American Academy of Religion

Negation, Nirva and Nonsense

Author(s): Bibhuti S. Yadav
Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Dec., 1977), pp. 451-471
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1463751
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JAAR XLV/4 (1977), 451-471

Negation, Nirvana and Nonsense

Bibhuti S. Yadav

ABSTRACT
To do justice to a concept as fundamental as Nirvana is to let it have its context.
To this end I have selected the 25th chapter of Chandrakirti's commentary
(Prasannapada) on Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka Sistram. Here Chandrakirti,following
Nagarjuna, is not interested in what Nirvana is; rather he is concerned with how a
Buddhist must not say what Nirvana is. The issue is clearly methodological, of showing
that a Buddhist must reject epistemology as the methodology of talking about
Nirvana. Man, according to Buddhist and Hindu philosophers, is healthy to the extent
that he is a cognitive subject, and his world a system of determinable referentssuch that
something about them could be affirmed or denied through language. Such an
epistemology, dignified as medicine, involves an either/or logic, its metaphysical
argument being that something either exists or it does not. Chandrakirti, on the other
hand, requests us to think therapeutically, which is to show that the either/or logic is
not a solution to the problem of life but a drug invented by those who love to "get
high." He equates the logic of 'is' and 'not-is' with suffering, and argues that the
Buddha's silence about Nirvana is a proposal therapeutically to liberate mankind from
either/or logic.
In this context I have formulated the issue this way: Can a Buddhist say that
"Nirvana does not exist" is a case of significant negation? Chandrakirti'sanswer is in
the negative. "The pot is not on the ground" is a case of significant negation because,
and only because, conditions for the cognition of both pot and the ground are given,
and we perceive the empty ground. It is this non-cognition of the cognizable pot that is
the reason for saying "The pot is not on the ground" is a case of significant negation.
The limit of negation is the limit of cognitive conditions; that which could not be
cognitively affirmed cannot be significantly denied. "Nirvana does not exist" is not a
significant claim for the simple reason that "Nirvana exists" is not a cognitive claim.
Chandrakirti concludes that Nirvana could neither be affirmed nor denied; it is a
'scandal' for logic. The metaphysician making claims about Nirvana is like the man the
Buddha encountered in Kapilavastu. The old man suffers because his will-to-be
surpasses the medium (body) of being! The metaphysician 'suffers' in that his will to
claim cognitively surpasses the conditions given which he can claim. Metaphysics is a
methodological fantasy, a tool to confuse the wish that "Being be" with the claim that
"Being is."

Bibhuti S. Yadav (Ph.D., Banaras Hindu University) is Assistant Professor of

Religion at Temple University. He has published articles in Indian Philosophical
Quarterly and Journal of Dharma.

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BibhutiS. Yadav
Yadav

452
I
T

he 25th chapter of Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka Sdstram is called

"Nirvana Pariksa." Here Nagarjuna is not concerned about Nirvana
which he characterizes as freedom from death and rebirth. Nirvana,
so described, is not the issue for the simple reason that no Buddhist would
disagree with it (Nagarjuna:228). What he is concerned with is signified by the
word "Pariksa," i.e., examination, and consequent destruction of
metaphysical thinking about Nirvana. Such a step is both bold and original.
One established trend of Indian thought has been that with regard to the
problem of the world; as with its solution, one either thinks metaphysically or
one does not think at all. Metaphysical thinking involves the logic of"is" (asti)
and "not-is"(nasti), its argument being that something either exists or it does
not. Pressed by this either/or logic, the early Buddhists felt obliged to claim
that Nirvana "exists," or that it is negation of all that "exists." One can see
them making claims such as "Nirvana is existence in which suffering is
absent," or that 'Nirvana is mere non-existence (of suffering)." Man's
existence, according to Hindu and Buddhist philosophers, is suffering which
they claim is caused by his failure to establish cognitive truths about the
world. Buddhists propose in the preface of their works to solve the problem of
aging, disease and dying (Dharmakirti: 2). This they seek to accomplish by
showing that "Existence is momentary" is true, and that "Non-existence is
non-momentary" is a valid claim, despite the fact that, by definition, the
logical subject of the proposition is empty. Nyaya (Hinduism), seeking
transcendencefrom the karmic circularity, proposes to establish "Ling"which
stands for inferential reasoning. The standard concern of Nyaya has been this:
What cognitive conditions must be fulfilled given that "X (action) is followed
by Y (consequence)" is a valid claim? It seems in India philosophers managed
to arrive at their conclusions by forgetting the problem they undertook to
solve. They sacrificed the purpose (prayojanatva) for method (prameyatva),
the existence that suffers for the logic of "existence" and "non-existence."
It is this logic as the methodology of making ontological claims that
Nagarjuna seeks to destroy. There is an atmosphere of anger and anguish in
his Madhyamaka Sdstram. Chandrakirti, in his Prasannapadd, argues that
not to think metaphysically is not necessarily not to think, that to discover the
structure of metaphysical thinking also is to think (Nagarjuna: 217). Those
who do either/or reasoning about the world and Nirvana are functionally
illiterate (216). He considers as sick that form of life which seeks expression
through metaphysical thinking (228). His is a request to think therapeutically,
which is to examine the causes and conditions given which the metaphysician
succeeds in making a logical and propositional issue out of something that is
existential and dispositional. Such a therapeutical thinking considers the
metaphysics of "is" and "not-is" to be not a solution to the problem of
suffering but a drug invented by those who love to "get high" (228).
Chandrakirti is not saying that Nirvana is being or that it is nothing; he is not
saying it is neither being nor nothing. He is simply saying that Nirvana is a

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Nonsense453
Negation,
Nirvana,and
and Nonsense
Negation, Nirvana,

