ENGAGING BUDDHISM

ENGAGING BUDDHISM
Why It Matters to Philosophy

Jay L. Garfield
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For the ven Prof Geshe Yeshes Thabkhas
Whose extraordinary kindness,
Whose perfect clarity as a teacher
And whose profound insight
Into the meaning of the Buddhadharma
Has made it possible for me, and for so many others
To approach and to benefit from the ocean of Buddhist philosophy.
CONTENTS

Preface
Acknowledgments

1. What Is “Buddhist Philosophy”?

2. The Metaphysical Perspective I: Interdependence and Impermanence
3. The Metaphysical Perspective II: Emptiness
4. The Self
5. Consciousness
6. Phenomenology
7. Epistemology
8. Logic and the Philosophy of Language
9. Ethics
10. Methodological Postscript

References
Index
PREFACE

The Western philosophical tradition is, of course, part and parcel of Western
culture, entangled as much with Western politics and history as it is with Western
religion and science. And these political and historical threads, like the more
conceptual threads deriving from religion and science, determine, often in ways
of which philosophers are but dimly aware, the character of the discipline.
While philosophy is, among contemporary academic disciplines, unique in
containing its own history as a subspeciality, that history is too often focused on
the history of specifically philosophical texts and their immediate intellectual
context. The larger political history of the discipline is often occluded, and our
self-understanding is thereby impaired. Unfortunately, that impairment is not a
merely intellectual disability; it has a moral dimension as well. For the Western
colonial enterprise, and the racism and blindness to non-Western ideas it
enshrines, is as much a part of our intellectual heritage as are Plato, Augustine
and Galileo. As a consequence, we are accustomed to regarding “philosophy” as
denoting Western philosophy, “metaphysics” as denoting Western metaphysics,
“ancient philosophy” as denoting Greek philosophy, and so on. And to the extent
that in our professional practice, either in scholarship, the organization of
professional meetings and journals, or in curriculum, we recognize non-Western
philosophy at all, it is marked: Asian philosophy; Indian Philosophy; African
philosophy, or the like. European philosophy is just “philosophy,” the unmarked,
privileged case, the “core” as it is sometimes put.
That phrase “the core” is revealing. When we use it we re-affirm the position
of the European tradition at the center of human history, as the most important
intellectual tradition the world has ever known, as that around which all others
revolve. In the wake of colonialism and in the context of racism, this is both
intellectually and morally indefensible. Indeed, the entire conduct of philosophy
as a discipline—from the way our curriculum is structured to the way we run our
professional organizations and journals—looks to anyone not already socialized
into it like an extension of a British club in India, celebrating European
intellectual hegemony and excluding the “natives.”
To take the West as the unique locus of philosophical activity was never a
good idea. For one thing, it is obviously and demonstrably false. For another, to
do so deprives us of valuable philosophical insights. For yet another, in the
context of centuries of racism and colonialism, it is to perpetuate at least a
passive deprecation of non-Western cultures and people. All of this is a problem
for us. And, as Eldridge Cleaver put it so eloquently, “You’re either part of the
solution or you’re part of the problem” (Scheer 1968, xxxii).
This book is not devoted to making that case. Indeed, I don’t think that
anything but ostension is needed to make that case. Instead, it is meant as a step
towards remediating the problem. For recognition of transgression is not
sufficient to enable redemption. One needs to begin to see routes to a better way
of living, and most contemporary Western philosophers, through no fault of their
own, have been educated in so parochial a fashion that they cannot even imagine
an alternative to their own philosophical practice.
To take the Buddhist tradition seriously in in the way I do here is one of the
many first steps we might take in the way of solving the problem of Western
parochialism. It is not the only possible first step, and it had better not be the
last. The Buddhist tradition is but one of many non-Western philosophical
traditions, and one way to gain access to them is to peruse a truly comprehensive
history of philosophy, such as Ben-Ami Scharfstein’s (1998) or one of the many
handbooks of world philosophy, or introductions to such traditions as Asian
Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy, Indian Philosophy, Chinese Philosophy,
African Philosophy, Native American Philosophy (Garfield and Edelglass 2011,
Koller 2012, Laumakis 2008, Lai 2008, Bartley 2011, Imbo 1998, Carpenter
2014). Or one might choose a great non-Western text and dive in. Or retrain
entirely. Any of these approaches work. A truly global philosophy must attend to
non-Buddhist Indian philosophy, to Daoist and Confucian philosophy, to the
many schools of Africana philosophical thought, to Native American
philosophical thought and to a range of other less well-known intellectual
traditions. But Buddhist philosophy is what I can offer, and I offer it here in the
hope that attention to these ideas will advance the goal of a truly global
philosophical engagement.
For those philosophers whose preoccupations are more systematic, and less
historical or cultural in nature, I suspect that such engagement is best facilitated
by attention to how some particular non-Western tradition can enable one to
think through philosophical problems with which one is already preoccupied, or
to see how non-Western voices can participate in current discussions. That is
what I propose to do here, using the Buddhist tradition as a case study. I choose
the Buddhist tradition for two reasons. First, and most important, it is the one
with which I am most familiar. Someone else might, and should, write a similar
book on Daoist philosophy or on Native American philosophy. But I am not
competent to do so.
Second, and perhaps less arbitrarily, my study of Buddhist philosophy and my
work with colleagues in which we have integrated Buddhist and Western
approaches and ideas, convinces me that this is a living tradition that benefits
from engagement with the West, and from engagement with which Western
philosophy benefits. An important precondition for genuine conversation—
mutual interest—is hence satisfied. Another precondition for successful
conversation is also satisfied, and in part motivates this book: The concerns and
methods of Buddhist philosophy and Western philosophy are sufficiently
proximate to each other, sharing sufficient horizons, that they are easily mutually
intelligible, but sufficiently distant from one another that each has something to
learn from the other. Conversation can hence be productive.
My hope is that by taking a number of examples of important current
philosophical issues and showing how Buddhist voices can contribute, I can
show Western philosophers both that the Buddhist tradition matters to them, and
how to engage that tradition. I am not interested in defending a Buddhist position
here, much less in trying to demonstrate the superiority of either tradition over
the other. Instead, I want to argue, through a series of examples, that ignoring the
insights and arguments that tradition has to offer is irrational for anyone
seriously interested in any of a number of philosophical problems. If anyone
takes from this the hunch that the same is true, mutatis mutandis, with respect to
many of the world’s philosophical traditions, so much the better.
In this respect, the present volume is a kind of mirror image of my earlier
book, Western Idealism and Its Critics (2011), in which I strove to demonstrate
to Tibetan Buddhist philosophers the claim—frankly incredible to many of them
—that Western philosophy could deliver any significant arguments or insights to
discussions of idealism. I am pleased to say that many of my Tibetan colleagues
took the point. I hope that I encounter minds as open in the Western academy.
There are many things that this book is not. It is not an introduction to
Buddhist philosophy. There are several very good books on the market that do
that already (Kalupahana 1976, Gethin 1998, Guenther 1976, Laumakis 2008,
Siderits 2007, Emmanuel 2013, Carpenter 2014). Nor is it a brief for treating the
Buddhist tradition as a philosophical tradition, as opposed to a purely devotional
tradition. Mark Siderits (2007) and Paul Williams (2009) have already done that
job admirably. Nor is it a deep exploration of some single important issue in
Buddhist philosophy, or examination of a single core text. There are books
aplenty that do this, and many are cited in these pages. Finally, it is not an
anthology of Buddhist texts. Edelglass and Garfield (2009) have already done
that.
Instead, it is a demonstration for Western philosophers of the value of
engaging with the Buddhist tradition over a wide range of topics, and of the
value of that engagement for contemporary philosophical practice. I would
measure its success by subsequent decisions to read Buddhist texts, to take
Buddhist positions seriously and to reconfigure curriculum to attend to Buddhist
texts. I would be even happier if Buddhism was not alone in this reconfiguration,
if the prefix “Western” or “European” became de rigeur when the topic under
discussion was purely Western, and if our professional meetings and journals
became a bit less like colonial relics.
There is no common structure to the chapters in the volume. Some,
particularly the earlier chapters, introduce Buddhist ideas systematically and
then apply them to some topic or literature of interest in the contemporary West.
Others begin with a problem, and then introduce a Buddhist voice. Others take
hybrid approaches. My aim is to focus on ideas, and not on comparison. And the
choice of texts and ideas to which I pay attention will perforce be idiosyncratic.
The chapters are arranged topically, not historically, or according to Buddhist
traditions. So they move freely between Western and Buddhist ideas, and among
Buddhist ideas from quite diverse traditions. I have tried to represent the range
of domains in which I see fruitful dialogue emerging. There is one significant
lacuna, however, and that is aesthetics. The Buddhist tradition in which by far
the most sophisticated aesthetic theory has developed is that of Japan. But most
of the important work in Japanese aesthetics is only available in the Japanese
language, which I do not read. So, I feel a bit of an amateur in that domain, and
leave it to somebody more qualified to fill that important gap.
I spend much of my professional life with Indian and Tibetan Madhyamaka
and Yogāāra treatises, and so I probably give these texts more prominence than
some might think they deserve. I do so not because I think that they are
disproportionately representative or important in the Buddhist traditions, but
rather because they are the ones that come to my mind most often when I work
in Buddhist philosophy. I have tried to salt the book with texts from other
traditions as well, and I hope that my readers will attend to the Buddhist tradition
broadly, not only to the corner I find so absorbing. I also confess that at times my
reading of parts of the Buddhist tradition may seem a bit tendentious or
idiosyncratic. I present Buddhist texts as I read them, Buddhist doctrines and
ideas as I understand them. I see no other way to come at this. This is a rich
tradition in which canonical figures and modern scholars alike dispute with one
another regarding the proper readings of texts and interpretation of doctrine. At
times those disputes are central to my presentation. But I do not pretend to
neutrality, or to completeness in these matters. Instead, I present my take on
these matters, in the hope that it is of interest to others, and with reasonable
confidence that it is a reasonable reading.
 A word about the title is in order. When I use the word Engaging, I do so with
the Sanskrit and Tibetan terms most often translated by this term in mind. In
Sanskrit the term is avatāra; in Tibetan ‘jug pa. These terms have nice semantic
ranges. They can mean engaging with, or engaging in, as in engaging with a
body of literature or an object, or in an activity; they could equally well be
translated as descending, as in coming down from a mountain into the real
world; or as manifesting, as in being the manifestation of a deity or a realized
being; they can also mean proceeding, as in proceeding on a journey. And they
can mean an introduction, as in Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy. I like these
terms, and I bring all of these senses to mind when I invite the reader to Engage
with Buddhism—to take it seriously; to take up thinking through the point of
view of this tradition; to come down from the mountain of Eurocentric isolation
into a multicultural philosophical marketplace; to manifest as a cosmopolitan
intellectual; to take up a new journey; and to be introduced to the Buddhist
world.
There are many to whom I owe enormous debts of gratitude. Thanks are first
due to Smith College for sabbatical leave and to the John Templeton Foundation
for generous research support. Without this support and the encouragement that
the College and the Templeton Foundation provided, this book would have been
impossible. I also thank the Australian Research Council for research support
that facilitated much of the work represented in this volume and the National
Endowment for the Humanities for a summer institute in the context of which
many of these ideas germinated. Thanks also to Yale-NUS College for a
generous research grant that made the completion of this project a lot easier.
This book has been a long time in the making, and many have contributed to
my thinking about these matters. Reflecting on their contributions only increases
my confidence in the importance of dependent origination, and my sense that I
deserve very little credit for the ideas I express.
I recognize the ancestry of some of these thoughts in what I was taught when I
was an undergraduate at Oberlin College, first by Norman S. Care, who
introduced me to Hume and Kant and then by Robert Grimm, with whom I
studied Wittgenstein. I also owe an enormous debt to Annette Baier and to
Wilfrid Sellars who taught me in my graduate studies. Their stamp on my own
thinking about the history of Western philosophy and the philosophy of mind is
indelible.
I was introduced to Buddhist philosophy by Robert A.F. Thurman, who also
kindled my fascination with Tsongkhapa’s thinking and directed my attention to
the affinities between Hume’s and Wittgenstein’s thought and that of
Candrakīrti. Bob has been a source of inspiration and a mentor as I have worked
to develop an understanding of the Indian and Tibetan Buddhist tradition. David
Kalupahana, Steve Odin and Guy Newland taught me Nāgārjuna, and Guy first
directed my attention to Tsongkhapa’s Ocean of Reasoning (rTsa she tik chen
rigs pa’i rgya mtsho) as a way into Madhyamaka thought. Since that time, he has
taught me much about Madhyamaka, and still more about how compassion can
be embodied in life and in the academic profession. His translations and his
expositions of Buddhist doctrine are models of lucidity, and his comportment
itself teaches Buddhist ethics. The ven Khenpo Lobsang Tsetan Rinpoche was
my first Tibetan language teacher, and the first to introduce me to the reading of
Tibetan philosophical texts. I always remember him with respect and gratitude.
I thank my principal teachers of Buddhist philosophy. I have no words to
express my gratitude to the ven Geshe Yeshe Thabkhas of the Central University
of Tibetan Studies to whom this book is dedicated and to the late ven Gen
Lobsang Gyatso of the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics. Their patient and erudite
exposition of text, doctrine and method have shaped my understanding of this
tradition. Their kindness and compassion, enthusiasm for philosophy and their
encouragement of cross-cultural engagement have been a source of constant
inspiration for this project. I also thank the most ven Prof Samdhong Rinpoche
and my longtime teacher, friend, colleague and collaborator, the ven Prof Geshe
Ngawang Samten, Padma Sri, Vice Chancellor of the Central University of
Tibetan Studies. They have each not only taught me much about Buddhist
philosophy and the Tibetan tradition, but have also facilitated my entry into the
Tibetan scholarly world and my research in innumerable ways. Their generosity
is a lesson in itself. The ven Geshe Namgyal Damdul, of Emory University, has
been a valuable teacher and collaborator. Our work together on Western Idealism
and Its Critics shaped many of the ideas I develop here. I also thank the ven
Geshe Dorje Damdul of Tibet House for many useful discussions from which I
have learned a great deal, and the ven Prof Tashi Tsering and the ven Prof
Sonam Gyatso, both of the Central University of Tibetan Studies, for many
productive conversations.
The Smith College Philosophy Department and the Five College Buddhist
Studies Faculty Seminar have provided a rich and supportive environment for
this research. In the philosophy department, I particularly acknowledge my
colleague and collaborator Nalini Bhushan, from whom have learned so much
about how to do philosophy across cultures and about the enterprise of Indian
philosophy, and John Connolly, from whose reflections on the relationship
between philosophical and religious traditions, and from whose insights into
Wittgenstein’s philosophy, hermeneutics, and Buddhist philosophy I have
profited. I am also grateful to my colleagues in the Five College Buddhist
Studies program. Peter Gregory and Jamie Hubbard have shaped my thinking
about Buddhist Studies and in particular about East Asian Buddhist philosophy.
Maria Heim has taught me a lot about the Pāli tradition and about how to
approach Buddhist Ethics; and Georges Dreyfus has been an invaluable
interlocutor on matters concerning Buddhist philosophy of mind,
phenomenology and epistemology.
My new home at Yale-NUS College and the National University of Singapore
is proving to be a wonderful research environment as well. I am blessed with
generous and thoughtful colleagues from whom I have learned much and whose
serious commitment to cross-cultural philosophy in research and pedagogy is a
real inspiration. I note in particular Neil Mehta, Sandra Field, Simon Duffy, Nico
Silins, Matt Walker, Taran Kang, Cathay Liu, Amber Carpenter, Andrew Bailey,
Neil Sinhababu, Ben Blumson and Saranindra Nath Tagore who have all
contributed to my thinking about these issues and who have contributed to the
collegial environment since I have arrived here. I thank Michael Pelczar, Pericles
Lewis, Charles Bailyn, Casey Nagey, Jenifer Raver and Grace Kwan Chi-En for
creating an environment in which such research is possible.
My association with the University of New Mexico and with the Bodhi Manda
Zen Center has been rewarding. Richard Hayes and John Taber have taught me a
great deal, about Dignāga and Dharmakīrti to be sure, but also about the nature
of Buddhist thought and practice in the West. The ven Joshu Sasaki Roshi has no
doubt influenced my thinking in ways that I may never understand. Through this
association, I was also fortunate enough to encounter Sandy Gentei Stewart
Roshi, one of the most lucid and inspiring Western Buddhist teachers I have ever
encountered, and one to whose formulations I often turn when perplexed. The
folks at Bodhi Manda and Sandy have shown me how to integrate Zen thought
with Indian and Tibetan Madhyamaka.
At Bodhi Manda I also met Prof. Shoryu Katsura, one of the titans of
contemporary Buddhist Studies. Prof. Katsura’s work on Buddhist epistemology
and philosophy of mind and the relationship between Buddhist epistemology and
Madhyamaka has been invaluable to me, and I have always profited from and
enjoyed our philosophical discussions. His combination of philological erudition
and philosophical acumen is rare indeed.
My life in Buddhist and cross-cultural philosophy has been immensely
enriched by my association with the Hamburg Buddhist Studies community. I
acknowledge in particular Prof. Michael Zimmermann, the ven Prof Jampa
Tsedron (Carola Roloff), Mr. Christoph Spitz and Ms. Birgit Stratmann. I have
benefitted enormously from philosophical interchange with this wonderful group
in Hamburg, as well as from their generous hospitality.
 My dear friend and collaborator Graham Priest deserves special mention. We
have been working together on the interface of Buddhist and Western philosophy
for a decade and a half. All of my recent thought about these matters has
developed in the context of this conversation and co-authorship. It is truly a gift
to have such a colleague and friend, and an even greater gift to have had the
benefit of such a sustained philosophical friendship. I owe virtually all of what I
write here in some way to our work together, and I am very grateful indeed.
This brings me to the Cowherds, the collective of which Graham is also a
member. Working with the Cowherds, first on Moonshadows and now on
Moonpaths, has been a source of great philosophical pleasure and real insight.
This collective, also comprising Koji Tanaka, Bronwyn Finnigan, Georges
Dreyfus, Tom Tillemans, Mark Siderits, Jan Westerhoff, Sonam Thakchöe, Guy
Newland, Amber Carpenter, Charles Goodman and Steve Jenkins, has shown
how to engage Buddhism philosophically, integrating the methodologies of
Buddhist Studies and contemporary philosophical analysis. The present work is
but an extension of the Cowherds’ project, and I thank each Cowherd for helping
me to think through problems in Buddhist philosophy and to think about the
relationship between Buddhist and Western philosophy.
I do want to single out four other Cowherds for special thanks. First, I thank
Tom Tillemans, whose rare combination of unparalleled philological skills and
encyclopedic knowledge of the Buddhist tradition, superb philosophical skills
and appreciation of contemporary Western philosophical literature, and absolute
intellectual rigor made him an anchor of the first Cowherds project. Second, Jan
Westerhoff deserves thanks for extended discussions of Madhyamaka and
Yogācāra. We share obsessions, and Jan’s clear and rigorous thinking about these
matters has clearly improved mine. Sonam Thakchöe has been a colleague for
decades. Every time I work with Sonam-la I learn something, and almost always
I discover that something I have never considered is actually central to
something about which I have been puzzled. I am always grateful for his insight
and his joy in philosophical exploration. Mark Siderits and I rarely agree. But we
often talk, and because of our disagreements, and because of the clarity of his
thought and expression, I always learn from those talks. I am grateful for his
willingness to continue these arguments.
I have also had the great pleasure and good fortune to work for years on a
number of projects with John Powers, from whom I have learned a lot,
especially about Yogācāra. John has been very generous to me and to a
generation of younger scholars. Our most recent project on Yogācāra has brought
me into closer philosophical collaboration with Dan Lusthaus, David Eckel and
Douglas Duckworth. Translating and talking philosophy with this team has been
richly rewarding.
In the summer of 2012, Christian Coseru, Evan Thompson and I co-directed
an NEH institute on consciousness in a cross-cultural perspective. This was an
extraordinary experience in which a group of scholars from Buddhist Studies,
Western analytic philosophy and Western phenomenology talked all day for two
weeks about consciousness. The quality of these discussions was very high, and
I learned a lot from each person in that room. There are too many to name
individually.
But a few deserve special thanks. First, Christian and Evan. From each, over
the years, in conversation and in print, I have learned a lot. Each has devoted his
professional life to the project of integrating Buddhist and Western philosophy,
and each has done so with great skill and intellectual generosity. Sheridan Hough
has taught me the relevance of Kierkegaard’s thought to this project. Laura
Guerrero has shown me new ways to think about Dharmakīrti. Special thanks to
Dan Arnold, from whom I have learned so much over the years, and whose
books have demonstrated the value of serious philosophical engagement with the
Buddhist tradition. Dave Chalmers, Charles Siewert, Shaun Gallagher, Jonardon
Ganeri, Bob Sharf, Jake Davis, Emily McRae and Jennifer McWeeny each
contributed importantly to my understanding of the issues I explore here. I thank
them all.
There are many other colleagues of whose contributions I am conscious and to
whom I am grateful as I write here. Among them are Paul Harrison with whom I
worked on Śāntideva; Charlie Hallisey whose insights into Buddhist ethics have
influenced my thinking and whose encouragement in this project I value; Sara
McClintock, for many useful conversations over the years; John Dunne, for
spirited exchanges in which remarkable scholarship is put to good philosophical
use, and from which I always learn; Jonathan Gold, with whom I started out in
Buddhist Studies, and who has taught me much about Yogācāra; and Yasuo
Deguchi, with whom I have recently been collaborating, and whose work on the
interface of logic and Buddhist philosophy is remarkable.
As a teacher, I am also keenly aware that I owe much to my students, many of
whom are now my colleagues. There are so many I could name, but I single out
for thanks among those now working in the academic profession Constance
Kassor, Karin Meyers, Dan McNamara, Joel Feldman and Andrew Quintman. I
learned from each of them in the classroom, and now I have the joy of learning
from their published work and contributions to conferences.
I have benefited enormously from the comments and critique of the members
of my graduate seminar at the National University of Singapore. Ms. Chua Wei
Lin has caught important omissions. Martin Kovacic has offered very insightful
comments that have improved this book. I am extremely grateful to Nico Silins,
Neil Sinhababu, Ryo Tanaka and Ben Blumson, who have read with great care
and generosity, and have forced me to rethink many issues and to correct many
errors. Ben and Neil have been particularly assiduous in calling me out on
obscurity, confusion, illicit presupposition and just simple errors, and so many of
their suggestions have been taken on board that to note each one would issue in
footnotes of gratitude on virtually every page. I thank them for their generous
critical support of this project. I also thank the students in Graham Priest’s
graduate seminar on Buddhist Philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center and those
in Eyal Aviv’s seminar on Buddhist Philosophy at George Washington
University, both in the Spring of 2014, for lots of useful feedback.
I have learned a great deal from two more recent graduate students, Nic
Bommarito and Daniel Aitken, each of whom is doing groundbreaking work on
Buddhist ethics. Much of my most recent thinking about Buddhist ethics has
evolved in dialogue with them, and I thank them for their contributions. Special
thanks to my student research assistants, Becca Alexander at Smith College and
Ling Xi Min and Rocco Hu at Yale-NUS College, without whose work this
project would have never been completed. They have each chased references,
edited my roughest prose, challenged my claims and have helped in so many
other ways.
This book is better for the careful comments I have received from my
colleagues. I thank Eyal Aviv, Lynne Rudder Baker, Eviatar Shulman, Shaun
Nichols, Mitch Parsell and Sonam Thakchöe for careful reading and helpful
suggestions. Special thanks to Maria Heim for a searching critical reading of the
text that pulled me up on a lot of my prejudices, and forced a good deal of
rethinking, and to Douglas Duckworth for extensive critique, always on target.
Steve Jenkins constantly challenges my readings and has talked me out of many
errors and infelicities.
Mr. Yeshi Tashi, another student from whom I have learned a great deal, and
now a colleague, has kindly translated the dedication of this book into Tibetan, a
gift both to me and to the teacher we share.
Finally, and most importantly, I will fail to express adequately my gratitude to
Blaine Garson, without whom none of this—this book or any of my other work
—or indeed any of my life as I know it, would be possible. She has traveled with
me to the ends of the earth, or has kept our lives going on the homefront when I
have been off alone; she has supported me, and has challenged me; she has
listened critically to what I have had to say, and has taught me. She has given me
a life that I would not trade for any other. Nothing I could say or do could
adequately repay her kindness.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Parts of chapter 2 in Moonshadows (“Taking Conventional Truth Seriously”)

appear in chapter 6 of this volume. I thank Oxford University Press for
permission to use this material.
Parts of “The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What’s at Stake in
a Tibetan Debate” are used in chapter 5. I am grateful to Philosophy East and
West for permission to use this material.
Parts of chapter 6 appear in “I Am a Brain in a Vat, or Perhaps a Pile of Sticks
by the Side of the Road,” published in Garfield and Westerhoff, Madhyamaka
and Yogācāra: Allies or Rivals. I thank Oxford University Press for permission
to use this material.
The translations from Alaṃbanāparikṣā, and from Gungthang’s and Dendar’s
commentaries in chapter 6 are joint work with Douglas Duckworth, M. David
Eckel, John Powers and Sonam Thakchöe. I thank them for permission to use
this material.
Parts of “What Is It Like to be a Bodhisattva? Moral Phenomenology in
Śāntideva’s Bodhicāryāvatāra appear in chapter 10. I am grateful to the Journal
of the International Association of Buddhist Studies for permission to use this
material.
Chapter 10 is to be published as “Methodology for Mādhyamikas” in
Deguchi, Garfield, Tanaka and Priest, The Moon Points Back: Buddhism, Logic
and Analytic Philosophy. I thank Oxford University Press for permission to use
that material.
To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the
self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by
myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others
drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.
—Dōgen, Genjōkōan (trans. R. Aitken and K. Tanahashi)
1 WHAT IS “BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY?”
1. Introduction
I spend a certain amount of my professional life working with Tibetan colleagues
and students in India. In the course of our collaborations, they often ask me a
question like, “What do Western philosophers think the nature of mind is?” or,
“What do Western philosophers think a good life is?” I have to take a long deep
breath and explain that the West is a very big place, that there are a lot of
Western philosophers, and that they disagree among themselves about every
important question in philosophy.
This might seem odd. But I have the same experience in the West. I am often
asked by Western colleagues and students, “What do Buddhists think about
personal identity?” or, “What do Buddhists think about idealism?” And I have to
take a long deep breath and explain that the Buddhist world is a very big place,
that there are a lot of Buddhist philosophers, and that they disagree among
themselves about every important question in philosophy. Just like their
colleagues in the West.
But not quite. For the Buddhist tradition is but one of the great Indian
traditions of philosophical reflection, and India is only one part of Asia. Within
the Indian traditions, the Buddhist tradition, although vast and diverse, is unified
by a coherent set of joint broad commitments that define a position as Buddhist.
The precise interpretation of these commitments differs among Buddhist
schools, but some allegiance to some recognizable form of them defines a
position as Buddhist. When I refer to “Buddhism,” or to “a Buddhist view,” as
opposed to the view of a particular Buddhist school or philosopher, I will have
this broad picture in mind. Often it will be necessary to be more precise, and to
specify the doctrine of a particular figure or group of figures, but sometimes the
broad brush will do for our purposes.
These commitments can be summarized as follows:
• Suffering (dukkha) or discontent is ubiquitous in the world. The sense of
dukkha is complex, and we will have occasion to spell it out in detail below,
but for now think of it as a sense of the unsatisfactoriness of life.
• The origin of dukkha is in primal confusion about the fundamental nature of
reality, and so its cure is at bottom a reorientation toward ontology and an
 awakening (bodhi) to the actual nature of existence.
• All phenomena are impermanent (anitya), interdependent (pratītya-samutpāda)
and have no intrinsic nature (śūnya). Once again, each of these Sanskrit terms
is a technical term; each has a complex semantic range that does not map easily
onto that of any English philosophical term; and the sense of each is contested
within the Buddhist tradition. We will return to each many times in this book.
But we need to start somewhere, and these rough and ready translations will do
for now.
• Fundamental confusion is to take phenomena, including preeminently oneself,
to be permanent, independent and to have an essence or intrinsic nature
(svabhāva).
• The elimination (nirvāṇa), or at least the substantial reduction of dukkha
through such reorientation, is possible.
• An ethically appropriate orientation toward the world is characterized by the
cultivation of mudita (an attitude of rejoicing in the welfare and goodness of
others, of mettā) beneficence toward others, and especially of karuṇā (a
commitment to act for the welfare of sentient beings).1
Of course the specific interpretations of these commitments differ from one
Buddhist school to another, and a great deal of other variation in a range of
metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, logical, hermeneutical, ethical and
aesthetic commitments follow from these, each with variations. We will have
occasion to remark on some of that variety below. But surveying the range of
Buddhist schools and doctrines is not my aim in this book. Instead, I wish first,
to spell out my own Madhyamaka- and Yogācāra-2 (and probably Geluk (dGe
lugs))3 -inflected understanding of these core commitments in a way that ties
them together as a coherent perspective on reality; and second, to take particular
examples of Buddhist analyses and current Western debates to show what a
Buddhist voice can contribute to a contemporary conversation, and what joining
that conversation can contribute to the modern Buddhist tradition.
Before returning to the broad principles noted above, a remark on
methodology is in order. Philosophy is, after all, the reflexive discipline: just
what it is to practice philosophy in the company of texts from multiple cultural
traditions is itself a philosophical problem. One approach to that practice,
initiated by the great late 19th-century Indian philosopher Brajendranath Seal, is
comparative philosophy. We needed comparative philosophy at an earlier stage
of cultural globalization when it was necessary to juxtapose different
philosophical traditions in order to gain an entrée and in order to learn how to
read alien traditions as philosophical. But now we can safely say, “been there;
done that.” I therefore take it for granted that the days when “comparative
philosophy” was the task are over, and a different methodology is necessary at
this stage of philosophical practice.
I have previously used the term “cross-cultural philosophy” to characterize my
own enterprise, and I still like that term. Mark Siderits prefers to think in terms
of “fusion philosophy” (2003, xi). I like that phrase as well, but I think that it can
be misleading. I intend not to fuse philosophical traditions, but rather, while
respecting their distinct heritages and horizons, to put them in dialogue with one
another, recognizing enough commonality of purpose, concern and even method
that conversation is possible, but still enough difference in outlook that
conversation is both necessary and informative. This may well be what Siderits
has in mind as well, and I have no quarrel with his project, but the term suggests
a project that is not my own. I am trying to build bridges, not to merge streams.
I should also note that this book is not meant to be a comprehensive
introduction to Buddhist philosophy, and still less an introduction to Buddhism
as a civilization or religious tradition. Nor again is it meant to be a systematic
presentation of a single Buddhist tradition. There is much of importance in the
Buddhist world that I will ignore, including much of its attention to
soteriological, cosmological, devotional and practice concerns. For example, I
do not discuss Buddhist theories of rebirth, of karma, or approaches to
meditation. That is not because I take these to be unimportant, or even
peripheral, to understanding Buddhist thought. It is rather because I do not see
them as principal sites of engagement with Western philosophy, which is the
primary intent of this volume. And there are many important Buddhist ideas that
I have simply left aside, either because I don’t see them as important sites of
engagement at the moment, or because I don’t understand them enough myself at
this point.
And while I try to retain a catholic, and decidedly nonsectarian attitude to
Buddhist philosophical traditions, representing quite a few of them in this book,
I am not self-consciously striving for completeness, or even fairness, in
coverage, only touching base with the ideas that I have found most useful in my
philosophical explorations. This perhaps somewhat capricious (with the
etymology of that word firmly in the mind of this once and future goatherd)
approach is, despite its incompleteness, very much at odds with another way I
could have gone. That is, I could have restricted my attention to a single lineage
or tradition, mapping and interacting with its philosophical commitments, and
striving for fidelity in conveying its view of things. I have elected not to do that
for several reasons. First, I simply think that the Buddhist tradition is richer for
its variety, and I would like to convey some of that—there simply is no
monopoly on good ideas held by any one tradition or lineage; second, I do not
want to convey the misleading impression that I am an orthodox exponent of a
single tradition; third, I don’t want to play the sectarian game of valorizing one
tradition at the expense of others.
One further remark on my methodology is important. As a translator, I am
frequently confronted with the difficulty of rendering Tibetan or Sanskrit terms
into English. This difficulty, as any translator or sophisticated consumer of
translations, is aware, is multidimensional. (See Gómez 1999, Bar-On 1993 and
Garfield unpublished for extensive discussion of these issues.) One dimension
reflects the very different philosophical and linguistic milieus in which terms in
source and target languages figure. Simply because the meanings of words in
any language are fixed by their relations both to other terms and to philosophical
or other ideological commitments in the cultures to which those languages
belong, there is bound to be slippage. There will be terms in any language whose
semantic range is not shared by any term in any other language. We will discuss
some terms that pose this problem in Buddhist languages below.
Another dimension reflects that fact that technical terms are often contested
within a tradition, and have different meanings in the hands of different
philosophers. “Idea” means one thing for Locke, and another for Hume, as does
“perception.” And some terms are ambiguous even in the work of a single
philosopher, with different meanings in different contexts. The same kinds of
ambiguities and shifts in meanings of technical terms are found in the Buddhist
tradition, with terms changing their meanings for a single school over time,
diverging in meaning when used by distinct schools, or simply having different
meanings in different contexts.
As a consequence, while I will present and rely upon quite a few translations
in this book, and will adopt some favored translations of some technical terms, I
will also often discuss a term and then leave it untranslated, inviting my reader
to enter the world of Buddhist philosophy in part by entering some of its
language. Just as we learn an unfamiliar culture better by learning at least a bit of
its language, and coming to inhabit the perspective on the world reflected in that
language, we can come to appreciate a distinct philosophical framework a bit
better by adopting some of its technical vocabulary and accustoming ourselves
to thinking through that vocabulary. While this might seem awkward at first, I
invite the reader to give it a try. It will pay off.
A word on policy regarding the rendering of personal names and of the titles
of texts is in order. Sanskrit personal names will always be written in Roman
script with diacriticals. This has become so standard in Buddhist Studies that I
see no reason to deviate from this practice. Those interested in proper
pronunciation of Sanskrit can refer to any of many good published or online
guides to Romanized Sanskrit. Tibetan personal names are another matter, as the
standard Wylie transliteration of Tibetan gives no real clue to pronunciation to
anyone unfamiliar with that language. I will therefore spell all Tibetan personal
names phonetically, but will give the Wylie transliteration on first occurrence
should anyone want to know how to spell these names. The titles of all texts will
be translated into English, with the original-language title in parentheses at first
mention. Just as we write Critique of Pure Reason these days instead of Kritik
der Reinen Vernuft we will write Introduction to the Middle Way instead of
Madhyamakāvatāra. This should be easier on readers unfamiliar with Asian
languages. Specialists may cringe, but they have the original at first occurrence,
and they should take comfort in the fact that this is one more step toward moving
these texts into the Anglophone mainstream.
One final methodological note: This is not meant to be an authoritative
treatment of particular texts in the history of Buddhist philosophy, but rather an
invitation to those who do not know the tradition well to take it seriously enough
to approach such treatments. For this reason, I eschew the common practice of
including footnotes containing the original language whenever I present a
translation of a passage from a canonical text. I figure that most readers won’t
know the original languages, and those few who do know the languages know
where to find the texts. And we philosophers don’t do that when we quote Kant,
Descartes or Aristotle, unless we are trying to make a point about the translation
or the original terms. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Tibetan are
my own. The reader unaccustomed to Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan terminology
may find some of the names and terms used unfamiliar, confusing and hard to
pronounce. When discussing specific terms, I will often include terms in several
canonical languages. But I will always gloss them and will always translate text
names.

2. The Ubiquity of Dukkha

The World is a beautiful place to be born into
If you don’t mind happiness not always being so very much fun…
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1958, 108–110)

First, let me say why I am not translating dukkha, which is usually translated as
suffering, dissatisfaction, unease, stress, anxiety or even pain. This term is so
central to Buddhist philosophy, and its semantic range does not coincide
perfectly, or even very well, with any of these perfectly adequate, but very
different, English choices, each of which can function as a technical term in
Western moral psychology. I am therefore worried that too quick a translation
can lead to too great an assimilation of Buddhist ideas to Western ideas, or to
finding what Buddhist philosophers take to be Siddhartha Gautama’s most
fundamental insight to be either trivially true or trivially false, depending upon
the translation chosen. As we explore the senses of the ubiquity of dukkha, what
the term means will become contextually apparent, and we will do well to use
this Pali loan word.
When in the The Discourse Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Doctrine
(Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta)4 Siddhartha Gautama says that “all this is
dukkha,” the scope of the claim is broad, and the sense of the term is rich. First
of all, “all this” means everything: every aspect of human life, both on the
subject and the object side, the animate and the inanimate, is either an instance
of dukkha or a cause of dukkha in ordinary human experience. It is partly for this
reason that we cannot use any of the standard English equivalents without
careful gloss and a string of caveats. In order to see why this is the case—why
dukkha is such a pervasive and universal aspect of experience— it is helpful to
explore the three levels at which, from a Buddhist perspective, dukkha operates.
At the most mundane and obvious level, our lives are permeated by dukkha in
its manifestation as straightforward physical and mental pain. We endure
headaches, illnesses, the boredom of airport terminals, fatigue at the end of a
long day, hunger, thirst, difficulties in interpersonal relationships, the anxiety of
the dentist’s waiting room, the awareness of our own mortality, the terror of
immanent death. We suffer the annoyance of not having what we want (“Lord,
won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz…”) and dissatisfaction with what we have
(“How can I miss you if you won’t go away?…”). Most of us experience at least
some aspect of this discomfort daily. That is the most superficial aspect of the
pervasiveness of dukkha, and it should be obvious that just about anything and
anyone in our environment can, in the right circumstances, be the occasion for
dukkha.
If we are lucky enough to experience a day in which none of this occurs, we
might say to ourselves as we settle in for a glass of good wine in the evening,
“Life is good!” But even here there is dukkha in this first sense, even if in a
subtler manifestation. For we must be aware that others are experiencing the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that we have today avoided. We might
feel sympathy for them, a sadness that they are in pain, even if we are not.
(“When something is wrong with my baby, something is wrong with me…”)
And that emotional pain in us is dukkha, occasioned not only by their
discomfort, but also, paradoxically, by our comfort, which we know is, in the
end, a matter of chance, and not something we earned. After all, who earns the
good fortune not to have been born in a war zone, or without a ghastly hereditary
illness?
On the other hand, we might not be troubled by pangs of sympathy or guilt
when we contemplate our own good fortune and the suffering of others. In that
case, however, we do not avoid this subtle dukkha, but suffer from a deeper and
subtler version of it. For none of us could contemplate a self that is utterly
indifferent to the suffering of others, and utterly complacent about one’s own
privilege, with complete approval. (“No man is an island / Entire of itself.”)
None of us, that is, would want our children to grow up to be like that, or would
honor a colleague for those traits. Therefore, if we notice this attitude in
ourselves, we experience the dukkha of knowing that we are less than we would
be, that we cannot reflectively endorse our own attitudes, and we experience the
dukkha of shame.5
This is but the first level. The second level of pervasive dukkha is the dukkha
of change. While there is a retail chain called Forever 21, none of us is forever
21. We are all aging, and we know that. Each moment of life is a moment closer
to infirmity, pain, dementia, the loss of our loved ones and death. Each moment
of life is therefore necessarily bound up with dukkha, and we know that. We
either dwell on that fact and fret, or repress it and seethe. Everything we enjoy—
all sources of happiness—are also impermanent, and so are slipping from our
grasp, or at least from their status as sources of pleasure at every moment. The
best bottle of wine will soon be empty; the sunset lasts only a few minutes; our
children age; we tire of what was once our favorite music. This, too, is a source
of dukkha.
The third and most profound sense of dukkha, and the one that gets us most
directly to its pervasive character, is the dukkha of pervasive conditioning. We
live in a world of inextricable interdependence, where most of the causal chains
that impinge on our well-being are outside of our control. We cannot seize a day
or our own destiny and control it; we cannot “stand on our own two feet,”
however much we may be exhorted to do so. Our well-being, security and
success depend not only upon our own efforts, but upon our genetics, the
weather, earthquakes, the presence of disease, the decisions of political leaders
or university administrators, just plain luck, other drivers on the road, the skills
of the pilot who flies the plane, the judgment of a doctor or the kindness of
strangers.
None of us can ensure safety from misfortune on our own. We know that, and
this is dukkha, and it is dukkha at its deepest and most fundamental level, for
from the perspective of Buddhist metaphysics, as we shall see below, causal
interdependence is the deepest and most fundamental fact about reality. Causal
interdependence, in turn, is inextricably bound up with dukkha, both because we
are subject to misfortune at any moment and because we must live in that
knowledge and attendant anxiety. This is why change is a source of dukkha, and
why, even when we are not currently suffering pain or misfortune, the presence
of pain and misfortune in our past, future or fellows is nonetheless our dukkha.
We can now see why dukkha is so pervasive, and so why the term dukkha
does not admit of easy translation into a language that does not encode this view
of reality. Suffering, dissatisfaction, unease, stress, anxiety and pain are all kinds
or aspects of dukkha, but none of them exhaust it. Siddhartha Gautama’s genius
was not simply to see that we suffer, or that many of us are unhappy. That has
been noted many times by philosophers in many traditions. His genius was
instead to see that dukkha is the fundamental structure of our lives, what
Heidegger would have called our existentiale. To be human is to live in dukkha.
And his genius was to see that this is a problem, indeed the problem of human
life. For dukkha is universally undesirable, or at least it is undesirable to most of
us. And this means that our lives and the worlds we inhabit, which are the most
desirable of all things, are in fact, as they are lived, undesirable. If our lives are
to be worth living, and if they are to be sources of happiness and legitimate
motivation, this puzzle demands solution. This is the absolute foundation of the
Buddhist view of the nature of human life. (See Carpenter 2014, c. 1 for a more
detailed discussion of dukkha.)

3. Primal Confusion
Dust in our eyes our own boots kicked up…
—The Indigo Girls

Siddhartha Gautama argued that dukkha is caused by what I think is best

rendered in English as primal confusion. This confusion, as the great 14th–15th-
century Tibetan philosopher Tsongkhapa (Tsong kha pa) felicitously puts it, is
not mere ignorance, but the positive superimposition of a characteristic on reality
that it lacks. He writes,
[Ignorance] is not just not seeing the way things really are, nor just any old
thing. Instead it is the diametrical opposite of that, maintaining the
antithetical mode of apprehension. Therefore it grasps its object as really
existent. (2006, 34)
Tsongkhapa’s point is that, in a kind of cognitive reflex—one that in
contemporary terms seems to be part of our evolutionary endowment—we take
the objects we encounter and ourselves to be independent entities, to be
permanent, and to have intrinsic characteristics. From a Buddhist perspective,
this is the diametrical opposite of the fundamental mode of existence of all
things.
This primal confusion is not, on a Buddhist view, the consequence, but rather
the source of bad philosophy. We take the world to be like this despite the fact
that we know better. It is not news to any of us that all phenomena are
impermanent and constantly changing; that things come into existence in
dependence on causes and conditions and pass away when the conditions on
which their existence depends no longer prevail. It may take a bit more reflection
—reflection in which we will engage in subsequent chapters—to convince
ourselves that for these reasons it makes no sense to take things to have intrinsic
natures, that the notion of an intrinsic nature makes no sense at all. But this
reflection, a Madhyamaka philosopher like Tsongkhapa would argue, is possible.
And as we will see, this reflection is at least prima facie cogent.
Primal confusion is then more like optical illusion than like misguided
reflective metaphysics. Even though we know, and can even see, that the lines in
the Müller-Lyer illusion are of equal length, they still irresistibly appear to be of
different lengths; even though we know, and even come to take it to be obvious,
that all phenomena are interdependent, impermanent and empty of intrinsic
nature, they nonetheless irresistibly appear to be independent, permanent, and to
have intrinsic identities.
A special case of this primal confusion emerges in the experience of the world
as structured by subject–object duality. We will go deeper into this topic when
we turn to phenomenology, below. For now we just note that one way to take
oneself to be an independent entity and to have an intrinsic identity that persists
through time is to take oneself as radically distinct as a subject from all of the
other entities one experiences. From this perspective, our objects exist only in
relation to our own subjectivity. They are object; the experiencer is subject;
objects are known indirectly; the self is known directly.
To take up with the world this way is to see oneself—in Kant’s metaphor—as
subject at the center of a phenomenal universe, or perhaps better, as Wittgenstein
put it, as the eye with respect to the visual field. It is to see the world as my
world. This standpoint, as Schopenhauer noted in On the Basis of Morality, is
the root of egoism. But it is also, from a Buddhist point of view, on reflection,
crazy. For this attitude is available to every potential subject. And not every
subject can be the center of the universe. The world does not partition itself into
a single subject and a field of objects, and to take it to do so is to confuse my
own particular standpoint with ontology. Nonetheless, to take up with the world
this way is a reflex. It is the reflex of taking oneself to be an ontological,
epistemological and moral singularity.
This appearance and this way of taking up with the world, Buddhist
philosophers argue, is the origin of dukkha. It is referred to canonically as “the
twofold self-grasping.” There are a couple of ways to parse this. But the most
basic one is this: to grasp oneself as a privileged subject in this way is to assign
special ontological and moral importance of the referent of ‘I’. That is the first
grasping.
The second, which follows from the first, is to see everything else as existing
in relation to the self, as “mine”: my friends, and those who are not my friends;
my possessions and those that are not mine; my field of interest, and those that
are not mine; my location, and other places, and so on. Once again, the idea that
the fundamental nature of reality is reflected in this structure is mad, but the
tendency to take up with and to experience reality through this structure is
irresistible, perhaps an essential character of human phenomenology. It is the
view that takes us each to live at the center of a universe most naturally mapped
in a polar coordinate system, and is the view reflected in the indexical system of
every natural language.
On this view the pain and irritation of life goes beyond being mere pain or
irritation and becomes dukkha as a result of the mismatch between the illusion
we project and the reality in which we live. A headache might hurt, but it
becomes dukkha when I identify the pain as a state of the center of the universe,
as the way things are, as opposed to being a transient sensation experienced in
one cognitive continuum. My aging and mortality might be inescapable facts,
but they become dukkha only when I take them to be the wrong alternative to
remaining forever 21. And the fact that I have no absolute control over my life
might be reality, but it is dukkha only if I thought that such control even made
sense. Pain, impermanence and interdependence are facts; to take them as
existential failures is to experience dukkha; and to take them in this way is the
inevitable consequence of primal confusion.

4. Reorientation
On what I am calling a Buddhist view, a cessation (nirvāṇa) of dukkha is
possible through awakening (bodhi) to the nature of reality, involving a direct
apprehension and engagement with reality—including both our objects and
ourselves as subjects—as impermanent, interdependent and lacking any intrinsic
reality. This distinctive epistemological orientation is coupled closely with an
ethical orientation to the world characterized by sympathetic joy (mudita),
beneficence (mettā) and care, or a commitment to act for the welfare of all
(karuṇā). Once again, we will explore each of these issues in depth in
subsequent chapters. For now, we are trying only to sketch the outlines of the
orientation.
Epistemologically, the idea is this: dukkha is caused by a misperception of
reality—the cognitive superimposition of permanence, independence and
intrinsic nature on things that lack it that we noted above. Therefore, dukkhacan
be alleviated by, and only by, the cessation of this superimposition. And note that
this is a cessation (nirodha), in particular, that consummate cessation denoted by
nirvāṇa (Pāli: nibbāna). The term nibbāna/nirvāṇa is chosen carefully, and is
often misunderstood by Western consumers of Buddhist literature. It is
essentially a negative term, and figures in an elaborate fire-based metaphor
(Gombrich 2009). Let us spend a moment on that metaphor, as often an
appreciation of the metaphors through which a philosophical framework
structures a view of the world can be useful in working one’s way into the way
of seeing things that framework encodes. This metaphor is particularly important
for understanding the broad Buddhist perspective on reality and our experience
of it.
When Buddhists think about the human being analytically it is in terms of five
skandhas, or piles of phenomena. For now we can enumerate these as the
physical (rūpa); the sensory/hedonic (vedanā); the perceptual/discriminative
(samjñā); the dispositional (cognitive and affective traits) (samskāra); and the
conscious (vijñāna).6 The details of this analysis need not detain us here. The
important point is the complex metaphor encoded in the term skandha and its
relationship to that encoded in nirvāṇa.
First, it is important to see that the term is chosen as a technical term in this
context not despite, but because of its imprecision. A pile is not a precise thing.
In a pile of sand, for instance, there may be considerable indeterminacy both
with regard to how much sand is needed to constitute a pile, and whether
particular grains are in the pile or not. There may be similar indeterminacy
regarding how many piles are in a particular spot. And big piles decompose into
smaller piles. Just so regarding the person. Our constituents and boundaries are
indeterminate, and there may well be no canonical account of our constitution.
What constitutes us may in part depend on how we count, on our explanatory
interests, and so forth.
But there is a deeper point, one that connects directly to the idea of cessation
mooted above. The term khanda (Pali for skandha) refers originally to a very
specific kind of pile—a pile of firewood on a funeral pyre. Skandhas, therefore,
are conceived as burning, and as being consumed. And this is an important
soteriological metaphor. In the Fire Sutta (Additapairyaya-sutta), Siddhartha
Gautama is represented as saying that our life is led as though we are on fire. We
are burned by dukkha, consumed by forces out of our control, and we are being
depleted all the time by those forces. Nibānna is also a term with a very specific
core meaning—the extinction of a flame, as in blowing out a candle or a lamp.
Nibānna, or nirvāṇa, then, is not a positive attainment or state of being. Nor is it
a state of complete non-being, of annihilation. Instead it is the state of no longer
being driven, consumed and tormented (however unconsciously) by dukkha.
Dukkha, is caused by a perceptual process. It is not that we engage with the
world, or contemplate our selves, and infer or decide that we or the things
around us are permanent, independent and have identifiable intrinsic natures.
Rather, we take the world and ourselves to be like that in our immediate
perceptual engagement—we see the world as constituted by entities with that
nature. Perception itself is therefore shot through with reification.
Tsongkhapa distinguishes two kinds of reification (Thurman 1984, 231). The
first, or most obvious, he argues, is that caused by bad philosophy. That is the
reification of self and phenomena that is articulated theoretically as a
sophisticated refinement and justification of our commonsense tendency to reify.
The second is what he calls “innate reification,” the cognitive reflex of seeing
things as permanent, independent, substantially existent. The first kind of
reification, he argues, can be cured by good philosophical argument. We will see
whether he is right about this as we work through these issues in this book. The
second kind, he argues, because of its “innate” character—what we might
characterize as its deep embedding in our cognitive architecture—can only be
eradicated by a fundamental transformation of our perceptual and affective
response to the world.
Tsongkhapa, like many other Buddhist philosophers, believe that this requires
sustained meditative effort. The important point for our purposes is not the
specific method by means of which one might effect that transformation, or even
whether that transformation is possible, but rather that this transformation is not
superficial, but is a deep reform of our most fundamental engagement with, or
comportment to, the world. And this transformation is a cessation—the cessation
of a reflex superimposition. But it is also the cessation of a reflex that
distinguishes ourselves as subjects from everything else, and that takes us to be
isolated, persistent, and deserving of special attention. The ontological self-
grasping we considered above has its affective and ethical image in a grasping of
ourselves as primary objects of concern. Egoism is therefore the ethical face of
reification and subject—object dualism. It is hence the moral aspect of
superimposition, and so also requires elimination.
From a Buddhist moral point of view, as we will see in our discussion of
ethics below, the cessation of this form of self-grasping, and hence of egoism,
leads immediately to an impersonal, non-self-centered view of pain, dukkha, and
of happiness. This leads us to take pleasure in happiness per se, to be moved by
dukkha, per se, and to commit ourselves to the promotion of well-being
whosever it is. Hence, from this point of view, the arising of sympathetic joy,
benificence and care are not positive phenomena consequent upon awakening
and nirvāṇa. These moral attitudes, instead, are themselves negations; they
constitute the way that the cessation of self-grasping, which is inextricably
bound up with the cessation of reification, is experienced in ethical engagement.
Epistemology, ontology, morality and soteriology are hence, on this way of
thinking of the world, tightly bound to one another. (See Carpenter 2014, c. 3 for
an extended discussion of the relationship between epistemology, psychology
and ethics in the Indian Buddhist landscape.)

5. What I Am Up To
When I use the term “Buddhist philosophy,” it will be to this broad orientation
that I refer. It is an orientation that involves a broad metaphysical account of
reality, a diagnosis of the fundamental human condition that rests on that
account, and a soteriological and ethical framework resting on that diagnosis.
My intention in the remainder of this book is to show that this broad framework
and the many specific philosophical analyses that have developed within the
tradition it inspires provide ideas and arguments that contemporary philosophy
can and should take seriously, and that this framework can be usefully articulated
in part through a productive engagement with the Western philosophical
tradition. As I make this case, I will draw on texts and analyses from a range of
sources in the Buddhist tradition, and will show how the philosophers who work
within this tradition can be taken as partners in the conversation that constitutes
the Western tradition. In doing so, I am emphatically not engaging in an exercise
in the history of philosophy. And that is so in two senses.
First, as I noted above, I am not attempting to present a comprehensive—or
even a limited—history of Buddhist philosophy. That is an important task, to be
sure, but it is not mine. Much of that tradition will be ignored, and my selections
will reflect not the historical importance of particular figures, doctrines or texts,
but rather their relevance to contemporary Western philosophical discussions.
My presentation will hence often appear—especially to scholars of Buddhist
Studies—to be seriously decontextualized.
 Second, I am less concerned with lectio (exegesis) than with applicatio
(deployment). A historian of Western philosophy may legitimately care a great
deal about precisely how a passage or doctrine in the Nicomachean Ethics
should be read. An ethicist, on the other hand, may take the same passage,
engage in creative rational reconstruction, and deploy the insights gained from
reading it for her own ends. Each application is legitimate, and each has a role in
our philosophical tradition.
But while applicatio may require lectio, it need not be completely constrained
by it. What makes the Nicomachean Ethics an eminent text, to use Gadamer’s
term, is the fact that it commands our attention now, not merely as a part of our
history, but as a part of our contemporary practice. To engage with Aristotle
philosophically is to take him as a conversation partner, not as a topic of
conversation; to talk with him, not about him.
My intention in this volume is to show that we in the West can talk with, not
about, philosophers and texts in the Buddhist tradition. I will hence be concerned
not with the context in which the texts I address were composed, or how we can
understand those contexts, but rather with the contemporary philosophical
context in the West, and what we can learn by taking these texts seriously in our
own intellectual lives.

6. A Very Brief Survey of the History of Buddhist

Schools
The audience I intend for this book includes people who know very little about
Buddhism and its long and complex history. Those who do know something
about the history of Buddhism can skip this section. Those who want more than
the very brief overview I offer here are invited to consult Gethin (1998), Lopez
(2002) or Skilton (1997) for a general survey, Williams (2009) for a detailed
history of the Mahāyāna or Carpenter (2014) for a fine history of Indian
Buddhist philosophy. Those who read on should be aware that the level of detail
I am providing would be roughly that one would provide in a history of Western
philosophy of this brevity, and the attempt to provide a useful overview may be
equally futile. Still, I think that it is nice for those new to the terrain to have a
broad map into which to locate the detail that will be coming later.
In the beginning was the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. There is not complete
consensus about his dates, but most scholars agree that he was born in the mid-
6th century BCE and died early in the 5th century BCE. Upon his death the First
Buddhist Council was held at Rajgir in present-day Bihar, at which time,
according to tradition, the canon of discourses of the Buddha was established.
These were passed down orally and were not committed to writing in the Pāli
language (itself neither a scholarly nor a vernacular language, but a language of
commerce used across language groups in India) until the Third Council in the
1st century CE in Sri Lanka. When we speak of the Pāli canon we speak of the
discourses of the Buddha that were committed to writing at that time, as well as
the Vinaya, or monastic code and the body of commentarial literature
(Abhidhamma/higher doctrine) also composed in that language and fixed in
writing at that time. When scholars speak of Pāli Buddhism, pre-Mahāyāna
Buddhism, (pejoratively) Hīnayāna Buddhism or (more politically correctly)
Śrāvakayāna Buddhism, or sometimes Theravāda Buddhism, it is the Buddhism
that evolved between the time of the Buddha and the Third Council that they
have in mind.7
Already in this period there was a schism. The first schism reported in the
tradition is said to have occurred at the Second Council, held between 50 and
100 years after the Buddha’s death. It, like most such schisms, was grounded in
questions of Vinaya, or monastic discipline, not in questions of philosophy or
doctrine. Nonetheless, the schools that emerged from these schisms did develop
some doctrinal differences. In the end it is said that 18 distinct schools emerged
before the rise of the Mahāyāna, only one of which, the Theravāda (Way of the
Elders) still exists. It is the dominant tradition in Sri Lanka, Burma/Myanmar,
Thailand/Siam, Cambodia and Laos. It takes its doctrinal foundation to be the
Pāli Suttas and the Pāli Abhidhamma.
Common to the Śrāvakayāna schools is a commitment to a broadly
reductionist understanding of persons and other macroscopic objects as resolving
into sequences of momentary property-instantiations called dharmas, a sense of
the soteriological goal of Buddhist practice as nibbāna, or the complete cessation
of dukkha, and as a moral ideal the arhat, or accomplished one, who has
eliminated all sources of suffering in his or her own continuum. Practice and
study in these schools was (and this is only changing in modernity) restricted to
monastics. The role of the laity was to support the monastic community in its
scholarly and soteriological venture; the monastic community in turn performed
rituals for the laity and offered a route to education and salvation for their
progeny.
At about the turn of the millennium, the movement in Buddhism known as the
Mahāyāna or Great Vehicle took hold in India. There is a great deal of scholarly
controversy regarding its precise origins. Some take it to have originated in a lay
movement to reclaim spiritual practice; others in devotional cults; still others in
philosophical evolution within monastic communities. These issues need not
concern us. (For details see Hirakawa 1963, Schopen 1999, Williams 2009.) We
do know from the reports of Chinese pilgrims that many monasteries housed
both Śrāvakayāna and Mahāyāna monks, and we also know from documents
such as Nāgārjuna’s Jewel Rosary of Advice to the King (Ratnāvalī) that there
was competition for resources among these communities (Walser 2005). There is
no sense that early on either regarded the other as especially heterodox. After
some time, however, the split between these two broad traditions grew, and now
most Theravāda practitioners regard Mahāyāna texts, doctrines and practices as
heterodox, or even non-Buddhist, while many Mahāyāna practitioners regard
Theravāda texts and practices as suitable only for beginners. Once again, the
historical and social details need not detain us.
Buddhist schools seek foundations in Buddhavacana, the speech of the
Buddha. It is the word of the Buddha himself, or at least words spoken in his
presence and approved by him, that ultimately validate doctrine from a religious
point of view as Buddhist. In the Pāli tradition, that is achieved by grounding
texts ultimately in the suttas, which are represented as reporting the discourses
given by the Buddha himself. Mahāyāna texts are composed in India in Sanskrit,
the language of scholarship. The Sanskrit term for a sutta is sūtra. And
Mahāyāna Buddhism appeals to a large set of Mahāyāna sūtras for its
legitimization.
The Mahāyāna sūtras are regarded within the Mahāyāna tradition as having
been spoken by (or in the presence of) the historical Buddha; most non-
Mahāyāna Buddhists regard them as spurious fakes composed over 500 years
after his death. Of course there is the problem about their provenance, and there
is a canonical story to account for their appearance so long after the death of the
Buddha. Briefly, worried that the doctrines they articulated were too profound
for most people to understand, the Buddha, after teaching them to a small group
of carefully selected disciples (many of whom were celestial beings) and telling
them that if they fell into the wrong hands, they might be misunderstood and
actually cause harm to those who misunderstood them, the Buddha did what
most of us would do in such a circumstance—he entrusted them to a band of sea
serpents (nāgas) for safekeeping, instructing them to hold them at the bottom of
the ocean for about 500 years until a monk named Nāgārjuna came for them.
Alternatively, one can suppose that these sūtras were composed by inspired
monks in roughly the 1st century BCE through 3rd century CE and became
accepted as canonical, ushering in a new, more open sense of canonicity.
Philosophically, several doctrines distinguish Mahāyāna Buddhism. Let us
note the two most salient doctrines common to all Mahāyāna schools. The first is
the doctrine of śūnyatā or emptiness. Whereas according to the abhidharma
doctrine of most northern Indian Śrāvakayāna schools (although interestingly,
not according to Pāli sources, which focus almost entirely on phenomenology, as
opposed to ontology), macroscopic entities, such as jars and people, are empty of
intrinsic identity, they resolve into fundamental dharmas, spatio-temporally
atomic constituents, which do exist intrinsically with unique, essential
characteristics. These dharmas are not empty of intrinsic identity or essential
characteristics, and so exist substantially (dravyasat), while macroscopic objects
only exist conventionally (prajñāptisāt).8 Mahāyāna doctrine, on the other hand,
asserts emptiness all the way down: everything, including the dharmas, is empty
of intrinsic nature, and essenceless. There is no ontological foundation. We will
be exploring these doctrines in detail in chapters 2 and 3.
From the ethical standpoint, the salient innovation in Mahāyāna Buddhism is
the institution of the ideal of the bodhisattva in place of the Śrāvakayāna ideal of
the arhat, one who has attained liberation from dukkha. The bodhisattva is one
who has cultivated a special moral motivation, called bodhicitta, which is
defined as an altruistic aspiration to attain full awakening not in order to
alleviate his or her own dukkha, but rather to liberate all sentient beings from
dukkha and rebirth. This aspiration to full awakening, and the altruism it
involves, is grounded in what becomes the central character ideal in the
Mahāyāna ethical system, karuṇā, often translated as compassion, but better
rendered as care,9 a commitment to act for the benefit of all sentient beings. We
will return to this moral ideal in chapter 10.
Among the early Mahāyāna sūtras are the Discourse of Vimalakīrti
(Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sūtra; that is, a sūtra that later becomes among the most
popular and influential in East Asia, and one to which we will return in chapter
3), in which the hero is a layperson, and, most importantly, a body of sūtras
known as the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtras (Prajñāparamitā sūtras) the oldest of
which is the The Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra in 8,000 Verses (Astahaṣrika-
prajñāparamitā-sūtra). The others are either extensions or condensations of this
one. The most popular condensation is the Heart of Wisdom Sūtra
(Prajñāparamitā-hṛdāya-sūtra), memorized and recited regularly by Buddhists
all over central and East Asia. These sūtras become the foundation for the
earliest Mahāyāna school—the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school.
The philosophical architect of Madhyamaka is the 2nd-century10 CE monk-
scholar Nāgārjuna, who develops the doctrine of emptiness and of the
bodhisattva ideal in a set of profound, albeit sometimes rather cryptic, verse
texts. Central to Madhyamaka is a particular doctrine of the two truths, or two
realities, to which we will return in chapter 2. Briefly, these are conventional and
ultimate reality. Conventional reality is the everyday world, with its own
standards of truth and knowledge—the world of dependently originated
phenomena we inhabit. Ultimate reality is emptiness. They sound entirely
different. Nāgārjuna argues that they are entirely different, but also that they are
identical. More of this anon.
In India, two schools of Madhyamaka develop, grounded in different
commentaries on Nāgārjuna’s magnum opus, Fundamental Verses on the Middle
Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā). It is important to remember, however, that the
distinction between these schools was never thematized in India. It is a Tibetan
doxographical construction. Nonetheless, like the distinction in Western
philosophy between rationalists and empiricists, thematized by none of those so
described, it is a useful rubric. One school (thal ‘gyur pa [telgyur pa]—back-
translated into Sanskrit as prāsaṅgika—or reductio-wielders) follows the
commentaries of the 5th-century philosopher Buddhapālita and the 6th-century
philosopher Candrakīrti, who first notes the two distinct approaches. The other
(the rang rgyud pa [rangyu pa]—back-translated into Sanskrit as svatantrika—or
those who advance their own position) follow the commentary of the 6th-century
philosopher Bhāviveka. The literature on the differences between these schools
is vast and subtle. Those who are interested are referred to Dreyfus and
McClintock (2003) for a fine set of essays, or to Tsongkhapa (2000, 2002, 2004)
for a canonical exposition.
Briefly, from a methodological point of view, the reductio-wielders rely on
demonstrations that their opponents’ positions reduce to absurdity as a
philosophical strategy, with no pretence to positively establishing a philosophical
position of their own. Those who advance their own positions, on the other hand,
develop formal arguments of their own from premises they take to be acceptable
to their opponents as well as themselves to conclusions they embrace and expect
their opponents to embrace as well. Tibetan doxographers, following
Tsongkhapa (14th–15th century), argue that this reflects a deeper ontological
difference—that while those who advance their own position take it to be
possible to provide a philosophical analysis of the character of conventional
reality, reductio-wielders take that to be impossible, and think that any
ontological account of reality is bound to fail. More of this below.
The second major Mahāyāna school in India is the Yogācāra (Masters of
Practice) school, also known as the Cittamātra (Mind Only), Vijñānavāda (Way
of Consciousness) and the Vijñaptimātra (Consciousness Only) school. This
school takes as its sūtra foundation a collection of a somewhat later group of
sūtras, prominently including the Discourse Unravelling the Thought
(Saṃdhinirmocana sūtra), the Flower Garland Sūtra (Avatamsika Sūtra, Hua
yan [ ]) and the The Entry into Lanka Sūtra (Lankāvatāra sūtra). The
philosophical foundations of this school are laid by the two 4th-century half-
brothers Asaṅga and Vasubandhu. This school has a strongly idealist streak, with
many of its texts privileging, both ontologically and epistemically, mind over the
material world. But it also has a strong phenomenological bent, with an
emphasis on a close understanding of the nature of experience. Much of what we
know as Buddhist logic also derives from Yogācāra thinkers such as Dignāga
(4th–5th centuries) and his eminent and highly influential commentator
Dharmakīrti (5th century), who initiates the Pramāṇavāda tradition of
epistemology and logic, to which we turn in chapters 8 and 9.11
The Mahāyāna moves out of India in two directions. First, it heads to China,
in fact as early as the 1st century CE, as the Mahāyāna is just getting underway.
While at first Buddhism was a small presence in the Chinese scene, by the 3rd
and 4th centuries, in part through interaction with neo-Daoists, Buddhism was
acquiring both a presence and a distinctively Chinese flavor. Over the next
millennium waves of missionaries from India and pilgrims from China bring
texts and ordination lineages to China, establishing a number of distinct schools.
As in India, Chinese schools were grounded in sūtras. The principal schools of
China are the Hua yan ( ) school, grounded in the The Flower Garland Sūtra,
the Tiantai ( ) school, grounded in the Lotus Sūtra (Saddharma-puṇḍarīka-
sūtra) and the Chan ( ) school, a school that paradoxically repudiates reliance
on sūtras in favor of direct psychological transmission and realization, but which
owes a great deal to the Discourse of Vimalakīrti among others, and which
generates such indigenous Chinese sūtras as The Platform Sūtra of the Sixth
Patriarch (Liuzu Tanjing / ).
China was hardly a philosophical tabula rasa when Buddhism arrived. It
already had flourishing Confucian and Daoist philosophical traditions and a rich
philosophical vocabulary. As Buddhist scriptures and philosophical ideas were
translated into Chinese—by a number of translators, over an extended period,
with no single translation method—Buddhist ideas became inflected in particular
with Daoist ideas (and vice versa), as much of the philosophical vocabulary
came from that tradition. Some ideas central to Indian Buddhism, such as rebirth
and the centrality of logic to philosophy, dropped by the wayside, at least in
some schools; some that had been more marginal, such as the idea of an innate
Buddha-nature, or potential for awakening, came to center stage. Emphases on
spontaneity and a suspicion of discursive thought permeate Chinese Buddhist
traditions.
Hua yan, in the hands of philosophers such as Fazang ( ) (7th century),
develops a vision of the universe in which all phenomena mutually
interpenetrate, using the metaphor of the jeweled net of Indra, comprising
infinitely many jewels, each reflecting all others, as a model for the infinite
interdependence of phenomena. The Tiantai school is best known for its
emphasis on the Lotus Sūtra itself as the supreme teaching of Buddhism, with
the doctrine of Buddha-nature, understood to be the primordially awakened
nature of the mind, a nature that only has to be disclosed, as its central teaching.
Chan takes over this emphasis on primordial awakening, taking discursive
thought to be the principal means of occlusion of this mode of taking up with the
world. Its emphasis on sitting meditation and the stilling of conceptual thought
derives from this idea. All three of these schools migrate from China through
Korea to Japan where Hua yan becomes Kegon, Tiantai becomes Tendai and
Chan becomes Zen.
The transmission of Buddhism to Tibet follows a very different trajectory.
Beginning in the 7th century, and culminating in the 9th century, Tibetan kings
invited Indian monastic scholars, including such luminaries as Atīśa and
Śāntarakṣita from Nālandā University, then the largest university in the world, to
establish Buddhism in Tibet. The establishment of Buddhism in Tibet was
deliberate and careful, involving a kind of national commitment to the
preservation of the Nālandā University system of Buddhist practice and study
and as much of the culture of the medieval Indian Buddhist world as possible in
Tibet, including medical, artistic and archaeological traditions as well as
academic and religious traditions. Much of this preservation has been
astonishingly successful, though not to the degree that Tibetans themselves
represent it.
Royal patronage was lavish and the transmission was highly systematic,
including the establishment of ordination lineages and the constitution of
translation commissions charged with standardizing translations from Sanskrit to
Tibetan. These commissions oversaw the skilled translation—by teams each
comprising both Tibetan scholars who had studied Sanskrit and Indian Sanskrit
pandits who knew Tibetan, supervised by committees charged with maintaining
lexical and grammatical consistency across translation teams—of virtually the
entire Indian Sanskrit Buddhist canon, including not only religious and
philosophical material, but also treatises on medicine, literature, and a host of
other subjects. It is to this massive and precise effort, unparalleled in world
history, that we owe the survival of much of Indian Buddhist literature, a great
deal of which was lost in the original when the great Buddhist libraries were
burned by Islamic invaders shortly after Buddhism was established in Tibet.
Despite its relatively systematic character, the development of Buddhism in
Tibet is far from simple, and we will eschew the details here. (See Powers 2007,
Kapstein 2002 and van Schaik 2011 for those details.) A number of distinct
Buddhist schools develop in Tibet between the 9th and 15th centuries,
representing significant differences in approaches to religious practice,
philosophical doctrine and institutional culture.
There are five schools that deserve particular mention. The oldest is the
Jonang (Jo nang), which emphasizes a synthesis of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra
doctrine, and a distinctive view of emptiness, called gzhan stong (shentong), or
emptiness-of-other, according to which conventional phenomena are empty of
instrinsic nature, but ultimate reality is non-empty. The Nyingma (sNying ma)
school, deriving from the teachings of Padmasambhāva, who brought tantra to
Tibet, emphasizes tantric practice, with the idea that direct non-conceptual
insight through nondiscursive practices is the only way to attain awakening. The
Kagyu (‘bkad brgyud) or oral lineage school owes a great deal philosophically
to Yogācāra, and emphasizes prolonged meditation and devotional practice.
The Sakya and Geluk traditions develop in the 14th and 15th centuries and are
far more scholastic and analytical in their approach. These schools reflect to the
greatest degree the analytic, scholastic approach to philosophy pursued in
universities like Nālandā, Vikramśīla and Takṣaśīla in India. And it is these
schools that produce some of the most astute and erudite scholars, such as
Gorampa (Go rams pa bsod nams seng ge), Ngog Loden Sherab (rNgog lo ts’a
ba blo ldan shes rab), Sakya Chokden (Sha skya mchog ldan) and Sakya Paṇḍita
(Chos rje sa skya pan di ta kun dga’ rgyal mtshan) from the Sakya lineage, and
Tsongkhapa, Gyeltsab (rGyal tshab dar ma rin chen), Khaydrup (mKhas grub
dge legs dpal bzang), Panchen Chokyi Nyima (Thub bstan chos kyi nyi ma),
Jangya (lCang bya) and Jamyang Shepa (‘Jam dbyangs bzhad pa ngag dbang
brtson ‘grus) in the Geluk tradition. These traditions were noteworthy for the
establishment not only of monasteries, but of comprehensive monastic
universities that became centers of study and scholarship, and remain so to the
present day. While it would be a gross exaggeration to say that the Indian and
Tibetan traditions are identical, there is a clear line of continuity between them,
and we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Tibetan culture and scholarship for
preserving a living tradition of Indic Buddhist philosophy. (For a much more
detailed discussion of the history of Tibetan Buddhism see Powers 2007 and
Williams 2009.)
The sectarianism of Tibetan Buddhism was always a mixed blessing.
Politically it was often disastrous as sects jockeyed for political and economic
advantage. But the philosophical and doctrinal rivalries often generated sharp
debate and a honing of arguments and positions. While sometimes we find
closed-minded sectarians among Tibetan philosophers, we also find eminent
scholars who proudly meld ideas from distinct lineages to generate new
syntheses. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in Eastern Tibet, a new
movement, called Ri-meh (Ris med), or nonsectarianism, arises, specifically
aimed at synthesis, rather than debate, of ideas from the major lineages. Under
the influence of philosophers such as Ju Mipham Rinpoche (Mi pham ‘jam
dbyangs rnam rgyal rgyam tso), many scholars sought to study in the
monasteries and colleges of multiple lineages. In this period, often referred to as
the “Tibetan Renaissance,” a great deal of very sophisticated philosophy
emerged, much of which is influential today.
And of course, now Buddhism is moving west, and as it does so it will
transform and will be transformed by Western culture, just as Buddhism has
transformed and been transformed by every culture into which it has moved. It is
too soon to predict the contours of this transformation. (But see Bhushan,
Garfield and Zablocki 2009 for a set of discussions of this process.) Our students
and grand-students will write the next chapters in its history. I hope that this brief
and very broad sketch helps to locate some of the ideas and figures we will
encounter in the next chapters.

1. The reader who is familiar with the elements of Buddhism will recognize that I have articulated what are
generally known as the “four noble (or ennobling) truths” taught by Siddhartha Gautama (the historical
Buddha, or awakened one) in the Discourse Setting in Motion the Wheel of Doctrine
(Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta), along with some related doctrine. The four truths are generally
articulated as follows:

(1) All of life is suffering;

(2) There is a cause of suffering (primal confusion, leading to attachment and aversion);
(3) There is a release from suffering (through the cessation of that attachment and aversion consequent on
the termination of primal confusion);
(4) The eightfold path to the release from suffering (right view; right intention; right speech; right action;
right livelihood; right effort; right mindfulness; right meditation).

I have conjoined the four noble truths with the three characteristics of reality (impermanence, selflessness
and interdependence) to construct this list of basic tenets.
2. The middle way and the Buddhist idealist schools. We will characterize each in more detail below.
3. One of the principal schools of Tibetan Buddhism, and indeed the one in which I pursued most of my
own study of Buddhist philosophy.
4. The Pāli term sutta and the Sanksrit sūtra are intertranslatable. In the Buddhist context a sutta or a sutra
is a text taken to be spoken by or directly approved by the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama. I use
sutta when the text in question is a Pāli sutta, sūtra when the text is a Sanskrit sūtra. We will return to the
relation between these bodies of literature in the final section of this chapter.
5. It is interesting to note (and we will return to this in our discussion of ethics toward the end of this book)
that a sense of shame (hiri) is regarded as an important human virtue in Buddhist ethical theory. See Heim
(2013) for an excellent discussion.
6. I should note that there are many ways of translating these Sanskrit terms, which do not map easily onto
English. Nothing here hangs on the translation choice, and I omit the Pali and Tibetan equivalents here as
they are not relevant to the present discussion.
7. Each of these terms is problematic in its own way. Pāli suggests that the Buddha actually spoke in Pāli
and that all Buddhist discourse and scholarship in the tradition in question is conducted in that language,
which is not true; pre-Mahāyāna suggests that the tradition in question existed only before the rise of the
Mahāyāna, or even that its canon was written down before that movement began, both of which are false;
Hinayāna means inferior vehicle, a term of derision used by some Mahāyāna practitioners, but
understandably rejected by those to whom it refers; Śrāvakayāna, which has been introduced recently and
means disciples’ vehicle, suggests that there are no disciples in the Mahāyāna; Theravāda is the name of
only one of the eighteen schools in this tradition, the only one to survive today. None of these terms are
coextensive with any of the others; all are regularly used in the literature for one or more of the others. I
will try to be both as minimally misleading and as minimally pedantic as possible when I use any of them.
8. See Siderits (2007) for a fine exposition of this position.
9. Thanks to Amber Carpenter for this felicitous translation suggestion.
10. Approximately—estimates of his dates vary from the 1st to the 3rd centuries. See Walser (2005) for an
excellent discussion of this issue.
11. There is considerable debate between Madhyamaka and Yogācāra thinkers in the history of Indian
Buddhism, and this debate generates some fascinating texts. But there are also synthetic thinkers,
prominently including the 9th-century figure Śāntarakṣita, who attempt to reconcile these approaches. We
will encounter this literature below.
2 THE METAPHYSICAL PERSPECTIVE I:
INTERDEPENDENCE AND IMPERMANENCE

Before addressing specific topics in the philosophy of mind, epistemology,

philosophy of language and ethics, it will be useful to bring the broad Buddhist
metaphysical perspective into greater focus. To do so, we begin with three
central, tightly linked theses regarding the nature of reality: all phenomena are
dependently originated, impermanent and empty of intrinsic identity. We will
explore these theses and their relationship to one another in some detail, with
attention to the variety of ways in which they are understood in Buddhist
traditions.
Second, we will address the complex doctrine of the two truths. Early in the
development of Buddhist philosophy we see a distinction drawn between
conventional and ultimate truth, introduced as a hermeneutical device to
distinguish between claims asserted or authorized by the Buddha that are to be
taken as literally true and those that are mere pedagogical devices or façons de
parler. This doctrine, as we shall see, undergoes significant transformation in the
history of Buddhist thought and becomes highly metaphysically charged with the
development first of Abhidharma theory and later with the rise of the Mahāyāna.
Its interpretation has been a matter of considerable contestation, both within
Buddhist canonical literature and in recent scholarship in Buddhist Studies. The
mature doctrine—which will concern us in chapter 3 and following—is
grounded on the analysis of the relationship between emptiness and dependent
origination, and so these discussions are deeply intertwined.
Finally, we will turn to one of the principal contributions I think that this
broad Buddhist metaphysical analysis can make to contemporary metaphysics. If
this perspective is even worth taking seriously—and I believe that it is—it may
shift our thinking regarding the use of intuitions in our own metaphysical
thought, and that regarding the nature of modality itself.

