Schopenhauer's Encounter with Indian Thought: Representation and Will and Their Indian Parallels

Chapter Six: The Reality-Status of the Empirical World: The Mādhyamika Teaching

Chapter six TheReality-StatusoftheEmpiricalWorld: TheMādhyamikaTeaching We have seen that one of the reasons for Schopenhauer’s interest in the Oupnek’hat was that in its pages there was to be found a teaching that appeared to broadly resemble his own doctrine of the world as representation. Such a teaching plays a significant part in Indian thought, in both its Buddhist and Hindu forms. Since, so far as we know from surviving texts, it received a developed formulation at an earlier period in the writings of Buddhist philosophers, we will turn to their view first. Early Mahāyāna: Nāgārjuna and the Doctrine of Dependent Origination (Pratītya-samutpāda) The Mahāyāna represented a significant change within Buddhism and was regarded as a new phase in the development of the teaching, the Second TurningoftheWheelofDharma.Itsoriginslieroughlybetween100BC and AD 100, when texts known as the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras appeared. These writings, claiming to be the esoteric teaching of the Buddha, seek a more profound understanding of the nature of reality and a new, more compassionate way of living based on this. They place a fresh emphasis on “skillful means” (upāya) through which one may seek not just the desirable state of the Arhat and the ending of one’s personal suffering, but the vastly superior path of the Bodhisattva. The character of the Prajñāpāramitā literature is mystical rather than philosophical, revolving around the idea of śūnyatā, the “emptiness” of all things and of the world as a whole. These insights were systematized, probably during the second century in southern India, by one of the greatest figures in the history of Indian thought, Nāgārjuna. Nāgārjuna has been described as “a monk-scholar second only to the The Reality-Status of the Empirical World: The Mādhyamika Teaching 67 Buddha,” who gave to the whole of the Mahāyāna a firm philosophical foundation.1 Around him there formed a new school of Buddhist thought, philosophical in its mode of expression but deriving its insights from the Prajñāpāramitā literature and spiritual insights gained during meditation.2 This was the Madhyamaka—the name expresses the claim to be the Middle Way,whichtheBuddhataught—anditsinfluencewasfeltnotonlythroughout Buddhism but also by Hindu schools and notably in Advaita Vedānta circles. The principal text of the Mādhyamikas is the Mūlamadhyamakak ārikā, in which Nāgārjuna establishes his teaching in brief and often paradoxical verses. A later member of the school, Candrakīrti, thought to have been a monk at the famous Nālandā monastery during the first quarter of the seventh century, has left an important commentary on this work, the Prasannapadā, and it is on these two texts that the present chapter is based.3 If one comes to his writings without an awareness of the traditional background , Nāgārjuna appears as a thinker of scintillating brilliance—bold, paradoxical, and difficult. Sprung remarks that he is regarded as the acutest intellect in Buddhist history.4 Yet Nāgārjuna was a monk, and like other Buddhist teachers his purpose was to rescue human beings from suffering. Though his discourse is couched in intellectual terms, he was traditionally regarded as a mystic of high attainments and believed to have moved after his death to the Pure Land of Sukhāvatī.5 Candrakīrti, in his dedicatory verse at the start of the Prasannapadā, speaks of him as the one who “compassionately brought to light the hidden truth of the treasury of Buddhism” and who “burns up the darkness in the minds of men.”6 Nāgārjuna tries, by means of what might be described as intellectual shock therapy, to startle us out of the habitual manner in which we view and live in the world—to make us see that in truth its nature is quite different from what we had supposed and that we are living in what is in reality a vast, self-imposed illusion. Central to his teaching was a fresh interpretation of a fundamental Buddhist doctrine, that of “dependent origination” (pratītyasamutp āda). This is among the core concepts of Buddhism and is traceable to the Buddha’s own teaching, while its subsequent development and expansion is, to a considerable degree, the development and expansion of Buddhist thought. The doctrine of dependent origination was initially a teaching of 68 schopenhauer’s encounter with indian...