non-existent. His apparent 'existence' was imputed, or ascribed by the hiker. More careful analysis, performed by that same hiker, resulted in the correction of error; this method is referred to as removal of ascriptions, and is part of the regular Madhyamika practice.
Similarly, all the other seemingly solid and existing phenomena invariably turn out to dissipate in the same way the imputed farmer had dissipated after more careful analysis. And according to the Buddha and Nagarjuna, as well as many other Buddhist Masters, no evidence exists of any phenomena that is not imputed/ascribed in the exact same manner.
Knowing this, it is easy to see how unreal the domain of conventional, everyday truth is. However, the inherent bias toward substantiality, that many of us seem to cherish above anything else (even above truth itself), compels some practitioners to still hold that behind all that charade, there is still some solid, immutable, reliable substance. According to their line of reasoning, all the demonstrable apparitions that the world of consensus-based truth deludes us with are based on some underlying non-deceiving substance. While they agree that things appear to arise and cease, and that these cycles are deceptive, they nevertheless insist that such deception, such error is only possible if there is something real, something substantial causing things to get imputed or incorrectly ascribed.
Such practitioners cannot conceive of the validity of accepting wholeheartedly the utter emptiness, or lack of self-determination of any manifested phenomena. Even after convincing themselves in the evident utmost unfindability of any perceived phenomena, they still keep on insisting that such phenomena continue to exist "according to their characteristics". In other words, while the substantialist Madhyamikas accept that manifested phenomena are devoid of real, inherent existence, they still must exist based on their attributes.
In this manner, the Madhyamikas with a substantialist bend introduce the third truth. That one they call the "approximate truth". Before we proceed with the analysis of the third truth, let us first examine all the possibilities. In the final analysis, it is possible to formulate four truths about the world:
- Hallucinatory truth
- All-concealing truth (i.e. truth by consensus)
- Approximate truth
- Ultimate truth (i.e. the indeterminate truth)
2. All-concealing truth: as already explained, everyday occurrences, which may appear totally solid and real, turn out to be mere figment of imagination when examined more closely.
3. Approximate truth: as mentioned above, this is the truth about phenomena who do not exist according to their true nature (which is nowhere to be found), yet exist according to their characteristics.
4. Ultimate truth: indeterminate, indescribable, surpasses conceptual realm.
Different philosophical and religious systems may subscribe to different combinations of the above list of possible truths. No system is known that embraces all four at the same time. Some systems embrace only one truth (such as Materialistic system, which basically only holds that whatever is accessible to immediate perception is true, everything else being false; as such, the materialists deal only with the second truth, the so called all-concealing truth).
Some systems embrace three truths at once (apparently, Vedanta being one such system, where the hallucinatory truth is accepted as a subject of investigation, together with the all-concealing truth and the ultimate truth).
In Buddhism, the doctrine teaches only about the Two Truths: the all-concealing truth and the ultimate truth. The Buddhist practitioners show no interest in analyzing the hallucinatory truth. However, in the Madhyamika practice, the substantialist current felt the need to introduce the third truth, namely the approximate truth.
Approximate Truth
Some Madhyamika practitioners, upon reaching the inevitable conclusion that all experiences are nothing but mere figment of imagination, feel uneasy about being forced to conclude that experiences are essentially unreal. While the inviolable evidence compels them to proclaim how things do not actually exist, they still cannot help but murmur under their breath: "How is it possible that things don't really exist?" Due to their deeply ingrained substantialist bias, they cannot really accept the fact that everything anyone could ever experience is a mere error in perception, a blatant miscalculation or misinterpretation.Thus they rush to impute another concept, that of "approximate truth". The rationale they offer for introducing this newfangled concept is based on the ineffability of the ultimate truth. Their argumentation goes as follows:
"If everyday experiences are phantom-like, and if the ultimate truth is unreachable by the rational means, how are we to teach the deluded beings?"
The simple answer by the non-substantialist Madhyamikas is: "In order to teach deluded beings, use the falsity of the manifested phenomena as a starting point for spotting and correcting the error. Once the error gets corrected, the ultimate gets realized."