1. Dependent Origination
Let us begin with a discussion of dependent origination, a doctrine to which the
Dalai Lama XIV has referred as “the entirety of Buddhist teaching.” (See, for
instance Dalai Lama 2001, 2005.) The standard formulation of this doctrine,
occurring frequently in the Pāli canon and quoted countless times in canonical
literature, is “when this arises, that arises; when this does not occur, that does not
occur.”1 This is, of course, a rather laconic expression of a complex
metaphysical thesis, and we will elaborate that thesis in company with the
Buddhist canon at some length.
But even on its surface, it indicates that to which we in the modern West have
come to refer as a “Humean” understanding of causation.2 That is, dependent
origination is spelled out as a kind of brute regularity, and brute regularity is
taken to characterize reality quite generally. The world is not random; it can be
characterized by laws, but those laws are not grounded in anything more than the
fact of the regularity of the world. Hume was at pains to argue that not only is
there no evidence of a necessary connection obtaining between regularly
associated events, but that we do not even have an idea of any such relation,
even though we have words that appear to express such an idea. According to
Hume the only idea we have in the metaphysical ballpark denoted by the term
causation is that of regular association between events and an idea of reflection
of our tendency to associate them. The events themselves are merely
independent occurrences, whose classification as being of the same type itself is
merely nominal. Even regularity, on Hume’s view, depends upon the linguistic
conventions that allow us to establish sortals whose instances are regularly
associated (Baier 1991, Coventry 2007, 2008, Fogelin 1985, Garfield 1994,
Kripke 1982; but see Garrett 2002 and Strawson 1992b, 2011a for alternative
readings).
Buddhist philosophers, including Siddhartha Gautama himself, and such later
systematic exponents of his views such as Nāgārjuna (2nd–3rd century CE)
anticipated Hume’s analysis in many respects. Necessary causal connections
play no role in Siddhartha Gautama’s account of dependent origination and are
explicitly rejected by Nāgārjuna (Garfield 1994, 1995, 2001). Buddhists, too, are
nominalists and regard sortals as merely conventional, dependent upon cognitive
and linguistic conventions. And the formula of dependent origination enshrines
the regularities we posit as the sole structure of reality.
Despite these similarities, there are interesting differences to note. First of all,
while Hume is interested not in causality, or regularity itself, but rather in the
content and source of the idea of causality, Buddhists are unanimous in
regarding interdependence as a fundamental feature of reality. Now, we will have
cause to nuance this a bit below as we encounter the doctrine of the two truths,
and it will turn out that interdependence is a fundamental feature only of
conventional reality; nonetheless, as we will see, in many Buddhist schools,
conventional reality is reality, while in those in which it is treated merely
fictionally, there is still a standard of truth and falsity to be observed with respect
to it. With Hume, then, Buddhists see causal relations as merely conventional,
but unlike Hume, they take this to be a principal way of being real, not an
alternative to reality (Cowherds 2011). Moreover, while Hume regards events as
“independent existences,” for Buddhists, dependent origination guarantees that
nothing is an independent existent. The only account we can give of anything
adverts to its relations to everything else (Garfield 1995, and see Bliss 2015 for a
different perspective). More of this below.
As the doctrine of dependent origination is elaborated, three kinds of relevant
dependence are identified. Together they constitute a complex web of
interdependence on multiple dimensions. It is important to keep all three in focus
as each plays an important role in Buddhist thought more broadly. Often the
phrase “dependent origination” is used to refer to the entire complex, but more
often a specific instance is relevant, but not explicitly identified. In a short text
called Instructions on the Profound Middle Path of the Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka
Tradition (dBu ma thal ‘gyur pa’i lugs kyi zab lam dbu ma’i lta khrid) (1991a),
Tsongkhapa writes that dependent origination is to be understood as “dependent
arising, dependent existence and dependent designation” (Collected Works, Sha
578:3).
The first kind of dependence is that to which we have already referred—
causal dependence. This is the central dimension of dependent origination and is
that which receives the most attention in early Buddhist texts. All events in time,
all Buddhist philosophers agree, occur in dependence on prior causes and
conditions, and all states of affairs cease when the causes and conditions that are
necessary for their occurrence cease.
The second dimension is mereological dependence. This dimension plays a
large role in Buddhist accounts of the two truths, and of personal and object
identity. On this dimension, all wholes depend upon their parts, and all parts
depend for their existence as parts on the wholes in which they figure. My body
only exists because all of its parts exist. Take those away, and I have no body.
But my heart only exists because of the rest of my body. Take away the body,
and that mass of muscle is no heart.
The most abstract and contentious form of dependent origination is the third—
dependence on conceptual imputation. Divergent interpretations of this form of
dependence are presented in different Buddhist schools, with some, such as
Yogācāra, emphasizing fundamental cognitive processes as the mechanism for
identity determination, and others, such as Madhyamaka, emphasizing language
and social convention. How this kind of dependence is understood in part
determines whether Buddhist ontological doctrine is conventionalist, idealist,
antirealist or whether Buddhism is an ontologically neutral phenomenological
doctrine. Most neutrally, we can start from this broad understanding: all
phenomena are dependent for their identity as the kinds of objects they are on
the conceptual structure that contributes to our experience. For something to be a
single thing, or to be a thing of a particular kind, is for us to take it as falling
under a sortal, and sortals are our conceptual constructions. We will interrogate
this further below.3

1.1 Causal Dependency

As we noted above, causal dependency figures in Buddhist metaphysics from its
outset. In what is taken to be Siddhartha Gautama’s first public discourse after
his awakening, the Discourse Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Doctrine, he
asserts that everything that occurs is caused to occur and specifically takes this
to encompass both the psychological realm, through the so-called twelve links of
dependent origination, and the material realm. Indeed, it is clear from the
presentation of the twelve links that he takes these realms themselves to be
causally interconnected. It is part of the Buddhist platform for human
perfectibility that our unsatisfactory life is caused by primal confusion, and that
eliminating this primal confusion is necessary and sufficient for the extinction of
the suffering it causes. These are causal notions.
But early on, things become more nuanced. First, let us note that early Indian
discussions of causation, including Buddhist discussions, are indifferent between
thinking of causal relations as relations between events, things, properties and
states. This gets confusing, and it is often useful to regiment discussions for
clarity in doctrinal reconstruction. So it is perfectly natural in this genre to say
that the disintegration of a seed (an event) causes the arising of a sprout (another
event); but it is also natural to say that the seed (a thing) is the cause of the
sprout (another thing); that ignorance (a property) is the cause of suffering
(another property); or that my ignorance (a state) is the cause of my remaining in
saṃsāra (another state). We may at times have to disentangle doctrinal issues
from mere façons de parler, but sometimes what appear to be mere façons are
more than that.
Early Buddhist Abhidharma doctrine distinguishes causes (hetu) from
conditions (pratyaya). And four kinds of conditions are then distinguished. Let
us begin with the first distinction. It is often drawn (somewhat misleadingly) in
the context of the example of the seed and sprout we have just been considering:
A seed is the cause of a sprout. When there is a seed, a sprout arises, and indeed
a barley seed only gives rise to a barley sprout, and a rice seed to a rice sprout.
The specificity is important here in determining causation. But none of this
happens without the cooperation of a number of conditions. The soil must be
fertile. There must be adequate rain, and sun. There must be no frost, and no
mouse must eat the seed before it germinates.
The cause here is that which—in some sense to be spelled out—is the primary
salient explanans of the phenomenon to be explained, and it is what explains
why that effect, as opposed to some other, came about. The conditions are the
supporting cast of phenomena that enable the cause to do its work, the stuff to
which we generally refer by ceteris paribus clauses in causal laws. So, for
instance, while fertile soil, rain and sun might help that rice sprout to grow, they
do not specify that it will be rice that grows; that is in the seed. They are the
conditions for any seed to germinate. And the sprout does not grow from them,
but from the seed. Moreover, some conditions are negative (no mouse, no frost),
whereas a cause in an Indian framework is always a positive phenomenon.
It should be clear that a lot of vagueness lurks here, and extending this
intuitive picture of the causal process to modern science would hardly be
unproblematic. On the other hand, there is a certain intuitive appeal to the
picture and a revealing tie of talk about causation to talk about explanation. And
as we will see, this causal contextualism sets the stage for subsequent Buddhist
dialectic and refinement of the picture. We can ask, “What caused that sprout?”
and be told, “A seed (with the help of cooperating conditions).” But we could
also ask, “What causes seeds to sprout?” and be told, “Rain, fair weather and
good soil.” Relative to that question, these are causes, while the absence of mice
remains but one condition. (But we might also answer that question, in a
different context, by saying, “the cat finally got the mice under control; that’s
why the seeds sprouted this year.”)
Moreover, the tie between causal discourse and explanatory discourse
substitutes nicely for any talk of occult causal powers or productive forces of the
kind of which Hume was to be so suspicious a couple of millennia after
Siddhartha Gautama flourished. If we ask why we attribute causation of barley
sprouts to barley seeds, the answer is simply that when we plant barley seeds we
get barley sprouts. We might in turn ask why that is, and we might get a story
about barley genes being carried by barley seeds, and then barley DNA encoding
barley genes, and so on. But in each case, when we ask why it is that we take the
relevant cause to be the cause of the relevant effect, the Buddhist theorist
responds by citing a deeper, more explanatory, perhaps broader regularity, and
nothing more. Regularities are explained by other regularities, and when we use
causal language, we do no more than promise a regularity to which we can
appeal in further explanation, and we promise in turn that these regularities will
be embedded in still deeper regularities.
There is one further reason, to which we will come shortly, not to worry too
much about the early Buddhist distinction between hetu and pratyaya. It is but a
dialectical moment, a stepping stone to a dissolution of that distinction, and a
critique of the very idea of anything privileged in the causal web as a hetu, as a
specific cause, of anything else, as opposed to a mere condition. More of that
below when we encounter the later Madhyamaka (Middle Way) analyses of
dependent origination, an analysis that explicitly dispenses with any notion of
causal power, or real link between causes and effects, and so with any notion of
natural necessity of the kind so prevalent in Western metaphysical accounts of
causation.
First, let us consider the four kinds of pratyaya. The first is what is called the
causal condition (hetu-pratyaya). It is a condition that, in the early formulation
we are considering, helps get things underway, such as a good soaking rain after
planting. The second, the observed or supporting condition (ālambana-
pratyaya), is a standing, simultaneous state of affairs that enables an effect to
eventuate, such as fertile soil. In a more familiar case, a table is an observed
support for a book, and a condition of its not falling to the floor.4
The third, the immediate condition (samanantara-pratyaya), is the kind of
condition we find on the minute dissection of the causal sequence, the proximal
micro-conditions of an event taking place, such as, for instance, the softening of
the skin of the seed so that the sprout can emerge, or in a more familiar example,
the excitation of fluorescent atoms in a light tube as an immediate condition of
luminosity, where flicking a switch was the cause of the light going on. Finally,
the dominant condition (adhipati-pratyaya) is the telos of an action. The barley
crop I desire is the dominant condition of the sprouts, for that is what got me to
sow the seeds (or perhaps it was the chang I hoped to drink once the barley is
fermented!).
Once again we note that in specifying these conditions, we are relying not on
a metaphysics of causal productivity. (After all, the chang I will brew after
harvest does not exert a retrocausal effect on the seeds.) Instead, we are asking
what explains what, what would count as a good answer to a “why?” question.
The pragmatism that underlies the distinction between different kinds of
conditions is exactly the same pragmatism that underlies the distinction between
causes and conditions. And therein lies the key to the Madhyamaka critique of
the very distinction between causes and conditions that is so fundamental to
earlier Buddhist thought about causality.5
 So, when we say from a Madhyamaka perspective that all phenomena are
dependent on causes and conditions, we mean that everything is explicable, that
no event or entity is independent of other events or entities for its existence, and
that explanation is nothing more than an embedding in explanatorily potent
regularities, of which, for any phenomenon, there are many, and which are
always interest-dependent and description-dependent.
In the work of Nāgārjuna (the founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way
school of Buddhist philosophy and a pioneer of Mahāyāna Buddhism) this
picture is made explicit. Nāgārjuna, as we will see in chapter 3, presents an
analysis of all phenomena as empty of intrinsic nature, an analysis that forms the
basis of all Mahāyāna metaphysical thought. In this context, he begins his major
work Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way with an examination of the status
of the causal relation itself. He argues that the emptiness of causation—the lack
of any determinate identity in the causal relation—and the emptiness of causes
of causal power effectively undermine the notion of causation itself, and of a
cause, and hence empty the distinction between causes and conditions of any
content.
Nāgārjuna therefore argues that while we can appeal to the four kinds of
conditions for explanation, that appeal is grounded always in convention, and
never in any ultimate facts about things. True assertions of dependence depend
themselves on the descriptions under which things are explained and hence the
sortals and interests we bring to the explanatory enterprise. Regularities are only
explanatory to the degree that they are explained by other regularities, in a
bottomless web of explanation. The anticipation here of Wittgenstein’s remarks
on the status of laws of nature in the Tractatus is startling, and there are real
affinities between Nāgārjuna’s view and the kinds of antirealism in the
philosophy of science recently defended by van Fraassen (1980) and Cartwright
(1983). On this view, there are no causal powers, and hence nothing ever arises
from anything else, although nothing arises independently. Everything, including
dependence itself, is dependent on other conditions.
Tsongkhapa puts it this way in his poem “In Praise of Dependent Origination”
(rTen ‘brel pa legs bshad snying po, 2014), emphasizing both the universality of
dependent origination and its deep link to a lack of intrinsic nature, and hence
merely conventional existence:6
14. The non-contingent is like a sky-flower.
Hence there is nothing that is non-dependent.
If things exist through their essences, their dependence on
Causes and conditions for their existence is a contradiction.
 15. “Therefore since no phenomena exist
Other than origination through dependence,
No phenomena exist other than
Being devoid of intrinsic existence,” you taught. (trans T. Jinpa 2014)
Tsongkhapa emphasizes in these two verses not only the universality of
dependent origination, including the dependent origination of dependent
origination itself, but also the fact that dependence is the very antithesis of
intrinsic existence, and hence entails that the existence of phenomena can only
be conventional. We will explore this doctrine in detail in chapter 3, below.7

1.2 Part-Whole Dependence

The second dimension of dependent origination is part-whole or mereological
dependence. This dimension is simpler and more straightforward. All composite
entities, from a Buddhist perspective, depend for their existence and their
properties on their parts. In the Sanskrit Abhidharma Buddhism of northern
India, this dependence bottoms out in impartite simple dharmas, the momentary,
dimensionless tropes that are the fundamental building blocks of all
psychological and physical phenomena. On this view, as we saw in the previous
chapter, dharmas have a very different grade of existence than those composites
they constitute. And this provides the basis for a distinction between the merely
conventional, second-grade existence these early Buddhist schools assign to
composite phenomena and the ultimate existence they assign to dharmas
(Siderits 2007, 111–113).
As the Mahāyāna develops, however, and the Madhyamaka critique of the
very idea of a dharma and the reductionism it encodes takes hold, the idea that
there is an ultimately real level of phenomena to which conventional phenomena
reduce ends up being rejected. Nāgārjuna argues in Fundamental Verses on the
Middle Way that dharmas themselves are dependently originated and empty of
intrinsic nature, and hence not ultimately existent. Moreover, he argues, the idea
that any real entity can be entirely indivisible is to be rejected.8 As a
consequence of these ontological developments, the idea that conventional
existence is a second-rate kind of existence also falls by the wayside. This
rehabilitation of the conventional truth in virtue of the analysis of the ultimate as
emptiness is central to what we might call “Nāgārjuna’s revolution.” (See
Cowherds 2011 for an exploration of this development.) As a consequence of the
rejection of the ultimate existence of infinitesimal parts, the dependence relation
between parts and wholes came to be recognized as a two-way street. Given that
there is no ultimate decomposition of wholes into parts, the identification of any
part as a part came to be seen as a matter of decompositional interest, just as the
identification of a condition as an explanans is seen as dependent upon
explanatory interests.
For something to exist as a part of a whole, on this view, is to be dependent on
the whole in two respects. First, if the whole does not exist, the part does not
exist as the kind of thing it is when it figures in the whole. To take Wittgenstein’s
example in Philosophical Investigations, a brake lever is only a brake lever, and
not simply a metal rod, in the context of a car in which it so functions (§6). A
biological organ, such as a heart, depends on an entire organism to develop, to
function and to be an organ at all.
Second, decomposition can be accomplished in many ways. We might say that
a memory chip is a part of a computer if we are decomposing it functionally, and
that the parts of the chip are circuits, and so on. On the other hand, we might
decompose the computer into adjacent 1 mm cubes, in which case the chip might
turn out to be involved in several different parts, and not to be a part itself. If the
whole in question is a solid volume, the cubes are parts; if it is a computer, the
chip is a part, and 1 mm cubes are irrelevant. So, just as wholes depend on their
parts, parts depend on their wholes.

1.3 Dependence on Conceptual Imputation

The third dimension of dependent origination is perhaps the most difficult to
understand. Mādhyamikas and Yogācārins argue that entities are dependent for
their existence on conceptual imputation. The rough idea is this: the entities and
properties we experience in the world depend for their reality and identity on our
minds, including our perceptual and conceptual apparatus, for their existence as
the entities we encounter. But this rough idea needs immediate refinement, as it
is indeterminate between a number of readings.
One straightforward way to read this thesis is as a kind of idealism, and to be
sure, this reading is well attested, particularly in the Yogācāra or Cittamātra
school of Buddhism. On this account, the phenomena we experience are
dependent on our conceptual imputation simply because they are all really
nothing more than projections of our consciousness, mere ideas and not external
phenomena. This position is arguably maintained by Vasubandhu in his short
treatises Twenty Stanzas and Thirty Stanzas (Trimsikakārikā) and is certainly
how he is interpreted by his most influential commentator, Sthiramati.
Vasubandhu, for instance, opens Twenty Stanzas as follows:
 1. All this is merely consciousness,
Because all apparent intentional objects are nonexistent.
It is just as one who suffers from opthalmia
Sees such nonexistent things as moons and hairs.
From this perspective, any entity we encounter is nothing more than a conscious
projection, and so any entity is trivially dependent upon conceptual imputation.
But this idealism is the most extreme end of a spectrum of understandings of this
kind of dependence. Closer to the center of Buddhist ideas, and more in harmony
with earlier Buddhist ideas, is the Madhyamaka interpretation: a kind of
conventionalism, coupled with a subtle attention to the ways in which our
interface with the world conditions the world we experience. On this view, we
pay attention to the entities we experience, to the ontology of everyday life.
From the Madhyamaka perspective there are two dimensions to this kind of
dependence. First, the world we encounter presents itself to us as a world of self-
presenting particulars endowed with properties and standing in relations that are
determined from the side of the entities themselves. But this is a cognitive
illusion. What constitutes a rabbit, as opposed to a set of rabbit parts, or a
moment in a series of rabbit stages; what constitutes a jellyfish, as opposed to a
colony of cells or part of an oceanic biomass depends upon our individuation
conventions and interests. Whether today’s church with its parishioners and
brand-new building is identical to or different from the church that existed a
century ago with the same name but now long-dead parishioners and a razed
building depends on who is asking and why.
We see a world of colored surfaces, marked with sounds in our audible range,
with muted scents. Our dogs inhabit worlds of vivid scents, drab surfaces and
hear sounds in a frequency range to which we have no access. Bees and other
insects see a world through compound eyes with four color cones instead of our
three; in their world objects we see as being of the same color are dramatically
different in color; frequencies of light to which we are not sensitive dominate
their experience. Which is the real world? Who sees it aright? Which viewpoint
is unimpaired? Which is distorted?
The classic Buddhist example used to introduce and to defuse these questions,
widely repeated, concerns water. We humans experience it as a clear, tasteless,
thirst-quenching liquid; fish experience it as the very medium of their existence;
divinities, according to Buddhist lore, experience it as ambrosia; pretas—often
known as hungry ghosts, one of the unfortunate kinds of beings in the world—
experience water as a disgusting mixture of pus and blood. We don’t need to
subscribe to the karmic mythology involving divinities, pretas and other such
beings to see the point—the manifest perceptible characteristics of things are not
simply features of those things themselves, but arise through the interaction of
objects with the particular kind of subjectivity of the subject experiencing them.
So, what is the right way to see the world? To the Mādhyamika it is obvious
that there is simply no answer to this question, and not because we can’t
determine the answer, but because the question doesn’t make sense. If bees are
right, everyone else is wrong; if we are right, our dogs are just mistaken about
their own world. If there is indeed no fact of the matter about how the world is,
we are faced with the conclusion that the world we inhabit, and the standards of
truth appropriate to it, depend upon our sensory and conceptual apparatus as
much as on the entities we perceive. Phenomena thus depend upon conceptual
imputation—a dependence with social, cognitive and sensory dimensions. This
may be one of the most radical attacks on one aspect of the Myth of the Given to
have ever been advanced in world philosophy. It is not simply an argument that
reality—whatever it may be—is not given to us as it is; rather, it is the claim that
we can make no sense whatsoever of the very notion of reality that is
presupposed by any form of that myth. This dependence, however, is not
absolute, and does not yield an idealism; it is rather causal, involving an
interplay between the subjective and objective aspects of the reality we enact.9
All of this raises an important question regarding the domain of metaphysics
in a Buddhist framework. When we say that phenomena are dependently
originated, and in particular, that they are dependent on conceptual imputation,
are we talking about the phenomena themselves, as they are independently of
how we take them—what we might naively call the world as it is? Or are we
talking about our lebenswelt—what we might in the same register call the world
as we find it? That is—especially in the context of a school like Madhyamaka,
with its radical rejection of the project of fundamental ontology—are we still
doing metaphysics at all, or have we retreated to the domain of phenomenology?
It is tempting to say that when we attend to the first two kinds of dependence,
it is the former, and when we attend to the last (unless we are idealists) the latter.
After all, it seems to be that causal relations (even if we interpret them in the
regularist way Buddhist metaphysics suggests) obtain between events whether or
not we experience or categorize them; that objects depend on their parts, and
their parts on the wholes even if we are not experiencing them. That is what the
metaphysics of dependence seems to be all about. Dependence on conceptual
imputation, on the other hand, seems to directly target the world only as we take
it to be.
There is something to this, but things are not so straightforward. For if the
Madhyamaka metaphysical picture we are sketching is correct, the world as it is
is not entirely given to us independent of conceptual imputation, either. That
world, and the interdependencies that obtain in it, as well as its ontology of
entities and parts, comprises, inter alia, the social world we construct. Such
things as nations, economies, academies and families constitute and are
constituted by their parts, by the wholes in which they participate, and are
subject to causal dependencies, and these are constituted in part by our
conceptual imputations. And given the multiplicity of ways of taking the world
scouted above, there is no reason to believe that the way that we take even the
natural, non-human world, is uniquely privileged. Conceptual imputation may be
at work all the way down.
Another way of putting this point concerns the close relation between identity
and existence, as seen from a Buddhist metaphysical perspective. The Quinean
slogan “no entity without identity” has a clear ancestor in this tradition. To say
that something exists, whether it is a proton, a person or a national deficit, is to
presuppose that it has an identity. If we cannot say what it is that exists, an
existence claim is empty. And the force of the thoroughgoing determination of
ontology from the subjective side, whether by the structure of the senses, of
thought, of language or of social structures and purposes, means that assertions
of identity independent of those considerations are empty. We don’t even know
what we mean when we assert that something exists simpliciter, what the truth
conditions of such a claim might be, and there may well be no content to any
such claims at all.
The Buddhist critique of the idea of independent existence encodes the
intuition that since identity conditions for phenomena are determined by an
interplay of subject and object, and since existence is always existence as an
entity with a particular identity, existence is also dependent in this sense. This is
another way of saying that the attempt to find a determinate reality beyond the
apparently ethereal lebenswelt may well be doomed to failure.

1.4 Western Connections

These ideas are not entirely foreign to Western metaphysical thought, of course.
They resonate both with ideas articulated in the Pyrrhonian and Academic
skeptical traditions, as when in chapter 10 of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus
says, “For example, honey appears to us to have a sweetening quality. This much
we conceded, because it affects us with a sensation of sweetness. The question,
however, is whether it is sweet in an absolute sense” (1964, 38). Among the ten
modes of Anasedemus, the first mode, that from differences in animals, is also
apposite: “According to this mode, the same objects do not produce the same
impression in different animals” (ibid., 45) “But if the difference in animals is a
cause of things appearing different, then we shall, it is true, be able to say what
—in our view—a things is; but on the question what it really is by nature, we
shall suspend judgment” (49).
While all of the modes attack the idea that we can sensibly predicate qualities
of objects independent of our own perceptual apparatus, the sixth mode, that
from admixtures, deserves special note. Sextus writes:
By this mode we conclude that, since none of the external objects appears
to us singly, but always in conjunction with something else, it is perhaps
possible to state the nature of the mixture resulting from the conjunction of
the external object and that other thing which we perceive together with it,
but we are not able to say what the real nature of the external object is in its
unmixed state. (64)
Sextus makes it plain in the subsequent discussion that the factors he takes to be
“mixed” with external objects are our sensory and cognitive faculties, including
both the physical sense organs and the cognitive processes by means of which
we perceive. Now, a lot of ink has been spilled on the question of how to
interpret Pyrrhonian skepticism, and I do not propose to wade once again into
that river. (For my thoughts see Garfield 1990.) Here I emphasize only that the
Buddhist idea that our objects of knowledge—the furniture of our lebenswelt are
dependent on both external and internal conditions and cannot be taken to be
independent in any sense—is hardly foreign to the Western tradition, although
the arguments for that conclusion and the ways in which it is understood may be
interestingly different.
These ideas also resonate with the intuitions of the intellectual descendants of
the skeptical tradition such as Hume, in his insistence that what we can know is
human nature, and that any metaphysics of the external world is doomed, and
Wittgenstein who speaks of the spade being turned when we arrive at human
practices and conventions. These ideas also resonate, not surprisingly, with ideas
articulated in German and British idealism (particularly with Kant’s and
Schopenhauer’s insight that we know only representations conditioned by the
structure of our sensibility and understanding, and that even what we take to be
rational is conditioned ultimately by the structure of human reason and not that
of any independent reality, but also with the thought of Bradley, who took all
appearance to be essentially relational).
Of course these Buddhist metaphysical ideas are not identical with those that
emerged in the West, and the point of this discussion is neither to show that they
are nor to engage in bland “compare and contrast” exercise. Nonetheless, it is
sometimes easier to appreciate the perspective of an unfamiliar tradition by
recognizing some of its more familiar characteristics. By seeing the ways in
which this network of ideas crosscuts more familiar philosophical divides we
come to see that Buddhist metaphysics is not some Western program being
prosecuted by other means, but a very different way of taking up with
metaphysical questions, with insights of its own that demand serious attention.
In rejecting a metaphysics of independent substances overlaid with attributes
in favor of a world of essenceless insubstantial relata we see anticipations of the
British empiricist critique of the idea of substance developed initially by
Berkeley and sharpened considerably by Hume. Berkeley ridicules the idea of
substance as a substratum for properties in the first of the Three Dialogues
Between Hylas and Philonous when after developing a regress argument to the
effect that substance can have no properties, including that of being the basis of
properties, he says, “It seems then you have no idea at all, neither relative nor
positive, or matter; you know neither what it is in itself nor what relation it bears
to accidents?” (40). Hume echoes this claim of the incomprehensibility of the
idea of substance when he says, “…[T]hese philosophers…suppose a substance
supporting, which they do not understand, and an accident supported, of which
they have as imperfect an idea. The whole system, therefore, is entirely
incomprehensible…” (222). Hume’s great advance over Berkeley, of course, is
to extend this argument to an attack on mental substance as well as physical
substance, thus completing the reprise of the critique developed originally by the
Buddha.
This affinity will be more apparent when we turn to questions concerning time
and identity. But we should also note that in understanding the fundamental
mode of existence of all phenomena to be relational, and not intrinsic, there are
also powerful anticipations of Bradley’s radical ontology. These entities are
hence not, as we remarked above, Hume’s independent existences connected by
contingent relations, but are rather insubstantial nodes in networks of
insubstantial, contingent relations.
The emphasis on the role of perception, cognition and convention in the
constitution of identity and the determination of existence that we see in
Buddhist metaphysics anticipates Hume’s analysis of identity over time, of
personal identity, as well as his account of causation. But it also anticipates
Kant’s analysis of phenomena as co-constituted by noumena and our sensory and
cognitive faculties. We can put the broad difference this way: In providing an
account of a world, the ontology of which is determined by imputation, Buddhist
philosophers, partly for soteriological reasons, partly for metaphysical reasons,
are emphasizing that the entities and properties with which we interact are those
that have significance for us, those about which we care, that stand out from and
are framed by backgrounds, or that constitute the backgrounds that give
significance to that which stands out.
And this makes perfect sense. Buddhist philosophy, as we said at the outset of
this study, is aimed at solving a particular problem, that of the omnipresence of
suffering; that suffering is created by and enacted in the world of things and
properties we take to be meaningful, and in ascribing them the meanings that
allow them to be sources either of suffering or its alleviation, we construct them
as the properties they are for us. The choice of the lebenswelt as the site of
metaphysics is thus not a retreat from reality, but a focus on the reality that
matters to us. Its metaphysics is the metaphysics that can make a difference.
While Western phenomenology may not share this soteriological concern, the
insights the Buddhist analysis generates are nonetheless hard to resist.
This lebenswelt, especially in the Mahāyāna tradition, is a social world, a
world in which conventions can be constituted. One of the central meanings of
convention (samvṛti, vyāvahāra), as the 6th-century Indian philosopher
Candrakīrti emphasizes in his Autocommentary to Introduction to the Middle
Way (Madhyamakāvatārabhāṣya), is agreement, or mundane practice. For this
reason, from a Mahāyāna perspective, not only are our salient social practices
and linguistic meanings conventionally constituted, but so is our ontology. The
connections between this perspective and the insights of the later Wittgenstein
are also salient. Here I have in mind both the centrality of social conventions in
the constitution of ontology and epistemic practices and the insight that the
phenomena we encounter in everyday life are essenceless. Wittgenstein, like
Madhyamaka philosophers, argued that such phenomena as meaning,
intentionality, justification and categorization depend crucially on human
purposes, forms of life and conventions.
Thurman (1980) notes the uncanny parallel between the philosophical strategy
adopted by Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa on the one hand and by Wittgenstein in
his later work on the other. He refers to this strategy as “non-egocentrism,”
although the terms “conventionalism” or even “communitarianism” have
become more popular. Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa argue that our conventions—
including both linguistic and customary practices and innate cognitive
commonalities—constitute our ontology, and that the very possibility of any
individual knowing anything, asserting anything or thinking anything requires
participation in those conventions. (See also Thakchöe 2013.) Explanatory
priority is located at the collective level, not the individual level. In a similar
vein, Wittgenstein argues that meaning is constituted by collective linguistic
practice enabled by shared innate propensities; that intentionality is parasitic on
linguistic meaning and that knowledge depends upon epistemic practices that are
in turn grounded in conventions regarding justification, doubt and so on. Once
again, while there is considerable overlap in perspective, the Buddhist traditions
that anticipate Western ideas are distinct enough in their approach to merit
serious attention.
The very practices that constitute our world and the practices of justification
and assertion are conventional through and through. And those conventions are
rough, dependent and variable enough that when we try to specify essences—
sets of non-trivial necessary and sufficient conditions—for things, we almost
always fail. Conventional reality for Wittgenstein, as for the Mādhyamika,
cannot withstand too much analysis. Not despite, but because of that fact, it
works for us. And for Wittgenstein, like the Mādhyamika, who and what I am,
and what I can think and talk about depends upon who and what we are, and
what we can think and talk about. Convention runs deep. And the conventional
status of reality is deeply connected to the impermanence of all things, a topic to
which we now turn.

2. Impermanence
All Buddhist philosophers, of all schools, argue that all phenomena (with the
exception of nirvāṇa, and of space in certain schools) are impermanent. The
details vary, of course, with varying accounts of the nature of time, and of the
temporal extent of the processes of arising, endurance and cessation. But in
general, the existence of phenomena is regarded as momentary. There are two
general senses of impermanence in Buddhist metaphysical theory, generally
referred to as “gross” and “subtle” impermanence. To say that phenomena are
impermanent in the first sense is to say that everything changes over time, at
least in minor ways, and over larger periods of time, often in substantial ways;
over great stretches of time, in dramatic ways. To say that phenomena are
impermanent in the second sense is to say that at every moment, everything is
changing, if only in imperceptible, minute ways.10 Because of these kinds of
change, all identity over time, from a Buddhist point of view, is a fiction, albeit
often a very useful fiction.
Nāgārjuna makes this point in chapter XIII of Fundamental Verses on the
Middle Way. He begins the discussion by anticipating a plausible objection to the
view that impermanence entails essencelessness and lack of intrinsic identity:
[Link] If there were no nature,
 How could there be transformation?
He replies as follows:
5. A thing itself is without transformation.
Nor is transformation in something else,
Because a young man does not age,
And because an aged man does not age either.
6. If a thing itself transformed,
Milk itself would become yoghurt.
But what other than milk
Could become the entity that is yoghurt?
Impermanence then is neither the gross nor the subtle change of any entity that
retains its identity through change. While we might say that a person gradually
grows old, and so that the person must endure through the change, that is not
literally true. Instead this is a way of saying that there is a continuum to which
we refer with a single name comprising both youthful and elderly stages that are
causally connected. The point is driven home by the milk to yoghurt example.
The fact that we say that milk became yoghurt does not mean that there is a
single entity that was once milk and is now yoghurt, but rather that there is a
causal continuum in which earlier stages were milk and later stages are yoghurt.
There can be no identity between the two.
The ramifications of this insight are significant. Gross impermanence is
reasonably straightforward. We are born very small. We grow and mature. We
age and die. Mountains are raised by tectonic forces. They wear away, and their
rocks become topsoil in the flood plains of rivers. Stars are assembled from
interstellar dust, give rise to planets that orbit them for billions of years,
supernova, cool and collapse into black holes. Universes evolve, and perhaps
collapse into themselves. To deny the impermanence of things in this sense
seems simply mad. To deny its significance may be more tempting, but we will
come to that below. For now, let us simply note that this conception of
phenomena is central to a Buddhist outlook.
From a Buddhist standpoint, gross impermanence entails subtle
impermanence. Gross changes of the kind we just noted are continuous
processes. This means that even though we may not notice these changes, subtle
changes are occurring at every moment. Our aging is a process of continuous
change. Every second we are not only (trivially, but importantly) one second
older and one second closer to our death, but also older in material ways, with
cells dying, some being replaced, some not, with deterioration in our tissues
occurring constantly. Mountains are rising imperceptibly at each moment, and
deteriorating imperceptibly at each moment, and so forth. This means that at
each moment, every thing that we identify as a single entity has properties it
lacked a moment before, and properties that it will lack a moment later.11
Buddhist metaphysicians were fans of Leibniz’s law long avant la lettre. That
is, they regard the condition of real identity as indiscernibility in all respects. To
differ in any respect is to fail to be identical. The classic example here occurs in
a late Śrāvakayāna text, The Questions of King Milinda (Milindapañha), a text
written in the form of a dialogue between a possibly fictional monk, Nāgasena,
and a king modeled on a the Greek Bactrian king Menander who reigned in the
2nd century BCE. The dialogue is replete with illustrative metaphors, as will be
obvious from this extract from the second chapter of Book II, in which the king
queries Nāgasena regarding the nature of personal identity.
The king said, “He who is born, Nāgasena, does he remain the same or become another?”
Neither the same nor another.
Give me an illustration.
Now, what do you think, O King? You were once a baby, a tender thing, and small in size, lying flat on
your back. Was that the same as you who are now grown up?
No, that child was one. I am another.
If you are not that child, it will follow that you have had neither mother nor father! Nor teacher. You
cannot have been taught either learning or behavior or wisdom. …Is the mother of the embryo of the
first stage different from the mother of the embryo in the second stage, or the third, or the fourth? Is the
mother of the baby a different person from the mother of the grown-up man?…
Certainly not. But what would you, Sir, say to that?
The Elder replied, “I should say that I am the same person, now I am grown up as I was when I was a
tender tiny baby flat on my back. For all these states are included in one by means of this body.”
Give me an illustration.
Suppose, O King, a man were to light a lamp, would it burn the night through?
Yes, it might do so.
Now, is it the same flame that burns in the first watch of the night Sir, and in the second?
No.
Or the same that burns in the second watch and the third?
No.
Then is there one lamp in the first watch, and another in the second and another in the third?
No. The light comes from the same lamp all the night through.
Just so, O King, is the continuity of a person or a thing maintained. One comes into being; another
passes away; and the rebirth is, as it were, simultaneous. Thus, neither as the same, nor as another does
a man go on to the last phase of his self-consciousness.
Give me a further illustration.
It is like milk which when once taken from the cow, turns, after a lapse of time, first to curd, and then
from curd to butter, and then from butter to ghee. Now, would it be right to say that the milk was the
same thing as the curd, or the butter, or the ghee?
Certainly not; but they are produced out of it.
Just so, O King, is the continuity of a person or a thing maintained. One comes into being; another
 passes away; and the rebirth is, as it were, simultaneous. Thus, neither as the same, nor as another does
a man go on to the last phase of his self-consciousness. (Müller 2005,. 63–65)

Beyond the literary merits of this little dialogue, there are a few remarkable
points to note. First, given the Buddhist doctrines of no-self and impermanence,
one might have expected that the king gets it right in his opening remark, when,
based on the differences between his infant self and his present self, he
pronounces himself a different entity from that he was when young. And indeed,
we realize when we come to the end of the dialogue that he was correct, in a
fashion. Had he answered in the opposite way, it is clear that he would also have
been refuted. But things are not so simple.
Nāgasena deploys two Buddhist rhetorical devices in arguing that while on the
one hand he is, like the lamp, the same being at the end of his life that he was at
the beginning, on the other hand, like the milk become ghee, he is a different
being at every moment, dying and being reborn in every instant in an extended
causal continuum. The first device is an early deployment of the rubric of the
two truths. Conventionally, for all kinds of reasons, it makes sense to ascribe
identity to a life or an object over time. Otherwise, we can make no sense of the
idea that one is old, or has parents. But upon analysis—ultimately, from the
standpoint of this early Buddhist position—nothing persists for more than a
moment. To say simply that one persists through time is incorrect; to say simply
that one exists only for a moment is equally incorrect. Each statement must be
parameterized. (Braddon-Mitchell and Miller make much the same point in their
defense of perdurantism in 2006).
The second device is the denial that we can say anything definitive about the
self. For there is no self. Were there one, the king’s adult self would have to be
either identical to or distinct from his infant self. But since neither can be
asserted, the fiction of the self is to be abandoned. In its place, we get two
entities: a conventional person, constituted by our conventions of individuation
and discourse; and a continuum of momentary entities that constitute its basis of
designation,12 the causal ground that makes sense of the conventions. The
conventional person is neither identical to nor different from that continuum. It is
in part constituted by it, but only given a set of human interests and practices.
The failure of the preservation of indiscernibility over time precludes genuine
identity.
It follows from this, as Nāgasena notes at the close, that since no entity retains
all of its properties from one moment to the next, no entity endures from one
moment to the next. Even were the only changes in an entity to be relational,
these are changes. Even if the only changes in an entity were to be its age, these
are changes. And as we know, there are far more central changes than this in
every entity from moment to moment. Any identity over time is hence a fiction,
at best a continuum of states and processes that are similar to one another and
causally connected. Impermanence hence has profound implications for
ontology.

2.1 Conventional Identity

What then does a Buddhist metaphysician say about the apparent identity over
time of persons, mountains, planets and institutions? Given the obvious utility of
discursive and other practices that take identity over time for granted, not only of
persons but of all of the middle-sized dry goods around us; and among these
discursive practices are specifically Buddhist discourse about personal
development, about the composite nature of entities, and even about gross
impermanence, we need some account of why we can talk about continuants in
our world.
The Buddhist reply to this demand is to argue that what we usually take to be
things that endure over time are in fact continua of momentary, causally
interacting events, or as they have come to be called in contemporary
metaphysics, tropes. These continua are temporally extended, and are causally
coherent enough, with successive stages that are similar enough to one another,
that it is practically useful, for many, though not for all purposes, to refer to them
with single terms, and to treat them as though they were endurants. This utility is
often confused with reality. The anticipations of Hume are remarkable, and to
see Hume’s positions on these matters as Buddhist is quite reasonable.13
Continua, then, may be regarded as conventionally real, in that we have
reasonable conventions for referring to and interacting socially and otherwise
with them. They are not, however, ultimately real; that is, there is nothing in any
causal or similarity continuum itself that demands recognition from us as an
entity independent of our conventions and interests. After all, a distributed mass
of air and water together with some nutrients in the soil, a tree, an acorn, another
tree, a pile of logs, some ash, and a flower fertilized with that ash are indeed a
continuum, but not one we recognize as a single entity, while a caterpillar, a
chrysalis and a butterfly might well be.
Buddhist philosophers often draw the distinction between ultimate and
conventional reality in terms of the distinction between being dravyasat, or
substantially real, and being prajñaptisāt, or merely conceived as real. And this
indeed is the kind of distinction in the background of the dialogue from The
Questions of King Milinda we discussed above. In this Sanskrit Abhidharma
Buddhism, momentary dharmas are regarded as dravyasat, and continua or
collections of them—enduring complexes—are regarded as merely
prajñaptisāt.14 In later Madhyamaka, nothing at all is regarded as dravyasat, and
only the emptiness of that substantiality is regarded as ultimate truth. More of
this later.
This ascription of conventional reality, but not ultimate reality, to most of
what Western philosophers would regard as unitary entities is one sense in which
Buddhist metaphysicians take themselves to be hewing to a middle path between
nihilism (the denial that these things exist in any sense, or that they ground truth
in any sense) and reification (the view that because they exist and can serve as
truthmakers in some sense, that they exist ultimately). Tsongkhapa, glossing
Candrakīrti, puts the point this way:
[The statement that conventional truth is obscurational] means that
conventional truth is that which is true from the perspective of ignorance—
obscuration—but not that it is truly existent from the standpoint of nominal
convention. Otherwise, this would be inconsistent with the system
according to which nothing exists through its own characteristic even
conventionally. Since the refutation of true existence and the proof of the
absence of true existence are presented through nominal convention, it is
not tenable that their true existence is posited through nominal convention.
If they were not so presented, they could not be presented ultimately, either
and it would follow that no framework would be coherent. (2006, 482)
There is a lot of technical language here, and a few technical dialectical moves,
but Tsongkhapa’s central point is this: Even though Mādhyamikas argue that
nothing exists truly—that is, ultimately, or independently—we must accept that
things exist conventionally, for otherwise, we would not even be able to say that
they do not exist ultimately. And when we say this, we do so truly, and so
conventional existence, or conventional truth, must ground truth. If it couldn’t,
nothing could. Note the intriguing parallel to Wittgenstein’s analysis of
knowledge in On Certainty: Our epistemic conventions are just that,
conventions; nonetheless, they underlie our justificatory and critical practices; if
they could not, nothing could. The Mādhyamika anticipates this form of
argument, but delivers it at the register of truth and existence, as opposed to
knowledge, playing for slightly higher stakes, as it were.
There is another, closely related middle path here. Another version of nihilism
—a more temporalized version—is to take continua as nonexistent because there
is nothing that persists—no common fiber in the thread—from moment to
moment, and so no bearer of the identity as a whole. And another, temporalized,
version of reification—often referred to as eternalism in Buddhist literature—is
to assert that there is something that persists in a temporally extended
continuum; that is, the continuum itself which endures despite having no part
that endures. In another passage of The Questions of King Milinda, Nāgasena
deploys the analogy of a flame transferred from lamp to lamp as an analogy for a
continuum across rebirths, stressing the role of causation, without any identity,
and the fact that to talk about a flame that is transferred is nothing but a façon de
parler. There is no flame, only a sequence of causally related things that serve as
the basis of designation for what appears to be a referring expression. But for all
that, the flame is not nothing. Tsongkhapa puts it like this:
In all of these cases [of temporally extended personal continua] in general
—without specifying the identity of the self in terms of time and place—the
self, because it desires to obtain happiness and to avoid suffering, does such
things. The mere self is taken to persist through these times as well. Thus it
is not erroneous for these people to take the mere self as the referent of ‘I’.
Therefore, the person who uses the expression “I am,” and the basis of the
use of that expression should not be taken to be coextensive; instead, the
person should be understood as a segment of that self. (2006, 272)
Tsongkhapa here is emphasizing that we must distinguish three putative entities
here: a continuing self; a mere self; the basis of designation of the mere self. The
continuing self is simply an illusion. There is no such thing at all. The mere self
is just whatever we mean when we use a pronoun or a name—a conventionally
designated cluster of phenomena with no clear identity conditions. Its basis of
designation is a causal continuum. That is, that continuum is causally
responsible for the utility of pronouns and names and is the basis for our
thinking of ourselves as continuing entities. But it is not the referent of the name.
When I use the pronoun ‘I’, or the name Jay, I do not refer to a continuum of
causal processes that stretches indefinitely, and which has no clear identity
conditions. I take myself to be referring to a self; in fact, I am referring to a mere
self, just whatever now causally grounds the use of that term.
The Buddhist middle path here consists in rejecting nihilism on the grounds
that continua, like threads, have perfectly good, albeit merely conventional and
rough-and-ready identity conditions that are not undermined by change—a view
supported by common sense and empirical science—and to reject reification in
virtue of its patent circularity and ontological gratuity. An endurant where
nothing retains identity is what is to be proven, not a mere redescription, and to
posit a super-entity that exists non-conventionally in order to explain the
conventional identity of a continuum is unnecessary when conventions
themselves can do all the work.

2.2 Apoha: A First Pass

This metaphysics of impermanence, together with the commitment to causal
interdependence of all phenomena, also underlies Buddhist nominalism with
regard to properties. Since universals are abstracta, and hence both causally inert
and permanent, they fail to satisfy the most fundamental Buddhist criteria for
reality—causal interdependence and spatio-temporal locality. It is for this reason
that all Buddhist philosophers regard universals of all kinds as conceptual
projections, and as entirely unreal. This rejection of universals of course requires
not only an ontological account of a world of pure particularity, but also an
alternate theory of predication, of word meaning, of concepts and of inference.
The most prominent Buddhist response to this set of demands is the construct of
apoha.
This idea is introduced by Dignāga in the early sixth century and is ramified
by a series of subsequent Indian commentators and interlocutors—prominently
including his immediate commentator Dharmakīrti—until the demise of
Buddhism in India in the 11th century, with a final Indian account in the work of
Ratnakīrti. Apoha theory was very influential in Tibet and is debated in the
Tibetan academy to the present day. Apoha is a hard word to translate, and the
fact that there is such a bewildering variety of apoha theories on offer makes it
even harder, for an apt translation of the term as it is used by one philosopher
runs afoul of the interpretation of another, even though they take themselves to
be arguing about the same thing. Apoha is often translated as exclusion or
elimination. But it can also be read as discrimination or distinction.
Here is the general idea: To use the stock example, when I say that Daisy is a
cow, it appears that I am saying that the particular Daisy (give or take a bit of
ontology, given that she is a composite, a continuum, etc., but let us leave that
aside) participates in or is saturated with the universal cowness, something that
also permeates Marigold, Bossie and Daisy’s other barnmates. Daisy is
impermanent and localized; cowness is permanent and non-local. But that
appearance is an error. For there is no such thing as cowness. What I am really
saying, on apoha theory is, to a first—and startlingly unilluminating—
approximation, that Daisy is not a non-cow. The double negation is the apoha.
The hope is that there is a way of understanding this device that explains the
meaning and truth conditions of the assertion, the possession of the concept that
enables it and explains what it is that instances of cows have in common.
Dignāga, in his Encyclopedia of Epistemology (Pramāṇasammucāya),
explains it roughly this way: We are able to distinguish cows from non-cows
using some cognitive mechanism. All that mechanism does is distinguish things
from one another, eliminating (apoha) those that are not similar to an exemplar
from those that are. (See Hayes 2009.) This is what Tillemans (2011b) calls a
top-down apoha theory. On this view, the meaning of the word cow just is the
ability to draw this distinction; to possess the concept is to be able to draw that
distinction, and what cows have in common is that the mind distinguishes them
from non-cows. They do not share a property that inheres in them, but instead a
capacity in us to assort particulars leads us to sort them into the same pile.
Dharmakīrti, Dignāga’s commentator (or wholesale reviser, depending on
one’s perspective) adopts what Tillemans (op. cit.) calls a bottom-up version of
apoha theory. On this view, although in perception we immediately encounter
particulars, these particulars elicit in the mind a representation. (Dharmakīrti is
silent about the specific cognitive mechanisms and adverts simply to tendencies
in the mind that are the results of past karma. But we can imagine a modern
cognitive account here, as does Chatterjee 2011). So, when I take myself to see
Daisy,15 a representation (ākara/rnam pa) of Daisy arises in my mind. The
representation is suitably general in that it could easily represent Marigold and
Bossie as well. It just could not represent anything that is not a cow; it represents
everything that is not a non-cow. It is an apoha. I easily mistake the
representation I have constructed for the particular it represents, thinking that
because it equally represents all cows I have apprehended something that all
cows share. I have confused an apoha, which is a particular representation, with
a universal. On this view, the meaning of the word cow is determined by the
ability to draw the relevant distinction between those things we call cows and
those we don’t; mastery of the concept consists in the generation of the
appropriate representation when in contact with the relevant particular.
Just as in the case of Dignāga, we eliminate universals in a psychologistic
account of verbal and conceptual capacities. And, like all iterations of apoha
theory, we see a presumption of a brute psychological capacity to respond to and
to recognize similarities on certain dimensions. This capacity is meant to do the
heavy lifting, as opposed to any universal in the objects classified. The
anticipations of Hume and Quine are obvious. It is not surprising that many non-
Buddhist critiques anticipate Armstrong’s (1984) response in the service of a
realistic account of universals: similarity in what respect? Much of the debate
between Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophers regarding the status of
universals in fact turns on this question. I note this not to resolve the debate,
which we will leave aside here, but once again to highlight an unfamiliar path
into familiar terrain.
Dharmakīrti’s commentators are legion, and the study of apoha theory is a
major subspecialty in Buddhist philosophy. The theory raises enough difficulties
to engender both a vigorous debate between Buddhist and non-Buddhist
philosophers on the status of universals and the nature of meaning, and a
vigorous debate within the Buddhist world on the best way to formulate apoha
theory. It would be impossible in this context to do justice to this rich tradition.16
Ratnakīrti is the last figure in the Indian Buddhist tradition to address this
matter, and his position deserves mention. Ratnakīrti takes up Dharmakīrti’s
view that apoha involves a representation and a distinction and gives it a novel
twist. He argues that apoha provides an analysis of concepts and meaning as
follows: a concept is a pair, consisting in a representation and a capacity for
distinguishing between what is similar to it and what is not. To possess the
concept cow on this view is to have the prototype representation and to be able
to draw the relevant distinction. The meaning of the word cow is its use in
drawing that distinction. The anticipations of Wittgenstein and Rosch are
striking.
We got ourselves into apoha theory for metaphysical reasons. Buddhist
commitments to interdependence and impermanence entail nominalism with
respect to universals, and nominalism with respect to universals requires some
fancy footwork in semantics and the theory of cognition. Apoha is that tango.
The metaphysical payoff is that instead of appealing to the universal cowness to
explain the truth of Daisy is a Cow, the meaning of cow, or the grasp of the
concept cow, Buddhist theorists appeal to our ability to recognize similarities, to
draw distinctions and to classify particulars in terms of the way we respond to
them and in terms of our purposes. Psychologically, this involves a model of our
contact with reality as mediated by representations, generated by sub-personal,
brute tendencies to respond to particulars in certain ways, which in turn enable
us to draw these distinctions, and a semantics that accounts for word meaning in
terms of our use of words, and not in terms of reference to properties. (See
Thakchöe 2012b.)
To the extent that we take universals seriously, on this understanding, we are
driven to hypostasize an underlying ground that justifies a convention for using a
predicate. This hypostatization, Buddhist theorists argue, leads in turn to
metaphysical nonsense that does not even deliver the requisite explanations—
nonsense because one can make no sense of the reality of universals given that
they depend on nothing and have no effects; a failure because we have no
account of our cognitive access to them, which we must have if they are to
explain our cognitive and linguistic capacities. Instead, from a Buddhist point of
view, all that justifies, and all that is needed to justify, our use of language is a
set of linguistic conventions and cognitive habits. This Humean-Wittgensteinian
program is familiar to the Western philosopher, even if its mode of prosecution is
different. Whether this program can succeed is another matter; but once again,
there is reason to engage.
Buddhist philosophers connect this conclusion regarding universals to the
Buddhist account of continua, and so tie this nominalism more deeply to the
metaphysics of impermanence. For successive momentary phenomena to be
regarded as identical, or even to be regarded as, on their own, parts of a single
continuum, is for them to be united by a universal, what we might call a
“longitudinal universal.” And the same holds true, of course, for simultaneous
parts taken as united into a whole. That is, for instance, for successive sets of
tropes to be regarded as the same table, or the same person, is to regard them as
satisfying at minimum the property “moments and parts of this table/person.”
But that property is already a universal, and so is unreal. There is hence nothing
from the side of the events in the world themselves that unites them into
continua or entities at all. That work is done from the side of language,
convention, thought and a host of non-discursive practices of sentient beings.
Thus interdependence and impermanence, thought through the problem of
universals, takes Buddhist philosophy immediately back to the merely
conventional status of the world we inhabit. We will return to apoha theory and
will take up these topics in more detail in the context of a discussion of Buddhist
epistemology in chapter 7.
All of this takes us back to the fundamental primal confusion that Buddhists
diagnose at the root of the suffering that sets the philosophical and soteriological
agenda for Buddhism. We can now see that primal confusion as operating at a
deeper metaphysical plane. Primal confusion on this view is the cognitive reflex
that takes sequences of momentary, interdependent phenomena to be real entities
that bear their own individuation conditions. This involves the superimposition
of unreal universals constructed by thought and the projection of that
superimposition onto reality itself; a confusion of the construction of the
conventional world with the discovery of an ontologically constituted world that
we passively, and accurately, record in consciousness.
This dimension of Buddhist metaphysics is, of course, immediately relevant to
contemporary debates about the metaphysics of continuants. It constitutes an
important, and little noted, position in the debate between 3D and 4D accounts
of object identity, one that denies the ultimate reality of continuants entirely,
while preserving through an account of conventional reality the intuition that
entities are real, four-dimensional phenomena. The 3D–4D debate has been hot
lately. (Baker 1995, 2000, 2007; Braddon-Mitchell and Miller 2006; Donnelly
2011; Fine 2008; Miller 2005a, 2005b, 2008, 2009; Sider 2001; Simmons 2008;
Yagisawa 2010 among a host of others.) Miller (2005a) felicitously sums up the
principal positions as follows:
Three-dimensionalism is the thesis that persisting objects have only spatial
dimensions. Thus, since our world is a world in which there are three
spatial dimensions, persisting objects are three-dimensional. Four-
dimensionalism, on the other hand, is the view that persisting objects have
both spatial dimensions and a temporal dimension. Since our world is a
world with three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension, this is the
view that persisting objects are four-dimensional: they are extended in time
as well as in space.
The three-dimensionalist holds that all objects are wholly present whenever
they exist, and persisting objects, which exist at more than one time, are
wholly present at each of those times. The most common version of four-
dimensionalism holds that objects persist through time by being only partly
present at each moment at which they exist, that is, by having a temporal
present at each time at which they exist. Thus objects persist by perduring,
where an object perdures if it persists by being the mereological sum of
temporal parts. (309–310)
The question then is this: what is the correct analysis of the mode of persistence
of physical objects and persons? Are we wholly present at each moment of our
existence, or are we mereological sums of our stages? The debate, as
metaphysical debates will, quickly becomes complex and develops a series of
epicycles. It is neither my aim to articulate it in detail nor to settle it. On the
other hand, I do want to suggest that it rehearses the very issues about identity
and time that are introduced in The Questions of King Milinda and picked up in
subsequent literature such as Candrakīrti’s Introduction to the Middle Way, and
that it might profit by attention to those texts and the moves they make.
In fact, Braddon-Mitchell and Miller (2006) unwittingly come very close to
this, and reinvent some nice old wheels in the process. They even (501) consider
the example of the relation between the child and the adult, arguing that there are
good reasons to say both that the child will become an adult and that it will not.
After all, it will develop into an adult, but at that time there will be no more
child. A bit later, they say:
 [T]here are many cases where it seems as though there is a sense in which a
common sense claim is right, and another in which it is wrong. For
instance, consider the following claims: “I won’t have my puppy in a few
years, for by then it’ll have become a dog”; “the butterfly was a caterpillar’
and ‘the corpse was a child”. In such cases it turns out that there is some
analysis under which the claim is true, and some analysis under which it is
false, depending on which parts of the rich four-dimensional ontology
ordinary talk is about, and whether the terms in question are being used as
phase sortal terms or substance sortal terms. (502)
Braddon-Mitchell and Miller, as the last remark suggests, like many of those in
the Buddhist tradition, resolve this tension by reference to two levels of
discourse. They distinguish substance from phase sortals, the first picking out
four-dimensional objects, the second three-dimensional objects. Many ordinary
language predicates, they point out, are ambiguous between these two readings.
Their position sorts out a number of issues in this debate rather nicely, but we
might worry about the commitment to a substance ontology and indeed to the
idea that phases or substances can be picked out in non-question-begging ways.
In a rich discussion alive to these problems, Braddon-Mitchell and Miller
rediscover the Buddhist idea that causal relations are insufficient to determine
persistence and the identity conditions of ordinary continua, but do not resolve
the conundrum of what does determine them. Perhaps a recasting of the
dichotomy of phase and sortal into ultimate and conventional and a focus on the
role of convention in ontology would help. Attention to the Buddhist literature
would naturally take one in this direction.
Braddon-Mitchell and Miller also note the connection of the 3D–4D debate to
questions about constitution and identity. One of the great virtues of their
analysis is their demonstration that constitution can be understood naturally in
terms of the sharing of temporal parts. On the metaphysical picture they develop,
constitution, as opposed to identity, captures the relation between parts and
wholes as well as that between statues and lumps.
A Buddhist analysis following The Questions of King Milinda and
Candrakīrti’s Introduction to the Middle Way would suggest that constitution
both goes further down than that and is less metaphysically robust than it might
appear in the contemporary Western literature. Indeed, it provides an analysis of
the relationship not only between parts and wholes, statues and lumps, but even
also between temporal stages and entities. But once we give up on the idea that
these relations are relations between metaphysically fundamental entities, we
might come to see that relations between that which constitutes and that which is
constituted obtain not in virtue of any properties internal to the relata, but in
virtue of our own cognitive, linguistic, social and behavioral conventions.
Constitution, from a Buddhist point of view, is the construction of conventional
reality, and given the fundamental character of impermanence, it is the only
route to entities we could ever recognize, or be.

3. Where We Are
As we noted at the outset, interdependence and impermanence are at the heart of
all Buddhist metaphysics. It is impossible to understand anything of the Buddhist
approach to metaphysics, epistemology or ethics without understanding these
commitments and the particular nuance they receive in the Buddhist tradition.
My hope is that this aspect of Buddhist metaphysics is now coming into focus,
and that this discussion will provide a foundation not only for a discussion of
emptiness and the two truths in the next chapter, but also for an understanding of
Buddhist approaches to epistemology, ethics and the philosophy of language
later.
Moreover, I hope that it is already becoming clear that Buddhist philosophical
perspectives are sufficiently different from those we find in the Western tradition
that they represent genuinely new voices. I also hope that it is clear that there is
enough overlap in concern and viewpoint that there is a basis for conversation.
While Buddhist viewpoints may not always strike us as natural, they should
strike us as reasonable, as demanding consideration, and as repaying
contemplation. In the next chapter we continue this exploration of the
fundamentals of Buddhist metaphysics.

1. This formulation may seem to prejudice the ontology of dependent origination in the direction of event
causation. But while we could read arises as occurs, it could also mean exists, allowing the relation to
obtain between entities.
2. I leave aside all of the complex debates about Hume exegesis and in particular the question of whether
the position here described as “Humean” was in fact Hume’s. It is also worth noting that for Hume the
relata of the causal relation are “distinct existences,” that is, they are entirely independent from one another.
(See Bliss 2015.) That is not so on many Buddhist accounts. More of this below.
3. In what follows I will be ignoring questions regarding whether Buddhist doctrines of karma or of non-
physical psychological causation require a distinct metaphysics of causality. I will simply presume that they
do not, and questions about whether there are specifically moral causal laws, or whether laws governing
relations between psychological events are different in form from physical laws, are simply empirical
questions about how the world works, not disputes about the fundamental metaphysics.
4. In epistemological literature on perception, such as Dignāga’s Investigation of the Percept
(Ālambanāparīkṣā/dMigs pa brtags pa) the supporting condition is the percept, the object one perceives in
the perceptual process. There are important debates (which we will not address in this volume) between
Buddhist schools concerning whether that percept is an external object or an internal representation or
cognitive process.
5. It is also important to note that Abhidharma accounts of causality are more explicitly realistic about the
conditions and about the fixity of the list of conditions than are Madhyamaka analyses, and seem to take
causal relations more seriously as fundamental aspects of reality, just as they take fundamental dharmas
seriously as ultimate existents in their reductionist program. These doctrines go together, and explain why
Nāgārjuna takes on the causal relation and the status of conditions as the first topic in Fundamental Verses
on the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā). See Garfield (1994, 1995, 2001).
6. See the discussion in chapter 3, below, for more on the connection between the lack of intrinsic identity
and conventional existence.
7. Detailed analysis of the consequences of this doctrine for the metaphysics of events occupies a great deal
of Buddhist Abhidharma thought, and the interested reader might turn to Vasubandhu’s Treasury of
Abhidharma (Abhidharmakośa), or to chapter 7 of Tsongkhapa’s Ocean of Reasoning to get some of the
flavor of that enterprise, but these details need not detain us here.
8. This argument is developed in greater detail in Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses (Vimśatikā) and Dignāga’s
Examination of the Percept. Vasubandhu and Dignāga (en route to defending an idealist position, in
contradistinction to the moderate realism of Nāgārjuna) argue that the very idea of indivisible atoms is
incoherent.
9. See Thompson 2007 and Thompson and Varela 2003 for discussions of Madhyamaka-inspired enactivism
in the context of cognitive science.
10. This distinction between gross and subtle impermanence can be drawn in terms of the two Buddhist
pramāṇas, or instruments of knowledge, viz., perception and inference. (We will address these in detail in
chapter 7.) Gross impermanence is the impermanence we can perceive; subtle impermanence is the
impermanence we infer on the basis of what we perceive. Since we can see that things change over large
periods of time, we can infer that they are constantly changing moment by moment.
11. The Sarvastivādin school—an important Buddhist abhidharma school—argued that in fact everything
that has ever or will ever exist in fact exists, and that being present is only a kind of manifestation at the
present moment of entities that nonetheless exist eternally, an anticipation of the recently popular
“spotlight” view of the present. (Clifton and Hogarth 1995, Skow 2009) This position was defended in part
on the grounds that fundamental dharmas, being substantially existent, are independent and cannot arise or
cease, but more importantly on the grounds that as objects of knowledge of an omniscient Buddha, they
would have always to be present to his mind in order to be known. This position was effectively buried by
Madhyamaka critiques of this position, particularly that of Nāgārjuna. But the debate between
Mādhyamikas and Sarvastivādins is an interesting anticipation of recent debates between 4Dists and
presentists regarding endurance vs. perdurance over time. It is intriguing that nobody in the West to my
knowledge has ever defended a 4D view on the grounds that objects of knowledge are required for an
omniscient god, a curious lacuna in theological metaphysics.
12. Some Buddhist philosophers go even further. Tsongkhapa, for instance, argues that there is no
intrinsically identifiable basis of designation for any conventional entities whatsoever, but only
designations, which themselves require no basis. The spade on Tsongkhapa’s view, is simply turned when
we note what we do and say.
13. Indeed Parfit (1984) notes the affinities of his own neo-Humean views regarding the nonexistence of
continuing selves to Buddhist views. See also Gopnik (2009) for interesting speculations on possible
historical connections between the Buddhist tradition and Hume.
14. It is important to remember that, despite a widespread tendency among scholars in Buddhist Studies to
assimilate the Pāli Abhidhamma tradition to the later north Indian Sanskrit Abhidharma tradition, this
understanding of the distinction between ultimate (paramārtha) and conventional (samvṛti) truth/reality in
terms of dravyasat and prajñaptisāt develops only in the latter tradition. Pāli scholars, on the other hand,
never gloss this distinction in ontological terms, but only with regard to the nature of the language the
Buddha used in teaching, and the level of technical precision vs. the colloquial nature of that language.
Moreover, the sense of samvṛti as deceptive or concealing that figures so prominently in the Sanskrit
literature is entirely foreign to the Pāli sammuti, which is never understood in this sense. Pāli Buddhist
theorists do not, therefore, distinguish (or then identify) different levels of reality or truth, but rather
different languages for describing human experience. The ontological turn, and with it, the distinction
between these levels of reality is a Sanskrit innovation. I thank Maria Heim for drawing my attention to this
point and for emphasizing its importance in understanding both the diversity and the development of
Buddhist thought in India.
15. In fact, I can only take myself to see her, on Dharmakīrti’s view, since what I actually see can only be a
momentary particular. One way to think about the primal illusion at the basis of saṃsāra in this tradition is
the pervasive confusion of perception with conceptual activity.
16. See Dreyfus 1997, 2011b; Dunne 2004, 2006, 2011; Katsura 1969, 1991; Kellner 2003; Patil 2009; and
Siderits, Tillemans and Chakarabarti 2011 for excellent discussions of Indian and Tibetan apoha theory; the
latter is particularly useful for the many connections the essays it collects draw to contemporary
philosophical concerns.
3 THE METAPHYSICAL PERSPECTIVE II:
EMPTINESS

With this backdrop of interdependence and impermanence in hand, it is much

easier to articulate what is often taken to be the most obscure, if perhaps
profound, doctrine in Buddhist metaphysics, that of the emptiness of all
phenomena. We have already taken on step to its de-mystification in noting in
chapter 1 that emptiness in the relevant sense is never, from a Buddhist point of
view, emptiness of existence, but always emptiness of some more determinate
metaphysical property. That is why in understanding Buddhist doctrines of
emptiness, it is always important, as Tsongkhapa puts it, to identify the object of
negation (dgag bya [gak cha]), that of which something is claimed to be empty.
We can sort major Buddhist schools and doctrines regarding this matter pretty
neatly by attending to this advice. We will first consider a series of Buddhist
doctrines concerning emptiness, following a historical order, which also helps us
to make sense of their relation to one another in dialectical sequence. We will
then turn to the Buddhist doctrine of the two truths, principally as it arises in the
Mahāyāna schools of India, Tibet and China, and we will conclude with some
remarks on the relevance of all of this for contemporary modal metaphysics as it
is practiced in the roughly Anglophone West.
Much of what follows will depend on the complex doctrine—or doctrines—of
the two truths, or two realities, and so a brief introduction to that doctrine here is
in order. We will turn to this issue in more detail below. Let us begin with a
translation issue. The Sanskrit term satya (Tibetan: bden pa [den pa]) can be
used, depending on context, to refer to what we would in English call truth in a
perfectly straightforward sense, and, depending on context, to refer to what we
would call in English in a perfectly straightforward sense reality. This can cause
some confusion. It can also sound like an ambiguity. But, in order to get a sense
of an Indian perspective, it is important to realize that in Sanskrit or Tibetan this
is not regarded as ambiguity, but simply as a single meaning. Sat means to exist
or to be the case. Satya just means that which is existent, or is the case. When
we say in Sanskrit (or Tibetan) that a sentence is satya (bden pa) or that a table is
a satya (bden pa), this sounds to a speaker of those languages like the same kind
of statement, that the sentence, or the table, accords with reality. Another way of
getting to this point is that the term for false, ālika, is often glossed as deceptive
(jālika). Inasmuch as a table is non-deceptive—it both is, and appears to be, a
table—and inasmuch as the statement that it is a table is non-deceptive—it
reports what is in fact the case—neither is false; hence both are true. When
appropriate, I will use truth and its cognates and reality and its cognates to
translate satya and its cognates in ways consistent with English usage. But it will
be helpful to bear in mind that in a Buddhist tradition they amount to the same
thing. (And taking this idea seriously might enrich Western thought about truth
as well.)
The rubric of the two truths has its origins in hermeneutical worries about the
resolution of prima facie inconsistencies in the discourses of the Buddha. In
some suttas, for instance, the Buddha talks about the self or the person,
emphasizing the fact that we are each responsible for the kinds of beings we
become; in others he emphasizes that there is no self, and that persons are
illusions. The hermeneutical mechanism for reconciling such statements is the
device of upāya, or skillful means. The idea is that the Buddha adopts the
language and framework of his audience in order to best communicate what
those in the audience are capable of understanding and need to hear. For some,
who cannot really understand the doctrine of selflessness, he speaks with the
vulgar about a self; for others, whose difficulties are conditioned by their
adherence to a belief in the self and who are capable of moving beyond that, he
talks about selflessness. But the exegetes who deployed upāya in this way do not
want the Buddha to be convicted of lying, of speaking falsely, or deceptively. So
there must be a sense in which when he says something at one level of discourse,
or in one context, that he disavows at a higher level of discourse, or in a more
sophisticated context, he nonetheless speaks the truth in that discourse, in that
context. Enter the two truths.
The first truth, in this early articulation of the doctrine is called samvṛti-satya
(kun rdzob bden pa/tha snyad bden pa [kundzop den pa/thanyet den pa]) or
lokavyavahāra-satya (tha snyad bden pa/’jig rten bden pa [jik ten den pa]). The
term samvṛti generally means conventional, as in by agreement, everyday,
ordinary. But it can also mean (and this is real ambiguity) concealing or
occluding. The Tibetan translations are kun rdzob, literally meaning costumed,
and tha snyad, literally nominal, or verbal. Lokavyavahāra-satya means truth in
the everyday world, or transactional truth, truth in the marketplace. The Tibetan
translates this again either as nominal truth (tha snyad bden pa) or as everyday
truth (‘jig rten bden pa).
The second truth is paramartha-satya (don dam bden pa), or ultimate truth,
truth in the highest meaning. This is the final account of the way things really
stand. The idea then is that when the Buddha is using upāya, he is talking the
everyday talk, the way folks talk in the marketplace, even if that talk conceals
reality. It is good enough for everyday transactions. When he wants to really get
to the heart of things, he speaks of things as they are ultimately. When a
cabinetmaker thumps her hand on a just-finished table and says, “This table is
solid,” she speaks the truth; when a physicist thumps on the same table in a
lecture on quantum mechanics and says, “This table, despite appearances, is not
solid; it is mostly empty space,” he speaks the truth as well. From an early
Buddhist perspective the carpenter is speaking conventionally, the physicist
ultimately,1 and there is no contradiction between their claims.
In early Buddhist theory, the relation between the two truths is often cast as
one of reduction, or at least ontological supervenience. They clearly represent
different levels of reality, and different senses of assertion. The entities that are
held to be conventionally real are taken to be, in the end, fictions, to be
eliminated by practice and analysis from any ontology one takes seriously. One
is then is left only with fundamental dharmas, momentary property
instantiations, in a complex of mutual interdependence that give rise to the
deceptive appearance of macroscopic continuants.
Part of the Mahāyāna revolution, effected in the Perfection of Wisdom sūtras
and the works of Nāgārjuna and his followers, is the re-thinking of the doctrine
of the two truths. On this view, as we shall see below, nothing turns out to be
ultimately real, everything is merely conventionally real, and the ultimate and
conventional truths, while radically different in one respect, are in fact identical
in another. That is the profound doctrine of the emptiness of emptiness.

1. Varieties of Emptiness
1.1 Pre-Mahāyāna Sanskrit Abhidharma doctrine
Early Abhidharma doctrine identifies the object of negation as substantial
existence (dravyasat). It is important to note in this context that the distinction
for Indian Abhidharmika scholars of the pre-Mahāyāna period between those
phenomena (dharmas) which do exist substantially and those which do not, but
which are merely mereological sums of dharmas and are reducible to them, is a
serious distinction indeed. It is the distinction between that which exists
ultimately, independent of human conventions, and that which exists merely
conventionally. Given this distinction, not everything is empty on the relevant
sense. Only composite phenomena (saṃskāra) are empty; impartite dharmas are
non-empty. The former lack substantial existence; the latter have it. So, to take
the stock example, while its most fundamental parts—dharmas, conceived as
momentary, punctual instantiations of property-instances—are dravyasat, the
chariot they constitute is not. It is merely prajñāptisāt (nominally, or
conventionally, real).
On this view, then, to be empty is to be reducible to and to be constituted by
something non-empty. The sense of reduction here is ontological, mereological
reduction. Constitution in this sense is a relation between that which lacks reality
on its own (the conventionally real, composite merely prajñāptisāt) and that
substance of which it is constituted (the dharmas). And much of the metaphysics
of this time consists in an attempt to enumerate the dharmas, to map the causal
relations between them, and to analyze composite phenomena into their
constituent dharmas. (See Siderits 2007.)
The fact that substantial identity requires partlessness entailed that these
dharmas also lacked temporal parts. Hence the Buddhist doctrine of
momentariness—the subtle impermanence we encountered in the previous
chapter—captures the nature of these dharmas. They remain in existence as
infinitesimal property instantiations only for an instant, conditioned by previous
dharmas, and giving rise to subsequent dharmas. The conventional composite
entities constituted by continua of these dharmas exhibit the gross
impermanence of constant perceptible change in virtue of the constant minute
momentary change of their constituent parts.
Real change on this view is the momentary change reflected in the rapid
succession of real dharmas, that is, subtle impermanence. The gross
impermanence of which we are aware, as the impermanence of unreal
phenomena, is itself merely conventional, and unreal, but nonetheless constitutes
our first evidence, or entrée into the subtle impermanence that conditions our
existence. Gross change is empty, simply because the entities it characterizes are
in the end unreal; subtle change is ultimately real, as it is grounded in the
momentary nature of dharmas.
This distinction emphasizes another important feature of early Abhidharma
metaphysics, one noted by Siderits (2007). Reduction can either be a way of
vindicating the reality of something—as when, for instance, we show that heat is
a real property of a gas by reducing it to mean molecular kinetic energy—or it
can be a way of showing that something lacks the kind of reality we thought it
had. That is, if one thought that heat was a primitive property of things, the
reduction to mean molecular kinetic energy shows that there really is no heat.
There is only mean molecular kinetic energy misleadingly called “heat,” just as
there is no demonic possession, only epilepsy, misleadingly called “demonic
possession.”
To the extent that one is pluralistic about modes of existence, one is generally
tempted to the vindication model; we gain greater confidence in the reality of a
phenomenon when we embed it in a larger theoretical context through a
scientific reduction. To the extent that one privileges a particular theoretical level
of description as uniquely real, on the other hand, taking phenomena not
characterized at that level as less real, reduction looks like elimination. This is
why contemporary eliminative materialists (e.g., Churchland 1979) sometimes
take the prospect of the reduction of the mental to the physical (if possible) to
entail the elimination of the mental in favor of the physical, whereas some
methodological pluralists (Garfield 1988, Baker 2000, 2007) would take that
very same prospect of reduction to entail the reality of the mental (however
suspicious they might be of the prospects for such reduction).
Given the commitment of early Abhidharmikas to the substantial reality of
dharmas, their status as ontologically and explanatorily fundamental and as
constitutive of the ultimate truth, we can see this Abhidharma theory as
eliminativist with regard to such macroscopic phenomena as tables and persons.
In Reality According to the Abhidhamma (Abhidhammatthavibhāvini), the early
Śri Lankan commentator Sumaṅgala puts it this way:
[I]t is the definition of the particular natures of ultimate dhammas that is
taken as absolute; the explanation by way of agent and instrument should be
seen as a relative manner of speaking. …The explanation of these terms
should be understood as for the purpose of indicating the nonexistence of an
agent, etc., apart from the particular nature of a dhamma. (In Edelglass and
Garfield 2009, 20)
Really, macroscopic things do not exist. What exists instead is a continuum of
causally interacting evanescent dharmas. Ultimate existence is ontological coin
of the realm. Conventional existence is a counterfeit. The Buddhist project on
this view is the replacement of a life in which we take the counterfeit for real
with one in which we engage only with the gold standard. Needless to say, this
entails a dramatic transformation in our everyday consciousness. That, on this
view, is the work of prolonged meditation.

1.2 Madhyamaka
The Madhyamaka revolution in Buddhist metaphysics gets its start in the
emergence of the Perfection of Wisdom sūtras around the turn of the first
millennium, but really begins to be systematized in a rigorous way by Nāgārjuna
in approximately the late 2nd or early 3rd century CE. This movement is both an
evolution of the Abhidharma metaphysics and a radical reaction against it. We
can see this revolution as the replacement of one understanding of the relevant
object of negation with another, a replacement with far-reaching and profound
implications.
On the one hand, we might say that Madhyamaka and early Abhidharma agree
about the fact that none of the entities we encounter in our ordinary engagement
with the world have svabhāva. Let us pause on this term for a moment, for the
respect in which they differ can profitably be understood through a re-thinking
of the meaning of this term. While this term is absolutely central to
understanding all Mahāyāna metaphysics, it has no perfect English equivalent. A
number of terms have been used to translate it, and a survey of these terms is a
good first step to triangulating its meaning. First the real English: substance,
essence, intrinsic reality, intrinsic identity, nature. Now the Buddhist Hybrid
English neologisms: self-nature, self-being, own-nature, own-being.
There is a clear core idea here. Lexically the term consists in a root, bhāva,
meaning being, with a prefix, sva, meaning self. It is worth noting that it has a
nice Sanskrit polar companion parabhāva, prefixing the same root bhāva with
para, meaning other. It is also worth noting that no simple English term, such as
substance, essence or nature has this feature. So when we use the term svabhāva
we are implicitly contrasting something that has its being or nature on its own
with something that borrows its being or nature from something else. For this
reason, I prefer the term intrinsic nature, as we can naturally contrast it when
necessary with extrinsic nature (though I confess to having used essence
liberally in the past, and, I still believe, with good reason).
Now, whereas for the Abhidharmika, to have svabhāva is to be substantially
existent, and this is the way dharmas (and nothing else) in fact exist, for the
Mādhyamika, svabhāva is a property that no actual thing can ever have. And that
means that the term has undergone a subtle semantic shift, reflecting a deeper
philosophical analysis and rejection of the Abhidharmika position. To have
svabhāva in the sense relevant to Madhyamaka is to have one’s nature
intrinsically, as the Abhidharmika believe that dharmas have their natures. But
Mādhyamikas argued that to exist in this way would also require being
independent. For if a dharma is caused by, or is the cause of, another dharma, as
they must be, given the doctrine of dependent origination, then part of what it is
to be a particular dharma is to be caused by particular predecessors, to cause
successors, to be part of certain composites, and so on. That is, since it is of the
very nature of all phenomena, including putatively fundamental dharmas, to be
interdependent, then no identity conditions can be given for any phenomenon
independent of others. So, since all phenomena are interdependent, and
svabhāva requires independence, svabhāva is impossible, a property nothing can
have.
Mādhyamikas, like their Abhidharmika predecessors and colleagues,
understand svabhāva as independent existence, as intrinsic nature. This is what
they take to be the object of negation, arguing that svabhāva in this sense is what
we project onto the phenomena we encounter in everyday life. They also argue
that svabhāva in this sense is what we, like the Abhidharmikas, seek when we
attempt to find out reductively what things really are, but that nothing at all can
possibly have this property. Everything lacks essence, substantiality,
independence. They disagree, however, in that while the Abhidharmikas thought
that svabhāva is a property that certain things, such as dharmas, can have,
Mādhyamikas argued that nothing can have this property, simply because it is
incoherent.
Here is a way to understand this doctrinal shift: The anti-realism with respect
to the macroscopic, composite entities of ordinary life espoused by early
Abhidharma philosophy is extended in the Madhyamaka perspective to the
dharmas themselves. This amounts to an adoption of what Siderits (2007, 2011)
has called global anti-realism. But when taken so globally, this amounts to more
than a mere extension, since the relevant contrast with the substantially real is
lost. If nothing at all is real in this sense, even the term anti-realismloses its
meaning. For this reason, it makes sense to see Mādhyamikas, in virtue of this
radical extension of anti-realism, to have recovered a robust realism regarding
the ordinary, conventional world, albeit a moderate kind of realism.
Paradoxically, then, from an Abhidharma point of view, Madhyamaka looks to
be downright nihilistic in virtue of its denial of svabhāva to everything,
including the dharmas. But from a Madhyamaka point of view, Abhidharma
philosophy looks nihilistic about the conventional world, in virtue of denying its
reality, while it appears illicitly to reify the ultimate in virtue of assigning
svabhāva to the dharmas. It is because it takes itself to find a middle path
between this nihilism and reification, treating both the macroscopic and the
microscopic as interdependent and therefore as lacking svabhāva, that this
school is called the Middle Way (Madhyamaka) school.
The Heart of Wisdom Sūtra2 says, in one of the best-known Buddhist formulae
of all:
Form is empty.
Emptiness is form.
Form is not other than emptiness.
Emptiness is not other than form.
The Heart Sūtra emphasizes that just as all phenomena (for which form stands
proxy, as the text itself makes clear in the next passage) are empty of intrinsic
nature, their emptiness is not some distinct phenomenon, somehow more real
than ordinary phenomena—ultimately, as opposed to conventionally real.
Instead, the emptiness of any phenomenon simply is a property of that thing, and
so is dependent upon it, and so is impermanent, and so is itself empty, and so is
itself merely conventionally real. In the third and fourth lines, the text
emphasizes that this is not a mere contingent fact. To be a conventional
phenomenon is to be empty; to be empty is to be merely conventionally real. The
ultimate reality of things (their emptiness) and the fact that they are merely
conventionally real are the same thing. After all, my desk is brown, and its
brownness is nothing more than the brownness of the desk. But that is a
contingent fact. We would never say that to be a desk is to be brown; to be
brown is to be a desk. But the relationship between the ultimate reality of
emptiness and the conventional reality of dependent origination, from a
Madhyamaka point of view, is an ontological identity.
This point is made elegantly in a more formal mode in the Discourse of
Vimalakīrti. In the ninth chapter, the text addresses the nature of nonduality. The
hero of the text, the lay bodhisattva Vimalakīrti, asks an assembly of highly
accomplished bodhisattvas to explain nonduality, the ultimate reality of things.
After many intriguing deconstructions of apparent dualities the bodhisattva
Mañjuśrī asserts that the ultimate truth of nonduality is indescribable in
language. The hero, Vimalakīrti, is then asked his view and remains silent. The
silence that expresses the ultimate truth, though, can do so only in this context,
in which it is itself a kind of speech. We will return to this textual moment in our
discussion of language in chapter 9.
Nāgārjuna makes a similar point in a more philosophical register in the
twenty-fourth chapter of Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way:
8. The Buddha’s teaching of the dharma
Is based on two truths:
A truth of worldly convention
And an ultimate truth.
9. Those who do not understand
The distinction between the two truths
Do not understand
The Buddha’s profound teaching.
10. Without depending on the conventional truth,
 The meaning of the ultimate cannot be taught.
Without understanding the meaning of the ultimate,
Nirvana is not achieved.
In this series of verses, Nāgārjuna emphasizes the distinctness of the two truths,
the necessity of each of them for a coherent ontology, and the dependence of the
ultimate on the conventional. But in the following verses he undermines this
duality dramatically:
18. That which is dependent origination
Is explained to be emptiness.
That, being a dependent designation,
Is itself the middle way.
19. There does not exist anything
That is not dependently arisen.
Therefore there does not exist anything
That is not empty.
In (18) Nāgārjuna identifies dependent origination with emptiness—the
conventional truth with the ultimate—and explains that emptiness, dependent
origination, and even their identity are mere dependent designations—merely
conventional facts. Understanding that everything, including the most profound
truths of ontology, is empty, and merely conventional, is the middle path. And in
(19) he emphasizes the universality of this claim. Emptiness is empty; it is
emptiness all the way down, with no ontological foundation. Nothing exists
ultimately.
Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka can hence be seen as neither a realism nor an anti-
realism, but a transcendence of the realism/anti-realism distinction through a
critique of the very notion of reality it presupposes. Like his rough contemporary
Sextus Empiricus, Nāgārjuna navigates between the extremes of the realism/anti-
realism dichotomy by suspending the debate at issue; and by doing so he rejects
the very presupposition of that debate—that to be real is to be ultimately real, to
have svabhāva. Instead, Nāgārjuna argues, the only reality anything can have is
conventional reality. To be real on this understanding is hence not to possess, but
to lack, ultimate reality. (See Garfield 1990, 2002b for more on this point.)
And this goes for emptiness as well. Not only are all composite phenomena
empty of intrinsic nature, as well as all of their constituents, but emptiness, too,
is empty of any intrinsic nature. This is because emptiness cannot be a real
universal, as there are none. Any emptiness is only the emptiness of a particular
phenomenon, and so is dependent upon that phenomenon, and so has no being of
its own. Emptiness, too, is empty, as is its emptiness. This doctrine of the
emptiness of emptiness is one of Nāgārjuna’s most profound innovations. It is
what ensures that emptiness does not amount to an absolute reality beyond a veil
of illusion, but simply the fact that everything, itself included, exists
interdependently, conventionally, impermanently.3 Madhyamaka thus constitutes
an effort to escape both the horns of realism and of nihilism in forging its middle
path.
On the other hand, this does involve real paradox, and this paradox was
evident from the very earliest strata of the Perfection of Wisdom sūtras,
articulated clearly both in the The Perfection of Wisdom Discourse in 8,000
Verses and in the Diamond Cutter (Vajrachedika). As Garfield and Priest (2003)
have argued, emptiness is both the absence of intrinsic nature, and the intrinsic
nature of all things, since anything, in virtue of existing at all, is empty of
intrinsic nature. As The Perfection of Wisdom Discourse in 8,000 Verses puts it,
“all things have one nature—that is, no nature.” Paradox, however, does not
entail incoherence, and Nāgārjuna, like many Buddhist philosophers in
subsequent generations, notes that reality is in fact profoundly paradoxical.
Consider the following remarks from Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way
XIII:
8. The victorious ones have said
That emptiness is the elimination of all views.
Anyone for whom emptiness is a view
Is incorrigible.
In his commentary to this verse, Candrakīrti offers an example of a customer
trying to buy something in an empty shop. In a paraphrase of an earlier
deployment of this example by Buddhapālita, he writes:
This is similar to a case where someone says, “I have no goods to give
you.” And the other person says, “Give me what you call ‘no goods’”!
(Lucid Exposition [Prasannapadā] 83b, quoted in Tsongkhapa 2006, 299.)
Emptiness is the lack of any intrinsic nature, not another intrinsic nature instead
of those we naively superimpose on entities. If one misreads Madhyamaka as the
replacement of one intrinsic nature with another—emptiness—one is like the
customer who wants to purchase the nothing on the shelves. As Candrakīrti asks
in the next sentence, “How would he get hold of anything?” That is, the
Madhyamaka program is not one of fundamental ontology in the ordinary sense,
but rather a critique of the very enterprise of fundamental ontology, anticipating
those of Heidegger and Wittgenstein.
This critique and the way it is prosecuted raises important questions about
how to understand svabhāva, the object of negation; and so about the relation
between classical Indian metaphysical concerns and those of the West; and
finally about how to translate these central terms. As we noted above, svabhāva
has connotations of intrinsic nature, of essence and of independence. These ideas
are unified in the Sanskrit term, but come apart a bit in English and in Western
thought more generally, and so a bit of precision is necessary here. In particular,
in modern Western metaphysical discourse, it is common to consider relational
properties to be candidates for essences. For instance, Kripke (1980) argues that
it is essential to me that I have the parents I indeed have. The sentence I could
have had different parents is on this view necessarily false. I do not want to
worry about the correctness or incorrectness of that particular position. The
important point for present purposes is that such a property is extrinsic, and so
the property regarded as part of my essence on this view would not count as a
svabhāva in the Sanskrit sense. In Sanskrit, this would be a parabhāva, an
extrinsic property.
Nāgārjuna considers in Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way I:3 the
coherence of the very idea of such extrinsic natures and rejects it. Candrakīrti
and Tsongkhapa argue that this is because in the absence of svabhāva there is no
determinate otherness, and so no way of identifying the other on which one’s
nature depends as really other. The point is that if the idea of extrinsic essences
can be made coherent, then essence and intrinsic nature come apart, and we need
to be clear about what the target of the Madhyamaka analysis is. The answer is
that it would have to be intrinsic nature, at least initially. Nonetheless, as we
have noted, there is an argument present in the tradition that if there is no
intrinsic nature, there can be no extrinsic nature either. And that is not entirely
implausible. After all, if we follow Nāgārjuna’s reasoning, specifying an
extrinsic essence—such as, to take the example at hand, mine as comprising, at
least inter alia, the property of being Learita and Sam’s offspring (once again,
leaving aside the plausibility of this particular account)—requires us to specify
the relata in a determinate way. If we can’t do that, the putative extrinsic
essences are not precise enough. So, in my case, we need to know who my mom
is, and who my dad is, and since they also have only extrinsic nature, this gets us
off on a regress.
Now, one might argue that that regress is benign. It just amounts to a kind of
structuralism. The essence of everything is given by its place in a structure of
relations. But then nothing bottoms out, and everything exists only in relation to
everything else. That itself is the Hua yan vision we will discuss in the next
section, and amounts to a deep kind of essencelessness: if the identity of all that
exists is dependent on other things, the Buddhist position is simply right. And
here we see the work done by the idea of groundlessness. One way to specify an
essence is this: it is what we come to at the end of the analysis of what it is to be
a particular thing—an ontological analytical ground. The Madhyamaka idea is
simply this: Analysis, as Freud was to note much later in a very different
context, never ends. There is no ground.
If the project of fundamental ontology is to find the final nature of things, this
means that fundamental ontology is quixotic. The quest for the fundamental
nature of things issues in the insight that there is no fundamental nature of
things, no final metaphysical account of reality. In the previous chapter we asked
whether this critique of fundamental ontology necessarily involves a retreat from
metaphysics into phenomenology. While, as we will see in chapter 7, certain
Yogācāra philosophers take this route, it is not inevitable. Nāgārjuna is rather, at
least as read by commentators such as Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa—perhaps,
more like Wittgenstein than Heidegger—developing a metaphysical theory,
albeit one that in virtue of rejecting the idea of a fundamental nature of reality, is
deeply paradoxical, seeming to provide an account of the fundamental nature of
reality while rejecting the very coherence of that notion. For all that, it is not
incoherent. And indeed, here we see a significant contribution that the Buddhist
tradition can offer to contemporary Western metaphysics. Taking Madhyamaka
seriously—whether in its Indo-Tibetan or Chinese guise—is to take seriously the
possibility that metaphysics is directed not at a deeper analysis of reality, but at
extirpating the need for such a deeper analysis.
Since on a Madhyamaka analysis to exist is to be empty, emptiness—the lack
of any intrinsic nature—is the intrinsic nature of all things. Here is another way
to put this: to attack the enterprise of fundamental ontology where that is taken
to be the project of finding the ultimate nature of reality, is nonetheless to do
fundamental ontology. The fact that Madhyamaka doctrine is paradoxical is
hence no accident of expression. Emptiness, on this view, reveals a fundamental
paradox at the heart of reality. Nāgārjuna returns to this theme in chapter XXII:
11. We do not assert “Empty.”
We do not assert “Nonempty.”
We assert neither both nor neither.
They are asserted only for the purpose of designation.
Here the paradox is expressed in the formal, rather than the material mode. In a
remark recalling the passage in the Discourse of Vimalakīrti we discussed above,
Nāgārjuna makes it plain that even the statement that phenomena are empty of
intrinsic nature is itself a merely conventional truth, which, in virtue of the
necessary involvement of language with conceptualization, cannot capture the
nonconceptualizable nature of reality. Nothing can be literally true, including
this statement. Nonetheless, language—designation—is indispensible for
expressing that inexpressible truth. This is not an irrational mysticism, but rather
a rational, analytically grounded embrace of inconsistency. The drive for
consistency that many philosophers take as mandatory, the Mādhyamika argues,
is simply one more aspect of primal confusion, a superimposition of a property
on reality that it in fact lacks. An important implication of Madhyamaka
metaphysics is hence that paraconsistent logics may be the only logics adequate
to reality. This, too, would be a valuable insight to take on board.4
The 14th-century Japanese Zen scholar Dōgen returns to this point in a
memorable passage in Actualizing the Fundamental Point (Genjōkōan):
1. All things are buddha-dharma. There is delusion and realization, practice,
and birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings.
As the myriad beings are without an abiding self, there is no delusion,
no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.
The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many and the one;
thus there are birth and death; delusion and realization; sentient beings
and buddhas.
Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion, weeds spread.
2. To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That
myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.
Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who
are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings. Further, there
are those who continue realizing beyond realization, who are in delusion
beyond delusion.
When buddhas are truly buddhas they do not necessarily notice that
they are buddhas. However, they are actualized buddhas, who go on
actualizing buddhas.
…
4. To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget
the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When
actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies
 and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this
no-trace continues endlessly. (Dōgen 1985, 69–70)
Philosophers approaching Dōgen’s cryptic mode of expression for the first time
often have difficulty unpacking his insights and dismiss him as an oracular
mystic. In fact he is a subtle thinker who expresses himself through a complex
mixture of intertextual allusion and metaphor, and careful reading reveals him to
be rigorously analytical. Nonetheless, Dōgen does not shy away from paradox.
Let us pause to unpack this passage. Learning to read these texts is part of
learning to engage. (And let us not forget that many Western texts demand that
we learn new ways of reading as well. Recall the first time you read Augustine,
Heidegger, or Wittgenstein!)
In (1) Dōgen begins with what might seem deeply paradoxical: the claim that
both delusion, realization, and the other such pairs exist, and that there are none
of these things. But there is no real paradox here. He is simply repeating the
trope of the two truths, both comprised under “buddha-dharma.” Conventionally,
these things are present, but because of selflessness (emptiness) they do not exist
ultimately. Paradox first emerges when Dōgen comments on this verse in terms
of “leaping clear of the many and the one,” abandoning not only duality, as in the
Discourse of Vimalakīrti, but also in abandoning nonduality, as in Nāgārjuna’s
XIII:8 in Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way. Here he asks the reader to take
the rubric of the two truths itself as merely nominal (echoing Nāgārjuna again at
XXIV:18) and then, more radically, stating that only because of this deeply
paradoxical nature of reality are things such as birth and death, delusion and
realization, sentient beings and buddhas—that is, the world in which we live—
possible. Each of these things is possible only because of the primordial
emptiness of all phenomena. That emptiness is their absence of any nature, and
they must have that emptiness as their nature. And then he immediately urges us
not to take this too seriously either, lest blossoms fall and weeds spread. The
roots of cyclic existence—attachment and aversion—are present in philosophy
as well, in the form of a conviction that our words and thoughts capture reality
just as it is!
Passage (2) is largely a gloss on (1) and it is a nice one. The trick to living
with this paradox, Dōgen urges, is to work to drop the habit of objectification—
of reification—and to work toward a radically different subjectivity, one of
participation in manifestation that takes one beyond experiencing oneself as a
subject standing over and against an object. This idea comes directly from
Yogācāra thought, and will, I hope, become clearer after reading the next section
of this chapter and chapter 7. The closing lines are important: Buddhahood itself
—awakening—is a transformation of a mode of experience, not a thing to be
experienced; it is in fact a transformation that dispenses with things as objects of
experience.
For a first pass, think of the transformation of subjectivity that occurs in
expert sport or musical performance. In the midst of play on a football (soccer)
field, an expert footballer does not experience herself making a cross to a striker;
she actualizes being an expert footballer making a cross to a striker; as any good
sport psychologist knows, one who in the moment of play objectifies that
situation inevitably fails to actualize that expertise in virtue of that
transformation of subjectivity. The virtuoso violinist does not notice his own
virtuosity as he performs, or indeed the notes themselves; instead he manifests
that virtuosity in a mode of subjectivity that goes beyond awareness of self and
other. It is that virtuoso life that Dōgen recommends here.
Passage (4) is perhaps one of Dōgen’s most famous remarks, and is a gloss on
the sense of virtuosity articulated in (2). Self, or intrinsic identity, is the
fundamental object of study—as it is put in the Tibetan tradition following
Tsongkhapa, the object of negation. But it is studied only to be negated. That
negation, however, does not result in a nihilism regarding oneself, but an
actualization of the only kind of existence one could ever have in interaction, in
interdependence. That very actualization is not itself something to be taken as
the object of some higher-order awareness, but is rather the objectless form of
awareness that is the goal of cultivation.