453

case of logical nonsense (viprakrsta) in that it could not be claimed as "is"or

"not-is." Nirvana, as nonsense, is not only a predicament of rational thinking
but, more so, a therapeutic necessity. Chandrakirti equates "suffering"with
the logic of "is" and "not-is," (229) and argues that the Buddha's language
about Nirvana is a proposal to liberate mankind from either/or logic.
So the lines are drawn. Two claims, one metaphysical and the other
antimetaphysical, are in a deadlock. Too often the Madhyamika Nirvana has
been called nihilism, its studied silence on Nirvana an "innocent"mysticism so
indiscriminately attributed to the "East." Such claims are too numerous to
mention, much less to counter. There is a tendency to treat the Buddhist
silence as a proposal and not a conclusion from an argument. This, I submit, is
to read Buddhism for non-Buddhist reasons. I am not saying that "silence"
does not involve mysticism. I am only saying that it too is born of a world of
perception and inference, of cognitive ascertainability and deniability, of
speakability and silence logically fixed as the limit of logic (tarka). It emerged
in a situation where philosophers walked naked because they found the
category of causation to be a contradiction in terms, a world where logicians
felt ashamed of hearing expressions such as "no-mind," "non-dualism,"
"nothingness," "supra-logical" and the "logic of the illogical" (vayam apy
adya lajjitah). I propose to discuss the problem of negation and Nirvana in the
context of the deadlock indicated above, with the help of Chandrakirti's
commentary on Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka Sdstram. Since Nirvana is
freedom from suffering, it is helpful to discuss the question of thinking about
Nirvana in the context of that frame of referenceto which the manner of man's
being in the world is suffering.
II
This frame of referenceis very important, for in it is involved the question
of a worldview. The Upanisad says, "Something is pleasant or unpleasant not
because of itself. ... It is because of the I that the other is pleasant or
unpleasant" (Brhaddranyaka Upanisad: 2.4.5; p. 68). The Upanisad is laying
down the conditions for the possibility and perception of a problem. A world
where no man lived is no concern of man. And the world as lived experience is
problematic because of man's point of view on things as a subject. It is in terms
of this frame of reference, grounded in man's mode of being as a subject, that
everything else becomes a problem. The Brahma Purana describes it
beautifully: "Why do you get embodied in the mother's womb, undergo the
agony of lived experience, and in search of what kind of pleasure do you seek
to become incarnate again?" (4.2.24-32).
The question addressed to the mother's womb reveals a world that may
be called Indian. Such a world is conceived as a thickness of persons in
relations; it is an extension of one's own self carved out of space (cittabala) for
the sheer pleasure of the ego's being in time. "The world exists to a subject
insofar as, and to the extent that, the ego has a sense of 'I am' through his
body. The world is an I-Thou drama with the I as the primordial center of
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BibhutiS. Yadav

reference" (Yoga Vasistha: II, 15). The world as lived-experience is an

extended subjectivity of my existence as ego, a self-reflexive situation and a
mirror of my own face (mukura bimbitam). The ego is not derived from the
world; it is the other way around. Subjecthood is not conferred upon man by
society in terms of its moral requirements;it is not a gift from God and it is not
a demonstrable fact to be inferredthrough the cogito. The ego is an existential
apriori (anadi); its being pre-supposed in all mediated experience is
admittedly a methodological predicament. That is why the being in the
mother's womb is not referredto as an embryo but addressed as a person; it is
not a potential neurological system but a situation wherein a world is
immanent. The implication is that birth is not a biological phenomenon but
an act of embodiment (Yoga Vadistha:I, 482). I am incarnate through body to
discover the limit of my immanence as a subject. My body is not just what I
have, it is the means and therefore the limit of all that I can have:
(atmanumapakatvam indriyatvam). Man's existence as a subject is given an
ontological guarantee; he is born as a subject because of his having been a
subject. Birth, therefore, is a hermeneutical event, a dispositional history
inheriting all that has been and promising all that shall be (janmi janmani
jivanam). The being in the mother's womb is a person, having his own
archeology and teleology (kamabhogi sakamasca). He is born to be reborn,
the condition of his living is dying. His birth is not a "trauma,"his thought of
death not "unconscious." Birth and death are not "unknown" to him but so
familiar that he is weary of dying in a way that he will be reborn to die again
(Devi Bhdgavata: 4.2.24-32).
The question also indicates that to be temporal is not enough. In order to
think philosophically, there should be a sense of weariness with existence in
recurrence (Yoga Viaistha: I, 127). One should have lived many lives, long
enough at least, to realize that the next life is not going to be any better.
Infinity, says Nachiketa in the Katha Upanisad, solves no problem, and there
is no hope beyond or later on in history (1.1.28). He goes to the God of death
(Yama) not to ask for personal immortality; it is offered him and he rejects it
on the grounds that he has had it. The problem of the Buddha is not just
seeing-as we all do-an old man; it is his perception that the man has the will
to walk in spite of his physical inability to do so (Asvaghosa: I, 36). The
Buddha has no intention to refuse the "lotus eyed" women of Kapilavastu,
who are out to confide in his ears that eros is the telos of being (I, 47). The
Buddha acknowledges the value of such a truth. He is anxious to avoid the
plight of ViSvamitra, the master of penance, who could not resist Ghrtachi
and who, in erotic meditation, confused the span of ten years with one day
(1,45). The Buddha's only worry is the sexual obsession incarnate in the
pleasant illusion to "think young" (capalam yauvanam priyah). His problem
is not just aging. It is Yayati's (an old man) metapsychological wish to
"return,"outsmarting the physiological by demanding on loan the body of his
own son. Suffering is this alienation between "is"and "can";it is immanence
in terms of man's will to be rebelling against the predicament of ceasing to be.
The Indian concept of the world as suffering signifies this immanence.

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Negation,Nirvana,
Nirv&na,and Nonsense

