Connection 7
Buddhist Philosophy: Emptiness
Essence vs Impermanence
From one perspective, Buddhism arose as a response to the Vedic traditions that dominated India at the time. In particular, Buddhist thought was an answer to the Vedic concepts of Atman and Brahman.
Atman is the unchanging true self, beyond the phenomenal self, and Brahman is the ultimate reality, that is unified and beyond the illusion of the phenomenal universe.
Both concepts speak to a transcendent essence of the self and reality that is not of this phenomenal world.
But for the early Buddhists, who observed the world as only impermanence and change, the essentialism of Vedantic thought distilled in terms of a permanent unchanging self and reality, was the cause of ignorance, illusion and suffering.
Anatta
The Buddhist term anatta is the concept of the “non-self.” There is no unchanging, permanent self, or soul, or essence.
The permanent self is an illusion derived from identification of the world as consisting in permanent substance.
It is a construction of effect placed on top of what is otherwise a steady stream of events or experiences.
All is change, and suffering results from identification with the illusion of the permanent self. Insofar as all of reality is impermanence, a permanent self could only be transcendent of reality, which Buddhists consider to be illusion or ignorance.
The self, to the extent we experience it, is a temporary aggregate or effect, a perspective derived from viewing the world as having an essence. But such a self is in reality dependent or conditioned, as are all things.
A person is more accurately seen as a result of a process of continual change and interdependent events that arise and fall over time.
Sunyata
The “three marks of existence,” or tilakkhaṇa, then, are suffering, impermanence and non-self. To this we must add a discussion of the concept of sunyata, or emptiness.
Emptiness is a central concept in Mahayana Buddhism, and in particular the Madhyamaka school, founded by the Indian philosopher, Nagarjuna (c. 150 — c. 250 CE). According to Nagarjuna, all dharmas are empty, sunya, of nature, substance or essence, or svabhava.
All phenomena are empty of solid and independent existence because they are dependently co-arisen. And this emptiness itself is also empty: it does not have an existence on its own, nor does it refer to a transcendental reality beyond or above phenomenal reality.
For Nagarjuna, dependent origination is emptiness. Inherent or unchanging identity would deny the process of becoming that informs all of reality. The existence of independent, inherent essences of things would make it impossible for reality to be in a constant state the flow and change.
Emptiness is not a nihilistic denial of all things, but a denial of inherent, permanent things. Independent essence would not only block the process of multiple arising and change, but would negate any kind or origination or genesis of things.
Middle Way
Nagarjuna outlined what has come to be known as the “two truths doctrine”: there are two levels of truth, conventional truth (everyday common sense reality) and ultimate truth (emptiness).
We perceive objects empirically, but this is limited truth or perspective that conceals their temporal and changing nature. On the other hand, we live in the phenomenal world in which conventional truth facilitates our survival.
Nagarjuna proposes a “middle way” in which we remain cognizant of both levels of truth. In other words, the two truths are an epistemological construct as opposed to an ontological one: there are not two levels of reality, but there are two ways we experience or understand reality.
The middle way navigates between the two extremes of essentialism and nihilism.
Constructivism
One might say that Buddhist epistemology most closely resembles empiricism: understanding is based on experience through the senses. But it is an empiricism with a specific overall objective: that of aiding the release from suffering and the means to spiritual liberation.
For the Madhyamaka school, the goal of Buddhist thought is direct experience of reality in order to relieve suffering.
Metaphysical debate based in reason has limited usefulness and is only worthwhile in the context of this soteriological goal.
The ultimate aim of understanding emptiness is not discovering philosophical truth, but instead gaining a liberated mind that no longer grasps at permanence.
On might argue then, that Buddhist epistemology is constructivist in this respect.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Thanks for reading!
Tomas
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Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming: A Life of Pure Difference (Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of the New) Copyright © 2023 by Tomas Byrne. Learn more here.