1.3 Yogācāra
Yogācāra, or Practice Mastery (also known as Cittamātra [Mind Only],
Vijñāptimatra [Consciousness Only] and Vijñānavāda [The Way of
Consciousness]) arises in the 4th century CE. Grounded in The Discourse
Unravelling the Thought (Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra) and the Entry into Lanka
Sūtra (Lankāvatāra-sūtra), and articulated philosophically by the half-brothers
Asaṅga and Vasubandhu (c. 4th century CE) and through the commentaries on
their work by Sthiramati (6th century CE), Yogācāra involves both idealistic and
phenomenological strains of thought. While Madhyamaka–Yogācāra polemics in
India and some Tibetan and Chinese doxography, following Sthiramati and
Candrakīrti, tend to emphasize the idealistic side of the school, Śāntarakṣita,
Kamalaśīla and some important Tibetan traditions—in particular the modernist
Rimeh, or non-sectarian tradition, represented principally in the work of Mipham
—emphasize the phenomenology.
Historically, both strands are important. While there is no firm consensus
regarding how to read each important Yogācāra text (Anacker 1984, Lusthaus
2003, Nagao 1991, Wood 1991, Schmithausen 2014), it is reasonable to say that
Vasubandhu explicitly articulates an idealistic perspective in his Twenty Stanzas
and Thirty Stanzas and that this view is adopted by the influential
epistemologists Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. It is also reasonable to read Asaṅga,
particularly in The Bodhisattva Stages (Bodhisattvabhūmi) and Vasubandhu in
his final work Treatise on the Three Natures (Trisvabhāvanirdeśa) as developing
a phenomenology. We might also say that the Entry into Lanka grounds the
idealism in this school, whereas the Discourse Unravelling the Thought,
particularly the Paramārthasamutgtāta chapter (the chapter structured around
the questions of the bodhisattva Pramārthasamutgata), grounds the
phenomenology. From a modern standpoint, the phenomenological strand of
thought is more important and interesting. Few in the West today, and even few
contemporary traditional Buddhists, take radical idealism seriously, but
phenomenology is a central concern of contemporary philosophy of mind and
cognitive science. As we shall see, Yogācāra phenomenology can be an
important resource for contemporary thought.
Central to Yogācāra metaphysics and to the understanding of emptiness in this
school is the doctrine of the three natures and corresponding three
naturelessnesses, or three aspects of emptiness. Three-nature (trisvabhāva)
theory regards all objects of awareness as having three distinct, but
interdependent natures, or modes of existence. I will try to articulate these in a
way neutral between the idealistic and phenomenological understanding of the
doctrine, and then turn to their relationship to emptiness, as articulated in the
Discourse Unravelling the Thought. Here is a central portion of the dialogue
between the Buddha and Paraṃārthasamudgata in which the doctrine of the three
natures and the three naturelessnesses is introduced:
Paraṃārthasamudgata, thinking of the three types of essencelessness of
phenomena—essenceless in terms of characteristics; essenceless in terms of
production; and ultimate essencelesseness—I taught that all phenomena are
essenceless.
Paraṃārthasamudgata, what is essencelessness in terms of characteristics? It
is the imagined nature. Why? Things have the characteristic of being
posited through words and symbols, but do not exist with that
characteristic. Therefore they are essenceless in terms of characteristic.
Paraṃārthasamudgata, what is essencelessness in terms of production? It is
the other-dependent nature. Why? Things arise through the power of other
 conditions and not on their own. Therefore they are essenceless terms of
production.
Paraṃārthasamudgata, what is ultimate essencelessness? Dependently
originated phenomena…are essenceless in virtue of being ultimately
essenceless. Why? Paraṃārthasamudgata, I teach that the ultimate is an
object of observation for purification. Since the other-dependent nature is
not an object of observation for purification, it is ultimately essenceless.
(trans Power 1995, 100)
First, every object has an imagined nature (parikalpita/kun brtags [kuntak]).
This is the way an object is taken to exist in naïve consciousness—existing as
external, as given to the mind in veridical awareness, as independent, as
substantial, etc, to exist as presented by our sensory faculties. Second, every
object has a dependent nature (paratantra/gzhan dbang [shenwang]). This is the
fact that every object of experience is dependent on causes and conditions for its
existence, but more specifically, in the context of Yogācāra, dependent for its
appearance to consciousness on our cognitive and perceptual apparatus. The
objects we experience are not passively received, but constructed by our
subjectivity as the objects they are, even if they are not experienced this way
(hence the imagined nature).
Third, every object has a consummate nature (pariniṣpanna/yongs su grub pa
[yongdup]). This is perhaps the most difficult to explain. A brief grammatical
remark may help, though. While paratantra in Sanskrit is a purely nominal
construction, both parikalpita and pariniṣpanna are past participles. And this is
important. Objects of awareness, according to Yogācārins, are in fact constructed
by our perceptual and cognitive faculties. (Again, this for now can be taken as
neutral between an idealistic and a phenomenological or psychological point.)
But they are imagined to exist independently, as items we discover, as opposed
to those we construct. Understanding this allows us to see that they are devoid of
the imagined nature, and this is their consummate nature—the fact that they do
not exist as they are imagined; this is the nature they are ascribed when we do
not impute independence to them. They are, in this sense, empty of the nature
they are imagined to have. The grammatical difference between parikalpita and
pariniṣpanna on the one hand and paratantra on the other indicates that while
the dependent nature may be more or less ontologically neutral, referring only to
the causal role of our cognitive activity in experience, when we construct objects
of experience, we actively imagine them to exist in a certain way. As a
consequence, to understand their reality, their mode of being independent of that
construction, we must empty them of that we imaginatively attribute to them.
Every object, on this view, has these three natures. When I consider my coffee
cup, for instance, it appears to me to be an independently existing external object
that possesses all of the properties I naturally ascribe to it, including a color, feel,
or some other property, that I simply register through veridical perception and
cognition. This is its imagined nature. In fact, the object as I experience it is
represented in my brain as a result of a complex set of perceptual and cognitive
processes, and may be experienced quite differently by beings with very
different kinds of minds, for instance an insect or a dog. The fact that as an
object of consciousness it is dependent on my cognitive architecture is its
dependent nature. And seeing this leads me to see that as an object of
experience, while it exists in one way (as dependent) but appears in another (as
imagined), it is devoid of existence in the way that it is imagined, and this is its
consummate nature.
Now, to each of these natures corresponds a sense of naturelessness, or
emptiness. And here we begin to see the Yogācāra understanding of emptiness.
Emptiness with respect to characteristic (lakṣana-niḥsvabhāvataḥ/mtshan nyid
ngo bo nyid med pa [tsenyi ngobo nyi mehpa]) corresponds to the imagined
nature. Objects are empty of the characteristics we naively impute to them.
When I see ordinary physical objects around me, for instance, I take my sensory
faculties to deliver them to consciousness as they are. But I know that that is
crazy. My visual awareness, for instance, is a result of the interaction of external
objects with my eyes, my nervous system, etc., creating a state of consciousness
to which—as Berkeley pointed out—resemblance of an external object makes no
sense at all. Objects are empty of the characteristics I take them to have.
Emptiness with respect to production (upadāna-niḥsvabhāvataḥ /skye ba ngo
on yid med pa [kyaywa ngobo byi mehpa]) corresponds to the dependent nature.
That is, these phenomena are empty of independence on our cognitive and
perceptual processes, despite the fact that we naively take the objects of our
perception to be independent. And emptiness with respect to the ultimate
(paramārtha-niḥsvabhāvataḥ /don dam pa’i ngo bo nyid med pa [dündam peh
ngobo nyi mehpa]) corresponds to the consummate nature. That is, ultimately,
they have none of the characteristics we take them to have.
This is one way of understanding the reconfiguration of the concept of
emptiness in Yogācāra thought. But there is another that emerges from this. We
can think of these three senses of emptiness or naturelessness as resolving into a
simple emptiness of subject–object duality, or of the externality of objects to
subjectivity. On this view, primal confusion consists simply in taking our
experience and the objects it presents us in a deceptive way: we partition our
experience, and reality itself into ourselves, as passive, experiencing subjects,
who confront our objects, objects that constitute a fully and independently
constituted reality of which we are aware just as it is.
Emptiness is the emptiness of everything we experience, including our own
minds as we are aware of them in introspection, of that duality. Instead,
experience consists in a complex, opaque, causally determined construction of
objects. This emptiness of subject–object duality, or of the externality of our
objects to our subjectivity, is the most common way of representing the
Yogācāra understanding of emptiness.
This is, to be sure, a different understanding of emptiness than is the
Madhyamaka understanding in terms of essenceless and interdependence. When
Yogācāra is read idealistically, the metaphysics represent a stark contrast. While
the Mādhyamika, on this reading, takes all phenomena, including mind and the
external world, to be conventionally real but ultimately empty, and to be
interdependent, the Yogācārin takes external objects to be mere appearances to
mind, to be utterly non-existent, and takes mind to be the substantially real
subjective substrate of those representations. So, in Autocommentary to
Examination of the Percept (Ālambanāparīkṣā svavṛtti), for instance, Dignāga
argues that what we take to be external objects in perceptual consciousness are
nothing but the cognitive processes that emerge from the ripening of potentials
in our foundation consciousness, and that while these processes are real, there
are no external objects corresponding to them. A similar position is defended by
Vasubandhu in Twenty Verses.
This ontological distinction in status between mind and its objects is what
constitutes an idealist Yogācāra position as idealist. Yogācāra certainly was read
this way in India, and debates between Yogācārins and Mādhyamikas turn on the
question of the identity or difference in the ontological status of mind and its
objects, and on the object of negation of emptiness—intrinsic identity or
externality, which in turn resolves into a kind of subject–object duality. On the
other hand, when we adopt a phenomenological reading of Yogācāra, there is no
contrast to be drawn with Madhyamaka. On this view, Madhyamaka gives us an
account of the ontology of phenomena—of their interdependence and lack of
any intrinsic nature. Yogācāra then gives us an account not of the emptiness of
phenomena, but of the nature of our subjectivity—of the way we experience
empty phenomena and project a kind of reality they lack. While Madhyamaka
treats emptiness from the standpoint of the object, Yogācāra treats it from the
standpoint of the subject, and provides an analysis of our erroneous experience
of our own subjectivity.
If we take this seriously, we find yet another very deep Buddhist critique of
the idea of givenness, suggesting not only that the objects we experience are not
given to us as they are, but also that our own experience, often taken for granted
as immediate and transparent, is as opaque to us and as deceptive as are the
objects we encounter. We construct ourselves and our awareness just as surely as
we construct the objects we posit, and we confuse our experience of ourselves
and our inner states with their nature just as surely as we do our experience of
external objects and their nature. There is, on this reading, no firm ground or
horizon that can be taken for granted. Once again, this anticipation of the attack
on the Myth of the Given in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and
Sellars’s Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind are striking. But the approach
to that attack is very different, itself anticipating a trajectory more associated
with Heidegger in Being and Time. This may be one key to seeing, through a
Buddhist lens, the deep affinities between these strands of Western thought often
taken to be in tension with one another. It turns out that sometimes one
understands one’s own tradition better when one views it from a bit of
hermeneutical distance. We will see a number of instances of this phenomenon
as we move forward.

1.4 Hua Yan

The Chinese Hua yan tradition, grounded in the Flower Garland Sūtra, is
perhaps the most striking development of the idea of the unity of emptiness and
interpenetration. Through a series of apt metaphors, principally that of the net of
Indra and that of the golden lion, Fazang, the Chinese patriarch of this tradition,
develops an account of infinite interdependence of all phenomena, and in the end
of the unity and non-difference of all phenomena. Hua yan synthesizes ideas
drawn from Madhyamaka and Yogācāra and takes them to a grand and dizzying
metaphysical conclusion.
The metaphor of the net of Indra—an infinite network, at each node of which
is a jewel that perfectly reflects all other jewels in the net—illustrates the Hua
yan view of interdependence. Just as each jewel owes its characteristics to every
other, and participates in the characteristics of every other, each phenomenon in
the universe, in virtue of bearing some relation to every other phenomenon, owes
part of its nature to everything else. Part of who I am is constituted by my
distance from some speck of stardust in a distant galaxy, and to you who now
read these words; part of who you are is determined by your reading these words
now, and your ever-so-slightly different relation to that speck, and its nature is
determined by our relation to it, and so on. In short, everything is related to
everything else, and, in virtue of the fact that we are constituted by our relations,
everything is constituted by everything else in a non-well-founded hierarchy of
mutual interdependence.
What does this mean for emptiness? Emptiness here, just as in Indian
Madhyamaka, is a lack of independent existence. But it is more than that. It is a
lack of difference between entities. For on the Hua yan account, since the
identity of everything is constituted by everything else, that which constitutes the
identity of any one thing is the same as that which constitutes the identity of
every other thing. (See Priest 2014a, 2014b.) There is therefore no substantial
difference between any two things in the universe. In this framework, all is one.
But things get even more interesting. For emptiness (the lack of any
independent existence) and existence (the positive reality as an entity) also
interpenetrate one another. Fazang interprets this as the unity of characteristic
and characterized, or of form and substance. Here are a few signal passages from
the The Treatise on the Golden Lion (Jin Shi Zi Zhang). The nature of the
Madhyamaka-Yogācāra synthesis in a Chinese voice will be apparent. Fazang
asks us to consider a golden lion.
1. Clarifying the Fact that Things Arise through Causation
It means that gold has no nature of its own. As a result of the conditioning
of the skillful craftsman, the character of the lion consequently arises. This
arising is purely due to causes…
The golden lion we apprehend, Fazang asserts, appears to have the nature of
being a lion. But this is not part of its nature. It is, after all, just a lump of gold,
and its appearance as a lion is the result of causes and conditions utterly
extraneous to the statue itself. Just so, when we instinctively take things around
us to have the characteristics they do by their very nature, we forget that these
are the consequences of countless extraneous causes and conditions.
2. Distinguishing Matter and Emptiness
It means that the character of the lion is unreal: there is only real gold. The
lion is not existent, but the substance of the gold is not non-existent.
Therefore they are called matter and emptiness. Furthermore, emptiness has
no character of its own; it shows itself by means of matter. This does not
obstruct its illusory existence. …
The lion, Fazang says, is hence empty of being a lion. It does not exist apart
from a set of causes and conditions, including the gold, which is its supporting
condition. So, he claims, the lion stands to the gold as form does to emptiness, as
the way in which emptiness is manifest at a particular moment. But, while this
might appear to privilege the gold (emptiness) over the lion (form) it should be
noted that the gold must appear in some form, and cannot simply exist with no
character whatsoever. The gold is only the gold of the lion, just as emptiness is
only the emptiness of form. Here we see Fazang following very closely the
Heart Sūtra, which as one of the Perfection of Wisdom sūtras is foundational to
Madhyamaka. But he now abruptly switches to a discussion of categories
coming from the Discourse Unraveling the Thought, a founding text of the
Yogācāra school, whose insights he fuses with those of the Madhyamaka
tradition:
3. Simply Stating the Three Natures
The lion exists because of our feelings. This is called the nature arising
from vast imagination. The lion seems to exist. This is called dependence
on others. The nature of the gold does not change. This is therefore called
perfect reality.
This is Fazang’s analogy for the three natures. We imagine the golden lion as a
lion; it seems to exist as a lion, but only in dependence on our cognitive
imputation of lionhood onto a lump of gold; it is really only gold, and its
appearance as a lion is the result of something foreign to it. So, Fazang says, we
see in this simile the imagined, the dependent and the consummate nature. He
now turns to the three naturelessnesses.
4. Showing the Nonexistence of Characters
It means that the gold takes in the lion in its totality; apart from the gold
there is no character of the lion to be found. Therefore it is called the
nonexistence of characters.
Fazang begins with naturelessness in terms of characteristic. The lion simply is
just a lump of gold. There is nothing in its nature that makes it a lion.
5. Explaining Non-coming into Existence
It means that at the moment when we see the lion come into existence, it is
only the gold that comes into existence. There is nothing apart from the
gold. Although the lion comes into existence and goes out of existence, the
substance of the gold at bottom neither increases nor decreases. …(Chan
1963, 409–410)
The lion also illustrates naturelessness in terms of causal dependence. It comes
into existence as a result of causes and conditions, including the craftsman and
our recognition of its shape, and ultimate naturelessness. Ultimately, it has none
of the characteristics of a lion, only those of gold.
Later in the text, Fazang poses a number of ontological questions that draw
these ideas together: Is the lion the same as or different from its gold? Is the lion
the same as or different from its shape? Is its instantiated shape the same as or
different from the gold that instantiates it? Are the manifold parts identical to or
different from the unitary lion?
In each case the answer is “yes” and “no.” The lion is the same, because if you
hand me the gold, you hand me the lion. But it is different, for that gold could be
melted down and made into the statue of a Buddha. Without the shaped gold,
there is no shape; but that shape could have been instantiated in another material,
or the gold could take another shape. And so on. In each case, characteristic and
characterized interpenetrate one another. While they are different, they are also
identical.
For this reason, in the Hua yan tradition, the fact that there is no difference
between distinct phenomena, despite their distinctness—just as despite the
distinctness of the infinitely many jewels in Indra’s net there is no difference
between them—is just the beginning of ontological vertigo. For on the one hand
there is all the difference in the world between emptiness and existence. For
anything to exist is for it to have an identity, and to stand out as the thing that it
is. On the other hand, for anything to exist is to be thoroughly ontologically
interpenetrated with everything else, and to be empty of any such independent
identity. And an object’s existence and its emptiness are nonetheless identical.
Hua yan presents perhaps the most radical Buddhist ontological vision, one
we might regard as verging on a kind of mysticism. Nonetheless, it represents an
important voice in ontological debates. It is often assumed that we can take the
existence and nature of individuals for granted and then ask about their relations
to others. It is also often assumed that we can talk about entities and their
characteristics as independent and take the framework of particulars and
universals for granted. Hua yan calls all of that into question. Ontology on this
view can never be an account of the nature of anything, but at best a reminder
that there is no nature of anything, and that what we see depends not so much
upon where our gaze falls but about the nature of that gaze.

2. The Development of the Doctrine of the Two Truths in

the Mahāyāna Traditions
We can now draw much of this discussion together by placing the doctrine of the
two truths at center stage. We have been talking extensively about various
understandings of emptiness and of the relation between emptiness and
conventional existence, and it is clear that in these Mahāyāna analyses of
emptiness the Abhidharma rubric of the two truths as a hermeneutic device has
come to have major ontological significance. In early Buddhism, as we have
seen, this framework indicates the difference between that which exists
ultimately, the fundamental dharmas, and that which merely exists
conventionally, those fictional extended composites that are regarded as real, but
are in fact nonexistent entities that are posited as a consequence of the mistaken
perception of a reality of momentary interdependent property instantiations.
While this specific framework is discarded in the move to Mahāyāna
metaphysics, the idea that to exist ultimately is to exist independently of
convention, and to be what is found to be substantially real through metaphysical
analysis is retained. It is just that nothing ends up satisfying that description. The
idea that there are two truths—a conventional and an ultimate truth—but that
nothing is ultimately real or true is, as we have seen, both powerful, and
paradoxical.
We have seen Madhyamaka philosophers, such as Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti,
emphasize the paradoxical relation between the two truths, that they are distinct
and yet identical. Let us first explore the sense in which conventional truth and
ultimate truth are necessarily distinct. Conventional truth is merely nominal,
determined by and characterizable through discursive practices; it is truth as
taken for granted by ordinary people, in conformity with mundane practices; and
it is always deceptive, appearing to be more than merely conventional when it is
not. Ultimate truth, on the other hand, transcends description, since all
descriptions implicate a conventional ontology of objects and properties, none of
which exist ultimately; it is independent of mundane practices as the primordial
mode of being of all things, and is not directly apprehended by ordinary modes
of consciousness; and it is non-deceptive—when emptiness is apprehended, that
is a correct apprehension of the absence of any intrinsic nature. So, in all of these
senses, conventional and ultimate truth are an exhaustive, mutually exclusive
partition of the modes of existence of things.
Nonetheless, conventional and ultimate truth are, as we have seen in our
reading of the Heart Sūtra and of Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way,
identical. The ultimate truth is emptiness, and emptiness is dependent
origination, which is the fundamental nature of the conventional world; the
ultimate truth is that there is no intrinsic nature to things, only their conventional
nature, and so there is nothing other than that nature; and emptiness is dependent
on empty things, and so only conventionally real anyway. Since the only way
that anything can exist is conventionally, and that is the ultimate truth, the
ultimate truth is the conventional truth.
It is this paradoxical identity and non-identity of the conventional and ultimate
that saves Madhyamaka from collapsing into another version of an appearance–
reality distinction of the kind so central to other Indian philosophical traditions,
such as Vedānta. It is also this paradoxical identity that saves Madhyamaka from
reifying emptiness as a non-apparent absolute and from deprecating the
conventional world as unimportant. Madhyamaka thus makes it possible, for
instance, to take epistemic and moral practices in ordinary life seriously
(Cowherds 2011, 2015). But it is also the insight that this is what is required to
avoid an unacceptable duality of an inaccessible reality and a pointless mundane
world that leads Madhyamaka to the insight that the heart of being is deeply
paradoxical.
Indeed, as I have been emphasizing, one of the more profound insights of this
Buddhist tradition may be that paradox is different from incoherence (Garfield
and Priest 2009, Deguchi, Garfield and Priest 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d). A
great deal of Western philosophical thought since Aristotle (with a few notable
exceptions, such as Hegel and Bradley) up until very recent developments in
paraconsistent logic (Priest 2002, 2006) has been predicated on the idea that any
true account of reality must be consistent, simply because no contradictions can
be true. But this may simply be a logical prejudice born of too little formal and
ontological imagination. Reflection on the semantic and set theoretic paradoxes
is one way to come to see that a logic that can tolerate contradictions may be a
better way to understand an inconsistent formal reality. Reflection on emptiness
may be the best way to come to see that a philosophical perspective that can
tolerate contradictions is a better way to understand the inconsistent reality we
inhabit. After all, who ever said that a particular, and rather arbitrary, human
approach to logic must constrain the nature of the universe?5
The Yogācāra account of the relation between the two truths, despite its later
emergence, is perhaps a bit more prosaic and owes more to pre-Mahāyāna
perspectives on this distinction. It is not for nothing that some Mādhyamikas
regard Yogācāra as the Mahāyāna school for those not yet ready for
Madhyamaka. The conventional truth is the imagined nature. That is, from this
perspective, conventional reality is a nonexistent reality of things imagined to be
external to and dually related to the mind. Ultimate reality is, on this view, the
consummate nature, that is, the absence or complete nonexistence of that
superimposed externality and duality. On this view, of course, the two truths are
as different as night and day: the conventional is completely imaginary, and the
ultimate is its unreality.
The pivot point that defines the relation between these truths in the Yogācāra
system is the dependent nature. This Janus-faced character of things forms the
basis for both the conventional and the ultimate truth. When externality,
independence and duality are superimposed, it is the conventional; when they are
removed, it is the ultimate. While this does not unify the two natures, as in
Madhyamaka, it does indicate a close ontological relationship between them.
Note that while we have insisted that a phenomenological understanding of
Yogācāra is possible, one to which we will return in a moment, in the context of
purely Yogācāra accounts of the two truths, it is hard to read this doctrine as
anything but idealist: it privileges the reality of mind and the mental, and
ascribes to the external world a merely imaginary existence.
Śāntarakṣita, an important 9th-century Buddhist philosopher central to the
dissemination of Buddhism from Nālandā University in Bihar—where he taught
and served as abbot—to Tibet, where he established the Buddhist monastic order
and educational system, famously synthesized Madhyamaka and Yogācāra
through the rubric of the two truths in his verse treatise Ornament of the Middle
Way (Madhyamakālaṃkāra) and its autocommentary. Śāntarakṣita argues that
Yogācāra provides a correct account of conventional truth and that Madhyamaka
provides the correct account of ultimate truth. Conventional truth is, as
Nāgārjuna notes in Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way XXIV:10, the
necessary stepping stone to ultimate truth. And, as Candrakīrti notes,
conventional truth is always deceptive. Now, if Madhyamaka is taken to be the
authoritative doctrine regarding ultimate truth, and if the doxographic framework
in which Śāntarakṣita worked, in which Yogācāra as the penultimate doctrine on
the way to Madhyamaka is taken for granted, then it is natural to take Yogācāra
as the (albeit deceptive) conventional truth that is the stepping stone to the
ultimate truth revealed in Madhyamaka. And this, indeed, is how many
canonical and contemporary Tibetan scholars take matters to go.
In the following verses toward the end of Ornament of the Middle Way,
Śāntarakṣita invites such a reading:
92. On the basis of Yogācāra,
One should understand the absence of external objects.
On the basis of our system,
One should understand that there is also a complete absence of self.
93. Whoever rides the chariot of these two systems.
Guiding them with the reins of logic,
 Will thereby attain the goal,
The realization of the Mahāyāna itself.6
This apparently irenic reading has one important hermeneutical virtue. It
explains the continuity between Yogācāra thought when read as a kind of
idealism with the more realistic Madhyamaka, and does so, paradoxically, by
showing how the more thoroughgoing antirealism of Madhyamaka in the end
undermines the view that mind has a special ontological status.
This reading, for all of its virtues, nonetheless faces a massive hermeneutical
problem. Conventional truth, on a Geluk reading of Madhyamaka—a reading
that is faithful to Candrakīrti’s exposition (Cowherds 2011)—is supposed to be
truth as ordinary people take it to be, the world as we naively take up with it. So,
on this reading of Śāntarakṣita’s synthesis, ordinary people are idealists, and
experience the world as illusory. Only when they become Mādhyamikas on this
view do they come to accept the reality of external objects. As a piece of
philosophical anthropology, this seems simply insane. If we are to take
Śāntarakṣita’s claim that Yogācāra captures conventional truth seriously, and if
we understand conventional truth as, say, Candrakīrti understands it, we cannot
also take him, as the 15th-century Tibetan philosopher Gyeltsap and other Geluk
commentators do, to read Yogācāra idealistically. But ironically, Gyeltsap’s own
(rGyal tshab dar ma rin chen 1999) incisive comments on these verses suggest a
much more interesting, more radical possibility:
Consider all phenomena comprised under causes and effects. They are not
substantially different from consciousness. This is because they exist in
virtue of being experienced through authoritative perception. This
entailment is valid because given this premise, they necessarily exist
substantially as consciousness. These phenomena should be understood
conventionally in this way as merely mind, in virtue of lacking any external
realty. But ultimately, even mind does not exist. For ultimately, it has
neither a singular nor a manifold nature. (599)7
We can clarify Śāntarakṣita’s argument by attention to the 19th-century Tibetan
philosopher Mipham’s commentary on the verses of Ornament of the Middle
Way in which Śāntarakṣita articulates the sense in which Yogācāra delivers
conventional truth. I focus on verses 63–64 and then turn to the summary in
verse 78.
63. Therefore, these things
Only have conventional characteristics.
 If one were to maintain that they exist ultimately,
What can I do?
Here Śāntarakṣita asserts that despite the fact that Yogācāra focuses on cognitive
states in its analysis of reality, those states are not asserted to exist ultimately.
Everything that is said of them is said merely conventionally. Mipham
immediately glosses conventional (samvṛti/kun rdzob [kundzop]) as deceptive, or
as false, one of the three glosses offered by Candrakīrti in his analysis in Lucid
Exposition:
…Here, “conventional” means that, with respect to the dichotomy between
real and unreal, they are unreal, having a false nature. They never have the
nature of being real—of being truly existent; this reality is what is denied.8
(Mipham 2004, 422)
Importantly, Mipham immediately, once again following Candrakīrti, clarifies
the sense of false at issue: it is not to be nonexistent, but rather to exist in one
way and to appear in another:
…Here, to be mere appearance, and to be truly empty is the nature of the
conventional. If it existed in the way it appears, it would not be
conventional. In that case, it would not even exist ultimately. Here, since it
does not exist in the way it appears, it is conventional. In that case, it would
have to exist ultimately. But all phenomena lack ultimate essence that
transcends unity and multiplicity. Therefore, these mere appearances have
the characteristics of the conventional. Therefore, these two truths clarify
each other, and could never be inconsistent with one another. …(Ibid., 426)
On this reading, the sense in which the mind and its immediate objects exist
merely conventionally is this: the mind, mental states and objects appear to exist
in a way that withstands analysis; they appear to have a definite nature. But they
do not. Ultimately they are empty of the nature they appear to have.
Mipham’s reading distances him from an idealist or ontological understanding
of Yogācāra according to which the mind and appearances are taken to be truly
existent, while external objects are taken to be nonexistent. But most
dramatically, and most revelatory of Śāntarakṣita’s philosophical originality, it
also distances him from any view according to which the mind is self-revealing,
and immediately available to consciousness. For if it were self-revealing, if it
existed in the way it appears, if introspection were inherently veridical, the mind,
according to Mipham, would be non-deceptive, and would exist ultimately.
Mipham is thus taking Śāntarakṣita’s account of Yogācāra as conventional truth
as a platform for an analysis of the mind as what is referred to in Buddhist
epistemology as “a hidden object,” one not directly observable, but knowable
only from inference. We see here a 19th-century reading of a 9th-century text as
developing yet another attack on the Myth of the Given much as it is developed
by Sellars in the 20th century. Śāntarakṣita continues:

64. Apparent9 only when not analyzed,

Subject to arising and cessation,
And capable of performing functions,
Their nature is understood to be to exist conventionally.
Here we encounter yet another gloss on conventional existence, one that
emphatically affirms conventional truth as a kind of truth, and hence the
Madhyamaka background of this analysis. To exist conventionally is to be
dependently originated, to be functional in the everyday world, and to be taken
for granted without analysis. Mipham emphasizes this realism, contrasting the
nature of conventional existents with that of illusions:
…This conventional reality does not consist in such things as the horns of a
rabbit, which are only expressed by words, are never seen, and cannot
perform any function. Rather when we examine dependently arisen
phenomena, although they are taken for granted when not examined—only
when not analyzed—they thus are apparent to perception. These objects
that are causes and effects—subject to instantaneous arising and cessation,
that are seen, and that are capable of performing desired and non-deceptive
functions, the nature of these objects is understood to be denoted by the
word conventional. Here, the characteristic of the conventional is presented
in three ways in terms of elimination, and in one way in terms of
determination. (They appear, they are momentary, and they perform
functions; and they are conventionally real.) (Ibid., 428)
…
Now things get interesting and startlingly contemporary, for anyone paying
attention to current literature on consciousness. Mipham turns to a consideration
of the mode of appearance and the mode of existence of the cognitive. He
explicitly takes as his example the appearance of a double moon, as when one
gazes at the moon and simultaneously presses one’s eyeball, not the appearing
double moon. And he argues that the appearance itself—the cognitive
phenomenon—exists in one way, but appears in another. That is to say, it is a
conventional existent, but as conventional, it is deceptive; it does not bear
analysis; our awareness of the appearance itself is not awareness of it as it is, but
only as it appears:
Consider a mistakenly grasped appearance such as a double moon: in this
case, the appearance is merely consciousness itself appearing to itself.
Therefore, one should not commit the error of not including it in the
conventional. However, when we consider whether or not these apparent
objects exist in the same way that they appear, they are just non-existent in
that way. (Ibid., 438)
That is, even the appearance does not exist as we take it to be. While we take our
access to our own inner states to be infallible and immediate, it is not. Our
access to our own cognitive states, in virtue of being mediated through opaque
cognitive processes, is only indirect and fallible.10 On Mipham’s reading,
building on Gyeltsap’s, Śāntarakṣita takes the relation between Madhyamaka and
Yogācāra not to be one of rival ontologies, but of complementary parts of a
single ontology, and one that demonstrates a very deep degree to which reality—
not only on the subject side, but also on the object side—is opaque to our
ordinary consciousness.11
As we will see in chapter 6, below, this reading harmonizes very nicely with
an understanding of the phenomenological theory of the Yogācāra philosopher
Vasubandhu. This is because the task of limning truth as it is understood by
ordinary consciousness, and the basis of our ordinary social, discursive and
epistemic practices is the task of phenomenology. Yogācāra does precisely that.
It explains how we take the world to be, and how we come to so take it. But
while that enterprise is important as a sketch of our lebenswelt, and is essential
to providing a clear view of how we live, act, justify and interact, it can never
pretend to be fundamental metaphysics, or to provide an account of the final
nature of reality. That is the task of Madhyamaka, which, Śāntarakṣita agrees,
delivers the verdict that there is no fundamental nature of reality. Madhyamaka
metaphysics and Yogācāra phenomenology are hence reconciled in a remarkable
feat of metaphilosophical synthesis.

3. Madhyamaka and Yogācāra in the 21st Century

The rubric of the two truths, even in India (we have not, after all, considered all
of the complexities that emerge when this doctrine is adumbrated and elaborated
in Tibet and China) is hence understood in a variety of ways. It is clear that there
is a significant difference between the way that doctrine is read in pre-Mahāyāna
Buddhist philosophy and the way(s) it comes to be understood in the Mahāyāna
traditions. On one dominant reading, within the Mahāyāna tradition we have two
contrasting readings, with Madhyamaka defending a reading that affirms the
reality of the conventional and identifies the truths and Yogācāra denying the
reality of the conventional and drawing a sharp distinction between them. On
this reading, Yogācāra may appear to be but a historical curiosity, like the
Berkeleyan idealism to which it is often compared. But we have seen that there
is an alternative to this picture: a Madhyamaka understanding of ontology
wedded to a Yogācārin approach to phenomenology provides a remarkably rich
approach to metaphysics, to phenomenology and to the philosophical project
broadly conceived. It also suggests a number of interventions into contemporary
discussions.
For one thing, Madhyamaka, understood as Candakīrti and Śāntarakṣita take
it, suggests that debates between metaphysical realists and metaphysical
antirealists may be hollow. If Nāgārjuna is correct, a realism that takes there to
be a convention-independent ontological ground of our practices, of knowledge,
of truth and reference, is a fantasy. But to conclude from this that our lives float
completely free is to go too far as well. For even if there are no foundations,
reality never presupposed them, and if conventional reality is all there is, there is
plenty of it. Conventional truth may not be ultimate truth, but it is all the truth
there is, and all the truth we could ever need.
Madhyamaka also suggests that in thinking about the nature of composite,
three- or four-dimensional entities, we can get beyond taking their reality and
nature to depend upon their having strict identity conditions, or being reducible
or not to something more fundamental. Ontology is not going to deliver us a
final account of the nature of things, simply because the very idea of a final
account, or a nature of things, may be just plain incoherent. Instead, to the extent
that we are interested in the nature of the world in which we live, a
metaphysically modest inventory of what we find, together with a
psychologically sophisticated account of the manner in which we present the
world and ourselves to ourselves, and of the sources of distortion that inevitably
involves, including the sources of distortion of any account of any sources of
distortion can yield a modicum of understanding and a modicum of humility
regarding that understanding. This may be all philosophy can or should deliver.
This is not a recommendation to give up on truth, or on the world. We can also
learn from these Buddhist interventions that we can take truth and the world very
seriously without taking them so seriously through metaphysical reification that
we place them beyond any cognitive or practical access. Taking conventional
truth seriously is how to take truth seriously; taking the world we collectively
constitute seriously is how to take ourselves and the world around us seriously.
To decide that only an ontology beyond convention and only a world that exists
independently of our apprehension of it is real is to cut ourselves off from any
reality at all.
Modern modal metaphysics and modal logic have been preoccupied with
understanding essences and necessity as features of the world around us.
Essences are often understood as qualities that an individual has in any world in
which that individual exists, and necessity is often understood in terms of truth
in possible worlds. Possible worlds, and often domains of individuals and sets of
properties, are then often taken in these investigations as primitives. And our
intuitions regarding individual identity, criteria for property attribution, and truth
or falsity in other worlds are taken as evidence for modal claims.
So, for instance, we might fight about whether I am possibly a goldfish. If our
intuitions are that humanity is essential to me, there are no worlds in which I am
a goldfish. If, however, we think that philosophically active goldfish are
possible, and that a world in which the thing most like me is a goldfish
preoccupied with Madhyamaka and modern Western philosophy, and that
Lewisian counterpart theory is true, we think that I might be. We might think
that since contradictions are obviously not possible, there are no possible worlds
in which they are true; or we might think that since there are, they are possible.
And so it goes.
From a Mahāyāna Buddhist perspective, this is all nonsense, or at least needs
a great deal of fundamental defense. The entire enterprise of taking our intuitions
as serious evidence is called into question in a framework in which our intuitions
typically reflect primal confusion rather than insight; the enterprise of searching
for the essences of things, or of reasoning based on claims about them, makes no
sense in a framework in which the very idea of an essence is regarded as
incoherent. Much of modal metaphysics as it is currently practiced may be little
more than an exploration and systematization of intuitions that deserve
dismissal, not reification; an elaboration of illusion of the kind that Buddhists
call prapañca, or conceptual fabrication—an idle but deceptive spinning of
conceptual wheels.
If we take Madhyamaka metaphysics, Yogācāra phenomenology and
Śāntarakṣita’s synthesis of these perspectives seriously, we take seriously a
philosophical framework in which our intuitions about the nature of reality and
even about our own experience of reality are likely to be profoundly wrong, and
we take seriously a philosophical framework in which an attempt to discover a
reality beyond the world of appearance is to be seduced by an illusion that there
is reality greater than what we find in front of us. What we have on this view is
the world we inhabit. Our task is to understand and to improve it, not to search
behind it for something better.
These first two chapters present a mere sketch of the outlines of Buddhist
metaphysics, primarily as articulated through the Indian and Tibetan Mahāyāna
tradition, albeit with some attention to antecedent Indian ideas and a few
Chinese developments. I hope that this picture accomplishes two goals. First, it
should provide the foundation for the more specific discussions of the self, of
knowledge, phenomenology, ethics and the philosophy of language to follow. I
fear that none of this would be intelligible without this metaphysical framework
in the background.
Second, I hope that it is apparent that the Buddhist tradition takes up
metaphysics in a way worthy of attention by contemporary Western
philosophers, even if they are not interested in what follows in the present
volume. As I have emphasized, many of the topics central to current concerns
were and are central to the concerns of Buddhist philosophers. Often the
conclusions to which Buddhist scholars have arrived are recognizable positions
in Western debates. Sometimes they are novel positions or suggest new ways of
thinking about those debates. Often the arguments and the starting points are
intriguingly different, allowing us to see those debates and the positions they
define in new light. If philosophy is, in Sellars’s memorable phrase, “the attempt
to understand how things—in the broadest sense of that term—hang together—
in the broadest sense of that term” (1963, 1), taking this philosophical tradition
seriously is good philosophy. We now turn to a more specific topic, that is, the
status of the self and the person.

1. Though to be sure, no Mādhyamika would regard physics as delivering ultimate truth; instead, it would
be taken to yield a deeper understanding of conventional truth. But there is another way to think about
scientific discourse and the precision at which it aims from a Madhyamaka point of view. Tsongkhapa
argues that for reductio-wielders, such as Candrakīrti, nothing has intrinsic identity even conventionally,
and that the meanings of words and ontology are purely conventional, and always rough and ready.
(Compare Wittgenstein on word meaning.)
For those who advance their own position, on the other hand, he argues, while nothing has intrinsic identity
ultimately, conventionally things do have intrinsic identity, because, he argues, those of this school must
take word meanings to be fixed precisely in debate, and so they take language to have precise, necessary
and sufficient conditions of application. We might see this as an account of the meanings of the terms of
precise scientific discourse, even if the meanings of ordinary language are not set that way.
Now, this also connects to the question about the status of scientific entities. Tsongkhapa distinguishes
(again, following Candrakīrti) between ultimate and conventional analysis. Ultimate analysis is the attempt
to find the fundamental nature of a thing; this, Tsongkhapa argues, always comes up empty: There is no
fundamental nature of reality. Conventional analysis, on the other hand, is simply the use of our ordinary
epistemic instruments to take us as deep as we can go into conventional reality. Science, on this view, would
have to be conventional analysis, even if its language may give us entities understood as having intrinsic
natures, conventionally. (Tsongkhapa holds this position to be unstable, but that is another matter. See
Cowherds 2011; Dreyfus and McClintock 2003; Garfield 2002b, 2001.)
2. Canonically regarded as Indian, but almost certainly Chinese in origin (Nattier 1992/1993).
3. We should note, however, that not all Buddhist commentators regard emptiness as itself impermanent.
Interesting debates ensue regarding its status, debates I leave aside for present purposes.
4. See chapter 8 for more discussion of paraconsistency in Buddhist logic.
5. Tsongkhapa expresses this point in Lam rim chen mo (Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path) by
saying that ultimate and conventional truth are extensionally equivalent, but intensionally distinct (ngo bo
lcig ldog pa tha’ dad). There is no ontological distinction to be drawn between them, but rather a conceptual
distinction. This is a strategy for defusing apparent paradox (something that Tsongkhapa, a philosopher very
much committed to consistency, is always concerned to do in his Madhyamaka exegesis). Maintaining this
view, however, requires a great deal of systematic re-reading of a lot of Madhyamaka literature, with the
interpolation of allegedly suppressed terms (“qualifying phrases” as Tsongkhapa puts it). See Jinpa (2002)
and Thakchöe (2007) for detailed explorations of this strategy.
6. Tibetan text in Blumenthal (2004). All translations are my own.
7. Gyeltsap rejects the inconsistency of Yogācāra—at least as it is deployed by Śāntarakṣita—with
Madhyamaka on surprisingly different grounds from those one might expect if he were defending the
graded reading we first considered. The former, he indicates, gives us an analysis of our experience of the
natural world (“all phenomena comprised under causes and effects”) as known to us only through
consciousness; the latter shows us that neither object nor subject exists ultimately; there is no contrast
possible between their ontological status.
This is an apposite development of Śāntarakṣita’s insight. Inasmuch as the world we experience is only a
world delivered by our consciousness, nothing we immediately experience can be substantially different
from that consciousness. But that non-difference from consciousness does not in the end give consciousness
a privileged position; both the subject and object side are ultimately known in the same way (through
perceptual and conceptual mediation) and exist in the same way—as empty of intrinsic identity.
8. In what follows I rely on the Tibetan text as reproduced in Mipham (2004). The translations, however, are
my own.
9. Here I read rnam dgya’ as meaning apparent, not delightful as it is often read in English translations.
(See Blumenthal 2004, Miphan 2004, trans. Doctor). This reading is attested in other contexts, and is
supported by Mipham’s own gloss on this term:

The phrase “apparent only when not analyzed” (ma brtags nyams dga’) should be understood to
mean to remain content to take something such as an illusory experience for granted as long as it
is not analyzed. This does not mean that to say that illusions are pleasant (nyams dga’) for
frightening appearances can obviously occur. …Hence this term does not refer to physical or
sensual delight.

10. This idea is also developed elegantly by the 18th-century Tibetan philosopher Gungthang (Gung thang
dkon mchog bstan pa’i sgron me) in his Ornament for Dignāga’s Thought Regarding the Investigation of
the Percept (dMigs pa brtag pa’i ‘grel pa phyogs glang dgongs rgyan).
11. For a subtle treatment of the use of the idea of illusion as a vehicle for understanding reality, see
Westerhoff (2010b).
4 THE SELF
There is a lot to say about the self, and a wide range of debates regarding the
self. I do not aim to provide a comprehensive view either of Western or of
Buddhist views about the self. But I do want to focus on some of the central
debates that dominate current Western thought about the self to see what a
Buddhist perspective can contribute. And I want to begin with debates regarding
the very existence of anything that deserves to be called a self. Let us begin by
asking just what is at stake in debates about the existence of a self, as that will
aid us in achieving the requisite focus.
There are four principal issues to which I will draw attention: diachronic
identity; synchronic identity; personal essence; and minimal conceptions of self.
I take them in this order as each successive worry seems to replace its
predecessor in the philosophical dialectic once the predecessor is seen to be
intractable. Let us first get clear about each issue, not with an intention to resolve
it, but rather to bring the debates they inspire into sharp relief, and only then turn
to the Buddhist tradition to see what it might contribute.

1. Some Contemporary Western Positions

The problem of diachronic personal identity is easy to state, and it is easy to get
a feel for the perplexity and anxiety it generates, both phenomenological and
theoretical. What is it, if anything, that makes me now the same person I was
yesterday, or that I will be tomorrow? We have an overpowering sense of our
own strict numerical identity over time. My memories are memories of my life,
not of someone rather like me, or of someone to whom I bear some
philosophically recherché relation; my plans are plans for what I will do, not
plans for the future actions of some similar fellow; my attitudes such as pride or
shame reflect my views regarding what I have done, or who I am, and so forth.
Or so it seems. In virtue of the intimate connection between memory, intention,
agency and responsibility to personhood, to fail to recognize myself as an
enduring agent and subject would be to fail to recognize myself as a person.
And much of our social life and our shared theory of such practices as census,
taxation, reward and punishment, education and the rest seem to depend
centrally on the fact of our diachronic identity. We assign birthdates, social
security numbers and passports to individuals, not to successions thereof; I pay
taxes on what the government takes me to have earned last year; we punish a
criminal long after the commission of a crime because we take her—the one in
the dock now—to be the perpetrator of what was done then, not just her nominal
heir. To fail to identify others over time would hence be to fail to recognize
others as persons—as beings worthy of rational interpretation, of the attribution
of rights, of respect. Strict numerical identity hence seems built into our very
conception of ourselves and to the social practices that constitute the
environments in which we become, live and treat not only ourselves, but also
others as persons.
On the other hand, as Leibniz and Hume pointed out, numerical identity
requires indiscernibility. Two things that differ in properties can’t be the same
thing. And every moment I am growing older. Not only that, my composition is
constantly changing in subtle ways from moment to moment, and in more
dramatic ways over time, as are my character, my beliefs and my memories.
Hence no two stages of me are literally identical to one another. They may be
very similar to one another, specifically identical, as Hume felicitously put it, but
not numerically identical.1
Specific identity—identity in kind, despite numerical diversity—is, as Hume
also argued convincingly, conferred, not discovered. The relevant dimensions of
similarity and the degrees of similarity along those dimensions that two distinct
entities must bear in order to count as identical depends upon our purposes and
the grain of our judgment. Identical twins are similar to one another in many
respects, but not in all. So, too, are “identical” copies of a single type of coin, car
or cloned sheep. But these are also different in many respects. For some
purposes they count as identical, for others not.2 To decide between identity and
difference in a particular context depends as much on the purposes of the actors
in the context as on an examination of the entities themselves.
It hence appears on reflection that while I might be very similar to earlier and
later stages of what I think of as “myself,” I am not identical to them in any
sense that could be merely discovered, although plenty of decisions come down
in favor of treating my current self as specifically identical to those stages.3 But
if a self is an entity that grounds from its own side those judgments and
determines that whatever purposes one might have, one must regard those stages
as stages of that self, there is no such self that persists as one and the same thing
over time.
Now, at this stage, of course, many metaphysical moves can be made. We can
appeal to causal connectedness, or to memory, for instance, to constitute special
relations between person-stages that are determinative of identity. But if it is
strict identity grounded in fundamental metaphysics that is at issue—as opposed
to explanations of conventions of individuation—there are decisive
countermoves to each of these in the form of fanciful counterexamples of
personal fission and fusion; of memory insertion and brain transplants; and of
reduction to software.
Derek Parfit is the best known and most systematic purveyor of such
examples. He asks us to consider, among other possibilities, the case in which a
molecule-for-molecule duplicate is created of ourselves on a distant planet
through teleportation. At the moment of the creation of this duplicate—assuming
even the weakest supervenience of the mental on the physical—the two copies of
me (the one here and the newly created one) are psychologically identical. Over
time, they diverge. Any relation determining diachronic identity determines
equally that successive stages of each of these duplicates is diachronically
identical to pre-fission me. But they are distinct from one another, violating the
transitivity of numerical identity.
Once again, there is an extensive dialectic of replies and more fanciful
examples deployed in this literature, and the interested reader is invited to
explore it, beginning with Parfit (1986). But whatever these examples may or
may not show about our actual conventions of personal individuation, they do
demonstrate rather convincingly that there is nothing to be found in the person
that by itself, absent a network of such conventions and purposes, determines
diachronic identity.
When we ask what it is to be a self—to be a person—we are asking is, in part,
what it is to exist as the same person in the relevant sense over time. And that
requires first that we determine what that relevant sense is. It is of course
ludicrous to claim that nobody has ever lived for more than a moment. But it
may be untenable to maintain that the grounds of that fact can be found by
careful metaphysical dissection revealing the basis of that endurance. This
understanding of our extension in time is part of what is at stake in
understanding what it is to be a person, and the broadly Humean considerations
scouted above suggest that that understanding is not grounded in fundamental
metaphysics, but in social convention.
But this is not all that is at stake. One might concede that there is no
convention-independent fact of the matter regarding diachronic identity, taking
our existence to be like that of a string of beads, or of a spun thread—both
popular Buddhist metaphors, by the way—with no single entity persisting over
time. Nonetheless, one might insist that such a picture does identify a specific
sequence of individually identifiable entities, each of which has determinate
identity conditions, and that we can get some kind of metaphysical determinacy
for a sequence of metaphysically determinate constituents. So, while a rosary
may exist only by convention, each bead exists on its own, independent of our
aggregation of them into a single conventionally constituted ritual object.4
Following the metaphor, one might then suggest that while diachronic personal
identity is conventional, or even fictional—to be constructed rather than to be
discovered—our synchronic identity may well be determinate. After all, even if
there is nothing that constitutes my being identical with my previous avatars,
there must be something that constitutes my present difference from the present
you!
Once again, both phenomenology and metaphysics seem to be on the side of
determinacy. On the phenomenological side, when we say ‘I,’ or when we
introspect, there seems to be no question about who the referent of that pronoun
is, no question about the object of introspective awareness. I seem to be unable
to mistake myself for anyone else, and it seems that I know immediately who I
am and what my subjective states are. Some might argue that I can be wrong
about some of my mental states, or certainly about the state of my body, but
those errors, one might urge, only show that those states are not themselves me.
About my identity, there can be no error. This intuition has spawned the
extensive literature on immunity to error through misidentification (Shoemaker
1968; Perry 1993, Pryor 1999, Campbell 2004, Evans 1982, Bermúdez 1998,
Cassam 1997, Prosser and Recanati 2012).5
Moreover, such human phenomena as agency, rationality and responsibility
seem to demand at the very least synchronic determinacy of identity. If I am to
act, as opposed to move, to take reasons as motivators and to be author of my
life, there must be some me who takes those reasons seriously, for whom they are
motives, and who acts on them. An indeterminate swarm of events and processes
is the wrong kind of thing to do this. And if I am even to take myself to be
rational, to be an epistemic agent, I must take myself to endorse beliefs for
reasons, to reflect on my epistemic processes and to draw appropriate inferences.
If these are not integrated, the very idea of rationality comes apart.
This is what Kant had in mind when he identified the transcendental unity of
apperception as a condition of genuine subjectivity, of rationality and agency. If
the “I think” cannot accompany all of our representations, he argues,
representations could not constitute human experience, as human experience is
necessarily the synthesis and integration of multiple representations—we might
add, in a more contemporary vocabulary inflected by cognitive science, multiple
modalities of representation—into a single, systematic manifold that constitutes
an objective world of which we can take ourselves to be subjects, about which
we take ourselves to reason, and toward which we take ourselves to act and to
adopt evaluative attitudes. Subjectivity, agency and rationality are not committee
phenomena, but individual phenomena, and individuation requires determinacy.
Kant’s powerful analysis is not a matter of mere historical curiosity; it grounds
our modern way of thinking about subjectivity.
Nonetheless, there are powerful considerations going the other way. Just as
individuation seems to demand determinacy, determinacy seems to demand
individuation. Quine’s dictum “no entity without identity” (1969, 23) can be
converted: “no identity without an entity.” And it is hard to see how we are to
individuate the self synchronically and informatively.
Bodies are notoriously inadequate. First of all there are all of the transplant
and teleportation thought experiments to consider. These are problems not only
for diachronic but synchronic identity as a body inasmuch as the fact—if it is a
fact—that I could undergo a body transplant and remain me shows that what it is
to be me is not to be this body. And if I am teleported—if my body here is
disintegrated and reassembled in a galaxy far, away, where I happily resume my
life—then once again, it seems that my identity is not that of my body. Then
there are the facts on the ground regarding the dispensability of any part of my
body—if we take parts to be small enough, say even cells—to my identity. And
finally there is the fact that I experience myself not as a body, but as embodied. I
take myself to be uniquely associated with my body, but available to myself in a
particularly intimate way; even my body fails to be available in that way.6 One
way to put this point is to say that if my identity is immune to misidentification
error, it cannot be bodily identity in which it consists.
But if I am not constituted even at a time, simply by a body, by what am I
constituted? To say that it is my mind instead introduces new problems. First, it
suggests an implausible dualism that is so at odds with contemporary science
that it can hardly be taken seriously. But even if we did take a body-independent
mind seriously, figuring out just how to identify it in a way that yields enough
determinacy to provide an internal identity condition is far from simple. And that
is simply because on any plausible account, the mind itself is far from simple. So
many aspects of our psychology are unconscious; our psychology is so dynamic,
so intertwined with our physiology and environment, that to find some kernel
that constitutes the self would appear to be impossible. As Hume noted, it is hard
to introspect and to find anything more than a flux of cognitive and affective
states and processes. And a self we can never experience seems little better than
no self at all. So, when we ask what is at stake in historical and contemporary
debates about the self, we have to add synchronic identity to diachronic identity.
When we ask what the self is, and whether there is one at all, we are asking not
only what unifies us over time, but also what constitutes the unity we experience
at a single time.
While it might seem natural to think about our identity in terms of the
primitive identity of a soul or pure subject/agent, this is on the one hand very
culturally specific and religiously grounded (note, for instance, that it is not even
recognizably classically Greek—while Plato and Aristotle, for instance,
recognized a psyche, this was a composite affair, and not a simple, primitive
identity) and on the other hand does not so much solve the problem of identity,
but transforms it into two problems: first, in what does the identity of the soul
consist, and second, how is it connected to the selves we know, our
psychophysical selves on whose identity we are to give up?
When I say that this way of thinking is culturally and religiously specific, I do
not mean to say that it is unique to European philosophical thought. Similar
ideas emerge in the religious and philosophical matrix of classical India, for
example in the schools that posit an ātman, or substantial self, and indeed that is
the view that is the explicit target of Buddhist anātman theory. (See Siderits,
Thompson 2014, Thompson and Zahavi 2013.) But it is worth noting that many
philosophical and religious traditions reject any basis for such a primitive
identity. These include not only the Buddhist tradition with which I am
concerned in this volume, but also the Daoist and Confucian traditions of China
and the Cārvaka tradition of classical India.7 Classical Greece certainly did not
take a soul with primitive identity conditions for granted either.
I emphasize this fact because much philosophical reflection about the self
begins with the presupposition that we are in some metaphysical sense
substances with identity conditions. The task then is to locate that substance, and
to articulate those identity conditions. But that presupposition reflects more the
fact that we imbibe certain religious prejudices with our mother’s milk, and that
philosophical reflection—however much it pretends to antagonism regarding
faith—is often little more than a rational reconstruction of and apology for
uncritically accepted prejudices whose religious and cultural origins are
unacknowledged. One of the signal benefits of pursuing philosophy cross-
culturally is the hermeneutic power of such engagement to foreground and to
allow us to interrogate these prejudices. (See also Garfield 2002d, 2014a.)
The questions we ask about our diachronic and synchronic identity are each
ways at getting at a deeper question about who we are, the question of our
essence. We take it for granted that most of our ordinary properties are
accidental. This includes our physical properties such as our height, hair color,
and even the particular neurons that constitute our central nervous systems. Any
of these could have been otherwise. It also includes our mental properties, such
as our intelligence, personality, values, emotional state, beliefs, etc…Any of
these could have been otherwise, and we would still be ourselves. And living in
cultures saturated both by a generically Greek outlook and a generically
Abrahamic outlook, we take a distinction between essence and accident for
granted, and even take such tests as conceivability by us to be reliable ways of
distinguishing between essence and accident. This is a further cultural prejudice
in need of interrogation.
We will problematize this metaphysical distinction and the epistemology of
modality it involves below. But for now, let us take it for granted as setting the
context that determines, once again, what we care about when we ask in the
context of the Western philosophical tradition about the nature of the self. It is
clear that we are asking what our essence is. And this is why the diachronic and
synchronic identity questions are so tightly linked to one another. Each is in the
end a way of getting at what it is that constitutes the necessary and sufficient
conditions of being me, that with which I am me, whatever changes in my
accidental properties may occur, and that without which I would cease to me be,
no matter how many of my accidental properties remained constant.8 Given the
critique of svabhāva mounted in the previous chapter, we should already be
suspicious of this enterprise.
The Abrahamic soul is meant to be just that thing that answers the question
about personal essence. But it is not the only candidate, and contemporary
Western philosophers have sought alternative conceptions of personal essence.
We will examine some of these in due course. But for now I just want to note
one more thing that is at stake, perhaps the most fundamental issue at stake when
we ask about our identity, that is, whether there is anything that constitutes our
essence.
I venture to say that central to a premodern and modern Western approach to
the self is a presupposition that the question of our essence makes sense in the
first place. Of course the postmodern turn initiated by Nietzsche in Twilight of
the Idols and carried forward by Heidegger and de Beauvoir problematizes this
question in profound ways. But as we will see, even those who take much of this
phenomenological and anti-Cartesian perspective on board have difficulty
jettisoning a reflex essentialism,9 and essentialism is still very much at the
mainstream of Anglo-American-Australasian metaphysics.
These considerations are not meant to suggest a crude genetic fallacy: the fact
that the doctrine that there is a self has its origins in the West in these religious
traditions hardly entails that it is false, no more than does the fact that in India it
has its origins in Vedic traditions. And the fact that the idea that there is no self
has its origins in a Buddhist tradition hardly entails that it is true. That is not the
point. Rather, the point is that noticing that divergent traditions embody such
radically different presuppositions, or horizons against which questions can be
raised, suggests that when we encounter a position that seem simply obvious, or
a question that seems to make sense, it is always worth interrogating the
presuppositions and roots of that position or question to find out whether things
are as obvious as they appear to be. (Garfield 2014a)
One might think that this claim is belied by the plethora of recent proposals
for “minimalist” conceptions of the self (Strawson 1999, 2011a, Gallagher 2000,
Thompson 2007, 2014, Zahavi 2005, 2009). These are interesting and important
in their own right, and will demand our attention, but, as we shall see, they do
not in general represent a retreat from essentialism about the self so much as a
more modest version of that presupposition. Each takes it for granted that there
is a self of which an account—however minimal—must be provided; none take
seriously the idea that there might be no such thing.
Minimal conceptions come in several forms. Some, such as Strawson’s (1997,
2009, 2011a), “reduce” the self from a diachronic continuant to a series of
momentary entities, each of which is nonetheless an integrated subject of
experience and agent of reasoning and action, emphasizing a kind of synchronic
unity at the expense of diachronic unity. This is an interesting move, but one that
should raise suspicions from the start. As Kant emphasizes in the Schematism
section of the first Critique and as Husserl argues in The Phenomenology of
Internal Time Consciousness, even synchronic identity may demand diachronic
identity, inasmuch as an identity devoid of retention and protension is no human
identity at all, and perhaps not even a kind of consciousness.
Others reduce the self to a “point of view,” or a perspective, emphasizing not
its diachronic continuity but its synchronic status as a kind of vanishing point,
the Tractarian eye in the visual field (Hutto 2007, 2008, Damasio 1999, Dennett
1991, Schechtman 1996, Gallagher 2003). Still others, such as Zahavi (2005),
take the self to be nothing but a kind of pure subjectivity, a self-consciousness
that accompanies all consciousness, a sort of mine-ness, with no substantial
owner, either synchronically or diachronically. With regard to a position such as
this, we will have to ask two questions (to which we return below, both in this
chapter and in the next): first, is there indeed such a pervasive sense, and second,
if there is, would it constitute an analysis of selfhood at all, or an abandonment
of that very idea?10
But some offer more robust notions of selfhood—recognizably minimalist, but
nonetheless presenting that minimalist, constructed self as grounded in more
fundamental processes with a claim to a more substantial level of reality. Ganeri
(2012), in explicit dialogue with Buddhist and orthodox Indian accounts, defends
a position according to which the self is an emergent phenomenon supervening
on more basic non-personal psychological events. On this account the self, albeit
a real phenomenon, is not fundamental. Thompson (2007) defends a
neurobiologically grounded conception of a constructed self along these lines.
He begins by arguing that any account of embodied agency for biological
organisms like us requires a conception of selfhood, on pain of positing
knowledge, agency and experience without any subject for those phenomena:
The dynamic sensorimotor approach needs a notion of autonomous
selfhood or agency because to explain perceptual experience it appeals to
sensorimotor knowledge. Knowledge implies a knower or agent or self that
embodies this knowledge. …(2007, 260)
Thompson then characterizes this self as an “invariant topological pattern that is
recursively produced by the [nervous system]”:
The nervous system establishes and maintains a sensorimotor cycle,
whereby what one senses depends directly on how one moves, and how one
moves depends directly on what one senses. Whereas biological selfhood in
its core cellular form is brought forth by the operational closure of
autopoietic network, sensorimotor selfhood results from the operational
closure of the nervous system. In either case, it is legitimate to invoke the
notion of “self” because the dynamics of the system is characterized by an
invariant topological pattern that is recursively produced by the system and
that defines an outside to which the system is actively and normatively
related. (260)
As we proceed, we will have to ask whether theorists like Ganeri and Thompson
have in fact simply provided an argument not for the reality of the self, but for its
elimination in favor of a kind of no-self account of personhood; and whether
such a pattern of activity is what we grasp when we grasp ourselves as selves.
Perhaps the maximally minimalist account is Hutto’s (2008) or Dennett’s (1991)
“narrative self,” a self constructed as the principal character in a story we tell
about ourselves, a protagonist in a useful fiction. Each of these approaches has
some claim on the minimalist title, as each takes what we might call an inflated
view of the self, as a continuing substantial entity, and deflates it along one or
more dimensions; each, on the other hand, might be seen as a strategy for
arguing against the reality of the self.
It is easy to see what drives minimalism as something like a movement. On
the one hand, we have the strong intuition that we are selves in some sense—
subjects, agents, centers of consciousness and referents of personal pronouns—
and philosophical commitments in domains as diverse as metaphysics,
epistemology and ethics to some kind of unified subject if agency, choice,
rational justification and moral assessment is to be possible. On the other hand,
the clear naturalistic light of reason tells us that over and above a complex
organism in a rich social matrix there seems to be nothing that fits the bill of a
continuing, integrated entity that subserves these functions.
Minimalism presents itself as the middle path, providing a self that does all of
the requisite philosophical work and satisfies at least most of our pretheoretical
intuitions, but without the objectionable ghostly substance or suspect empirical
claims that more maximal theories involve. Buddhists love to valorize their
positions as middle paths; after all, in the Discourse Setting in Motion the Wheel
of the Doctrine the Buddha presented his doctrine as the middle path.
Nonetheless, we must always beware of claims to the middle; they can end up
being little more than Solomonic compromises, giving to neither side anything it
could ever want. In any case, this seems to be the final major issue at stake in
Western debates about the self: Is a minimal conception of the self viable, and if
so, which minimal conception is in the end acceptable? Let us turn to the
Buddhist world to see what light its debates concerning the self might throw on
Western discussions.