455

Suffering is the predicament of man's seeking to have everything without

ceasing to be an ego. The world is the modality of the ego's existence seeking
fulfillment and ending with emptiness; it involves the paradox of eating which
is not only to satisfy hunger but a qualification to be hungry once more. Such
a circular immanence is called samsara, i.e., the ego's passion of repeating
itself in search of itself. Transcendence is freedom from this self-repetition
(Yoga Vdsistha : II, 141). Samsdra is the situation of not-being-oneself; it is
because of not knowing oneself. Freedom from such a circular immanence is
called moksa or nirvana, a state of having reclaimed one's being through
knowledge.
It is in this samsara that the problem of negation arises. In it my not-being
anymore what I was is the condition of what I am; in it I am a will to be what I
am not, to have what I have not. In the world it so happens that I do not find
what I seek, and I find what I do not seek. In it I say "I am" and "This is mine."
But there is a contingency that I may not be; the consciousness of "mine"
involves the anxiety that it may not be "mine."In the world something comes
to be by not being a non-being anymore, the non-existence of the pot as a pot
in the clay out of which it was shaped as a pot. Something is not anymore after
having been, destruction of pot "X" such that it can never be the same "X." In
the world we say that a horse is not a cow, that the book is not on the table,
that the air is not blue, and that the daughter of a barren woman does not
exist. This state of affairs of the world has to be related to the modes of our
cognition, it must admit of intelligible discourse. That "I am not anymore
what I was," is true. But involved in such an assertion is the question of
cognitive conditions given which I can validly claim so. To say "Air is not
blue" is simple. What is not so simple is whether we cognize air as not being
blue the same way we cognize the wall as not being blue, or whether it is a case
of cognition at all. That "The horse is not a cow" can easily be granted. What
could not be so easily granted are the cognitive conditions given which we can
say "The horse is not a cow" is a valid claim. Is it that not being a cow is the
very being of the horse, or is it just an instance of our conceptual and linguistic
behavior of locating the horse from all that is not a horse? What is at stake is
whether negation is involved in our thinking and speaking about what is, or
whether it is precisely the being of which is. And last, but not least, there are
wise men who say that a man's nature is to seek freedom from pain, and that
moksa or nirvana is a kind of experience where there is absolute negation of
pain (Gautama: 1,1,2; p. 59).
We propose to discuss two positions in which the manner of talking
about nirvana (moksa) is sharply incompatible. One is that of NyayaVai?esika (N.V.) which claims moksa as absolute absence of the world
(Gautama: 1,1,2; p. 59). Moksa is objective, though negative, being; it admits
of cognitive and linguistic treatment and therefore is an epistemological
problem (Vacaspati Misra: 35). To avoid the justified charge of talking
abstraction, N.V. argues that metaphysical thinking promises sound health
which is to help man make contact with his destiny beyond dharma. Dharma
stands for the individual's social existence, the ethic of sexual satisfaction and
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the value of being as having in the world historical. But the ultimate destiny of
man is to become tired of being as having, and metaphysics is ontologization
of this tiredness. It shows that having is contingent on his being; philosophy is
rationalization of the individual's freedom from his further being in the world
and therefore from all that he has been (Gautama: 59). To think
metaphysically is to show that death is equivalent to the obligation of dying,
and that the act of dying has a philosophical foundation. This foundation is
moksa, an ontological nothingness further than which there is nothing. The
other position is that of Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti. Their request is that"what we cannot speak, we must consign to silence." It is nonsense (vipakrsta)
to speak of Nirvana as "is" or "not-is" for the simple reason that cognitive
conditions are not given. Metaphysics, because of its refusal to be silent, is a
dispositional disease that needs to be psychoanalyzed (Nagarjuna: 226).
Problems of life, they say, are not logical but psychological; the Buddha's
silence speaks of practicing pdramita for the simple reason that nobody fails
to die for lack of ontological reasons.
The issue therefore is this: Whether cognitive conditions are given in
order for us to claim that "Nirvana (moksa) is absolute absence of the world"
is a negative assertion, and whether it is valid. We shall take up the famous
paradigm: "The pot is not on the ground."
III
Nyaya-Vaisesika (N.V.) is essentially a metaphysical system. It sets upon
itself the task of defining its subject matter, the methodology it adopts and the
statement of purpose. Metaphysics, according to N.V., is the study of
categories (padarthasastra). The term "category" signifies ontology, the
question of "what there is." Included in it is the task of determining the
structure-both generic and derivative-of what exists, of the methodology
of arriving at intelligible predications (sadhana), of showing that those
predications are valid (pariksana). The methodological model of N.V.
metaphysics is not mathematics but medicine. It claims that the mode of
man's being in the world is a case of transcendental sickness (adhyatmika
dukha); it seeks to diagnose this sickness by showing first that everything that
exists has sufficient reason behind it. Metaphysics therefore is an act of
analysis whose standard form of reasoning is this: A is B because of C
(hetusastra). It agrees with medicine (Indian) that mind is confused, there is a
cause of this confusion, and that there is a method to diagnose the causes of
confusion which in turn leads to mental health (Patanjali: 178). The N.V.
philosophers claim that there is a therapeutic dimension to metaphysics. A
sick form of life is due to a sick form of understanding; an illogical use of
language causes a world of jealousy, conceit and fear. Problems of life are
cognitive and propositional; the necessity is to evolve a methodology of valid
cognitions and intelligible use of language. Language binds, and it can liberate
as well (Gautama: 19).
The proposal for a liberating language is a proposal for a world of true
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Negation,Nirvana,and Nonsense

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propositions, for a cognitive language and reality as a system of predicable

referents. This proposal N.V seeks to achieve by cultivating epistemology,
which is defined as the methodology of making ontological claims (Gautama:
2). A good life is correlated with life lived in terms of valid cognitions. Man's
health consists in being a cognitive subject (pramata), and a healthy world is a
system of definite, determinable referents such that something about them
could be affirmed or denied through language. Existence is cognizable and
objectifiable; that which cannot be cognitively determined cannot be claimed
to exist. Nyaya therefore conceives a world of substance, quality and action;
of generality, particularityand relation; of soul, mind and body; of size, sound
and taste; of perception, inference and words; of space, time and negation.
Above all it is a world of birth, death and moksa as "absolute absence of pain."
With the definition of emancipation as "absolute absence of pain," two
points of necessity are involved in the N.V. system. First, discussion of
negation, in its various forms, becomes a metaphysical imperative
(Vallabhacharya: 17). Secondly, negation is not just a logical but an
ontological category. Reality, according to Nyaya, is of two kinds: existence
(bhava) and non-existence (abhava). Nyaya therefore fails to appreciate the
difficulties of those to whom the negative proposition "The pot is not on the
ground" is an embarrassment. A proposition is that form of discourse wherein
a predicate is affirmed or denied of a known subject. Given this, the
proposition "The pot is not on the ground" is apparently paradoxical. If there
is nothing corresponding to its not, the judgment is not true; in its confidence
to say something is involved the fallacy of saying something about nothing.
And if the judgment is true, insofar as there is something corresponding to it,
it is not negative. Hence the paradox, which could better be expressed through
a question: How can we significantly speak about something that admittedly
does not exist? Nyaya's response is that the manner of formulating the
question is wrong in the first place. It reflects an ontological claim on the basis
of a too narrow view of reality. The claim that reality is exclusively positive is
trivial; it is not a conclusion from an argument but an assumption which does
violence to experience. Nyaya claims that the "Pot is not on the ground" is as
good a case of what is given as the claim that the "Pot is on the ground." Nyaya
is arguing that a negative judgment, like a positive one, is descriptive of that
which is the case. In so doing, Nyaya is not obliged to avoid the so-called
paradox of a negative judgment by "adopting a formal and abstract account
of a negative judgment." On the contrary, it is using ontological language,
arguing that the problem of negation is not semantical but metaphysical. The
necessity is not to rewrite the sentence expressing a negative judgment, it is to
revise the ontological claim which does violence to experience by not
admitting the existence of negative facts. It advances the claim that "being is
no more real than non-being." To say "The pot is not on the ground" is
therefore to say "There is absence of the pot on the ground."
The Buddhist-claiming that reality is exclusively positive-argues like
this: the statement "The pot is not on the ground" is equivalent to "There is
empty ground." He is accusing Nyaya of committing a category mistake, for
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confusing the non-perception of the pot with the perception of the nonexistence of the pot. The "negatively given" being admittedly different from
the "positively given" on Nyaya's terms, what the Buddhist wants to know is
this: How is the negatively given (abhava) different from nothing (tuccha)?
And how definitely does its cognitive form-if there is one at all-differ from
the cognition of the empty ground, or from no cognition at all?
The tradition to which Nyaya belongs is a tradition of saying and
showing, and not of "silence";its pride has been that the language of ontology
contains the sweetness of logic (vani tarka rajosvalah). Nyaya, therefore, says
that by "given" it means the cognitively given and that talking about reality,
including non-existence, means using a cognitive language (Gautama: 22). A
"given"is anything that could be affirmed, denied or differentiated insofar as
it belongs to a class (Gautama: 2.267; p. 291). And a valid cognition is always
definite; it posits a referent beyond itself such that something about it could be
affirmed or denied through language. Nyaya thus claims that a negative
judgment, like the affirmative, is cognitive; it has a referent transcendent to
itself and says something about it that could not be said about anything else
(Gautama: 22). In other words, a negativejudgment is a definite description of
a definite given; the not-A is different from A on the one hand and B and not-B
on the other. What the-Nyaya is doing is to provide ontological-cognitional
conditions to substantiate its claim that the "negatively given" is an objective
reality. The ontological condition is that the "not-is" is given only in the
context of something "thatis. "The cognitive condition is this: the cognition of
the "not-is" depends on that of its counterpositive.
Some elaboration is in order. The model at hand is: "The pot is not on the
ground." The issue is whether this statement has ontological reference and is
therefore cognitive. The point to note is that we are not talking about pot or
ground. What we are talking about is the absence of the pot on the ground.
Now whatNyaya is claiming is this: The absence of the pot on the ground is an
objective fact which is different both from the pot and the empty ground. The
Buddhists argue that the alleged absence of the pot on the ground is in fact the
empty ground. Their argument is that absence of an object is not an objectjust
as "not-red"is not a color. In response, Nyaya says that the absence of the pot
is a definite object in the sense that it can be differentiated from what it is not.
The absence of the pot, for instance, is different from the absence of a book.
This is so because absence depends upon that whose absence it is. The absence
of the pot is a definite something because that whose absence it is, is a definite
something; it is cognizable and therefore objectifiable and real. The objective
distinctness of the real absence could be put this way: "X (pot) cannot occur in
the same locus where the absence of X is supposed to occur." The force of the
argument is that the absence of the pot has as definite a form as the pot has.
That is why "absence of the pot" does not referto the so-called empty ground,
just as "It is raining" does not ipso facto mean "It is snowing."
So much then, in response to the question whether the absence of the pot
on the ground has a definite form of being. The question now is how is it
cognized? That is to say, what is its cognitive form?Nyaya's answer is this: the
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"negatively given" is grasped by sense perception as much as its

