"Reification decontextualizes." I need to borrow this sentence...
The Middle Path between Dualism and Materialism (from 'A Buddhist Response', by
Prof. B. Alan Wallace, in Consciousness at the Crossroads, Conversations with
the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism, edited by B. Alan Wallace e.a.,
Ithaca, New York 1999) The Madhyamaka, or Centrist, view adopted by Tibetan
Buddhism at large challenges the assumption that any phenomena that comprise
the world of our experience exist as things in themselves. Thus, not only does
this view reject the notion that the mind is an inherently existent substance,
or thing, but it similarly denies that physical phenomena as we experience them
are things in themselves. For this reason, the notion of an absolute,
substantial dualism between mind and matter is never entertained. According to
the Madhyamaka view, mental and physical phenomena, as we perceive and conceive
them exist in relation to our perceptions and conceptions. What we perceive is
inescapably related to our perceptual modes of observat
ion, and the ways in which we conceive of phenomena are inescapably related to
our concepts and languages..
In denying the independent self-existence of all the phenomena that make up the
world of our experience, the Madhyamaka view departs from both the substantial
dualism of Descartes and the substantial monism that seems to be characteristic
of modern Materialism, or Physicalism. The Materialism propounded during this
conference seems to assert that the real world is composed of physical
things-in-themselves, while all mental phenomena are regarded as mere
appearances, devoid of any reality. Much is made of this difference between
appearances and reality. The Madhyamaka view also emphasizes the disparity
between appearances and reality, but in a radically different way. All the
mental and physical phenomena that we experience, it declares, appear as if
they existed in and of themselves, utterly independent of our modes of
perception and conception. They appear to be things in themselves, but in
reality they exist as dependently related events. Their dependence is
threefold: 1) p
henomena arise in dependence upon preceding causal influences, 2) they exist
in dependence upon their own parts and/or attributes, and 3) the phenomena that
make up the world of our experience are dependent upon our verbal and
conceptual designation of them.
This threefold dependence is not intuitively obvious, for it is concealed by
the appearance of phenomena as being self-sufficient and independent of
conceptual designation. On the basis of these misleading appearances it is
quite natural to think of, or conceptually apprehend, phenomena as
self-defining things in themselves. This tendency is known as reification, and
according to the Madhyamaka view, this is an inborn delusion that provides the
basis for a host of mental afflictions. Reification decontextualizes. It views
phenomena without regard to the causal nexus in which they arise, and without
regard to the specific means of observation and conceptualization by which they
are known. The Madhyamaka, or Centrist, view is so called because it seeks to
avoid the two extremes of reifying phenomena on the one hand, and of denying
the existence of phenomena on the other.
(Dalai Lama,Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with the
Dalai Lama on Brainscience and Buddhism)
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