"I’ll review the principle of emptiness within the Middle Way Consequence
School (Prasangika Madhyamika, which I abbreviate by Middle Way) through a
little story. Nearly thirty years ago a very holy man gave me some fresh carrot
juice to drink. What a tasty elixir! I returned home determined to grow some
fresh carrots of my own on our little farm. (Actually, I was determined to get
my wife to grow them.) However, the soil in my part of the world is heavy and
stony, and the carrots that first year were stubby and misshapen. I thought,
"If only I had a garden tiller, I could whip that heavy soil into the most
beautiful carrot bed." I could not afford one of those fancy tillers that a
delicate ten-year-old girl can operate with one hand. My rototiller is a test
of my manhood, a bucking bronco requiring strength and stamina. Of course, time
destroys both people and equipment, and my tiller soon suffered from a long
list of woes. It requires the patience of an advanced Bodhisattva to start, it
only works at the deepest setting, it no longer has a reverse, and it cannot
run in place and so bolts ahead . . . when you can manage to start it. However,
I only use it a few hours a year, so I suffer with it and consider it a
perverse sort of challenge.
One beautiful spring day a few years ago the rototiller was taking me for my
annual ride while it bathed me in the blue smoke of burning oil. I was musing
on carrots and rototillers and suddenly had a tiny enlightenment. The second of
Buddha’s Four Noble Truths tells us that suffering is caused by desire. My
desire for that delicious carrot juice had chained me to this rototiller for a
quarter of a century! A desire for fresh, sweet carrot juice initially seemed
innocent and "spiritually correct," in that good health is an aid to practicing
dharma, but look where it led. Desire does generate suffering. However, those
blue clouds bellowing from the burned out muffler along with that shattering
noise and vibration urged me to deeper reflection. Upon what is that
carrot-desire based?
The Middle Way clearly answers that desires and aversions are based upon the
false belief in independent existence, the idea that beyond my personal
associations, relationship, and names for carrots, there is a real,
substantial, inherently existent entity. This substantially existent object,
that entity that "exists from its own side," is the basis upon which we project
all our desires and aversions, all our craving for and fleeing from objects.
This innate and unreflective belief in inherent existence divides into two
pieces. First, that phenomena exist independent of mind or knowing. That
"underneath" or "behind" the psychological associations, names, and linguistic
conventions we apply to objects like carrot or rototiller, something objective
and substantial exists fully and independently from its own side. Such
independent objects appear to provide the objective basis for our shared world.
Second, we falsely believe these objects to be self-contained and independent
of each other.[2] Each object being fundamentally nonrelational, it exists on
its own right without essential dependence upon other objects or phenomena. In
other words, the essential nature of these objects is their nonrelational unity
and completeness in themselves.
Since it is so critical to identify inherent existence carefully, let me say it
in other words. Consider the carrot stripped of its sense qualities, history,
location, and relation to its surroundings. All but an advanced practitioner of
the Middle Way believes that this denuded carrot has some unique essence, some
concrete existence that provides the foundation for all its other qualities.
This core of its being, this independent or inherent existence, is what the
Middle Way denies. The carrot surely has conventional existence; it attracts
rodents and makes great juice. It functions as a food. However, it totally
lacks independent or inherent existence, what we falsely believe is the core of
its being. In other words, the object or subject we falsely believe
independently exists is not actually "finable upon analysis." When we search
diligently for that entity we believe inherently exists, we cannot actually
find it. It’s independent being does not become clearer and more definite upon
searching. Instead, phenomena exist in the middle way because they lack
inherent existence, but do have conventional existence.
While reifying carrots, I simultaneously reify the one who desires carrots and
consider him as inherently existent too. Out of the seamless flux of
experience, I falsely impute or attribute inherent existence to both the
subject and its object of desire and thereby spin the wheel of samsara. In this
way, perception is a double act that simultaneously generates a false belief in
inherently existent subjects and objects, gentleman farmers and their carrots.
Then our time is occupied with cherishing our personal ego, putting its desires
before all else, pushing others aside to satisfy those desires, and running
after objects we falsely believe inherently exist. We think those objects will
make us happy, but in fact they can never satisfy us. Perhaps time "is a fire
that consumes me, but I am the fire." Was not this the point of the Buddha’s
fire sermon?
According to the Middle Way, we can put out the fire by deeply appreciating the
doctrine of emptiness, the lack of inherent existence in all subjects and
objects, in all phenomena. This requires not only an intellectual formulation
as given here, but a profound transformation of our whole being at many
levels—a process that usually takes many life times.