counterpositive is. In other words, the statement "The pot is not on the
ground," is as good a case of perception as "The pot is on the ground." It is a
case of perception in that it is a cognition caused by sense-object contact, an
objectively given case is revealed through that contact, and it could
methodologically be shown whether or not it corresponds with what actually
is given (Sridhara: 226).
IV
Dharmakirti, representing Buddhism, has been growing impatient in the
meanwhile. His immediate response is that the Nyaya's view of the "negatively
given" is naive because its view of the "positively given" is naive. Reality,
according to the Buddhist, is particular and positive. His further claim is that
there are no things, material or spiritual. The world is a system of sound, size
and shape; of taste, smell and touch; of perception, ideation and imagination.
There are sensibles and the senses; there is a complex process of ideation
resulting in the world of determinate experience as a system of conceptual
constructs. Positing reality as exclusively positive, the Buddhist explains
negation as a cognitive-linguistic phenomenon. Negation does not pertain to
what is, it is involved in what we think about that which is. Determinate
existence is conceptually fixed existence, its mode is such that the cognition,
and therefore propositional treatment, of A involves differentiating A from
all that is not A (vyavaccheda phalam vakyam). Thus "The pot is not on the
ground" does not refer to a real, though negative, entity. Only the relation of
conjunction between the pot and ground is denied for the simple reason that
the empty ground is cognized.
The Buddhist, consequent upon his view of reality, is arguing that the
"negative" not only involves that whose negation it is, its cognizability and
intelligibility requires that it be given in a context as well. That is to say,
negation not only involves what is being negated, but more so, where it is
being negated. But the question still stands: what kind of cognition, according
to the Buddhist, is involved in "The pot is not on the ground"?He prefers to
speak of what is involved by showing first what is not involved. His contention
is that it is not a perception of a non-existent pot, nor is it a non-perception of
a non-perceptible pot. In "The pot is not on the ground," the non-perception
of a perceptible pot is involved. It is this non-cognition of the cognizable that
the negative judgment is all about (Dharmakirti: 37).
Nyaya, in response, submits a request and a point of objection. His
request is that the Buddhist please speak in simpler language. He understands
the Buddhist's disassociation from commonsense naivete, but urges him
nevertheless to see that expressing ideas in difficult language is not necessarily
a sign of a distinguished philosopher. His point of objection is that the
Buddhist is commiting self-contradiction in that he claims to ascribe
perceptibility to an object which is admittedly absent from the locus, i.e., the
ground. Can a pot be said to be perceptible in the place where it is absent?
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Honest to tradition, the Buddhist rejoinder contains a request and a

change in style. His request to N.V. is that conveniently to miss the context
does not make a good argument, and the change in style is that he now speaks
in terms of personal pronouns. The statement "The pot is on the ground" we
make in the context that the pot could be on the ground, that a negative
situation is a case of unsuccessful expectation. The phrase "non-perception of
the perceptible" therefore does not mean demanding cognition of the pot
where it is absent. It means that conditions for the cognition of the pot are
given, and we perceive an empty ground. The issue is not whether we see the
pot because it is there, or that it is there because we see it. The issue is that in
"The pot is on the ground," the cognitive conditions of both the pot and the
ground are given. And we assert the pot's existence in a relation of
conjunction with the ground. In "The pot is not on the ground," the cognitive
conditions are given. We deny the relation of conjunction of the pot with the
ground for the simple reason that we cognize empty ground. The Buddhist
urges one to see that negation is the predicament of thought and language, and
by asserting what is not the case we assert something very significant about
what is the case. Philosophy performs a negative function. A philosopher may
indeed say, "This is a cow." But all he means is negation, that is, asserting cow
by negating all that is -not cow (anyapoha).
Nyaya agrees that the Buddhist indeed lives on his theory of negation,
only it is a theory that puts the cart before the horse. The Buddhist claim is
that the reference of the word "cow" involves exclusion of "non-cow." But
"non-cow" can be excluded only if and when the reference of the word "cow"
is established first; one cannot exclude everything in terms of nothing. Either
the Buddhist is reasoning in a circle, or else his theory of negation as exclusion
of the contrary (anyapoha) is superfluous (Shastri: 350). The problem in "The
pot is not on the ground" is the pot's absence on the ground, and the Buddhist
is talking about an empty ground. Nyaya claims that the cognitive situation
does not allow this, that the Buddhist is making a leap. Experience bears
testimony to the fact that an existing pot signifies a different state of affairs
than that in which it is not existing. It is true, Nyaya admits, that in certain
methodologically determined instances, we infer that something is not the
case on the ground that something else is the case. But this kind of reasoning is
out of place in the case of "The pot is not on the ground." It is not a good
argument to say that "The wall is not blue" because "It is either green or red."
Nyaya therefore asks: What does the expression "empty ground"signify?
The Buddhist's reply is this: It is called "empty ground" because it is a
suggested locus of a perceptible negatum (sambhavitabhiitavastu
bhuitalatvam).That is to say, B is called ground when there is A such that it is
expected to be, and is, on B. And B is called empty ground in relation to the
expected presence but actual absence of A on it. The expression "empty
ground" therefore signifies negation of the cognition of a possible cognizable.