2. The Buddhist Landscape

Somewhat different, but importantly related issues are at stake in Indian
Buddhist debates. To get a feel for these debates (explored in great depth and
with great subtlety by Ganeri 2012) it is important to remember that Buddhism
first and foremost emerges as an Indian philosophical system in dialogue with
other Indian philosophical systems, both orthodox and heterodox. Buddhism in
particular sets itself apart in this dialectical context as a doctrine of no-self
(anātman) against most orthodox systems, but as non-nihilistic about persons
against the eliminative materialist Cārvaka system. In its characteristic trope of
representing itself as a middle path between extremes, Buddhists argue that the
self posited by most of the orthodox does not exist, but that this denial of
existence does not amount to a denial that persons exist at some level of
description. It permits us to say that a person exists conventionally, even if a self,
appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, does not exist in any sense. So,
once again, the rubric of the two truths will be important as we talk about a
conventional person who turns out, yet, not to be a self.
 Orthodox Indian philosophers offer a range of reasons—most of which are
familiar in structural terms at least, to Western philosophers—for the necessity
of a substantially real, continuing self.11 For one thing, philosophers such as
Kumārila and Gangeśa argue that the possibility of retention and protention
require a self that retains its identity over time. Without such a self, they argue,
there would be no account of the relation between past experience and present
memory, or present intention and future action.
Second, they argue, the unity of consciousness requires a self. After all,
consciousness is multi-modal, but integrated. If the multiple features of a single
object are to be synthesized into a single representation, and if different
experiences are to be experienced in relation to one another, there must be a
single central locus at which these are all experienced in relation to one another.
A particularly striking version of this is the argument of the 6th-century Nyāya
philosopher Uddyotakara, whose position is represented by the 9th-century
Buddhist philosopher Śāntarakṣita in his Encyclopedia of Ontology
(Tattvasaṃgraha) as follows:
Uddyotakara argues as follows: “Devadatta’s cognitions of visible form,
flavor, odor, and texture bear the mark of one and many; for they are
unified together by the cognition ‘I’. Similarly, the cognitions of many
persons, who have previously entered agreement, are linked together during
the single instant when the dancing girl raises her brow.
His meaning is this: Just as man might enter into an agreement, saying, “As
soon as the dancing girl raises her brow let us all throw fine fabric onto the
stage…,” so that the many agents and the many cognitions “I have seen her
raise her brow” are unified because of the singularity of the sign, the raising
of the brow; so, too, in the present case, cognitions with many different
objects should be unified owing to the singularity of a sign, and that single
sign is the self. The unification, moreover, is of many cognitions, such as “I
have heard,” which are linked together by the characteristic of having a
single knower. (In Edelglass and Garfield 2009, 325)
It is worth noting the anticipation of Kant’s argument for the transcendental
unity of apperception in judgment. Uddyotakara’s point is straightforward: When
we have a unified experience of the sights, smells, sounds, tastes and textures in
experiencing a night of entertainment (in a brothel, in this case!) that is not the
experience of a committee, but of a single consciousness. The principle of unity
when we all agree on the moment at which to hurl our token of appreciation may
be in the object of experience, but the principle of unity of the total experience
for each of us lies in our subjectivity. That, Uddyotakara argues, can only be
explained by the presence of a self—in his sense, a permanent, purely subjective
level of consciousness that is the substratum of all psychological processes and
that unifies perceptual and conceptual experience.
Śāntarakṣita responds that such a self is a gratuitous and explanatorily
impotent posit—that higher-order cognition can do all of the work. He argues
first that there is a genuine multiplicity of sensory cognitions at work in a
complex sensory experience such as our night with the dancing girl, and that
these indeed need to be unified. But, he argues, the mechanism of unification is
simply psychological. He appeals to the introspective or mental sense faculty
(manas-vijñana/yid dbang shes [yi wang sheh]) and asserts that it takes as its
object all of the input from all of the external sensory faculties (ibid., 329–
330).12
Now, in one sense, this seems to be an explanatory standoff and a begging of
the question. Uddyotakara says that the self does the experiential integration, and
doesn’t say how; Śāntarakṣita says that a cognitive process does it, and doesn’t
say how. But in another sense, Śāntarakṣita wins the day. For even though he
can’t specify how a higher-order cognitive process can do the work, he does
point out that in order to do psychology, we don’t need to go transcendental—we
shift instead to empirical ground; moreover, he is right. To solve the “binding
problem” in perception—and that is the problem that Uddyotakara and his
Nyāya colleagues are properly raising for their Buddhist interlocutors—we need
to talk about higher-order cognitive processes, and that is what is happening in
contemporary cognitive neuroscience; pace Uddyotakara and Kant, we don’t
posit a transcendental subject to do the work. Śāntarakṣita was just a millennium
or so too early to have the requisite science at his disposal.
Third, it is urged by orthodox proponents of a self that many of the properties
that attach to the self cannot attach to a physical body, such as cognitive or
affective properties, even if they may require a body in order to be realized. That
thing to which they attach must therefore be a self that is distinct from a body.
Furthermore, many advocates of the reality of what is called in the orthodox
Indian traditions ātman (usually translated as soul, but really just self)—a
continuing, substantially existent self—argue, the very phenomenon of
consciousness demands a self. For when we are conscious, they argue, we are
always conscious of both a subjective and an objective aspect of our experience.
The subjective aspect consists in a certain perspective on or ownership of the
experience. Where there is perspective or ownership, there must be something
whose perspective it is, or an owner, and that is a self.
 Finally, it is argued, personal individuation and immunity from
misidentification require selves. For me to be distinct from you, and for it to be
impossible for me to confuse my cognitive or affective states with yours, there
must be a real difference between us and a special kind of access we have to
ourselves distinct from any access to our bodies or to the states of other selves.
There must be an object of this distinctive kind of access and objects of this
important individuation relation. Bodies won’t do the trick as we can commit
errors regarding their identity, so there must be selves.
These of course are at this stage the very sketchiest accounts of the relevant
arguments. (See Ganeri 2007 for details.) But they are sufficient to indicate what
is at stake between Buddhists, who deny that there is any self of the kind posited
by their orthodox opponents, and those orthodox philosophers themselves. The
self posited by the orthodox, whether it is a distinct substance or not, regardless
of its precise relation to the body, is posited as a continuing entity with an
important degree of ontological autonomy (where this could range from
substantial identity to non-reductive supervenience) that is the subject and
integrator of experience, the continuing basis of memory and intention, and the
self-conscious basis of personal individuation and continuity. The Buddhist
denies that any such entity exists, and indeed that any such entity is needed to
explain, or even could explain, the putative phenomena it is called upon to
explain. The arguments, as we will see, are various, some denying the reality of
proffered explananda, some offering explanations that do not advert to the self.
On the other hand, no Buddhist philosopher wants to reject the fact that such
linguistic devices as names and personal pronouns make sense, or that there are
distinctions between individuals, or that there is memory, agency, cognition, and
other such phenomena. There must therefore, even on a Buddhist view, be some
sense in which persons are real. In just what that reality of persons consists, and
how it prevents Buddhism from sinking into an implausible nihilism, is not
straightforward and animates most of the important intra-Buddhist debates about
the self (ātman/bdag [dak]), the person (pudgala/gang zag [gangzak]) and
consciousness (vijñāna/shes pa [shehpa]).
The doctrine of anātman is fundamental to Buddhist philosophy and is
articulated in the very earliest strata of the Pāli canon. In the The Discourse on
the Characteristic of No-Self (Anatta-lakkhaṇa-sutta) we read:
Material form, monks, is not-self. Now, were this material form self, it
would not lead to affliction, and one would be able to effectively say, “Let
my material form be like this, or not like this.” But inasmuch as material
form is not-self, therefore it leads to affliction, and one cannot effectively
 say, “Let my material form be like this, or not like this.” [The same is then
said of feeling, perception, dispositions and consciousness.]
What do you think about this, monks? Is material form permanent or
impermanent? “Impermanent, venerable sir.” But is that which is
impermanent painful or pleasant? “Painful, venerable sir.” But is it fitting to
regard that which is impermanent, painful, and of a nature to change as
“This is mind, this am I, this is my self?” “No, venerable sir.” [The same is
then said of feeling, perception, dispositions and consciousness.]
Therefore, monks, whatever is material form: past, future or present;
internal or external; gross or subtle; low or excellent; far or near; all
material form should be seen as it really is by right wisdom thus: “This is
not mine; this I am not; this is not my self.” [The same is then said of
feeling, perception, dispositions and consciousness.] (Edelglass and
Garfield 2009, 269)
Here we see the historical Buddha reported as first decomposing the person into
the five aggregates (skandhas) of material form, feeling, perception, disposition
and consciousness, and then arguing that none of these can constitute the self on
the grounds that we in fact do not identify with any of them. The self for the sake
of this critical argument is taken to be that self we posit as the referent of the
first-person pronoun when we use it. We take that thing to endure, and to
possess, but not to be the aggregates. That is, when I think about the body, we
think of it not as me, but as my body. I can imagine a body transplant; in that
case, I think, I would still be me, but I would have a new body.
Even when I think of my mental constituents, the Buddha argues, I do not
identify any of them as me. I can dream, for instance, of a mind transplant. So, I
can say to myself—regardless of the metaphysical coherence of the reverie—“I
wish—if only for a day or so—that I could have the mind of Stephen Hawking.
It would be so much fun to understand general relativity so clearly.” When I do
so, I imagine me, Jay, having his mind. And this shows that I at least take myself
not to be identical to my mind, or to any particular mental faculty, but rather to
take myself to be a fundamental possessor of my mind. All of this is a way of
saying that from a Buddhist perspective when we identify the self that is the
subject of critique—the self we mistakenly grasp as the basis of our identity—
that is in fact none of the constituents of the person; and beyond those
constituents there is nothing to grasp. Therefore, there is no self.
This is made more explicit in another simile from The Questions of King
Milinda, the simile of the chariot, adapted in the 6th century CE to a Mahāyāna
analysis of the self by Candrakīrti in his influential Introduction to the Middle
Way. Here is the simile as it occurs in The Questions of King Milinda. We begin
with the challenge posed by the king:
…If you say, “Fellows in the holy life, address me, sire, as Nāgasena,” what
here is Nāgasena? Is it, venerable sir, that the hairs of the head are
Nāgasena? “Oh no, sire.” “That the hairs on the body are Nāgasena?” “Oh
no, sire.” “That the nails…the teeth, the skin, the flesh, the sinews, the
marrow, the kidneys, the heart, the liver, the membranes, the spleen, the
lungs, the intestines, the mesentery, the stomach, the excrement, the bile,
the phlegm, the pus, the blood, the sweat, the fat, the tears, the serum, the
saliva, the mucous, the synovic fluid, the urine, or the brain in the head” are
any of them Nāgasena?” “Oh no, sire.”
“Is Nāgasena material form, venerable sir?” “Oh no, sire.” “Is Nāgasena
feeling…perception…dispositions or consciousness?” “Oh no, sire.”
“But then, venerable sir, is Nāgasena form-feeling-perception- dispositions-
and-consciousness?” “Oh no, sire.” “But then, venerable sir, is there
Nāgasena apart from form-feeling-perception-dispositions- and-
consciousness?” “Oh no, sire.” “Though I, venerable sir, am asking you
repeatedly, I do not see this Nāgasena. Nāgasena is only a sound, venerable
sir. For who here is Nāgasena? You sir, are speaking an untruth, a lying
word. There is no Nāgasena.”
There are a few noteworthy aspects to the king’s challenge. The important thing
to note is that this is not an orthodox, or ātamavādin, position. In fact, the king
gives voice to what one might call a “near miss” to a Buddhist position, a pretty
good, but not excellent, student’s presentation of the Buddhist position. The text
is thus aiming not at a simple reply to a non-Buddhist opponent, but rather a
careful refinement of the proper way to express a Buddhist position on the self.
The king begins with a kind of parody of an Abhidharma reductive analysis,
asking whether the self can be identified with any specific constituent of the
psychophysical continuum or of any of the five aggregates. Of course it cannot;
this merely recapitulates the kind of analysis we have already encountered in the
sutta discussed above.
In the second sally, the king offers what one might think is the obviously
correct analysis—that Nāgasena is in fact the combination of all of these entities.
Nāgasena rejects that out of hand. This might bring us up short. But it makes
sense. For as Hume was to point out nearly two millennia later using his analogy
of the church in the Treatise, this combination is constantly changing, but the
referent of Nāgasena must continue if our conventions for individuation is to
make sense. Our hair grows or is cut, our perceptions and personalities change,
but our nominal identity does not. The person, the referent of the name, hence
cannot be the combination, any more than the church can literally be such things
as the building, current parishoners or the corpses in the graveyard. The relation
between the conventional person—the referent of the name or pronoun—cannot
be this assemblage; nor can it be something other than them, for when they are
all removed, nothing remains. Hence the puzzle.
Then the venerable Nāgasena spoke thus to King Milinda: “You, sire, are…
noble…Now, did you come on foot, or in a conveyance?” “I, venerable sir,
did not come on foot. I came in a chariot.” “If, sire, you came in my chariot,
show me the chariot. Is the pole the chariot, sire?” “Oh no, venerable sir.”
“Is the axle the chariot?” “Oh no, venerable sir.” “Are the wheels…the
body of the chariot, the flagstaff, the reins, or the goad the chariot?” “Oh
no, venerable sir.” “But then sire, is the chariot the pole-axle-wheels-body-
flagstaff-yoke-reins-and-goad?” “Oh no, venerable sir.” “But then, sire, is
there a chariot apart from the pole-axle-wheels-body-flagstaff-yoke-reins-
and-goad?” “Oh no, venerable sir.”
“Though I, sire, am asking you repeatedly, I do not see the chariot. Chariot
is only a sound, sire. For what here is the chariot? You, sire, are speaking an
untruth, a lying word. There is no chariot. You, sire are the chief king of the
whole of India. Of whom are you afraid that you speak a lie?”
“I, venerable Nāgasena, am not telling a lie, for it is dependent on the pole,
dependent on the axles. …That chariot exists as a denotation, appellation,
designation, conventional usage, a name.”
This introduction of a dependent designation, a term we encountered when
discussing Nāgārjuna in the previous chapter, is the crux of the analysis. Here
the claim is that apparently referring terms, like names, pronouns and nouns,
which lead us to believe in discrete entities that serve as their referents, in fact
have no such referents. Instead, they are useful conventions that enable ordinary
transactions. Their apparent denotations are fictional. They are neither core parts
or substrata of complex phenomena, nor aggregations, nor anything apart from
them. But they are related to such aggregations. Those aggregations are the
bases of designation. They are causally responsible for the conventions that
enable these terms to be used and hence that constitute the fictions that are their
referents.
Nāgasena draws this conclusion explicitly: Conventionally, there is a person,
but ultimately there is none; just as conventionally, Ahab is the captain of the
Pequod, but ultimately there is no such person. Just as literary criticism would
be impossible without a discussion of Ahab, copyright law would not work if
Jay Garfield was not used as it is; just as the captain in Moby Dick is the
husband of the protagonist in Ahab’s Wife (Neslund 1997), despite the century-
odd lapse between their composition and the difference in authors, the child who
grew up in Pittsburgh is the elderly author of this text, despite the differences
between them. Nāgasena now draws attention to another difference: that between
the conventions that establish the utility of a name and the fictional denotation of
the name.
“It is well: you, sire, understand a chariot. Even so is it for me, sire, it is
dependent on the hair of the head, and on the hair of the body…and
dependent on the brain in the head, and dependent on material form, and on
feeling, perception, dispositions and dependent on consciousness that
Nāgasena exists as a denotation, appellation, designation, as a conventional
usage, merely a name. But according to the highest meaning (ultimately) a
person is not apprehended here.” (Edelglass and Garfield 2009, 272–273)
But this analysis by no means settles the question, even within the Buddhist
philosophical world. While no Buddhist school would acknowledge that it posits
a self in the orthodox sense of that term, there is an early Buddhist line of
thought called the personalist or pudgalavāda13 school that does argue that
while there is no self, there is a real, continuing person that is distinct from, but
related in a very particular way to, the sub-personal skandhas. This school
constitutes a kind of metaphysical waystation between early Abhidharmika
views and later Mahāyāna views and flourished in the waning centuries of the
last millennium BCE and the first few centuries of the Common Era.
Pudgalavādins argued that there is a person whose nature and precise relation to
the underlying psychophysical aggregates is inexpressible; that it is only present
when they are, but is neither strictly identical to, nor strictly distinct from them.
In modern terms, we would describe this position this way: that there is a self
that supervenes narrowly upon the psychophysical aggregates and which,
although they are constantly changing, is a stable entity not identical to them, but
nonetheless constituted by them.
Other Buddhist schools criticized this view savagely as a retreat to a view of a
self, and in fact this school of thought disappeared from the Buddhist tradition
under the pressure of these attacks. Abhidharmika Buddhists argued instead for a
reduction of the self to impersonal cognitive processes and events as a way of
eliminating its privileged ontological status. While the Abhidharmikas concur
with earlier Buddhist analyses such as that of The Questions of King Milinda that
the conventional self is a nonexistent fiction in need of elimination in a final
ontology, they held that the final ontology of dharmas provides a reduction of
that self to an ultimately real continuum of those evanescent dharmas.
Mādhyamikas, in particular Candrakīrti in his Introduction to the Middle Way
and Lucid Exposition, criticized this view trenchantly from the other side. First,
they argued that a self about which so little could be said was hardly explanatory
of anything at all, and so not worth the metaphysical effort. Second, they argued
that if the self is to be the object of self-grasping, and so the foundation of
egoism and suffering, it can’t be such an intangible, abstract object. The
(nonexistent) self we grasp is grasped as a concrete, perceptible entity, not
supervenient epiphenomenon.
Third, and most importantly, however, they argued that the Pudgalavādins got
the supervenience base wrong, and this issue is central to Candrakīrti’s
construction of Madhyamaka. The Pudgalavādins take the aggregates to
determine the person, and take the ultimate reality of the aggregates to give the
supervenient person its reality. Candrakīrti, as we will see below, takes social
and verbal conventions, and the utility of collecting the stages of certain
psychophysical continua and denoting them by proper names or personal
pronouns, to be all that gives the person its conventional reality. One way to put
this is that Candrakīrti argues for a broad supervenience base for the person,
comprising not only the psychophysical aggregates themselves, but also the
network of social conventions and dispositions that together constitute our
common practices of personal discourse.
Now it might seem at first glance that this third critique falls afoul of the
second: if supervenience on a narrow base sinks the Pudgalavādin position in
part on the grounds that nothing that abstract could be the object of self-
grasping, how could a broadly supervenient entity do any better? Answering this
question enables us to see the real space between Madhyamaka and
Pudgalavāda. Pudgalavāda, like some minimalist views of the self, by analyzing
the self as narrowly supervenient, is an attempt to save the self; the entity they
posit is meant to be independent of verbal conventions, for instance. But
Candrakīrti, by broadening the supervenience base, does not intend to provide an
analysis of a self, or of the object of self-grasping; to the contrary, he is arguing
that there is none. Instead, he is offering an account of a conventional person and
arguing that the person, while conventionally real, is not the object of self-
grasping. That object, while grasped, is entirely unreal. The person as it exists
could never be that object. While it is often hard to see the metaphysical distance
between Pudgalavāda and Madhyamaka—which, after all, accepts a
conventionally real person—when we put it in terms of this distinction between
supervenience bases, and so in terms of the direction of determination between
ontology and convention, the difference appears stark, as it did to Buddhist
philosophers in India.
While this critique of Pudgalavāda is important, Madhyamaka arose primarily
as a reaction against the Abhidharma project, and it is to that critique that we
now turn. Mādhyamikas targeted the reductive eliminativism of Abhidharma
metaphysics. They argued that reduction is not elimination and that the very
processes to which the Abhidharmikas reduced the self were real enough to
preserve everything that Buddhism aimed at rejecting. That is, they argued that
the real object of negation in an analysis of the self is intrinsic identity. The
Abhidharmikas, in reducing the self to a series of dharmas that themselves have
intrinsic identity, thus failed to eliminate the most important object of negation.
Moreover, to the degree to which the members of such a continuum are taken to
be ultimately real, that continuum is itself ultimately real, and the claim that the
self is merely that continuum retains too much reality for Buddhist comfort.
Mādhyamikas therefore argued instead that there is no self at all. Instead, the
linguistic conventions and cognitive capacities the self is meant to underwrite—
to the extent that they are justified or real—are mere conventions, with their
reality and truth amounting only to conventional truth. The entities to which they
appear to refer are at best mere fictions, or deceptive cognitive constructions.
And this is the space, for instance, between a Mādhyamika such as Śāntarakṣita
and contemporary minimalists, despite the appearance of a close kinship
between them. While minimalists are minimalists about a self, Mādhyamikas are
eliminativists about the self, while realists about persons.
In Introduction to the Middle Way, the locus classicus for this discussion,
Candrakīrti, after an interesting reprise of the chariot analogy and a systematic
reply to a number of Buddhist and non-Buddhist conceptions of the self (see
Huntington and Wangchen 1987 and Mipham 2005 for good English
translations) summarizes his Madhyamaka analysis as follows (I include the
most crucial root verses and some of Candrakīrti’s autocommentary):
150. Therefore, the basis of self-grasping is not an entity.
It is neither identical to nor different from the aggregates.
The aggregates are neither its basis nor does it possess them.
It exists insofar as it is established on the basis of the aggregates.
 How is it that it is said here merely to arise in dependence on the
aggregates? We maintain that it exists insofar as it is not analyzed, within
the framework of conventional truth. Just as even though we say such
things as “neither without a cause, nor arising from self…” in the context of
dependent designation, we say that this arises from that in order to avoid
error, we say that the self is merely designated on the basis of the
aggregates in the context of mundane convention. That is, the self is seen
only in the context of convention.
Here Candrakīrti employs the framework of the two truths from a Madhyamaka
perspective. Note that he takes conventional existence to depend on ordinary,
everyday verbal and other conventions, not on any analysis—not on a developed
ontology. (Compare Wittgenstein on games or on standing “roughly there.”
(Philosophical Investigations §70–71)) To reject those conventions would not be
to be more precise; it would be to be in error. But the consequence of this is that
an entity that exists in this way does not have clear identity conditions, and does
not stand in fundamental explanatory relationships. It is merely conventional.
151. Like a chariot, the self is not different from its parts.
Nor is it non-different, nor does it possess them.
It is neither in the parts nor are the parts in it.
It is neither the mere collection of the parts, nor their configuration.
Here Candrakīrti is summing up what is known as “the sevenfold analysis,” his
partition of the space of possible relations a thing can have to its parts. This
analytical strategy is a central part of his own appropriation of the chariot
example from The Questions of King Milinda. A thing can be identical to it parts
or different from them; it can possess them; it can contain them or be contained
by them; it can be the collection of the parts, or the parts configured.
So, as Candrakīrti discusses the chariot in the preceding verses, he argues that
the chariot can’t be identical to its parts (for then even a heap of unassembled
parts would be a chariot); can’t be different from them (because if you take them
all away it vanishes); can’t possess them (because then it would be a distinct
entity over and above them—that is, even though we can say correctly in
Sanskrit, Tibetan or in English that the chariot has two wheels, an axle, and other
such parts, this should not be taken to mean that there is an entity, distinct from
those parts, that possesses them, as for instance the Nyāya argued); doesn’t
contain them (for the same reason); is not contained by them (since when you
have the parts, you just have the parts, not some other thing); isn’t the mere
collection (since you could replace parts but have what would count
conventionally as the same chariot, and you would still face the problem that the
chariot would be identical with the heap of chariot parts on the ground); and it
isn’t the parts in configuration, since the configuration changes as the chariot
moves, and once again, parts can be replaced.
158. Even though in the context of everyday life
Its existence cannot be established through sevenfold analysis,
In everyday life, without any analysis at all
It is accepted that it exists in dependence on its parts.
…In this context, on the basis of what is accepted in ordinary life, it is
obvious that they exist, because one can refer to chariots, and that is all
there is to it. Even though they are nothing but nominal referents, since,
without any analysis they are accepted in everyday life, we maintain that
they exist.
159. This very thing has parts and pieces;
This very chariot is called the agent.
According to ordinary people it is the appropriator.
Don’t forsake the conventions of ordinary life!
The opposite of ordinary life is reality. Even though the conventional
phenomena of ordinary life when analyzed are found not to exist, when not
analyzed they are accepted, and therefore exist in that sense. …
In these verses and the commentary on them Candrakīrti is once again
emphasizing that conventional existence is indeed a mode of existence, not an
alternative to existence. Since nothing actually exists in any other way, this is the
only way things can exist. Nonetheless, to exist in this way is not to have the
definite and precise ontological status that one might expect from something for
which one could provide a final conceptual analysis.
162. In the same way, since they are accepted in ordinary life,
We even accept the self as the appropriator
In dependence on the aggregates, the elements
And the six sense faculties.
163. Nonetheless, since there is no such entity,
It is neither dependent nor independent;
Neither momentary nor permanent; neither arisen nor ceased.
It is neither existent nor non-existent; neither identical nor different.
Even though we have a set of conventions for talking about ourselves and others,
it does not follow that there are entities that correspond to the pronouns and
nouns we use. These terms function like those in fictional discourse, and so
when we ask certain questions—particularly philosophical questions—about
them, there are no answers that can satisfy us.
164. The self is that to which beings constantly
Develop the attitude of grasping to ‘I’ and ‘mine’.
The self arises from the grasping to ‘I’ and ‘mine’
Taken for granted without analysis it exists only as a result of confusion.
(2009, 252–257 passim.)
Here Candrakīrti closes by connecting the self both as effect and as cause to the
self-grasping that is part of primal confusion, and hence to soteriological
concerns. It is taking the bases of designation of our nouns and pronouns to be
more than that—to be such things as selves—that gives rise to the reification that
leads us to worry about the nature of the self in the first place. And that
reification in turn leads to a more rigid sense of the reality of the self, and a way
of taking up with the world that distinguishes between self and other, and that
relates to everything—from our own bodies and thoughts to our friends,
homelands and possessions and to those of others—as ours: I take this body to
be mine; I take some people as my acquaintances; others as strangers to me; there
are places I have been, and those I have not. An odd way to think that reality is
structured, on reflection, but one that becomes instinctive, Candrakīrti thinks,
once we enter the framework of a real self.
This Madhyamaka view, on the other hand, was regarded itself as too extreme,
too nihilistic and too explanatorily impotent by many Yogācārins. They argued
that while the self posited by the orthodox schools is certainly nonexistent, an
evolving, constantly changing series of interdependent processes cannot explain
the continuity, specificity and lucid nature of consciousness. They posited
instead a primal foundation consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna/kun gzhi [kunshi]) as
the basis of the evolving mental stream, and as the locus of the causal potencies
that give rise to it. Philosophers such as Asaṅga and Vasubandhu developed rich
phenomenological accounts of perception, affect and consciousness according to
which virtually all of our cognitive life is afflicted by illusion, including the
sense that the self we project is the real, continuing, substantial self. We will
consider this illusion further in the next two chapters.
On the other hand, they argued, even those illusions require a basis in
something real. That underlying reality, or foundation consciousness, they argue,
provides the perspective from which those illusions are experienced, as well as
the continuity and individuation so hard to recover from causal streams alone.
The theory of the foundation consciousness—which we might conceive as a
Buddhist unconscious—posited a set of potentials imprinted in that level of
consciousness. When these potentials are triggered by sensation, they result in
the production of such things as full-fledged perceptions, desires, intentions, and
so on.
It is important to see that the foundation consciousness is not held to be a self
in this tradition (though Madhyamaka critics of Yogācāra such as Candrakīrti
argued that it might as well be one), but rather a continuum of unconscious
processes and a repository of causal chains linking past to present and future that
underlie conventional personal identity and that gives rise to experience. That
experience is structured by the framework of subject and object, and the
projected subjectivity in turn gives rise to the illusion of self. We will return to
this framework in much more detail in chapter 6, below. Even this tradition,
while demanding a more robust account of the basis of imputation of self,
regards the self as an illusion.
We might therefore say that within the Buddhist tradition, debates surrounding
the self all concern the limits of minimality, and the precise object of negation of
the phrase “no self.” All parties agree that no robust sense of self answers to
anything real (and note that minimalists such as Hutto or Thompson would
agree); all agree that we are in some sense nothing but streams of causally
connected psychophysical events and processes (and again, many contemporary
minimalists would agree). But all also agree that that there is a robust, persuasive
and well-entrenched illusion that we are more than that. All agree that that
illusion must be dispelled. But all agree that some account must survive of our
ordinary psychological lives, which, after all, are the basis of the problem
Buddhism sets out to solve—that of suffering—and of the solution if offers:
liberation from primal confusion. And here the Buddhist parts company with the
minimalist, wanting not to restructure our talk about selves, but rather to dispel
the illusion that anything at all answers to that term.
This sense that the illusion of self underlies all of suffering is nicely captured
by the 20th-century Japanese Buddhist philosopher Nishida Kitaro:
As individuals in this world, our selves are always thoroughly self-
contradictory. Therein lie the primary and fundamental dilemmas of human
existence. This also constitutes the predicament of the world. We penetrate
the root of our own self-contradiction; this way we win true life from the
standpoint of absolutely contradictory self-identity. … Self-cultivation
 constitutes…what Dōgen as the method of meditation that “casts off body
and mind.” (from “The Problem of Japanese Culture” in Edelglass and
Garfield 2009, 363–364)
Nishida’s prose is not always immediately transparent. But in the context of our
exploration of earlier Buddhist approaches to the self, this statement is clear. To
take ourselves as entities, as opposed to as mere conventional designations, is to
plunge into incoherence. Only when we cease that process of reification—the
cessation Dōgen describes as the “casting off of body and mind”—can we see
ourselves as we truly are: on the one hand as nonexistent as anything can be, that
is, as fictional entities; and on the other hand, as real as anything can be: as
conventional entities in conventional reality.

3. A Dialogue
Now, if we look back at the question regarding the reality and/or nature of the
self and of illusions of self with a more binocular view, bringing together the
questions that are at the center of concerns in the West and those at the center of
Buddhist concerns, we might identify a set of core issues, the real issues that
matter when we ask what we take the self to be, whether there is such a thing,
what else there might be. We must account first of all for our sense of ego-
identity. That is, we must take it as a datum, that at least pre-reflectively, we take
ourselves to be persistent individuals who are the subjects of our experience and
the agents of our actions. That central, distinct mode of being for ourselves
demands explanation, even if it is only an appearance.
We have seen that the Buddhist tradition offers approaches to this problem.
We must distinguish two different senses of ego-identity. First, there is the
reification of a substantial self that persists in time. To account for that sense is
to account for a persistent illusion. The tradition is virtually unanimous that the
origins of this illusion lie in an innate cognitive reflex of reification, homologous
with that which leads us to reify external objects, and to confuse our
representations with reality as it is. But second, there is the conventional reality
of the persistence of conventional persons in time, and of the causal continuities
that enable memory, intention, ordinary awareness and social life. That, all
Buddhist philosophers insist, is also explicable, though as we have seen, there is
less unanimity in the tradition regarding its possible explanation. Abhidharmikas
offer a reductive explanation; Mādhyamikas offer a fictionalist account
according to which our explanatory spade is turned at the level of brute
convention; Yogācārins argue that the continuity is provided by a persistent flow
of unconscious processes.
Second, we must explain the temporality of our existence, including the
possibility of memory, of anticipation and intention, and our ability to represent
the entire manifold of temporal experience as episodes in temporal relation to
one another (the Kantian synthesis through schemata). That is, we must be able
to explain why, instead of a sequence of experiences of moments, we experience
a sequence of moments in time. Buddhist responses to this demand follow
closely those to the demand for an explanation of ego-identity over time. The
bases of imputation that ground the conventions for identity also provide our
sense of temporality. In unifying our past and our future moments into single
conventional continuants, we thereby temporalize our experience.
Third, we must explain why even at a moment, to continue the Kantian
language, we experience not a manifold of intuitions, but an intuition of a
manifold. We must solve the binding problem and explain why it is that we
experience coherent objects and not simply qualities, even located qualities.
Here, I think that the Buddhist tradition is largely silent. Not completely silent:
There are words to describe the fact that we have cognitive processes that unify
our experience and project representations of objects and an inter-related world.
That is what the skandha of perception is for; that is partly what the innate
predispositions posited by Yogācāra theory in the foundation consciousness are
meant to explain. But Buddhist philosophy is an old tradition, and the solution to
this problem is empirical, not conceptual; those experimental resources are only
now available to us.
Fourth, we must explain why we are immune to error through
misidentification. What is it about us that engenders the impossibility of taking
our mental states to be those of another? This demand in turn raises the demand
of working out what the factors are that constitute us as individuals. To put this
another way, these two joint demands—on any account of what we are and of
what we take ourselves to be—amount to the need to provide an account of what
underpins both the ascription of identity to us by others and our own
apprehension of our own identity. Even if that identity is constructed, or even
fictitious, and so must be explained away, its apprehension is a reality that must
be explained.
That fictitious identity, achieved through the process called ahaṃkāra or self-
construction, is frequently characterized by Buddhist philosophers on two
dimensions: I and mine (ātman/ātmīya or bdag/bdag gi ba [dakgiwa]). That is,
to posit the self is not only to grasp one’s own identity as that of a substantial
subjective ego, but also to grasp one’s intentional objects and more generally the
world one inhabits, as existing in relation to that self. When I grasp myself as the
substantial referent of I, I also grasp my body, my possessions, my friends and
family, and my world in general as mine. These two self-graspings are taken by
many Buddhists as being inextricably bound with one another. Thompson (2007)
reflects this connection in his own account of selfhood and its intentional
structure:
When I pick up a bottle and grasp it with my hands, I experience the bottle
as other to me, but the feeling of grasping the bottle is immediately and
noninferentially experienced as mine. The intentional object of my tactile
experienced is the bottle, but at the same time I live through my grasping
feeling in a nonintentional (non-object-directed) manner. To experience the
feeling as mine I do not have to identify it as mine. Rather, the feeling
comes with an intrinsic “mine-ness” or “first-person givenness” or “ipseity”
(I-ness) that constitutes its subjectivity. (2007, 261)
Thompson parses the correlativity these “two self-graspings” in terms of the
need to posit a self if we are to experience objects around as “mine.” This differs
only in direction of explanation from the Buddhist account according to which
once we posit the self, we necessarily regard everything else in relation to it. But
he also, as a minimalist, takes it for granted that this is the primordial structure
of our reality, something to be explained. From a Madhyamaka or Yogācāra
point of view, however, that begs the question. For what Thompson takes as self-
evidently accurate as an account of the world and our experience of it, the
Mādhyamika or Yogācārin takes as an illusion, something to be explained away.
Here, if we follow the Mahāyāna account of innate mechanisms of reification
coupled with social conventions for the aggregation of causal continua into
wholes, we see the outlines of an answer to the question with which Thompson
challenges us: Why do I ascribe my experiences to me, and not to someone else,
or as the experiences of nobody in particular? The answer from the Mahāyāna
side is simple: the mechanisms that cause me to posit a self take as their causal
basis these very experiences. I do not first experience a self, and then experience
experiences and wonder whether they are associated. I first have experiences,
and use them to construct a representation of a self, and representations of
objects as connected to that self as mine.
The explanation of that construction is psychological, and here there may be
little distance between the metaphysical outlines of a Buddhist answer and the
kind of enactivist, embodied answer Thompson’s work so persuasively suggests.
Other persons do the same. And our ascriptions of identity to one another rely on
much broader social conventions, for we do not experience others’ psychological
continua. We rely on criteria of bodily and behavioral causal continuity in those
cases. But in either case, what we are explaining is not the nature of a self, or the
fact that the objects in its experience are its, but the mechanisms by which the
illusion of a self and the illusion of that orientation are constructed in a world in
which they have no fundamental existence.
In sum, when we ask about the reality and nature of the self, whether within a
Western or a Buddhist tradition, we are asking the two most fundamental
questions of the metaphysics of the person: what is the nature of our being, and
what is its source? And Buddhist thought has a great deal to contribute to our
effort to formulate and to answer these questions. To be sure, it does not deserve
to be the only voice in this conversation, and it may not in the end prove to be
the most influential voice, but it is an important voice.
This is so for several reasons. First, as we have seen, there is a matter of
philosophical and analytical experience. Buddhists, as we have seen, simply
have been thinking hard about the nature of the self and illusions of self for a
long time, in dialogue with self-realists, and in an internal dialogue aimed at
sorting out the most plausible form of minimalism about the self. Buddhist
thought has also attended with great care to the phenomenology of subjectivity
as well as its metaphysics, and the complex relationship between
phenomenology and metaphysics in this domain. When we are considering the
nature of subjectivity, this connection is very intimate indeed. After all, if what
constitutes the self is its point of view, or subjectivity, and if what constitutes
subjectivity is a certain kind of phenomenological perspective and relation to the
objective world, a distinction between the metaphysics of the self and the
phenomenology of selfhood may in fact be impossible to draw.
But beyond an argument from long experience, there are specific aspects of
the Buddhist approach to the self that render its voice distinctive and valuable.
First, Buddhist thought has emphasized more than most Western thought14 the
ethical, affective and social dimensions of the representation of the self. Positing
a self, as Śāntideva (8th century CE) notes, lies at the foundation of egoism and
extirpating that sense of self is the foundation for the cultivation of care.
For instance, in chapter VI, on patience (verses 22–31) of How to Lead an
Awakened Life (Bodhicaryāvatāra), a text to which we will return at greater
length in chapter 9, Śāntideva argues that anger requires both a personal object
and a representation of harm to oneself as a person. Neither of these can be
justified, though, if there is no self. So, absent a self to be harmed, there is no
cause for anger, and absent a self in another, there is no object at which anger
can rationally be directed. Śāntideva points out that for any action taken against
oneself that is a putative justification of anger, the body of the perpetrator and
indeed the intentions are simply caused by countless prior causes and conditions.
One might, he argues, with equal justification be angry with the stick with which
one is beaten as the arm that wields it, or the intention that impels the arm, or
some other causal antecendent. One will never find a core self that originates the
harm.
Moreover, Śāntideva argues, the drive to posit the self has an affective ground.
It is not only the basis of attraction and aversion, but the consequence of
attraction and aversion as well. Inasmuch as the self is constituted through
grasping both ‘I’ and ‘mine’, it is constituted not only by my sense of who I am,
but also by my sense of what belongs to me, and of what does not; of what I take
on board as part of myself, and what I do not. I do not first identify myself and
then determine what I want and what repels me; those affective sets are causally
and constitutively operative in the construction of my self in the first place.15
And given the ineliminable role of language and social conventions, it is also
constituted by what others ascribe to or withhold from me.
On a Madhyamaka account, therefore, our construction of a self, or our
exaggeration of the reality, primacy or substantiality of the self, does not simply
have ethical or affective consequences, although, to be sure, on a this view it
does; more importantly, part of the explanation of the posit of the self is
affective. For this reason, the phenomenology that underlies our determination to
regard ourselves as determinate centers of experience and agency has a moral
dimension. Our innate affective reflexes lead us to take ourselves as centers of
experience, as independent agents, and as objects of special concern. Part of the
point, then, of moral cultivation on a Buddhist view is to reduce this kind of
hypostasization.
Moreover, on this view, positing the self is a matter of convention, in a
number of important senses, and conventions are inevitably social. On this
picture, societies do not emerge from an association of independently constituted
selves; instead the constitution of selves and cultures are mutually dependent,
with our conceptions of who we are and our identities depending as much on
others as on ourselves. This last issue leads us to another contribution Buddhism
brings to the table: a sense that the question of the reality of the self is not one
that admits of a univocal answer. As a consequence, a Buddhist perspective, in
which we do not presuppose the reality of a self, but in which we take for
granted the conventional reality of persons, leads us to ask questions about
personal identity in a very different register.
Buddhist analyses make use of the devices of the catuṣkoti, or four-cornered
approach to semantic evaluation, and of the two truths, or two realities, as
analytic approaches. And these devices are brought into effective use by
philosophers in the Madhyamaka and Yogācāra traditions especially in the
context of the discussion of the self. Buddhist analyses hence offer ways to think
of the self as neither existent nor nonexistent—as the wrong kind of thing to
figure in existential questions in virtue of being merely a posit of construction.
They also offer ways of seeing the self as both existent and nonexistent, as
conventionally real, but as ultimately nonexistent. (For more on catuṣkoti see
chapter 8.)
This range of analytical possibilities can provide a great deal more texture to
discussions of the self, adding a dimension of modality as an alternative to the
dimension of substantiality that seems to underlie discussions of minimality
versus maximality. That is, instead of focusing on questions concerning that in
which the self consists, or on its reality, a Buddhist analysis suggests that we
focus on the manner in which our sense of ourselves is constructed, on the
consequences of those processes and of that sense, and on how we might best
conceive of the nature of our lives on rational reflection.
This suggests in turn a different direction of fit between conceptions of
personhood and persons. Instead of taking it for granted that there is something
in which we, or persons, consist, and then working to develop a metaphysical
account of that kind of existent, a Buddhist analysis suggests that we determine
what kind of conception of personhood and of human life is maximally
beneficial and rational to adopt, and construct ourselves in that image. This
might seem radical, but only to one in the grip of a metaphysics that takes
personal substance for granted. Dropping that prejudice, and detaching the idea
of a person from that of a self, might be the first step to clarity about matters of
personhood.
Consideration of the metaphysics of the self is always incomplete if we do not
consider the nature and status of consciousness. Indeed the self is often
conceived—whether its reality is maintained or not, and regardless of its level of
reality—as the seat of consciousness. It is thus to a consideration of debates
about the nature of consciousness and Buddhist contributions thereto that we
now turn.

1. There are, of course, important contemporary responses to this position, including 4D positions,
according to which properties of any thing are time-indexed, and so that distinct temporal slices are parts of
a numerically identical continuant. We will consider these issues below.
2. Not all metaphysicians would agree, of course. There are those such as Armstrong (1978, 1989) who
argue for a small, fixed stock of universals and for the claim that reality itself determines what kinds things
really belong to. This is not the place to debate these issues, however, and I set those positions aside in
favor of a broadly acceptable view that whether things count as instances of the same kind in a context
depends upon our classificatory interests. On this view, there are many kinds, many of them uninteresting,
to be sure, but still many of interest, and when we say that two things are specifically identical, the truth
conditions of that claim depend on the kinds we have in mind at the time. Those with a more robust sense of
the determinacy of universals may balk. Buddhists, moreover, are nominalists about universals (more of this
in chapters 7 and 8). Most Buddhist philosophers are hence happy to countenance a plethora of potential
classificatory kinds, but to deny any of them an interest-free or mind-independent reality.
3. And once again, if we countenance Kripkean essences of origin, we might say that the fact that each of
these states shares the essential feature of being a descendant of my parents, this might provide a
convention-independent ground for identity. But we are better off eschewing such essences for reasons
scouted in the previous chapter.
4. Now one might press the rosary metaphor and point out that the beads are joined by a thread. Well, yes.
But if that thread is spun from many fibers it doesn’t really help much. On the other hand, one can switch
metaphors and save the point. Think about constellations. It is surely a matter of interest and decision
whether any group of stars constitutes a constellation, and it matters a whole lot from which point in the
universe one views those stars!
5. Actually, this idea has an older lineage. G. E. M. Anscombe raised similar ideas in (1975). But the issue
is explored even earlier with considerable ingenuity by K. C. Bhattacharyya (1930).
6. See Bhattacharyya (1930) for an elegant exploration of this phenomenon.
7. The latter defended an eliminativism with regard to the self and to the mental, a position even more
radical than the Buddhist no-self view, akin to that suggested by Churchland (1979).
8. There are always lots of trivial, uninformative identity conditions that can be patched together, and even
trivial essential conditions, such as being such that 2+2=4 and being in this place and time but none satisfies
the demand for determinacy.
9. See Spelman 1988 for an excellent study of this problem in the domain of feminist theory.
10. Someone might argue as follows: Gettier problems show that it may be impossible to provide any set of
necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge; Wittgenstein shows that it is impossible to provide
necessary and sufficient conditions for being a game. And so on. But nobody takes Gettier to have shown
that there is no knowledge, and nobody takes Wittgenstein to show that nobody has ever played a game.
And so the failure to find the essence of a thing or a kind cannot be taken to demonstrate that there is
nothing of that kind. And so, in particular, the failure to be able to say what it is to be a self does not mean
that there is no self.
But this objection misses the point in the present case. In these cases, we have an ordinary kind whose
instances we recognize when we see them, and terms with fairly non-controversial conditions of
application, despite our inability to articulate those conditions. These are manifest image phenomena, to use
Sellarsian language, not theoretical posits. The self under examination here is not like that. It is not
something we observe; it is not a theoretical posit of any science; it is a philosophical posit meant to explain
a range of first-person phenomena, and it is not clear that it explains any of them. In order to do so, it would
have to be made determinate, and it can’t be.
11. In this discussion I am collapsing a number of very different orthodox Indian schools. These schools
diverge dramatically from one another on a number of important metaphysical issues, but they do share a
broad commitment to the reality of ātman. For an excellent treatment of Indian views about the self, see
Ganeri (2007, 2012) and Carpenter (2014).
12. Note that Śāntarakṣita’s proposal is not far off from that of Thompson, noted above. But Śāntarakṣita
takes himself to be arguing against the reality of a self, and explaining an illusion that there is a self,
whereas Thompson takes himself to be explaining the construction of a real, but minimal, self.
13. The term pudgalavāda is actually an epithet attached to the proponents of this view, who called
themseles the Vātsiputrīya or inexpressibilists.
14. The great exception here is Hume, as Annette Baier has emphasized (1991, 2008).
15. Once again, the comparison to Hume’s account of the role of the passions in the representation of the
self in Book II of the Treatise is apposite.
5 CONSCIOUSNESS
Consciousness is perhaps the hottest of all hot topics in contemporary
philosophy of mind. The range of accounts of consciousness on offer is
breathtaking, as is the panoply of distinctions between different kinds of
consciousness. To survey, let alone to adjudicate, the range of options would
require a substantial volume of its own (and fortunately, there are many such
substantial volumes, such as Blackmore 2004, Chalmers 2010, Block, Flanagan
and Güzeldere 1997, Dennett 1991, Zelazo, Moscovitch and Thompson 2007).
Since these volumes exist, I don’t need to do that hard work here. Instead, I am
going to rehearse what I see as the most important specific debates and
alternatives, the complex set of presuppositions they involve and questions they
raise.
As it is, this chapter addresses a range of issues, each of which might merit its
own chapter, or indeed its own book. We will consider questions about the
nature of perceptual experience, about the nature of introspection, the status of
qualia and even the possibility of zombies! I don’t pretend to offer the last word
on any of these matters, or even the last word on the way that Buddhist
philosophy can contribute to discussions about these matters. Instead, I want to
draw attention to a thread that links them, and to the ways in which adding
Buddhist fibers as we spin that thread can make it stronger. That thread is the
understanding of what it is to say that we are conscious and what the nature of
consciousness, in its various senses, might be.

1. Senses of Consciousness
There is a widely accepted distinction in the Western literature between two
senses of the term “consciousness,” that is, between what is I will call “access
consciousness” and what is often called “phenomenal consciousness.” By
“access consciousness” I will mean introspectibility.1 A psychological state or
process is conscious in this sense if we are able to report on it, to take awareness
of it as input into our reasoning processes. My belief that I am typing right now
is access conscious in this sense. I can introspect and determine that I do believe
this.
“Phenomenal consciousness,” on the other hand, denotes something more like
the felt character of experience, often denoted by the problematic phrase, due to
Thomas Nagel, “what it is like” to be in a particular state. So, unlike my belief,
which doesn’t feel like anything, my typing right now is phenomenally
conscious. It feels like something to be typing. At least to a first approximation,
an approximation from which we may backtrack later. Phenomenal
consciousness might also be called qualitative consciousness, and that of which
we are phenomenally conscious is sometimes referred to as “qualitative
character,” or even hypostasized into qualia.
This distinction is already a bit too crude, however, even to capture the
questions debated in this literature.2 To these we might add two more senses. We
might want a term to denote the property of being responsive to a stimulus, even
if that responsiveness is not introspectible and has no phenomenal character.
This might be the right way to think about low-level proprioception or our
responsiveness to happenings on the road when our primary attention is on the
radio news broadcast, and such things. Call this “responsive consciousness.”
Finally, we might want to discuss the pre-reflective background horizon of
awareness, or bare subjectivity, that many, especially in the Husserlian tradition,
regard as the most basic precondition of any kind of conscious activity. This kind
of consciousness might be thought of as the non-thematized awareness of
ourselves as subjects of our conscious states, and of those states as our states. To
be conscious in this sense is simply to be a subject and, at least pre-reflectively
or transcendentally, to take oneself as a subject. In order not to beg any
philosophical or historical questions regarding the precise character of whatever
might be denoted by “consciousness” when used in this sense, let us call this
“subjective consciousness.”3
So, when we ask what consciousness is, how and whether it can be explained,
what its relationship is to the body, whether it is discursive or not, or even
whether there is such a thing, we need to be clear in each case and each context,
in which of these four (and more may be forthcoming) senses we are using the
term. It is one thing merely to be subjectively conscious. We might experience
this in the barest moment of awakening in the morning. It is another to be
responsive: we orient toward a sound that we have not even registered in any
introspectible awareness; the sound then acquires a qualitative existence in our
mental life, as in the case of the sound of our alarm clock and we are
phenomenally conscious of it. A moment later we find that we can introspect and
report on our state of mind—all of this is now accessible.
It might be tempting to think of this unfolding of awareness in the first few
seconds of our day as a simple increase in a single dimension—as we wake up,
we simply become progressively more conscious. If, however, this set of
distinctions among senses of the term “consciousness” (leaving aside the
question of whether the term in any or all of these senses denotes anything at all
—at this point we are simply mapping the way these terms are used in
contemporary philosophical discourse) is right, then we aren’t talking about the
same thing when we say: first I was simply conscious, then conscious of
something, I know not what, then of a sound, and then that I was waking up.
Instead, new kinds of relations between subject and object (or at least kinds of
states of subjects), perhaps interrelated, emerge as our engagement with our
environment, inner and outer, becomes progressively more complex.
It is also worth noting that responsive and access consciousness are each
characterized as explicitly relational. That is, when we say that we are conscious
of a particular stimulus in the sense that we are responsive to it, or that we are
conscious of an inner state in the sense that we can introspect and report it, we
are explicitly describing relations we as subjects bear to particular objects. There
is not even a whiff of an idea that we are describing a monadic or intrinsic
property of subjectivity itself. And indeed, the relation we describe here is not
even prima facie different from that we would describe between a thermostat and
the temperature of a room in the case of responsiveness, or that between a fuel
gauge and a fuel tank in a car in the case of the second.
It is tempting to respond to this observation, as have many who are interested
in the nature of consciousness, by saying that these kinds of consciousness are
not what we are really talking about when we ask about the nature of
consciousness—in the now familiar jargon due to Chalmers (2010), they do not
pose the hard problem. Zombies might be conscious in these senses. The hard
problem of explaining consciousness, both analytically and scientifically, this
line of thinking continues, concerns phenomenal and subjective consciousness.
These are the kinds of consciousness, Zombologists argue, that we have, but that
Zombies—beings behaviorally and functionally identical to us, but without any
genuine inner life or phenomenology—lack. There is something that it is like to
be us, they urge, and that something is captured by our experience of ourselves
as subjects and by the phenomenal character of our perceptual and affective
experience.
This line of argument has a kind of plausibility to it, and we will return to it
below, with attention both to the conceptions of consciousness at work and with
respect to the possibility of zombies. But for now, it is worth registering one
preliminary reason for skepticism about the wedge the argument requires
between responsive and access consciousness, on the one hand, and phenomenal
and subjective consciousness, on the other. That wedge, as we have seen, finds
its narrow edge in the distinction between relational and non-relational senses of
consciousness. If we are to take this seriously, we have to take seriously the idea
of a fundamental property of our mind that is intrinsic to it, a kind of mere
objectless awareness. This is not as obviously a given, a self-presenting
explanandum, as it might appear to be.
In this context, it is worth considering the complex role of affect in
consciousness, another matter about which we will see that Buddhism has much
to say. In contemporary discussions of consciousness in the West, affect often
enters into the picture as an object of awareness, typically of phenomenal
consciousness.4 On this view, represented perhaps most prominently by
Chalmers (2010), our affective states have a phenomenal feel, and we are
conscious of these much as we are conscious of sensory qualities.5,6
There is an immediate problem with this view, suggested by Buddhist
analyses, to which we will turn below. On the one hand, we should countenance
the possibility of affect that is neither accessible to introspection nor
phenomenally present—what we might call in a Freudian moment,
“subconscious” affect. Emotions that circulate below the radar may nonetheless
determine much of our conscious life. And this leads us to the second problem:
It may be more important to think of affect as a cause, rather than an effect or an
object of the character of our conscious engagement with the world. As noted in
passing above, this is very much part of a Heideggerian (and Freudian) picture in
the West, but is in tension with views according to which we have privileged
access to our affective lives, and so according to which all emotion is to some
degree accessible. It is also a central part of a Buddhist understanding of the
relationship between the five skandhas and of the nature of the origin of dukkha.
Buddhist discussions of consciousness feel radically different from
contemporary Western discussions. Nonetheless, we will see that they can be
valuable sources of viable alternatives, both with respect to positions on the
topic and, more fundamentally, with respect to how questions and debates are
framed in the first place. But first, we should be clear about terminological
issues, as it is easy for participants in these atemporal, cross-cultural discussions
either to talk past each other or to find their positions seriously distorted by
misleading translation. We will have to acknowledge that to a certain extent
Buddhist and contemporary Western discussions of consciousness occur in
different intellectual contexts and are pursued for different reasons, in different
vocabularies. But if we are clear about this, we will still find important points of
contact.
2. The Buddhist Conceptual Landscape
It is methodologically useful to recall that our own philosophical vocabulary, as
well as that of any other tradition, often structures, rather than reflects, the
ontology of a domain or inquiry. This is particularly true of the psychological
domain, as Wittgenstein notes in Philosophical Investigations and as Sellars
notes in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.” In this domain, we become
so accustomed to the use of a language, and a way of mapping the inner domain,
that we take it for granted that the language we use and in which we think carves
the inner world at its joints, joints that are simply apparent to our introspective
gaze. In doing so, we forget the origins of our terms, which often lie in
theoretical frameworks we explicitly reject, and forget that other traditions carve
the mind in radically different ways, which they equally take as obvious. Taking
another tradition seriously hence requires taking its vocabulary seriously and
adopting a conversation horizon that allows us to problematize our own—and
their—way of taking the landscape.
Let us begin with some basic Sanskrit terminology and rough glosses to get a
sense of the lexical terrain and move from there to a more conceptual overview.
There is a plethora of Sanskrit terms (and Pāli, Chinese and Tibetan equivalents
or rough equivalents—for the sake of convenience I will focus on the Sanskrit
here) that denote phenomena in the conceptual neighborhood of the already
semantically complex English “consciousness.” I choose a few that are most
relevant to the present discussion.
The most central term is probably vijñāna and the various compounds in
which it figures. The term has a complex semantic range across Indian
philosophical literature. We can read it as indicating that which enables
knowledge. In Buddhist literature its most important locus for present purposes is
in its denotation of the fifth skandha, or aggregate underlying personhood. The
functions of that skandha are manifold, including conceptual thought, judgment,
attention, reflection, etc…
We can get a sense of how vijñāna functions when we see it in the context of
the psychology of the skandhas, in which we begin with the action of the
physical body (rūpa), as in the functioning of a sense organ, leading to sensation
(vedanā), which in turn gives rise to perception (saṃjñā)7—note again the root
jñā (cognate with the kn or gn in terms like knowledge or gnosis in European
languages, denoting awareness)—in which that which is sensed is initially, but in
a sense preconsciously, brought to cognitive determinacy, and as a possible
object of knowledge through the mediation of our affective and habitual
predispositions, which, again, function prior to consciousness.
 A second set of terms relevant to this discussion includes saṃveda (a term that
figures prominently in the compound svasaṃvedanā, denoting reflexive
awareness, to be discussed below) and anubhava. Saṃveda connotes perceptual
awareness, the kind of consciousness of something we have when we perceive it,
a consciousness that is both phenomenal and recognitional. When I am
conscious of something in this sense, I both sense it and categorize it. Anubhava
has a similar semantic range, denoting consciousness of something immediately
present.
Samprajaña, a term often translated as mindfulness, is used to denote
attentiveness to one’s own current state, a higher-order, introspective awareness.
By distinguishing samprajaña from saṃveda or anubhava, the Sanskrit Buddhist
tradition presupposes that it makes sense to talk about qualitatively rich
perceptual consciousness, consciousness capable of guiding behavior, without
presupposing that one is explicitly aware that one is having such consciousness.
One final term in this large family may be relevant for present purposes.
Cetanā is most often translated as intention and figures most prominently in
discussions of action and responsibility.8 And this is fair enough. But it shares a
good part of the broad philosophical semantic range of the technical English
(Latin) term intentional, indicating as well directedness on an object. Cetanā can
hence also refer to the state of being conscious of something in the barest sense
of being directed toward it, of registering or being responsive to it, tracking the
sense of responsive consciousness. (See Meyers 2010, Heim 2013.)
I belabor this range of terms because it is important to remember that simply
translating a conversation or a literature from a canonical Buddhist language into
English, and using the term consciousness to translate all of the terms it most
naturally translates, can mislead the unwary into thinking that there is a single
sense of “consciousness” at work in the Buddhist literature. Or, with equal
infidelity to the tradition, one might simply presume that the same set of
distinctions among senses of consciousness in English is replicated in the
relevant Buddhist language or literature. We must be alert to the fact that the
distinctions encoded at the outset in language serve in part to define the
conceptual landscape, and that the Buddhist and Western conceptual landscapes
may not be entirely commensurable.

3. Consciousness and the Self—Buddhist Perspectives

When consciousness is identified as one of the skandhas, it is, as we have noted,
vijñāna that is meant. But one of the questions of importance in Buddhist
philosophy of mind, as we saw in the previous chapter, is what constitutes the
basis of designation of the self. In a Buddhist framework, as we have seen, there
is no self. But this is not, of course, a simple matter. After all, from a Buddhist
perspective, there is a persistent illusion of self to be explained as well as a
reasonable convention of individuation permitting pronominal and nominal
reference, ascription of agency and other relevant personal conventions. We
must therefore ask what the role of vijñāna is in the propagation of the illusion
of self as well as what its role is in the establishment of these conventions.
It may seem more plausible to think that our conventions of identification that
allow us to designate ourselves and others, to re-identify persons over time, to
ground morality and so forth—all that constitute persons in the everyday world
—take ordinary vijñāna, or the aggregate of conscious cognitive processes, as
the basis of designation. That is, one might think that even though this skandha
is not the illusory self against which so many Buddhist arguments and analyses
are ranged, it is the conventional self left untouched by those analyses.
But that has to be wrong. After all, especially in the identification of others,
but also in reference to ourselves, our bodies (rūpa), personalities (saṃskāra)
and feelings (vedanā) play significant roles as well. The whole point of skandha
theory in the first place is that the basis of designation of self even if it is
intrapersonal, is not a single thing but a complex, interwoven set of continua.
This insight raises the possibility that much of who we are is unconscious and so
the possibility that our focus on the conscious in our self-conception may be
unwarranted.
There is another reason to think that from any Buddhist point of view, to take
the skandha of vijñāna to constitute a self, or even to be the referent of a name or
personal pronoun, would be—although tempting—a serious error. The skandha
cannot be a genuine self because of its constant change and because of its
dependence on the other skandhas. Most importantly, when we posit a self in the
relevant sense, we posit it not as vijñāna, but rather as that which has vijñāna, as
a subject more primordial than consciousness itself, modally independent of any
particular skandha. As we pointed out in the previous chapter, the same
consideration that shows that we don’t identify ourselves with our bodies—the
imaginability of a body transplant—applies to our minds.9 Just as I can wish that
I had the body of Usain Bolt, I can wish to have the mind of Stephen Hawking.
Yogācāra Buddhism, as noted in the previous chapter, does suggest a way in
which a particular level of consciousness could be identified with the self,
namely the alaya-vijñāna, or foundation consciousness. On certain Yogācāra
views, this is the basis of identity over time and the unified ground of all other
conscious states. It is the pre-reflective ground of experience.10 For this reason,
in part, Mādhyamika philosophers such as Candrakīrti in India and Tsongkhapa
in Tibet criticize this view as a smuggling of the self back into the basement after
hard analysis has kicked it out of the front door. Yogācāra philosophers typically
reply that the foundation consciousness is not a self in the pernicious sense—it is
not an unchanging, substantial ground of experience; it is not that which we
imagine ourselves to be in the act of self-grasping or in the narratives we tell
about ourselves and the world; it is not even phenomenologically accessible. The
self that is the object of negation of Buddhist analysis is a self like that. If this is
right, though, then even if the construct of the foundation consciousness made
sense, it would not constitute an identification of consciousness of any kind with
self. Buddhist reflection on consciousness also suggests that we are best not
focusing on consciousness—in any sense—as a singular thing. Even the skandha
of vijñāna decomposes on most Buddhist analyses into a number of different
faculties. For each of the six perceptual faculties (the five external senses and the
introspective faculty) there is a corresponding faculty of sensory consciousness.
On a standard Buddhist model, perception first involves physical contact of
the organ with the sensory object, then the registration in the sense faculty of the
perceptual object, and only finally the consciousness of the object. But that
consciousness is particular to the relevant sensory faculty. Visual consciousness
is a different faculty from auditory consciousness. The introspective
consciousness, on this picture, unifies the deliverances of the sensory
consciousnesses as it takes them as its proper object. (See the discussion of
Śāntarakṣita on the unity of consciousness in the previous chapter.) But
importantly, consciousness is not unitary; it is present in each sense faculty prior
to the action of the sixth sense.
If we accept the alaya-vijñāna in addition to these so-called “evolving
consciousnesses” as a more fundamental level of consciousness, things get even
more complex. This level of consciousness, which we might characterize as pure
subjectivity, is regarded by the Yogācāra as the unifying principle that gives rise
to the other forms of consciousness and in which the consequences of actions
and events are stored, with the potential to give rise to future episodes of
consciousness. But it is not introspectible and is not the seat of the subjectivity
of any particular conscious episode, but rather stands as a transcendental
condition on any awareness being conscious at all. It is more like the horizon
provided by subjective consciousness, not something of which we are aware, but
that in virtue of which we are aware.
On any Buddhist account, then, consciousness is neither singular, nor a
monadic property, nor something that is simply present or not. It is a many-
layered set of phenomena that are principally relational. Leaving the foundation
consciousness aside for the moment, to be conscious is to be conscious of
something. Consciousness is always a relation between a sensory faculty and its
object. To understand consciousness is to understand that complex relation, the
processes and conditions that make it possible, and those it in turn enables.
Even the foundation consciousness is, according to those who posit it, in
ordinary circumstances relational in character.11 It is described as a kind of
consciousness because it is the metaphysical ground of the relation to the
evolving consciousnesses as objects of introspection. It can be thought of as the
possibility of taking those forms of consciousness as one’s own.

4. Buddhist Rubber Hitting the Contemporary Road

David Chalmers lists a number of conscious phenomena that pose what he calls
“easy problems” (2010, 3–13):
• The ability to discriminate, categorize and react to environmental stimuli
• The integration of information by a cognitive system
• The reportability of mental states
• The focus of attention
• The deliberate control of behavior
• The difference between wakefulness and sleep. (4)
These correspond, at least roughly, and probably exactly, to the second of the
senses of “consciousness” scouted at the beginning of this chapter. Explaining
them, Chalmers argues, is easy, because they are functional capacities that we
can understand as being subserved by physical mechanisms. They contrast with
the sense of “consciousness” in which the hard problem is posed:
The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience.
When we think and perceive, there is a whirl of information processing, but
there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it there is
something that it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect
is experience. When we see, for instance, we experience visual sensations:
the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of
depth in the visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in
different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. …What
unites all of these states is that there is something that it is like to be in
them. All of them are states of experience. (Chalmers 2010, 5)
The “hard problem”—explaining how experience is possible in a physical
organism—Chalmers argues, is the problem of explaining consciousness in this
sense. Seeing the problem as “hard” requires us to acknowledge two things: first,
that the sense of experience—of there being something that it is like to be in a
state—makes clear sense. Second, that it is possible to do all of the “easy to
explain” things, and yet for it to be possible to differ from those with experience
just in that one has no experience, the possibility of zombies.
We will come back to zombies below. But let us first consider the problem of
understanding phenomenal experience, that the having of which is supposed to
be like something. Of course there are many different theories on offer regarding
the nature of such experience. But once again, Chalmers’s account can be taken
as paradigmatic for present purposes. Phenomenal experience, according to
those who deploy this notion (whether perceptual or not)12 involves the
formation of phenomenal beliefs, which in turn involve the deployment of
phenomenal concepts, concepts not of properties, but of the supposed inner
correlates of those properties. Chalmers puts the point this way:
Phenomenal beliefs always involve phenomenal concepts, concepts of the
phenomenal character of experience. When one believes that one is having
a red experience, one deploys a phenomenal concept of a red experience.
The most important phenomenal concepts are those we acquire directly
from having experiences with that sort of phenomenal character. For
example, when one first learns what it is like to experience an orgasm, one
acquires a phenomenal concept of the experience of orgasm. (251)
…
I look at a red apple and visually experience its color. This experience
instantiates a phenomenal quality R, which we might call phenomenal
redness. It is natural to say that I am having a red experience even though
experiences are not red in the same sense in which apples are red.
Phenomenal redness (a property of experiences or subjects of experience) is
a different property from external redness (a property of external objects),
but both are respectable properties in their own right. (254)
Perhaps the most important sentence to note here is the last. If we are to take
phenomenal consciousness as a special kind of consciousness, not simply the
awareness of properties in the external world, but awareness of a peculiar family
of inner properties, there must be a difference between these phenomenal
properties and the properties of external objects. This distinction, and the
consequent positing of consciousness as a special singular phenomenon
characterized by properties of the second type, demanding a special theory, is
driven by the idea that there is nothing “that it is like” merely to see a patch of
blue; a non-conscious zombie might see patches of blue. But there is something
“that it is like” to experience seeing a patch of blue. This involves special inner
states that are blue in a different sense, phenomenally blue.
Now, the idea that inner states have such properties as blueness, redness, or
other such properites, albeit in some special sense, has legs in Western
philosophy, and has properly been subjected to critique before. (See Sellars
1992a, b for an elegant discussion.) Indeed, many contemporary theorists of
phenomenal properties argue that such properties as phenomenal blueness are
only contingently related to actual blueness, and that terms such as phenomenal
blueness are as semantically distant from such terms as blueness as the term
blunderbuss is from buss. On this account, phenomenal properties are simply
those of our inner states that are causally connected to typical causes of the
properties whose names sound like them. I don’t want to take us too far into this
terrain, but suffice it to say that even if these accounts avoid the Sellarsian
critique, they fall from that frying pan into the Wittgensteinian fire of critiques
both of private language and of the very idea of special introspectible properties
of inner processes. Now, these critiques may not be decisive, but they are
weighty, and indeed, as Thurman (1980) has argued, both Candrakīrti and
Tsongkhapa anticipate those critiques in precisely this context.
This thought—and the debate it occasions—has ancestry in the Indian and
Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Dignāga and his followers in the Yogācāra tradition
argued—against the earlier Vaibhāśika school’s direct realist theory of
perception—that perception must be mediated by a representation (ākāra/rnam
pa [nampa]) and that this representation is the intentional object (artha/don
[dön]) of a perceptual state. The perception of a patch of blue, on such a model,
is the immediate apprehension of a representation that is blue. Dignāga puts the
point this way: “What we call an intentional object is what a cognition ascertains
to be the entity itself. This is because its representation arises. …An object
produced by self-presenting awareness is understood as a percept”
(Autocommentary to Examination of the Percept commentary on verse 1).
Perception on Dignāga’s model is always the immediate awareness of a
representation; the qualities perceived are qualities not of external objects—
indeed in this text he argues that they cannot be—but rather of internal
representations.13 His 18th-century Tibetan commentator Gungthang (Gun thang
dkon mchog bstan pa’i sgron me) comments on this as follows:
Suppose someone asks, “…[H]ow could [a representation] appear?” The
 representation does not appear as it exists. For example, when an image of
the moon appears in a mirror, spatiality also appears. The moon appears to
be different from its action of reflecting. Although it is apprehended with an
appearance of externality, the object is that which exists internally. (4)
Gungthang’s principal claim here is that according to Dignāga, even though we
might think of distal objects as the objects of perception, the objects of
immediate awareness are always representations. To the extent that distal objects
figure at all in our consciousness, it is in virtue of the indirect relation they bear
to us, mediated by these representations. On the other hand, Gungthang also
emphasizes that the mode of appearance of these representations is itself
deceptive: just as a reflection of the moon appears to be located in space, and not
to be a mere process of reflection, our own representations appear to us to exist
as internal objects that we observe, when in reality they are merely cognitive
processes. Ngawang Dendar (Ngag dbang bstan dar), writing later in that
century, amplifies the argument that perception engages immediately with
representations and only immediately with their objects:
Regarding the way in which the Sautrāntikas and more advanced schools
maintain that cognition is representational, Introduction to the Middle Way
states, “Whatever the mind represents is its intentional object.” [VI:13]
When a representation of a blue intentional object arises for a visual
cognition apprehending blue, because it thereby apprehends blue, it is said
that there is an apprehension and an apprehender of blue. Other than by way
of subjective cognition becoming like its object, there is absolutely no way
for cognition to apprehend its object.
For example, when a crystal is placed on a blue cloth, all facets of the
crystal turn blue. In the same way, when a visual cognition apprehending
blue sees blue, the color blue is transferred to the visual perspective and so
the subjective visual cognition becomes just like the blue object. The visual
cognition apprehending blue is referred to as “a visual cognition that arises
as a representation of blue.” This is the criterion for the direct apprehension
of blue. (227–228)
Dendar emphasizes here that the consequence of this view is that the qualities
we perceive—those of which we are immediately aware—are qualities of
appearances, not of external things. It is qualitative blue, the blueness of an
experience that I perceive, not any property of any external blue object. We will
see soon enough that this view comes in both for extension and for critique in
the Buddhist tradition. Some of the arguments and doctrines we will encounter
will anticipate some we find in contemporary Western debates about
phenomenal properties and phenomenal concepts. Some are unique to the
Buddhist tradition. But all are bound up in a Buddhist context with a more
general worry about the nature of consciousness itself, and it will be useful to
put aside worries about the nature of phenomenal properties themselves for now
and to explore the questions in the philosophy of mind they engender. Many are
also bound up with issues concerning the epistemology of the inner.

5. Reflexivity, Consciousness and Self-Knowledge

Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophers share with their contemporary
Western colleagues a concern for the structure of self-knowledge, and roughly
the same range of positions that emerge in the West are found in Indian Buddhist
debates. Moreover, just as we see in contemporary Western debates, the
positions regarding the structure of self-knowledge do double duty as models of
consciousness itself. We hence see reflexive models of self-consciousness and
self-knowledge, higher-order thought models, higher-order perception models
and self-luminosity models.
Reflexive models take consciousness always to involve two aspects: a
directedness toward the manifest object of consciousness and a self-directed
aspect that makes possible both knowledge of the conscious state itself and its
status as a conscious, as opposed to an unconscious state. Higher order thought
and higher order perceptual models take states to be conscious in virtue of other
states that take them—either cognitively or perceptually—as their objects, and
which enable our epistemic access to them. Self-luminosity models take
conscious states to be primitively conscious and self-manifesting without being
intentionally directed upon themselves, and without being the intentional objects
of other states, revealing their subjectivity as a primitive property.

5.1 Reflexivity of Awareness

The idea that perception is, au fond, an engagement with phenomenal properties,
Dignāga and his followers realized, issues in an intriguing dilemma. Given that it
is the perceptual engagement with phenomenal properties that is meant to be
constitutive of consciousness, the apprehension of these phenomenal properties
must either itself have phenomenal properties apprehended by a higher-order
state in order for it to be conscious, or it must be reflexively conscious—
conscious of itself at the same time that it is conscious of its perceptual object
(svasaṃvedena/svasaṃvittiḥ/rang rig). Otherwise, phenomenal properties
themselves would not be apprehended, and would constitute at best a mysterious
fifth wheel in the explanation of perception. The latter position (anticipating that
of Husserl, a position inspiring the work of Coseru 2012 and Zahavi 2004, 2005)
is adopted by all Indian Yogācāra thinkers and Śāntarakṣita, and in Tibet by
eminent Sakya scholars such as Gorampa and Sakya Chokden. The former
position, prescient of that of Sellars and his followers, is adopted by most Indian
Mādhyamikas and in Tibet by Geluk figures such as Tsongkhapa.
There are three principal arguments for the reflexivity of awareness in the
Buddhist literature, two that seem unique to that tradition, and one that
anticipates Husserl’s argument for reflexivity pretty directly. Dignāga advances
what has become known as the “memory argument” for reflexivity. He argues
that when I remember yesterday’s sunshine I remember myself seeing yesterday’s
sunshine. The memory of the sunshine and the memory of my seeing it are one
and the same. Moreover, he argues, one cannot remember something of which
one was not conscious. Therefore, since the memory of the sunshine and my
seeing the sunshine are identical, and since my memory of the sunshine
presupposes that I was aware of the sunshine, my memory of my apprehension
of the sunshine presupposes my consciousness of that apprehension. And, since
the memory of the two phenomena is identical, the two phenomena must be
identical. Hence my apprehension of the sunshine was at the same time my
awareness of the apprehension of the sunshine, and perceptual consciousness is
therefore reflexive.
Candrakīrti represents Dignāga’s argument as follows:
Even those who do not [mount the regress argument] will inevitably have to
accept reflexive awareness. This is because otherwise, although when a
memory arises at a later time of the form “…was seen,” an object would
thereby be remembered, when a thought of the form “I saw…” occurs, the
object that was seen would not thereby be remembered. Why is this, you
might ask? Since the memory is to be experienced subjectively, and since
consciousness is not perceived, it can’t be remembered. It follows that if
there were no reflexive awareness, nothing could experience itself. And it
makes no sense to say that it is experienced by another consciousness. Why
is this? Because if it had to be experienced by another consciousness, an
infinite regress would ensue. (Candrakīrti 2012, 166–167)
There are two arguments here. The first is the memory argument. My memory of
yesterday’s sunshine could come to me in the form, “I saw the sunshine
yesterday” or in the form, “Yesterday was a sunny day.” These seem to be the
same memory, but if awareness were not reflexive—that is, if my memory of the
sunshine were not identical to my memory of seeing the sunshine—the first
would simply be a memory of a subjective state, and not of its object, and the
second a memory of the object, and not of the experience, and they would be
distinct and unrelated. They are not; so awareness must be reflexive.
At the end, the argument is reinforced by the second argument, a regress
argument also proffered by Dignāga and his commentator Dharmakīrti. They
argue that every conscious state must be known to its subject. Otherwise, it
would not be conscious. If it is known, it must be known either reflexively, or by
some higher-order state. If a cognitive state could be known only by a higher-
order state, then either that higher-order state would be conscious or
unconscious. If the former, we are off on a regress, requiring an infinitude of
higher-order states in order for any state to be conscious; if the latter, there is no
explanation of how an unconscious state could make another state conscious.
Therefore, every conscious state must be reflexively aware. Dignāga offers a
related argument for the necessity of reflexive awareness, one that emphasizes
the need to be aware that one is aware in order to be aware, which, coupled with
the regress argument, entails that any genuine awareness must involve reflexive
awareness.
Although reflexive action is not conventionally presented as the object of
the sense faculties, and such things as objects and attachments are presented
without reflexive thought, meditators and lamas without exception
whenever they perceive or think of an object maintain that there is reflexive
awareness. …
Superficial perception is obscured for it is involved with conceptual
thought. It is the effect of epistemic engagement, and although it is said to
be authoritative, it is not actually discriminative. However, reflexive
awareness is its effect. As a consequence of that, its object is ascertained,
for reflexive awareness is authoritative with respect to the appearance of its
object, and thus one says that the object is epistemically engaged.
Therefore, the appearance is the apprehended object. Epistemic authority
is consequent on that. Therefore, apprehending consciousness arises from
these three distinct things: the consciousness of the object; the
consciousness of that consciousness; retaining these two modes of
consciousness in memory. Through these two considerations we prove that
awareness is reflexive. If a second consciousness was needed to perceive
the first, there would be an infinite regress, and so an infinite number of
 distinct objects, and this is not what is observed. (Encyclopedia of
Epistemology [Pramāṇasamucccaya] sDe dge 15b–16a)
This view is, of course, well known in the contemporary literature on
consciousness as well, and is championed most notably by Kriegel (2009).
Kriegel puts it this way: “[M]y conscious experience of a blue sky is the
conscious experience it is in virtue of its bluishness, but it is a conscious
experience at all in virtue of its for-me-ness.” (1) Kriegel clarifies this notion of
“for-me-ness,” which he calls subjective character as follows:
[T]o say that my experience has subjective character is to point to a certain
awareness I have of my experience. Conscious experiences are not states
that we may host, as it were, unawares. …A mental state of which one is
completely unaware is not a conscious experience. In this sense, my
conscious experience is not only in me, it is also for me. (8)
Continuing in his recapitulation of Dignāga, Kriegel sums up his own argument
for reflexive awareness as follows:
1. C is conscious in virtue of S’s being suitably aware of C.
2. For S to be suitably aware of C is for C to be suitably represented by S;
therefore,
3. C is conscious in virtue of being suitably represented by S; therefore,
4. C is conscious in virtue of being suitably represented;
5. it is not the case that C is conscious of being unconsciously represented;
and
6. it is not the case that C is conscious in virtue of being consciously
represented by a distinct state; therefore,
7. it is not the case that C is conscious in virtue of being represented by a
distinct state; therefore,
8. C is conscious of being represented by itself; that is,
9. C is conscious in virtue of suitably representing itself. (21)
The first premise is a recapitulation of Dignāga’s opening move. He then
recapitulates Dignāga’s and Dharmakīrti’s regress argument.14
One comment on these arguments is in order before turning to some Buddhist
critiques of them. These are not arguments for a broad pre-thetic awareness of
one’s own subjectivity of the kind advanced by Husserl, and much later
defended by Zahavi (2005) and Coseru (2012), as well as the late 19th-century to
early 20th-century Tibetan philosopher, Mipham, who seems to endorse that
broader reading of reflexivity. We will return to this below. Instead, these
philosophers defend the claim that every conscious mental episode, in virtue of
being a conscious episode, has a dual intentional content: on the one hand it is
directed upon its nominal intentional object; on the other hand it is directed back
upon itself, a view more like those of Gennaro (2011) and Kriegel (2009), views
advanced on somewhat different grounds. This view instead is aimed at
explaining how our responsiveness to the phenomena we apprehend can be
conscious, and the explanation is that it is the reflexivity that makes this
possible.
There are a lot of problems with these argument (as noted by contemporary
proponents of Higher Order Thought [HOT] and Higher Order Perception [HOP]
theories of consciousness), and its faults were pointed out by a number of
Buddhist scholars. For one thing, there is a problem with the first premise. Given
the enormous variety of prima facie conscious states, it is simply not true that all
are known by their subjects. Much of our consciousness is opaque to us much of
the time. And there are so many forms of consciousness to consider. In the
Buddhist tradition, this is part of what motivates meditative practice: one thereby
becomes increasingly aware of aspects of one’s consciousness of which one is
generally unaware. We do not know our own minds flawlessly, but only through
fallible perceptual and inferential means (Tsongkhapa 1991a). In modern
cognitive science this is simply the familiar phenomenon of the opacity of
consciousness to introspection and the prevalence of illusions of consciousness
(Noë 2002, Schwitzgebel 2011 and Gennaro 2011). We will return below to the
importance of these phenomena for understanding a Buddhist contribution to
contemporary debates.
Second, the regress-generating premise fails to generate the requisite regress.
Even if a conscious state must be known by another state, it does not follow that
that higher-order state must itself be conscious. Just as my perception of a blue
sky does not need to be perceived in order to be a perception, my consciousness
of that perception does not have to be consciously observed in order to be
conscious, even if it must be the possible object of some higher order state (See
Rosenthal 2005b, Gennaro 2011). At best the proponent of the argument might
get the premise that it must be possible to become consciously aware of any
conscious state through a higher-order state. That generates a regress, but a
benign regress. It just means that I can iterate higher order states of
consciousness, not that I must, just as the fact that every natural number has a
successor means that I always can count higher, not that I must.
Candrakīrti (2012) and Śāntideva (1997) each criticize the memory argument.
Candrakīrti points out that the account of memory at work in the memory
argument is problematic.
[168] Now, suppose that this is supposed to concern that which exists
substantially. Then, since there is neither arising either from self or other,
memory is not possible at all. So how could a non-existent memory
demonstrate the existence of a non-existent reflexive awareness? On the
other hand, suppose it is supposed to exist in terms of mundane
conventions. Even in that case it is impossible to use memory as a reason to
prove the existence of reflexive awareness.
Why is this, you might ask? Suppose that, just as in the case of fire, you had
to establish the existence of reflexive awareness by appeal to another
cognition. If this were the case, just as the existence of fire is proven by
smoke that is observed at a later time, it would have to be proven to exist by
a later memory. But since the cogency of reflexive awareness hasn’t been
proven, how could a memory that itself is not reflexively aware prove the
existence of reflexive awareness? In the same way, just by seeing water you
can’t prove the existence of a water-producing crystal; [169] nor can you
prove the existence of a fire-producing crystal just by seeing fire.
After all, water comes about without crystals, as a result of such things as
rain, and fire comes about without crystals from such things as matches
being struck. In the same way, memory can occur without reflexive
awareness. Therefore, memory can never serve as a premise to prove the
reflexivity of awareness. Since it has not already been proven to exist, in
order to prove the existence of reflexive awareness, you would need a
memory that was already proven to be reflexive, and this has not been
proven to exist. (2012, 168–169)
This is, of course, not an argument against the reflexivity of awareness, but a
rebuttal of the memory argument, an argument that ends up looming large—
perhaps too large—in the Indian context, simply because it was one of the first
arguments advanced for the reflexivity position. Subsequent theorists all feel the
obligation to take it on. First, Candrakīrti notes that the domain of this debate is
conventional reality, not ultimate reality; this debate is not about fundamental
ontology but about psychology and the philosophy of mind. Candrakīrti then
notes that the argument can’t proceed just by noting that reflexivity would
explain the effect in question, for all kinds of things could explain the
phenomenon of memory. Moreover, if awareness is necessarily reflexive, then
the memory to which one appeals should independently be taken to be reflexive.
If that were the case, nothing else would need to be said; if it is not, the
conclusion is false.
All that is necessary for memory, Candrakīrti argues, is that the cognition that
counts as a memory is caused in the right way by a previous cognitive episode.
So I might experience today’s sunshine, fail to be reflexively aware that I am
experiencing it, and tomorrow recall the sunshine in an episode caused (in the
right way) by today’s perception, but in neither case thematize my own
subjectivity in the matter.
Śāntideva goes further, arguing that the illusion of reflexivity arises only in
virtue of the inferential processes used in memory reconstruction, using as an
analogy the fanciful example of a bear bitten by a rat while hibernating, who
wakes up to discover a painful, infected wound. The bear, Śāntideva says, knows
on the basis of the painful wound that he suffered a rat bite, even though at the
time of the bite he was not aware of the bite. The point of the analogy is this: (1)
One can come to be aware of a previous event through causal sequelae of that
event even though one was not aware of that event at the time of its occurrence;
(2) Those sequelae can induce a cognitive state intentionally directed at that
previous occurrence even if one was not aware of that occurrence at the time.
And we might note that contemporary cognitive science, with its reconstructive,
rather than storage-and-retrieval models of memory, is on the side of Candrakīrti
and Śāntideva in this debate.
It hence follows not only that one could come to remember an event of which
one was not explicitly aware at the time of its occurrence, but also, and most
importantly, that one could have a memory with the intentional structure “I
experienced…” even if one was not aware of experiencing that event when it
occurred, despite being aware of the event. Suppose, to take a more
contemporary event, one was engrossed in participation in a sporting event,
diving to catch a goal in a game of Ultimate. At the time of the event, one might
be aware of the flight of the disk, but not aware of one’s awareness of it; that is,
the awareness of the disk is not accompanied by self-awareness. Nonetheless,
after the game, one reports, “I remember diving for the disk, hoping I would
catch it. …” This later memory is caused by the previous event, and although the
memory presents itself as reflexive, the event itself need not have been one
involving any reflexivity. (See Garfield 2006b for an extended discussion of
these arguments.)
All of this is grounded in Candrakīrti’s more general concern with two issues
—the importance of interdependence and the absence of any intrinsic nature in
anything on the one hand, and the role of linguistic convention, and hence
intersubjectivity, in constituting meaning and knowledge on the other (Thurman
1980). For Candrakīrti, reflexivity as a mechanism for self-knowledge would
render cognitive states intrinsically known, independent of any other cognitive
apparatus, and so would violate interdependence, and would amount to assigning
cognitive states a kind of essence. And for the mechanism of their knowledge to
be essentially inner would violate the principle that the epistemic instruments—
perception, inference, testimony and analogy—are constituted as justificatory
intersubjectively, by convention. The so-called knowledge that would be
constituted by reflexivity, on this account, would not be knowledge in any sense
at all, given its essential privacy and its isolation from the rule-governed, public
epistemic practices that confer warrant on our beliefs. This view, once again, as
do so many Madhyamaka analyses, nicely anticipates both Sellars’s attack on the
givenness of mental content and Wittgenstein’s emphasis on the social
dimensions of knowledge in On Certainty.
There is a final issue raised by Candrakīrti, and this may be the most
profound, anticipating the more contemporary “rock” problem raised by
Stubenberg (1998) for Western Higher Order theories, but mobilizing it against
First Order theories that appeal to reflexivity. Stubenberg points out that if
having a distinct conscious state directed on an object were sufficient to render it
conscious, then my thinking about a rock should render the rock conscious; if it
cannot, there is no reason to think that a higher-order state directed on a state not
already conscious on its own could make that state conscious (185–195).
So, if there is a regress problem, reflexivity can’t be the answer to it. For the
regress problem suggests that a state that is merely perceptually directed on an
object but not the object of another state would not itself be conscious. Grant
that claim for the sake of argument. Then consider a reflexively aware perceptual
state. If that state were not reflexive, it would not be conscious. But to add
reflexivity is then only to add the already unconscious awareness of an
unconscious state. It is hard to see how that could issue in consciousness if an
unconscious higher order state could not. Candrakīrti replies to the regress in a
Sanskrit grammatical register with a clear point:
If one says that a conscious state knows itself then the nature of the process
of knowledge would be as follows: Since there must be an agent of that
action of knowledge, the account of that action would make no sense, since
it would follow absurdly that the agent, action and object would be
identical. Such a unity is never observed. For instance, the woodcutter, the
wood and the cutting are not identical. For this reason we can see that there
is no reflexive awareness, and that we do not become aware of a cognitive
state through that state itself. As the Entry into Lanka sūtra says,
 A sword
Cannot cut its own blade,
And a finger cannot cut itself.
Reflexive awareness is exactly the same. (2012, 171–172)
Now, this argument is cast in a classical grammatical mode, arguing that agent,
action and object are necessarily distinct on the grounds of case, and in that
form, the argument is hardly compelling. As many proponents of reflexive
awareness in the Indian and Tibetan traditions point out, for instance, lamps do
reveal themselves, and to the extent that we think of awareness as a kind of
revelation of its objects—a very frequent image in Indian philosophy of mind
and encapsulated in the term svaprakaśa (self-illumination)—that is not a bad
counterexample. But Candrakīrti also makes a deeper point. If it is in virtue of
reflexivity that a state is conscious, the state that is the object of the reflexive
awareness must already be conscious, since it is identical with the awareness that
makes it conscious. But if that is so, reflexive awareness is awareness of an
already conscious state, and so cannot be that which makes it conscious. The
very idea of reflexivity thus presupposes the very property it is meant to explain.
An unconscious state directed on itself would hardly make itself conscious.
Candrakīrti’s critique may have been what led the 9th-century Buddhist
philosopher Śāntarakṣita to maintain that reflexivity is simply definitional of
subjective consciousness as such, that it is what differentiates sentience from
insentience. Here is what he has in mind. Both sentient and insentient matter is
subject to effects, and indeed, we might add, many of those are information-rich
effects. My footprints in the sand are indicative of the shape of my foot just as is
my visual perception of my foot. So no merely relational account of the
interaction between my visual faculty, my eye and the foot will distinguish
between the interaction between my foot and the sand in a way that will explain
why the one is conscious and the other is not. There must therefore be some
intrinsic character of consciousness itself, namely its reflexivity, the fact that it
presents both the object and our subjectivity of that object, that makes sentience
sentience. Here is how Śāntarakṣita puts the point in his Ornament of the Middle
Way:
Consciousness arises as diametrically opposed
In nature to insentient matter.
Its nature as non-insentient
Just is the reflexivity of awareness. [16]
Since it makes no sense for that which is unitary and partless
 To have a threefold nature,
The reflexivity of awareness
Does not have an agent-action-structure. [17] (verses in Blumenthal 2004)
Śāntarakṣita eschews any talk of self-representation or of the explanatory force
of reflexivity in favor of a brute definitional move coupled with
phenomenological reflection. In (16) he simply claims that reflexivity—
awareness of oneself as a subject—is constitutive of consciousness, and in (17),
conceding Candrakīrti’s critique, he asserts that reflexivity is non-
representational and pre-thetic. This view anticipates those of Husserl and his
followers, such as Zahavi (2005), Thompson (2007) and Coseru (2012),
suggesting a primordial pre-thetic character to subjectivity. As we will see, it
also comes in for trenchant critique by Tsongkhapa, following Candrakīrti.

5.2 Implications for Self-Knowledge

Just as in the case of the theory of consciousness, debates about reflexivity play
a large role in Buddhist debates about self-knowledge. Dignāga introduces this
issue in his account of pramāṇa, or epistemic warrant, and the nature of
epistemic instruments in his Encyclopedia of Epistemology. There he argues that
reflexive awareness is the mechanism by means of which we know our own
inner states. Since this is a kind of perception, on Dignāga’s view it gives us
immediate, non-conceptualized knowledge of our inner episodes, and this, as we
saw above, is why he thinks that perception, despite its ordinary fallibility, is, in
the end, authoritative. While this might appear to be a classical Buddhist version
of a contemporary higher-order perception model of self-knowledge (HOP)
(Armstrong 1968, Lycan 1997), it is not. For the point of a reflexive model of
awareness in Dignāga’s framework—and in subsequent Buddhist articulations of
this doctrine—is that each mental state is itself reflexive, requiring no higher-
order state to make itself known.
On the other hand, there are homologies between this reflexive model of self-
knowledge and contemporary HOP theories. In both accounts, self-knowledge is
taken to be direct, unmediated by theory, and hence available even to those who
lack the capacity for sophisticated theory, such as small children and animals.
Both views recognize the spontaneous, non-reflective nature of self-report, and
the fact that we seem not to theorize, when we know our own minds. A great
virtue—or a great vice—of this account, depending on one’s perspective, is the
fact that it represents self-knowledge as very different in kind from knowledge
of other minds. Whereas we know other minds only by inference, we know
ourselves, on the other hand, directly. This kind of view explains both the
apparent asymmetry with respect to mode of access and epistemic security
between self- and other-knowledge as well as the apparent symmetry between
this kind of knowledge and ordinary perceptual knowledge.
But there are also important differences between Dignāga’s theory and HOP
theories. For Dignāga, reflexivity is not limited to the case of explicit
introspection: it is also implicated in the process of external perception
becoming conscious. Reflexive awareness generating self-knowledge is indeed
the means by which we know ourselves, but this same reflexive awareness is
implicated in every conscious state, and explains not only self-knowledge but
consciousness itself. Once again, this may constitute a theoretical virtue or a vice
depending on one’s perspective. On the one hand, to the extent that one thinks
that there are no unknown—or at least no unknowable—conscious states, this
model explains that fact; on the other hand, to the extent that one thinks that
there are, this model might make the wrong prediction regarding our epistemic
access to our own minds. Moreover, because reflexive awareness is not
contaminated by conceptual superimposition, Dignāga is committed to the view
that our awareness of our own mental states, at least until the moment that we
conceptualize it in verbal judgment, is veridical. (See Yao 2005 for more detail.)
He thus provides the platform for a strong doctrine of the transparency of mind
to itself, although not one committed to a kind of higher-order model of
cognitive access.
Now Dignāga’s account is a starting point, and perhaps most interesting for its
historical role as the beginning of a tradition of Buddhist reflection on the
epistemology of the inner, a topic which, while central to the Buddhist
soteriological project, receives surprisingly little attention prior to Dignāga’s
reflections. Things get more interesting as we move forward in the history of that
reflection.