Just so that you will have the whole story, I recently bought a new tractor to
replace my 1934 hand-cranking model (also the source of many deep lessons).
With the new tractor, I bought a huge rototiller that attaches to it and makes
garden preparation a breeze. However, I have given the old rototiller, now
called the dharma-tiller, to my son hoping that he will grow good vegetables
and a deeper understanding of emptiness.
The description of emptiness given so far is negative, a thoroughgoing denial
of what we wrongly believe is the core of existence. Next, let me turn to a
more positive description of phenomena, including carrots. If phenomena don’t
independently exist than how do they exist? The Middle Way tells us that they
dependently exist in three fundamental ways. First, phenomena exist dependent
upon causes and conditions. For example, carrots depend upon soil, sunlight,
moisture, freedom from rodents, and so forth. Second, phenomena depend upon the
whole and its parts. Carrots depend upon its greens, stem, root hairs, and so
on and the totality of all these parts. Third, and most profoundly, phenomena
depend upon mental imputation, attribution, or designation. From the rich
panoply of experience, I collect the sense qualities, personal associations,
and psychological reactions to carrots together, and name them or designate
them as "carrot." The mind’s proper functioning is to construct its world, the
only world we can know. The error enters because along with naming comes the
false attribution of inherent existence, that foundation for desire and
aversion.
For the Middle Way, dependent arising is a complementary way of describing
emptiness. We can understand them as two different views of the same truth.
Therefore, contrary to our untutored beliefs, the ultimate nature of phenomena
is its dependency and relatedness, not isolated existence and independence.
One of the difficulties in understanding emptiness is that we can easily assent
to the importance of relatedness, while falling prey to the unconscious
assumption that relations are superimposed upon independently existent terms in
the relation. In fact, it is the relationships, the interdependencies that are
the reality, since objects or subjects are nothing but their connections to
other objects and subjects.
We might ask what would phenomena be like if they did in fact inherently or
independently exist. The Middle Way explains that inherently existent objects
would be immutable, since in their essence they are independent of other
phenomena and so uninfluenced by any interactions. Conversely, independently
existent objects would also be unable to influence other phenomena, since they
are complete and self-contained. In short, independently existent objects would
be immutable and impotent. Of course, experience denies this since our world is
of continuously interacting phenomena, from the growth of carrots nourished by
sun, rain, and soil, to their destruction by rodents. From the subjective side,
that we do not independently exist implies that it is possible to transform
ourselves into Buddhas, exemplars of infinite wisdom and compassion.
Critics of the Middle Way often say that if objects did not inherently exist,
they could not function to produce help and harm. Carrots lacking independent
existence could not give sweet juice or make soup. The Middle Way turns this
around 180 degrees, and answers that it is precisely because objects and
subjects lack independent existence that they are capable of functioning. So
the very attribute that we falsely believe is at the core of phenomena would,
if present, actually prevent them from functioning.
Now how does all this relate to the Middle Way notion of time? As I mentioned
above, if phenomena inherently existed then they would of necessity be
immutable and impotent, unable to act on us or we on them. Since, in truth,
phenomena are fundamentally a shifting set of dependency relations,
impermanence and change are built into them at the most fundamental level. That
the carrot exists in dependence upon causes and conditions, its whole and
parts, and on our attribution or naming is what makes it edible, allows me to
experience it and be nourished by it. More important for impermanence, these
defining relations and co-dependencies and their continuously shifting
connections with each other guarantee that all objects and subjects are
impermanent, ceaselessly evolving, maturing, and decaying. In short, emptiness
and impermanence are two sides of the coin of existence and therefore
transformation and change are built into the core of all entities, both
subjective and objective. In this way, the doctrine of impermanence is a direct
expression of emptiness/dependent arising. Because I lack inherent existence
and am most fundamentally a kinetic set of shifting experiences, with no
eternal soul, as we normally understand it, then "Time is the substance I am
made of." Borges’ compact sentence seems like a Middle Way aphorism. Being
substantially of time guarantees my continuous transformation and death.
Indeed, time "is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire." These philosophic
truths of emptiness and impermanence are central to Buddhist practice, and I
return to them later. Now let us turn to physics and its view of time."
from Time and Impermanence in Middle Way Buddhism and Modern Physics by Victor
Mansfield:
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Colgate University Hamilton, NY 13346
http://www.buddhanet.net/timeimpe.htm
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