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Negation,
Nirvxa, and
and Nonsense
Nonsense
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V

Negation defined as non-cognition of a cognizable X has a very telling

implication. It rejects the thesis, held by Kumarila of Mimamsa realism, that
negation signifies non-cognition of the non-cognizable. According to
Kumarila, in the being of an object X is inherent its non-being as all that is not
X. It means a pot exists in the form of a pot and it does not exist in the form of
a cloth. Both forms are ontologically real, and are equally given in experience.
To say "The pot is absent on the ground" is to mean that the pot in its nonexistent form inheres in the ground. Kumarila chastises Nyaya for saying that
the absence (of pot) is perceptuallygiven, and the Buddhist for claiming that it
is a case of the non-cognition of a cognizable. They both succumb to a
common mistake which is this: to be cognitively given is to admit of
perceptibility and inferability. This Kumarila refutes on the ground that
perceptual and inferential cognitions presuppose sense-object contact, and
that contact between senses and absence is impossible (473). In "The pot is on
the ground," the referent, as its cognitive form, is positive. Not so in "The pot
is not on the ground."The absence (of the pot) is objectively given. But it is not
a substance or an attribute; it has no color, extension or size. It makes sense to
say that "The pot is red"is a perceptual experience; but to say "The absence (of
the pot) is red"is nonsense. One can significantly say "The pot is round." But it
is nonsense to say "The absence (of pot) is round." The negatively given simply
cannot be sensed. It is redundant for a Buddhist to say that negation signifies
non-perception of a perceptible reality. In addition, the Buddhist claim does
violence to experience. On this logic, says the Mimamsa realist, a blind man,
for his not being able to perceive something that is perceptible, should make a
cognitive claim. This impasse Kumarila seeks to avoid by making two points.
One, the negatively given is objectively given such that it is different from all
cases of positively given. Secondly, it admits of distinctively cognitive, though
negative, experience. This experience, like its object, is different from all other
positive forms of cognition; it functions when, and only when, the positive
means of knowledge have ceased to operate (Parthasarathi Misra: 241). The
force of Kumarila's argument is that a cognitive claim is correlative with an
ontological claim. "If a thing be such that while it exists, its existence is
revealed through any of the five means of knowledge and if still there is no
knowledge of the thing, this non-cognition of the thing is evidence for the nonexistence of the thing" (473). What Kumarila is saying is that non-existence of
an object is as real as its existence, and that absence of all other means of
cognition signifies cognition of absence.
Dharmottara, following Dharmakirti, complains that the realist has by
now conveniently forgotten his definition of epistemology as the
methodology of making ontological claims. What the metaphysical realists
fail to see is that in "The pot is not on the ground," there is no breakdown of
knowledge. The non-perception of the pot is not absence of knowledge but
perception of only the ground in a situation where one expects to perceive a
pot. The pot admits of sense-experience, and its non-existence is inferred

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because it is not perceived even though the conditions of its perception are
given. It is this non-perception of the perceptible (pot) that is the argument
(pratisedha hetu) for saying that "The pot is not on the ground" is a cognitive
claim (Dharmakirti: 39-40). What Dharmakirti is saying is that a cognitive
claim is concommitant with cognitive conditions, that the non-existence of a
thing cannot be established when there are no means of cognition (60). The
question of existence and non-existence is a question of cognizable existence
and non-existence, of perceptibility and inferability. A cognitive claim is a
determinate claim, which in turn is about a determinate X implying thereby a
non-X such that it counts against X. This is known as anyapoha, a logical
theory in defense of the Buddhist metaphysics. Existence is subject to causes
and conditions; it is momentary and particular. One moment does not become
another moment; everything is different from everything else. To say "Thisis a
cow" is to say the cow is different from all that is not cow. An object (X)
cannot be said to exist if it does not exclude all that it is not (non-X); it could
not be significantly denied if it could not be affirmed (35). Two points of
significance are involved here. One, X and non-X are mutually exclusive and
qualifying; affirmation and negation, existence and non-existence are
dichotomous. Secondly, that which is not subject to causes and conditions
(pratitya-samutpanna) cannot be affirmed or denied (60). Cognitive claims
about non-temporal, non-relational realities are pseudo-claims. And the
argument that they could be significantly affirmed or denied is nothing but the
psychosis of those who confuse the psychological with the ontological and call
it epistemology (44).
Negation as absence of cognition or negation as cognition of absence
may be capitalized to make claims such as "Tathagata exists," "Nirvana is
being in which suffering is absent," "God exists" etc. Udayana, the great
Nyaya logician, promises enlightenment through a "flawless logic of the
language of God"(1968:3). Such a logic, he says, is as natural and delightful to
his mind as a flower to the bumblebee. This poetic expression
notwithstanding, Udayana rigorously contends that God exists, his argument
being there is no means to deny God's existence (1939:866). That is to say,
"God exists" makes sense because there is no means to establish "God exists"
makes no sense. What he fails to see is that the Buddhist is not denying the
existence of God; he is only saying that to deny God's existence is nonsense
because, and only because, to cognitively affirm the existence of God is
nonsense (nanu capramanatprameyavyavastha). "God does not exist" could
be a significant claim if, and only if, it could be shown that "God exists" is a
significant claim. The word "exists"in the sentence "God exists" does not refer
to a differentiable and therefore a deniable something: jnapakasya
lingdbhdvat. And the "not"in "God does not exist" does not signify a deniable
for it does not admit an assertable counter-positive: yogyatanupalabdhih. The
language about God can have no logic.
It is because of this reason that Chandrakirti, following Nagarjuna,
destroys all cognitive claims about Nirvana and Tathdgata. The cognitive
world is a totality of affirmables and deniables whose being and non-being is

