From: Scott Roberts (jse885@localnet.com)
Date: Fri Apr 01 2005 - 21:34:56 BST
Ant,
Ant McWatt had noted to Sam:
I thought it was Nagarjuna's idea of "contradictory identity" rather than
Scott's?
Scott Roberts replied March 24th 2005:
>It is Nishida's, further developed in Nishitani's "Religion and
>Nothingness".
Ant McWatt replies:
In a section concerning the "Kyoto School" of philosophy, Professor David E.
Cooper (1995, p.384) notes that Nishida traces the "logic of contradictory
identity" back to Nagarjuna.
Scott:
Yes, Nishida's logic is based on Nagarjuna, but I just meant it was his
(Nishida's) phrase, or perhaps usage. For example, Nishida will speak of the
self as that which exists by negating itself, while Nagarjuna stuck to
showing how saying "self exists" leads to contradiction, and "self does not
exist" does as well. By the way, I am not all that interested in pinning the
label "nihilist" on the MOQ, given the wide range of usage of that term, and
that it tends to be used pejoratively. Mainly, I am trying to show that the
MOQ has not gone beyond that stage which Nishitani calls the "field of
nihility", the one that treats Emptiness as a center (see below).
Scott Roberts further noted March 24th 2005:
>but in any case a very different interpretation of Nagarjuna
>than can be found in Northrop and Pirsig
Ant McWatt replies:
The only place that explicitly relates Nagarjuna and Pirsig is my PhD thesis
which (as mentioned previously) was checked through by Pirsig on a number of
occasions. He made a point in mid-2002 to confirm that there was indeed an
identity between his philosophy and Nagarjuna's (regarding the static and
Dynamic) so I was wondering which "very different interpretation" from mine
that you are referring to. I point this out as I've certainly never read
one.
Scott:
The difference between seeing Nagarjuna as nihilist (as Northrop states
several times), or as Nishitani puts it, as an example of a view on the
field of nihility, versus moving on to the field of emptiness, by emptying
out the concept of emptiness. It is this latter step that Pirsig does not
do.
Ant:
As regards my "interpretation", I specifically refer you to Chapter 2,
Section 2.4. and David Burton's article 'Is Madhyamaka Buddhism Really the
Middle Way?' in "Contemporary Buddhism" (Vol.2, Issue 2, Autumn 2001)
regarding the issue of nihilism and the MOQ:
==========================================
As explained by the Buddhist philosopher, Walpola Rahula (1959, p.55), it's
correct to think of physical objects and minds as being real in the
'conventional' sense (sammuti-sacca) especially as some order and sense of
the world is beyond one's personal wishes and desires. Otherwise, as David
Burton (2001, p.181) postulates, the Madhyamaka-like claim of Pirsig's could
lend itself to the charge of nihilism:
"An entirely fabricated world - with no basis at all which is real, i.e.
anything more than a conceptual construction - would seem to be hardly
distinguishable from a non-existent world."
To qualify this, Burton does note that the Madhyamaka texts can be
understood as stating (specifically in Nagarjuna's "Refutations of
Objections") that it is objects of knowledge as they are perceived that lack
inherent existence; that Nagarjuna was simply taking into consideration the
(Kantian) epistemological limit that it's impossible to apprehend objects
(of knowledge) as they exist independently from mind (i.e. outside of
perception).
"The Madhyamaka philosophy of emptiness treads the Middle Way between the
nihilistic claim that everything is totally a fabrication and the naïve
realists' contention that one has access to the unfabricated world as it
actually is. things in themselves are known to us - they are present to us
when we apprehend them - but this knowledge is nevertheless always a
negotiation between the known entity and the knower." (Burton, 2001, p.187)
===========================================
Scott:
But it (the MOQ) doesn't go as far as saying that form *is* formlessness,
that DQ *is* SQ. Until it does, one has this substance (in the traditional
sense of the term -- that which exists causa sui) called DQ *from which* SQ
is derived. That makes DQ "really real" while SQ is "real, but less real".
Scott Roberts stated March 24th 2005:
>It was common in Northrop's time for
>Western commentators to describe Nagarjuna as nihilistic. Since then,
>though, that has been largely rejected. See C. W. Huntington's introduction
>to "The Emptiness of Emptiness" for more on the various interpretations of
>Nagarjuna. Unfortunately, Pirsig is using Northrop's nihilistic
>interpretation.)
Ant McWatt comments:
D.T. Suzuki's "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism" (which I quoted in my
previous post concerning this issue) was published in 1934 a few years
before Northrop published his first philosophy book. Moreover, we're not
discussing what certain commentators in the 20th century thought of
Nagarjuna as regards nihilism but rather, whether or not the MOQ is
nihilist. The simple fact is that the MOQ is a development of Zen Buddhism
and both Northrop (in "The Meeting of East and West") and Suzuki (in "An
Introduction to Zen Buddhism") deny - at some length - that Zen Buddhism is
nihilist. If you can't address the particular arguments given by these
philosophers in these texts then I think we have come as far as we can with
this particular debate.
Scott:
I couldn't find any discussion of Zen in Northrop. Just one mention, in a
quote. But Northrop certainly does refer to Nagarjuna's philosophy as
nihilist, at least three times. On Suzuki, see below.