5.3 Self-Luminosity
Dignāga’s commentator and successor in the development of Buddhist
epistemology, Dharmakīrti, develops Dignāga’s account of reflexivity and self-
knowledge in terms of self-luminosity. He argues that all consciousness is
necessarily dual in aspect, incorporating both an awareness of the object of
consciousness, whether external or internal, and an awareness of the act of
consciousness as such. Mipham endorses this view in his commentary on
Śāntarakṣita (Mipham 2004, 273).
On this model, we know our own mental states simply in virtue of being in
them, for it is of the very nature of a cognitive state to present itself as the state
that it is in its manifestation. While this view is very close to Dignāga’s, and is
presented as a gloss on that earlier view, it is slightly different. On Dignāga’s
account, every mental state takes itself as object, providing a representation of
itself, as well as of its object, to consciousness; on Dharmakīrti’s view, each state
is instead internally complex, with its subjective aspect self-presenting as
subjectivity, not as the object of any state, including itself. While its primary
intentional content is its apparent object, it takes its own subjectivity as a
secondary intentional object. This is a pre-thetic awareness of subjectivity itself,
by means of which we know ourselves and our states immediately.
A similar self-luminosity position is also well represented in the West. As
noted above, it has its modern origins in Husserl’s account of consciousness
(Zahavi 2005, Kriegel 2009). According to this position, our cognitive states are
known immediately because it is of their very nature to present themselves to
consciousness as the states they are. My belief that 7 + 5 = 12 is, on this view, at
the same time a cognitive state directed on an arithmetic fact and a state which
presents myself as subject. My knowledge that I have that belief is part and
parcel of the belief itself. Kriegel, Thompson and Zahavi, each in his own way,
defend just such a view.
To take a belief to be self-luminous is to take it that to be in a cognitive or
affective state (or at least to be in a conscious cognitive or affective state, with
the appropriate sense of conscious to be filled in, or perhaps an occurrent state)
is to know that state immediately, not only without the need for any higher-order
thought or perception of that state, but also without any perception of that state
even by itself. This is possible, on this view, because conscious states are self-
illuminating, requiring no second state in order to be known. Just as we do not
need a second light bulb to see a glowing light bulb, on this view, we do not
need a second state to allow us to become aware of a first state. We may need a
light bulb to illuminate that which is not self-luminous, of course, like the
furniture in the room, and so we may need conscious states to mediate our
awareness of the world around us, but to require a higher-order state, on this
view, is to invite a vicious regress. On this account, just as to be self-luminous in
this sense is constitutive of and criterial for consciousness, since cognitive states
are conscious states, self-luminosity is criterial for cognitive states as well
(Zahavi 2005, Kriegel 2009).15
Debates about self-knowledge and reflexivity extend into Tibet, with its rich
tradition of analytic epistemology. The 13th-century Tibetan scholar Sakya
Paṇḍita argued that self-knowledge is achieved through reflexive awareness,
relying heavily on Dharmakīrti’s analysis of cognitive states as self-luminous.
He argues, however, that since in any perceptual or cognitive apprehension,
subject and object must be distinct, in the case of reflexive awareness, since
there is no such distinctness, there is no object of that awareness. Such
knowledge, he argues, is in fact objectless. Now, of course this raises the
question of just in what sense reflexive awareness counts as knowledge at all.
Dreyfus (1997, 402) compares this account to that of European
phenomenologists like Sartre, who argue that all consciousness presents
subjectivity pre-thematically as a precondition of any awareness. On the other
hand, while this might vouchsafe the very general self-knowledge that one is
aware, it would hardly take one to knowledge of the contents of one’s own mind,
and may in the end be too thin to count as any kind of knowledge worth having,
in addition to being so odd, that it is hard to see it as knowledge in the sense that
anything else we count as knowledge is knowledge.
This worry about both the sui generis nature and the thinness of reflexivity
was very much in the mind of Sakya Paṇḍita’s 15th-century Sakya successor
Gorampa. Gorampa argues from the fact that reflexive awareness is the
mechanism of self-knowledge that it must therefore be intentional, and therefore
must have an object of knowledge (Dreyfus 1997, 403). Now, Gorampa’s own
view is that all knowledge is mediated by representation, and this raises further
difficulties for the account that reflexivity is the basis of self-knowledge. For if
we grant the necessity of the mediation by representation of all knowledge, then
self-knowledge must be mediated by representation as well, and if this is so, a
regress looms. If we need a representation in order to know our own inner state,
then presumably to know this representation a further representation is needed,
and so on.
Gorampa is aware of this potential problem, and cuts the regress off by
following Dharmakīrti in another respect, that is, in distinguishing two aspects of
any cognitive state, a subjective and objective aspect.
The representation is the object of apprehension. To say that the instrument
of knowledge, its effect and the apprehension are three different things
therefore makes no sense. With regard to the object, consciousness and the
consciousness of that consciousness appear to consciousness in a twofold
manner, and this how it is in memory at a later time as well. Reflexive
awareness is this twofold appearance. If there were no reflexive awareness
there would be no perception. And if a distinct consciousness was required
to perceive it there would be an infinite regress. And memory would always
be of another object. (Elucidation of Epistemology [Tsad ma rnam ‘grel]
300). (See also an extended treatment in Illumination of the Ascertained
 Object [Ngas don rab gsal] 577–582)
A reflexive awareness, he argues, takes, in its subjective aspect, the objective
aspect of the state as its object. This may cut of the regress, but once again there
is a cost. Subjectivity now takes objectivity as an object, but to the degree that
this is all that is involved in reflexivity, it is a thin sense of self-knowledge,
sounding more like a restatement of the fact that subjective states have objects.
Geluk scholars, following Tsongkhapa, take Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti more
as touchstones in this debate than they do Dharmakīrti. Tsongkhapa (1988)
argues, following Candrakīrti, that reflexivity makes no sense in the first place.
Suppose someone asked, “If according to your view there is no assertion of
reflexive awareness, how does memory occur?” According to mundane
convention, the mind does not experience itself. But the previous state of
consciousness perceives a previous object, and this is the cause of the
effect, which is the later memory. (289)
Here Tsongkhapa follows Candrakīrti in asserting that the simplest explanation
of memory is simply a causal process, requiring no special higher-order
intentionality. He now turns to a possible objection. Does the denial of
reflexivity undermine the possibility of ordinary introspective knowledge? He
argues that it does not, but that our ordinary understanding of introspective
knowledge is in terms of higher-order perception and thought (which he does not
clearly distinguish here, but which can easily be in a Buddhist framework in
terms of their respective objects—particulars vs. universals).
Suppose one thought as follows: Since it would be to deny that one
experiences such things as pleasure and pain through the introspective
consciousness, how could there be no reflexive awareness? We commit no
such error, because the denial of reflexive awareness is consistent with the
distinction between subject and object with respect to all cognitive states
that are directed inward. …According to mundane nominal conventions as
well, the experience of pleasure and pain occurs in this way. Since the
perceiver and the perceived appear distinctly, there is no need to posit
reflexive awareness as it is accepted in our opponents’ position. (Ibid., 297)
Tsongkhapa now comes to the heart of the issue. He takes as his target the
position recently defended by Kriegel, a self-representational model of reflexive
awareness: The only cogent model of reflexivity, Tsongkhapa notes, is
representational. After all, reflexive awareness has to have an intentional
structure, and its intentional content must be known via a representation. Hence
every cognitive state must represent itself on this view. But once we grant that
representational structure, Tsongkhapa says, we can now ask about the epistemic
status of that reflexive state. If it contains itself as object, it must be completely
authoritative. How could it be mistaken about its own nature? But if it is
authoritative, we have the consequence that we would have omniscient access to
our own minds.
Now Tsongkhapa, like many contemporary philosophers, takes this to
constitute a reductio on reflexivity. Of course any proponent of strong privileged
access to our own doxastic and perceptual states—and there are such people—
would take this as a welcome consequence. Blumson (personal communication)
argues for such a view, advancing two distinct arguments, which I consider here
because I think that they express exactly the intuition against which Tsongkhapa
is concerned to argue. First, Blumson urges that the Cogito provides a clear
example: If I am thinking, I know immediately and irrefutably that I am
thinking. Hence, I have infallible access in this case to my own mind. Blumson
may be right about the premise, but it hardly establishes the conclusion he wants.
For I know that I am thinking because of the logic of thinking, not because of the
content of any thought. It does not follow, for instance, that if I am thinking that
roses are red that I know that I am thinking that. And that is what the strong
reflexivist position requires.
The second argument is meant to respond to this point, and appeals to what
one might call the BB principle, that is, that if one believes that P one believes
that one believes that P. Leave the regress issue aside—there are ways to finesse
that by talking about potential but not actual regresses. The obvious response
from Tsongkhapa’s perspective (and from that of much contemporary research in
cognitive development—particularly that devoted to the acquisition of Theory of
Mind) is simply that the principle is false. To believe something is a
conceptually enriched act; to believe that one has a belief requires that one have
the concept of belief, and many small children and infralingual animals don’t
have it. And then there is the Freudian point, at the heart of Tsongkhapa’s
concern: It also requires that one have a pretty good understanding of one’s own
cognitive life, something that even many adults fail to have. On this perspective,
self-knowledge is far from immediate, far from given. And while this might
appear counterintuitive from certain other perspectives, it turns out to be
surprisingly well-confirmed empirically. Here is how Tsongkhapa makes this
point:
If any consciousness to which the object of that consciousness appears were
 also its own object, that consciousness would appear as a representation. If
that consciousness were non-deceptive with respect to that, that mundane,
non-deceptive consciousness just by being known as authoritative, would
have to be authoritative. In that case, if the apparent object of knowledge
were to be established by that consciousness, the subject would already
have to have been. (Ibid., 298–299)
Knowledge, Tsongkhapa argues, is always a relationship between a subject and
an object. If we know our own mental states, it is because of epistemic states that
take our cognitive states as object, and moreover, states that are distinct from
those that they know. Self-knowledge, on his view, if it is to mean anything, is an
understanding of our own cognitive lives and perceptual experience achieved by
the same mechanisms by means of which we know external events.
Moreover, the Geluk school is realist, not representationalist, about
perception, taking perception to be a relation between a perceived object, a
sensory system and a cognizer. Tsongkhapa’s demand that apperception and self-
knowledge are constituted in the first instance by higher-order perception does
not, therefore, engender a vicious regress, and at worst, only a regress of
potential higher-order states, corresponding to potential higher-order states of
knowledge. This position does raise another issue, though. On this analysis, the
introspective power is mediated by the sixth sense faculty (the introspective
faculty), epistemically aligned to the external sense faculties, as a perceptual
state. But perception, at least for ordinary beings, is also epistemically complex
and problematic on a Buddhist account. For while it may in principle be
veridical, in practice it delivers us data that are infected by the imperfections of
our sensory organs and our instinctive superimposition of conceptual categories
—many or all of which may be intrinsically falsifying—on the deliverances of
sensation. So, while higher-order perception may be a central part of the story, it
may well be that any analysis of that perception must appeal to higher-order
thought as well, and on this account, unlike those of proponents of a special self-
revealing nature of first-order cognitive states, self-knowledge will always be
fallible. That is, on this account the mind, like external objects, always is, at least
to some degree, hidden to us.
To take self-knowledge to be mediated by HOT, as one must on Tsongkhapa’s
view, is to see it as reflective, as theoretical. On this model we know ourselves in
part by theorizing about ourselves, by inference to the best explanation. Our
inner states are not perceptible, but our behavior is interpretable, and when we
self-ascribe cognitive states, we engage in an act of interpretation, just as we do
when we ascribe cognitive states to others in the absence of any ability to
perceive them directly. This homogeneity of self-ascription and other-ascription
is, depending on one’s perspective, a great virtue or a great vice of this account.
On the one hand, it eliminates the mystery of a sui generis access to our own
mental lives and explains our fallibility with respect to the mental. On the other
hand, it suggests that creatures incapable of the requisite degree of reflective
capacity, such as young children and animals, do not know their own minds at
all. This is an important insight, for, as I have been emphasizing, it is easy to
take for granted the view that our access to our own minds is immediate. That is
probably not just a part of our Cartesian legacy; it seems to have an intuitive
hold on many people, and in many traditions.
The Madhaymaka view defended by Tsongkhapa is hence not just common
sense. That is not to say—as I have also been at pains to emphasize—that it has
no counterparts in the contemporary Western literature. Rorty (1979) as well as
Churchland (1979) make similar claims, though on different, more metaphysical
grounds. It is interesting to contrast Tsongkhapa’s view with Lewis’s otherwise
similar position (1995), as it is representative of this trend. Lewis argues that
qualia are inconsistent with materialism and therefore should be rejected en
route to a more general rejection of immediate self-knowledge. Fair enough, but
if one is not antecendently materialist, as many contemporary qualiaphiles are
not, this argument may seem patently question-begging, or at least ad hoc. For
this reason, the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition might be a welcome voice in this
debate: it provides more principled reason for treating self-knowledge in the
same way as knowledge of the external world, grounded in an analysis of
perception, self-knowledge and subjectivity.

6. Higher-Order Theories
It might appear that there is something terribly flat-footed about any insistence
such as that of Śāntarakṣita’s that nothing relational, nothing not already
subjective, could ever differentiate conscious from unconscious phenomena. But
it is a position remarkably prescient of new mysterians (those who regard the
psychophysical relation as unknowable, either in principle or in practice) such as
Stoljar (2006), Chalmers (2010) and McGinn (2004) and even of those who
insist on some intrinsic feature of mental states that make them conscious, such
as Searle (1997), Levine (2001) and Gennaro (2011). On the other hand,
Śāntarakṣita raises an important issue. There is a burden of proof on the
shoulders of the higher-order theorist. She must explain how some relations
among subjects, their faculties and their objects constitute consciousness and
why others do not. If she cannot do this, reflexivity looks like the only option, an
argument taken up in a different register by Kriegel (2009).
Before turning to Madhyamaka responses to this challenge, let us spend a bit
of time with contemporary higher-order theories. Peter Carruthers (1996) has
offered the most extensively worked-out higher-order theory of consciousness.
(There are many more, of course, most recently that of Gennaro [2011]. But to
survey and address the contemporary literature on consciousness is well beyond
the scope of this discussion. My aim is simply to show how Buddhist theory can
inform that discussion.) Carruthers writes:
Consider routine activities, such as driving, walking, or washing up, which
we can conduct with our conscious attention elsewhere. When driving
home over a route I know well, for example, I will often pay no conscious
heed to what I am doing on the road…I saw the vehicle double-parked at
the side of the road, since I deftly turned the wheel to avoid it. Yet I was not
conscious of seeing it, either at the time or later in memory. My perception
of that vehicle was not a conscious one. (135)
…
Recall just how rich and detailed an experience can be. There can be an
immense amount of which we can be consciously aware at any one time.
For example, imagine looking down at a city from a window high up in a
tower block…In this case I am consciously perceiving the complex
distribution of trees, roads, and buildings; the colours on the ground and in
the sky above; the moving cars and pedestrians; and so on. And I am
conscious of all of this simultaneously. (166–167)
…[C]onsciousness is constituted by an accessibility-relation to occurrent
thinkings, where those thinkings are conscious in turn (that is, where they
are regularly made available to further occurrent thinkings). Conscious
experiences, in particular, are those which are available to acts of thinking
which are reflexively available to further thinkings…
What makes my perception of a glass on the desk to be conscious, on this
account, is the fact that perceptual information about the glass is held in a
short-term memory store whose function is to make that information
available to conscious thinkings—where those thinkings are conscious, too,
in virtue of each one of them fed back, reflexively, to the same (or similar)
short-term memory store to be available to be thought about in turn. (194)
There is a lot to be said about this discussion, but I want to focus on three points
here: first, the way that consciousness, for all of Carruthers’ philosophical care,
is taken as a unitary, all-or-nothing phenomenon; second, the easy claims
regarding what we are conscious of or not in perception (surveying the cityscape
from the skyscraper vs. driving); and third, the implication of thought, and hence
of language, in the story.
The term consciousness is used in this passage to denote our sensitivity to
information in order to make the claim that we are conscious of the visual array
when looking from the window of the skyscraper, to denote introspective
availability (but not mere sensitivity) when denying conscious awareness of what
we are doing when washing dishes or what we are seeing when driving, and
conceptual availability when offering a more formal definition at the end of the
passage. This easy slide is commonplace in this literature, and it is pernicious. It
is pernicious not because there are many senses of consciousness at play; it is
only appropriate that there are, as there are many cognitive phenomena denoted
by this vague single term; rather, it is pernicious because the very singularity of
the term and our familiarity with its use leads us both to take consciousness to be
a unitary phenomenon, and one whose presence or absence is simply apparent to
us.
From a Buddhist perspective, neither could be further from the truth. As we
have seen, Buddhist psychology recognizes multiple kinds and levels of
consciousness, including sensory and conceptual forms of consciousness;
consciousness that is introspectible and consciousness that is too deep for
introspection; consciousness that takes external phenomena as objects and
consciousness that takes inner phenomena as objects; consciousness that is
merely receptive and consciousness that is constructive and even projective. In
general, the complex set of phenomena is opaque to casual introspection, and are
knowable only theoretically or perhaps by highly trained meditators. Let us leave
the meditators to the side, for a moment. To take seriously the idea that
consciousness itself is both complex and opaque is to see that what Carruthers
here takes as unproblematic data may well be nothing more than fantasy, akin to
taking the flatness of the earth, so manifest to us, as a datum in astronomy.
The second point is closely connected. Carruthers blithely asserts that he is
conscious simultaneously of all of the trees, cars and colors below his window,
but also that when driving he is not conscious of the obstacles on the road he
avoids when his mind is occupied in conversation. How on earth can he know
either of these things? We already know that when surveying our visual field, or
even attending voluntarily and carefully to part of it, that there is much that we
do not see. We are inattentionally blind, change blind, blind to foveal gaps and to
the monochromicity of our peripheral vision. Introspection is no guide to what is
available to vision (Most 2010; Most et al. 2005; Mack 2003; Rensink 2001,
2002, 2004; Rensink, O’Regan and Clark 1997; Noë 2007; Noë, Pessoa and
Thompson 2000; Simons 2000a, 2000b; Simons and Ambinder 2005; Fendrich,
Demirel and Danziger 1999; Guirao and Artal 1999).
There is a neat dilemma here for one who wants simply to take the data of
naive introspection as a starting point for inquiry in this domain: either take the
term conscious to apply only to what is available to introspection or take it to be
a complex, theoretically informed term that may well comprise a natural kind
whose members are heterogeneous and whose natures are hidden from
introspection. If we take the first option, all we are doing is investigating
introspective awareness, something we know to be variable among subjects,
prone to illusion and dependent on attentional variables. Characterizing that
might be interesting as a matter of autobiography, but not as philosophy or
psychology. If we take the second, casual introspective reports are irrelevant.
And this is why most Buddhist theorists eschew naive introspection as a source
of data for reflection on consciousness, taking it to be the report of illusion, not a
veridical source of data.16 This is an issue for almost every current philosophical
account of consciousness.
Finally, it is noteworthy that Carruthers’s account (like those of Rosenthal and
Gennaro), as a higher-order thought account, implicates conceptual thought in its
account of consciousness—at least in its account of what we might more
precisely call introspectible conscious experience—and hence language, as the
vehicle for the expression of concepts. (I leave aside the vexed question of
whether there are inexpressible phenomenal concepts for now. We will return to
phenomenal concepts and qualia below.)
Here there is real harmony with at least several important strands of Buddhist
thought about apperception. Philosophers as different in perspective as
Vasubandhu and Candrakīrti (the former a Yogācāra and the latter a
Mādhyamika critic of the Yogācāra school) in India; Tsongkhapa and Gorampa
in Tibet (the former a Geluk insistent on the importance of conventional truth
and the latter a Sakya scholar insistent on its entirely deceptive character) and
Dōgen in Japan (who rejects virtually all of the analytic philosophy developed in
the Indian and Tibetan scholastic tradition) agree that introspective awareness is
mediated by thought and therefore by language. Therefore, moreover, it is
mediated by the conventions that determine linguistic meaning and the structures
of our concepts, and hence is always a matter of convention, not a deliverance of
the nature of mind to a lucid instrument observing it. But from a Buddhist
perspective, this insight of the HOT school undermines, rather than facilitates, its
more general program of developing a theory of consciousness, per se. At best,
one could hope for a theory of our folk conception of the meaning of the word
consciousness. Not much to write home about.

7. Qualia
A very different strand of thought running through contemporary theories of
consciousness is the idea that qualia or qualitative properties, which are posited
or said to be discovered introspectively as the inner objects of experience,
constitute or explain the fact that “there is something that it is like” to have
conscious experience, and given the emphasis that Buddhist ethics places on the
interests of sentient beings (see chapter 9 below), the question of the nature of
sentience, and hence of experience, is central to the Buddhist philosophical
project. The idea that something like qualia are essential to sentience is common
to a number of theoretical perspectives that differ among themselves in countless
other ways, including Higher-Order Thought, Higher-Order Perception, Intrinsic
First-Order, Phenomenological and Reflexive models. We have already
encountered Chalmers’s posit of phenomenal properties and concepts to go with
them. Gennaro makes a similar claim:
There is significant disagreement over the nature, or even the existence, of
qualia, but they are most often understood as the felt properties or qualities
of conscious states. There is something it is like to have qualia or to be in a
qualitative state. Most generally, perhaps, qualia are “introspectively
accessible phenomenal aspects of our mental lives.” But even this can be
misleading if it is taken to imply that only introspected, or introspectible,
states have qualia. Surely first-order, or world-directed, conscious states
also have qualia. …What it feels like, experientially, to see a red rose is
different from what it feels like to see a yellow rose. (2011, 7)
There is a massive philosophical literature on qualia and related constructs. I will
ignore most of it in the interest of focusing once again on what Buddhism brings
to this debate. But first, a few preliminary remarks on qualia to open the field for
another perspective. It is often taken for granted in recent literature on
consciousness that “surely…conscious states…have qualia.” But given how little
clarity there is on just in what qualia are supposed to consist, we should be
suspicious of this consensus. As we have seen, qualitative redness is not redness.
Roses may be red, and violets may be blue; but red and blue qualia are found
only in me and in you. These are inner properties, or properties of inner states.
As Nida-Rümelin puts it,
 To have a particular phenomenal property is to have an experience with a
specific subjective feel. If you have a phenomenal concept of a phenomenal
property, then you know what it is to have an experience with that subject
feel. (2007, 307)
The echoes of Dignāga are striking. Levine (2011) agrees that phenomenal
properties are special properties of inner states, essentially grasped by having
them (just as the facets of the crystal turn blue when placed on the blue paper)
and that perception is characterized by the immediate awareness of these
properties. So, we should ask ourselves what reason there is to posit this second
layer of properties in order to understand consciousness or experience.
There are two principal kinds of reasons one might have: observational or
theoretical. The only kind of observational evidence could be introspective, and,
as we have already noted, introspection is a highly fallible instrument for
limning the cognitive world. But suppose that, for the sake of argument, we
grant its veridicality. Let us now ask what occurs when we see a red rose. In
particular, what introspective evidence could there be for the claim that beyond
the redness we perceive in the rose, there is a second phenomenal redness that
we perceive immediately, or that permeates our perceptual experience? To have
such evidence, both properties would have to be evident, and we would have to
be able to distinguish them. But by the qualiaphile’s own lights, only the
phenomenal property is directly perceived. So, perhaps the evidence is
theoretical. But then we would imagine that, somewhere in the best
psychological theory of perception, qualia, qualitative properties, or qualitative
concepts appear. The fact that they do not should at least give philosophers
pause. I conclude that the surely that precedes the claim that our conscious states
have qualia is the protestation that evidence and argument are not needed, albeit
for a claim nobody really understands. We will see why this is below.
It might be interesting to take a whirlwind tour through the doxography of
Buddhist positions on perceptual experience to get a very different take on these
matters. Buddhist doxographers distinguish a number of schools of thought
organized in a hierarchy of degrees of supposed sophistication. On the one hand,
this doxographic enterprise helps to systematize the history of Indian Buddhist
philosophy. On the other hand, it provides a dialectical map for reflection and
education, motivating each successive view on the ranked list as a reply to
difficulties raised by the immediately preceding view.17
The most straightforward account of perceptual awareness in the Buddhist
world is presented by the Vaibhāṣika school. A pre-Mahāyāna school, the
Vaibhāṣikas presented a non-conceptual direct realist theory of perception. On
this view, perceptual awareness arises from the direct contact of sensory
apparatus with perceptible objects or qualities in the environment, unmediated
by any representations. We might see this as a kind of proto-Gibsonian model of
perceptual consciousness: consciousness is not a kind of mental accompaniment
to sensory contact, or even a downstream consequence of it; it is the very fact of
sensory contact with the world. According to the Vaibhāṣika, then,
consciousness is not a property, a thing, a process, but rather a simple relation
between a sensory/cognitive system and the world. In this system, note, nothing
answers to qualia; there are no special qualitative properties. Instead, in
perceptual experience we are immediately aware of ordinary external properties.
This direct realism, however, has difficulty accounting for perceptual illusion, as
perception itself is taken to be veridical.
The Sautrāntika system arises as a response to the difficulty the Vaibhāṣika
system has accounting for perceptual error or illusion. Sautrāntika is a
representational theory of mind, interposing a representation (ākāra/rnam pa
[nampa])18 as the direct object of awareness between the external object and
subjectivity. While for a Vaibhāṣika, when I perceive a patch of blue, I perceive
the patch directly, and the consciousness of that patch of blue just is the relation
between my perceptual apparatus and the patch of blue, for a Sautrāntika, that
consciousness is immediately of a representation of that patch of blue. The
representation is itself blue, but in a different sense from that in which the patch
is blue. It has blue content, or resembles the blue patch in some way.
It is here, if anywhere in the Buddhist tradition, that we come close to a
doctrine of phenomenal properties. For the Sautrāntikas, like the Vaibhāṣikas to
whom they respond, inner cognitive phenomena like representations cannot be
literally blue. On the other hand, if they are the immediate objects of perception,
since in perception we are conscious of blueness, they must be blue somehow.
Here we might say that the account of perceptual consciousness on offer trades
directly on the presence of blue qualia as mediators of our perception. We have
encountered this view in our discussion of Examination of the Percept and its
commentaries.
So, it might seem that the Buddhist world is friendly to an account of
perceptual consciousness in terms of qualia. But not so fast. We are only on the
second rung of the doxographic ladder. Yogācāra is presented as the next step in
sophistication, and as a response to an intractable problem posed by the
Sautrāntika representationalism, one that directly concerns the qualitative
representations it posits. The problem, as Buddhist theorists see it, is twofold:
First, if the blue representation is blue in a different sense from that in which the
blue patch is blue, or if it somehow resembles the blue patch, the only way that it
could mediate perceptual knowledge of the blue patch would be if we were to
know how it resembles the external patch, or how one sense of blue connects to
the other. But the very point of the representationalism is that we are cut off from
direct contact with the represented, and so have no idea what it might be like,
and so no idea of what is represented, or how.19
This is, of course, an anticipation of Berkeley’s argument against
representationalism in the second Dialogue. And like Berkeley, the Yogācāra
wield the argument in favor of idealism, arguing that since direct realism is
incoherent, as is representationalism, the direct and only object of conscious
experience is an inner state. A second argument deployed against the Sautrāntika
position is a simple regress argument: if the only way that we can be
perceptually aware of an external patch of blue is by directly perceiving
something qualitatively blue, then it would seem that the only way that we could
ever perceive a patch of qualitative blueness would be by perceiving something
that was qualitatively qualitative blue. And so on. That is, if the mediation of the
perception of a property by the perception of a second property is needed in the
first place, the perception of that second property should need similar mediation.
If it does not, there is no reason to think that the first does, either.
The view that there are phenomenal properties corresponding to the properties
of experienced objects, and that our perception of the properties of objects is
mediated by those phenomenal properties is well-known in Buddhist literature as
well. The eighth century Indian philosopher Dharmottara, in his Epitome of
Philosophy (Nyāyabindu), a sub-commentary on Dharmakīrti’s Commentary on
the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, considers and replies to a query regarding the
causal basis of perceptual intentionality:
Question: How can a single cognition have the relation of intended and
intentional?
Response: Since that cognition, experiencing the likeness of blue, is
established as apprehending blue by a thought that is a judgment (niácaya-
pratyaya), therefore the experienced likeness is the cause of intending. And
that cognition, being established as an experience of blue by a thought that
is a judgment, is what is intended. Therefore, a cognition’s resemblance,
which is realized by way of exclusion of what is unlike (apoha), is a cause
of intending; and the fact of being in the form of a thought of blue, which is
realized by exclusion of thoughts of nonblue, is what is to be intended.
(trans. Arnold 2009, 194–195)
The interlocutor here wonders how it could be that an internal state could have
both subjective and objective character, that is, to be, in this case, at once the
apprehended blue of an intentional object and the apprehender of that blue. The
reply is that the apprehended blue is grasped by means of a subjective aspect of
the intentional state which resembles that blue, which is subjectively blue. Now,
I think it is plain that this account falls prey to the same difficulties that afflict
contemporary perceptual theories according to which perception is mediated by
inner phenomenal properties that correspond to external properties. Nonetheless,
it is better off than most of these theories in one odd respect. Because this is an
idealist theory of perception, according to which there is no genuine external
object to be perceived, the two occurrences of blue are both mental. It is much
easier to see how one mental occurrence of blueness could be involved in the
perception of another in virtue of similarity than to see how a mental occurrence
of blueness could be similar enough to physical blueness to constitute the
mechanism by means of which an intentional state is directed on that property, as
Berkeley pointed out.
In a Yogācāra analysis of perceptual consciousness, the external object and the
distinction between subject and object drop out entirely. As a response to a
mediated view of consciousness, Yogācāra reinstates an immediate theory, but
one in which the only terms of experience are inner. On this view, perceptual
consciousness has no external object; to be conscious is just for a conscious
perceptual state to arise in cognition, and the analysis of the contents and
character of consciousness involves only attention to inner states. This view has
certain obvious advantages: it avoids the need to posit a layer of mysterious
properties that are not obviously explanatory, and it avoids what looks like a
nasty explanatory regress, with the claim that conscious states simply arise as a
consequence of propensities in the foundation consciousness, or, as we might put
it, our fundamental psychological architecture.
On the other hand, Yogācāra is not obviously successful as an explanation of
perception or consciousness, inasmuch as what looks like awareness of external
objects, and what looks like a distinctive mode of engagement with the world,
simply are explained away as the sui generis arising of conscious states from a
foundation consciousness. What looks like explanation seems more like the
positing of brute fact; while it looks like perceptual consciousness should arise
from a variety of causal factors, it ends up being a kind of explanatory surd.
Madhyamaka enters as the most sophisticated view, then, as a response to this
explanatory predicament. The Madhyamaka view of perceptual consciousness is
simple and sophisticated. Mādhyamikas analyze consciousness, as they analyze
all phenomena, as a set of relations, not as an independent phenomenon or
characteristic. In this case, perceptual consciousness is simply the fact of the
relations between a perceived object, a sense organ, a sensory system and the
conceptual and motor systems to which that sensory system is connected. Just as
the illusion of a self is resolved in favor of a network of interconnected
psychophysical processes, the illusion that there is a special property or center of
consciousness is resolved in favor of a network of processes.
That they constitute consciousness is simply the fact that they are perceptual,
conceptual, conative and affective. The properties they deliver are simply the
properties of the external objects we perceive, as they are delivered by our
perceptual processes.20 There is nothing more than that. This may feel
disappointing, as deflationary accounts often do, but, from a Madhyamaka
perspective, all that we lose in such an account is the illusion that there is more
in conscious experience than the psychology and physiology of experience. In
particular, reference to internal representations, qualia, phenomenal properties
and other such ghostly mediators of our experience drop away. Ontology
becomes cleaner, perhaps more naturalistic, and certainly more public, less
private.
I review this Buddhist doxography in order to point out that what is taken as
obvious in so much of the Western discourse on perceptual consciousness—that
it centrally involves something like qualia, qualitative properties or qualitative
concepts—is taken in this tradition as but one unstable moment early in a
dialectic, and a moment that emerges not from naive introspection, but from
reflection on illusion, as did the introduction of sense data in the early 20th
century. This dialectic, moreover, is not aimed at providing an analysis of a
special, singular property that makes our experience come alive, or confers
subjectivity to it, but at dispelling the illusion that there is any such singular
property. There are many kinds and degrees of consciousness on this view, and
they reflect the many kinds of ways that cognitive and perceptual processes
engage their objects. It is the engagement that constitutes, rather than gives rise
to, or is accompanied by, consciousness on this view.
I do not claim that this Madhyamaka view—or any Buddhist view—is
obviously correct, only that it is a voice with which to be reckoned. And
reckoning with this voice forces the theorist who takes something like the
qualitative character of experience to be real, and to be essential to
consciousness, to defend and not to presuppose that view. And the route to a
defense is not at all obvious. It also forces us to ask once again just whether
when we propose a theory of consciousness, we even know what we are talking
about, or whether the object of our theory exists. We may be doing something
akin to the biology of unicorns.
8. The Sense of Self in Consciousness
There is a major strand of theory in contemporary consciousness studies that we
have ignored so far, the neo-Husserlian phenomenological strand left hanging in
the previous chapter. On this view, consciousness is essentially bound up with
self-consciousness, and to understand what it is to be conscious is in the first
instance to understand what it is to be self-conscious. Dan Zahavi (2005) is a
sophisticated proponent of this view. He writes:
Although phenomenologists might disagree on important questions
concerning method and focus, and even about the status and existence of
the self, they are in nearly unanimous agreement when it comes to the
relation between consciousness and self-consciousness. Literally all the
major figures in phenomenology defend the view that the experiential
dimension is characterized by a tacit self-consciousness. (11)
This is intriguing. Of course this is not an argument for the claim that all
consciousness involves self-consciousness, but it does indicate a willingness to
take this as read as a starting point for investigation. Of course to say that all
consciousness involves self-consciousness is not yet to specify how it involves
self-consciousness, or what the nature of that self-consciousness is. It may be,
for instance, that self-consciousness is merely potential, and not actual; that it is
the mere consciousness of subjectivity, as opposed to the consciousness of a self;
it may be that it is the consciousness of a specific subject of experience. Let us
see how Zahavi specifies the account:
Self-consciousness is not merely something that comes about at the moment
one scrutinizes one’s experiences attentively…Rather, self-consciousness
comes in many forms and degrees. It makes perfect sense to speak of self-
consciousness whenever I am not simply conscious of an external object—a
chair, a chestnut tree, or a rising sun—but acquainted with my experience of
the object as well, for in such a case my consciousness reveals itself to me.
Thus, the basic distinction to be made is the distinction between the case
where an object is given (object-consciousness) and the case wherein
consciousness itself is given (self-consciousness). In its most primitive and
fundamental form, self-consciousness is taken to be a question of having
first-personal access to one’s own consciousness; it is a question of the first-
person givenness or manifestation of experiential life. (15)
Self-consciousness, then, is being “acquainted with my experience of the object
as well,” or “first-person givenness or manifestation of experiential life.” It may
seem obvious that when I see a blue sky I am not only acquainted with the blue
sky but with my experience thereof, and that I know my own life from a first-
person perspective. The latter fact, however, is a tautology. How else could I
know my own life? The sleight of hand that gives content to this formulation is
only apparent when we ask whether when an object is “given”—that is, when I
become perceptually aware of an object—my experience is also given—that is,
made aware to me—as a second object of awareness. This is not at all obvious,
and no argument is offered for it. For my part, when I perceive a sky, my
experience is exhausted by seeing the sky. If the experience of the object is
distinct from the experiencing of the object, I sense one object too many, and we
are pushed back to the Sautrāntika position, and the regress problems it raises.
Zahavi insists that his theory is no higher-order theory. Like Kriegel, he argues
that self-consciousness is intrinsic to consciousness, and not the result of a
moment of awareness itself becoming object of another state:
In contrast to higher-order theories, the phenomenologists explicitly deny
that the self-consciousness that is present the moment I consciously
experience something is to be understood in terms of some kind of
reflection, or introspection, or higher-order monitoring. It does not involve
an additional mental state, but is rather to be understood as an intrinsic
feature of the primary experience. That is, in contrast to the higher-order
account of consciousness, which claims that consciousness is an extrinsic
property of those mental states that have it, a property bestowed upon them
from without by some further states, the phenomenologists typically argue
that the feature that makes a mental state conscious is located within the
state itself; it is an intrinsic property of those states that have it. (20)
Thompson follows Zahavi closely:
Consider visual experience, When I see the bottle of wine in front of me on
the table, I experience (I am visually aware of) the wine bottle. But I also
experience my seeing. In experiencing my seeing in this way, I do not need
to introspect or reflect; my awareness is instead an implicit and
nonreflective one. I experience my seeing by living it nonreflectively.
(2007, 285)
From a Madhyamaka perspective, this is seriously problematic stuff. When we
say that a state is intrinsically conscious, we are stating that its being conscious
is independent of its relation to any object, to any perceptual system, to any other
psychological processes. Even philosophers like Dharmakīrti and Śāntarakṣita,
with their respective accounts of the primitive manifestation of subjectivity in
conscious states, took that subjectivity to be parasitic on their intentionality and
directedness to an objective content. Zahavi’s and Thompson’s view, on the
contrary, like Husserl’s, raises the possibility of a state being conscious, but not
being conscious of anything, and of the possibility of seeing without seeing
anything. The multiplicity of objects of experience is either gratuitous or
incoherent, and in its attempt to rescue consciousness and intentionality from
reduction, leave these phenomena as unexplained primitives. It is indeed difficult
to see how this makes sense at all. At this point, the Buddhist insistence that
consciousness is a relation, not a brute, intrinsic property is surely a voice
necessary to bring clarity to the discussion. The confusions entailed by this
version of phenomenology only multiply:
We are never conscious of an object simpliciter, but always of the object as
appearing in a certain way; as judged, seen, described, feared, remembered,
smelled, anticipated, tasted, and so on. We cannot be conscious of an object
(a tasted lemon, a smelt rose, a seen table, a touched piece of silk) unless
we are aware of the experience through which this object is made to appear
(the tasting, smelling, seeing, touching). This is not to say that our access
to, say, the lemon is indirect, or that it is mediated, contaminated, or
blocked by our awareness of the experience; the given experience is not an
object on a par with the lemon, but instead constitutes the access to the
appearing lemon. The object is given through the experience; if there is no
awareness of the experience, the object does not appear at all. (Zahavi
2007, 121)
At the end of this passage we have a conclusion that, at least from a
Madhyamaka perspective, is a reductio on the entire project. “If there is no
awareness of the experience, the object does not appear at all.” Once again, if the
experience is the appearance of the object, this is a tautology: If there is no
appearance of the object, there is no appearance of the object. The claim is only
contentful, though, if the experience is more than the appearance of the object, if
it is a special inner appearing. And there is simply no reason to think that when I
am aware of a blue sky, I am also aware of a second thing, namely its
appearance. This really does seem like a needless multiplication of entities, and
even worse, entities with obscure properties, obscure identity conditions, and
which turn no explanatory wheels. Once again, reflection on the Buddhist
tradition of thinking of consciousness not as some intrinsic property, but as a
relation between thinkers and their objects, suggests a route out of this morass.
All of this brings us back to the question of the meaning of the phrase “what it
is like,” that looms so large in current [Link] Kriegel (2009), as we
saw above, has helpfully distinguished two aspects of the intended meaning of
this phrase, what he calls qualitative character and what he calls for-me-ness. He
argues that any conscious experience must have both of these two
characteristics, that that is what it is like to be conscious. We have already found
reasons to doubt the need for consciousness to have some special qualitative
character. The discussion of subjectivity above can help us in dismissing the
need for for-me-ness.
Kriegel claims that consciousness consists in a kind of penumbral halo around
every experience, whether perceptual or cognitive, that reveals it as mine. Now,
he concedes that we have no introspective evidence for this. And we might add
that there is no experimental psychological evidence, either. The argument
would have to be philosophical. Rather than imagine such arguments, let us look
once again at the conclusion. If the argument is meant to show that when I have
an experience, it is mine, the claim is an empty tautology. But if the claim is that
beyond the experience of the blue sky, there is an experience of me seeing the
blue sky, and that that is not a higher-order or an introspective experience, we
are back to a regress-generating, explanatorily impotent inner state for which
there is no evidence, exactly the kind of position that Candrakīrti criticizes so
trenchantly.
I conclude that one consequence of this Madhyamaka take on consciousness is
that the phrase “what it is like” is simply devoid of any content, if it is meant to
apply to anything other than the objects of experience, and does nothing to
explicate consciousness. I can say what a blue sky is like: it is blue; what a red
sunset is like: it is red. But to go further and to say that there is something more
or different that it is like to see a blue sky or a red sunset is simply to obfuscate,
and to posit an ineffable, mysterious nothing as a mediator of my awareness of
the world. We will return to this issue and explore the sense of the phrase “what
it is like” in greater depth in the next chapter.
When we turn to the question of for-me-ness, things are even worse. For the
sense of being mine, and the sense of a self that is the subject of consciousness,
as we have seen earlier, are, from any Buddhist perspective, necessarily illusory.
For this character presupposes both the awareness of a subjective self and the
appropriation of the experience as belonging to that self. On any Buddhist view,
however, there is no such self, and there is no intrinsic possession relation
between a self and its experiences or faculties. There are only psychological and
physical states and processes, including sensory faculties that constitute
subjectivity. Together they form the basis of imputation of a conventional
person, but they do not constitute a self. So, to the extent that consciousness is
implicated with self-consciousness, it is not revelatory of its character, an idea
taken for granted in virtually all of this literature, but rather obscurational, or, in
Sanskrit, samvṛti, concealing. So, even if, despite the absence both of
introspective or scientific evidence, one felt compelled to posit this explanatorily
impotent property of consciousness, if the general Buddhist framework for
thinking about the self is at all correct, the consequence is only that
consciousness is necessarily opaque, distorting its own character as it presents it
and superimposing a deceptive subject-object duality. It might be better to
rethink this posit.

9. Zombies and Other Exotica in Consciousness Studies

We remain simply and necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we
must be confused about ourselves. For us this law holds for all eternity: “Each man is furthest
from himself”—where we ourselves are concerned, we are not “knowledgeable people.”
—Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

No discussion of contemporary views of consciousness would be complete

without a discussion of some of the central examples—real and imagined—that
animate that discussion. For part of what makes it appear obvious that
consciousness is some special thing or property with a nature either intrinsic or
extrinsic is that we are invited to imagine the difference between conscious and
unconscious states or beings, and to imagine in them in ways that they constitute
what Dennett once called “intuition pumps” (1980). It is time to dispose of those
once and for all, following the lead of the Buddhist-inspired analysis offered thus
far.
Zombies perhaps play the leading role in this philosophical horror show. They
are deployed effectively by Chalmers (2010) among others to argue that there is
a special “hard problem” about consciousness, in virtue of the fact that there
could be beings functionally exactly like us, but obviously unconscious—
zombies. Now, nobody claims that these zombies are nomologically possible; the
claim is rather that they are metaphysically possible. Let us leave aside for now
(though we introduced the topic in chapter 1 and will return to this issue in
chapter 7 below) what metaphysical possibility amounts to, and how we can
determine what is metaphysically possible. Let us rather ask whether, even on a
generous reading of the relevant modal metaphysics and epistemology, zombies
so understood are metaphysically possible. We shall see that in taking them to be
so a question is being begged, and that the begging of that question is obvious
from a Buddhist perspective.
Zombies are nonsentient duplicates of us. There are two ways to characterize
the sense in which they are duplicates, however. We can think of them as
physical duplicates without qualitative states or as functional duplicates without
qualitative states. There are good reasons to prefer the second option
dialectically. If we are asked to imagine physical duplicates of us who lack any
cognitive states at all, we might simply balk at the imaginative exercise. That is
an exercise in special effects: we are asked to imagine something that appears to
be a duplicate, but is not. I might as well be asked to imagine a triangle whose
interior angles sum to 100º. The fact that I claim to be able to do so would be no
guide to metaphysics, only to my own strange imaginative powers, real or
illusory. It is at least prima facie more interesting to imagine zombies who are
physical and functional duplicates of us, but who lack only qualitative states. If
we can make sense of this, we might motivate a dualistic theory of
consciousness, and this is the goal of the zombie exercise. It is for this reason
that dialectically, even if zombie discussions begin with physical duplicates, they
quickly move to a discussion of functional duplicates.
In this context, a functional duplicate must be understood as a being with the
same beliefs, desires and other intentional states that we have, but who lacks any
states with qualitative character. The idea here is that intentional states are
relational, and can be characterized in terms of their typical causes and effects—
their relations to stimuli, to behavior and to other intentional states; to have
qualitative character, however, is taken to be monadic, to be intrinsic to the state
itself. This is what gives zombies their plausibility, and the hope that their
possibility can illuminate the nature of consciousness, and hence their starring
role in contemporary Western philosophy of mind. But does it yield possibility?
At least in a non-question-begging way?
Let us focus on the fact that a zombie is meant to be functionally—that is,
cognitively—identical to a human being, but lacking in qualitative states. If it is
not really cognitively like us, there is really nothing of interest here. For then, all
we are really imagining is a special effect: something that appears to be human
in interesting senses, but is not—a product of PIXAR, perhaps. Or we are asked
to fall back on the implausible—and not obviously imaginable—target of a
physical duplicate that behaves exactly like us, but with nothing inside. The
important point, then, is that despite behavioral equivalence—and hence, at least
prima facie, cognitive equivalence—there is nothing “that it is like” to be the
zombie. It has no genuine experience, no consciousness. One can feel the pull of
intuition here. (Though I note, non-probatively, but as an anecdotal aside—that
nobody I have ever met from a Buddhist culture has found the case even vaguely
intuitively compelling.)
Now, we can see the problem for this device: for the qualiaphile zombologist,
(1) our beliefs about our perceptual states are caused by the qualitative character
of our states, as are our introspective beliefs that we have experience; (2)
zombies are cognitively/functionally identical to us; (3) zombies perceive the
world (unconsciously) and believe that they have qualitative perceptual states;
but (4) their beliefs are not caused by any qualitative states, because they lack
them; their perceptual beliefs and their introspective beliefs that they have
experience are false. It is obvious that these four claims are inconsistent with one
another. Together they constitute a reductio on the hypothesis of the
metaphysical possibility of zombies.
I do not want to go too far down the path of zombie debates, a path that leads
through many thickets. I do note that Chalmers, among others, does reply to this
argument. He argues (2010) that (1) is false, because the relation between
qualitative states and qualitative beliefs is one of constitution, not causation.
Hence, he argues, zombies don’t have beliefs about qualitative states. This reply
is patently question-begging. First, it requires a unique set of intentional states
that are in part constituted by their objects, but second, it denies the obvious
possibility that false qualitative beliefs are possible, in which case there is no
way to tell whether we are zombies. He denies (2) on the grounds that whereas
our states are caused by (or constituted by) qualia, zombies’ states are not. But
this would be to deny that zombies are enough like us to be duplicates, as
opposed to mockups. It is thus hard to see how one can mount a non-question-
begging argument for the possibility of zombies.
So, when we claim that zombies are devoid of qualitative states, while
claiming that our own are cognitively relevant to our lives, we can no longer
claim that zombies are cognitively like us. This conclusion only reinforces the
Madhyamaka insight that consciousness is not a thing, or a unitary property, but
a complex set of relations. Moreover, it shows that the very supposition that
zombies are possible is equivalent to the supposition that there is a discrete
something—qualitative character, or consciousness—that we can simply subtract
from ourselves to get some other possible entity, the zombie. That supposition is
not only false, but is the conclusion of the argument of which the possibility of
zombies is meant to be a premise. (See Garfield 1996, as well as Braddon-
Mitchell 2003, Hawthorne 2002 for more detailed discussion of this problem as
well as Dennett 2003, Harman 1990 and Webster 2006 for other reasons to
distrust zombie intuitions.)
 It might appear that in a book about the importance of Buddhist philosophy to
Western philosophy I am spending far too much time on this issue. There is a
reason for this attention, though. Zombies don’t show up in Buddhist discussions
of mind and consciousness, and there is a reason that they do not. To be sure,
they are meant to provide arguments for the non-physical status of
consciousness, and just as there are modern dualists about the conscious and the
physical, there were, and are, Buddhist dualists about these matters. These
Buddhist dualists should welcome this line of argument, were it sound. But
Buddhist philosophers saw that one can’t simply treat consciousness as a simple
thing or property that one either has or does not; it is a complex of states,
processes and capacities; and Mādhyamika Buddhists like Candrakīrti and
Tsongkhapa saw that we can’t just look inside and report on the nature of our
psychological states; nor can we say a priori what kinds of things have or lack
any of these kinds of consciousness. These lessons are both apposite here; either
would have forestalled the descent into this peculiar rabbithole wonderland.
Illusions of consciousness confirm this sensible approach. The well-known
phenomena of inattentional blindness (Most 2010; Most et al. 2005; Rensink
2000b; Rensink, O’Regan and Clark 1997; Noë 2007; Simons 2000a, 2000b),
change blindness (Rensink 2001, 2002, 2004; Noë, Pessoa and Thompson 2000;
Simons and Ambinder 2005) and blindness to the anisotropy of the visual field
suggest that not only do we refer to a motley, complex set of processes and states
as conscious, and so that there is no unitary phenomenon to be called
consciousness, but also that we are not introspectively authoritative regarding
the objects and properties to which we are responding. The well-known
phenomenon of masked priming (see for instance Masson and Isaak 1999)
demonstrates conclusively that our cognitive processes respond to stimuli of
which we had to be conscious, but which we cannot report, and of whose effects
on our thought we are completely ignorant. Our conscious life is, rather than
being transparent, opaque; rather than revealing our subjectivity often occludes it
and its nature.
All of this suggests that while it appears that we know ourselves and our inner
life intimately from a first-person point of view, a point of view that can provide
immediate data for a theory of that life, in fact, we are strangers to ourselves, and
what we take to be immediate data may be nothing more than illusion. Not only
is there nothing that it is like to be me, but even my judgments of what particular
experiences are like are likely to be useless. If zombies are possible, we may
well be zombies. If they are not, we learn nothing about consciousness from the
thought experiment. Once again, the Madhyamaka insight that the mind, and
even consciousness, are hidden, rather than manifest phenomena, known only by
inference, and through imperfect processes, can be a useful corrective to the easy
use of introspection, speculation and shallow phenomenological analysis.
Blindsight raises further problems. Blindsighters affirm sincerely that they
cannot see, are introspectively unaware of any vision, and form no articulable
beliefs about the visible objects in their immediate environment (Collins 2010,
Danckert and Rossetti 2005, Ptito and Leh 2007). Nonetheless, they navigate
successfully around obstacles using only visual cues and reliably reach in the
right place and for the right objects in forced choice situations, while insisting
that they are only guessing. If we take consciousness to be necessarily
transparent, or introspectible, or available for verbal report, or revelatory of our
subjectivity, or as “feeling like something,” or to satisfy any of the
characterizations prevalent in the Western literature, we would have to conclude
that blindsighters are not visually conscious.
Blindsighters’ actions, however, are modulated by sensorimotor processes that
are shared by ordinary sighted people, and blindsight might well be exactly like
the visual mechanisms that subserve the visual experience of infrahuman
animals, who may well not introspect and who do not report their visual
experience. And it would be odd to deny them any consciousness. From a
Buddhist perspective, there is no immediate reason to believe that all visual
consciousness is introspectible, or that we are capable of reporting and reflecting
on all that we see. Blindsight on this model simply involves the presence of one
kind of consciousness in the absence of other kinds. Visual consciousness is
present—there is receptivity and responsiveness to visual information—but this
is not transmitted to introspective consciousness. Once again, this perspective,
like this phenomenon, suggests that the construct of consciousness as an entity
or property is just too simple to do justice to that which it is called to explain.

10. The Epistemology of Self-Knowledge

Though clouds’ illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all.
—Joni Mitchell.

Madhyamaka and Yogācāra accounts of the mind remind us of the complexity

and limitations of introspection. Even the most optimistic and, we might say,
naively realistic accounts of the introspective sense faculty we find in the
Buddhist literature remind us that it is very much a sense faculty. As such, even
if its objects are in some sense, or in principle, known by such a sense faculty,
they are known fallibly. If they are intrinsically self-revealing, on the other hand,
while they are not then known through the mediation of a human sensory
system, to the degree that we take up that knowledge and make use of it, it is
only subject to higher-order reflection. And such reflection is imperfect on a
number of dimensions, and is always deeply inflected by our conceptual
framework. As a consequence, we can’t think of introspection as a veridical
means for simply delivering the inner world to subjectivity. Just how we can
think of it is a complex matter.
Finally, and consequent upon this insight regarding the fallibility of the
introspective sense, a review of Buddhist accounts of the project of self-
knowledge reminds us that we may be massively confused about its structure,
about its object and about the epistemic credentials of introspection or
phenomenological reflection as tools for the use in the development of a theory
of mind. (Schwitzgebel 2011 makes similar observations.) To inquire into the
nature of self-knowledge in the first place is to grant that we don’t know how it
works, and so to grant that these seemingly obvious instruments may be entirely
deceptive. So not only are the objects of introspection delivered in an opaque
way, but the instruments we use, and even the data delivered by those
instruments are, in a deep sense, opaque to us. Self-knowledge becomes very
elusive indeed.21
To use introspective data themselves, and to treat them as constituting an
unproblematic given in that investigation, is then to treat the investigation as
complete before it has begun. If we truly don’t know what the mind is, how it
works, or how we might know about it, considerably more epistemic humility
regarding what seems evident to us as we reflect on it may well be in order. If we
learn nothing else from the Buddhist tradition of reflection on the mind than this,
reflection on that tradition is well worth the trouble.
What does all of this suggest for current discussions of self-knowledge? While
one cannot simply map Buddhist debates onto current debates, I do think that the
dialectic we see developing from 5th-century India through 15th-century Tibet
helps us to appreciate both the perils of immediate first-order accounts of self-
knowledge, and the degree to which taking higher-order views seriously forces
us closer to taking knowledge of our inner lives to be very much like knowledge
of the external world. We are thus led to accept a serious falliblism about
introspection, and to appreciate the complex and problematic role of inference
and theory in making sense even of higher-order perceptual processes. All of this
means that what we might take as unproblematic explananda for, or
commonsense intuitions to be accommodated by, theories of self-knowledge,
might instead be illusions or delusions to be explained away.
Long ago, Dennett (1991) made the same point, perhaps channeling Buddhist
ideas unawares. He distinguishes between two approaches to phenomenology
(44–45). The first takes as its task the mapping of our inner life, of inner
episodes, processes and experiences as they are—of the structure of
consciousness, we might say—taking as authoritative introspective reports of
that inner world and our sense of what it must be like. The second takes as its
task mapping the claims that people make about their inner life and the popular
lore about what consciousness and its contents must be like—a kind of
anthropology of phenomenological reflection.
While it might appear that the former is serious philosophy and the latter is
merely a superficial survey of attitudes, Dennett points out that only the second
has any respectable epistemic credentials. We can know what people say about
their inner lives; but only if we take people to be oracular about those lives do
we have any grounds for taking the inner appearances or experiences they report
seriously as entities, and that requires an improbable model of introspection, one
taken for granted by almost everyone in the contemporary consciousness
literature in virtue of regarding our intuitions about our own inner experience as
constituting the data to which a theory of consciousness must respond.
From a Buddhist perspective, we can recast this as the distinction between
exploring an illusion versus taking that illusion for granted as reality. We know
that our inner sense, like our outer sense, is fallible; we know that we tend to
reify ourselves and to take our introspective awareness as well as our external
perceptual faculties as more reliable than they are. We know that our
understanding of our lives is deeply theoretically infected and that our theories
are always tentative. To take what introspection delivers as reality is therefore,
from a Buddhist perspective, simply to embrace delusion. On the other hand, to
take what we believe about introspection seriously as a matter for reflection is to
take delusion as an object for study, and that may be the first step not to an
oracular understanding of an inner reality, but at least to an understanding of our
own capacity to obscure whatever that reality might be.
The Chan/Zen tradition offers one more insight we might well consider in
closing. In distinguishing between (1) acting thoughtlessly; (2) acting with
thought and (3) acting without-thinking, Zen theorists challenge us to reconceive
the omnipresence and necessity of self-consciousness in consciousness as well as
the introspectibility and explicit availability to reflection of conscious
experience. Consider the mastery of a skill, such as that of playing the piano or
playing football. One first might bang away at the keys or kick the ball aimlessly
about the pitch with no particular thought; we might even say that one is not
conscious of what one is doing. Perhaps the mind is elsewhere; perhaps there
just aren’t the conceptual resources to make sense of one’s activity. But with a
bit of coaching and prompting, one begins to play with thought, attending to
where one’s fingers are on the keys, to how one strikes the ball, to where one’s
teammates are on the field. At this point, perhaps, we might think that one is
acting with maximum consciousness.
But of course when real expertise clicks in, all of that thought that was once so
necessary to guide action drops off. Action becomes automatic. One is no longer
able to say where one’s fingers are, of what key is to be struck next, of the angle
of one’s foot, or even who is where on the field. One just plays, spontaneously
and expertly.22 Now, in one sense, that of explicit access to what is going on, that
of phenomenal feel, or of self-consciousness, there is no consciousness. But this
is a straightforward reductio on these criteria of consciousness. From the
standpoint both of Chan theory and of common sense, it is in this kind of expert
performance that consciousness is most manifest and most present, when our
responsiveness and effectiveness are at their maximum, when we are most fully
engaged, most fully present. Once we realize this, we might reflect on the fact
that most of what we do—walking, interacting with one another, cooking,
reading—we do with something like this expert consciousness. This is the stuff
waking life is made of, and in this mode of engagement, the world is, as
Heidegger would put it, ready-to-hand, not present-to-hand, in a mode of
conscious engagement that is not introspected, in which the subject is not present
even as periphery, and in which both higher-order and reflexive thought is
absent. We will return to this topic in more detail in the next chapter.
This suggests that a Buddhist perspective can do a great deal to enrich
contemporary discussions of consciousness. It brings a suite of insights that can
refigure debates and ways of thinking about the topic. Instead of seeing
consciousness as a singular phenomenon, a natural surd perhaps requiring non-
natural explanations, the Buddhist asks us to think of consciousness as a family
of relations that subjects might bear to their objects. Its different levels and
manifestations may require very different kinds of explanations. But in each case
they will take the form of natural explanations of the relations between
psychological processes and their conditions or objects, not mysterious powers
of a self or subjectivity.

1. It is important to note that I am using this term not in the original sense in which it was introduced by
Block (1995), but in a sense that has become more common since then. Block used it to denote access to
external information, as in the case of blindsighted individuals, who in his sense have access to information
about objects in their environment despite lacking any of what he called (and what I will call) phenomenal
consciousness. I instead use this term to denote access to one’s own inner states. Below I will call that to
which Block refers as access consciousness as responsive consciousness. I think that this vocabulary is
more intuitive, and accords more with ordinary usage these days.
2. And of course the contemporary literature is replete with alternative classifications of kinds of
consciousness.
3. This is sometimes called creature consciousness. But this term may beg questions regarding whether
there is a common phenomenon in this neighborhood across phylogenetic types.
4. The exception is that body of literature deriving from Heidegger’s attention to mood as structuring
subjective consciousness.
5. But see Harman (1990, 1996), for instance, for a very different view of qualia, not as direct objects of
consciousness, but as aspects of a transparent relation to distal objects.
6. Of course they are also the objects of access and responsive consciousness, but that is beside the present
point.
7. This term as well deserves comment. saṃjñā, unlike perception, connotes a kind of discriminative
awareness, and even a linguistic, or quasi-linguistic awareness, what we would call perception-as, as
opposed to a mere undifferentiated awareness.
8. This term can also have the sense of volition, or intention to act. And so it shares the ambiguity of
intention in English. But that sense is not relevant to the present discussion. For more on the range of the
term, see Meyers (2010) and Heim (2013).
9. It is important to remember in this context, as we noted in that context, that the mere fact that we imagine
such things is no guide to fundamental metaphysics. This doesn’t entail that we are something entirely
distinct from our body, our mind or our aggregates, only that when we take ourselves to be selves in that
sense, these reveries seem to make sense. The imagination exercise, then, tells us a great deal about what
we take ourselves to be, but nothing at all about what we actually are. This does not mean, however, that
considerations of these exercises are metaphysically idle. When we are interested in what a self would be, it
is essential to fix on the object of negation, to make it clear, even if our purpose is to demonstrate its
nonexistence.
10. Once again, it is worth recalling the similarity of this view to that of Husserl and his more recent
followers, such as Zahavi (2004, 2005) and Thompson (2007).
11. We leave aside here the hard-to-characterize state of awakening, in which that consciousness undergoes
a complete transformation and becomes an objectless awareness.
12. Whether there is non-perceptual phenomenal experience is another fascinating question we will leave to
one side, as it has no bearing on the issues at hand here.
13. The material in this discussion related to Alaṃbanaparikṣā and its commentaries is from as yet
unpublished joint work with John Powers, John Makeham, Sonam Thakchöe, Douglas Duckwkorth, M
David Eckel and Dan Lusthaus, supported by the Australian Research Council.
14. Kriegel, at the time he wrote this, was unaware of the Buddhist antecedents to (and critiques of) his
view. I do not want to suggest, however, that he remains unaware of them. In any case, it is instructive to
read his argument in the context of those antecedents.
15. Expressivist views, such as those of Shoemaker 1994 and Bar-On 2004, share with the self-luminosity
view the sense that self-knowledge is immediate, as opposed to being mediated by additional cognition, but
these views distance the subject slightly from the state known, requiring an act of profession. One way of
putting this point is that while on the self-luminosity view, it is impossible to be in a conscious mental state
without knowing oneself to be in that state, on the professing view, it is possible to be in such a state, and
only to come to know it when that state finds explicit inner or outer expression.
16. On the other hand, some Buddhist traditions, particularly meditative or tantric traditions, do rely heavily
on the introspective reports of trained and experienced meditators, taking those reports to provide
compelling evidence regarding the nature of cognition. Whether this is an epistemically warranted practice
is a real question, both in Buddhist epistemology and in contemporary contemplative neuroscience. On the
one hand, science requires observational data, and trained observers are better than untrained observers. On
the other hand, trained observers can easily find only what they seek, and in the introspective domain
calibrating the observer is difficult, if not impossible. I note this issue only to set it aside for another time.
17. Doxography of this kind, common in India, Tibet and China, might strike the Western philosopher or
historian of philosophy as a bit exotic and odd. But of course we engage in doxography as well to organize
our own canon, even if we don’t go in for the hierarchies that characterize Buddhist views. We have our
Platonists and Aristotelians, rationalists, empiricists, Kantians, idealists, realists, and even HOT, HOP and
FO theorists in the present debate. Doxographies are, of course, both useful heuristics for understanding the
history of philosophy and polemical strategies for shaping it. Here we follow a fairly standard, and clearly
polemical, Tibetan doxographic framework. (See Hopkins 1996 and Cabezón 1994, as well as Gregory
1991 for more on Buddhist doxography.)
18. This term has a very complex semantic range and functions in many ways as a technical term in
Buddhist epistemology and philosophy of mind. In some contexts it is best translated as aspect; in others as
image or form. (Think of the many ways in which idea is used in early modern philosophy as a parallel.) A
complete exploration of Buddhist theories of ākāra would take us far afield and would require a substantial
volume of its own. For a very fine exploration of the role of this term and the phenomena it denotes in
Buddhist epistemology see Kellner and McClintock (2014).
19. Here especially (but throughout this discussion) I simplify considerably, eliding substantial
disagreements among philosophers in these schools in favor of a broad brush. The reader interested in the
details of these debates should refer to Coseru (2012), Dreyfus (1997) and Kellner and McClinock (2014).
20. It is important to note here that despite their important differences along other dimensions, the Yogācāra
and Madhyamaka traditions are united in the view that there are not two, but instead one set of such
properties. Despite the fact that Yogācāra offers an idealist account of perception and Madhyamaka a realist
account, neither posits both a set of empirical and a set of phenomenal properties in order to explain
perceptual experience.
21. We should note in this context, however, that there is a very different position also represented in
classical Indian Buddhist philosophy, one which attracts a great deal of attention both in the Indian and
Tibetan literature and in contemporary Buddhist Studies and cross-cultural phenomenology. (See especially
Coseru 2012, Thompson 2011 and the essays in Siderits, Thompson and Zahavi 2013.) That is the position
of Dignāga and his followers, according to which we have immediate verdical access to our own perceptual
states, in virtue of their being self-presenting and reflexive. We will consider this position in detail in the
next chapter. This is the position against which Candrakīrti and his followers react. See Coseru (2012) for a
defense of this position.
22. Compare Merleau-Ponty (1962) on the embodiment of skill.
6 PHENOMENOLOGY
The term “phenomenology” is rather elastic in contemporary philosophical
discourse. Broadly speaking, it is the study of the nature of experience, of the
cognitive processes and structures that enable experience and of the nature of
subjectivity. Phenomenology is concerned especially with the first-person point
of view, with a deep exploration of subjectivity. None of these phrases is as clear
as we would like them to be, but then neither is the topic itself.
In the West, the tradition of phenomenology is complex and replete with
differences in perspective and position. It is fair to credit Husserl with the
introduction of phenomenology as a particular kind of philosophical inquiry—a
transcendental inquiry into the conditions of the subjectivity of experience,
conducted by a bracketing of ontological questions regarding the status of the
objects of experience—and as an alternative both to metaphysics and
epistemology as they were practiced in the 19th century. Thompson characterizes
the Husserlian program eloquently:
Phenomenology, in is original Husserlian inspiration, grows out of the
recognition that we can adopt in our own first-person case different mental
attitudes or stances toward the world, life and experience. In everyday life
we are usually straightforwardly immersed in various situations and
projects…Besides being directed toward these more or less particular,
“thematic” matters, we are also directed at the world as an unthematic
horizon of all our activity. Husserl calls this attitude of being
straightforwardly immersed in the world “the natural attitude,” and he
thinks it is characterized by a kind of unreflective “positing” of the world as
something existing “out there” more or less independently of us.
In contrast, the “phenomenological attitude,” arises when we step back
from the natural attitude, not to deny it, but in order to investigate the very
experiences it comprises. …We are to attend to the world strictly as it
appears and as it is phenomenally manifest. Put another way, we should
attend to the modes or ways in which things appear to us. We thereby attend
to things strictly as correlates of our experience, and the focus of our
investigation becomes the correlational structure of our subjectivity and the
appearance or disclosure of the world. Things remain before us, but we
 investigate them in a new way, namely, strictly as experienced. (2007, 17–
18)
Nonetheless, it would be unduly restrictive to regard all phenomenology as
Husserlian. Husserl emphasizes the “bracketing” of the external object of
intentional states and the analysis of the intentional, temporal and transcendental
structure of the conscious states and their immediate intentional objects
themselves. Heidegger, on the other hand, emphasizes the immediate
embeddedness of subjectivity in the world, and argues that such bracketing is
impossible, or at least a terrible distortion of the nature of experience.
For Merleau-Ponty our embodiment and the ways in which feeling, perception
and action structure our experience are the central phenomenological facts. In
Sartre’s work, by contrast, self-consciousness takes center stage, with an
emphasis on social relations and moral experience in the wings. And de
Beauvoir emphasizes the central roles that gender and gender relations play in
phenomenological reflection. Phenomenology then, even as practiced by the
great luminaries of the European movement, is a multifaceted phenomenon.
Nonetheless, it has a recognizable core: the reflective investigation of the nature
and of the transcendental conditions of the possibility of subjectivity.
Much contemporary phenomenological reflection, while drawing on the
insights and methodology of these “classic” figures in the European
phenomenological tradition, draws heavily as well on contemporary cognitive
science. For if the goal of phenomenological reflection is to understand the
structure of experience, and the motor, sensory, social, ecological and intentional
processes that together constitute that experience, we do well to heed what
science tells us about how we actually work. Reflection has its place, but then so
do empirical data. And so we see recent work in phenomenology by such
philosophers as Gallagher (2007, 2012a, 2012b), Noë (2004), Kriegel (2007),
Levine (2001), Carruthers (2000), Zahavi (2004), Thompson (2014), Metzinger
(2003) and others (Thompson and Zahavi 2007, Thompson, Lutz and Cosmelli
2005, Thompson and Varela 2003) relying explicitly on empirical psychology as
well, giving birth to the burgeoning field of neurophenomenology.
I say all of this because while there is this vast diversity in approaches to
phenomenology, and hence a tendency to fight over the term, it is fair to say that
the domain is reasonably well limned; it is broad enough, however, to
countenance a wide variety of approaches to detailing its geography. Broadly
speaking, when we do phenomenology, we ask what it is to be a subject, and
more specifically, what it is to be a human subject. This inquiry may well begin
with introspection, but it can hardly end there, and all phenomenologists are
insistent on the difference between phenomenological reflection and mere
introspection (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008, 23–24). Introspective data, as we
argued in the previous chapter, themselves tell us very little—at best what the
most manifest contents of our experience are at a single moment. And even that
may well be subject to the distortions of an imperfect introspective faculty.
The data of introspection, to the degree to which they are given to us
discursively, require interpretation, and so, as Heidegger emphasized, a
hermeneutic method is necessary to the enterprise of phenomenology. Moreover,
introspective data are always particular. General reflection therefore requires
analysis, inquiry into the transcendental conditions of experience of any kind,
and reflection on the alternative modes of being and consciousness of which
humans are capable. Phenomenology, that is, is theory. And hence it is always
contested, even though the apparent immediacy of the data with which we begin
might suggest no room for doubt or disagreement.
We can put this point in a slightly different register by distinguishing between
a “naive” and a “jaded” view of introspective evidence. On the naive view,
introspection is both easy and veridical: we just look inside, and our inner life is
presented to us just as it is, with no possibility of illusion or error. On this view,
there is all the difference in the world, to use Kantian terminology, between inner
and outer sense: Outer sense is mediated and fallible; inner sense immediate and
infallible. On the jaded view, when we look inside, our inner perception is as
clouded, subject to error, and as theoretically infected as any external perception.
Our inner sense may be subject to cognitive illusion; our observations may be
biased by theory; we may have inadequate conceptual resources to characterize
what we find, and so may be unable to achieve any judgments regarding the
nature of our inner life in which we have the right to place any confidence. That
is, on the jaded view, our access to our inner life is mediated, just like our access
to the outer world. It is mediated both by the faculty itself by means of which we
introspect, which functions, as I argued in the previous chapter, as a kind of
inner measuring instrument—but an instrument the operations and fidelity of
which are opaque to us—and by the conceptual resources we use to formulate
the judgments that encapsulate our views about our inner life, concepts of whose
adequacy to the domain we use them to limn we must remain uncertain. On the
jaded view, then, as I argued in the previous chapter, there is good reason to be
leery about the data of introspection.1
One last preliminary note is in order. Since Thomas Nagel’s landmark essay
“What Is It Like to be a Bat?” (1974), the phrase “what it is like” has come to
dominate Anglophone phenomenological discourse. Some would even
characterize phenomenology as the study of “what it is like to be conscious” or
to characterize consciousness as “a state that there is something that it is like to
be in.” Zahavi says that “most people are prepared to concede that that there is
necessarily something ‘it is like’ for a subject to undergo an experience…”
(2005, 15). Kriegel takes it as unproblematically obvious that “there is
something that it is like for me to have my experience” (2009, 8). Galen
Strawson writes of “the wholly concrete phenomenon of the experiential ‘what-it
is-likeness’ of experience” (2013, 102). Coseru even glosses the Sanskrit caitta
(or mental constituent—the fundamental phenomena that constitute mental
events and processes) as “the what-it-is-likeness of experience” (2012, 69). And
even Schwitzgebel, no friend of the phenomenological mainstream, defines
consciousness as “whatever it is in virtue of which (in Nagel’s 1974
terminology) there is ‘something it is like’ to be you, or a bat, and (presumably)
nothing it’s like to be a rock, or a toy robot” (2011, 93–94). We could continue
this perp parade for quite a while.
Nagel’s phrase has legs, to be sure. We have considered it above and will
return to it below, but for now I would like to set it aside. Let us just note for
now that the very nominalization it involves suggests a particular; a particular
we could come to know. This may well be an instance of what Wittgenstein
called “the decisive move in the conjuring trick” (Philosophical Investigations
§308) the one we don’t notice but that saddles us with an entity that we come to
take for granted, and strive to understand—a set of inner mechanisms and
phenomena—just like external, physical, mechanisms and phenomena, only
neither external nor physical! We should begin our investigation instead with the
idea, already suggested in the previous chapter, that there may well be nothing
that anything is like, just because that phrase is empty, and see where we our
investigation takes us. This move is suggested by Carruthers (2011) and
Metzinger (2003) as well.
We will proceed by moving between Western and Buddhist approaches,
drawing on the fruits of the last few chapters. I am spending so much time on
preliminary discussions of the phenomenological enterprise because I think that
phenomenological reflection is absolutely central to—but easy to miss in—
Buddhist philosophy. It is easy to miss because it is not thematized as such.
Buddhist phenomenological reflection is undertaken often in what appears to be
a metaphysical, epistemological or even psychological or soteriological register,
and it is hence easy to overlook the fact that in a particular case (and we will
consider cases below) what is really at issue is phenomenology.
Phenomenology is central to Buddhist thought, because in the end, Buddhism
is about the transformation of the way we experience the world. It begins with an
analysis of how ordinary beings take up with the world, and how that engenders
suffering. Buddhist analysis continues with an account of the cognitive and
intentional structures that constitute that mode of comportment. The whole point
of that analysis is to conclude with an account of how they can be transformed
so as to enable us to experience the world without engendering suffering. And of
course that requires an account of what the structure of such a consciousness
would be. One way to think of Buddhist philosophy, then—though not the only
way—is phenomenology at the beginning, the middle and the end.

1. Surface versus Deep Phenomenology

There is fiction in the space between you and reality.
You would do and say anything
To make your everyday life seem less mundane.
—Tracy Chapman

We need to begin with a distinction between two kinds of phenomenology,

which I call “surface” and “deep” phenomenology reflecting the similar
distinction that commentators such as Zahavi [2008] draw between
phenomenology as introspection and phenomenology as transcendental analysis.
Phenomenological reflection, even careful, illuminating reflection, and
observation by sophisticated, trained observers, is directed in the first instance,
almost by definition, at those cognitive states and processes that are accessible to
introspection. Indeed, this is often what some philosophers and psychologists
mean by “phenomenology”—the inner world of which we have, at least in
psychological principle, conscious awareness, and which we can describe. (See
Dennett 1978b, 182–186 and Metzinger 2003, 36.) It is not always easy to
introspect in a revealing way, of course, and reasonable people disagree about
what one finds when one does look within and especially what it is to look
within, but we have a pre-theoretic fix on this inner world and our access to it.
The sophisticated articulation of its contours is what I call “surface
phenomenology.”
The term “surface” here is meant not to disparage the sophistication of such
reflection, or of the theories of mental life arising therefrom, but to emphasize
that phenomenology in this sense—as sophisticated introspection—penetrates no
further than the surface of our cognitive lives, necessarily only to that which can
in principle be observed, not to the non-introspectible processes and events that
underlie and generate it. This point will be clearer once we contrast surface with
deep phenomenology.
Deep phenomenology is the inquiry into the fundamental cognitive, affective
and perceptual processes that underlie and which are causally or constitutively—
biologically or metaphysically—responsible for those we find in introspection.
This is necessarily an experimental and theoretical enterprise, not an
introspective one. It is the enterprise undertaken in the West not only by such
philosophers as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and de Beauvoir as
well as their contemporary heirs, but also by such psychologists as Simons
(2000a, 2000b); Rensink (2000b); Lutz, Dunne and Davidson (2007); Lutz and
Thompson (2003); Brefcynski-Lewis et al. (2007); Farb et al. (2007); Khalsa et
al. (2008); McLean et al. (2010); Moore and Maliniowski (2009); Shear (2004);
Shear and Jevning (1999); Raffone, Tagini and Srinivasan (2010); Varela (1996,
1999); Varela and Shear (1999); and in the Buddhist tradition first in the
development of the Abhidharma, later by such philosophers as Asaṅga,
Vasubandhu, Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśila, and elaborated at length in various
Chinese and Tibetan traditions.
To get a feel for the difference, consider your visual field. Right now. Is it
colored or black and white? Uniform or gappy? Simultaneously or successively
apprehended? Precedent or subsequent to the fixation of attention? These are
questions about the phenomenology of perception. In each case, the answer is
not simple: shallow and deep reflection yield very different answers, although
each is accurate at its respective level, and each must be taken seriously in a
complete phenomenological analysis of human perception.
Most of us experience our visual field as richly colored from left to right, top
to bottom. That is true, but shallow. We also know that only the central 10% of
the field is actually processed in color: the rest is black and white, with the color
experience filled in by, not delivered to, central processes. Our deep visual
phenomenology is hence largely monochrome; the lebenswelt of our surface
phenomenology is a construction from the ur-welt of our deep phenomenology.
(See Stiles 1959, Hurvich and Jameson 1960.) Understanding how this happens
causally is a matter for the psychology of perception; understanding its
significance for our self-understanding and for the interpretation of our
experience is a matter for philosophical phenomenological reflection.
We experience our visual field as uniform in character. We have already noted
that this is not so from a chromatic point of view at the deep level. But things at
the deep level are even worse: There are holes at the center of our visual world
where the optic nerve enters the retina. While these holes not introspectible, and
hence not a fact of surface phenomenology, they set a task for the visual system
in the construction of our introspectible experience. Moreover, our visual field is
delivered to us in the form of two slightly different images that must be
integrated by the visual sense faculty. At the surface level we see one world; at a
deeper level, two. Philosophers and psychologists in the West since Goethe and
Schopenhauer have been aware of this phenomenon.
Finally in this parade of now commonplace facts about our visual system at
the surface level, we experience our visual field as present to us simultaneously
from edge to edge. But we know that at a deeper level, only small parts of it are
being processed from the bottom up at any moment; the arc of our vision is
generated not by a photographic transfer of what is in front of us to
consciousness, but through a constantly updated stitching together of moments
of apprehension of different zones within that field. What is experienced as a
still photograph at the surface level is a filmstrip—or a pair of damaged
filmstrips—at the deeper level. (See Fisher and Weber 1993 for a good
discussion.)2
Recent research into inattentional blindness (Most 2010; Most et al. 2005;
Rensink 2000b; Rensink, O’Regan and Clark 1997; Noë 2007; Simons 2000a,
2000b) has only amplified our sense of the disjunction between the deep and
surface facts of our phenomenology. Inattentional blindness really is blindness at
the level of surface phenomenology. But we know that a refocusing of attention
eliminates that blindness. We don’t see (at the introspectible level) the gorilla
when we are counting the basketball catches; we do see the gorilla when we look
for it. But this also tells us that at a more fundamental level—the deeper, non-
introspectible level—information is cognitively available and that it is actively
suppressed before reaching surface consciousness. That filtering, like the
invisible seams that stitch together our visual field, and like countless other such
processes that we only discover through careful experimental paradigms, is
essential to the construction of the surface phenomenology we enjoy (Simons
2000a, 2000b). There is far more to experience than meets the eye, or even than
meets the most careful and honest introspection.
For this reason, we must countenance the possibility of significant error in
introspection, just as we recognize the possibility of significant error in external
perception. Some of this error derives from simple inattention to our current
states; that may be remediable by psychological training, or just by the
resolution to attend more carefully to our own lives. Some of that error may be
caused by the adoption of inadequate or confused conceptual schemes as the
categories in terms of which we understand and report to ourselves our own
inner lives. After all, the unit of introspective knowledge, just like the unit of
perceptual knowledge, is the observation sentence, not a mere feeling, and
sentences require predicates, which require conceptual schemes.
There are multiple ways in which we might report our inner lives. Some are
the stuff of Western folk psychology; some the categories or orthodox Indian
philosophy of mind; some the frameworks of the Abhidharma, and some the
stuff of complex tantric texts. None has a privileged claim to correctness. Then
there is the possibility of simple introspective illusion. Our introspective sense
may be as subject to illusion as are our external senses. And finally, summing up
all of these issues, is the simple fact that our introspective faculties are opaque to
us. There is no guarantee that what our introspective sense delivers bears any
relation to anything really going on at deeper levels of our minds.
Why call this deeper level of our psychological life phenomenological at all?
For several reasons. First, it is essential to understand this deep level in order to
understand our surface phenomenology. This is not only the stuff waking life is
made of; it must also be the stuff that awakened life is made of. Second, in the
quest to understand what it is to be conscious, we need to understand not only
that which we can report in introspection, but that which is waiting in the wings,
sometimes introspectible in principle, but even if not, accessible to processes
that appear to be making cognitive decisions that determine the character of our
inner life: attend to this, not to this; patch this remembered bit into this hole;
keep the field steady, even though the retinal image is moving, and countless
other such decisions. We will see this drive to treat these subconscious,
subpersonal processes phenomenologically despite their opacity to introspection
mirrored in Yogācāra Buddhist discussions of distorted consciousness
(kliśṭamanas) and the foundation consciousness below.

2. The Complexity of the Interior

Buddhist philosophy of mind and psychology generally promise accounts of
deep phenomenology as an explanation of our surface phenomenology. Buddhist
accounts of perception, memory, attention, and suffering typically refer to states
and processes to which ordinary persons do not have introspective access. And
many claims for meditative practice and expertise are claims to access these
deep states in meditative equipoise; indeed the reports of meditators are often
important—though not the only—evidence for certain Buddhist claims about
deep phenomenology. These accounts of consciousness are robust theoretical
accounts precisely because they operate at this level, and the fact that processes
at these levels are regarded by most Buddhists as conscious processes is the final
reason that it makes sense to treat this level as a phenomenological level of
analysis. Indeed, one of the important features of Buddhist phenomenology is its
identification of a variety of cognitive processes as kinds of consciousness, and
hence an early insight into the complex, multilayered, and often cognitively
impenetrable character of consciousness itself. As we have already seen, debates
about the degree to which consciousness is transparent to itself are important in
Buddhist philosophy, and while Buddhist philosophers offer us deep theoretical
insights into conscious life some of the deepest insights are into its ineliminable
opacity.
Consideration of deep phenomenology raises complex questions about the
nature of consciousness. The philosophy of cognitive science has lately been
much preoccupied with the nature of consciousness, and indeed there is welcome
new dialogue between phenomenologists and cognitive scientists, as is evident
by the success and quality of The Journal of Consciousness Studies and a host of
recent books, articles and research programs too numerous to cite and too fecund
to ignore. Buddhist philosophy has been focused on the nature of consciousness
for much longer, and it might well be useful to attend to the results of that
sustained reflection (as indeed many contemporary cognitive neuroscientists
have under the auspices of the Mind and Life Institute dialogues over the past
quarter century).
Some (see, e.g. Wallace 2008, 2009) have argued that the greatest contribution
that Buddhist philosophy can make to cognitive science is an account of the
nature of consciousness born of meditative introspection into the deep
phenomenology that underlies our ordinary thought. Proponents of such a view
argue that consciousness is immediately knowable, self-revealing and hence
always in principle the object of veridical apperception. The reasons advanced
for this position are far from convincing. They rely either on the assurances of
experienced meditators that when they look inside they know what they see, and
that their results are stable, or on an a priori claim that there can be no
appearance–reality gulf in the domain of the psychic interior. But neither line of
argument is compelling. Beyond the manifest circularity of relying on the
testimony of trained introspectors that trained introspection is veridical, the fact
is that meditators in different traditions find different things when they look
inside. Hindu meditators find their ātman; Buddhist meditators find its absence,
and so on. And this is not surprising given the falsity of the claim to the
transparency of the inner. As we saw above, there are simply too many veils
between naive introspection and our cognitive interior for there to be any
security in introspective reports.
And this view is far from unanimous in the Buddhist tradition, canonical or
modern. On any Buddhist view, as we have seen, consciousness is a many-
leveled phenomenon. The coarsest levels of consciousness are on all accounts
introspectible by ordinary agents in ordinary states; the subtler levels, however,
are the ones that matter for an understanding of the nature of our experience, and
these, most traditional scholars argue, are too deep for most of us to introspect.
These deeper and more subtle levels of consciousness—what many in cognitive
science might regard as analogues to unconscious cognitive processes—are,
according to some (but not all) Buddhist traditions, accessible to the
introspection of highly advanced meditators. Many Buddhist scholars, however,
such as Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa, argue that no human who has not attained
full awakening (and they are very special beings indeed) could ever pretend to
know the mind at all through introspection—that it is a hidden phenomenon
from all ordinary beings.3
The transparency of the depths of the mind is hence a matter that is up for
discussion in the Buddhist world. But very similar considerations apply to
surface phenomenology, once we penetrate beyond mere appearances. Here we
may be tempted by the image of immediate direct access to our own minds, a
temptation common to Western and Buddhist epistemologists. But we must ask
ourselves whether this assumption of the possibility of immediacy, of pure,
uncontaminated apperception, actually makes sense at any level. Or must our
access to the mind always be theoretically mediated? If so, what are the
consequences of that mediation for our self-understanding, self-consciousness,
and for the structure of subjectivity itself?
Prior to all of these questions is a meta-question about questions concerning
consciousness. Some (but not all) Buddhists share with some (but certainly not
all) cognitive scientists and some (but not all) phenomenologists a tendency to
think of consciousness as a kind of thing, or at least as a discrete property. We
can then ask, as we did in the previous chapter, how many kinds or loci of
consciousness there are, whether they are physical or not, what the neural
correlates of it are, whether machines can have it, etc. These questions may or
may not be interesting, and may or may not have answers. But they share a
common presupposition which must be interrogated in either tradition, viz., that
there is something (or even some things that cluster meaningfully into a natural
kind) denoted by consciousness, awareness, jñāna/shes pa (shehpa),
vedanā/tshor ba (tzorwa), rig pa, and other such terms about which these
questions can meaningfully be asked. We have introduced these issues in the
previous chapter, but we now must engage them in more detail.
So far, we have been discussing the vijñānas, or cognitive functions, as kinds
of consciousness, and that is natural. But part of what we regard as the landscape
of consciousness in the West is subsumed in a Buddhist taxonomy not under
vijñāna, but rather under vedanā/tshor ba, usually translated as feeling,
awareness or sometimes as hedonic tone. The latter translation captures the fact
that vedanā is experienced on a continuum from unpleasant to pleasant. But the
former captures the fact that it is associated with the immediate sensory
experience of a perceptual episode and that there is a separate kind of vedanā for
each of the six sense faculties.
We can think of vedanā loosely as the sensory component of perceptual
experience; it is pre-conceptual, and is immediately and primitively affective.
The pleasurable scent and red sensation is vedanā; the awareness of it as an
experience of a rose is vijñāna. Like vijñāna, vedanā is introspectible; unlike it,
it is non-conceptual; it contributes the affective tone and sensory character to an
episode of vijñāna, and gives rise to that richer form of consciousness. Buddhist
and Western accounts of conscious phenomena may therefore often be accounts
of different phenomena.
Now, the preliminary discussion of a Buddhist anatomy of consciousness in
the previous chapter barely scratches the surface, just as we have barely
scratched the surface of Western accounts of consciousness. Specific accounts of
the operations and structure of different cognitive processes underlying our
conscious life are rich, complex and various in that tradition. But it is enough to
see that the Buddhist tradition carves things up a bit differently than does the
Western tradition. Neither, when adumbrated with any sophistication, regards
consciousness as a unitary phenomenon. But they see the complexity of
conscious life as demanding different kinds of analyses, and different kinds of
taxonomies. This would be surprising only if we thought that our conscious life
is self-presenting. Instead it must be recovered by careful theoretical reflection,
and theoretical reflection can yield different results if undertaken from different
starting points. The Western philosopher typically starts from a horizon of a
primordially given individual, unitary subjectivity; the Buddhist with the view
that the experience of a self is necessarily illusory.4
The fact that consciousness is neither a unitary phenomenon nor is
immediately available to introspection, or even to introspection supplemented by
a priori reflection, means that deep phenomenology as an enterprise is essential
to understanding ourselves. It also means that deep phenomenology is hard. It
requires us to use techniques of examination that rely on theory and experiment,
not simple observation, however sophisticated that observation may be, or
however difficult it may be to cultivate it. The mind guards its secrets as
jealously as any other natural phenomenon. It also means that we had better pay
attention to insights that others may have, inasmuch as there may be no cultural
Archimedean fulcrum for understanding the mind. Let us now explore in detail
one Yogācāra exploration of the structure of subjectivity, one that takes up with
the topic in a way radically distinct from any we find in the Western tradition.
While we cannot hope to survey all Buddhist phenomenological approaches, or
indeed all of those within the Yogācāra tradition, I hope that this will serve as an
example of the utility of attention to this tradition as a way to deepen and to
extend Western thought about these matters, and as encouragement to dialogue.