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Negation,
Nirv&na,and
and Nonsense
Nonsense
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subject to causes and conditions. In such a world Nirvana (or Tathagata) does
not exist, cannot exist and need not exist. If the Buddhist claims that "All
existence is dependent existence" is true, there could be no existence which is
not dependent existence-including Nirvana, if it "exists." On this logic
Nirvana is reduced to samsara; it is not a solution to the problem of suffering
but a causal existence whose structure is death and decay (Nagarjuna:230). If
"All existence is dependent existence" is true, then all that is non-dependent is
non-existence-including Nirvana, if it is freedom from causal existence. On
this logic Nirvana is reduced to absolute non-existence; it is no more different
from a hare's horn. But this too is an impossible position, for then Nirvana
does not imply something other than itself which could count against it. Nonexistence could be of something somewhere, as of a pot on the ground. It
cannot be of nothing which, because of its nature, cannot exist anywhere. To
say that in "Nirvana is absolute non-existence" the existence of Nirvana is
denied, is as nonsensical as to say that in "The son of a barrenwoman does not
exist," the existence of a barren woman's son is denied. It is not a negative
judgment because a significant denial is always of something that could be
affirmed.
Chandrakirtiis not saying there is no Nirvana, or that the Buddha did not
talk about Nirvana. What he is saying is that Nirvana is cognitive nonsense; it
is a "scandal" to logic. In order for Nirvana to be cognitively affirmed or
denied, it must be reduced to samsara, to existence in causes and conditions.
Or else Nirvana could neither be affirmed nor denied, in which case
expressions about it, if meant to be cognitive, become as meaningless as "The
hare has no horn." The force of Chandrakirti'sargument is that we cannot say
"There is Nirvana" the way we say "The pot is on the ground." We cannot say
"There is no suffering in Nirvana" in the sense we say "The pot is not on the
ground." We cannot make inferential claims about Nirvana either. We cannot
speak of the absence of suffering in Nirvana in the sense we say "The hill is not
fiery because it is not smoky." Nirvana is not a case of cognition of the noncognizable; it is not a non-cognition of the cognizable. And it, of course, is not
a case of non-cognition of the non-cognizable, for apart from cognitive
conditions the expression "non-cognizable" makes no sense. Nirvana,
therefore, is not a category (padartha), for not only does it not admit of
cognitive affirmation, it is not a case of cognitive denial either (Nagarjuna:
232). Those who take it as an ontological category are the ones with whom
nostalgia has become comfort. One who speaks of Nirvana in cognitive
language is insane (sah pralapati); it is "an excellent subject for a comedy of
higher lunacy" as Kierkegaard would have it. The language of Nirvana
involves a non-cognitive thinking, a thinking which is not a sweet proposal
but a conclusion from an argument. This argument is the Buddhist
epistemology. It rejects the thesis that the cognitive field has no boundary, a
thesis advanced by those in India who thought that determining whether the
world is finite or infinite is a cognitive issue. The Buddhist logic sets limits to
what could be cognized and in so doing, to what could not be cognitively
claimed. Buddha's silence signifies this limit to arrive at which the Buddhist

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logic serves as the "ladder"(yana) (Nagarjuna: 236). It is the Buddhist way of