Scott Roberts stated March 24th 2005:
>What you say here amounts to "Now that we know that everything is really
>empty (nihilism) we shall return to the world with this knowledge."
>Nishitani's turn is quite different. It amounts to saying: the next step is
>to learn that what we learned in the first turn is itself empty. With the
>second turn we no longer see the self and world as either substantial, nor
>as empty, but as existing by not existing, as a non-substantial substance.
>Again, not a whisper of this in Pirsig.
Ant McWatt comments:
Nishitani's or Huntington's work is helpful if it clarifies the issues
surrounding nihilism, the self and reality though - from the evidence of
your recent posts - they are possibly taking an intellectual step too far.
Scott:
Now that is the approach I think you should be taking, that is, reject this
second movement of Nishitani's, because it is irreconcilable with the MOQ.
Of course, I disagree, and think that the Nishitani/Huntington
interpretation is a better way to think about mysticism than Pirsig's.
Scott Roberts stated March 24th 2005:
>As Nagarjuna says: "The emptiness of the conquerors was taught in order to
>do away with all philosophical views. Therefore it is said that whoever
>makes a philosophical view out of "emptiness" is indeed lost."
Ant McWatt asks:
Where does Nagarjuna say this? Without context such a quote isn't
particularly helpful especially without knowing what type of "conqueror"
that he's referring to.
Scott:
Don't know specifically, as it is quoted with just the reference "Nagarjuna,
*Madhyamakasastra*" at the beginning of Huntington's *The Emptiness of
Emptiness*. But it is fairly obvious that the conquerors are buddhas, i.e.,
those who have conquered ignorance, anger, and desire.
Scott Roberts stated March 24th 2005:
>There is not a whisper, in Northrop or in Pirsig, of the notion that
>Nirvana
>is Samsara.
Ant McWatt comments:
For you to prove this assertion (at least regarding Pirsig) you would have
to indicate that the MOQ is not based on Zen Buddhism (which, of course,
follows the Mahayanistic middle way) or show that Mahayana Buddhism (which,
of course, is derived from Nagarjuna's work) is nihilist. Both projects, in
my mind, would be non-starters.
Scott:
Umm. For you to disprove this assertion all you need to do is show a
countering quote (an indication, in MOQ terms, that DQ is SQ) from LILA or
ZAMM. I do not deny that Pirsig thinks that the MOQ is based on Zen, but the
question is, how has Pirsig understood Zen? Zen is not a monolith, and one
can base one's philosophy on it in different ways. For a different take, I
recommend (once again) Robert Magliola's *Derrida on the Mend*, in which he
contrasts differential mysticism with centric mysticism. Here's Magliola [p.
97]:
"As for "abrogation of the identity principle," an abrogation which is the
first norm of genuine Madhyamika (that is to say, Nagarjunism, or Madhyamika
which has remained faithful to Nagarjuna's original attitude towards
sunyata), the historical linkage between Ch'an/Zen and the origins is more
complex. The nature and history of the ... koan, for example, is subject to
great academic controversy, with some researchers claiming it operates quite
purely in Nagarjuna's mode, viz., a rigorous rationalism whereby logic
cancels itself out -- leaving devoidness to lapse (slide) by, interminably
[aka logic of contradictory identity - Scott]; and others seeing it as
operative in a Yogacaric mode, as an intuitionism, so the monk does *not*
through the assiduous use of reason *deduce* self-contradiction, but rather
*transcends* reason "in a flash". When W.T. de Bary speaks of Zen's interest
in Indian Hinayana sources and when Ninian Smart calls Zen "Japan's
substitute for Lesser Vehicle Buddhism", they are indicating a movement in
Zen away from what was the increasing absolutization of sunyata occurring in
most of the later Buddhist schools. But Westerners, through the good offices
of Zen's great missionary to the West, D. T. Suzuki, know only of
logocentric (and thus absolutist) Zen, and indeed there is no question that
logocentric Zen has been for quite some time now Zen's most popular form.
Or, to avoid needless confusion, let us call it "centric Zen", since its
whole effort is to transcend logos understood as the language of *is* and
*is not* and to achieve the 'undifferentiated center' (of course,
'undifferentiated center' is just a permutation of logos, in the specialized
Derridean terms we have already worked through at such length). Thus Suzuki
declares that "The meaning of the proposition 'A is A' is realized only when
'A is not-A', that Buddhist philosophy is the "philosophy of self-identity,"
and that in this self-idenity "there are no contradictions whatsoever." The
supreme self-identity, indeed the only self-identity in the ultimate sense,
is centric Zen's sunyata: "Emptiness is not a vacancy -- it holds in it
infinite rays of light and swallows all the multiplicities there are in this
world."...
"The differential movement in Zen of course opposes the centric Zen just
instanced..."
(He goes on to give some stories that exemplify differential Zen, too long
to quote. But in essence, it is about emptying out emptiness, so it does not
become an "undifferentiated center", as DQ is a center in the MOQ.)
Ant quotes:
"Before one enters the gateless gate, the Dynamic is the only 'ultimate
reality.' But after one passes through the gateless gate and looks back he
sees there never was any gate. Now he sees that the static patterns he was
trying to discard are real enough and has no problem accepting them."
(Pirsig to McWatt, February 18th 2005)
Scott:
So why keep trying to uphold a philosophy based on an 'ultimate reality'
that one is to discard later?
- Scott
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