3. Trisvabhāva Theory and Yogācāra Phenomenology

Phenomenology is not metaphysics, but an alternative to it. Rather than ask
about the ultimate nature of things, as the metaphysician does, the
phenomenologist asks about our mode of subjectivity in relation to those things,
and the way they manifest themselves in our lebenswelt. Nor is phenomenology
epistemology; again, it is an alternative, asking not whether or how we know
about objects in the world, but rather about how we are aware of the objects that
figure in our experience, whether veridically or not. Now, to be sure—and this is
one of the attractions of the phenomenological project—important metaphysical
or epistemological conclusions regarding human life might fall out from
phenomenological analysis, but the project itself is one of interrogating
experience, not its transcendental objects, if indeed there are any.
As we noted at the outset of this chapter, there is a distinction to be drawn
between a phenomenological investigation of the kind Husserl conducts, in
which bracketing the external world plays a central part, and one of the kind
Heidegger conducts, in which such bracketing is regarded as literally incoherent.
That methodological contrast structures much of late 20th- and early 21st-
century Western phenomenology and its debates. Perhaps it need not have done
so. Perhaps these are not as radical alternatives as they appear. Vasubandhu’s
phenomenological reflection might help us to get beyond that.
Vasubandhu introduces near the end of Treatise on the Three Natures
(Trisvabhāvanirdeśa), the last text he wrote, 5 a simile drawn from the Discourse
Unravelling the Thought in order to illustrate the relationship between the three
natures. The specific characters of these natures, their role in phenomenology,
and the structure of conscious experience that arises from Vasubandhu’s account
will become clear as we proceed. The simile refers to what appears to be a
classical Indian roadside magic show in which (the details are hazy, and my
attempts to replicate this feat have failed spectacularly) a magician uses a piece
of wood or a pile of sticks as a prop, and somehow—allegedly by the use of a
mantra that affects the minds of those in the audience, though it is important to
the simile that only the magician really knows how the trick works—causes the
audience to see these sticks as a real elephant. In the opening verses of this
section (27 and 28) Vasubandhu tells us that our perception of external objects is
in some sense like the perception of the elephant by the naive villagers in the
show. There is no elephant. But we must be careful to see what corresponds to
the elephant as we adumbrate the simile.
27. Like an elephant that appears
Through the power of a magician’s mantra—
Only the percept appears;
The elephant is completely nonexistent.
28. The imagined nature is the elephant;
The other-dependent nature is the visual percept;
The non-existence of the elephant therein
Is explained to be the consummate.
29. Through the foundation consciousness
The nonexistent duality appears.
But since the duality is completely nonexistent,
There is only a percept.
30. The foundation consciousness is like the mantra.
Reality can be compared to the wood.
Imagination is like the perception of the elephant.
Duality can be seen as the elephant.
Let us first consider in more detail the three natures as Vasubandhu deploys
them. The imagined nature is purely projected and is completely unreal, just like
the elephant. The imagined nature is, on this account, the nature that we
superimpose on our experience in virtue of our cognitive processes, not a nature
that the objects of experience supply from their side. This is a first pass, and we
will have cause to render it more precise as we proceed. But for now note that it
need not be understood as externality, as on an idealistic reading of Yogācāra.
The dependent nature of any percept is the fact that it depends for its character
as a percept on the structure of our perceptual and conceptual apparatus. Our
percepts depend upon us; we only imagine them to be presented to us with all of
the qualities we supply. So, to take an example we discussed above: Our visual
field is imagined to be uniform in grain and in color. But it is not. The surface
phenomenology is imaginary; that experience depends upon our constructive
cognitive processes.
Just so, with the sticks used by the magician: they can be correctly perceived
as a pile of sticks by the side of the road, as a prop for a cool trick, or mis-
perceived as an elephant. The consummate nature is the absence of the imagined
in the dependent, that is, the fact that since our introspectible experience depends
on mind, it is empty of those qualities we superimpose, and of a dualistic relation
to my subjectivity. Just so, the fact that there is no real elephant in the pile of
sticks is their actual nature, what is to be understood if one sees through the
trick. Let us now work deeper into Vasubandhu’s perspective.

3.1 To Bracket or Not To Bracket: Phenomenological Reduction

From a phenomenological perspective, we can ask the question that divides
Husserl from Heidegger in the European tradition: Does it make sense, in order
to understand the structure of human experience, to bracket the external world,
or not? That is, do we gain insight from focusing solely on the nature of inner
experience without considering its external objects or causes, or do we distort
our experience in doing so? And if the latter, how do we attend to the external
side of our experience while retaining a phenomenological attitude. In the
discussion that follows, I will consider Indian Buddhist arguments in favor of
bracketing and against it. We will see that there are compelling arguments for
bracketing, against bracketing, for adopting both perspectives, and finally
arguments that neither perspective is coherent in the first place. This discussion
will illuminate the deep and surprising connections between Yogācāra
phenomenology and Madhyamaka accounts of selflessness.

3.1.1 Bracketing the External World

I wish to consider a perfectly naturalistic motivation for and interpretation of
phenomenological bracketing—the suspension of consideration of the external
reality of the objects of consciousness in order to focus on the structure of
consciousness itself. We will then extend this to a phenomenological inquiry
trading on Vasubandhu’s analysis in the verses under consideration. What is it to
consider our experience to be all that is available as data for reflection? It is to
recognize that to be subjects of experience—as central nervous systems on
which our conscious states supervene—is to be dependent on input systems
under the control of external forces6 that generate my experiences. It is also for
all of my efferent activity to result in actions or their effects (karma) whose
reality is only apparent to me through those same afferent pathways. In short, it
is to have no unmediated access to reality—that is, for all of my access to reality
to be mediated by my cognitive and sensory apparatus.7 It is also for all of the
mediation to be through media opaque to my consciousness, and for it to be
impossible to verify the veracity of these media independently. They are as
opaque, one might say, as the operations of a magician at a good magic show. To
take this situation seriously and to restrict ourselves in analysis to what we know
immediately is to perform Husserlian epochē.
And we should take this enterprise seriously. My brain, as far as I can tell, and
as far as the best scientists (real or imagined) tell me, is housed in a human body.
It is indeed—if I can believe my experience at all—hooked up to input devices
(the afferent nerves and blood supply) that are indeed controlled by external
forces, including—in Quine’s felicitous phrase—sensory irritations, in turn
perhaps caused by such things as external objects, the chemistry of my blood,
and other such causes and conditions. And indeed it is only through these
afferent pathways that I can have any knowledge of the effects or reality of my
own apparent activity. I have no direct unmediated knowledge of any reality
independent of these sensory inputs, and their actual nature and relation to
whatever might lie beyond them is indeed opaque to me.8
Note—and this is the first reason that Vasubandhu is an important partner in
this conversation—that this epochē is not idealist.9 It is neither to deny the
materiality of the brain, nor of the body, nor to deny the reality of the world to
which I have only mediated access. There is a tempting way to take this in an
idealistic direction: One could argue (with Dignāga and his followers) that the
objects of my experience—the percepts in my sensory fields, for instance—
inasmuch as they are only the inner effects of distal causes about which I know
nothing, are purely mental. So, one would argue, in a somewhat Berkeleyan vein
—albeit a vein that leads us directly to the more nuanced view articulated by
Kant—that nothing I ever know exists externally to consciousness. This includes
my brain, and the body that encloses it; so whatever physicality might
characterize whatever might exist in some other, unknown way, nothing I
encounter is physical.
But we should resist this idealistic temptation, for at least two reasons. First, it
begs the ontological question in a subtle but important way. Consider the tulip
Berkeley’s Hylas places before me. Even when I grant that the experience of the
tulip is an inner event, caused proximally by the input to my brain, to argue that
the tulip just is the experience of it presupposes its conclusion—that perception
is not a causal interaction with a distal object but a mere conscious episode.
Berkeley may be able to achieve a standoff—maybe—but certainly not victory
on this terrain.
Second, and more importantly—and we will have reason to reflect more
carefully on this later—as Kant (as well as Tibetan Geluk philosophers such as
Tsongkhapa, Gungthang and Dendar) was to argue, what goes for the tulip goes
for the percept, too. Just as we cannot treat the external object as a thing known
as it is itself, in abstraction from the sensory and cognitive faculties that deliver
it to us, we cannot treat our inner experiences as things in themselves known
apart from our inner sense, or, as Vasubandhu would call it, our introspective
consciousness—manas-vijñāna. This, of course, is the central point made by
Kant in the “Refutation of Idealism” in the second edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason. There Kant argues that the idealist cannot infer that the external world is
nonexistent, or at least inaccessible to knowledge, on the grounds that our
knowledge of external objects is mediated by perception, whereas the inner
world is obviously real, or at least better known to us, on the grounds that our
knowledge of the inner is immediate. This is because, he argues—following the
analysis of inner sense in the Transcendental Aesthetic—our knowledge of our
inner states is subject to the form of our inner sense, and to the categories of
judgment. The idealist would then be forced to agree that the inner is as
problematic ontologically or epistemologically as the other. The asymmetry that
idealism needs cannot be established.
The idealist, that is, needs a wedge that distinguishes the outer from the inner,
giving privileged status to the latter; but all that is forthcoming is a distinction
between experience and its object. This distinction is ontologically neutral. Note,
for instance, that we can talk in English, as well as in Sanskrit, Chinese or
Tibetan, both of real and of unreal objects of cognitive or physical acts. One can
describe, wish for, or aim at the existent as well as the nonexistent. The
act/object of distinction instead distinguishes only the subjective from the
objective aspects of a cognitive act, enabling an anatomy of experience, but not
an investigation of reality. With this distinction between idealistic and
phenomenological readings of our embodiment, let us return to text in question
to see what it would be to read Vasubandhu in this way:
27. Like an elephant that appears
Through the power of a magician’s mantra—
Only the percept appears;
The elephant is completely nonexistent.
28. The imagined nature is the elephant;
The other-dependent nature is the visual percept;
The non-existence of the elephant therein
Is explained to be the consummate.
29. Through the foundation consciousness
The nonexistent duality appears.
But since the duality is completely non-existent,
There is only a percept.
 30. The foundation consciousness is like the mantra.
Reality can be compared to the wood.
Imagination is like the perception of the elephant.
Duality can be seen as the elephant.
Verse (27) sets out the example. In the example, the elephant is nonexistent,
because the example is a conjuring trick. In (28) Vasubandhu tells us that the
elephant is analogous to the imagined nature, and so we are to conclude that that
nature is what is unreal in the same sense that the elephant is unreal in the
conjuring trick, and in (30) he specifically identifies the elephant with duality,
and hence, by transitivity, duality with the imagined nature. So, if we focus
specifically on this set of verses, Vasubandhu argues that subject–object duality
is unreal, and that, just as the mantra causes the elephant to appear, that duality
in our experience is caused to appear by our foundation-consciousness, or what a
Western neurophenomenologist could call our neuro-cognitive processes.
Perception in Vasubandhu’s scheme has as its material condition or de re
object (alambanā/dmigs rkyen [mikkyen]) reality or a pile of sticks, but delivers
as the character of its intentional object (artha/don [dön]) a subject–object
duality absent from reality itself, or a hallucinated elephant. While the
intentional object of perception is denied existence independent of the mind,
neither perception nor the external world that occasions it is even interrogated
ontologically here. Vasubandhu hence argues that our ordinary experience
involves a confusion of the nature of experience with the fundamental nature of
reality, caused by instinctive cognitive habits of which we are unaware, and
leading us to ascribe the subject-object duality we superimpose in consciousness
to reality itself as it is independent of that superimposition, thus confusing
construction with discovery. This point is driven home in (28) and (29)—the
verses that link those we have been examining. Here the point to be realized (28)
is that there is no elephant at all in reality—that subject–object duality is
imaginary, and that it arises (29) through our cognitive processes, in which we
confuse a real percept with the unreal structure of subject standing over against
object.
Vasubandhu hence shows that a phenomenological bracketing reveals part of
the structure of my subjectivity. My experience (the dependent nature,
characterized as percepts) is the joint product of a reality that I never directly
apprehend (the sticks) and a set of psychological processes that are opaque to me
(the mantra, or root consciousness). To the extent that I take my experience to be
a direct deliverance of reality, to exist as it appears to me, or to be, qua
experience, external to me, or even transparent to me, I am simply deceived.
 I am, however, qua subject, also a pile of sticks by the side of the road. For, as
I have been emphasizing, in foregoing the idealist’s distinction of outer versus
inner, in turn mapped to real versus unreal, in favor of the phenomenologist’s
distinction between act and content, my own existence as subject is rendered as
problematic as the existence of the object I confuse with an external cause of my
experience. Where I seem to come upon a world neatly divided into me, the
experiencer and it, the experienced, all I find instead is experience.
The division into subject and object, and the subsequent reification or
deprecation of one with respect to the other, depending on how I take things, is
my contribution, not my discovery. So, then, on this view, what am I? I am,
independent of my experience, just what the elephant is: a pile of sticks beside
the road that I have never encountered directly, and, short of complete
awakening, or Buddhahood, never will. The implications for the immediacy of
self-knowledge and for the status of introspection are profound, as we shall see
below.

3.1.2. On the Other Hand, Maybe We Should Not Bracket!

Just as Western phenomenologists are far from unanimous regarding the utility
of epochē, so are Buddhists. Just as Western philosophy includes both idealistic
and realistic voices, so does the Buddhist tradition. In order to enrich our reading
of Treatise on the Three Natures, let us introduce Candrakīrti into this
conversation. While he is often a foe of the Yogācāra analysis, and certainly a
foe of any idealism, he has something to contribute here. We will begin by
considering Candrakīrti’s reasons for rejecting idealism, and then we will see
how his insights take us one step deeper into Vasubandhu’s dialectic. In
Autocommentary to an Introduction to the Middle Way Candrakīrti argues that
any attempt to discredit the reality of external objects yields arguments that, if
cogent, discredit the reality of the self as well. Let us consider the relevant verses
and autocommentary:
92. If there is no matter, don’t hold on to the existence of mind!
If mind is existent, on the other hand, don’t hold on to the nonexistence
of matter!
Thus, although one might think that there is no matter, since they stand or
fall together, you would have to also think that there is no mind. And if you
think that there is mind, you have to also think that there is matter. Both of
them are thus obviously mundane realities. And scripture supports this:
 92cd. The Buddha rejects them in the same sense in the Perfection of Wisdom,
And treats them similarly in the Abhidharma.
According to the Abhidharma, everything from aggregates like that of
matter to such things as particulars and universals are subject to the same
detailed analysis. And in the Perfection of Wisdom, all five aggregates are
rejected in the same way from “Subhuti, matter is empty of intrinsic nature”
to “consciousness.”
93. Thus, you would destroy the framework of the two truths—
That which is established by scripture and reason—
Since your substance has been refuted, it cannot be proven to be real.
Having asserted that even though there is no matter, there is only
consciousness, how can you maintain the framework of the two truths? You
would have destroyed it! Having destroyed the framework of the truths, you
cannot prove your substance to be real. “Why is that?” you might ask.
Because since substance has been refuted, all of your effort will be
pointless.
93de. Therefore, according to a correct understanding of this framework,
Ultimately nothing arises; conventionally, arising makes perfect sense.
…
96. The Buddhas have taught that without an object of knowledge,
It is easy to eliminate the knower.
Since without an object of knowledge, the knower is refuted,
They begin by refuting the object of knowledge.
The glorious Buddhas first show through the analysis in terms of
fundamental particles that everything lacks intrinsic nature. Then it is easy
to engage with the nature of the bearer of karma. …Once the ultimate
existence of the object of knowledge and its selflessness has been
demonstrated, in the same way that they show them to be selfless, the
Buddhas easily show that consciousness and the knower are selfless. The
arguments that show the object of knowledge to be selfless show the subject
to be selfless. (2009:180–187)
Here, Candrakīrti emphasizes several points relevant to the present discussion.
First, mind and matter stand and fall together. Any argument that can be used to
undermine the reality of the material world can be used to undermine the reality
of the mental. Now, to be sure, here he takes his target to be Yogācāra idealism,
and he is worried principally about the ontological status of mind and matter. In
that sense, we can see Candrakīrti as anticipating Hume by a bit over a
millennium, arguing that Berkeley’s attack on the reality of material substance
works just as well against mental substance.
On the other hand, Heidegger saw, the argument transposes nicely to the
phenomenological domain. Any argument for bracketing the reality of the
external object of knowledge is equally an argument for bracketing the reality of
the subject. To the extent that we have cause to see the object as a mere
construction, the subject we take to be its constructor may also be such a
construction. To the extent that we are entitled to take the subject for granted as
part of the horizon of consciousness, since its subjectivity consists in its
engagement with objects, we are entitled to take the object for granted. (See
Haugeland 2013 for an excellent discussion.)
Second, Candrakīrti emphasizes that to treat the subject and object differently
is to violate the framework of the two truths. Neither is ultimately existent;
neither is a substance. Both are conventionally existent; both are part of the
everyday world. The only reason for so much emphasis on the status of the
object in Buddhist scriptures, he argues, is that the analysis of the emptiness of
the object paves the way for the homologous analysis of the emptiness of the
subject. Once again, the emphasis on the non-substantiality, but conventional
existence, of both subject and object anticipates Hume, and the emphasis on the
need for both subject and object to constitute a world of everyday engagement
anticipates Heidegger.
So, while Candrakīrti attacks the conclusion he takes the Yogācārins to
defend, viz., that the mind is more real than external objects—that while external
objects are entirely imaginary, the mind is real, and that it must be, if it is to be
that which experiences and imputes reality to an unreal external world—he
thereby neither reifies the external world nor does he deny the reality of mind.
Candrakīrti argues instead that the same arguments that show external objects to
be mind-dependent, impermanent and without any ultimate entity show the
mind, or the self, to be mind-dependent, impermanent, and with no entity of its
own.
The subject, Candrakīrti argues elsewhere in this text, is not a unitary thing,
but a composite of a myriad of functions, each itself composite; it is not
something that can be identified over time independent of our representation of
it; he contends that it is dependent for its existence and character on innumerable
causes and conditions. The self we experience and posit, the referent of the first-
person pronoun, he concludes, is merely a conceptual, verbal designation on the
basis of that causal stream, not even that stream itself.
162. In the same way, in virtue of being taken for granted in everyday life,
And since it depends on the elements and the six sensory domains,
One can say that the self is indeed the appropriator.
Just as the self depends upon such things as the five aggregates, the chariot
depends upon such things as the wood, the traces and wheels. Just as it is
the appropriator, so is the chariot. Nonetheless, since the self is
conventionally real—is accepted by mundane nominal conventions without
analysis—one can, just as in the case of the chariot, call it the appropriator.
It is the appropriator of such things as the five aggregates, the elements and
six sensory domains; thus it is a dependent designation based upon such
things as the aggregates. …
Thus, we maintain that this framework of appropriator and appropriated is
merely conventionally designated, just like the framework of agent, action
and object. It is all just like the chariot.
162d. The agent is just like the appropriator.
Since it is a dependent designation, and is merely dependent, it doesn’t
actually have any characteristics such as being dependent or independent;
and it cannot be conceived as permanent or impermanent.
163. Since it is not an existent object, it is not dependent.
Nor is it independent. It neither arises nor ceases.
Nor does it have properties such as permanence or impermanence.
Nor does it have identity or difference.
…It makes no sense to say that something cannot be found through the
sevenfold analysis is either permanent or impermanent. …
164. That self to which beings constantly develop
The attitude of self-grasping
And with respect to which the attitude of grasping as mine arises
Is only apparent when not analyzed, and arises out of confusion.
…Even though it doesn’t exist, as a result of confusion, it is posited by
convention. So, it doesn’t appear to advanced practitioners…(262–268)
We know ourselves, Candrakīrti argues, not directly, but only imperfectly, using
a conceptually mediated inner sense that is just as fallible as any outer sense.
Candrakīrti’s refutation of idealism, like Kant’s, proceeds, in Kant’s words, by
“turning the game played by idealism against itself” (Critique B276), that is, by
demonstrating first that idealism is essentially a contrastive doctrine, assigning
the mind or the inner world a greater degree of reality than physical objects, or
the external world, and second, that it fails in its attempt to distinguish those
degrees of reality.
What does this all have to do with Vasubandhu’s phenomenology or indeed
with the nature of subjectivity? Well, once we see that the essence of idealism is
the ontological contrast it draws between mind and the material world, we see
that the drive to bracket the external world in order to characterize experience is
already an idealistic move. I take my experience to be real; the world I imagine,
I take to be, well, imaginary. Candrakīrti’s analysis bites here. Husserlian
bracketing takes my access to the external world to be dubious, but my
knowledge of my immediate cognitive state to be secure. I know that I am
experiencing a world containing trees and birds, but I leave open the ontological
status of those trees or birds.
But none of this makes sense. For if the fact that my knowledge of the
external world is mediated makes the epistemic status of the world dubious and
renders coherent the claim that it is unreal, then the same goes for my self and
my own experience. My knowledge of my own inner states and experience is
mediated by my introspective processes. My representation of myself as a
continuing subject of experience requires a conceptual construction of a unity
from a multiplicity of cognitive processes and states occurring over time. I have
no better knowledge of my inner life than I do of the external world, and no
greater assurance of my own reality—if that means the kind of reality that
persons have—than I do of that of the external world. So, if to be a subject
means to be something assured of its own reality in intimate, veridical contact
with its own experience, but with only dubious, mediated access to the external
world, which may indeed by nonexistent, I am not a subject.
Once again, not only are there strong resonances between Candrakīrti’s
analysis and those of Kant, but there also are intriguing affinities to important
insights of Wittgenstein both in his treatment of self-knowledge in Philosophical
Investigations and in his discussion of idealism and certainty about the external
world in On Certainty. In §§305– 308 of Philosophical Investigations,
Wittgenstein notes the ways in which we use our conception of external
phenomena as models for understanding the mind, leading us to posit inner
mechanisms—mechanisms we neither observe nor whose nature we really
understand. The critique of behaviorism and of mechanism, in the context of
which these observations occurs, need not concern us here. But the insight that
our self-knowledge is not immediate, given by an infallible inner sense, is
important. We can join this with the Sellarsian insight (1963) that to the extent
that we think of our inner episodes as significant, as meaningful, we understand
them on the analogy of language, and language can only be a public
phenomenon, inasmuch as meaning emerges from rule-governed behavior, and
rules require communities to constitute them. Our inner life and subjectivity is
hence constituted in part by our social context. We exist as subjects only
conventionally.
This hermeneutical turn, of course, also has strong resonances with
Heidegger’s treatment of intentionality and of our interpretations of ourselves.
On this view, to the extent that we think anything at all, or think that we do, we
do so in virtue of being members of actual linguistic and epistemic communities.
This entails that if I am a mind at all, and if I know myself at all, to bracket the
external world in order to understand experience is no option.
In his consideration of Moore’s refutation of idealism in On Certainty,
Wittgenstein returns to the theme of the social dimension of knowledge. He
argues persuasively that since knowledge is justified true belief, and since
justification is a social practice that must be learned from others, and which is
responsible to evidentiary practices and arguments that get their warrant from
their reliability and their acceptance by others, knowledge is possible if, and only
if, we participate in epistemic communities in the context of a world against
which our claims are tested. Moreover, he argues, doubt is an epistemic activity
that must be learned, and whose felicity conditions are socially and
pragmatically determined.
Doubt, moreover, presupposes a background of true beliefs. To doubt a
proposition requires one to know how to doubt, what justifies doubt, what it
would be for the proposition to be true, and so on. Genuine doubt is impossible
in the context of massive Cartesian error. These epistemic attitudes, like all
others, are not individualistically characterized psychological states, but are
norm-governed social epistemic practices. Therefore, even to doubt that there is
an external world presupposes that there is one; and to know the truth of
solipsism presupposes that I am in fact a person among persons whose beliefs
are, by in large, true.
We thus see that the phenomenological dialectic drives us inexorably from
Husserl to Heidegger. The very possibility of the reflection that leads us to
recognize the mediation of all of our experience—in Yogācārin terms the
pervasively imagined nature of our experience, and in Husserlian terms, the
necessity of phenomenological reduction, in other words, the transcendental
conditions of even inquiring into my subjectivity—presupposes that I am a
person among persons, embedded in an external world. The transcendental
epistemic conditions of bracketing guarantee that bracketing is incoherent. I am
not an isolated subject. Human consciousness itself—dasein—presupposes the
immediate presence of and engagement with a world of other conscious agents
—mitsein—and the immediate presence of and engagement with a world of
objects of experience. Parikalpita—the imagined nature—presupposes
paratantra—the dependent. Or to put it another way, while the magician can do a
lot, he needs those sticks and that mantra!

3.1.3 The Phenomenological Dialectic: We Must Both Bracket and Not

Bracket
It would seem to follow from the preceding discussion that, at least from the
Indian Yogācārin point of view I am asking us to take seriously, our experience
is structured by a causally necessary preconscious horizon constituted by a
linguistic and epistemic community—an embodiment and a location in a causal
nexus—and on the other by cognitive reflexes that construct for us a surface
phenomenology to which we react as though it was given. It would also seem to
follow that the understanding of the constitution of that experience requires a
bracketing of the external world as well as an interrogation of the subject–object
duality that structures that experience.
I will now argue that that is so, taking us one step deeper into Vasubandhu’s
phenomenological project. To do so, however, I want to take a detour through
yet another Indian Buddhist philosopher—Śāntarakṣita. In Ornament of the
Middle Way, as we saw in chapter 3 above, Śāntarakṣita attempts to synthesize
Vasubandhu’s Yogācāra thought with the skeptical ontology of Candrakīrti’s
Madhyamaka, arguing that Yogācāra provides the best analysis of conventional
reality, and Madhyamaka the best analysis of ultimate reality. This synthesis,
given the phenomenological concerns of Yogācāra and the ontological concerns
of Madhyamaka, represents an important Buddhist account of the relation
between phenomenology and ontology.
As a Mādhyamika, Śāntarakṣita takes Candrakīrti’s account of the
conventional nature of things seriously—a thing’s conventional nature is the way
it appears to ordinary people. Śāntarakṣita, moreover, takes that to be the way
things are experienced. But he also takes Vasubandhu’s account of experience
seriously: Things are experienced only as they appear as delivered by our senses,
through input channels opaque to us, shot through with subject–object duality.
Taking these three theses together allows Śāntarakṣita to conclude that
conventionally, things are shot through with an erroneous subject–object duality
and a pervasive confusion of appearance with reality.
On Śāntarakṣita’s view, then, Yogācāra, by giving us an analysis of
appearance, also gives us an analysis of our ordinary mode of taking up with the
world, of conventional reality, even if it is not therefore an account the way in
which that ordinary mode is misconceived. This is nonetheless an analysis of
conventional truth, simply because that is what it explores; that truth remains, on
this analysis, deceptive because it obtains in one manner (as construction) but
appears in another (as given).
On this account, despite providing an analysis of conventional truth, Yogācāra
says nothing about the ontology either of mind or of the external world. That is
the work of Madhyamaka, and that is what gives us the ultimate truth.
Śāntarakṣita’s synthesis hence reconciles Yogācāra phenomenology with
Madhyamaka ontology. While he urges that we get to the heart of the nature of
reality only when we move beyond phenomenology to ontology, the move to
ontology does not undermine, but rather explains, the phenomenology.
The fact that phenomenology and ontology are so independent and yet
constitute two indispensible levels of analysis is one of Śāntarakṣita’s deepest
and most original insights. It provides the basis for his own synthesis. But it is
also a promising basis for the project of joining a Madhyamaka metaphysics to a
Yogācāra phenomenology as we bring Buddhism to bear on contemporary
discourse. Moreover, as I will now argue, this reading of Śāntarakṣita’s project
animates Mipham’s reading of The Ornament of the Middle Way, and underlies
the deep insights into the philosophy of mind Mipham articulates in the context
of his commentary, one we considered in chapter 3. We pick up Mipham’s
commentary where we left off:
Consider a mistakenly grasped appearance such as a double moon: in this
case, the appearance is merely consciousness itself appearing to itself.
Therefore, one should not commit the error of not including it in the
conventional. However, when we consider whether or not these apparent
objects exist in the same way that they appear, they are just non-existent in
that way. (2004, 438)
Mipham then argues that we cannot take cognitive states to have some special
status, conventionally existent in virtue of depending on causes and conditions,
of being neither unitary nor manifold, but nonetheless existing as they appear,
apparent as the objects they are, available to non-deceptive introspection. He
says that this would be to violate the dichotomy between the two truths, and to
create a new, incoherent category, conventionally real in some respects,
ultimately in others:
If they were taken to exist as objects, since they would not have the
characteristics of the conventional, one might think that one had discovered
a third category or objects of knowledge apart from the conventional and
the ultimate. If one maintained that such things exist, but are not
momentary, they would be permanent appearances, and would not be false.
(Ibid.)
Not only would this be ontologically incoherent, he argues, but to take inner
experience to have this kind of privileged epistemic status would make discourse
about inner life impossible. In a remark prescient of Wittgenstein’s treatment of
self-knowledge in Philosophical Investigations, Mipham notes that if we each
could claim incontrovertible access to our inner experience, agreement about the
meaning or truth of statements about mental life would be impossible, and we
would abandon even the common practices of everyday life in which the
possibility of both agreement and error are taken for granted:
And if this were the case, it would follow absurdly that there could be no
mutually agreed upon counterexample to a truth claim. Since one would be
even more foolish than ordinary people, one would be just like a cow.
(Ibid.)
Śāntarakṣita concludes his discussion of the conventional status of the mind and
of the Cittamātra position by emphasizing that the analysis of the ultimate in
Madhyamaka terms does not undermine the reality of these appearances, only
their veridicality. While we have no guarantee that the appearance of mind to
itself is verdical, this does not mean that it does not appear at all:
78. I do not refute entities
That have the nature of appearance.
Therefore the framework of proof
And conclusion is not confused. (Ibid.)
Mipham emphasizes that this point amounts to a restatement of the Madhyamaka
doctrine of the identity and mutual dependence of the two truths, but with an
important twist relevant to self-knowledge. Even to say that appearances are
empty of intrinsic nature is to grant their conventional reality, for if they were
not real, they could not even be empty. But to say that they are empty is at the
same time to say that they are only conventionally real, and to say that is to say
that they are deceptive. Therefore, even the appearance of mind to itself is
deceptive appearance.
…Therefore, in this context, and in that of Madhyamaka in general, one
should not understand the statement that appearance is not refuted to mean
that appearances have a distinct existence not characterized by emptiness of
intrinsic nature. When, for instance, the moon appears in the water, it is
empty, but just as there is nothing empty apart from its perceived
appearance, its being empty does not imply that it is devoid of mere
appearance. If there were not even mere appearance, there would not even
be the emptiness of mere appearances. Therefore, mere appearance and
emptiness are mutually dependent: without one, the other is impossible as
well; when one is present, that entails that the other must be as well. Nor is
their mode of existence like that of black and white thread—twisted around
each other, but distinct, or alternating, one appearing only by excluding the
appearance of the other. Appearance entails emptiness; emptiness entails
appearance. (2004, 440)
We should take this last remark very seriously. The very idea of totally non-
deceptive appearance is incoherent,10 and it is as incoherent with respect to the
appearance of mental states as it is with respect to external objects. Nothing of
which we are aware, even in our own inner life, exists as it appears. What do we
make of all of this? Well, for one thing, Śāntarakṣita’s synthesis of Madhyamaka
and Yogācāra shows us how Yogācāra provides an analysis of subjectivity. But
Mipham takes the analysis one step further. He argues—consistent both with the
perspective of Vasubandhu in Treatise on the Three Natures and with
Candarakīrti’s analysis of conventional truth in Introduction to the Middle Way
and Lucid Exposition—that to take Yogācāra as delivering conventional truth is
to take the appearance of the mind to itself to be deceptive, and hence to take the
mind to be a hidden phenomenon from itself.
If we take Śāntarakṣita’s synthesis seriously, then, we see that we must bracket
at one moment of analysis and must lift the brackets at another. From a
phenomenological standpoint, I am nothing but a subject to which only
experience is present. The self I experience and the objects I experience are
nondually related, but dualistically experienced, and are mere appearances
caused in ways I can never know. From an ontological standpoint, however, this
view is untenable. I can only make sense of the truth even of the claim that I am
only a subject if I am more than that. The very fact that I know most intimately
that I am subject shows that I can never know my own nature, even as subject, at
least to any degree greater than I can know anything else.
These facts, moreover, are not reducible to one another. Despite their apparent
inconsistency, they are both true. Despite being both true, they are distinct from
one another. From the mere fact of emptiness and conventional reality one
cannot deduce the phenomenological character of experience. Moreover, it is not
through an analysis of our experience that we gain an understanding of the
fundamental nature of reality, but through ontological analysis. From the
standpoint of this Buddhist phenomenological dialectic, even if, per impossibile,
we had substantial selves, and lived in a world of things with essences, our
access to them would be mediated.
To bracket the external world is to accept the cogency of a radical idealism or
skepticism. And this makes no sense at all. It cannot, as we have seen, and as all
Madhyamaka philosophers would argue, even be asserted coherently. But we
cannot refrain from doing so. And this is so precisely because we must
presuppose our embeddedness and embodiment in the world. How can this be
so? Well, as we have seen, the fact that bracketing is incoherent reflects the
mandatoriness of a robust realism about other persons and about the world we
inhabit.
That robust realism also entails accepting a naturalistic and realistic
understanding of my own sensory and cognitive apparatus, and so of the fact that
my perceptual and cognitive states—including even my apperceptive and
reflexively cognitive states—arise in the familiar opaque way adumbrated in
contemporary cognitive science and anticipated in the Yogācāra phenomenology
of Vasubandhu. Given that they do, as Śāntarakṣita and Gyeltsab point out, I
must regard my own experience as possibly radically disjointed from the way the
objects of my experience—even the objects of my introspective experience—in
fact exist. The very phenomenological inquiry that leads me to the conclusion
that experience requires embodiment and embedding leads me to the conclusion
that that embodiment and embedding themselves present the world to me as
though it was given.
To say only that that I inhabit a world would be, paradoxically, to deny my
embodiment—to deny that my body is indeed an epistemically opaque organism
containing my brain, and to deny the disjunction between reality as it is
experienced and what reality is independent of experience. This would be to
succumb to the strongest possible version of the Myth of the Given—the view
that the world is given directly to consciousness as it is in itself. To say only that
I am a subject of experience standing in relation to my objects would be to deny
the role that my social and natural context plays in my cognitive life. I am
therefore neither a mere part of nor ontologically apart from the world. Once
again, I am a pile of sticks by the side of the road, experiencing itself as a pure
subject believing that it is not one, and an embodied being knowing itself to be
nothing but a pure subject. The opacity of the mind to itself and the immediacy
of experience turn out to be two sides of a deeply paradoxical coin.

3.2 Mu, or Radical Negation of All Four Possibilities

In Japanese Zen literature, the term “Mu” is used to indicate a radical negation—
a denial with no affirmation, a denial of the very presupposition of the question
being asked. It is a fitting rubric for a final take on Vasubandhu’s metaphor. We
can see this entire phenomenological investigation as a grand reductio on a
particular very compelling model of subjectivity. Let us ask, “Who or what is
this thing that inquires into the transcendental character of its own subjectivity?”
It is at least a metaphysical or epistemic subject, posited as distinct from and
related somehow to, its object. Having taken its identity, reality and distinctness
from its objects for granted, we can then ask about its precise status, and use the
law of the excluded middle to assert that it either is or is not distinct from its
objects. This is the mode of inquiry that characterizes much of Western
phenomenology. But it need not be.
The set of presuppositions are analogous to those subject to critique in the
negative tetralemmas in Nāgārjuna’s Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way
regarding causation, emptiness and the Buddha. In these contexts Nāgārjuna
argues that none of the four possibilities—existence, nonexistence, both or
neither—makes sense precisely because of such presupposition failure.11 The
same presupposition failure obtains in this case. In posing the question of our
immediate subjectivity we begin with the presupposition of an unproblematic
subject, a subject necessarily distinct from its object, and then pose our question:
Is it necessarily embedded in a world or not? But that presupposition is
equivalent to the presupposition of the reality of the self, and of subject–object
duality, and these are the very targets of both Yogācāra and Madhyamaka
analysis, each of which is aimed at establishing selflessness and non-duality.
The very inquiry into the nature of the subject then begs the question against
Vasubandhu, Nāgārjuna and, for that matter, the entire Buddhist tradition. It does
so by presupposing an unproblematic unified subject of experience, precisely the
subject that is the target of the dialectic of each of these schools. Candrakīrti’s
and Vasubandhu’s recommendation of thesislessness with regard to the self
issues from the insight that the self in question is merely a nominal posit and has
no independent existence. Hence there is nothing left to say about the subject
itself, as distinct from its objects. This is, however, not to be understood as a
rejection of the reality of either. When understood as a Buddhist phenomenology,
Yogācāra analysis does not reject the existence of the external world, only its
externality. That is, it is not the world that is nonexistent, but the duality between
mind and world. So, nor is the reality of our experience rejected, only its
existence as a distinct internal world by means of which we know our external
objects. Our lebenswelt—the only world we ever inhabit—emerges in full reality
not in spite of, but in virtue of, its emptiness of independence, and in virtue of,
not in spite of, its constitution through the operation of our sensory and cognitive
apparatus.

3.3 Being in the World: What the Elephant Simile Does and Doesn’t
Show
Vasubandhu’s elephant simile illustrates the complex nature of our subjectivity, a
subjectivity in which at the most basic level we inhabit a world in which the
distinction between subject and object, internal and external, is entirely absent,
but a subjectivity that also systematically mis-takes that world to be saturated
with that very duality in virtue of cognitive processes that, in a kind of cognitive
reflex, superimpose that structure at a higher level on an experience that does not
present it at a more primordial level. That is the conjuring trick. We
systematically deceive ourselves about the nature of our own experience, and
hence about the world in which we live. But it is a deception through which we
can learn to see.
Vasubandhu’s point is that when we see elephants in the road, that experience
is multi-layered. In naive introspection, we take both our own subjective state
and the objectively presented pachyderm to be presented to us as they exist,
related to one another as experiencing subject and experienced object. But this is
a mis-taking not only of the elephant, but also of ourselves, and of the structure
of the experience at a more primordial level. At that more fundamental level, the
elephant we perceive on the road is a conceptual-perceptual construction
wrought by our sensory and cognitive apparatus in response to stimulation; our
subjectivity is constructed by a complex network of subpersonal perceptual and
apperceptual processes, and the duality we project in which we take ourselves
simultaneously to be aware of self and other as distinct entities in this experience
is itself constructed. That is the conjured elephant. We, the elephant and the
moment of experience are all, finally, sticks in a pile by the side of the road.
4. Re-thinking Subjectivity through Buddhism
Earlier in this chapter and in the previous chapter we noted and put aside the
phrase “what it is like” that structures so much of contemporary
phenomenological reflection. Let us now take it up and see how it looks in light
of Vasubandhu’s approach. The first thing to note is that it is a nominalized
phrase that purports to refer to some property or individual, suggesting that there
is a relevant referent. As Candrakīrti and Vasubandhu argue, phrases like ‘I’ can
be deceptive. They can give the appearance of reference while being empty.
(Recall our discussion of the self in chapter 4.) They demand interrogation
before analysis.
We might imagine that the phrase refers to qualia, if such things exist. But as
we argued above, there really are no compelling reasons to think that they do.
When we see red tomatoes, we see red tomatoes, not red qualia. If the direct
object of our sensory experiences were qualia, they would lack the
intersubjectivity necessary even to get reference going. They would be, in
Mipham’s terms, something neither conventionally nor ultimately real. To posit
them as mediators between us and the world solves nothing and raises new
problems of its own, leaving us, as Mipham suggests, as inarticulate as cattle.
Perhaps the phrase is meant to refer to sensations, that is, to subjective states
themselves, as opposed to their ghostly inner objects. Then “what it is like” to
see red is to have a red sensation; what it is like to see a sunset at Race Point is
to have the sensations one has when one sees such a sunset. This is better. There
are at least sensations. And if “what it is like” refers to those, the phrase is not so
much pernicious as otiose. The problem is that those who deploy it might then
want to ask what it is like to have a red sensation, or wonder whether, for
instance, zombies might have red sensations, but yet there be nothing that it is
like for them to have them. Now we are back to the act–object structure that
bedevils sense-data theory, and we start thinking of our sensations not as
subjective cognitive or perceptual states, but rather as the objects of further
cognitive states.
The decisive move in yet another conjuring trick has been made, and it does
seem so innocent. After all, we know what it is for a state to take another as an
object, and we know the difference between states of which we are reflectively
aware and those of which we are not. So, why not argue that what makes a
perceptual state conscious is for there to be something that it is like to be in it,
and then simply treat that something as other than the state? But what? If we do
not retreat to the failed qualia option, we simply blow smoke.
Perhaps we mean a property, a universal. So, what it is like to experience a
Race Point sunset is an abstract entity, something that all experiences of Race
Point sunsets have in common. Which one? The property of being such an
experience? Big deal. We were after, we thought, what it is like to have that
experience. Nothing more is forthcoming. What more do all such experiences
have in common than being such experiences? Moreover, that qualitative
property would have to be experienced in order to perform any psychological or
phenomenological function. And then there would be something that it is like to
experience that what-it-is-likeness. We are off on a vicious regress. We should
begin to suspect that “what it is like” is like the self, on Candrakīrti’s analysis—a
useful façon de parler, but nothing more, a term that simply refers to nothing at
all.
There is ground to which one might be tempted to retreat at this point. We
might take the phrase to refer simply to mere subjectivity, to the fact that when
we have a sensation, see a sunset, bite into a tomato, the experience has a
subjective as well as an objective aspect. What it is like is the very subjectivity of
that experience. While this has all the virtues of not positing qualia as direct
objects, or of taking first-order sensory states as objects of higher-order
subjectivity-conferring states, and of not positing mysterious sui generis
universals as essential objects of consciousness, it buys these virtues at the
expense of vacuity. We were seeking an analysis of subjectivity. To say that it is
for there to be something that it is like to be me, or to have an experience, and
then to analyze that as mere subjectivity is simply to say that to be a subject is to
be a subject. The noun phrase does nothing but obfuscate. We are looking once
again, in a different guise, for the referent of ‘I.’
Why does it appear so compelling to talk about “what it is like,” then? I think
it is this. The phrase asks us to direct our attention to our current state. Can we
feel it? Of course we can. Do we know it? Sure. Is it an object of knowledge?
Well, yes. Can we then ostend it? Why not? That, the thing ostended, is what it is
like, or something. Note how much nonsense and unjustified reification goes on
here, but how seductive each move is, if done quickly. Can we feel our current
state? Not necessarily. We are in it, and it may be a feeling, but feeling a state is
a higher-order state that may or may not be present. Do we know our current
inner state? Probably not. The mind just is not that transparent. Is our current
mental state an object of knowledge for us? To even ask this question is to
impose a subject–object duality on subjectivity itself, making an ontological and
epistemological hash of our own being. This hash can have serious
methodological consequences when transferred into psychological practice.
Consider this endorsement of introspective method by Thompson:
 [E]xperimental neurophenomenology employs first-person
phenomenological methods in order to obtain original and refined first-
person data. Individuals vary in their abilities as observers and reporters of
their own experiences, and these abilities can be enhanced through various
phenomenological methods.
…
The relevance of these practices to neurophenomenology derives from the
capacity for sustained attentiveness to experience they systematically
cultivate. This capacity enables tacit and prereflective aspects of
experience, which typically are either inaccessible of reconstructed after the
fact according to various biases, to become subjectively accessible and
describable in more accurate ways. Using first-person methods, individuals
may be able to gain access to aspects of their experience that otherwise
would remain unnoticed and hence unavailable for verbal report and
description. (2007, 339)
The methodology here suggests that when trained introspectors look inside, they
find mental reality as it is. This is the nature of primal confusion, of grasping to
the self, and of grasping to the property of being mine, and of grasping that
nature of that which is mine. It is precisely the confusion against which Buddhist
phenomenologists warn us. Could there then be nothing that it is like to be me,
to taste a tomato, to see red? If that question is paraphrased as “Could there be
nothing more to being me than being me? To tasting a tomato than tasting a
tomato? To seeing red than seeing red?” The answer is, “Damn right.” It is time
to get rid of the phrase, and a Madhyamaka and Yogācāra analysis can help us to
do so, and to clear some fog from phenomenology.
Another way to put this point is that this kind of phenomenological reflection
presupposes a unity to consciousness or subjectivity that may well be illusory. It
may well be that the phenomenological project as prosecuted by Dignāga and
Husserl, and as resurrected by Coseru and Zahavi, may be misguided for a
simple reason: There may be nothing that it is like to be me because there is no
me; there may be nothing that it is like for me to see red, because I don’t. Instead
of a single locus of consciousness contemplating a distinct world of objects—
like a Wittgensteinian eye in the visual field or a Kantian transcendental ego—to
be a person, from a Buddhist perspective, is to be a continuum of multiple,
interacting sensory, motor and cognitive states and processes. Some of these are
first-order intentional states and processes; some higher-order and some non-
intentional. Some are introspectible; some are not. My own access to them is
mediated by my ideology, my narrative and a set of fallible introspectible
mechanisms. When I introspect, I impose a subject–object duality on my
experience that I take for granted, although I know it is my superimposition, not
an intrinsic feature of subjectivity. Whatever I take the character of my
subjective experience to be is at best a reconstruction. There is nothing that it is
like to be me, in part because there is no me, and in part because there is no
privileged level of experience to which that phrase could attach.
Yet another way to put this point is that from the perspective of Yogācāra
analysis the very idea of subjectivity as an object of transcendental analysis is an
error. Subjectivity is a pole of a duality that is constructed by introspective and
reflective processes that can never promise, any more than any human
instruments can process, to deliver any reality to us as it is. Apprehension is
always mediated, and the media through which our self-knowledge is delivered
are themselves not only probably fallible, but opaque. Any understanding we
gain of them is itself mediated, and so on all the way down. For the self to fail to
have an ultimate nature in the Buddhist sense is for there to be nothing that it is
to be a subject at all. This is why Candrakīrti says that we are neither permanent
nor impermanent. Any predication of a subject suffers from presupposition
failure.
Now, one might object at this point that while the veridicality of introspection
may always be questioned—and so the character of our subjective experience
may be constructed and not given—the fact of subjectivity itself cannot be
constructed by cognitive processes, on pain of regress. They must themselves be
either subjective, in which case we have begged the question, or not, in which
case it is not clear how they could ever give rise to subjectivity.12 But this
objection misses its mark. The subjectivity we are trying to characterize is the
one that presents us to ourselves as unified, continuous loci of our experience
and agency, as the selves about which we care, and which we recognize. The
point is that our awareness of ourselves in that guise, the only guise in which we
encounter ourselves in non-reflective introspection, the guise in which I take
myself to be the referent of ‘I,’ is constructed, and constructed by means of
innumerable unconscious cognitive processes. Those processes lie below the
level of introspectibility, and so never by themselves have this kind of subjective
character. They are the unseen creators and scaffolding of the scenery of the
theatre in which we take our lives to be enacted; subjectivity emerges in the
scenery, but is wrought only in the wings. When we forget this, we can find
ourselves in thickets like this one, in the context of Thompson’s pondering the
status of one’s consciousness of a sound to which one was not at first attending:
 [H]earing the sound before noticing it should be counted as a case of
phenomenal consciousness. One does consciously hear the sound before
noticing it, if “noticing” means turning one’s attention to it. The sound is
experienced implicitly and prereflectively. One lives through the state of
being affected by the sound without thematizing the sound or one’s
affectedness by it. This prereflective consciousness counts as phenomenal
consciousness because the sound’s appearance and affective influence have
a phenomenal character, though an indeterminate one. …Nevertheless,
there is no reason to believe that the experience is not also a case of access
consciousness. After all, one is poised to make use of one’s implicit and
prereflective hearing of the sound. The content of the experience is at least
accessible, even if it is not accessed explicitly. (2007, 264)
On this view, even if it is not introspectible, hearing the sound is part of our
phenomenal subjective experience. Even if there is no determinate character to
the experience of the sound, it has some character; even though we have no
access to it, it is a case of access consciousness. Each of these might be taken as
a reductio on the idea that these categories map anything we can coherently call
consciousness as a state independent of our introspective activity to which we
have any kind of access at all. Together they call this entire framework of into
question. As Vasubandhu suggests, when we engage in analysis of something we
take ourselves to have discovered—our own self, subjectivity or consciousness
—we stumble instead on something we have constructed. To pretend to develop
a science of it, to ask whether it is present even when we don’t notice it, is to
pretend to research the real biography of Ahab. Fictions may be useful; if a
Buddhist analysis is right, they are all we have. But this does not make them
more than fictions, and they outlive their utility, becoming obstacles to the truth,
when we forget their status as fictions.
There is a reason that so much of Chan or Zen reflection on experience takes
that experience that is most authentic, most revelatory, most conducive to
awakening and to effective engagement with the world, to be that in which the
self does not figure, that in which we are immersed in the world, not standing
over against it. This is not because such experience feels good, or because there
is something special that it is like to be in that state. It is because there is in that
experience none of the fabrication that yields the false sense of self, and the
polar coordinate view of reality that takes the subject to be the center of a world
of objects, and, despite not being an object, being a potential object of
knowledge. When reification ceases, engagement can begin. Once again, we
consider Thompson’s account of a pre-conceptually given state of consciousness,
and we see the difficulties that emerge from the Husserlian tradition, difficulties
that do not emerge in the same way in the Heideggerian or Chan tradition. These
considerations take us back to the phenomenology of skilled engagement, a topic
with which we concluded the previous chapter. Consider Thompson’s account of
this phenomenon:
…[E]xperience does not have a subject-object structure in immersed
skillful action. Instead, experience is the phenomenal flow of one’s body-
environment coupling. Furthermore, consciousness here is not detached
observation of reflective self-awareness, but rather a non-reflective
attunement to the interplay of action and milieu. …There is clearly a
phenomenal flow…Consciousness has the structure of a non-reflective “I
can” in the flow of habitual action…As Merleau-Ponty says, “Each
maneuver undertaken by the player modifies the character of the field and
establishes in it new lines of force in which the action in turn unfolds and is
accomplished, again altering the phenomenal field.” (2007, 314, citing
Merleau-Ponty 1962, 168–169)
Note here the actual divergence between Thompson and Merleau-Ponty.
Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the causal coupling between the player and others on
the field, between perception and action, in terms of “lines of force”; Thompson,
on the other hand, thematizes these in terms of an “I can” in a flow of
consciousness. If consciousness here denotes nothing more than engagement
with the world through perception and action, the intentional content is
superfluous and the prefix non-reflective serves only to negate the force of the
term. If, on the other hand, the term consciousness denotes something more—a
kind of inner domain in which states unfold that we might or might not
introspect, the intentional structure “I can” appears to be an illicit interpretation
that undermines the claim that all of this is non-reflective. That this latter reading
is the one intended—the one that lurks behind the myth of the givenness of
consciousness—becomes clear when Thompson contrasts his own position with
that of Heidegger. Responding to Hubert Dreyfus (1991), Thompson writes:
Dreyfus (1991, p. 58), who says “absorbed action in the world does not
involve an experience of acting,” seems to think that the only kind of self-
awareness is reflective awareness, and hence that there is no prereflective
self-awareness in skillful coping. In this view, in skillful coping we
experience a steady flow of activity, but we are unaware of our acting
because we are absorbed in acting do not reflect on it…Although we should
grant this point about reflection, it does not follow that we are completely
 unaware of our acting in skillful coping. The reason is that reflective self-
awareness is not the only kind of self-awareness. …There is every reason to
think that…prereflective self-awareness animates skillful coping. If skillful
coping were not prereflectively self-aware, then it would not be different
from unconscious automaticity and would have no experiential character
whatsoever. And if it had no experiential character, then there could be no
genuine phenomenology of skillful coping but only a logical reconstruction
of it. (2007, 315)
The echo of Śāntarakṣita’s claim that reflexivity is what distinguishes conscious
states from unconscious states is striking. Thompson is following the tradition of
Dignāga in arguing that consciousness must be reflexive, even if he wants to
deny that it is always reflective. As we have seen, while that position has a great
deal of traction in the Buddhist tradition, it also comes in for a great deal of
trenchant criticism. To the extent that the critique of philosophers such as
Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa is successful, we might be suspicious of this
approach. The Heideggerian approach to consciousness and reflexivity is
anticipated by Dōgen, and offers an interesting alternative.
Dōgen wrote that “to study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to
be affirmed by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and
mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away” (Tanahashi 1985,
72). I hope that by this point we can take this Zen aphorism seriously, not as a
mystical pronouncement, but as the result of deep phenomenological reflection
in a different key. The more we pay attention honestly to our own nature, the
more we realize that there is no such nature; the more we pay attention to our
own subjective character, the more we realize that we are not subjects; the more
we realize that, the more we realize that that to which we respond as our object
is not apprehended as it is; and the more we can shed the myth of subject–object
duality and the immediacy of our relation to subjectivity, the more honestly we
can understand our participation in the reality we inhabit. This is the goal of a
Buddhist phenomenology.
I close this with a poem of Dōgen:
Being in the world.
To what can it be compared?
Dwelling in the dewdrop,
Fallen from a waterfowl’s beak,
The image of the moon. (quoted in Kasulis 1981, 103)
Note that here there is no focus on subjectivity, no focus on the character of
experience, only of an ephemeral, impermanent, impersonal existence pregnant
with illusion, but also with beauty.

1. Note that this view that introspection is conceptually and perceptually mediated is not the view that
perception—outer or inner—is indirect. That is, this is not the claim that perception is mediated by
representations. It is consistent with that view, but does not entail it. Perception, on this view, might be
direct in that it is not representationally mediated, despite being mediated both conceptually and through
perceptual faculties.
2. Buddhist scholars have also been aware for millennia that our ordinary perceptual experience is the result
of cognitive processes that operate on sensory input to yield experience of a constructed reality that is
erroneously taken to be an accurate representation of an external world existing independently of our
perceptual processes. For this reason it is an important voice in this discussion. But that doesn’t mean that it
should be the dominant voice. To be sure Buddhism does not need cognitive science to tell it that there is a
parikalpita svabhāva—an imagined nature that we superimpose on experience. But the details regarding
how this superimposition is achieved are not present in any Buddhist accounts of perception or cognition of
which contemporary scholars are aware. This is not surprising. They are hard to discover. On the other
hand, contemporary cognitive science is rather thin on the implications for consciousness of the complex
transcendental conditions of experience that emerge when we reflect on the nature of this kind of
superimposition. This is not surprising, either. These are not straightforwardly empirical matters. One more
reason why Buddhism and Western philosophy need to be in dialogue with one another.
3. Carruthers mistakenly claims (2011, 30–31) that all Buddhist traditions regard consciousness as
transparent to itself. This is simply an error, one that it is easy to understand if one has not read the relevant
texts. Such errors demonstrate the need for more than casual conversation when we try to work across
cultural boundaries and philosophical traditions.
4. This does not mean that no Buddhist phenomenologists take for granted a primordially given horizon of
subjectivity tout court. As Coseru argues persuasively (2012, 235–262.) Dignāga understood reflexive
awareness as just such a horizon of subjectivity, albeit not the presentation of a unitary self, but rather of the
fact that each distinct moment of awareness has a subjective as well as an objective aspect.
5. See especially Lusthaus (2003) for a compelling defense of a phenomenological understanding of
Vasubandhu’s project, but note that Lusthaus (personal communication) also denies the ascription of the
Treatise on the Three Natures to Vasubandhu, on the grounds first that Xuanzang does not mention or
translate it, second that he finds stylistic differences between this text and other verse texts of Vasubandhu,
and third that there are no Indian commentaries on the text. These are interesting arguments. But I do not
think that they are compelling reasons to take the canonical attribution to be erroneous. According to the
biography of Vasubandhu, he composed this text in the last year of his life. This late composition would
explain some stylistic difference (after all, one ought not compare the styles of Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations, and conclude that they were not authored by the same
person), as well as the fact that there are no commentaries (Vasubandhu himself wrote autocommentaries on
his other texts, which served as the basis of later commentaries), and the dearth of commentaries could also
explain Xuanzang’s omission of this text in his own project. I take the matter to be unsettled, but see no
positive reason to reject the authenticity of the text.
6. Imagined differently in the history of philosophy as Putnam’s “brain in a vat” hypothesis; in Descartes’s
evil demon hypothesis; and in Vasubandhu’s account of the workings of karma.
7. Not necessarily, however, by representations; mediation and a certain kind of directness of perception are
consistent with one another.
8. This is also the main point of Paul Churchland’s (2012), one important moral of which, defended
elegantly both on neuroscientific and philosophical grounds, is that most of what we take to be the
deliverances of introspection is profoundly false as an account of the actual nature of our subjectivity.
Consciousness, Churchland shows, is far from transparent, and the first-person view is anything but
privileged.
9. On the other hand, it is important to note that although Vasubandhu argues for idealism elsewhere,
Vasubandhu’s own argument for idealism is not Berkeley’s, and is not a target of Kant’s attack. His
argument in Twenty Stanzas rests on the incoherence of the concept of matter.
10. Aside from the direct nondual appearance of emptiness ascribed by Buddhist philosophers to highly
realized practitioners. But that experience is entirely different in kind from the ordinary human subjectivity
being considered here.
11. See Deguchi, Garfield and Priest (2008) and Garfield (1995, 2014b) for more detail on these
Nāgārjunian arguments.
12. I owe this objection to Lynne Rudder Baker (personal communication).
7 EPISTEMOLOGY
1. Pramāṇa
1.1 General Introduction to Pramāṇa Theory
When contemporary Western philosophers address epistemological questions,
the central topic is often the definition of knowledge, say as Justified True Belief
± Gettier, and most of the action is devoted to determining what counts as
justification (with a bit to the Gettier problem). Buddhist epistemology is not
much different in emphasis, but different enough to be interesting. The central
term in Buddhist epistemology is not any that we would translate naturally as
knowledge, but is related to justification. The term in Sanskrit is pramāṇa, or in
Tibetan tshad ma (tsehma). Let’s first talk etymology, and then semantic range,
to get a feel for how Indian and Tibetan Buddhist epistemologists thought about
their project.
One should also bear in mind that Buddhist epistemological reflection
occurred not in a philosophical vacuum, but in the context of a broader Indian
philosophical milieu in which pramāṇa theory was always at center stage.
Philosophical schools were often identified by the range of pramāṇas they
accepted, and epistemology was taken as foundational to all other philosophical
inquiry, inasmuch as philosophical inquiry is always aimed at the acquisition of
knowledge and the justification of claims. Moreover, pramāṇa theory played a
special role in classical Indian philosophical discussion. Inasmuch as
philosophical dispute often involved partisans of competing philosophical
traditions—prominently including discussions between orthodox and Buddhist
or Jain philosophers—the terms of debate had to be set in a non-question-
begging way. There was hence considerable interest in the project of settling on
a minimal set and conception of pramāṇas on which all sides to a debate could
agree, so that at least the terms of evidence and justification could be taken for
granted by all parties. The Buddhist investigation of pramāṇa, while central to
the Buddhist project and responsive to specifically Buddhist ideas, was also
always sensitive as well to broader Indian epistemological debates and dialogical
concerns. (See Frauwallner 2009, Gupta 2012, Patil 2009.)
The root meaning of pramāṇa derives from māṇa, to measure. The Tibetan
tshad ma captures this nicely, denoting measurement or degree, and was created
to track the meaning of Pramāṇa. For that reason everything we say
semantically about pramāṇa goes over to tshad ma. From the standpoint of
etymology, a pramāṇa is something that measures, or takes the measure of,
things. But the semantic range of this key term is more complex. Roughly,
depending on context, we can say that pramāṇa denotes an instrument of
knowledge, such as perception or inference. These measure, or take the measure
of, reality.
That sense is descriptive, indicating the function of a cognitive instrument, but
also normative, suggesting that it is appropriate or useful to deploy that
instrument epistemologically. In this sense of the term, it coordinates nicely with
prameya, or epistemic object. In other contexts, pramāṇa denotes epistemic
warrant more directly. So we might say that perception is pramāṇa because it is
reliable, or we might speak of a belief as pramāṇa because it is warranted. The
term can also sometimes be translated as authoritative cognition, denoting a
cognitive episode that is the result (phāla) of warranted use of an instrument that
is pramāṇa. The term pramāṇa hence conveys justification or warrant, and
instrumentality as well as that which is delivered by instruments that confer
warrant. Indian and Tibetan Buddhist debates about epistemology concern the
nature and number of the pramāṇas, and the nature of their respective prameyas.
Pramāṇa theory in Indian Buddhism is generally associated with the so-called
Pramāṇavāda school, sometimes called the Logicians or Epistemologists. The
principal originary figures in this school are Dignāga and his commentator
Dharmakīrti. Dharmakīrti’s Commentary on the Encyclopedia of Epistemology
(Pramānavartikka) and his other epistemological texts are in turn the subject of
an enormous commentarial literature in India and Tibet and an extensive
contemporary scholarly literature.1
To be sure, much of the most sophisticated elaboration of Buddhist
epistemological theory is developed in the commentarial literature on Digṅāga’s
and Dharmakīrti’s work. But it would be an error to think that the
Pramāṇavādins held a monopoly on pramāṇa theory either in India or in Tibet,
for they were in constant dialogue and debate with Mādhyamikas as well,
including Nāgārjuna, Bhāviveka and Candrakīrti, who often diverged regarding
the nature and number of pramāṇas and the proper conduct of epistemology.
(See Thakchöe 2012a, 2013.) In what follows, I will suggest that we gain insight
into different ways of approaching epistemological problems in part by attending
to the differences between these schools.
In particular (and we will discuss this in greater detail below) while
Buddhism, in virtue of the centrality of the Pramāṇavādin school to the
articulation of pramāṇa theory, is generally associated with the view that there
are only two pramāṇas, viz., perception (pratyakṣa) and inference (anumāna),
Mādhyamikas such as Candrakīrti took on the more liberal Nyāya understanding
of pramāṇa according to which there are four pramāṇas, with analogy
(upamāna) and testimony or scriptural authority (śabda) added to the list. And
while the Pramāṇavādins were epistemological foundationalists, the
Mādhyamikas were coherentists.

1.2 Apoha and Buddhist Nominalism

Let us begin by considering the two pramāṇas recognized by the Pramāṇavādin
school and their respective prameyas, or epistemic objects. These represent one
of the more distinctive Buddhist contributions to epistemology; the apoha theory
of the meaning of predicates introduced in chapter 1 is another. Before entering
into any discussion of this issue, we should acknowledge that there is an
enormous literature on apoha theory itself. (See, especially, Siderits, Tillemans
and Chakrabarti 2011.) We will only scratch the surface, but that surface will
have plenty to interest us.
As noted above, the Pramāṇavādins defended the view that there are only two
pramāṇas, or epistemic instruments, or means of warranting a belief, viz.,
perception and inference. In restricting the number to two, they are explicitly
ruling out pramāṇas recognized by non-Buddhist Indian philosophical schools
such as verbal/textual testimony or analogy. They accomplish this restriction by
reducing the latter two to perception and inference. The details need not concern
us here. The big issues arise when we consider the relation between inference
and its epistemic object, for inference appears to be mediated by relations
between universals.2
Indian logicians and epistemologists characterize this relation by the term
vyapti. This term can be felicitously translated as entailment or pervasion or
categorization depending on the level of discourse at which one is operating.
Buddhist logic in medieval India was categorical, and so entailment between
propositions was conceived as grounded in the relationships of subcategorization
between classes denoted by the predicates in those propositions, much as
Aristotle understood syllogistic. So, when I deduce the impermanence of sound
from the fact that it is produced, it is the fact that the category of impermanent
things is a subcategory of the category of produced things that validates the
inference. There is vyapti between the property of being produced and the
category of impermanence at the ontological level and vyapti between the
propositions that sound is produced and that it is impermanent at the logical
level. The important thing about this account of inference is that it appears that
the pramāṇa of inference must put one in direct contact with universals and
relations among them.3
This is problematic because of Buddhism’s commitment to nominalism
introduced in chapter 1, deriving from its metaphysical commitment to the claim
that whatever is real is causally interdependent and impermanent. And this, as
we have seen, in turn entails that universals are nonexistent, illusory, mere
conceptual constructs with no real correlates. But that would also mean that the
most obvious account of vyapti as a relation between universals is off the table.
And that means that it is hard to make sense of how inference can be a pramāṇa.
However, without inference, knowledge would be rather meager. Very meager
indeed. We would be limited to knowing only what we perceive directly and
currently. (This excludes memory, which, after all, involves inferences, as does
reliance on testimony.) And we could have no general knowledge at all. That is
bad enough. But remember that if inference is characterized as that which
engages with a universal, we could not even know anything about the enduring
composite dry goods that populate our ordinary world, such things as rocks,
trees, cows, or other people. The reason for this is that anything composite or
enduring has its identity in terms of a specific universal, a property held in
common by all of its spatio-temporal parts.
When I take myself to perceive the tree outside of my window, for instance, in
fact I am perceiving many momentary tree parts. To represent those momentary
particulars as constituting a single tree, I must categorize them as parts of the
tree outside of my window. And that seems to involve engagement with the
universal part of the tree outside of my window. The judgment that the trunk and
the branches belong to the same tree, constitutive of my perceiving the whole as
a tree, involves then an inference from (1) The trunk has part-of-the-tree-
outside-my-window-hood; and (2) The branches have part-of-the-tree-outside-
my-window-hood to the conclusion, “The trunk and the branches share in the
property of part-of-the-tree-outside-my-window-hood,” and so are of the same
thing.
So even what we might take to be ordinary perception, on this view, is
actually inference (and this confusion, according to these Buddhist
epistemologists, is part of the epistemological face of primal confusion). If
inference involves engagement with universals and if there are no real
universals, then even ordinary perceptual knowledge is undermined. Now, as we
will see, there is a sense in which Buddhist epistemologists do want to
undermine some of the pretensions of ordinary perceptual knowledge, but they
do not want to reject the entire framework of everyday knowledge.
For these reasons, Buddhist theorists creatively developed an account of an
ersatz universal—the apoha—as the prameya of inference, an idea introduced in
chapter 2. The term apoha is a contraction of anyapoha, which literally means
exclusion of that which is other. Apohas, as we have seen, are negations. Let us
return to the classical example, the apoha analysis of what it is to be a cow,
introduced in chapter 2, which always sounds bizarre at first reading, but which
we can come to understand as a plausible move with the help of the
commentarial tradition. At first pass, to be a cow would seem to be to possess
the property of bovinity, and this is indeed how all non-Buddhist Indian
traditions (quite sensibly, it might appear) see the matter. But on apoha theory, it
is not. It is to be, on a first pass, excluded from being a non-cow.
Now we could immediately and uncharitably gloss this as to possess the
property of not being a non-cow, and then by double negation elimination
determine that nothing has been gained. This critical move was in fact
immediately made by non-Buddhist Indian critics of apoha theory. But we
needn’t be so hasty, for a lot has to do with how we understand negation and
exclusion. And the understandings of these ideas develop considerably in the
course of intra-Buddhist debates about apoha, as well as in the context of
debates between Buddhists and their orthodox critics. (See Siderits, Tillemans
and Chakarabarti 2011, Dreyfus 2011b, Dunne 2004, 2011 and Patil 2003 for
details.)
Let us begin with a few remarks about negation. From the standpoint of most
Buddhist ontology, verbal negation denotes an absence, and this absence itself
can also be referred to as a negation. So, the fact that there are no angels on my
desk right now is an absence, a negation of angels. Importantly, this conveys no
ontological commitment. Therefore the absence of angels, expressed by the
sentence “There are no angels on my desk” does not commit me to the existence
of angels, or for that matter, non-angels at all. Negations—like that represented
by emptiness, discussed in earlier chapters—are thus attractive to Buddhist
philosophers as ways of eschewing ontological commitment, a real desideratum
in this ontologically spare philosophical framework. So, initially, we can see that
the seemingly vacuous move from a positive assertion that Elsie is a cow to the
negative assertion that Elsie is not a non-cow can be the starting point for an
ontological evaporation scheme.
Let us put negation on hold for a moment and attend to the understanding of
anyapoha itself. Dharmakīrti—the most important figure in the articulation of
this idea—is not always clear in his discussion of the nature of apoha and how it
is supposed to solve the problem of universals, and so contemporary scholars are
at odds regarding how to interpret his views. (See Siderits, Tillemans and
Chakrabarti 2011 for some of this debate.) But he does move the discussion
forward. Dharmakīrti argues that the basis for taking things to be excluded (or
not) by a term rests on judgments of similarity and takes these in turn to be
grounded in linguistic and cognitive practice and their efficacy in fulfilling
specific human purposes (arthakrīya) (Guerrero 2013).
Dharmakīrti argues that when we reform our naive assertion that Elsie is a
cow into the slightly more nuanced claim that Elsie is not a non-cow we are
noting that Elsie is different from all of the things to which the label “cow” is not
applied, which, in turn, are similar to one another in not being called “cows.”
Dharmakīrti’s critics were quick to point out that to refer to things as “similar”
appears to presuppose a dimension of similarity, and here two problems arise.
First, the most natural way to characterize such a dimension is as sharing, to
some degree at least, a property, and we seem to have landed back in the lap of
realism about universals. Second, when we seek a respect in which all non-cows
are similar, things are even worse: The only thing that such things as cabbages,
kings, committees, cogs and coffee share in respect of which they are non-cows
is the absence of a property, in particular, that of being a cow. And now we are
back in the lap not only of realism about universals in general, but of realism
with respect to bovinity, the very universal we sought to eliminate in the first
place.
There is controversy surrounding whether Dharmakīrti’s own reply to these
objections is cogent. Dharmakīrti argues that judgments of similarity do not
presuppose commitments to properties in virtue of the possession of which
things are similar. Instead, he argues that we create predicate expressions,
apparently denoting properties, to encode our habitual tendencies to regard
certain things as similar. The anticipations of Hume’s own brand of nominalism
are intriguing here. Dharmakīrti goes a bit further, though, and argues that what
grounds these tendencies to agree in similarity judgments are the degrees to
which things fulfill human purposes, together with innate cognitive tendencies
(vasanas, understood by Dharmakīrti as karmic imprints formed as a result of
experiences in past lives, but which can easily be naturalized as our evolutionary
ancestry).4 Non-cows don’t give cow milk or produce cowdung, and humans
need cow milk for nutrition and cow dung for fuel. Humans instinctively see
cows as similar to one another, and as different from horses. (See Dharmottara in
Arnold 2012, 190–191.)
Given these fundamental human goals and a similar perceptual neurobiology
we tend to judge as similar those things that have the power to advance our goals
and to judge as similar (and dissimilar from the first class) those that don’t. The
analytical spade on this account is turned not when we stumble upon a universal
whose presence we recognize in particulars, but rather when a particular does or
does not do what we want together with an innate non-conceptual tendency to
see as similar things that serve similar sets of purposes reinforced by tendencies
to apply common linguistic terms to those things we see as similar. This last
tendency in turn gives rise to an illusion, mediated by a naive referential theory
of meaning, that we are referring to universals. (See Guerrero 2013 for an
extended discussion.)
I now skip a lot of history and dialectic and move to the most mature form of
this doctrine that we find in the work of Dharmakīrti’s 11th-century
commentator, Ratnakīrti, and also to some extent in the work of his teacher
Jñānaśrīmitra (10th–11th C). We might call this the “paradigm and distinction”
model of apoha. Ratnakīrti glosses apoha as determination (niścaya), asserting
that to grasp an apoha is simply to be able in practice to determine which of two
alternatives holds, to draw a distinction among entities. He argues that to have a
concept—to be able to engage in inference or to recognize conceptually
constructed composite entities—is a two-stage affair. First, he argues, we must
have an ākāra/rnam pa—a representation5—of a paradigm instance of a
particular that satisfies the concept in question. Second, we must have the
capacity to distinguish things that are similar to the paradigm from things that
are not.
Once again, the objection regarding the presupposition of universals in order
to account for similarity can be raised, but it is not decisive. If we appeal to
innate habits or dispositions to respond to some particulars in a certain way in
virtue of responding to others in a particular way—a causal story—we may be
able to dispense with the ontological extravagance of a universal as the
explanation of that causal capacity, especially if we are Buddhists about
causality, seeing it as mere dependent origination. The role of a representation of
a paradigm anticipates Eleanor Rosch’s (1999) account of the role of paradigms
in concepts in a nice way. And the gloss of apoha as the ability to draw
distinctions in our verbal and non-verbal behavior gives a nice nominalistic
understanding that avoids the awkward double negations to which Digṅāga and
Dharmakīrti were committed.6
Geluk theorists in Tibet, particularly Gyeltsap, took things a step further,
asking whether the representation of a paradigm is necessary at all to this story.
Adopting something like a direct realist theory both of perception and of
cognition, they argued that conceptual thought merely consists in the ability to
draw distinctions and to use words and concepts to codify those distinctions we
draw in perception and action. Some capacities to distinguish may be innate;
some depend on our language; but all are matters of convention, in the sense that
each of these constitutes a way in which we construct a shared reality, as
opposed to being ways in which we discover an independently existing reality
awaiting our transparent epistemic faculties. In this story—one might call it
articulation without representation—neither universals nor representations play
any central role at all.
Apoha, on this view, is merely the ability to draw distinctions. All we have are
particulars, our responses to them, and the language with which we describe
those responses. To have a concept is to behave in a particular way; to believe
that to have one is to grasp a universal is merely to reify. To draw an inference is
to respond at a discursive level (in thought or in language) to the distinctions we
draw in behavior. The story is nominalistic, particularistic, and non-conceptual
all the way down, and yet is an account of how we engage conceptually with a
world of particulars.
It is important to note before we leave apoha theory that this is also a story
according to which any conceptual knowledge—including what we in the West
would regard as perceptual knowledge of composite, enduring objects—is at
best conventional, not ultimate truth. We can return to Candrakīrti’s analysis of
convention to unpack this claim. It means for one thing that it depends upon our
biology, our conceptual apparatus and our language. For another, it does not
deliver reality in a way that withstands analysis, reality as it is independent of
how we engage with it. Analysis reveals the properties we take ourselves to
register to be mere imputations. And finally, in virtue of this, conception is
always deceptive. While it is a pramāṇa, an instrument of knowledge,7 it is a
second-rate instrument, standing behind perception as a guide to reality, simply
in virtue of always presenting itself as engaging with that which is not real.
Inference and perception are then both pramāṇas, but Buddhist nominalism
and the apoha theory it inspires establish a hierarchy in the Pramāṇavāda
tradition we have been exploring. Perception engages directly and causally with
particulars, and can in principle, though not for most of us in practice, deliver
these momentary tropes as they exist. Inference, on the other hand, always
presents itself as an engagement with the universal, and while we can analyze
that away, it never escapes the taint of language, conception and deception. But
the fact that we need at least these two pramāṇas to get anywhere in the world,
to accomplish any of our puruṣārthas, together with the fact that our
categorization depends upon our contingent vasanas, guarantees that the world
with which we engage is always merely conventionally real according to this
tradition.
1.3 How Many Pramāṇas? Pramāṇavāda versus Madhyamaka
While Buddhism is often identified on the epistemological side as the school that
recognizes only two pramāṇas, this is true only of the Pramāṇavāda school we
have just been examining. Candrakīrti, in Lucid Exposition, rejects this position,
arguing that there is no good reason for Buddhists to reject the Nyāya pramāṇas
of testimony and analogy,8 and so that four pramāṇas should be taken seriously.
His argument is simple and compelling, and is developed in the context of his
commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way.
When we ask about pramāṇa, Candrakīrti points out, we must be talking
about knowledge from either the conventional or the ultimate perspective. But,
he also urges, it makes no sense at all to say that anything is ultimately real,
including pramāṇas. The activity of gaining knowledge is something we do in
the conventional context, using conventional means. If we are asking how our
ordinary mundane conventions pertain to acquiring knowledge of the external
world, and how we actually engage in epistemic discourse with others,
epistemology must be a descriptive enterprise, a kind of anthropology of human
investigative practices, albeit a descriptive enterprise with normative
implications. When we actually describe how we come to know, we see that a
great deal of our knowledge in fact does come from testimony, from the spoken
or written words of others. Moreover, a good deal of our understanding also
relies on drawing analogies (a point made forcefully by Wittgenstein in On
Certainty).
To be sure, inference is involved in these activities, but it is also involved in
perception. We must infer from our knowledge of the reliability of our sense
faculties that the information they deliver is accurate. And our confidence in
inference is grounded on the words of others, who teach us how to reason. The
assignment of a special primacy to two of the four pramāṇas, Candrakīrti argues,
amounts to a covert assertion that they have some special ultimate status. Once
we give that up, we should, he argues, let all plausible pramāṇas into the
epistemological playing field. And given that the Buddhists’ most prominent
interlocutors were the Nyāyikas, the full set of Nyāya pramāṇas recommended
itself. (See Thakchöe 2012a, Cowherds 2011.)
At one level, Candrakīrti’s response to Pramāṇavāda methodology is a debate
about how to count epistemic instruments and is simply a familiar analytic
debate about whether certain epistemic activities are reducible to others. At
another, it is an interesting move in a discussion of epistemological
foundationalism. 9 Candrakīrti is challenging the project of reducing the set of
pramāṇas to a privileged pair from which all others can be derived, arguing that
our full range of epistemic practices instead form an interdependent set. And at
yet another level, Candrakīrti is anticipating a naturalization of epistemology,
urging that in asking about how we know, we are asking an empirical question
about human practices, and the answer to that is to be given by asking what we
in fact do as knowers, not by adopting a prescriptive account of what knowledge
is, once again challenging, as does Wittgenstein, the very cogency of a solipsistic
hypothesis in the context of a discourse about knowledge.10 Candrakīrti’s
analysis suggests that we see these three levels of analysis as tightly related.
Candrakīrti’s more expansive approach to the enumeration of pramāṇas is
shared by several early Chinese Buddhist epistemologists. The 6th-century
Chinese epistemologist Huiyuan, in his Essay on the Three Means of Valid
Cognition (translated in Lin 2014) agrees precisely with Candrakīrti in accepting
all four of the Nyāya pramāṇas.11 Moreover, Huiyuan, like Candrakīrti, despite
using frequent analogies in his text, confines his epistemological analysis to the
other three pramāṇas. He argues in particular that we require the separate
pramāṇa of testimony or scriptural authority in order to come to know things
that are outside of the scope of our own perceptual or inferential capacity, but are
known by others in whom we have independent reason to trust (Lin 2014, 14–
15, translation at 22).
Huiyuan’s analysis, however, is very different from the Indian view of these
pramāṇas and their relations to their respective prameyas. Huiyan does not
distinguish among the pramāṇas on the basis of their respective objects of
knowledge, but rather in terms of the kinds of cognition they generate. In fact, he
argues that each of the pramāṇas of perception, inference and scriptural
authority can take particulars or universals as their objects. This divergence from
Indian Buddhist epistemology is interesting, and is explained in part by the fact
that for Huiyuan, what is known, in the end, is the truth of sentences (even
though he takes all language to be merely metaphorical—see the next chapter for
more on this), and sentences contain nouns and predicate expressions that must
be understood as referring to individuals and predicating universals of them.
Huiyuan seems to infer from the unity of the object of knowledge, and from its
comprising both particulars and universals, that whatever is known, no matter by
what means it is known, involves both.
Huizao (7th–8th C) was more directly influenced by Dignāga (Lin 2013). He
follows Dignāga in taking particulars as the prameya of perception and
universals as the prameya for inference. Nonetheless, it is important to Huizao
that if universals are objects of knowledge—if inference is to be a genuine
Pramāṇa—those universals are real in some sense. His solution is conceptualist:
universals, he argues, are mental representations and are the noematic contents
of inference. He hence argues that inference does have a real object—these
intentional contents of mind are real things—but that there is nothing non-
conceptual to which they correspond. He then follows Dignāga in offering an
apoha understanding of the relation of predicate expressions and the
representations they express to reality: While predicates positively refer to
conceptual representations, the only function of those representations is to
enable us to draw distinctions. Scholars are only beginning to investigate
seriously the Chinese Buddhist epistemological tradition, and there may be a
great deal more of value forthcoming in the near future.

2. Pramāṇa and Convention

2.1 The Problem
Candrakīrti’s firm insistence that epistemology is an inquiry into our conventions
for justification and inquiry raises the problem of epistemic relativism. If
epistemic practices are merely conventional, then how are we to decide between
competing conventions? The attack on the Pramāṇavāda tradition can be seen as
an attack on the possibility of any such Archimedean standpoint. In the Buddhist
context, this problem is even more poignant, given the association of convention
with ignorance, or primal confusion, inviting the suspicion that a consequence of
Buddhist epistemological commitments to the conventional status of the
pramāṇas and the deceptiveness of the conventional, that there is no genuine
knowledge at all. Let us explore the dimensions of the problem before
examining the Madhyamaka solution.
Tsongkhapa, following Candrakīrti closely, writes that “Convention12 refers to
a lack of understanding or ignorance; that is, that which obscures or conceals the
way things really are” (2006, 480–481). Candrakīrti himself puts the point this
way:

Obscurational truth13 is posited due to the force of afflictive ignorance,

which constitutes the limbs of cyclic existence. The śrāvakas,
pratyekabuddhas and bodhisattvas, who have abandoned afflictive
ignorance, see compounded phenomena to be like reflections, to have the
nature of being created; but these are not truths for them because they are
not fixated on things as true. Fools are deceived, but for those others—just
like an illusion—in virtue of being dependently originated, they are merely
obscurational. (Ibid., 481–482)
So it might seem that for Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa conventional truth
(understood here as obscurational truth) is merely illusion, wholly false,
accepted only by the fools it deceives. In this case, even to talk about pramāṇa
or knowledge conventionally would make no sense.
But of course that can’t be the whole story, for several reasons. First of all,
both Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa refer to conventional truth as a truth. Indeed in
Introduction to the Middle Way VI: 24 and its commentary, Candrakīrti explicitly
argues that there is a big difference between conventional truth and conventional
falsehood. Second, he points out in Lucid Exposition that the term “convention,”
though it can mean concealing (2009, 439), can also refer to mutual dependence
and to signifiers (2006, 480), Introduction to the Middle Way, 252b, 2009, 439–
440). In Lucid Exposition, Candrakīrti emphasizes the presence of these more
positive meanings, asserting that “positing the person as a dependent designation
based upon the aggregates” is an example of mundane convention (2009, 439),
and that mutual dependence is a meaning of “conventional”; and therefore he
claims that “term and referent; consciousness and object of knowledge, and all
such things, so long as they are non-deceptive, should be known as conventional
truth” (2009, 440).
Third, Candrakīrti also asserts that “it has been shown that each phenomenon
has its own two natures—a conventional and an ultimate nature” (Introduction to
the Middle Way, 253a, Tsongkhapa 2006, 483). The fact that these are natures of
phenomena means that they are in some sense both existent. In fact, the very fact
that Candrakīrti refers to these as natures of objects indicates that he does not
reduce the sense of “conventional” (samvṛti, vyavahāra) to illusory. Fourth,
Nāgārjuna asserts quite plainly, in the verse to which all of the passages to which
I have just adverted are commentaries, that “the Buddha’s teaching is based on
two truths: a truth of worldly convention and an ultimate truth” (Fundamental
Verses on the Middle Way XXIV: 8, Tsongkhapa 2006, 479). Finally, given the
doctrine of the identity of the two truths (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way
XXIV: 18–19), a doctrine of which both Tsongkhapa and Candrakīrti approve, if
the ultimate truth is a truth, a conventional truth that is identical with it just has
to be true in some sense. And knowledge of it has to be possible in some sense.
It is important therefore to see how Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa understand
the idea of conventional truth, most specifically, in the sense in which, and the
reasons for which, they regard conventional truth as true. We must therefore
reconcile the claims that conventional truth is concealing, deceptive, truth only
for fools with its identity with ultimate truth, and its being one of the two natures
of any object. We thus also must explain the sense in which conventional truth is
distinct from, and the sense in which it is identical to, ultimate truth, and why
these two claims are mutually consistent.