saying that "the real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping
doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that
it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself in question"
(Wittgenstein, 1968:51).
VI
Buddha himself did not wish to talk of Nirvana as a cognitive-ontological
category. Buddha asks Udayi, "Well then, Udayi, what is your own teacher's
doctrine?" Udayi replies, "Our own teacher, Venerable sir, says thus: 'this is
the highest splendor.'" Buddha rejoins: "What is the highest splendor, Udayi,
of which your teacher's doctrine speaks?" Udayi says, ". . . it is a splendor
greater and loftier than which there is nothing." The Buddha keeps on
inquiring what is that "greater than which, loftier than which there is
nothing." Udayi keeps on repeating "the highest splendor greater than which
there is nothing." Then the exhausted Buddha requests the stubborn Udayi to
see that the phrase "greater than which there is nothing" is a case of saying
without meaning, of claiming without showing how to arrive at that claim.
This confusion of saying and meaning the Buddha demonstrates through
illustrations from common sense. He says that the claim of "the splendor
greater than which there is nothing" is as good a case of nonsense as a man's
claim to love and desire the most beautiful woman in the land. When asked
about "her name . . . her clan . . . whether she is tall, short or of middle
height. . . whether dark or golden skinned ... in what city, town or village
she lived"-the man replied that he did not know. When asked "Hence, good
man, . . . you love and desire a woman you neither know nor see,"-the man
replied in the affirmative. Coming back to Udayi the Buddha asks, "What do
you think, Udayi . . . would not that man's talk amount to nonsense?"
Udayi's response is in the affirmative. The Buddha requests him to see that his
claim of a "being greater than which there is nothing" is nonsense of the same
order and for the same reason (Thera: 11).
It should be noted that the Buddha is not denying "the splendor of the
being greater than which there is nothing." In fact, he cannot do so. He is
interested in two things. One, he is requesting that one be cognitively silent if,
and when, the cognitive conditions are not given. This is the context of the
famous silence of the Buddha. Secondly, in case the metaphysician does not
observe silence, as he does not, to psychoanalyze him as a subject in whom the
will to claim surpasses the conditions given which one could cognitively claim.
This is the context given in which the term "prapafica"-intensively cultivated
by Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti-becomes significant. Let us take the first
point first.
Buddha's silence is not an expression of his sweet will; it is a critical
response to a metaphysical tyranny. The tyranny is this: What is that by
knowing which everything could be known? The answer is this: By knowing
that which is the cause of all that exists. The tone of the question is interesting,
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Nirvana,and
and Nonsense
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for it equates knowledge with causal explanation of the world. The quickness
tf the answer is no less interesting, for it involves the confidence that the Being
of beings (satyasya satyam) could be known; it is important that it be known.
Hence, the emergence of metaphysics (tattva-vidya) as a methodology of
causal deduction of the world. One can see theories after theories emerging in
the history of Indian philosophy claiming that being comes out of non-being,
that non-being comes out of being, that the world is finite or that it is infinite,
etc. The professed ethic of this reasoning has been that nothing should be
accepted if it could not be demonstrated. Buddhist literature depicts the
Buddha as being forced rationally to claim either that Tathagata exists, or
that he does not exist, or that in a sense he both does and does not exist, or that
he neither exists nor does not exist after death. This is the logic of the famous
Catuskoti which in effect means that about a given X either of the four
alternatives must hold. Such pseudo-logicians are the Indian counterpart of
Dostoevsky's Belinsky who, after a six hour discussion, complains, "We still
do not know whether God exists, and you want to go to dinner" (Miller: 43).
The Buddha requests them to see that before giving categorical answers, it is
wiser to determine what could be a question. He proposes analytical thinking
and comes to the conclusion that there are questions which could be
significantly asked and satisfactorily answered. And there are questions that
could indeed be framed in language but about which no significant alternative
is possible except silence. Dostoevsky could have written these lines about the
Buddha: "My Hosanna has passed through the purgatory of doubt and been
purified by the cup of temptation" (Miller: 45).
Buddha's silence signifies two things. It is a refusal to commit
metaphysical nonsense, and it is a proposal to diagnose the human existence
whose form is expressed in metaphysics. The metaphysician, in doing causal
deduction, seems to imply that the being of the world is immanent in its cause,
and that without raising questions as to the "why"of the world the meaning of
there being a world will be lost. The Buddha's silence signifies that the most
difficult task in philosophy is to formulate a significant question, and the
reason why the metaphysician derives the "what"of the world from its "why"
is because he manages to forget that he too is in the world, an embodied
consciousness whose structure is temporal. That is why he talks of the
beginning and the end of the world while himself being in the world. The
question as to why there is a world is correlative with the metaphysician's
contention that mind is autonomous and independent of embodied
experience, that "my body is not essential to my I which doubts, conceives,
affirms, denies, wills. . ." (Malcolm: 3). What the Buddha requests is to see
that there is no such thing as disembodied thinking, and that the
metaphysician, too, lives in the world as an embodied subject. Mind not only
has a temporal structure, it is bearer of time too (Nyanaponika: 104). It is only
in living through the world that one thinks through it; man cannot afford to
think in behalf of God. The function of philosophy is not to provide
transcendental conditions-logical or ontological-for the possibility of
there being a world. The problem is not how can there be a world; the problem
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is that there is a world. That is why before asserting "X is Y" or "X is not Y,"
the Buddha proposes to explore the conditions given which we come to say "X
is Y" or "X is not Y." His request is not to derive existence from definitions,
not to prove that soul is immortal in front of a weeping mother with the dead
child in her lap. Rather than refuting metaphysical theories such as the world
has a first cause or no such cause, his effort is to show that the logos of logic is
the world, that lived experience is older than the metaphysics of the first cause.
Based on the Buddha's silence, Chandrakirti demonstrates that the form
of metaphysical reasoning is rooted in the form of a life in suffering, that the
rules of the metaphysical game are not logical but dispositional. "The
uncritical person," says the Buddha to Vacca, "does not understand
metaphysical views, does not understand the origin of views, does not
understand the cessation of views, does not understand the way leading to the
cessation of views. For (and from) him views grow; and he is not free from
birth, death . . . griefs" / 1/. Two points of significance are involved here.
First, the Buddha is equating metaphysical thinking with suffering. Secondly,
he is proposing an anatomy of such a suffering, and that is to investigate the
form of life which is the root of metaphysical thinking and which the
metaphysician manages to ontologize.
What, then, is this form of life? On the streets of Kapilavastu, symbol of
the world, the Buddha encountered an old man displaying a strong will to
walk in spite of his physical inability to do so. It should be noted that a
disembodied consciousness is not known to have will and, for an embodied
ego, his own body is not just an extended datum to the cogito. Body is the
medium of the will to be. The problem of the old man is that his will to be
(bhava tanha) surpasses the medium (body) of his being; his anguish of not
being able to move is consequent upon his will to move. This is the form of life
known as "suffering" (dukkha) in Indian Buddhism; it signifies the
predicament of ceasing to be in face of the will to be. Metaphysics as a
methodology of making claims about eternal Being and Nothingness is
expression of this form of life. The metaphysician says "Being is"; his
epistemology claims to know Being as it is (yathartha jinana). Chandrakirti,
after Nagarjuna, argues that Being is made to be; it is imaginatively carved out
of space as a landscape on the canvas. Being is born of a transcendental will
equipped with the power to confuse what one wishes to see with the seen; it is
an imaginative look unconsciously posited as the object to be looked at
(Nagarjuna: 194). Metaphysics is a methodological fantasy; to be committed
to category mistakes is its structural requirement. To call "Brahman is
eternal" a rational truth is as nonsensical as to say "The barrenwoman's son is
golden skinned" (194). The metaphysician's claim that knowledge is objective
insofar as it corresponds with reality is because of his forgetfulness that he has
wishfully carved something and then posited it as an independent reality. This
forgetfulness is called drsti (198). "Truths," said Nietzsche, "are illusions of
which one has forgotten that they are illusions." It should be noted that one
doesn't consciously fall into illusions, they are unconscious requirements
without which a certain manner of man's being in the world is not possible.
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Negation,
Nirvana,and
and Nonsense
Nonsense
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Metaphysics is expression of that form of life whose unconscious requirement

is illusion. Metaphysical thinking is not autonomous and apriori; it is
constituted by impulses incarnate in lived experience. The relation between
subject and object, language and reality, is not cognitive but aesthetic (149).
The metaphysician is in the same situation as the old man on the streets of
Kapilavastu; in him the will to claim haunts the ability to claim truths.
Epistemology collapses in carrying a fat ontology. What Chandrakirti is
arguing is that the ontological is a projection of the psychological; the claim
that "X is" is expression of the wish that "X be" (201). Metaphysics is a
methodology of transcendentalizing human immanence which, as indicated
earlier, is of the form "I am" (aham iti abhiniveSat). Between inside and
outside there are no real boundaries; between samsara and Nirvana there are
no walls (nirvanasya ca ya kotih kotih samsaranasya). Claims such as
"Tathagata exists after death" or "Tathagata does not exist after death" are
rooted in the obsession to exist as "I am," and the implied anxiety that "I may
not be" (203). Metaphysics is not a liberating knowledge of Being or Atman; it
is an argument for existence in bondage and self-love. Rather than delivering
health and healing through knowledge, it is a methodology of presenting as
truth a pleasant untruth. It is not just a linguistic mistake but a
standardization, through language, of man's mode of being which is a
dispositional disease called prapanca.
VII
What is this man's mode of being which the Buddha calls prapanca? The
Buddha himself is asked to be precise as to the "world"he calls prapanca, and
which he proposes to overcome. The Buddha says, "That by which one is
conscious of the world, by which one has conceit of the world-that is called
"world" in the Noble One's discipline. Through what has one conceit of the
world? Through the eyes, friends, through the ear, the nose, the tongue, the
Body and mind." To this, he adds that the functioning of the five sensefaculties is outward manifestation of "I am." For "given the notion 'I-am,'
monks, there set in then the five sense-faculties" (Samyukta Nikaya: 69-72).
This observation of the Buddha is pregnant with implications. The most
important of these is that there is no world apart from the lived-world.
Secondly, the world as lived-experience (samsara) is co-terminus with the
means of experience. The world consists of senses, the sensibles, and the
resulting conceptual experiences. Thirdly, the world as experience, together
with the means of experience, has the "I am" as its existential ground
(Nagarjuna: 147). The Buddhist concept of the world (Indian view in general)
is that it is not an autonomous "there";it is a lived-through "there."The world
discloses the face of "I am," it is a psycho-history of man's mode of being as an
ego. Contrary to the Nyaya and the Sautrantrika epistemology, Chandrakirti
is arguing that "X" is not a given entity to be cognitively affirmed or denied. It
is not so because in the "X"is immanent a lived-through history (karmakle?a),
and the cogito is not just a cognitive activity but an organizing project, a