However, in the approach suggested above one cannot find any handles that would help one solidify, or reify one's need for substantiality. Both the unborn error, as well as the act of correcting it, are totally insubstantial. And the realized ultimate truth is also insubstantial, simply by the virtue of being indeterminate.
Such situation is absolutely untenable for the practitioners who have even the tiniest substantialist inclination. For them, after all is being said and done, after everything has been analyzed and debunked, a solid residue of something distilled that is reliable, immutable and definable must remain. And that definitely is not the case with the devastating dialectic analysis that the Madhyamika practice brings.
In order to keep the dreaded insubstantiality at bay, the substantialist Madhyamika practitioners introduce the concept of approximate truth in the last ditch attempt at clutching straws. The practice of approximate truth is devised in order to attempt bridging the perceived gap between the all-concealing relative truth, and the ineffable absolute, ultimate truth. While proper Madhyamika practice forbids us to introduce any concepts that may attempt to approximate the characteristics of the ultimate truth, the substantialist current of the Madhyamika practice encourages such attempts. Thus, such practitioners do not limit themselves to only exposing all theories as being idle speculations (by reducing their conclusions to absurdity), they also actively engage in weaving their own theories about the world. They allow for introducing positive propositions during the debate, thus directly violating Nagarjuna's dictum:
If I were to advance any proposition whatsoever, from that I would incur error. On the contrary, I advance no proposition. Therefore, I incur no error.(Mulamadhyamaka karika)
Two Teachings
In order to suppress the strong urges toward substantiality, Buddhas and bodhisattvas resort to two teachings. The easiest way to explain the difference between these two teaching is to give a simple illustration:Imagine a person who must spend one month alone in the forest. His biggest concern is survival. Not having any skills required to live alone in the wilderness, that person is getting close to having a panic attack when thinking about what awaits him in the dreaded forest.
He may hear of a good teacher, a person who himself is known for being able to survive alone in wilderness for a prolonged period of time. So he goes to see that teacher, to ask for help.
The teacher may ask him: "When are you scheduled to spend one moth in the forest?"
"In April", the person would reply.
"April could be tough," warns the teacher. "No berries or any other plants will be available yet. You may have to rely entirely on mushrooms for your sustenance."
"All right, I'll eat the mushrooms then!" the person replies, being somewhat relieved to hear that it is possible for him to somehow stay alive there.
"Wait, not so fast!" warns the teacher. "You cannot just go there and start eating the first mushroom you stumble upon. There are many different mushrooms in the forest, many of which are very poisonous. If you don't know what you're doing, you'll drop dead on the forest floor the very first day!"
"But, what am I to do then?" the person asks desperately.
"Well, you can either learn all there is to know about mushrooms, or... I can try and teach you how to obtain keen vision. You see, even if you acquire encyclopedic knowledge of the mushrooms, that still wouldn't mean that you are free of risk. Many poisonous mushrooms look very similar to the edible ones. You will then grasp for the innocent looking one, and will soon find yourself rolling on the ground in mortal coil."
"Please help me, what should I do then?"
"You need to acquire the ability to see through the mushroom as something that is desirable or as something to be avoided based on the characteristics of that mushroom. If you can see through that, you'll be able to see which ones contain the deadly poison."
In a similar way, in order to attain liberation, deluded beings need to let go of their attachments. So, the most natural way to teach them is to warn them against attaching.
However, that would be similar to saying "don't eat mushrooms, they may be poisonous, you never know!" The person who accepts the teaching, which advocates not to attach, will be right in his practice. However there will remain a certain residue in that person's mind which will sit there like a cloud of doubt. Sort of like "All right, I've abstained from eating that mushroom because I know that it may be poisonous; but what if it isn't? Am I not missing a delicious meal then?"
In order to circumvent this doubt, Nagarjuna taught the method of direct seeing: if you can learn how to see directly, and to realize the very emptiness of phenomena, your propensity to attach/reject will spontaneously melt away. Once you do that, you will never again suffer from doubts whether your decision not to attach to something was a correct one or not.
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