2.2 Two Reasons that Conventional Truth Is a Truth (Preliminaries)

There are two prima facie reasons for treating conventional truth as a truth both
in the work of Candrakīrti and in that of Tsongkhapa. First, there is a very
important sense in which the conventional truth is the only truth that there is.
There are two ways of making this point. First, as we noted above, the two truths
are, in an ontological sense, identical. If that is true, then even ultimate truth is
only conventional. Second, the ultimate truth is emptiness, the absence of true,
or inherent, existence in things. The ultimate truth is thus the fact that they are
merely conventionally existent.
Now, neither Tsongkhapa nor Candrakīrti would put the point this way. They
present two different arguments for the status of the conventional as truth. First,
Tsongkhapa argues, following Candrakīrti very closely, that the ultimate truth—
emptiness—is an external negation, a mere elimination of any intrinsic existence
in things, and of any conceptualization (2006, 52–23). But this in the end
amounts to the same thing, since to be merely existent is to lack any intrinsic
identity. The ultimate truth is hence, even for Tsongkhapa, that the conventional
truth is all that there is. We will return to this consideration at the end of this
chapter.
The second reason will be more important in what follows. Tsongkhapa and
Candrakīrti each emphasize that conventional truth is the domain of
conventional pramāṇa, and hence that conventional truth is a domain about
which there is a difference between getting it wrong and getting it right, and that
one can be correct about conventional truth in two different but equally
important senses. First, ordinary people can be right about the fact there is a rope
on the ground, or they could be wrong about the fact that there is a snake there.
The fact that there is a rope, not a snake, is hence in some sense true. Moreover,
it is important to Buddhist soteriological theory that accomplished beings can
know the conventional nature of conventional reality in a way that ordinary fools
cannot. What is deceptive to fools is not, according to philosophers in this
tradition, deceptive to āryas—highly accomplished practitioners—although it is
merely conventional. In that sense, too, convention can be seen truly. Buddhist
epistemology is hence in an important sense progressive, or optimistic, holding
out the possibility that careful use of our pramāṇas can lead to entirely new and
improved means of access to reality.
But there is a deeper point here concerning the very relation between truth and
knowledge. It is easy to take for granted the idea that reality, or truth (and
remember that in Sanskrit and Tibetan these are denoted by the same term,
satya/bden pa) is foundational to knowledge, in that knowledge is defined in
terms of access to truth, or to reality. But it is also important to remember that
for both Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa, it is the fact of epistemic authority that
guarantees truth in convention and the reality of the conventional. When we ask
why conventional truth is a truth, the answer will turn on the fact that epistemic
practice allows us to draw a distinction within the conventional between truth
and falsehood, as well as to talk about truth about the conventional. The fact that
in epistemic practice there is something that counts as getting it right about
conventional reality is what anchors our concepts of truth and reality, not the
other way around. This is one of the distinctive contributions of Indo-Tibetan
Madhyamaka to epistemology. We will explore this contribution first by
considering Candrakīrti’s and Tsongkhapa’s account of conventional truth.

2.3 Mirages for Mādhyamikas

Among the many similes for conventional truth that litter Madhyamaka texts, the
most fruitful is that of the mirage. Conventional truth is false, Candrakīrti tells
us, because it is deceptive (Commentary on Sixty Stanzas of Reasoning
Yuktiṣaṣṭikāvṛtti, 7b in Loizzo, 2007). Candrakīrti spells this out in terms of a
mirage. (Once again, given his liberality concerning pramāṇas, allowing
upamāna or analogy into the set, his regular use of analogies is instructive.) A
mirage appears to be water, but is in fact empty of water—it is deceptive, and in
that sense, a false appearance. On the other hand, a mirage is not nothing: it is an
actual mirage, just not actual water.
The analogy must be spelled out with care. A mirage appears to be water, but
is only a mirage; the inexperienced highway traveler mistakes it for water, and
for him it is deceptive, a false appearance of water; the experienced traveler sees
it for what it is—a real mirage, empty of water. Just so, conventional phenomena
appear to ordinary beings to be inherently existent, whereas in fact they are
merely conventionally real, empty of that inherent existence; to those who see
reality as it is, on the other hand, they appear to be merely conventionally true,
hence to be empty. For us, they are deceptive, false appearances; for them, they
are simply actual conventional existents with the capacity to deceive.
We can update the analogy to make the point more plainly. Imagine three
travelers along a hot desert highway. Alice is an experienced desert traveler; Bill
is a neophyte; Charlie is wearing polarizing sunglasses. Bill points to a mirage
up ahead and warns against a puddle on the road; Alice sees the mirage as a
mirage and assures him that there is no danger. Charlie sees nothing at all and
wonders what they are talking about. If the mirage were entirely false—if there
were no truth about it at all—Charlie would be the most authoritative of the three
(and, importantly from a Buddhist framework that takes seriously the possibility
of full awakening, Buddhas would know nothing of the real world). But that is
wrong. Just as Bill is deceived in believing that there is water on the road,
Charlie is incapable of seeing the mirage at all, and so fails to know what Alice
knows—that there is an actual mirage on the road, which appears to some to be
water, but which is not. There is a truth about the mirage, despite the fact that it
is deceptive, and Alice is authoritative with respect to it precisely because she
sees it as it is, not as it appears to the uninitiated.

2.4 Constraints on Conventional Truth in Madhyamaka Epistemology

Tsongkhapa, in his discussion of the status of arising and ceasing, and the other
pairs of opposites in the context of the negations presented in the Homage verses
for Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, remarks:
[I]f there were no place for conventional phenomena, the existence of
which is established by the epistemic instruments, these phenomena would
be like the snake—that is, the rope grasped as a snake—of which no cause
or effect is possible…
[I]f one were forced to maintain that there is no place for bondage,
liberation, etc. in the meaning of “conventional existence,” and that these
must be placed only in the erroneous perspective, that would be a great
philosophical error.
Even worse, as long as convention is conceived [as entirely nonexistent],
since there would be no role for the epistemic instruments, neither the
proposition maintained nor the person who maintains it nor the proof—
including scriptural sources and reasoning—could be established by
epistemic instruments. So it would be ridiculous to maintain that there are
no genuine phenomena delivered by the epistemic instruments. (2006, 30–
31)14
Tsongkhapa makes it plain here that conventional phenomena, unlike the snake
thought to be perceived when one sees a rope (but like the thought that it is a
snake), have causes and effects, and are actual. Moreover, he argues that the
repudiation of the reality of the conventional would undermine the possibility of
epistemic authority, undermining even the ability to argue cogently that the
conventional does not exist. Such a position would be self-refuting.
Tsongkhapa comments that although ignorance is not a necessary condition of
positing conventional truth, it is the source of the superimposition of inherent
existence on that which is conventionally existent.
This does not demonstrate that those who posit the existence of
conventional truth posit through ignorance, nor that from the perspective of
the śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas and bodhisattvas…it is not posited as
conventional truth. …Since it is through afflictive ignorance that one grasps
things as truly existent, the object that is thereby grasped cannot exist even
conventionally, and whatever is an obscurational truth must exist
conventionally.
…When it is said that compounded phenomena are “merely conventional”
from their perspective, the word “mere” excludes truth, but in no way
excludes conventional truth. …Thus, the sense in which the conventional
truth is true is that it is true merely from the perspective of ignorance—that
is, obscuration.
[When] Candrakīrti…says, “since it is conventionally true, it is
obscurational truth” [Commentary to Introduction to the Middle Way, 98]
[he] means that conventional truth is that which is true from the perspective
of ignorance—obscuration—but not that it is truly existent from the
standpoint of nominal convention. (2006, 482)
Tsongkhapa notes that the fact that something is “only” conventionally true does
not make it false. Things that are conventionally true are indeed true, but only
conventionally so. And so he glosses Candrakīrti’s apparent claim to the contrary
as merely drawing a distinction between conventional and ultimate truth.
Tsongkhapa next turns to the question of whether the distinction between
conventional and ultimate truth is drawn on the basis of two distinct perspectives
on the same reality or on the basis of two distinct natures of that reality.
Following Candrakīrti, he adopts the latter position, arguing that when we
distinguish conventional from ultimate truth we are distinguishing between two
aspects of the object, not between two ways of apprehending the object, despite
the fact that we indeed apprehend these aspects by using different faculties:
Each of the internal and external phenomena has two natures: an ultimate
and a conventional nature. The sprout, for instance, has a nature that is
found by a rational cognitive process, which sees the real nature of the
 phenomenon as it is, and a nature that is found by a conventional cognitive
process, which perceives deceptive or unreal objects. The former nature is
the ultimate truth of the sprout; the latter nature is the conventional truth of
the sprout.
[Candrakīrti’s assertion that] “it has been shown that each phenomenon has
two natures—a conventional and an ultimate nature” [Commentary to
Introduction to the Middle Way, 98–99] does not show that a single nature
is in fact two truths in virtue of the two perspectives of the former and latter
cognitive process. (2006, 483)
The distinction between the two natures, or two truths about a phenomenon, is
drawn, according to both Tsongkhapa and Candrakīrti, on the basis of the kind of
pramāṇa appropriate to each, and it is important that there is a kind of pramāṇa
that is authoritative with respect to each. To be empty and to be deceptive are
different. It is one thing for a mirage to be empty of water; it is another thing for
it to be a deceptive appearance. These are two natures of the mirage, and the
distinction between them is not the difference between two perspectives on the
mirage, but between two objects of knowledge, which in turn are apprehended
through different cognitive processes.
When one perceives the emptiness of a phenomenon, one perceives a nature
that that phenomenon has, regardless of one’s perspective on it, and the kind of
cognitive process that perceives that emptiness is one that is authoritative with
respect to ultimate truth; when one perceives the conventional character of a
phenomenon, one perceives its deceptive nature, both the way it appears and the
fact that it does not exist in that way. Moreover, the kind of cognitive process
that perceives that is one that is authoritative with respect to the conventional.
On the other hand, to perceive a conventional phenomenon as inherently existent
is not even to be authoritative with respect to the conventional.
…In order to ascertain a pot for instance, as a deceptive or unreal object, it
is necessary to develop the view that refutes…the object of fixation that is
the object grasped as truly existent. This is because without having
rationally refuted its true existence, its unreality is not established by
pramāṇas. So, for the mind to establish anything as an object of
conventional truth, it must depend on the refutation of its ultimate
existence. (2006, 483)
…
 Ordinary beings grasp such things as pots as truly existent, and grasp them
as ultimately existent as well. Therefore, from the perspective of their
minds, such things as pots are ultimately existent, but they are not
conventional objects. The things, such as pots, which are ultimately existent
from their perspective, are conventional objects from the perspective of the
āryas, to whom they appear as illusionlike. Since they cannot be posited as
truly existent as they are apprehended by an āryan consciousness, they are
referred to as merely conventional.
…
That which is perceived by ordinary people
By being grasped through unimpaired sense faculties
Is regarded by ordinary people as real.
All the rest is said to be unreal. (Introduction to the Middle Way VI: 25 in
Tsongkhapa 2006, 484)
Finally, there is a standard of correctness for conventional truth. Truth, for
Candrakīrti and for Tsongkhapa, must contrast with falsehood. And the standard
for the truth of a judgment regarding conventional truth is that it is vouchsafed
by the authority of conventional pramāṇas and cannot be undermined by them,
just as the standard of truth of a judgment regarding the ultimate is that it is
vouchsafed by the authority of ultimate pramāṇas and not undermined by
cognition of that kind. This in turn requires a distinction between sound and
impaired conventional faculties:
The internal impairments of the sense faculties are such things as cataracts,
jaundice, and such things as hallucinogenic drugs one has consumed. The
external impairments of the sense faculties are such things as mirrors, the
echoing of sounds in a cave, and the rays of the autumn sun falling on such
things as white sand. Even without the internal impairments, these can
become the causes of grasping of such things as mirages, reflections and
echoes as water, etc.
The impairments of the mental faculty are…such things as erroneous
philosophical views, fallacious arguments and sleep. ….
Taking conventional objects grasped by such unimpaired and impaired
cognitive faculties to be real or unreal, respectively, merely conforms to
ordinary cognitive practice. This is because they actually exist as they
appear or do not, according to whether or not they are undermined by
 ordinary cognition. This distinction is not drawn from the perspective of the
āryas. This is because just as such things as reflections do not exist as they
appear, such things as blue, that appear to exist through their own
characteristics to those who are afflicted by ignorance do not actually exist
as they appear. Therefore there is no distinction between those two kinds of
cognitive faculties in terms of whether or not they are erroneous. (2006,
485)
Note the emphasis on ordinary cognitive practice. Conventional truth, according
to Tsongkhapa, is that which is delivered by unimpaired cognitive faculties when
they are used properly. This is not an accidental generalization; instead it is
constitutive of conventional truth. It entails that any judgment about truth is in
principle revisable, but that to be true is to endure through revision. The
distinction between the conventionally true and the conventionally false has
nothing to do with ultimate truth. Conventional existents and conventional
nonexistents are all false from the perspective of ultimate truth.15 Those who are
taken in by the conventional fail to understand its deceptive character, and so fail
to understand the two truths. That failure, however, is consistent with a lot of
conventional knowledge about a lot of conventional truth.

3. Coherentism, Fallibilism and Pragmatism

3.1 Epistemic Authority for Mādhyamikas
Inasmuch as the role of the authority of pramāṇas in Madhyamaka metaphysics
plays a significant role in Buddhist epistemology, a few remarks on Nāgārjuna’s
and Candrakīrti’s account of the source of the authority of the pramāṇas are
necessary. It is often urged that Nāgārjuna, in Reply to Objections
(Vigrahavyāvārtanī), rejects the intelligibility of any pramāṇas (Siderits 2011). I
believe that this is incorrect. Nāgārjuna, in that text, criticizes a Nyāya account
of pramāṇas and their authority according to which the pramāṇas are taken to be
foundational to all knowledge. He does so because this kind of foundationalism
would require their intrinsic identity and authority as instruments, and so would
undermine his more general account of emptiness.
The Nyāya interlocutor in Reply to Objections argues that Nāgārjuna himself
cannot argue cogently for his own position, as that would presuppose that it is
delivered and so justified by a pramāṇa; that, in turn, the interlocutor argues,
requires that the pramāṇas be self-verifying, and hence non-empty. Hence, he
argues, Nāgarjuna must presuppose non-empty epistemic categories in order to
argue for the emptiness of everything, and so is self-refuting.
5. Suppose one were to deny the things
One apprehended through perception.
That by which one apprehended things—
Perception itself—would be nonexistent!
That is, as the autocommentary makes clear, the opponent is reasoning that any
argument for the emptiness of the objects of knowledge is an equally good
argument for the emptiness of the pramāṇas. But if the pramāṇas are empty,
they cannot serve as foundations for knowledge, and so in the absence of such
foundations, there would be no reason to believe even the Mādhyamika’s claims.
(See Westerhoff 2010a for details.)
Nāgārjuna replies not by denying the utility of the pramāṇas, but rather by
arguing, in what must be the first explicit defense of epistemological
coherentism in the history of world philosophy, that the pramāṇas are
themselves useful precisely because they are dependent. Once again, a
terminological clarification is needed. The kind of coherentism Nāgārjuna is
defending is not one in which all beliefs are mutually supportive, but rather one
according to which the warrant of mechanisms of attaining knowledge and the
warrant of the beliefs they deliver are mutually supportive. The pramāṇas,
Nāgārjuna argues, are dependent upon their prameyas, the objects of knowledge.
40. If pramāṇas were self-established,
They would be independent of prameyas.
These pramāṇas you would establish,
Being self-established, would depend on nothing else.
41. If, as you would have it, the pramāṇas
Are independent of their objects, the prameyas
Then these pramāṇas
Would pertain to nothing at all.
…
46. So, as far as you are concerned, by establishing the pramāṇas
The prameyas are thereby established.
So, as far as you are concerned,
Neither pramāṇas nor prameyas can be established.
Foundationalism, even of this methodological kind, according to Nāgārjuna,
makes no sense. Neither instrument nor object of knowledge can serve as
foundations. We are entitled to rely on epistemic instruments, that is, just
because they deliver epistemic objects; we are entitled in turn to have confidence
in our judgments about our epistemic objects just because they are delivered by
these epistemic instruments. For instance, you are entitled to believe that your
vision is good just because it delivers visible objects to you; in the same way,
you are entitled to believe that those objects are present just because your vision
is good. (See Thakchöe 2012a.)
Candrakīrti, as we have seen, is even more explicit in his endorsement of the
full set of Nyāya pramāṇas (perception, inference, analogy and scriptural
authority). He enumerates them specifically, but argues that they have only a
dependent, conventional validity, concluding, “therefore, in this context [that of
mundane knowledge] the four pramāṇas make the mundane object known”
(2003, 55). Moreover, Tsongkhapa makes explicit use of this theory of pramāṇas
and their objects, using this theory as an account of authority or warrant
throughout his corpus. It is therefore a serious mistake to think that
Madhyamaka, at least as articulated by Nāgārjuna, Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa,
eschews reliance on, or an account of, epistemic authority. But it is equally
incorrect to ignore their radical pluralism and coherentism about such authority.

3.2 Pragmatism and Fallibilism

Not only is there an important strain of coherentism in Buddhist epistemology,
but there is also an important strain of pragmatism.16 We have encountered one
source of this pragmatism in Dharmakīrti’s attempt to ground apoha theory
through the appeal to puruṣārtha or human ends and arthakrīya, the ability to
accomplish those ends. Here we have an explicit appeal to non-discursive as
well as discursive human practices at the basis of concept formation and
judgment. But as we follow the trajectory of Buddhist epistemology into
Candrakīrti’s Madhyamaka, the pragmatism goes deeper yet. For Candrakīrti
explicitly treats justification and the process of coming to know as conventional
practices alongside any others, whose justification as practices consists simply in
the fact that they fit into a network of everyday conventions and practices that
work for us. When asked for any ultimate ground, such as direct contact with
reality or transcendental justification, the Mādhyamika shakes her head,
suggesting that the very idea of such a ground is incoherent; convention, human
practice, is all we have, and all we need. This justification and understanding of
pragmatism in epistemology is another signal contribution of Buddhist theory to
our understanding of knowledge.
 Moreover, this epistemology is fallibilist in at least two senses. First, and most
obviously, while we may know some things to be conventionally true,
everything we say conventionally, whether true or false, fails to be ultimately
true. What we know is hence always false in one very important sense. But this
is old hat within a Madhyamaka framework, as we have seen in our discussion
of the two truths. More interestingly, and more relevant to contemporary Western
discussions of knowledge, since knowledge is understood in terms of the
deliverances of the pramāṇas, and since the pramāṇas are only validated in
terms of evolving social epistemic practices and the prameyas they deliver, we
can never take knowledge, on this model, to be a finished enterprise.
Conventional knowledge is thus not only ultimately false, but much of it is
very likely to turn out to be conventionally false as the ongoing equilibrium
between pramāṇa and prameya, as well as the ongoing calibration of pramāṇas,
advances. This is simply another version of the “pessimistic induction” on
knowledge: when we focus epistemological reflection on the pramāṇas, when
we couple that with a careful account of just in what the warrant of the pramāṇas
consists, and when we focus on the relationship between knowledge, truth and
the role of convention in constituting each, this conclusion is unavoidable. This
is another contribution of Buddhist epistemology to contemporary discourse.

4. The Centrality of Epistemic Authority to Ontology

The authority of the pramāṇas is hence central to Madhyamaka accounts of truth
and reality in two respects. First, conventional truth is conventionally true
precisely because it is that which is delivered by conventional pramāṇas and not
undermined by it. My knowledge that snow is white is delivered by vision,
corroborated by the vision of others, and is not undermined by any other
conventional pramāṇa. Without an antecedent account of the pramāṇas and their
authority, there is no way to distinguish conventional truth from conventional
falsity. On the one hand, without such an account, we might take only the
ultimate pramāṇas to be authoritative. But then, since all phenomena are
ultimately unreal, reliance on these instruments only would deliver the verdict
that everything is false, and we would have no domain of truth whatsoever. On
the other hand, in the absence of such an account, we might take the object of
any cognition to be conventionally existent. But that would make a hash of all
inquiry, as there is always somebody crazy or deluded enough to believe, or to
believe in, anything. It is therefore the fact of conventional authority—of the
robustness of ordinary epistemic standards—that allows us to distinguish truth
from falsity and to engage in inquiry in the first place.
 Second, the genuine actuality of conventional truth is a consequence of the
fact that according to Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa the pramāṇas of āryas—of
those who have transcended the primal ignorance that fabricates inherent
existence—deliver conventional phenomena as actual, although deceptive,
phenomena. Once again, the authority of their pramāṇas doesn’t so much reflect
the fact that it is true that conventional phenomena are existent but constitutes
their existence, as it constitutes a standard by means of which we can distinguish
the true from the false.17
Truth for Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa is always that which is delivered by
pramāṇas. But what makes these pramāṇas authoritative? Here is where the
epistemic rubber hits the soteriological road and where the term “conventional”
(vyāvahara/tha snyad) gets its punch. An ultimate pramāṇa is simply defined as
one that is authoritative with respect to ultimate truth. It is hence the kind of
cognition finally necessary to attain awakening and the kind engaged in
awakened consciousness. A conventional epistemic instrument, much more
straightforwardly, is just one that is authoritative with regard to what we
conventionally accept. As we have seen, Nāgārjuna argues in Reply to
Objections that this is not a static set—pramāṇas depend on their prameyas for
their authority, and these objects, in turn, depend on the pramāṇas for their
actuality in a coherentist spiral that defies grounding, but characterizes epistemic
practice in the only way we could ever hope to do so. Candrakīrti follows
Nāgārjuna in accepting the authority of conventional pramāṇas in the
conventional domain.

4.1 Seeing Mirages Correctly

We can now see why it is so important to Buddhist epistemology that we
actually see mirages, and that we can come to see that mirages are mirages.
Mirages are genuine parts of our world, and they cause real problems. If one
were to spend one’s life in polarizing sunglasses, one would never know this,
and one would be less useful to everyone else. To see a mirage as water is not to
see conventional truth, but conventional falsehood, for conventional pramāṇas
undermine the assertion that there is water on the road. But conventional
pramāṇas vindicate the claim that there is a mirage that appears to be water. That
is why it is conventionally existent.
There are two levels of apprehension of mirages, though. There is a difference
between the novice desert driver who sees the mirage as water, but then infers its
mirage-status and the experienced driver who sees it as a mirage. They each
apprehend conventional existence, but the first does so as do most of us
ordinarily, but as sophisticated Mādhyamikas do, inferentially. The latter sees the
mirage as an arhat sees conventional existence—immediately, perceptually, non-
inferentially. We see it as deceptive because we are, at least in the first moment
of perceptual consciousness, deceived. She sees it as deceptive because she
knows what we see. The transcendence of primal ignorance is hence not the
transcendence of the apprehension of the conventional, but the transcendence of
deception by it. Buddhist epistemology is deployed to make sense of the
possibility and the process of this kind of transcendence.
Buddhism, as we noted in chapter 1, is about solving a problem—the problem
of the omnipresence of suffering—and the central intuition of Buddhism is that
the solution to that problem is the extirpation of ignorance. Epistemology is
located at the foundation of morality and gets its point just from that location,
but it also has profound ontological consequences. The mechanism of the
extirpation of ignorance is the competent use of our pramāṇas. What truly
competent use delivers is hence, at least indirectly, always of soteriological
significance—always instrumental to liberation. Inasmuch as that is the central
moral virtue and inasmuch as epistemology is so tightly bound to the
soteriological project, it is also the central epistemic virtue, and what we call the
goal of epistemic activity is truth. Conventional truth is hence not to truth as
blunderbusses are to buses, nor as fake guns are to real guns, but rather is,
instead, simply one kind of truth. And knowledge must be defined in reference
to it. The primary Buddhist insight is that the most obvious direction of
explanation is in fact to be reversed.

4.2 Epistemology and the Two Truths

One of the Buddha’s deepest insights was that there are two truths, and that they
are very different from one another. They are the objects of different kinds of
cognition, and they reflect different aspects of reality. They are apprehended at
different stages of practice. Despite the importance of the apprehension of
ultimate truth, one can’t skip the conventional. Despite the soteriological
efficacy of ultimate truth, even after Buddhahood, omniscience and care for
others require the apprehension of the conventional.
Nāgārjuna’s deepest insight was that despite the vast difference between the
two truths in one sense, they are, in an equally important sense, identical. We can
now make better sense of that identity that we discussed at length in chapter 2,
and of why the fact of their identity is the same fact as that of their difference.
The ultimate truth is, from a Buddhist perspective, emptiness. Emptiness in
Madhyamaka thought is the emptiness of inherent existence, not of existence
simpliciter. To be empty of inherent existence is to exist only conventionally,
only as the object of conventional truth. The ultimate truth about any
phenomenon, on the analysis of this doctrine I have been defending, is hence
that it is merely a conventional truth. Ontologically, therefore, the two truths are
absolutely identical. This is the content of the idea that from a Madhyamaka
standpoint the two truths have a single basis: that basis is empty phenomena.
Their emptiness is their conventional reality; their conventional reality is their
emptiness.
But to know phenomena conventionally is not to know them ultimately. As
objects of knowledge—that is, as intentional contents of thought, as opposed to
as mere phenomena; that is, as external objects considered independently of their
mode of apprehension—they are objects of different kinds of knowledge, despite
the identity at a deeper level of those objects. Hence we see the difference
between the two truths. But the respect in which they are different and that in
which they are identical are, despite their difference, also identical. A mirage is
deceptive because it is a refraction pattern and it is the nature of a refraction
pattern to be visually deceptive. The conventional truth is merely deceptive and
conventional because, upon ultimate analysis, it fails to exist as it appears—that
is, because it is ultimately empty. It is the nature of the conventional to deceive.
Ultimately, since all phenomena, even ultimate truth, exist only conventionally,
conventional truth is all the truth there is, and that is an ultimate, and therefore, a
conventional, truth. To fail to take conventional truth seriously as truth is
therefore not only to deprecate the conventional in favor of the ultimate, but to
deprecate truth, per se. That way, according to any Buddhist school, lies
suffering.
Buddhist epistemology is aimed at the extirpation of suffering, but, as I hope
to have shown, it is of more than soteriological interest. It represents a
distinctive way of picking up the problem of knowledge. It develops a distinctive
account of the nature of justification and a distinctive account of the relationship
between knowledge and its objects, as well as a distinctive approach to thinking
about the structure of concepts and judgments. To be sure, all of this is entwined
with a Buddhist account of ontology, both with its nominalism and with its focus
on the two truths. One not predisposed to Buddhist metaphysics might therefore
find the epistemology of little interest. On the other hand, to the extent that the
epistemology makes sense—and in my view that is a considerable extent—this
might provide reason to be sympathetic to Buddhist metaphysics as well. In any
case, it is clear that this is a distinctive voice in epistemology, and one that
belongs in discussions of knowledge as they are prosecuted in the contemporary
West.
1. See Dreyfus 1997; Dunne 2004; Patil 2009; Coseru 2012; Katsura 1969, 1984, 1991, 1992, 1999; Franco
1997, 2009; Steinkellner 1991; Hayes 1980; Kellner 2001, 2010, 2011; Hattori 1980 for a treatment of this
vast literature, much of which is beyond the scope of this chapter.
2. Well, not all of the big issues. Understanding the nature of perception—including both ordinary
perception and that of highly realized practitioners (yogic perception) is also an important preoccupation in
Buddhist epistemology. In particular, Dignāga, in Investigation of the Percept, devotes serious attention to
understanding the relation between the causes of perceptual experience, which may well be atomic and
imperceptible (atoms or dharmas), with the intentional object of perception, which typically is nonexistent
outside of perceptual experience (enduring macroscopic objects), and to working out how perception, given
this predicament, can be a source of knowledge at all. These are fascinating questions, but we will leave
them aside here.
3. It is worth noting a distinctive feature of Candrakīrti’s thought about logic in this context. Indeed, most
Indian logicians and epistemologists after Dignāga take the logical relation vyapti to be first and foremost a
material relation between categories, or between categories and individuals. And the most common English
translation of vyapti is pervasion, signaling this fact. Candrakīrti, however, in the context of his critique of
Bhāviveka’s use of this logic in the latter’s commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Fundamental Verses on the Middle
Way, suggests that this has to be an error. He argues that Nāgārjuna, rather than using an Indian formal
argument that presupposes a shared understanding of the reference of the key terms of the argument, and
hence a shared understanding of the potential material relata of vyapti, makes use only of reductio
(prasāṅga) arguments that presuppose no common understanding of the meanings of terms, but only a
shared commitment to inference. Inference, on this view, then, is taken as a relation between sentences (or
terms, at least) and not between classes and individuals. This idea seems to die in Indian thought about
logic, however, due to the pervasive influence of Dharmakīrti and his followers.
4. Vasanas play another important naturalizing role, explaining our primitive dispositions to interact with
our conspecifics in ways that facilitate the learning of language and the acquisition of norm-governed
dispositions, playing the same role that our evolutionary history does in explaining the innate tendencies
that make learning and socialization possible. We can thus naturalize karma by treating it as a placeholder
for anything we inherit psychologically from the past.
5. Once again, bear in mind the complex semantic range of this term, which can also connote an image, or
an aspect, or even, as Kellner and McClintock (2014, 1–6) suggest, phenomenal content. But here
representation seems clearly to be what is at issue.
6. For a nuanced treatment of apoha and a persuasive pragmatist interpretation of Dharmakīrti’s theory of
truth and meaning see Guerrero 2013.
7. A status they have in virtue of their reliability in delivering knowledge. Dharmakīriti and many of his
followers—and like most non-Buddhist Indian epistemologists—are classical reliablists, unlike, for
instance, Nāgārjuna and his followers who, as we will see, are coherentists.
8. Candrakīrti does devote some space to arguing that testimony is, at least conventionally, a distinct
pramāṇa, in virtue of the fact that speech is intentional and constitutive of the domain of convention (we
might say that it puts the sam [together] and the vṛt [speech] in saṃvṛti [convention]). But it is ironic,
given that he, like so many Buddhist philosophers, makes such heavy use of analogy in his own writing,
that he says nothing much about how analogy works. We will have occasion to consider this issue in the
next chapter when we talk about Buddhist theories of metaphor and of the nature of meaning.
9. A note about my use of the word “foundationalism” is in order here. The term often is used only to
denote an epistemological position according to which certain sentences or cognitive episodes are taken to
be self-warranting and to stand as the foundation for all other knowledge. That is a foundationalism of
content. But there is also a foundationalism of method, according to which certain faculties or methods of
knowing are taken to be self-warranting and foundational. Descartes’s use of clear and distinct perception in
the Meditations is a good example of this kind of foundationalism. It is this latter kind of foundationalism
that Nāgārjuna is here concerned to refute.
10. See Thurman (1980) for an insightful treatment of the homologies between the thought of Candrakīrti
and that of Wittgenstein, emphasizing their shared commitment to the centrality of a domain of shared
practices in the constitution of knowledge and meaning.
11. Lin notes that in translating Indian pramāṇa literature, Kumārajīva uses the Chinese term xin, meaning
trust, warrant or assurance, bringing this normative dimension of pramāṇa into Chinese (2014, 3).
12. There is a translational problem posed throughout this discussion by the terms vyāvahāra and samvṛti in
Sanskrit and tha snyad (thanyet) and kun rdzob (kundzop) in Tibetan. I will use convention to translate the
first members of these pairs and obscuration to translate the second. The only time that this difference is
important is where they are glossed. Both Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa regard them as absolutely
coextensive.
13. Here I am using the term obscurational truth instead of the normal conventional truth to reflect the
gloss Candrakīrti is developing for the Sanskrit samvṛti. In general, in this chapter, as we will be
occasionally referring to his and Tsongkhapa’s gloss of this term, we will require this alternative translation
to make sense of what they are doing.
14. I have made slight changes in the translation that appears in (2006) for greater clarity in this context.
15. Nāgārjuna’s glosses falsehood in this context in Introduction to the Middle Way XIII: 1 as deceptiveness.
So to say that the conventional is false is to say that it is deceptive, as when we call someone a false friend
or refer to a fake gun. It is not to say that the conventional is nonexistent, but to say that exists in one way,
but appears to exist in another. See Cowherds (2011), especially chapter 4, for more on this.
16. Many, including Kalupahana (1976) and Guerrero (2013), have noted the broad philosophical affinities
between many ideas developed in many Buddhist traditions and American pragmatist thought, particularly
that of John Dewey and William James. There is a lot to be said for this insight, and I thank Andrew Connor
for calling this connection to my attention, but I will not pursue those analogies here.
17. See Westerhoff (2011) and Finnigan and Tanaka (2011) for interesting explorations of how this
constitution might be modeled.
8 LOGIC AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF
LANGUAGE

Formal logic as we know it since Frege was not a feature of the classical Indian
landscape. A categorical logic reminiscent of Aristotelian syllogistic logic was
introduced to Buddhist thought by the Nyāya school in about the 4th century,
and developed in some detail by Indian and Tibetan Buddhist epistemologists,
particularly Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. While this “Buddhist Logic” has received
considerable attention in Buddhist Studies per se, it never reaches a level of
sophistication that would lead us in the modern world to take it seriously as a
sophisticated account of reasoning or of consequence relations in general. And
Buddhist logical thought makes almost no inroads into East Asia at all. So, while
the history of Buddhist accounts of formal reasoning and debate are to be sure
interesting to the historian of logic, it would be useless to look to medieval
Indian Buddhist logic as a source of formal insights today.
This does not mean, however, that there are no resources in Buddhist logical
theory for contemporary philosophical logic. To find those resources we travel
back in time, prior to the Nyāya intervention in Buddhist philosophical thought,
to the deployment by the Buddha himself and later by Mādhyamikas, of the
catuṣkoṭi, or four-cornered logic. This structure represents the first serious
program in four-valuational logic in world history, recognized by Routley (1975)
as an important anticipation of the Meyer-Dunn semantics for first-order
entailment (Meyer and Dunn 1972). It is also a clear anticipation of Belnap’s
four-valued logic for computer reasoning (Belnap 1977a, 1977b). In this
framework, while some sentences are simply true, and others simply false, some
are both true and false, and some are neither true nor false.1
And while formal logic may not have preoccupied Buddhist philosophers, the
philosophy of language certainly did. Language, as we have already seen,
occupies a complex position in Buddhist philosophical reflection. On the one
hand, Buddhavacana (the speech of the Buddha), although clearly linguistic, is
valorized if not as a pramāṇa, then at least as something awfully close, capable
of clinching a doctrinal argument, and even when its meaning is disputed,
requiring interpretation as true in the context of intramural Buddhist dialectics.
And no Buddhist philosopher, in any tradition, has been shy about using
language, despite some apparently extralinguistic “utterances” by Zen masters
and certain valorized silences to which we will return below.
On the other hand, language is always associated with conceptuality, with
reification, and with predication that implicates universals. Ultimate truth, access
to which is the epistemic goal of Buddhist reflection and practice—and which is
indeed the subject of much Buddhist speculation carried out in Pāli, Sanskrit,
Tibetan, Chinese and other languages—is regarded as ineffable, as beyond
discursive thought or description. So language is always regarded as deceptive,
as in need of transcendence. This tension, not surprisingly, gives rise to
paradoxes, the resolution of which may require the device of the catuṣkoṭi.
The conjunction of the obvious utility of language—acknowledged both
implicitly in its use, and explicitly in reflection on its use—and its necessary
ultimate inadequacy and deceptive nature raises important broad questions that
Buddhist philosophers took very seriously: What does language actually do?
What is the nature of meaning? How can something so deceptive and inadequate
nonetheless be useful in the pursuit of truth? Addressing these questions,
especially in the context of tantric Buddhism, leads to interesting speculations
about the genus of which language is a species. In this chapter we will take up
each of these linked topics in turn.

1. Logic—the Catuṣkoṭi
Let us begin with the catuṣkoṭi. This Buddhist approach to logic is often
characterized as a four-valued logic, but I think that is misleading. It is a two-
valued logic that allows four valuations. We can bring this point home with the
following simple analogy. Suppose that you invite my wife and me to dinner.
There are four possibilities: (only) she comes; (only) I come; we both come; or
neither of us comes. The fact that there are four possibilities for our attendance
does not mean that there are four of us, only that there are four subsets of the set
comprising the two of us.
The insight behind the catuṣkoṭi is simply that truth values, like spouses,
dispose themselves independently. While the only truth values are true and false
—and all Buddhist philosophers of language are insistent on this fact—these
truth values are independent of each other. A sentence may be (only) true; (only)
false; both true and false; neither true nor false. The catuṣkoṭi hence partitions
logical space into four possibilities, which we can represent by thinking of a
valuation function that maps sentences not onto members of the basic set of truth
values, but rather onto subsets of the set of truth values. Hence four valuations,
not four values.
While the catuṣkoṭi is deployed in certain Pāli suttas and in the Perfection of
Wisdom sūtras that constitute the foundation of Madhyamaka (Westerhoff 2009,
Garfield and Priest 2009, Tillemans 2011a), its locus classicus is in Nāgārjuna’s
Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way and in the commentarial literature that
follows it. Shortly after the period of Nāgārjuna, this logical approach is eclipsed
by the much less interesting categorical logic of the Nyāyikas, brought in to
Buddhist discourse by such philosophers as Bhāviveka and Dignāga, and
developed most extensively by Dharmakīrti and his commentators.2
In Nāgārjuna’s hands, the catuṣkoṭi comes in two forms: a positive and a
negative form. In the positive form, generally asserted from a conventional
perspective, all four limbs are asserted. That is, Nāgārjuna argues that some
sentences can be understood as true, false, both and neither, from that
perspective. For instance, in the eighteenth chapter of Fundamental Verses on
the Middle Way, he says:
8. Everything is real; and is not real;
Both real and not real;
Neither real nor not real.
This is the Lord Buddha’s teaching.
In such cases, the four corners are parameterized. So, there are two principal
readings of this verse. On one reading, these represent sequential stages in
understanding. One begins by urging people to take phenomena seriously. They
are real. But then it is important to teach that phenomena are in fact empty, that
they do not exist in the way they appear to exist, and so are unreal as they
appear. Since this can lead to nihilism, it is important then to teach that their
ultimate nonexistence is perfectly compatible with their conventional reality.
And finally, it is necessary to urge that neither of these assertions conveys the
ultimate reality of things, because that is beyond characterization by words. But
this must be contrasted with the negative catuṣkoṭi in which all four limbs are
denied. Tsongkhapa draws this contrast as follows::
We do not assert both of these; nor do we assert neither that he [the
Tathāgata] exists nor does not exist because ultimately none of these four
alternatives can be maintained. On the other hand, if we did not assert these
conventionally, those to whom we speak would not understand us. So, from
the standpoint of the conventional truth and for conventional purposes, we
say “empty” and “nonempty,” “both empty and nonempty,” and “neither
empty nor nonempty.” We say these having mentally imputed them from
the perspective of those people to whom we are speaking. Therefore, we
 simply say that “they are asserted only for the purpose of designation.”
(2006, 448)
The last statement, on this interpretation, leads directly to a paradox of
expressibility, of course. That is, in asserting that ultimate reality is
inexpressible, it expresses something about ultimate reality, namely its
inexpressibility. (See Garfield and Priest 2003, 2009; Deguchi, Garfield and
Priest 2013a, 2013b, 2013d.) A second way to read this is as the assertion that
everything exists (conventionally), does not exist (ultimately), both exists
(conventionally) and does not exist (ultimately) and neither exists (ultimately)
nor does not exist (conventionally). Interestingly, more canonical commentaries
take the first reading than the second.
When Nāgārjuna is discussing the ultimate perspective in chapter XXII, on the
other hand, he resorts to negative catuṣkoṭis in which all four possibilities are
denied.
11. We do not assert “empty.”
We do not assert “non-empty.”
We assert neither both nor neither.
These are used only nominally.
This suggests a more radical possibility for a valuation function—that it is
partial, and not only partial but radically so. Some sentences get no evaluation at
all, not even the empty set of truth values. (See Garfield and Priest 2009.) In this
case, Nāgārjuna’s point is that all language—no matter how useful—fails to
characterize reality, simply because it deals in unreal universals, superimposing
concepts on a non-conceptualized world. To the extent that language is necessary
at all, it is a necessary evil; while it can never succeed, it gives us the illusion
that we have somehow encompassed the world as it is.
This lands us once again in an expressibility paradox. Some Buddhist
philosophers, noting this looming paradox, attempt and fail to defuse it.
Candrakīrti glosses the possibility of this kind of refusal to assert or deny
anything at all in terms of a distinction between non-implicative, or external,
negation, in which a sentence is simply denied without anything being
implicated, not even its falsity or lack of any truth value. This distinction is an
old one in Sanskrit grammatical traditions. It corresponds roughly to the Western
distinction between internal or predicate negation and external or sentential
negation, but with a pragmatic dimension as well. So, the non-implicative
negation rejects a sentence without suggesting anything at all about its subject
term, while an implicative negation rejects a sentence implicating that its subject
term satisfies a property contrary to the one asserted by the sentence.
So, when I say that my horse is not brown, I implicate that I have a horse of a
different color, while if I say that I do not have a brown horse, I do not implicate
that I have a horse at all. This draws the distinction in terms of logical form.
Sanskrit grammarians, however, also draw it pragmatically: An implicative
negation is any negation that carries a clear implicature regarding the subject
term; a non-implicative negation is one that does not. So, to take a stock
example, “that fat man does not eat during the day” implicates that he eats at
night, while “that fat man has no son” does not implicate that he has a daughter.
The two negations are then regarded as distinct in type despite the identity of
logical form. This alerts us to the fact that negation as an operator is conceived
somewhat differently in this tradition, not simply as a kind of denial, but as a
family of speech acts.
In the case of the negative tetralemma, Candrakīrti urges that emptiness is an
external, or non-implicative negation. So when we say that things are empty, we
deny that they have any nature; we do not implicate that they have some other
nature, in particular, that they have the nature of being empty. For this reason, he
suggests, the negative tetralemma is not contradictory. For in denying that things
are empty, we are denying that they have the nature of emptiness; in denying that
they are non-empty, we are denying that they have any nature at all, etc.
Unfortunately, given that emptiness is also asserted to be the ultimate nature of
phenomena, and that that nature is to have no nature, paradox is nonetheless
inevitable. (See Garfield and Priest 2009, Deguchi, Garfield and Priest 2013a,
2013b.)
In the Chan and Zen traditions in China and Japan, this negative tetralemma is
glossed as an absolute negation, or MU, the refusal to say anything, even that. In
Tibet, this radical negation is taken to indicate the complete ineffability of
ultimate truth—that to say anything about it, or anything that purports to
characterize reality as it is, is to say something that is not even truth-valueless,
something not even suitable for evaluation. Gorampa argues for this position,
stating that the ultimate truth is “beyond all conceptual fabrication” (Kassor
2013), and so that no statements about it have any content whatsoever.
Sometimes, on the other hand, the catuṣkoṭi is neither simply asserted nor
simply denied, but rather is used as a partition of the logical space for the
purposes of reductio. In Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way XXII we find
the following:
13. One who holds firmly
That the Tathāgata exists
 Will have to fabricate his nonexistence
After having achieved nirvana.
14. Since he is essentially empty,
Neither the thought that the Buddha exists
Nor that he does not exist
After having achieved nirvāṇa is tenable.
15. Those who develop fabrications with regard to the Buddha—
The unextinguished one who has gone beyond all fabrication—
And are impaired by those cognitive fabrications,
Fail to see the Tathāgata.
16. Whatever is the essence of the Tathāgata,
That is the essence of the transmigrator.
The Tathāgata has no essence.
The transmigrator has no essence.
This argument is often taken to be a reductio on an imagined opponent’s
presupposition that the Buddha exists ultimately, as some kind of soul, or
substantially real continuum. The argument is then that one of the four
alternatives would have to obtain after the Buddha has entered nirvāṇa, but that
each is absurd. If he continued to exist, then since the post-nirvāṇa Buddha
would be identical to the pre-nirvāṇa Buddha, he would have the same
properties, and would not be awakened; if he did not exist, then nirvāṇa would
simply be extinction, and would be useless. To both exist and not exist in the
same sense is impossible—particularly if neither conjunct is true—and anything
substantially real must either exist or not exist at any moment.
While this use of the catuṣkoṭi might seem less radical than its simple
assertion or more radical denial, it still implicates the partition of logical space
into four possibilities rather than two. So, even in cases such as this, the use of
the catuṣkoṭi framework presupposes the cogency in general of the assertion of
contradictions and the cogency of truth value gaps, even if they are not cogent in
a particular case. In any of these three uses of the catuṣkoṭi the Madhyamaka
perspective on logic is clear: Logic must be both paraconsistent and
paracomplete.
This Madhyamaka logical commitment is not, I emphasize, a recommendation
of irrationalism, or some kind of antinomian rejection of canons of reasoning.
Instead it is a specific account of what rationality demands, and a specific
proposal for a particular canon of reasoning. We can make perfectly good sense
of the contradictions that arise at the limits of thought, expressibility and
ontology that arise naturally from these Buddhist analyses. The tools of modern
paraconsistent logic demonstrate the cogency of such reasoning and the
rationality of the endorsement of certain contradictions (Priest 2006, 2010;
Garfield and Priest 2009; and Garfield 2014b). Moreover, the standard semantics
for entailment and the most powerful database logics validate this approach. In
each of these cases, we have compelling arguments for each conjunct of the
relevant contradiction, a commitment to accepting the rational consequences of
rationally justified beliefs, and no reason to believe that contradictions are to be
rejected per se, as there is no commitment in this tradition to the principle of ex
contradictione quodlibet, or explosion. Without a commitment to this principle
—one hard to defend without begging the question—the Mādhyamika
recommends a tolerance of contradiction.
But we can also make sense of presupposition failure issuing in the
assignment of the empty set as a valuation for a sentence. This is a perfectly
natural approach to be taken in the case of fictional discourse, and Madhyamaka
can be cogently interpreted as a kind of pan-fictionalism. (See Garfield 2006a.)
That is, conventional truth is entirely a fiction, a collectively constituted fiction,
a fiction sufficient to ground conventional truth just as ordinary fictions ground
truths about the fiction. But just as fiction has its gaps, and it is neither true nor
false, for instance, that Ahab’s mother was blonde, conventional truth has its
gaps. It is neither true nor false that I remain the same person today that I was
tomorrow, since the basis of identity—the self—that would either verify or
falsify that claim does not exist.
Logic follows metaphysics quite naturally in Madhyamaka. We may or may
not adopt a Madhyamaka metaphysical framework, and the purpose of this study
is not to recommend, but to articulate that framework. Nonetheless, if logic is a
canon of inference that enables us to think cogently in any domain, the four-
valuational approach suggested by early Buddhist thought recommends itself to
us. It does not require that we augment our set of truth values; nor should it.
Truth and falsity constitute the most natural way to evaluate sentences. But it
does permit us to reason in domains where contradictions may be true, or when
truth may be underdetermined.
Of course there are those—including many in the Buddhist philosophical
world—who believe deeply that our own world is consistent. If it is consistent,
though, that is a metaphysical fact, not a logical fact. Others—once again,
including many in the Buddhist world—believe that our world is complete, and
determines the truth or falsity of every sentence. Once again, that is metaphysics,
not logic, and our logic should not commit us to that view. Still others might
believe the world to be complete and paraconsistent; still others that it is
paraconsistent but not paracomplete. Once again, these are metaphysical theses.
Logic transcends metaphysics: It is a canon of reason, not a theory of reality, and
a canon of reason ought to be equally valid no matter how the world is. That is
the early Buddhist insight, one we might well take seriously now, whatever we
think of the metaphysics that underlies it.

2. Language, Conception and Deception

It is a central thesis of virtually every Buddhist school that language is deceptive
and that it distorts reality (and this thesis is often expressed eloquently and
elaborated upon at great length). Ultimate truth is almost universally asserted to
be indescribable, inconceivable, beyond all discursive categories. Of course, as
we have already noted, this ends up in paradox, and we will consider the paradox
of expressibility in more detail in the next section. Let us first remind ourselves
of why so many Buddhist theorists are so critical of language as a vehicle for
truth.
There are really two problems: one on the subject side, and one on the
predicate side. On the subject side we find ostensibly referring terms, terms,
which, if they fail to refer, would render a sentence false, or truth-valueless. The
assertion of any sentence then implicates the existence of its subject, and in
much of our ordinary discourse, its endurance over time. But composite
enduring things, on a Buddhist account, do not really exist. They are conceptual
fictions. Language hence misleads us into taking to be ultimately real that which
is only conventionally real. And when we try to use language to talk explicitly
about ultimate reality, things are even worse. For nothing exists ultimately, and
so there are no referents for words at all in such a discourse.
On the predicate side, things are just as bad. For predication implicates
property possession, and properties are most naturally conceived as universals.
As we have seen, Buddhists are resolutely nominalist with regard to universals.
The implicature of participation of (illusory) particulars in nonexistent universals
—and the sense that the truth conditions of sentences consist in this participation
means that language is misleading with regard to predicates just as it is with
regard to subjects.
There is a perfectly natural way to think about this. I tell you that the weather
is beautiful here today. It seems natural to us that that sentence, the weather is
beautiful today, if true (and it is) tells you something about the day—that it
somehow corresponds to the weather. But nothing in that sentence conveys the
blue of the sky, the fluffiness of the clouds, the remnants of cherry blossoms
fluttering in the cool breeze. Even these words leave so much out. And when we
try to specify what a correspondence relation would look like, we run into
notorious difficulties. There simply does not seem to be any natural relation that
connects sounds, inscriptions or types thereof to the particulars, universals,
relations and logical functions to which they are meant to “correspond,” nor any
account of how satisfying any such relation would explain the phenomenon of
meaning.
Here is a natural way to think of this point. As Wittgenstein emphasizes in his
metaphor of a toolbox (Philosophical Invesigations, §11), there are many kinds
of tools. Hammers pound; screwdrivers turn; pliers grab. There is no single
common function that all tools perform. Similarly, some meaningful words refer;
some characterize; some function purely grammatically. There is no single
common function that all words perform. Nothing corresponds to thank you, or
to perhaps. We might be able to make some metaphorical sense of the
correspondence relation for some words (maybe); but there is no reason to think
that meaning in general is captured by any correspondence relation. To the extent
that the meaning of any class of terms is to be understood in terms of
correspondence, then, that is a special case of a more general phenomenon.
Buddhist philosophers of language are convinced that that phenomenon is to be
understood in terms of our conventions for using signs.
There is a further, more metaphysical problem with correspondence as a
fundamental semantic notion in the context of Buddhist linguistic nominalism. A
relation requires two relata, and the most natural relatum on the language side
for correspondence to the world when we try to explain truth and falsity is the
proposition, or in Sanskrit, pratijñā. The pratijñā is—in orthodox Indian
semantic traditions just as the thought or proposition is in Fregean semantic
traditions—the content of a sentence, the bearer of truth value, what
intertranslatable sentences have in common (and hence—as we will see—what
orthodox Indian semanticists saw as the svabhāva, or essence of a sentence), the
argument of negation and what the mind grasps. For a sentence to be meaningful
is for it to express a pratijñā. But the pratijñā, unlike the token of the sentence
whose meaning it is taken to be, is timeless and abstract. In short, it is a
universal, and is independent. And for a Buddhist nothing has these qualities,
and so there can be no pratijñā. But without a pratijñā, there is no determinate
meaning for any sentence, no content. So, correspondence can never be a general
account of the semantic value of a sentence, or the primitive notion of semantic
theory. And so language always fails to correspond to reality, or to anything for
that matter.
Nonetheless, we take ourselves in sharing this sentence as speaker and hearer
to have grasped something of the quiddity of the day. You may even imagine a
day that would ground these sentences. But it wouldn’t be this day. That is the
deceptive character of language and thought. Where we are after particulars—
real moments of real things—all we can characterize are vague generalities.
After all, how many days are there that could justify such a sentence, and in how
many respects do they differ from one another? And where we take our words to
bear some determinate, graspable relation to the world, such a relation is not to
be found, still less to be grasped.
In Reply to Objections, Nāgārjuna, considering a set of Nyāya objections to
arguments he offers in Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, considers the
objection that if he, Nāgārjuna, is correct that everything is empty, than his
language must be empty as well, in precisely this sense. But if his language is
empty—that is, if there is no core to his assertions that could be captured by
synonymous assertions—then he expresses no proposition. And if he expresses
no proposition, then he fails even to say that things are empty. And if he is not
saying anything at all, he cannot even deny that he is saying anything at all, since
negation presupposes an argument, and there is no propositional argument for
the negation function to take. We see in this discussion an articulation of the
classical Nyāya version of a correspondence theory of meaning in a framework
we would recognize as that of intensional semantics. Here is how the opponent’s
argument is articulated. (I quote only the verses, not the autocommentary):3
1. If no essence can be found anywhere in anything, your assertion, being
essenceless, is incapable of refuting essence.
2. On the other hand, if your assertion exists essentially, it refutes your own
thesis. Otherwise, it is an exception, and you owe us an explanation.
3. You can’t reply that this is just like saying, “Don’t make a sound.” For this is
just to prevent a future sound by making a present sound.
4. So, this is not the correct account of the negation of a negation. Thus your
thesis, not mine, is undermined by this characterization.
How does this argument go? In the first two verses, the opponent sets out a
destructive dilemma: When Nāgārjuna asserts that everything is empty,
everything either includes that very statement or it does not. If it does, then that
statement is empty, which means that it does not express any proposition, since a
proposition, as we noted above, is the essence of a statement. If it does not
express any proposition, however, it cannot assert that all things are empty. If, on
the other hand, it does express a proposition, then it constitutes a counterexample
to its own claim, or a special case that cannot be explained. Moreover, the
opponent continues, Nāgārjuna cannot simply trade on the claim that the term
empty, glossed here as essenceless, is a negation, and so that he is not asserting
anything, but merely denying. This is because the negation must attach to
something—there must be a proposition negated for the negation to make any
sense (unlike the case of “be quiet,” which can cancel a future sound).
On many plausible (Indian or Western) views of what it is to be meaningful or
to connect to reality, then, language as understood by a Mādhyamika—or indeed
by any Buddhist—fails to be meaningful, and fails to mediate between us and
reality. Nonetheless, it is obvious that even in stating this, as Nāgārjuna’s
imaginary Nayāyika interlocutor points out, we presuppose that language is
meaningful; otherwise we could not even indicate its meaninglessness. Even in
denying that sentences convey propositions, we are negating what those
sentences say, and the negation operator would seem to require an argument, and
what could that argument be save a proposition?
Nāgārjuna’s reply is elegant.
21. My assertion is neither among the combination of causes and conditions nor
distinct from them. So, why can’t an essenceless thing demonstrate that
things are empty?
22. Dependent origination is explained to be emptiness, for anything
dependently originated is essenceless.
23. This negation is just like the case of an illusory man who stops another
illusory man from doing something, or like that of one illusory man
conjuring up another illusory man.
24. Since my assertion does not exist essentially, it does not undermine my
position. Since it is not an exception, I don’t owe any special explanation.
25. The example “Do not make a sound” is not apposite. Although it is the
prevention of a sound by a sound, it is not analogous to the present case.
26. If the essencelessness of things were refuted by something essenceless, then
by giving up on essencelessness, essence would indeed be established.
…
29. If I asserted any proposition, I would commit this error. But since I do not
assert any proposition, I do not commit this error.
This is a subtle rejoinder. Nāgārjuna opens by affirming that his statement, like
everything else, is indeed essenceless, in virtue of its dependent origination. He
points out that essencelessness does not, however, preclude causal or dialectical
efficacy. He explicitly embraces the position that emptiness is a negation, but
adopts a different account of negation from that presupposed by his opponent,
pointing out that to adopt the opponent’s theory that negation must take a
proposition as an argument—something that exists essentially, in virtue of being
abstract and uncaused—is to beg the question. Instead, Nāgārjuna points out that
there are plenty of cases of negation operating on that which is in fact
nonexistent.
We can recast Nāgārjuna’s examples of magic in terms of cinema to make the
point clear. We don’t think that the images on the screen in the cinema are real
people. Nonetheless, when the image of Omar Sharif in Doctor Zhivago crosses
the screen, we have no trouble saying that he, Dr. Zhivago, fell in love with Lara.
Just as characters empty of reality can bear relations to one another, negations
empty of intrinsic reality can deny the truth of sentences that do not express
propositions. Just as characters in a film can exist in a different way—as
cinematic characters—sentences can be meaningful in a different way—as
devices we use to cause cognitive states in one another, such as the realization
that phenomena are empty and that sentences are only meaningful insofar as they
have uses, not in virtue of relations to abstract objects such as propositions.
Nāgārjuna points out in conclusion that if a Buddhist theory of meaning
posited propositions as the meanings of sentences, the reductio advanced by his
opponent would indeed be successful. But, Nāgārjuna continues, he asserts no
proposition. This is not to say that he says nothing—after all, he is not only
producing words, but arguing. But it is to say that he sees the functions of his
words not as mirrors that reflect reality, but as instruments, as discursive tools by
means of which he can cause his interlocutor to see things in a certain way. The
words are not taken to express abstract entities, but simply to be effective means
of intellectual and behavioral coordination, including this use to coordinate our
thought so as to enable us to see that words do no more than coordinate our
behavior! The deceptive character of language is its tendency to get us to think
that it is more than this. The parallels to ideas to be advanced two millennia later
by Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations are striking.
Language is hence deceptive but indispensable, another aspect of that
complex fiction called saṃsāra, the cycle of confusion, attraction and aversion
that generates the mass of difficulties that is our life. But language is more than
just a necessary evil; it is also the ladder that enables one to climb out of this sea
of conceptual and affective difficulties. But it is a paradoxical ladder, one that we
will see cannot, perhaps, bear the weight it needs to bear. We have been circling
around the edge of those paradoxes, noting that even to say that linguistic
expressions are, in a deep sense, meaningless is to express that meaning. We will
now go the heart of linguistic paradox as it emerges in Buddhist philosophy of
language.
3. Paradoxes of Expressibility and the Context of Silence
We have already noted that the ultimate truth is inexpressible. Since nothing
exists ultimately, and nothing has any properties ultimately; since the ultimate is
the way things are independent of our conceptualization, and since language is
necessarily encodes our conceptual categories, language is inadequate to express
the ultimate. But everything we have just said about the ultimate is true, and is
expressed in language. This limit contradiction, which has been called
Nāgārjuna’s expressibility paradox (Garfield and Priest 2003; Deguchi, Garfield
and Priest 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d; Garfield 2002c), is inescapable once we
take seriously the Buddhist insights that the way things are ultimately is
independent of and transcends the way any particular kind of consciousness
takes them to be, and that language reflects our form of consciousness.
One frequent Buddhist admonition in the face of this paradox is to forego
speech. There are many admonitions of this kind in Mahāyāna sūtras, and
extensive development of this idea in meditative practice and in the Chan/Zen
tradition, with its many references (all discursive, of course!) to non-discursive
techniques for bringing about realizations, precisely because of the supposition
that any discursive techniques are inadequate to this purpose.
The locus classicus, however, and the episode that directly inspires much of
the Chan/Zen tradition, is surely the so-called Lion’s Roar of Silence in the ninth
chapter of the Discourse of Vimalakīrti (Thurman 1976). In that chapter,
Vimalakīrti, the hero of this sūtra, asks an assembly of bodhisattvas how to
understand nonduality, a way of indicating ultimate truth. A few dozen answers
are given, each indicating that a distinction commonly drawn is in fact artificial,
and that understanding that artificiality and the illusory nature of the putative
distinction is the way to understand nonduality. For instance:
The bodhisattva Dharmavikurvana declared, “Noble sir, production and
destruction are two, but what is not produced and does not occur cannot be
destroyed. Thus the attainment of the tolerance of the birthlessness of things
is the entrance into nonduality.”
The bodhisattva Śrīgandha declared, “‘I’ and ‘mine’ are two. If there is no
presumption of a self, there will be no possessiveness. Thus, the absence of
presumption is the entrance into nonduality.”
The bodhisattva Śrīkuta declared, “‘Defilement’ and ‘purification’ are two.
When there is thorough knowledge of defilement, there will be no conceit
about purification. The path leading to the complete conquest of all conceit
 is the entrance into nonduality.” (Thurman 1976, 88)
After a number of such proposals, Vimalakīrti asks Mañjuśrī, the celestial
bodhisattva of the perfection of wisdom, and so the representation of the very
highest understanding of such matters, for his account. Mañjuśrī replies that all
of the previous explanations were good attempts, but all failed, since all were
expressed in language, and language is inherently dualistic. Only by
transcending language and the distinctions it encodes, he says, can we enter into
an understanding of nonduality.
Mañjuśrī replied, “Good sirs, you have all spoken well. Nevertheless, all
your explanations are themselves dualistic. To know no one teaching, to
express nothing, to say nothing, to explain nothing, to announce nothing, to
indicate nothing, and to designate nothing—that is the entrance into
nonduality.” (90)
Mañjuśrī then turns to Vimalakīrti and asks for his explanation. Vimalakīrti
remains silent.
This moment is dramatic enough. But it is even more poignant given the
larger context of the sūtra as a whole. Two chapters earlier, Śāriputra, the
paragon of the śrāvaka or early Buddhist practitioners so often pilloried in
polemical Mahāyāna sūtras such as this one, attempts just such a move when
asked a set of rather sharp philosophical questions by a mysterious goddess who
has just emerged from a closet. When he remains silent—stymied by the
goddess’s dialectic—she asks him why he says nothing. He replies that ultimate
truth is inexpressible, only to be upbraided, with the goddess pointing out that
the Buddha himself talked extensively during his lifetime.
ŚĀRIPUTRA: Since liberation is inexpressible, goddess, I do not know what to
say.
GODDESS: All the syllables pronounced by the elder have the nature of
liberation. Why? Liberation is neither internal nor external, nor can it be
apprehended apart from them. Likewise, syllables are neither internal nor
external, nor can they be apprehended anywhere else. Therefore, reverend
Sariputra, do not point to liberation by abandoning speech! Why? The holy
liberation is the equality of all things! (67)
Vimalakīrti’s silence is articulate precisely because of its place in a larger
discourse, like a rest in a piece of music or John Cage’s 4′33″ in the context of
the tradition of Western musical performance.4 Discourse may be limited, and
silence may be necessary, but only when that silence is articulate—that is, when
it is also discursive. And we are back to paradox. For if it is discursive, it is more
than just silence; it is one more symbol. Śāriputra’s silence fails precisely
because, absent the discursive context that gives it sense, it is senseless; but a
silence that has the requisite sense—a sense that no speech can convey—has that
sense only when it becomes a kind of speech.
This paradoxical approach to meaning is of course familiar to many Western
philosophers. It involves the relegation of the most meaningful not to the sound
in the foreground, but to the silence in the background, to the context that
enables speech rather than to speech itself, hence rendering that very silence, or
background, a kind of speech, and hence a new foreground. It is prescient of
Wittgenstein’s worries about the limits of expression in the Tractatus, of his
emphasis on the role of inarticulate brute convention in the constitution of
meaning—or the bedrock that turns the semantic spade—in the Philosophical
Investigations (§217), of Heidegger’s ruminations on poetic language, and of
Derrida’s drive to write sous erasure in Grammatology, despite the fact that even
the erasure must, per impossibile, stand sous erasure.
When these issues move into China, silence is valorized even further, first by
such philosophers as Jizang (6th C CE) in the San Lun or Three Treatise
tradition, and later, under his influence, by the even more antinomian Chan
tradition. Jizang, in his text The Profound Meaning of Mahāyāna (Dasheng
xuanlun),5 writes:
Other schools take only ‘Being’ as conventional truth, and ‘Emptiness’ as
ultimate truth, and claim nothing else. Now let me make clear that either of
them, whether it is Being or Emptiness, is conventional truth, and Non-
emptiness and Non-being can be first named as ultimate truth. Thirdly—let
us call Emptiness and Being as ‘Two’ and Non-Emptiness and Non- Being
as ‘Non-two’—all of Two and Non-two are conventional truth, whereas
Non-two and Non-non-two can be first named as ultimate truth.
At this point, Jizang takes us through the ground level of the tetralemma,
asserting that although one might take the third and fourth limbs (both and
neither) to constitute an ascent to ultimate truth, all are simply conventional. All,
as he says in the next phrase, are assertions. Nothing that can be expressed
expresses reality.
Fourthly, all of these three sorts of two truths are mere doctrines. Those
three are preached only for making people understand Non-three. Having
 no foundation is alone named as way of things.
Question: Do you take all the former three as conventional truth and Non-
three as ultimate truth?
Answer: Yes I do.
So here, Jizang asserts that the fourth limb, the denial of the first three,
constitutes a reference to ultimate truth. He then refers obliquely to the
Discourse of Vimalakīrti, indicating that although the conventional is expressible
and the ultimate inexpressible, they are no different from one another.
Question: Then why do doctrine and the way of things differ with each
other?
Answer: I take Two Truths as doctrines and Non-Two (truths) as way of
things. But the distinction between them is merely superficial and
occasional, and there is no barrier between them.
Question: Why do you claim this Fourfold Two Truth?
Answer: Against the Abhidharma’s two truths of phenomena and truth, the
first two truths; i.e., Emptiness and Being, is claimed. Against people who
are based on Vasubandhu’s Thirty Verses and uphold two truths of
Emptiness and Being, I claim that since your two truths of Emptiness and
Being are merely our conventional truth, Non-Emptiness and Non-Being is
really ultimate truth. That’s why I made the second two truths.
Jizang argues that a linguistic via negativa, a writing sous erasure, can even
indicate the nature of reality, that the articulation of the two truths in the Indian
tradition, in virtue of their positive mood, are necessarily deceptive, and that
ultimately, even these negative formulae have to be rejected as deceptive:
Thirdly, against people who are based on Asaṅga’s Anthology of the
Mahāyāna (Mahāyāna-saṃgraha) and take ‘Two’; i.e., interdependent
nature and discriminative nature as conventional truth, and non-
interdependent nature and non-discriminative nature; that is to say, true
nature as ‘Non-two’ as ultimate truth, I claim that either of the ‘Two’ or
‘Non-two’ is merely our conventional truth and ‘Non-two and Non-non-
two’ is really ultimate truth. Hence we have the third two truths.
Fourthly, other Mahāyāna people say that Yogācāra’s three are conventional
 and the three naturelessnesses or non-firmly-established truth is ultimate
truth. That is why I claim that either of your two truths, i.e., interdependent
nature and discriminative nature; or two truth that is not two, or firmly-
established truth on the one hand, and ‘Non-two and Non-non-two’; i.e.,
three non nature or non-firmly-established truth on the other hand, is merely
my conventional truth, whereas ‘Forgetfulness of words and annihilation of
thoughts’ is really ultimate truth. (Taisho, vol.45, 15, trans. Deguchi, 2014)
Jizang hence uses the rubric of the tetralemma as a radical way to explore
linguistic meaning, presenting a dialectical treatment prescient of a Hegelian
analysis. We can see it this way: Jizang begins with assertion, or what he calls
being (wu). At this level, we can say things about the empirical world, ordinary
things, like Snow is white or The cat is on the mat. At this level, the theory of
meaning is roughly Fregean, and the theory of truth roughly Tarskian. Sentences
aim to represent reality, in virtue of their referring expressions denoting entities,
their predicate expressions denoting properties, and the sentences are true if, and
only if, the sequence of referents in fact satisfies the relevant properties. Jizang
is not explicit about the details, but the story is at least close.
The second level of the dialectic is the level of mu, of non-being or negation.
The negation here is a kind of strong pragmatic cancellation. The assertions
made at the first level, together with the semantic theory they implicate, are to be
cancelled. There is no ultimately real snow; there are no ultimately real cats; the
properties of being white and being on the mat are unreal; the pretense language
that has to somehow mirror the world or deliver truth is just that, a pretense, a
deception to be seen through, not one in which we should participate.
But there is a third level of this dialectic, corresponding to the third position in
the catuṣkoṭi; Jizang advises that at this third level, we assert both wu and mu,
that we both affirm conventional truth and use language as it is, for what it can
do, and cancel the ontological and semantic implicatures it carries. An irenic
solution indeed. Note that at this point, and from here on through the dialectic,
though, the naive reference-and-truth semantics for language have been
discarded, and we are treating language as merely instrumental in a strong sense.
Note also that on this reading, the negations that take us through the dialectic are
cancellations of speech acts, not truth-functional operators.
But there is one more koṭi, and a lot more dialectical ascent to go! After all,
however irenic the third koṭi appears to be, it is unstable. For it involves a
statement that we should both use language conventionally, that is,
instrumentally, and that we should refuse to endorse its representational or truth-
conveying character. And that statement itself purports to be true. It, too,
requires cancellation. At the fourth level of the dialectic, then, Jizang urges that
we assert neither wu nor mu, that we simply refuse both to use language
conventionally and to assert that we reject its pretensions.
And this, if we remained with Nāgārjuna’s catuṣkoṭi framework, would be the
end of the matter. It would seem that at this point, we have reached a place of
complete silence, and a total rejection of all language. But Jizang takes us
further. His dialectic raises the Madhyamaka dialectic one catuṣkoṭi and then
some. At the next level, we realize that the Neither phase itself contains the
seeds of its own destruction. For if we maintain (in any sense) that we must
refuse both to assert and to cancel, it is because we assert that we should do so
and that we cancel that assertion. But this means that we are now committed
both to the both and neither phases of the first four-fold phase of the dialectic,
and this is in fact its fifth moment, or the first moment of the second, higher-
order catuṣkoṭi phase.
On the other hand, of course, the cancellation means that in fact we are
committed linguistically to neither the both nor to the neither phase of the first
dialectic, since we are committed to nothing, and cancel all apparent ontological
or semantic commitment. And this higher neither phase is the sixth moment. The
sixth generates the seventh in a now predictable fashion: Since each of both and
neither and neither both nor neither are indispensable, mutually implicative
moments of this debate, so is their conjunction, in a higher-order image of the
first catuṣkoṭi. And this takes us immediately to what would appear to be the
final limb of an infinite hierarchy of dialectical positions, neither both and
neither nor neither both nor neither, a refusal to maintain any of the positions in
the hierarchy, since no way of using language can escape its deceptive nature,
but no refusal to use language can, either.
The second, higher-order catuṣkoṭi yields an important insight, though, and
that is the insight that this dialectic is endless. That insight, of course, is
Mañjuśrī’s insight in the Discourse of Vimalakīrti. And that is the insight that
takes us directly to Vimalakīrti’s own solution to that problem: silence. And that,
we might say, is the position at which Jizang says that this series converges. But
let us note that like the Vimalakīrti, Jizang quite deliberately locates that final
silence in the context of informative discourse, demonstrating that even silence,
if it is to be articulate, itself becomes discourse, bringing us inevitably back to
paradox. Inevitably, but with an understanding of our predicament, just as
awakening brings us back to the world, back, but with insight replacing
confusion.6
This situation is mirrored in the storied Zen Oxherder pictures on pages 262
and 263. The series begins with the ox of the mind running wild, the
understanding of reality elusive, and the oxherder merely aspiring to tame the
mind and to grasp reality. In the second image he obtains a rope, a method for
subduing the mind, and for fixing an understanding of the world. In the third the
ox is pursued and in the fourth, the mind is disciplined, reality is grasped, but
only discursively, and the ox remains tied tightly by the rope. In the fifth image
the ox follows the boy easily and freely, but remains bound by discursive
thought—the mind is better understood, but still is taken to be an object, not
fully inhabited; in the sixth, the ox can be trusted to go its own way, representing
a mind in complete harmony, understood implicitly. Reality is understood
effortlessly, and analysis is no longer required. In the seventh the ox disappears;
the need to penetrate reality as it is has been cast off and the mind is no longer an
object of inquiry. And in the eighth we find emptiness. Subject and object
vanish; nothing is depicted at all. In the ninth, illuminated by emptiness, the
world is completely manifest, though with no mind, and hence with no subject-
object duality, and in the tenth, the boy returns to social life, back to the ordinary
world, engaged in ordinary transactions, just as before, but now spontaneously
engaging with it as ordinary. Emptiness is not the annihilation of convention,
but the ability to return to convention, seeing it merely as conventional.
Discursive thought returns; language is again used, but now understood merely
as a tool, not as a mirror of reality itself.

FIG. 1
FIG. 2

FIG. 3

FIG. 4
FIG. 5

FIG. 6

FIG. 7
FIG. 8

FIG. 9

FIG. 10

It is important to remember that the pictures end not with the empty circle, but
with the return. The return to the world and to discourse is the inevitable goal—
neither an accidental consequence nor a reductio—of the quest for a non-
discursive space or a trans-lingusitic insight into language. But as we have seen,
even in the Zen tradition, there is plenty of room for language and plenty of
appreciation of its value and significance, albeit carefully qualified. Dōgen, in an
echo of the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa, says in his essay Entangled Vines (Kattō):
My late master Rujing once said: “The vine of a gourd coils around the vine
of another gourd like a wisteria vine.”…[T]his refers to studying the
Buddhas and patriarchs directly from the Buddhas and patriarchs, and to the
transmission of the Buddhas and patriarchs directly to the Buddhas and
patriarchs. …
The twenty-eighth patriarch said to his disciples, “As the time is drawing
near for me to transmit the Dharma to my successor, please tell me how you
express it.”
Daofu responded first. “According to my current understanding, we should
neither cling to words and letters, nor abandon them altogether, but use
them as an instrument of the Dao.”
The master responded, “You express my skin.”
Then the nun Zongshi said, “As I now see it, the Dharma is like Ānanda’s
viewing the Buddha-land of Akshobhya, seeing it once and never seeing it
again.”
The master responded, “You express my flesh.”
Daoyou said, “The four elements are emptiness, and the five skandhas are
non-being. But in my view, there is not a single dharma to be expressed.”
The master responded, “You express my bones.”
Finally, Huike prostrated himself three times, and stood silently in his
place.
The master said, “You express my marrow.”
Huike became the second patriarch as a result of this, and he received the
transmission of the Dharma as a result of this, and he received the
transmission of the sacred robe.
You must study the first patriarch’s saying, “You express my skin, flesh,
bones and marrow” as the way of the patriarchs. All four disciples heard
 and realized this saying all at once. Hearing and learning from it, they
realized the skin, flesh, bones and marrow of the casting off of body-mind.
You should not interpret the teachings of the patriarchs and masters from a
single specific viewpoint. It is a complete manifestation without partiality.
However, those who do not fully understand the true transmission think that
“because the four disciples had different levels of insight, the first
patriarch’s saying concerning the ‘skin, flesh, bones and marrow’ represents
different degrees in recognizing the superficiality of depth of
understanding. The skin and flesh are further from the truth than the bones
and marrow.” Thus they say that Bodhidharma told Huike that he
“expressed the marrow because the second patriarch’s understanding was
superior.” But interpreting the anecdote in this manner is not the result of
studying the Buddhas and patriarchs or of realizing the true patriarchal
transmission. (Heine and Wright 2000, 151–152)
This is a wonderfully complex discussion. Dōgen begins with the metaphor of
two vines entangled with one another. One is a gourd, the other a wisteria; so
one is useful in the mundane world, and one a thing of pure beauty. But they are
completely intertwined, supporting one another, and inseparable. One is the
study of the transmission of the Dharma, a discursive practice; the other is the
transmitted Dharma, completely inexpressible. These two are completely
intertwined, completely inseparable.
The metaphor opens the story of the transmission of the Dharma from
Bodhidharma to the second patriarch in China. The standard Chan reading of the
story is clear: the first disciple, Daofu, does OK, but is too reliant on language
when reality is inexpressible and language always deceptive; Zhongshi is much
better: she sees that reality is momentary, and that it can only be glimpsed, but
not expressed; but like Mañjuśrī, she falls down when she tries to express that;
Daoyou comes closer still, stating that everything, including what he says, is
inexpressible, at least explicitly undermining his own speech. But only Huike
rises to the heights of Vimalakīrti in maintaining silence. So he gets the robe and
the transmission.
While this is an orthodox Chan reading, Dōgen undermines it, taking the four
perspectives, which we might see as the four moments in Jizang’s tetralemmic
dialectic, as mutually interdependent. As organisms, marrow only makes sense if
it is encased in bones, bones only function if they are covered with flesh, and we
only live in our skins. Dōgen then reinterprets a metaphor of depth into a
metaphor of organic unity, taking silence itself to be but one more discursive
practice.
 We might end there, taking Dōgen to anticipate Tsongkhapa in the re-
centering of language as a mode of access to reality. But that might be hasty. In a
related text, A King Requests Saindhava (Ōsakusendaba), Dōgen opens with the
following verse, echoing the title of Entangled Vines:
Words and wordlessness:
Like tangled vines to a tree,
Feeding a mule to feeding a horse,
Or water to the clouds. (Ibid., 156)
Here things are very different, and we are again climbing Jizang’s hierarchy. For
now words and silence are related as tangled vines to a tree—a disorderly mess
to a beautiful, strong organism; like a mule to a horse—a mere expedient to an
honorable ride worthy of a king; or to something that actually quenches one’s
thirst, as opposed to a distant promise. The tangled vines of discursivity and
silence are themselves taken to be but a precursor to a higher silence, and the
poetic images as the vehicles to its realization.
The Buddhist approach is more than a historical curiosity anticipating in India
and China later developments in the West. I hope that it has become clear from
this discussion that Nāgārjuna, the shadowy authors of the Mahāyāna sūtras, and
those who followed them in this tradition of semantic reflection thought at least
as systematically about the origins of these paradoxes, their connections to
ontology and to the relation between thought, language and reality as their 20th-
century Western successors, and in a very different, perhaps complementary,
register. This account does not leave the paradoxical impotence of discursive
practice as a curious aporia, but locates it firmly in a logical and ontological
framework, connected to a set of related paradoxes that make sense in a grand
metaphysical system.7

4. What Does Language Do?

But language is necessary, and Buddhist philosophers use quite a lot of it,
however much they disparage it. So, we might ask, what does language actually
do, and why are Buddhist philosophers entitled to it? One thing that language
does, and does well, is to engage conventional truth.8 As we have seen, despite
the doctrine of the two truths, and the merely conventional and illusory character
of the world as we engage it, conventional truth is all of the truth we actually
have, and engagement with it is necessary for life and for any accomplishment.
Language is hence not to be disparaged, as the goddess reminded Śāriputra; even
though the limitations Mañjuśrī tried and failed to make clear must be
recognized.
Language facilitates our engagement with the world, on a Buddhist view,
because it functions at the broadest level not as a vehicle for reference and
predication, but as a complex cognitive tool for social coordination, for
cognition and the expression of cognition. As we saw above, Nāgārjuna
emphasizes this when he replies to his Nyāya critic in Reply to Objections,
saying that he doesn’t pretend to express any pratijñā, only to use words.
Candrakīrti makes the same point when he says that “words are not prowling
policemen, they are our tools” (2003, 78). On a Buddhist account of meaning,
anticipating, as Thurman (1980) noted, Wittgenstein’s account in the
Philosophical Investigations, language can be used non-deceptively to the extent
that we are not taken in by the “picture that holds us captive.” Tsongkhapa, in his
Essence of Eloquence (Legs bshad snying po), writes:
We might suppose here, as the mundane person engages in a great deal of
analysis—“Is it happening or not?” or “Is it produced or not?”—that it must
be improper to reply to such inquiries, “It happens” or “It is produced.”
However, this type of inquiry (conventional analysis) and the above
analytic method (analysis into the ultimate nature of things) are utterly
different. The mundane person is not inquiring into coming and going
through analysis into the meaning of the use of the conventional
expressions comer, goer, coming, going out of dissatisfaction with their
merely conventional usage. He is rather making spontaneous inquiry into
the spontaneous usage of the expressions coming and going. (Thurman
1980, 329–330)
Tsongkhapa’s point is straightforward: While the philosopher might think that
analysis requires a precise specification of the meanings of terms, and even a
theory of meaning to guide that specification, ordinary inquiry remains satisfied
with terms as rough and ready tools that permit social and intellectual
intercourse, no more. Vasubandhu, Sthiramati and the great Tibetan philosophers
Sakya Paṇḍita in the 14th century and Mipham in the 19th and 20th centuries
make a similar point when they argue that the putative distinction between literal
and metaphorical language must be jettisoned, as all linguistic usage is
figurative. Jonathan Gold puts it this way:
Whereas we ordinarily think of language as literal, it cannot be,
[Vasubandhu] says, since (given that all things are appearance only) there is
no literal reality to which such words might refer. Instead, as we see in
 Vasubandhu’s opening verse, as interpreted by his great commentator
Sthiramati (470–550), all language refers figuratively to the transformation
of consciousness—to the illusory play of mind itself:
A varied figurative use of “self “ and “things” is what sets things going
—that is to say, in the world and in treatises. It is with regard to the
transformation of consciousness. (from Ornament to the Māhāyana
sutras [Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra])
What this means is that whenever we use terms that refer to either “self “ or
“things” (and in this system all terms do one or the other), we are in fact
using figures—metaphors—wherein the illustrative terms are these self and
things and the topic illustrated by the metaphor is the transformation of
consciousness. What makes them say that words can only be only
figurative?
Sthiramati’s commentary is very clear: “This is so because selves and
things do not exist outside of the transformation of consciousness.”
(Commentary to the Ornament of Mahāyāna Sūtras) Since there are no real
things (only illusions), all reference to things must be merely figurative—
and to prove this Sthiramati need only restate the traditional Sanskrit
grammarians’ definition of metaphorical reference: “[A word] is used
figuratively with regard to something which is not there, as when [one
calls] a Bahikan [person] an ox.” (2007, 12)
As Gold (2013) and Tzohar (2013) emphasize independently, this view of the
role of language in our cognitive lives and of the structure of meaning maps
nicely onto the Yogācāra rubric of the three turnings of the wheel of Dharma
and, more importantly, onto the rubric of the three natures and the three
naturelessnesses. The Discourse Unravelling the Thought emphasizes that the
third turning of the wheel of doctrine is definitive in meaning, but that it does not
represent a shift in doctrine and merely explicates the intention of the first two
turnings.9
On this (admittedly polemical, but nonetheless philosophically useful) view,
the approach to language suggested in the first turning is literalist and referential.
The words spoken by the Buddha in the suttas and their adumbration in the Pāli
Abdhidharma are to be taken as true, and true in virtue of their correspondence
to reality. In the second turning—represented in the Perfection of Wisdom sūtras,
this view is undermined. These texts, according to this sutra, take all language
directed at the conventional world to be merely a useful instrument, as nothing in
the conventional world literally exists as it is described in language: language
implicates true existence, but everything exists merely conventionally. On the
other hand, on this reading, the language directed at the ultimate indicates a
reality, but does so merely figuratively, for the ultimate, by its lights, is
inexpressible. The meaning of this language is to be taken seriously, on this
view, but not the language itself.
The third turning, on this view, detaches language entirely from the
mechanism of reference, and from any pretense of representation or connection
to truth. From the standpoint of the Discourse Unravelling the Thought, the only
possible meaning is figurative meaning; the only possible understanding of the
utility of language is causal and instrumental. To think that for language to be
meaningful or to be useful requires that any of its terms denote, that any of the
predicates it employs correspond to properties, or that any sentences bear some
special relation to truth is simply to misunderstand how we use sounds to
coordinate our behavior and to interact with reality. Our sound-making behavior
on this view is no different from our locomotion, perception, or tactile behavior.
It can be more or less efficacious in achieving our ends. But that is all.
To put this into the framework of the three natures, we might say that the
imagined nature of language is its ability to represent reality; this is how we
naively take it to be, and this is that in which we take meaning to consist. On the
other hand, the dependent nature of language is the fact that its performing any
function at all depends not on primitively semantic properties, but on causal
properties; that our linguistic behavior is dependent upon determinate sets of
causes and conditions, and in turn conditions the behavior of ourselves and
others. The consummate nature of language is the absence of the imagined in the
dependent, that is, the fact that performing these functions does not require
semantic properties at all, or literal meaning, or representation, or the possibility
of expressing truth. Language is ultimately empty of all of that.
Finally, to put this in terms of the three naturelessnesses, we might say simply
that the emptiness of language with respect to characteristic is the fact that it is
empty of the semantic properties it appears to have; that its emptiness with
respect to production is the fact that it lacks any independent abstract status as a
system of meanings—it is merely the product and the producer of human
interactions and thought; that its ultimate emptiness is the fact that there is no
literal meaning to be found anywhere, even here. All meaning, on this view, is
figurative. It goes without saying, of course, that all of this lands us back in
paradox, but that is familiar terrain by now. More importantly—and this may
need saying—what goes for language goes for any form of expression, including
thought. Our own thinking is, on this view, just as figurative, just as
instrumental, and is just as disconnected from the activity of representation or
truth-grasping as public language. This is perhaps the deepest and most
disturbing level of Buddhist analysis of meaning.
We might think in a post-Fregean world that metaphorical meaning is parasitic
on literal meaning, and that literal meaning can be understood in term of
reference and satisfaction of predicates. These Buddhist philosophers of
language challenge the idea that there is such a basic use of language. If to be
figurative means to be meaningful despite reference and satisfaction failure, all
language is figurative. All is grounded in a loose set of conventions for use.
Reference and predication can then be recontextualized not as the foundation of
meaning, but rather as activities undertaken within the context of convention,
with the understanding that the nominal objects of reference, just as the nominal
properties ascribed by predicates, are merely nominal, fictional entities.
Taking figuration to be nothing but one more way to use language, hence
lightening the ontological baggage to be carried by semantic theory, may make
more sense of language as one more human activity. Taken in this way it is
nothing more than a system of social behavior and an epistemic instrument like
any other, and not so special as it pretends to be. Language so understood is
neither a mirror of reality nor a shrine for truth. Sakya Paṇḍita elsewhere refers
to linguistic usage as nothing more than a way of coordinating action and
realizing intention. To the degree to which we take words or phrases as
indicating any non-linguistic referents, that is merely a special case of this more
general function, to be understood only practically, and not in any sense the
central function of language, and explicitly locates word meaning in relation
only to other words and to linguistic and other non-linguistic activity. (See Gold
2007, 45–53)
Tsongkhapa, in The Essence of Eloquence, addresses these issues when he
uses the philosophy of language as an important doxographic tool. In another
move prescient of Wittgenstein (see Thurman 1980, 1978) Tsongkhapa
characterizes Mādhyamikas who advance their own positions as being
committed to a semantic theory according to which the meanings or words are
specified by necessary and sufficient conditions for reference, conditions that
underpin linguistic usage, and which specify the conventional natures of things.
So, for instance, a proponent of this position (such as, according to Tsongkhapa,
the Indian Mādhyamikas Bhāviveka and Jayānanda) would argue that if a word
like cow is to have any meaning at all, there must be commonly agreed-upon
conditions for its usage, a conventional essence of bovinity.
Now, since this is a Madhyamaka position, Tsongkhapa notes, it is not a
position according to which these conditions reflect intrinsic natures in the
things themselves; rather, they reflect conventional intrinsic natures—what
Tsongkhapa calls, conventional existence as having a distinguishing
characteristic (rang gi msthan nyid gyis yod pa [rang gi tsenyid ki yöpa]).10
Nonetheless, according to this view, even if it is we who decide what it is to be a
cow, in this decision about the necessary and sufficient conditions for the
application of the predicate, we thereby fix its meaning, and any usage of the
term can be assessed against that criterion.
Though the exegetical argument that results in ascribing this position to this
group of commentators is complex, the central issue is this: Because they are
committed to the view that Mādhyamikas such as Nāgārjuna (on whose texts
they comment) must be able to offer positive arguments for their own positions,
they are committed to the view that the terms in which those arguments are
couched must be understood in the same way by all parties to the argument,
including non-Mādhyamikas and even non-Buddhists. But the presupposition
that these terms have shared meanings independent of one’s philosophical
position, Tsongkhapa argues, is the presupposition that the meanings are fixed
not by the way that the terms are used, but rather by a set of independent criteria
for their use.
Tsongkhapa contrasts this position with that he ascribes to Mādhyamikas who
wield reductio arguments such as Candrakīrti. These Mādhyamikas, whose
position Tsongkhapa regards as more sophisticated, eschew positing necessary
and sufficient conditions for the applications of terms, arguing that all there is to
semantic character is use, with no independent criteria for that use. They are
freed from the commitment to independent criteria for the correct application of
words, Tsongkhapa argues, because they are committed not to presenting
independent arguments for their positions in terms acceptable both to themselves
and to their interlocutors, but only to demonstrating the incoherence of their
interlocutors’ positions on their own terms. Therefore, they can adopt a way of
using language acceptable to their opponents without any commitment to the
entities or properties to which their opponents are committed, only agreeing
about how the language works in the discourse in question. This, Tsongkhapa
argues, is what it really is to take meaning to be conventional—it is the
conventions themselves that ground meanings; they are not grounded in
meanings.
When we understand conventional truth as conventional, when we see
through the deception, as we saw in the discussion of mirages in the previous
chapter, its deceptive character is rendered harmless and merely potential. In the
same way, when we see through its deceptive character, language can cease to
deceive us into taking it as accurately representing an independent reality.
Language is not so much a ruler that measures reality as a screwdriver that
operates on it. It can then, to continue to torture this metaphor, dismantle the
barriers that prevent understanding. This is the promise of a non-conceptual,
immediate confrontation with reality central to Buddhist soteriology. Even if one
doubts the possibility of utility of that kind of understanding, the analysis of
linguistic meaning is compelling.
The term used for this kind of analysis in Buddhist literature is upāya/thab
mkhas (thapkheh)/fāngbiàn. The history of its semantic tone in Sanskrit, Tibetan
and Chinese is instructive here, partly for understanding the trajectory of
Buddhist philosophy in those traditions, but also for understanding the Janus-
faced character of this idea and of Buddhist attitudes toward language. The term
connotes technique or means to an end. In Sanskrit it is a term of neutral
valence. It can either connote a useful savoir faire or a kind of devious
manipulation or expedient.
Indian Buddhist literature often valorizes upāya as a necessary characteristic
of anyone who wants to benefit others, or to accomplish goals. Vimalakīrti, for
instance, is praised as a master of upāya. The Buddha is praised for his upāya.
But upāya is often also regarded as something desirable only because of the ends
it can achieve, and itself distasteful. In the familiar story from the Lotus Sūtra
the father lures his children from a burning house they are reluctant to vacate by
making false promises of gifts. The lie, itself undesirable, is a necessary
expedient to achieving an important goal, and so is regarded as upāya.
This ambiguity forks when Sanskrit is translated into Tibetan and Chinese. In
Tibetan it is translated as thab mkhas, a term with valorizing connotations
(indeed often conferred on monks as an ordination name), associated with a kind
of wisdom (mkhas pa [khepa]), or pedagogical understanding. In Chinese, on the
other hand, it is translated as the pejorative (fāngbiàn), connoting a mere
expedience—something necessary but distasteful.11
When we think about attitudes toward language in the Tibetan and Chinese
tradition, we see a divide that tracks this distinction. In Tibetan Buddhist
literature, commentarial practice, eloquence in exposition and precision in
reasoning are valorized as thab mkhas; while discursive practices are always
regarded as merely conventional, and potentially deceptive, they are regarded as
indispensible pedagogical means of transmitting wisdom and of asserting truths.
A precise analytic literature is the consequence, as well as extensive reflection
on the nature of meaning, and on logic.
In the Chinese Buddhist traditions, on the other hand, discursive practices—
also widely undertaken—are disparaged as mere /fāngbiàn, and the
consequence is a corpus of highly metaphorical, cryptic and poetic writing,
writing that deliberately aims at transcending in practice the limits the tradition
sees in discursive practice itself. Here we see both Mañjuśrī’s and Vimalakīrti’s
responses to the illusions of discourse. Attention to this character of language, so
explicitly thematized in the Buddhist tradition, is still at the margins of Western
philosophical thought about language. It may be time to move it to center stage.
This approach to language has natural affinities, for instance, to the
intentionalism advanced by theorists such as Grice (1989) and Shiffer (1972,
1987), tying meaning to what we do with words and how we interact with each
other using words.12