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sedimentation of likes and dislikes. In referringto an object, the cogito refers

to its subject; in positing "X" the cogito affirms its bliks (Nagarjuna: 203).
What Chandrakirti is saying is that not only the Tathagata cannot be
cognitively affirmed or denied, but that nothing in the world is cognitively
affirmed or denied.
In positing objects the cognitive subject posits its attitudes; the world is
not a totality of cognitive objects but a dispositional density of likes and
dislikes. The world is samsara. It is an intentional history (karma kathi) of the
human ego, an objectivity insofar as it coheres by virtue of belief in self. The
world is a situation in terms of nouns and pronouns. Its epistemology
comprising the duality of cognizing subject and cognized object (pramataprameya), its ontology of being and non-being (bhava and abhava), its ethics
presupposing "I" and "mine" (aham mameti)-all these are grounded in the
existential anxiety of "I am" and "I may not be" (Nagarjuna: 203). Lived
experience is indeed conceptually constituted (samvrti); in it we cognitively
claim that "X is Y" or "X is not Y." But this experience presupposes the "I"as
its cognitive subject whose bliks are immanent in the conceptual world. In the
"I know" there is "I can";in the proposed "how far can I know" is involved the
anxiety "how far can I be." The limit of thinking and therefore the limit of the
conceptual world is the limit of "I am." There are those who think that "The
philosophical self is not a human being, does not have a human body. . . but
rather . . . the limit of the world . . . not a part of it (Wittgenstein,
1961:5.631-32, 641). According to Ndgarjuna, there is a philosophical self; it is
an embodied consciousness and therefore not at the boundary of the world
but the very centre of the world. Taking a holiday from this self is necessarily
taking holiday from both metaphysics and the world. Nirvana is freedom
from self; it is transcendence from metaphysics and the world as conceptual
constructs (Nagarjuna: 154).
What precisely is this "I"whose limit is co-terminus with the limit of the
world? The reply given by Indian Buddhism is that it is cognitive nonsense,
although it serves as a subject in a cognitive situation. It is nonsense because it
could not be cognitively affirmed or denied. It could not be established by
perception and inference, the only two means of cognition acknowledged in
Buddhism. It could not be denied because negation involves non-perception
of the perceptible, and the "I" is not an object of sense-perception. It is not
seen, touched, smelt or heard; it cannot be inferred for the simple reason that
it is not perceived. The "I"is vikalpa, a belief sustained through the word "I"
corresponding to which nothing exists in reality. It isprapanca, an existential
apriori (anddivdsand)(Nagarjuna: 150). Apriori, because it is a beginningless
disposition, and not derived from experience. Existential, because it is
immanent in all determinate experience. This determinate experience,
although cognitively nonsense, is a dispositional reality; and the alleged
cognitive subject is not cognitive but a dispositional beliefsustained through
language. The ground of the world is the word "I," and the meaning and
destiny of the world is the meaning and destiny of the word "I."
This ego, as it has been aptly remarked, "is our mother in us" (Brown:
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Negation,
Nirvia, and
and Nonsense
Nonsense
Negation, Nirvana,

469
469

144). Put in Buddhist language, the mother of the world is an empty word
(tattva-Siunya).The world is a field of compulsiveness consequent upon this
emptiness (Nagarjuna: 154). This "I," a dispositional heritage as it is, grasps
and selects; it measures, judges and makes truth-claims (managatam)It
generalizes, collectivizes and then transcendentalizes its dispositions and
thinks it is making ontological claims (phanditam). Hence the world of "I"
and "You," "We" and "They," Buddhist and non-Buddhist. In identifying
itself, it excludes and isolates; in love of its own identity it ignores and
becomes insensitive to others and becomes incarnate as dogmas. It now
confuses seeing as with seeing. "Thought-reality is placed on an equal footing
with the external reality, wishes with fulfillment and occurrences" (Brown:
150). Metaphysics is an argument for the meta-psychological (abhinivega), a
methodology of converting belief into being. Metaphysics is a defense of the
psychosis of identity: satkdyadrstimulakah. It is for this reason that the
alleged rational encounter between the Buddhist and the Vedantist
metaphysician comes to this: For the Vedantist, reality cannot be momentary
because it is Being; and for the Buddhist, reality cannot be Being because it is
momentary. Two philosophers are condemned to misunderstand each other.
But it is in misunderstanding the other that one's own identity comes to the
surface. The world is a situation of mutual ignorance.
That is why whenever and wherever controversies arise, the Buddha
becomes silent. His language is not so much "X is true," but to show how one
comes to assert that "X is true." His silence signifies putting a lid on all
metaphysical controversies. It is a proposal to analyze the causes and
conditions of such controversies. His findings are two-fold. First, at the center
of a metaphysical claim, there is a self and metaphysical controversies are
expressions of psychosis of identity. Second, the metaphysical, theological
and ideological controversies cannot be resolved on a rational level. That
would be mistaking a symptom for the cause.
In the Majjhima Nikaya, Dandapani asks, "What does the Budda teach?
What does he proclaim?"The Buddha replies, "I proclaim that according to
which there is no quarrel with anyone" / 2/. What the Buddha means is this:
not to have the word "I" is not to have a metaphysical view because the
psychosis of identity through symbols is the cause of all quarrels. "To abolish
war, therefore, is to abolish the self, and the war to end war is total war, i.e., to
have no more enemies or self" (Brown: 149). This the Buddha calls Sunyatd
which signifies overcoming of the word "I"/ 3 /. This SOnyatahe equates with
Nirvana which in effect means that "the solution of the problem of identity is,
to get lost" (Brown: 161; cf. Nagarjuna: 108).
The word of the Buddha therefore is to become wordless. It is to this end
that he requests Subhuti to see that the world is put on ego-fire, and proposes
that he practiceparamitd. Following the Buddha, Nagarjuna feels he has done
enough of de-ontologization in his Vigrahavydvartiniand writes Ratndvali
pleading that the solution to the problems of life is not logic but becoming a
bodhisattva who refuses to enter Nirvana and chooses to "stay in the world till
the end, even for the sake of one living soul" (Haradayal: 18).
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470

Bibhuti S. Yadav

NOTES
/1/

"Asuttava bhikkhu puthujjano ditthim nappajanati, ditthisamudayam

nappajanati ..
/2/

." (Gradual Sayings quoted by Bhikkhu: 17).

". . . na kena ci loke viggayha titthati ..

." (Majjhima Nikaya quoted by

Bhikkhu: 12).
/3/

". ..

manta asmiti sabbam uparundhe ..

." (Anguttara Nikaya quoted by

Bhikkhu: 31).

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