5. Vajra Hermeneutics
In his essay “Vajra Hermeneutics,” (1978) Robert Thurman introduces another
important insight regarding language to be derived from the Buddhist tradition,
one deriving from much older Indian thought regarding language and sound. (It
is no accident that the Tibetan word sgra [da] denotes either a word or sound.)
Once again, just as in the case of our discussion of pramāṇa theory above, while
I will be emphasizing specifically Buddhist deployment of these ideas, it is
important to note the broader Indian context of this line of thought. From the
Vedic and Upaniṣadic literature on up, the role of speech as sound has been
conceived causally in Indian thought, most evidently in the theory of mantra and
in Indian poetics.13 Thurman points out that attention to the way that sound in
general, and language in particular, are treated in Buddhist tantric traditions,
which follow this older view of sound and language, sheds light not only on
tantra per se—a topic well outside the scope of the present investigation in any
case—but on Buddhist thought about language more generally. I conclude this
chapter with an exploration of ideas arising from reflection on that essay.
Thurman notes, as we have, that it may be a mistake to regard the primary
purpose of language to be to convey meaning, or to take the goal of utterance to
be understanding of the content of the utterance, as much Western thought about
language would have it. Instead, he argues, much language may be intended to
be cryptic, and much language is used in order to cause things to happen, as
opposed to conveying meaning. There are cases where this is obvious:
commands to dogs, or to computers; lullabies sung to small children; poetry in
some aspects; spells, and in the Indian and later Chinese Buddhist contexts, the
mantras central to tantric practice that are meant to transform the mind as a
direct effect of sound.
These cases are all in a broad sense mantras, or utterances produced and taken
to be efficacious in virtue of their physical or sonic properties, as opposed to any
semantic properties. Attention to the phenomenon of mantra may lead to a
further recontextualization of semantically pregnant language, and suggest new
directions in the philosophy of language.14 The point is to focus not on meaning
as a sui generis category, but rather on causation, and on meaning only as a
special case of that larger phenomenon.
While this discussion focuses on sound, regarded in the Indian and Tibetan
context as the primary vehicle of language, nothing hinges on that modality
being taken as paradigmatic. The same points could be made regarding manual
signs, semaphore or written language. For the sake of cultural fidelity, though, I
will focus on sound. Sound is, obviously, part of the network of dependent
origination. It is caused, and has effects. And as a physical phenomenon in the
range of our sense of hearing, it has physical effects on us—on our sensory
apparatus, and on our nervous system. Those phonological effects must
underwrite even any semantic analysis of language.
All of this seems painfully obvious, but like so much that is obvious, it is also
painfully easy to ignore these facts in philosophical reflection. Ignoring it, from
a Buddhist perspective, leads to a kind of mystification of language and
eventually of thought. That mystification—treating language and thought, in
virtue of being meaningful, as putting us in direct touch with a third world of
abstracta that stand between us and the rest of reality—takes us straight to the
duality of subject and object, representation and represented. That dualism in
turn leads to worries about correspondence or other reference- or meaning-
inducing relations, the relation of the self to the world, of mind to body, and the
whole raft of confusions that result from forgetting that the self or subject, to the
extent that it is real at all, must be part of the world, not something standing over
against it.
How does this go? We begin by distinguishing the semantic from the causal
aspects of sound. We then focus on the semantic aspects we have isolated,
understanding the effectiveness of language and its relation to thought as a
matter of relationship to content, and thinking of that content as constituted by
abstract entities, such as propositions, themselves understood perhaps as
functions from indices to truth values. And of course mathematical functions are
the wrong kinds of things to be causally produced or to have effects. The
efficacy of language has thus effectively been mystified precisely in the attempt
to understand how it can actually function to enable our epistemic and cultural
activity.
Given the fact that we, as physical organisms, are part of a causal nexus, we
know that the real story has to be a causal one. Of course we also know that
when we are talking about language and thought, semantic categories will
emerge as part of that causal story. There has to be an explanation of the fact that
sounds that are as different as those produced when an English woman says
Snow is white and when a Tibetan man says khang dkar po red (khang karpo
reh) have similar causes and effects. But that story itself has to be causal, on pain
of further mystification. Semantic evaluability, that is, has to emerge from, not
provide an alternative to, or an explanation of, causal efficacy.
This in turn means that, as Wittgenstein points out in the very beginning of
Philosophical Investigations, the focus in understanding the nature of language
on the truth conditions of the declarative sentence are misleading.
11. Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a
screw-driver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws.—The functions of
words are as diverse as the functions of these objects. (And in both cases
there are similarities.) Of course, what confuses us is the uniform
appearance of words when we hear them spoken or meet them in script and
print. For their application is not presented to us so clearly. Especially when
we are doing philosophy.
12. It is like looking into the cabin of a locomotive. We see handles all
looking more or less alike. (Naturally, since they are all supposed to be
handled.) But one is the handle of a crank which can be moved
continuously (it regulates the opening of a valve); another is the handle of a
switch, which has only two effective positions, it is either off or on; a third
is the handle of a brake-lever, the harder one pulls on it, the harder it
brakes; a fourth, the handle of a pump: it has an effect only so long as it is
moved to and fro.
The fundamental insight of Vajra hermeneutics, of seeing language from the
standpoint of mantra, as opposed to pratijñā—sound as opposed to proposition
—is that meaning, however special it is, is nothing more than a special case of
natural causal efficacy. Just as Sellars was to argue a few millennia later,
Buddhist philosophers of language saw meaning as a kind of functional
classification. But in even a more naturalistic spirit than that of Sellars, they saw
this not au fond as a kind of functional classification, but as a kind of causal
classification (of which the functional, once again, might be one intermediate
special case).
Just as the recitation of a mantra was held to cause one to become more
compassionate (a claim whose truth or falsity is irrelevant to the point in
question), singing a German lullaby to an English baby might cause her to drift
off to sleep. Just as the lullaby might induce sleep, an utterance of attention!
might cause a soldier to straighten up. And just as the command causes the
soldier to behave in a certain way, the assertion that Buddhist philosophy is
indeed worthy of attention might cause a Western philosopher to take it more
seriously.
To be sure, on this view the explanations of the causation in question drive us
to generalizations that are progressively more aptly framed in terms of content.
And Tibetan semantic theory introduces a raft of concepts proper to language to
explain this, including term universals that aggregate functionally isomorphic
words or phrases and meaning universals that aggregate the cognitive states they
bring about. But again, like all universals, these are in the end fictions to be
nominalized away. If this perspective is right, what we see is a continuum and
not a dichotomy. Moreover, if this perspective is right, at no point on this
continuum do we leave causality behind, and at no point on this continuum do
we need an appeal to a fundamental duality between vehicle and content, or
representation and represented. Communication is tantric all the way down.
This tantric approach to thinking about meaning is worth taking seriously,
particularly in the context of the drive to naturalize epistemology and the
philosophy of mind. Part of that worthy enterprise—an enterprise of which, as I
hope that this investigation has shown, any Buddhist would approve—has to be
the naturalization of semantics. For if we cannot provide a naturalistic account of
the meaningfulness of linguistic tokens, we cannot hope for a naturalistic
account of the content of thought. And without that, epistemology is a non-
starter.
To the extent that the representational model of meaning is committed to the
idea of a fundamental duality of representation and represented, and to content
as abstract, this naturalization is impossible. And it is hard to see what is left of
representationalism if that commitment is abandoned, for if there are no
universals, there is no relatum on the language side, and without such a relatum
it is hard to see how a relational model such as representationalism can get off
the ground. In the end, then, we might see this tantric strain of the philosophy of
language implicated by Buddhist theory and practice as one of history’s most
radical and profound attack on the representational model of thought and
language, and one of the most serious blows in the battle for naturalism. That is
worth taking seriously.

1. I use the term “four-valuational” logic to emphasize that while Mādhyamikas were happy to recognize
both truth value gaps and gluts, the only truth values they recognized (whether singly, together, or altogether
absent) are true and false. This emphasizes a deep kinship between their paraconsistency and
paracompleteness, on the one hand, and the logics more familiar to those whose logical reference points are
Boole and Frege, on the other hand. Of course those logics can also be specified with only a single truth
value, true, and two valuations—true and not true—although they are rarely conceived by their proponents
in that parsimonious way. There is also a kind of awkwardness in using this anachronistic language to
discuss Buddhist logic. For as we have seen, Buddhist philosophers are resolutely nominalist, and in
helping ourselves to the apparatus of evaluation functions, we may be using a rather Platonist
metalanguage. Thoughts about how to nominalize that metalanguage are for another day.
2. The interested reader can consult Chi (1984), Tillemans (1989), Matilal and Evans (1986), Perdue (2008)
and Matilal (1998) on Buddhist formal argument as needed.
3. Translations are mine. For a good translation of the entire text, with autocommentary, see Westerhoff
2010a.
4. There is critical debate regarding whether 4′33″ is in fact silent, and a broad critical consensus (though
not a unanimous one) that it is not—that it in fact essentially comprises the ambient noise in the concert hall
(Kania 2010). I dissent from that consensus, but this is hardly the place to fight that battle. Nonetheless,
even if 4′33″ is not silent, the analogy to the silence of Vimalakīrti goes through—this is the kind of
absence that only make sense in the context of a tradition of presence. Moreover, as Kania points out, there
are clear examples of silent music (in fact predating Cage), such as Erwin Schulhoff’s “In Futurum” from
his Fünf Pittoresken. I thank Ben Blumson for drawing my attention to this issue.
5. This text, however, is almost certainly not written by the historical Jizang. Most scholarship dates it at
least several centuries after his death, and there is reason to believe that it is composed in Korea or in Japan.
We can think of it as the work of some pseudo-Jizang (Ito 1971, 1972; Mitsugiri 1970a, b; Plassen 2007;
Choi 2007). Thanks to Yasuo Deguchi for invaluable help on this.
6. Yasuo Deguchi (2014) presents this dialectic as an intricate alternation between conventional and
ultimate truth. We begin at stage 1 with the conventional assertion of being (p). But at this stage, ultimately
we assert emptiness (–p). At the second stage, we can sum these by conventionally asserting conventional
being and ultimate emptiness (p&–p). But ultimately we deny that. (–(p&-p)). At the third stage we
conventionally assert the conjunction of the conventional and the ultimate at the second stage, and so on.
Note that at each stage what is asserted conventionally is denied ultimately; at each stage we assert
conventionally (and deny ultimately) the conjunction of what we asserted at the previous stage. This
sequence has a nice feature. If we sum up at omega, we get all of the assertions at the conventional level,
and all of the denials at the ultimate. In one sense, these are quite distinct: all assertions on one side; all
denials on the other. But at the same time, every formula that occurs on the conventional side occurs on the
ultimate side as well. The two truths are hence also identical. The identity and difference between the two
truths emerge quite naturally from this interpretation.
7. See Sharf (2007) for an excellent discussion of the treatment of language and silence and of the roots of
this treatment in the Discourse of Vimalakīrti.
8. Of course given the identity of conventional and ultimate truth, and the impossibility of expressing
ultimate truth, there is another paradox here, Nāgārjuna’s Paradox, explored in detail in Garfield and Priest
2003, 2009, and in Deguchi, Garfield and Priest 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, but we leave that aside for
present purposes.
9. The rubric of the three turnings of the wheel of Dharma is a common hermeneutical device in Mahāyāna
Buddhist commentarial literature, distinguishing three cycles of texts attributed to the Buddha and the
attendant treatises and commentaries. The first turning comprises the Pāli suttas and the treatises and
commentaries that depend upon them. The second comprises the Perfection of Wisdom sūtras and the
Madhyamaka texts that take them as their scriptural basis. The third comprises the Sūtra Unravelling the
Thought, The Entry into Lanka Sūtra and the Flower Garland Sūtra, among others, and the Yogācāra
literature inspired by those texts. Śrāvakayāna schools recognize only the first as authentic; Mahāyāna
schools recognize all three as authoritative. But within the Mahāyāna tradition there is a split: Mādhyamikas
take the second turning to be the definitive expression of Buddhist doctrine and the third to constitute a way
station for those incapable of understanding that position; Yogācārins take the third turning to be definitive,
and the second turning to be the halfway house.
10. This Tibetan neologism is a somewhat tendentious gloss of the Tibetan term rang mtshan (rangtzen)
that translates the Sanskrit svalakṣaṇa, a term that generally simply denotes a particular.
11. Douglas Duckworth points out that instant noodles are referred to as (fāngbiàn) noodles in
contemporary Chinese, confirming the point!
12. See Hansen (1992) for extended discussion of Chinese theories of language. He argues persuasively for
a semantic account focused upon the uses of language as opposed to a representational model of meaning.
Hansen’s treatment of Chinese philosophy of language and of Chinese philosophy more broadly is an
excellent example of how the study of a non-Western tradition can force a dramatic re-thinking of
assumptions we take for granted in the practice of Western philosophy.
13. One might see Aurobindo’s poetics as an intriguing modern continuation of this approach. See
Aurobindo 2000.
14. Śri Aurobindo in The Future Poetry intriguingly characterizes mantra as the primordial form of
language, and as fundamental to poetic structure.
9 ETHICS
1. Introduction: The Subject Matter of Ethics
Contemporary normative ethics is dominated by debates between deontologists,
consequentialists of various stripes and areteic ethicists with varying degrees of
allegiance to Aristotle, with a few antirealists thrown in. That is, moral theorists
are debating the subject matter of ethics. Does it concern our obligations and
rights? Or is it concerned with the preconditions of happiness or human
flourishing? With the maximization of good and the minimization of harm? Or
perhaps with our feelings and dispositions? Or is there perhaps no subject matter
at all? Of course despite all of this theoretical debate, there is a great deal of
common ground between divergent ethical theories regarding the moral valence
of most states of affairs, maxims of action and traits of character. We can
fruitfully see these debates, and, as we shall see, the Buddhist intervention into
these debates, as a kind of generalization of the Euthyphro problem: Are
deontological maxims good because they maximize utility, or the other way
around? Are virtues good because they conduce to the discharge of duty, or the
other way around? In short, what, if anything, grounds moral value? I will argue
that Buddhist moral theory enters this debate not through disagreements about
the value of happiness, virtue or duty, but rather by arguing that these values
depend on a more fundamental value: our phenomenological orientation toward
the world.
It is important when approaching Buddhist moral theory to resist the
temptation to assimilate Buddhist ethics to some system of Western ethics.
Succumbing to this temptation usually results in portraying it either as some
form of utilitarianism (Goodman 2008) or virtue ethics (Keown 2005). In
Buddhist philosophical and religious literature we find many texts that address
moral topics, and a great deal of attention devoted to accounts of virtuous and
vicious actions, states of character and lives. However, we find very little direct
attention to the articulation of sets of principles that determine which actions,
states of character or motives are virtuous or vicious, and no articulation of sets
of obligations or rights. So, while in many chapters of this volume I have argued
for significant homologies or overlap between Buddhist and Western ideas, here
I will be suggesting a dramatically different way of addressing important
philosophical problems.
 Buddhist moral theory provides an alternative voice to those in contemporary
debates, and a different view of the subject matter of ethics. Buddhist moral
theorists see ethics as concerned not primarily with actions, their consequences,
obligations, sentiments or human happiness, but rather with the nature of our
experience. That is, as we will see, Buddhist ethics is a moral phenomenology
concerned with the transformation of our experience of the world, and hence our
overall comportment to it.
This is not because Buddhist moral theorists were and are not sufficiently
sophisticated to think about moral principles or about the structure of ethical life,
and certainly not because Buddhist theorists think that ethics is not important
enough to do systematically. It is instead because from a Buddhist perspective
there are simply too many dimensions of moral life and moral assessment to
admit a clean moral theory.1 Buddhist ethical thought has instead been
concerned with understanding how the actions of sentient beings are located and
locate those beings within the web of dependent origination, or pratītya-
samutpāda. This web is complex, and there is a lot to be said. And so Buddhists
have had a lot to say. But the web is also untidy, and so what Buddhists have had
to say resists easy systematization.
There is one last temptation to resist, and that is to see the various Buddhist
philosophical and religious traditions as constituting a homogenous whole. An
enormous variety of positions have been defended within the Buddhist world on
just about every philosophical position, and ethics is no exception. Here I will
confine my remarks to one strand of Buddhist moral thought, that beginning
with the articulation of the four noble truths at Sarnath and running through the
work of Nāgārjuna in his Jewel Rosary of Advice to the King, Candrakīrti in
Introduction to the Middle Way, and Śāntideva in How to Lead an Awakened
Life. In particular, I will be ignoring a rich lode of moral literature comprised by
the Jātaka tales and the vast corpus of Buddhist morality tales that populate
Buddhist literature, offering a range of moral examples, ideals and cases for
consideration (Rotman 2008).
I hope that the observations I offer regarding this narrow path through Indian
Buddhist moral thought will serve to show that Buddhist moral thought
represents a reasonable alternative way of thinking about our moral life, one that
can engage Western moral theory in profitable dialogue. Each tradition of ethical
thought has a great deal to learn from the other, and that learning begins with
attention to what each has to say on its own terms. The discussion that follows
will be grounded in Buddhist ethical texts and discussions, and sometimes on
oral commentary to which I have been privy. But it will also involve a certain
amount of rational reconstruction extrapolating from those texts and
commentaries. Often the Buddhist tradition is not as explicit as one would
expect on topics in ethics (Hayes 2011) and reflection and reconstruction is often
necessary; indeed it is often a central task of oral teaching in this tradition.

2. Ethics and Interdependence

Thinking about the good from a Buddhist perspective begins from the first
principle of Buddhist metaphysics—the fact of thoroughgoing interdependence.
As we have seen, from a Buddhist perspective, every event and every
phenomenon is causally and constitutively dependent upon countless other
events and phenomena; and it, in turn, is part of the causal ancestries and
constitutive bases of countless other phenomena. Moral reflection on action must
take all of these dimensions of dependence into account. To focus merely on
motivation, or on character, or on the action itself, or on its consequences for
others, would be to ignore much that is important.
Interdependence is relevant when thinking about identity and interest as well.
Many Western moral theorists begin by taking a kind of ontological and
axiological individualism for granted in several respects. First, agency is taken to
reside in individual actors, with an attendant focus on responsibility as a central
area of moral concern. Second, interest is taken to be au fond an individual
matter, and even when the self is consciously deconstructed, as it is by Parfit,
interest is taken to attach to individual stages of selves. Third, and consequent on
these, a conflict between egoistic and altruistic interests and motivations is taken
to structure ethical deliberation and acting on egoistic motives regarded as at
least prima facie rational, if not morally defensible or ultimately rational.
Buddhist accounts of identity reflect the commitment to interdependence. The
boundaries between self and other are regarded as at best conventional and
relatively insignificant, and at worst deeply illusory. Agency is not taken as a
primary moral category, at least if taken to indicate a unique point of origin of
action in an individual self, and so moral responsibility, duty and desert are not
foregrounded in moral reflection. Interest is hence also seen as a shared
phenomenon, and egoism as fundamentally and obviously irrational. We will
work out the ramifications of these views as we proceed. (See Garfield 2010/11,
2012.)
Nāgārjuna argues that to understand dependent origination is to understand the
four noble truths. The truth of suffering sets the problem that Buddhism sets out
to solve. The universe is pervaded by dukkha and the causes of dukkha. As we
saw in chapter 1, the Buddha did not set out to prove this at Sarnath. He took it
as a datum, one that is obvious to anyone on serious reflection, though one that
escapes most of us most of the time, precisely because of our evasion of serious
reflection in order not to face this fact. The Buddha also assumed that suffering
is a bad thing. If one disagrees with this assessment, from a Buddhist
perspective, moral discourse has no basis: There is no problem to be solved. If
you just love headaches, don’t bother taking aspirin. If you don’t, you might
consider how to obtain relief. Once again, the Buddha took it as a datum that
people don’t like dukkha, and Buddhist ethics is aimed at its relief.
The Buddha then argued that dukkha does not just happen. It arises as a
consequence of actions conditioned by attachment and aversion, each of which
in turn is engendered by confusion regarding the nature of reality. This triune
root of dukkha is represented in the familiar Buddhist representation of the
Wheel of Life with the pig, snake and rooster at the hub representing primal
confusion, aversion and attraction, respectively; the six realms of transmigration
(or aspects of the phenomenology of suffering as we might understand them less
cosmologically) turning around them, structured by the twelve links of
dependent origination (a detailed psychology of perception and action), all of
which is depicted as resting in the jaws of death, the great fear of which propels
so much of our maladaptive psychology and moral failure.
Attention to the second noble truth allows us to begin to see how very
different Buddhist moral thought is from most Western moral thought: the three
roots of dukkha are each regarded as moral defilements, and are not seen as
especially heterogeneous in character. None of them is seen as especially
problematic in most Western moral theory, and indeed each of the first two—
attachment and aversion—is valorized in at least some contexts in some systems,
particularly that of Aristotle, who characterizes virtues in part in terms of that to
which we are attracted and averse.
The third, confusion, is rarely seen in the West as a moral matter, unless it is
because one has a duty to be clear about things. But this is far from the issue in
Buddhist moral theory. Buddhism is about solving the problem of dukkha; the
three root vices are vices because they engender the problem. The moral theory
here is not meant to articulate a set of imperatives, nor to establish a calculus of
utility through which to assess actions, nor to assign responsibility, praise or
blame, but rather to solve a problem. The problem is that the world is pervaded
by unwanted dukkha. The diagnosis of the cause of the problem sets the agenda
for its solution.
The third truth articulated at Sarnath is that, because dukkha depends upon
confusion, attraction and aversion, it can be eliminated by eliminating these
causes. And the fourth, which starts getting the ethics spelled out in a more
determinate form, presents the path to that solution. The eightfold path is central
to an articulation of the moral domain as it is seen in Buddhist theory, and
careful attention to it reveals additional respects in which Buddhists develop
ethics in a different way than do Western moral theorists. The eightfold path
comprises correct view, correct intention, correct speech, correct action, correct
livelihood, correct effort, correct mindfulness and correct meditation.
While many, following the traditional Tibetan classification of three trainings,
focus specifically on correct speech, action and livelihood as the specifically
ethical content of the path, this is in fact too narrow, and misses the role of the
path in Buddhist practice and in the overall moral framework through which
Buddhism recommends engagement with the world. The eightfold path identifies
not a set of rights or duties, nor a set of virtues, but a set of areas of concern or of
dimensions of conduct.
The path indicates the complexity of human moral life and the complexity of
the sources of suffering. To lead a life conducive to the solution of the problem
of suffering is to pay close heed to these many dimensions of conduct. Our views
matter morally. It is not simply an epistemic fault to think that material goods
guarantee happiness, that narrow self-interest is the most rational motivation,
that torture is a reasonable instrument of national policy or that women are
incapable of rational thought. Such views are morally problematic.2 To hold such
views is not to commit a morally neutral cognitive error, like thinking that
Florida is south of Hawai’i. It is to be involved in a way of taking up with the
world that is at the very root of the dukkha we all wish to alleviate.
It is not only what we do that matters, but what we intend. Intention grounds
action, and even when it misfires, what we intend to do determines who or what
we become. The great 5th-century Theravāda philosopher Buddhaghosa in The
Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga) explores the role of intention (cetanā) in
great detail, as do his slightly older, but roughly contemporary Mahāyāna
colleagues Asaṅga and Vasubandhu, in Encyclopedia of the Abhidharma and
Investigation of the Five Aggregates (Pañcaskandhaprakaraṇa), respectively. It
is worth spending some time on this term and its role in Buddhist psychology
and moral psychology at this point, as cetanā constitutes an important focus of
Buddhist thinking about agency and morality in all major Buddhist traditions.
The term, as we noted above, is perhaps best translated as intention (or, as
Meyers 2010 prefers, intending). Its semantic range is roughly consistent with
that of intention in English, connoting directedness in its various forms. So it can
indicate the purposive intentionality of action, the directedness of perception on
an object or of thought on its content. So right in the eightfold path, we have an
emphasis not only on what we intend to do, but on what we think about, and
under what descriptions we think about and act on the world around us. And
Buddhaghosa and Asanga explicitly draw our attention to the relationship
between cetanā and our orientation to objects and persons around us as pleasant
or unpleasant, allies or enemies, or in terms of other such categories, all
orientations with moral as well as cognitive dimensions.
It is also worth considering, as we note the centrality of intention in this
complex sense to Buddhist moral psychology, the ways in which the ascription
of intentionality is always a matter of interpretation, even when that is self-
ascription, or self-interpretation. And given the embeddedness of the practice of
interpretation in narratives, as the backgrounds against which we make sense of
action, we would expect an important narrative dimension to Buddhist moral
thought, a dimension we will in fact discover. We will return to the role of
cetanā and other prima facie simply cognitive attitudes, but, in a Buddhist
framework, deeply ethical dimensions of experience below.
The eightfold path, which represents the earliest foundation of Buddhist
ethical thought, must always be thought of as a path, and not as a set of
prescriptions. That is, it comprises a set of areas of concern, domains of life on
which to reflect, respects in which one can improve one’s own life (as well as
those of others), and, in sum, a way of moving cognitively, behaviorally and
affectively from a state in which one is bound by and causative of suffering to
one in which one is immune from suffering and in which one’s thought, speech
and action tend to alleviate it.
The eightfold path may be represented as broadly consequentialist, but it is
certainly not utilitarian, and it is consequentialist only in a thin sense—that is,
what makes it a path worth following is that things work out better to the extent
that we follow it. By following this path, by attending to these areas of concern
in which our actions and thought determine the quality of life for ourselves and
others, we achieve greater individual perfection, facilitate that achievement for
those around us and reduce suffering. There is no boundary drawn here that
circumscribes the ethical dimensions of life; there is no distinction between the
obligatory, the permissible and the forbidden; there is no distinction drawn
between the moral and the prudential; the public and the private; the self-
regarding and the other-regarding.3 Instead, there is a broad indication of the
complexity of the solution to the problem of suffering.

3. Action Theory and Karma

The term karma plays a central role in any Buddhist moral discussion. It is a
term of great semantic complexity and must be handled with care, particularly
given its intrusion into English with a new range of central meanings. Most
centrally karma means action. Derivatively, as Tsongkhapa makes clear (2006,
355) it means the consequences of action. Given the Buddhist commitment to
the universality of dependent origination, all action arises from the karmic
consequences of past actions, and all action has karmic consequences. Karma is
not a cosmic bank account on this view, but rather the natural causal sequelae of
actions. Karma accrues to any action, simply in virtue of interdependence, and
karmic consequences include those for oneself and for others, as well as both
individual and collective karma.
Buddhist action-theory approaches human action, and hence ethics, in a way
slightly divergent from that found in any Western action-theory, and it is
impossible to understand moral assessment without attention to action theory.
Buddhist philosophers distinguish in any action the intention, the act itself
(whether mental, purely verbal, or non-verbally physical as well) and the
completion (or, as we would say in more contemporary language, the immediate
consequence) or the final state of affairs resulting directly from the action itself.
If I intend to give ten dollars to Oxfam and hand over the ten dollars to an
Oxfam worker, who then uses it to bribe a policeman, beneficial karma accrues
from the intention, beneficial karma from the act, but non-beneficial karma from
the completion. If I intend to steal your medicine, but instead pocket the poison
that had been placed on your bedstand by your malicious nurse, thereby saving
your life, negative karma accrues from the intention, but positive karma from the
act and from the completion, and so forth.
It is important to see that karma isn’t additive or subtractive. There is no
calculus of utility or of merit points here. The fact that something I do is
beneficial does not cancel the fact that something else I do is harmful. It just
means that I have done something good and something harmful. I have
generated both kinds of consequences, not achieved some neutral state. No
amount of restitution I pay for destroying the garden you worked so hard to
cultivate takes away the damage I have done. It only provides you with some
benefit as well. Truth and reconciliation commissions do indeed reveal the truth
and promote reconciliation, and that is good. But to pretend that they thereby
erase the horrific consequences of the deeds they reveal for those who are
reconciled is naive.4
Note as well that the relevant kinds of karma include the impact on my
character and that of others, such as the tendency to reinforce or to undermine
generosity or malice, and the degree to which the action promotes general well-
being. Behaving in wholesome ways can be habit forming; so can behaving
viciously. There is hence attention both to virtue and to consequence here, and
attention to the character of and consequences for anyone affected by the action.
The fundamental facts relevant to moral assessment are causal interdependence
and the moral equivalence of all moral agents and patients.
Buddhist moral assessment and reasoning hence explicitly takes into account a
number of dimensions of action. We cannot characterize a particular action as
good or evil simpliciter in this framework, nor can we enumerate our obligations
or permissions. Instead we examine the states of character reflected by and
consequent to our intentions, our words, our motor acts, and their consequences.
We ask about the pleasure and pain produced, and about how actions reflect and
enhance or ignore and undermine our universal responsibility. In sum, we ask
how these actions are relevant to solving our collective problem—the
omnipresence of suffering. The fact that a terrible outcome ensues from a good
intention does not make the outcome morally acceptable; nor does a good
outcome somehow cancel malicious intent. Each component of action has its
consequences and reflects morally relevant features of its genesis.
Attention to this approach to moral assessment and reasoning reveals that in
this framework there is no morally significant distinction between self-regarding
and other-regarding actions. Nor is there any distinction between moral and
prudential motivations. Motivations that appear to be immoral but prudential are,
on deeper analysis, simply confused. Nor is there any limit to the domain of the
ethical. Karma is ubiquitous; interdependence is endless. Responsibility, on this
model, as the Dalai Lama XIV constantly reminds his audiences, can only be
universal.

4. Beyond Virtue, Consequence Obligation: Toward

Moral Perception
We can now see that Buddhist moral theory is neither purely consequentialist nor
purely areteic nor purely deontological. Elements of each kind of evaluation are
present, but there is no overarching concern for a unified form of moral
assessment. And none of these is thematized as the focus of moral assessment.
Rather, as I emphasized at the outset, the concern of Buddhist reflection on
ethics is the solution of a fundamental, pervasive problem, the problem of
dukkha. The problem is complex, its roots are complex, and so its solution can
be expected to be complex.
Suffering is both caused and constituted by fundamental states of character,
including preeminently egocentric attraction, egocentric aversion and confusion
regarding the nature of reality. Hence the cultivation of virtues that undermine
these vices is morally desirable. Suffering is perpetuated by our intentions, our
acts and their consequences. Hence attention to all of these is necessary for its
eradication. Because our own happiness and suffering are intimately bound up
with that of others, we are responsible for others and obligated to take their
interests into account.
Buddhism hence represents a distinct moral framework addressed to problem-
solving that takes action not to issue from a free will bound by laws, but from a
dependently originated, conditioned continuum of causally interdependent
psychophysical processes. It takes the relevant consequences of action not to be
pleasure and pain conceived of as introspectible experiences of persons, but to
be states of sentient continua of genuine suffering, that which conduces to
suffering, genuine liberation, or that which conduces to genuine liberation,
whether or not those are desired or detested, or experienced as desirable or
detestable by the sentient beings imputed on the basis of those continua.
The relevant categories of assessment, and the relevant considerations in
deliberation, are unified by an overarching vision of the complexity of ethical
life, by an overarching vision of the purpose of moral reflection and of moral
cultivation, and by an overarching vision of the nature of agency and of the
nature of life. If we fail to attend to this framework, we see a patchwork of ad
hoc admonitions and assessments. When we attend to the framework, we see a
unitary, alternative way of taking up with ethics.
Buddhist ethical thought is articulated with considerable care both in Pāli
literature—preeminently by Buddhaghosa and his commentators—and in the
Mahāyāna tradition, as developed in texts such as How to Lead an Awakened
Life and Introduction to the Middle Way. There are important differences in
emphasis in these two bodies of literature, but they are more complementary
than competitive, and together offer a rich view of moral psychology that can
contribute a great deal to Western approaches to moral theory.5
Central to each is an account of perception grounded in Abhidharma
psychology, a framework devoted to the detailed anatomy of the psychology of
experience expressed in a set of lists of kinds of mental episodes, processes and
factors together with an account of the ways in which fundamental subpersonal
mental phenomena combine to yield the relatively macroscopic cognitive and
affective states of which we are aware. There is not space in this volume to scout
that terrain in full. For present purposes, it is important to note that there are
several fundamental processes taken to be involved in all perceptual awareness,
referred to as the sarvaga/kun ‘dro (kundro) (constantly operative) mental
factors.
We have already encountered one of these—cetanā, or intention, and have
considered its role in perception and in moral consciousness in a preliminary
way. To this we add sparsa/reg pa (rekpa) (contact), vedanā/tshor ba (tsorwa)
(feeling or hedonic tone), samjñā/’du shes (dusheh) (ascertainment) and
chanda/’dun pa (dönpa) (action selection). On this model of the perceptual
process, perception involves not only bare sensory contact, but also
intentionality, an initial sense of the sensory and affective valence of the object
(pleasant or unpleasant; to be approached or avoided; friend or foe…), a
cognitive ascertainment or determination of what the object is (perception is
always perception-as, but on this model, not only as a thing of a kind, but as a
thing with an affective valence) and all of this readies action with respect to the
object.
What does all of this have to do with ethics? Everything. Each of our
perceptual encounters, whether with other people or with the animate and
inanimate objects around us, involves hedonic or affective tone. We may find
ourselves averse to people who don’t look like us or attracted to objects that lend
us status, for instance. And every morally charged interaction begins with
perceptual encounter. These affective sets are neither morally neutral nor fixed.
Changing the affective dimensions of our perceptual experience is both possible,
and can lead us to be better (or worse) people, can lead us to experience and to
create more or less suffering. This is part of the work of ethical development.
We have already encountered the moral dimensions of cetanā, of
intentionality. The way we direct our attention, the categories in terms of which
we perceive, that which grabs our attention are all matters of moral concern, but
are all matters not of what we do after perception, but condition and direct our
perception of the world. Nonetheless, while intention drives much perceptual
processing, it is not an autonomous foreign force in our experiential lives, but
rather a force we can come to control, and which can either take us in morally
salutary or deleterious directions. Once again, moral development is seen to
consist in the cultivation of essentially perceptual skills.
When we engage perceptually, we categorize. We see others as colleagues,
adversaries, friends, family members, or strangers, superiors or subordinates,
white, black, male, female, and so forth. And of course often these categories are
far from morally neutral, and their moral valence may vary considerably with
context. But perception is impossible without ascertainment of this kind. And
once again, this ascertainment process is one that while present in any moment
as a kind of perceptual reflex, is also malleable. We develop skills of
ascertainment constantly in daily life, as when we learn to recognize kinds of
flowers, genres of art, or the work of particular composers. But we can also hone
our skills in moral ascertainment. Indeed, we used to have a term for this
—consciousness raising.
 Finally, part of perception is the readying of action. Our motor systems are
fully integrated with perception, and this can be the basis of thoughtless reflex
action, as when we strike out in anger upon perceiving a threat or an insult,
flinch when we hear something uncomfortable, or reach out spontaneously in
embrace. Once again, this aspect of our perceptual engagement with the world,
while automatic in the moment, is malleable, and while deeply cognitive is also
deeply moral. As we cultivate ourselves ethically, we develop the motor sets that
are part of our spontaneous perceptual engagement with the world around us.
(See Heim 2013 for a detailed discussion of Buddhaghosa’s account of the
structure of perception and of its moral dimensions.)
Ethical engagement, on this Buddhist view, has its foundation in perceptual
engagement, and perceptual engagement on this view is far from passive, far
from fixed. The project of leading a life that is a solution to, rather than a
reinforcement of, the problem of universal suffering is at least in large part the
project of reordering our perceptual engagement with the world. This is a very
different orientation from one focused on action, duty or even the cultivation of a
broad set of action-based virtues. Let us now see how this orientation to moral
engagement through perception and our mode of experiencing the world
articulates in the two great living Buddhist ethical traditions—that of the
Theravāda and that of the Mahāyāna.

5. Theravāda Ethics: The Four Immeasurables and the

Narrative Context
The Theravāda tradition emphasizes the cultivation of the four brahmavihāras or
divine states: karuṇā (care), muditā (sympathetic joy), mettā (love) and
upekkhā/Skt: upekṣā (equanimity). The account of these states of character
provides a moral psychology that articulates with a more general Buddhist
phenomenology and metaphysics.
karuṇā is a central concept not only in the Pāli tradition, but also, as we shall
see, in the Mahāyāna, where it is thematized as the heart of morality. The
translation of karuṇā as compassion has become standard in Buddhist Hybrid
English. But I can no longer stick with it. While the root of compassion is
passio, meaning to experience, or to suffer, and connoting being a patient, rather
than an agent, the root of karuṇā is kṛ, meaning to act.6 And karuṇā connotes not
just an emotive response to another, but a commitment to act on behalf of others
to relieve their suffering. The standard translation is hence etymologically
paradoxical, and can be misleading. The term care nicely captures this
commitment to act, as in the case of caregiving, caring for, and other such
expressions.
To cultivate care in this sense is to recognize both the omnipresence of
suffering and our interconnectedness through the web of dependent origination;
it is to recognize that one cannot solve even the problem of one’s own suffering
without caring about that of others, as well, given our essentially social nature
and the claims that nature ensures that we make upon one another. It is to
recognize that not to care about others is to suffer from profound alienation, and
to adopt an attitude with which one can never be comfortable. But to adopt a
caring attitude is more than an act of recognition; it is also to adopt a mode of
comportment to the world, a mode in which the welfare and suffering of others is
that which is ascertained in perception, in which sentient beings are perceived
intentionally as suffering, and in which the actions that are readied in the
perceptual cycle are actions designed to alleviate suffering. In short, karuṇā is
tied directly to the phenomenology of perception as well as to the ideology of the
four noble truths and of dependent origination.
Mettā is an attitude of spontaneous positive emotion and well-wishing toward
others, an attitude of beneficence. It joins with karuṇā in signaling a recognition
of interdependence and a lack or self-grasping, but focuses intentionally and
cognitively not specifically on the suffering of others, but on positively
promoting their welfare. Again, it is not a reflective attitude, but a perceptual set.
Muditā or sympathetic joy is a distinctively Buddhist moral psychological
state, the mirror image of schadenfreude. To cultivate muditā is to cultivate an
attitude in which the good fortune, the positive traits of character, the happiness
and the accomplishments of others are a source of immediate joy to oneself. It
counteracts envy, and also reflects the sensibility of selflessness, of an absence
of self-grasping—that recognition that happiness and accomplishment are good
per se, not because they are good for me.
Once again, the disposition to such sympathetic joy represents not simply a
post-perceptual cognitive judgment and appraisal, but part of a perceptual set, a
way of being embedded in the world. For it is once again to be intentionally
oriented to, and to ascertain, others’ achievements in perception; for the hedonic
tone of that awareness to be positive, and neither negative as in envy nor neutral
as in the mutual disinterest celebrated by modern economists; and for celebration
and support to be the actions readied in this perceptual engagement.
Finally among these four aspects of morally awakened perception we
encounter upekkhā (Pāli) or upekṣā (Sanskrit). This is an attitude of equanimity.
In the context of these other affectively charged states, this one might seem odd.
But it is not. Equanimity in this sense is at the heart of selflessness and at the
foundation of moral effectiveness. In equanimity we dislodge the sense that the
world revolves around us or even the sense that the events in our immediate
environment revolve around us. Equanimity in this sense is not a refusal to care
about what happens to us. On the contrary, because it allows us to detach from
egocentric involvement with the world, it allows us to care about what happens
per se, not about its impact on us.
The sense that the world does revolve around us—that we as subjects stand at
the center of our universe—is, as we have seen, a central aspect of the Buddhist
conception of self-grasping. It is the foundation of the subject–object duality that
not only makes a hash of our metaphysical and phenomenological orientation to
the world, but which grants us a prima facie reason to isolate ourselves as
deserving of special regard, and so is also a foundation of egoism. More than
that, however, it is the foundation of a set of what Peter Strawson (1962) called
“reactive attitudes,” such as resentment and gratitude, attitudes that are affective
reactions to the morally charged actions of others.
From a Buddhist point of view, these reactive attitudes, along with their
cousins such as anger and egocentric affection, are in fact kleśas, or
dysfunctional cognitive states. They impair our judgment, orient us to our own
reactions and not to the circumstances around us, and make us less, rather than
more, morally effective. In resentment we feel ourselves wronged; we take
others to be personal agents of harm; we isolate perpetrators and victims from a
complex web of interdependence; we end up reacting, rather than responding to
circumstances, and in the end, make things worse for ourselves and others, not
better.
Once again, both the self-grasping orientation that underpins this kind of
pathological reactivity and the attitude of selflessness that permits the
equanimity that can underlie non-self-interested moral intervention are
perceptual sets, ways of experiencing and taking up with the world. It is one
thing to see the world with oneself at the center, and hence immediately to
develop hedonic and action-readying responses grounded in that sense of self
and ownership, and another to see a de-centered world in which one’s own
perspective is but one among many, and one’s own experiences but some among
many. Doing so, Theravāda ethicists such as Buddhaghosa argue, allows us not
only to see the world more accurately, but more ethically as well.
This is but the briefest introduction to the brahmavihāras and hence to this
profound Theravāda analysis of moral phenomenology.7 I hope, however, that it
is sufficient to see that this is a perspective on the subject-matter of ethics, and
on the nature of moral cultivation, that deserves to be taken seriously, one
grounded in moral perception, and one grounded in a compelling analysis of the
nature of perception and experience itself.
Another feature of Theravāda (and indeed of all Buddhist) moral discourse
deserves mention here, and that is the explicitly narrative character of Buddhist
moral discussion. Whether we attend to early Buddhist Avadāna (stories of
virtuous activity) literature (Rotman 2008), vinaya (monastic discipline
literature), the moral admonitions in the vast sutta literature, or even such
systematic commentarial literature as Candrakīrti’s commentary on Ārydadeva’s
Four Hundred Stanzas (Catuḥśataka) (Lang 2003), Buddhist moral thought is
often presented in the context of narratives. A story is told about an event,
perhaps in one of the Buddha’s previous lives, perhaps an event in the history of
the monastic community, or perhaps the life of one of the Buddha’s interlocutors,
or even a folk tale. The moral lesson derived is not a “moral of the story”
abstracted from the tale. Instead, the narrative is essential for making sense of
the actor’s actions, and of the moral assessment of and response to those
actions.8
In the canonical story of Kisagotami, for instance, a young grieving mother
asks the Buddha to restore her child to life. The Buddha tells her that he can do
so if, and only if, she brings him a mustard seed from the house of a family that
has never known death. Kisagotami, overjoyed at the prospect of the miracle,
travels from house to house, only to find that death has visited each one.
Gradually it dawns on her that her loss is not unique and that death is a normal
part of life, and her grief eases. In this case, simply to state that everyone dies
and that everyone loses loved ones is to thin the narrative beyond the bounds of
its sense. The repetition of Kisagotami’s actions, the blindness of grief, the
determination to find a miracle and the gradual realization are all essential parts
of the story of how a person comes to grips with suffering.
The fact that the narrative makes sense to us is an essential part of its power.
Our coming to make sense of the narrative is what teaches us as we read the
narrative, and absorption in the narrative brings us as readers to see the world
differently; that transformation in vision, which appears not only in the
protagonist, but in the reader as well, is the goal of moral practice in this
tradition. (See Bhushan 2009 for an excellent discussion of the Kisagotami story;
see Rotman 2008 and Heim 2013 for a textured discussion of the role of
narrative in Buddhist ethics.) One might indeed read a great deal of Buddhist
ethical literature looking for moral theory and fail to see it simply because of its
embedding in so much narrative.
Only by understanding this essential role of narrative and the centrality of a
transformation of vision can we make sense of ethical discourse in Indian
Buddhist literature. Ethical thought is a way of making sense of our lives,
individually and collectively. To see our actions and our situations ethically is to
see them in relation to their social context, and to the context of our own lives,
options, perceptual skills and acculturation, to see our actions and our lives as
having meaning in the context of a larger story that gives them meaning, a story
that we must understand in order to grasp their meaning. Ethical assessment is
ineliminably hermeneutical, and ethical response is an attempt to complete a
story in a way that makes sense to the central ethical actor, to those affected by
his or her actions, and to ourselves as a culture. This is why so much courtroom
time is spent telling stories about the lives of perpetrators and of victims. This is
why when we raise children ethically we do so through narrative.
But from a Buddhist perspective, things run deeper, since from this
perspective, our very being as ethical agents comes into existence through
narrative. This is because from any Buddhist perspective, as we have
emphasized at length above, persons are constructed. They are constructed
through the appropriation of aggregates, through recognizing a body as mine,
thoughts as mine, values, dispositions, and intentions as mine. In turn, those
physical and cognitive processes are also constructed in relation to that person,
and the person is appropriated by them as a locus. That appropriation and
construction is itself accomplished through the narration of a life in which a
person emerges as a character (Garfield 2014a). The very English term person,
deriving from persona or mask, with its theatrical resonances suggests this idea.
That appropriation and narration of a life is, moreover, not a solo affair. We
narrate and construct each other constantly in the hermeneutical ensemble act
that is social life. (See Hutto 2008 and Bogdan 2011 for more recent Western
developments of this idea, but of course as Nehamas 1985 points out, this idea in
the West goes at least back to Nietzsche.) None of us is innocent in our own
creation; but at the same time none of us is autonomous in that creative activity.
Our identities are negotiated, fluid and complex in virtue of being marked by the
three universal characteristics of impermanence, interdependence and the
absence of any self. It is this frame of context-governed interpretive
appropriation, instead of the frame of autonomous, substantial selfhood that sets
metaphysical questions regarding agency, and moral questions regarding
responsibility in a Buddhist framework.
What is it to act, in a way relevant to moral assessment or reaction? It is for
our behavior to be determined by reasons, by motives we and/or others regard as
our own. It is therefore for the causes of our behavior to be part of the narrative
that makes sense of our lives, as opposed to being simply part of the vast
uninterpreted milieu in which our lives are led, or bits of the narratives that more
properly constitute the lives of others. This distinction is not a metaphysical but
a literary distinction, and since this kind of narrative construction is so
hermeneutical, how we do so—individually and collectively—is a matter of
choice, and sensitive to explanatory purposes. That sensitivity, on the other hand,
means that the choice is not arbitrary.9
So, from a Buddhist point of view, when we make choices or when we
perform acts that merit moral assessment or assign responsibility to agents for
their actions, when we absolve others and when we assess acts morally, we do
not settle questions about the ultimate structure of reality or about sui generis
moral facts. Instead, we locate ourselves and others in collectively constituted
moral narratives within which we make sense of our actions and theirs, and
which, when read, help us to better see how we could participate in further
narratives in which we would like to figure, narratives of greater happiness, of
less suffering, of more human flourishing. Once again, this suggests a different
way of thinking about ethical discourse from those that dominate Western ethical
theory. Let us now continue this exploration of the Buddhist framework through
attention to the developments that emerge in the context of the Mahāyāna
tradition.

6. The Bodhisattva Path and Buddhist Moral Psychology

As I have been emphasizing, Buddhist ethics is directed at solving the problem
of suffering in the context of the nexus of dependent origination. Careful
attention to the nature of suffering and its causes in this context reveals that the
causes and effects of any one sentient being’s suffering include the states of
indefinitely many other sentient beings, and that there is nothing special about
the suffering of any particular sentient being that gives it pride of place in moral
consideration. Together these drive one to a universal concern for the
enlightened welfare of all sentient beings and to the cultivation of states of
character that reflect this awareness and commitment, and this insight is the
foundation of Mahāyāna moral theory. Let us take these points in turn, and then
consider the relevant range of virtues as adumbrated in Buddhist moral
psychology.
First, it is an important fact about human beings in particular, but more
generally about any beings with sufficient sentience, to have moral standing, that
their cognitive, affective and motivational states are linked inextricably with
those of indefinitely many others in a vast causal nexus. For present purposes, let
us focus on the case of those social animals we know as Homo sapiens. Our
happiness, suffering and moral progress depends at all times on the actions and
attitudes of others, as well as on their welfare. If others cooperate and support
our projects and our development, success is far more likely; if their attitudes are
hostile, happiness and progress are difficult to obtain.
If we know of others’ weal or woe, we are either motivated to celebrate or to
regret. Celebration of others’ welfare benefits both ourselves and others;
schadenfreude is not only detrimental to those around us, but ultimately, through
undermining the relations that sustain us, to ourselves as well. Muditā is not only
good for others, but good for ourselves as well. Similarly, our own actions,
mental, verbal and physical, have endless ramifications both for our own
affective and moral well-being and for that of those around us. These are natural
facts, and to ignore them is to ignore the nature of action and its relevance to our
moral, psychological and social lives.
Confusion regarding the nature of reality in the moral realm, from a Buddhist
perspective, as we have seen, manifests itself most directly in the grasping of
oneself and of that which most immediately pertains to oneself as having special
importance and justifiable motivational force. The twofold self-grasping issues
directly in the moral duality of self and other. Such a duality leads to the
distinction between prudential and moral concern, self-regarding and other-
regarding acts and between those to whom one owes special regard and those to
whom one does not. All of these are taken by Buddhist philosophers to be
spurious, and in general to reflect a view of the world as comprising me, et al., a
view not rationally sustainable once one sees that it is equally available, and so
equally unjustifiable, for any moral subject. It is for this reason, at bottom, that
confusion is a root moral delusion, and not simply an epistemological problem.
In the Mahāyāna tradition, moral attention is focused on the cultivation of a
set of perfections, or virtues, including those of generosity, patience, propriety,
attention, meditation and wisdom. Once again, this list might seem odd to the
Western ethicist, in virtue of the inclusion of such prima facie non-moral virtues
as those of attention, meditation and wisdom on the same list as generosity,
patience and propriety. Once again, though, attention to the focus of Buddhist
ethics on solving the problem of suffering, and attention to the role of
inattention, failure to develop the insights and traits of character cultivated in
meditation, and ignorance as causes of and maintainers of suffering, should
dispel this sense of oddness, and we should be well on the way to normalizing
these concerns.
Although a signal conceptual innovation in the Mahāyāna movement is the
overlay of this prima facie areteic conception of moral development on the
framework of the eightfold path with its delineation of areas of concern, and on
the account of the nature of action and karma familiar from earlier Buddhism,
this innovation is not an abandonment of the more basic framework, but an
enrichment and a refocusing. The eightfold path remains a central guide to the
domains in which the perfections figure, and the perfections are manifested in
the propensity to perform cognitive, verbal and physical actions of the kind
assessable in the familiar framework of Buddhist action theory. The framework
of the perfections hence represents only an approach to morality more focused
on states of character than on their manifestations as the fundamental goals of
moral practice.
The most important innovation in Mahāyāna moral theory, however, is not the
framework of the perfections but the installation of karuṇā, or care as the central
moral value and the model of the bodhisattva’s caring and careful engagement
with the world as the moral ideal. karuṇā, as we have seen, is not a passive
emotional response, and not a mere desire. That is sloppy sympathy, and benefits
nobody. Instead it is a genuine commitment manifested in thought, speech and
physical action, to act for the welfare of all sentient beings.10 It is in the
Mahāyāna tradition of Buddhist ethics, and its development of the Theravāda
anticipations of such moral theorists as Hume and Schopenhauer, that Buddhist
moral theory makes its closest contact with Western ethics.
Care in the Mahāyāna tradition is founded upon the insight that suffering is
bad, per se, regardless of whose it is. To fail to take another’s suffering seriously
as a motivation for action is itself a form of suffering and is irrational. This is a
deep insight, and one over which we should not pass too quickly: The
bodhisattva path is motivated in part by the realization that not to experience the
suffering of others as one’s own, and not to take the welfare of others as one’s
own, is to suffer even more deeply from a profound existential alienation born of
a failure to appreciate one’s own situation as a member of an interdependent
community. Our joys are social joys; our sorrows are social sorrows; our identity
is a social identity; the bounds of our society are indefinite. We either suffer and
rejoice together in the recognition of our bonds to one another, or we languish in
self-imposed solitary confinement, afflicted both by the cell we construct, and by
the ignorance that motivates its construction.
Care, grounded in the awareness of our joint participation in global life,
hence, from the Mahāyāna perspective, is the wellspring of the motivation for
the development of all perfections, and the most reliable motivation for morally
decent actions. Care is also, on this view, the direct result of a genuine
appreciation of the emptiness and interdependence of all sentient beings. Once
one sees oneself as nonsubstantial and existing only in interdependence, and
once one sees that the happiness and suffering of all sentient beings is entirely
causally conditioned, the only rational attitude one can adopt to others is a caring
and careful one.
 Care, Mahāyāna moral theorists argue, requires one to develop upāya, or
moral skill, in order to realize one’s objectives. Caring intention is only genuine
if it involves a commitment to action and to the successful completion of action,
enabled by the skills requisite for that action. A desire to eradicate world hunger
is not genuinely caring in this sense if it leads nowhere. But moving to eradicate
world hunger requires that one know how to act, if only to know to which
organizations to donate, let alone to help others to grow or distribute food. It is in
the domain of upāya that Buddhist and Western ethics converge in practice and it
is in this domain that each can learn from the other.
Often the best way to ensure that minimal human needs are met, for instance,
is to establish rights to basic goods, and to enshrine those rights in collective
moral and political practice. Often the best way to ensure that human dignity is
respected is to enshrine values that treat persons as individual bearers of value.
Often the best way to ensure plenty is to develop social welfare policies. And
often the best way to develop flourishing citizens is to articulate a theory of
virtue. Western moral theorists have been good at this. Liberal democratic theory
and a framework of human rights has been a very effective device for the
reduction of suffering, though hardly perfect or unproblematic. So has utilitarian
social welfare theory. And virtue theories have been useful in moral education.
These Western articulations of the right, the good and the decent provide a great
deal of specific help in the pursuit of the bodhisattva path.
On the other hand, Buddhist moral theory provides a larger context in which
to set these moral programs, and one perhaps more consonant with a plausible
metaphysics of personhood and action, and with the genuine complexity of our
moral lives. To the extent that that world is characterized by omnipresent
suffering, and to the extent that that is a real problem, perhaps the fundamental
problem for a morally concerned being, Buddhist moral theory may provide the
best way to conceptualize that problem in toto. But Buddhist moral theory and
Western moral theory can meet profitably when we ask how to solve that
problem in concrete human circumstances, and it is in these concrete human
circumstances that we must solve it.
It is useful to attend to the work of the 20th- and 21st-century Vietnamese
Buddhist philosopher the Ven. Thich Nhat Hahn, who eloquently characterizes
the essentials of Buddhist moral development in his essay “Fourteen
Mindfulness Trainings” (1998, reprinted in Edelglass and Garfield 2009, 421–
427). There, Thich Nhat Hahn emphasizes that moral cultivation comprises the
development of traits such as openness, which he glosses as “awareness of the
suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance” (Edelglass and Garfield 2009,
421); non-attachment and freedom of thought, also glossed in terms of kinds of
awareness (Ibid., 422). In these cases and that of others on his list, Thich Nhat
Hahn argues that the primary object of moral cultivation—the state at which
ethical practice aims—is not a disposition to act, not to become an agent who
regularly maximizes utilities, and not respect for duty. Instead, ethical perfection
consists primarily in a way of seeing things, in a kind of awareness of others and
of one’s place in the world. The goods most Western moral theorists are likely to
emphasize flow from this mode of ethical comportment and from this quality of
experience. But it is validated not because it leads to these goods, but because of
its congruence with an understanding of the nature of existence and of human
life. It is for this reason that I prefer to see Buddhist ethics as a kind of moral
phenomenology.
Among the qualities of ethical awareness, Thich Nhat Hahn also notes
“dwelling happily in the present moment.” (Ibid., 424) Once again, he is
characterizing a mode of awareness, one that reflects an understanding of the
possibilities of life, and of interdependence and its fruits. The important point
here is that this is not a recommendation for personal satisfaction, but a
component of moral comportment, and a component that reflects an
understanding of reality. Even dispositions that might appear to be traditional
Western virtues, such as generosity and propriety are treated as kinds of
awareness. Thich Nhat Hahn concludes his presentation:
Studying and practicing the mindfulness trainings can help us to understand
the true nature of interbeing—we cannot just be by ourselves alone; we can
only inter-be with everyone and everything else. To practice these trainings
is to become aware of what is going on in our bodies, our minds, and the
world. With awareness, we can live our lives happily, fully present in each
moment we are alive, intelligently seeking solutions to the problems we
face, and working for peace in large and small ways…(Ibid., 427)
This approach to ethics as moral phenomenology is hardly new in the Buddhist
tradition with Thich Nhat Hahn. It has old roots, beginning with the Pāli suttas
themselves and the work of Buddhaghosa, and articulated with great force by
Śāntideva, to whose work we now turn.

7. Moral Phenomenology in Bodhicaryāvatāra

7.1 Introduction to the Text
Let us now turn directly to How to Lead an Awakened Life. Śāntideva’s
understanding of how to lead an awakened life, or a life aimed at awakening, is
distinctive for its sophistication and for the detail with which it is articulated and
defended.
The central moral phenomenon taken up in the text is that of bodhicitta, a
term I prefer to leave untranslated. This term is usually translated either as the
awakened mind or as the mind of awakening. But that’s not very helpful, in part
because of the different connotations of citta/sems (sem) and mind in Buddhist
and Western philosophy, respectively, and in part because of the unclarity of the
bare genitive construction in English. Avoiding the temptation to follow
attractive philological and metaphysical byways, let me offer this preliminary
reading of the term: Bodhicitta is a complex psychological phenomenon. It is a
standing motivational state with conative and affective dimensions. It centrally
involves an altruistic aspiration, grounded in care, to cultivate oneself as a moral
agent for the benefit of all beings.11
That cultivation, as we shall see, demands the development of the skills in
moral perception, moral responsiveness and traits of character we have already
encountered, as well as an insight into the nature of reality so deep that it
transforms our way of seeing ourselves and others, and what we would call
practical wisdom. In short, bodhicitta entails a commitment to attain and to
manifest full awakening for the benefit of others. A bodhisattva is one who has
cultivated bodhicitta in at least one of two senses adumbrated by Śāntideva, and
distinguished below.
Śāntideva’s account of morality has been read in the West as a distinctively
Buddhist theory of moral virtue, that is, as structurally Aristotelian, even if very
different in content from Aristotle’s account of virtue and the good life (Keown
2005, 2007). It has also been read as consequentialist (Goodman 2008, Siderits
2007). Each of these readings, I fear, is a symptom of the dangerous hermeneutic
temptation to force Buddhist ethics into a Western mold against which I warn at
the opening of this chapter, and while each reading reflects something of the
content of Śāntideva’s approach, each misses the heart of the matter. How to
Lead an Awakened Life addresses the nature of bodhicitta and the means of
cultivating it. We can therefore better read it as a treatise on the distinction
between the phenomenologies of benighted and of awakened moral
consciousness.
It is true, as proponents of the areteic reading note, that Śāntideva focuses in
How to Lead an Awakened Life on the cultivation of traits of character, and it is
true that he contrasts moral virtues such as patience and care with moral vices
such as a irascibility and selfishness, and recommends virtue over vice, focusing
on states of the agent as opposed to actions or obligations. On the other hand, for
Śāntideva the point of all of this is not to lead a happy life, or even to be a good
person: Bodhicitta does not take the moral agent as its object. The point is to
benefit others, as well as oneself. Perfection itself, in other words is, for
Śāntideva, neither an end in itself, nor final, nor self-sufficient. This is no virtue
theory, and awakening, while analytically related to the perfections, is not a kind
of eudaimonia analytically related to virtues.
It is also true that Śāntideva urges us to care for the happiness of others, and to
reduce their suffering. And it is even true that we can find verses in the text that
enjoin us to compare how little our own happiness or suffering is in comparison
to that of all sentient beings in order to motivate us to sacrifice our own interests
for that of others. Here is an example many (e.g., both Goodman 2008 and
Siderits 2006) cite in support of a consequentialist reading:
III: 10 Without any hesitation, I relinquish
My body, my pleasures,
And all virtues achieved throughout all time
In order to benefit all sentient beings.12
But to take such verses to be the expression of a kind of consequentialism would
be to take them seriously out of context, and to miss the heart of Śāntideva’s
account. This verse in particular, as we will see below, occurs in the context of a
resolution to abandon selfishness, and to broaden one’s moral gaze to universal
scope, to cultivate a way of seeing oneself in the context of a much broader
whole in which one’s own interests are a rather small affair. Śāntideva does not
argue that bodhicitta or the perfections cultivated by the bodhisattva are valuable
because of the consequences they entail; and there is never a suggestion that the
suffering of one can be balanced against the happiness of another. Whereas for a
consequentialist, balances of benefits and harms are the ground of the value of
actions or attitudes, but not necessarily their objects, for Śāntideva, the good of
others is an object of bodhicitta, but not the ground of its value. Its value is
grounded instead in the fact that it is the only rational way of taking up with the
world.
It is the burden of the text to defend this thesis. For Śāntideva, it is egoism,
not care, that requires defense, because egoism presupposes the uniqueness of a
particular practical standpoint, viz., my own. And for Śāntideva, everything I
think I can best achieve by egoism is not only thereby unattainable, but is better
sought through an attitude of mutuality and care. And comparison, or tradeoff of
suffering and benefit, is never on the table.13 Buddhist ethics, we have seen, is
not a method for resolving moral dilemmas or for choosing action, but rather an
approach to our comportment toward the world. Śāntideva takes this project one
step further.

7.2 Fear and Refuge: Suffering, Aspiration and Awakening as Moral

Development
The role that fear plays in Śāntideva’s account of the phenomenology of moral
life is striking, and the diagnosis of this fear is subtle. It is one of the most
original contributions he makes to Buddhist moral psychology. The centrality of
fear in our lives to which he directs our attention connects deeply with the
centrality of the practice of taking refuge in Buddhist life, and one can read this
text profitably as an extended meditation on refuge.14 The very need for refuge
itself suggests an overarching experience of fear—perhaps a fear whose
dimensions and objects are to a large extent opaque to the sufferer.
The ultimate source and object of this fear is depicted graphically in the
Indian and Tibetan representation of the wheel of life (bhāvacakra/srid ‘khor
[sikhor]), in which all of existence takes place in the jaws of death. The
iconography suggests that our cognitive and emotional lives, the constant
cycling between states of mind and the experience of being buffeted about by
events—whether external or internal—that are beyond our control, gives rise to
so much suffering and is driven in large part by the unconscious awareness and
fear of the inevitability of death.
That fear engages us psychologically at the hub. Although the awareness of
our own impermanence and that of all about which we care constitutes the
horizon of our experience, we suppress that fear in confusion, living our lives as
though these impermanent phenomena are permanent. This is why Tsongkhapa
(2006, 34–35) remarks that confusion, in this sense (avidya/ma rig pa
[marikpa]) is not simply the absence of knowledge, but the direct opposite of
knowledge—a psychologically efficacious and destructive denial of the truth.15
In this case, as Śāntideva is aware, it is a denial of what we at a deeper level
know to be true, of a troubling knowledge.
This confusion (born, as we have seen, of fear) generates attraction and
aversion. Our attachment to ourselves, to our own well-being, to our
possessions, to our conventions and practices, and in general to all that in the end
is a source of suffering, Śāntideva urges, is at bottom a reflexive defensive
reaction to the fear of loss. Our aversion to that which we find distasteful is at
bottom a reaction to the fact that it reminds us of our own impermanence and
vulnerability. Our conviction that we are independent agents interacting with
other independent agents—a feature of our moral experience that runs both so
very deep and so contrary to all that we know upon reflection—he urges, is a
way of warding off the fear of interdependence, of being out of control, of being
subject to the natural laws that issue in our aging, infirmity, reliance on others
and eventual demise. And around the hub cycle our emotions, desires, actions
and experiences.
II: 38 Thus, since I have not realized
That I am ephemeral,
Through confusion, attachment and aversion,
I have committed many kinds of vicious deeds.
II: 42 O Protectors, through being inattentive
And heedless of this danger,
For the sake of this impermanent life
I have achieved much that is vicious.
But fear and awareness of fear are two very different things. Though we all live
in fear, we are not, Śāntideva thinks, all aware of that background of fear, or of
its impact on our lives. Moral sensibility properly so-called, according to the
account of How to Lead an Awakened Life, arises when one becomes truly aware
of the terror that frames one’s life and that lies at the root of self-deception and
vice. That awareness generates the impulse to take refuge and to strive for
awakening, and as a consequence, the cultivation of aspirational bodhicitta.
II: 47 From this very moment I go for refuge to
The victors, protectors of all beings,
Who strive for the purpose of protecting all,
And who have great power to completely eliminate all fear.
II: 48 Likewise, I honestly go for refuge to
The Dharma in which they are completely engaged,
Which completely eliminates the fear of cyclic existence,
As well as to the assembly of bodhisattvas.
II: 49 Overwhelmed by fear,
I offer myself to Samantabhadra,
And of my own accord,
I offer this, my body to Mañjugoṣa.
II: 50 In despair, I cry out for help to
The protector, Avalokiteśvara,16
Who acts compassionately and inerrantly,
 Begging him to protect my vicious self.
II: 53 Now, because of what you said before,
Having experienced great terror,
I approach you with refuge so that you
Might quickly dispel my fear.
Moral development is hence, once again, revealed to be a transformation of
moral experience; this time a transition from a life conditioned by terror and
unreason—albeit perhaps unconscious terror and unrecognized unreason—to a
life conditioned by confidence and clarity; from a life constituted by
phenomenological self-deception to a life constituted by introspective
awareness; from a life in which vice is inevitable and taken to be unproblematic
just because it is not recognized, or recognized as vice, to a life in which the
cultivation of virtue is at the centre of one’s consciousness.

7.3 The Importance of Mindfulness

Chapter V, on maintaining awareness, connects these insights to the importance
of mindfulness we discussed earlier. Mindfulness, which I take to be the union of
smṛti/dran pa (denpa) and samprajñana/shes bzhin (sheshin), is taken up as the
very foundation of all of moral practice and development. The first of these
terms is often translated as memory or attention. It has the sense of calling to
mind. The second is often translated as maintaining attention or restraining the
mind. Each is often translated, depending on context, as mindfulness. I use the
English term “mindfulness” to translate their union as it is characterized in How
to Lead an Awakened Life and its commentaries, intending the calling to mind
and retaining in mind.
Mindfulness in this sense is regarded by scholars and practitioners of many
Buddhist traditions (in particular in the Pāli and Mahāyāna traditions of India
and in Tibet) as essential not only for the development of insight, but also for the
cultivation and maintenance of ethical discipline.17 In the Pāli canon,
particularly in the Great Discourse on Mindfulness (Mahāsatipaṭṭāna- sutta), but
elsewhere as well, we encounter admonitions to train in mindfulness as the
foundation of all Buddhist practice. Why is mindfulness so important? Śāntideva
puts the point in the following memorable way at the beginning of chapter V of
How to Lead an Awakened Life:
V:1 One who wishes to protect his practice
Should be careful to protect his mind.
 If one does not protect one’s mind
It is impossible to protect one’s practice.
V: 2 The elephant of the mind
Causes much harm and degradation.
Wild, mad elephants
Do not cause so much harm.
V: 3 Nonetheless, if the elephant of the mind
Is restrained by the rope of mindfulness,
Then all fear is banished,
And every virtue falls into our hands.
Śāntideva here argues that the cultivation of a moment-to-moment awareness of
one’s own cognitive and emotional states is central to leading an awakened life.
It is possible to remain utterly inattentive to one’s own moral life, failing to
notice situations that call for moral response, failing even to recognize one’s own
moral attitudes, dispositions and motivations, even if one is obsessed with the
idea of morality. From this perspective, we can think of the three fundamental
dysfunctional psychological states of confusion, attraction and aversion in the
first instance as distracters, leading us away from the attention that is necessary
if we are to live effectively, insightfully and compassionately; awakening
consists in part in replacing that inattention with mindfulness.
These opening verses emphasize the fact that mindfulness is necessary in
order to combat the natural tendency to mindless action driven not by care and
insight, but rather by blind passion and confusion. Without attention to our
motivation as well as to the situations in the context of which we act, moral
conduct is impossible. Later in the same chapter, Śāntideva emphasizes, using
the metaphors of Buddhist hell imagery, a second moral dimension of
mindfulness, that is, that mindfulness is necessary not only in order for us
directly to alleviate the suffering of others, but also in order to extirpate the deep
existential suffering in ourselves that leads us to moral failing in virtue of our
inability to see beyond our own misery. He emphasizes here that this suffering is
entirely endogenous, and that moral development is entirely mental cultivation:
V: 7 Who so purposefully forged
The implements of sentient beings’ hell?
Who constructed the floor of burning iron?
And whence have those women come?18
 V: 8 The Sage has explained that
The vicious mind gives rise to all of these.
So, there is nothing whatever in the triple world19
More terrifying than the mind.
Because our own mental activity is the root of primal confusion, it is the root of
vicious attraction and aversion, of all vice and so of all suffering. Because our
own mental activity is the only possible root of insight and understanding, it is
the only possible root of care, of virtue and so of liberation. Left to its own
devices, it is the mad elephant and the architect of hell. But mindfulness can
tame it, and it can become the supple, disciplined instrument of our own and
others’ happiness. Mindfulness, from this perspective, is therefore important
because without it no other virtue can be manifest; and because with it, all other
virtue emerges.
Maintaining the focus on the relationship between the dissipation of fear and
moral development, Śāntideva argues that the cultivation of a moment-to-
moment awareness of one’s own cognitive and emotional states is central to
leading an awakened life. The morally benighted are characterized by an
inattention to their own mental lives; awakening consists in part in replacing that
inattention with mindfulness. It is in this context that Śāntideva emphasizes the
centrality of self-cultivation to moral development in these verses.
Perhaps the most widely studied and most beautiful chapter in How to Lead
an Awakened Life is that on patience. In this chapter Śāntideva emphasizes the
pervasiveness of anger and aversion in the morally immature state, and the
enormous—though often unconscious—suffering they bring in train, feeding on
a cycle linking anger to fear and aggression.20 The predominance of these
emotions prior to the cultivation of bodhicitta contrasts with the patience that
characterizes awakened moral experience.
The final two chapters of How to Lead an Awakened Life address the more
directly cognitive aspects of the awakened moral life, those concerned with
establishing how to see reality properly. Meditation is central to Śāntideva’s
account, for it is through meditation that one embeds discursive knowledge into
one’s character. In the following three verses he focuses on various aspects of
attachment, its consequences and how to relinquish it. The first of these
considers the impact of the understanding of impermanence on the release from
attachment to others, and the development of equanimity.
The second addresses attachment to self, and once again, its connection to
fear; the third emphasizes more graphically the role of meditation in
reconstructing not our behavior or sense of duty, but our way of seeing the
world. In each case, Śāntideva presents the topics as objects of meditation,
emphasizing that the task of this philosophical project is not simply to develop
cognitive insight, but to embed that insight so deeply into our psychology that it
transforms our way of taking up with the world.
VIII: 5 What impermanent being
Attaches himself to what impermanent being?
For sadly, he will not see her
For thousands of lifetimes.
VIII: 17 If one thinks such thoughts as
“I am very rich and respected,
And many people like me,”
When death approaches, fear will arise.
VIII: 52 If you do not lust for the impure,
Why do you repeatedly embrace another
Who is only flesh-smeared bones
Bound together with sinew?
Finally, in the chapter on wisdom, Śāntideva emphasizes both the importance of
a deep understanding of metaphysics for moral life, and, more specifically, the
fact that the relevant metaphysical view is the Madhyamaka view according to
which all phenomena are empty of essence, interdependent, and have only
conventional identities. It is important to note here not just that Śāntideva
recommends this metaphysical position as the foundation of awakened life and
morality, but also, especially in the context of the preceding chapter, that it is a
foundation for such a life precisely because once internalized, this view (and for
Śāntideva only this view) transforms one’s very experience both of the external
world and of oneself, generating a metaphysical vision that enables a moral
engagement, thus enabling engaged bodhicitta.21
IX: 1 The Sage taught all of these matters
For the sake of wisdom.
Therefore, if one wishes to avoid suffering,
And to attain peace, one should cultivate wisdom.
IX: 48 Without an understanding of emptiness
A mental state that has ceased will arise once again,
Just as when one engages in non-conceptual meditation.
 Therefore, one should meditate on emptiness.
IX: 77 Pride, which is the cause of suffering,
Increases due to delusion regarding the self.
Since from one, the other necessarily follows,
Meditation on selflessness is supreme.
The excursion into abstract metaphysics and epistemology is so important to
Śāntideva, and its location at the conclusion of the treatise, and not, as one might
think, given the foundational role of insight in Buddhist theory, at the beginning,
is significant. It is a central theme of How to Lead an Awakened Life, as it is a
central theme of the Buddhist diagnosis of the existential problem of suffering
generally, that suffering and the egocentric tendencies it generates and which in
turn perpetuate it, are grounded in a fundamental confusion about the nature of
reality—taking what is in fact interdependent, impermanent and essenceless, on
both the subjective and objective side to be independent, enduring and
substantial.
This attitude, Śāntideva urges, is not the result of careful metaphysical
reflection, but an innate cognitive instinct. A truly awakened life requires its
extirpation. This extirpation requires philosophical reflection, but such reflection
is not sufficient, given the depth of the cognitive set.22 Even receptivity to that
argument requires the cultivation of a moral sensibility that loosens the
attachment and aversion implicated with the metaphysical error. But meditative
practice is also necessary, in order that reflective thought can become a
spontaneous cognitive set, a way of being in the world, rather than a way of
thinking about the world, in which we experience ourselves and all around us as
we are, interdependent, impermanent, insubstantial.23
This transformation of vision, and consequent transformation of mode of
being, even though it is cast in How to Lead an Awakened Life as a direct
understanding of ultimate reality, and an understanding of the relation between
this ultimate reality and conventional reality, amounts not to seeing behind a
world of illusion, but rather to coming to see a world, about which we are
naturally deceived, just as it is, not being taken in by the cognitive habits that
issue in that deception. For this reason, just as the historical Buddha emphasized
that one’s view of the nature of reality is a moral matter in the presentation of the
eightfold path at Sarnath, Śāntideva, in his analysis of an awakened life, urges
that our metaphysics and epistemology are central to our moral lives. It is
because it is this vision that finally transforms aspirational to engaged bodhicitta
that this chapter comes at the end, not at the beginning of the text.
 This whirlwind tour through How to Lead an Awakened Life of course cannot
do justice to the richness of Śāntideva’s insight and moral thought. On the other
hand, I hope that it gives the reader a glimpse of the development of the
fundamental Buddhist orientation to ethics through moral phenomenology, and
of the rich possibilities of this orientation. When Śāntideva asks about moral life,
he asks not what our duties are, nor what actions are recommended, nor what the
relation is between the good and our actions, nor even what would make us
individually happy. Instead, he starts with a problem that is to be solved—that of
the ubiquity of suffering—and the standard Buddhist diagnosis of that problem
in terms of attachment and aversion rooted in fundamental ontological
confusion. He then asks how to solve that problem.
Like his predecessors in the Theravāda tradition, Śāntideva develops a deeper
diagnosis of the problem through an analysis of our own experience of ourselves
and of our place in the world. And so, like them, he seeks the solution to this
problem not—at least not directly—in a transformation of the world, or even of
our conduct, but rather in a transformation of that experience. The task of
leading an awakened life—a morally desirable life—is the task of transforming
our phenomenology. Śāntideva extends this tradition of reflection by pushing
deeper into the phenomenology of fear as a driving force in ordinary life, and by
articulating a further set of morally relevant character traits. He also locates care,
and the distinctive attitude of bodhicitta, at the center of this moral discourse.
I hope that it is clear by now that we cannot force this account into a familiar
Western form, or even just to graft it on to one, as the phenomenological adjunct
to consequentialism or Aristotelian aretaism. The value of this engagement with
Buddhist ethics is that it allows us to open ourselves to the possibility of a very
different way of understanding ethical aspiration and engagement—in this case,
the path of the bodhisattva.

8. Care and Rationality

I alluded above to the Buddhist rejection of the presumption so common in
Western ethical theory that egoism is a rational starting point for ethical
reflection, and that the burden of proof is on the moralist to demonstrate the
rationality of moral demands as motivations for action. Now that we have a
general sketch of the Buddhist understanding of the ethical landscape, and of the
Mahāyāna understanding in particular, we can return to this issue and we will see
that Śāntideva offers an argument that shifts that burden of proof. We will begin
with an important passage in chapter VIII of How to Lead an Awakened Life.
VIII: 90 “Self and others are the same,”
One should earnestly meditate:
“Since they experience the same happiness and suffering,
I should protect everyone as I do myself.”
Here Śāntideva introduces the conclusion: there is no moral or motivational
difference between moral subjects. He then offers several arguments or analogies
to make this point: First, the ontology that takes individual organisms as the
relevant unit of analysis for the purpose of moral assessment of motivation is
arbitrary:
VIII: 91 Divided into many parts, such as the hands,
The body is nonetheless to be protected as a single whole.
Just so, different beings, with all their happiness and suffering,
Are like a single person with a desire for happiness.
Second, it is not the locus but the fact of suffering that makes it bad. So worrying
about whether it is mine or someone else’s is simply beside the point:
VIII: 92 Even if my own suffering
Does no harm to anyone else’s body,
It is still my own suffering.
Since I am so attached to myself it is unbearable.
VIII: 93 Just so, even though I do not experience
The sufferings of others,
It is still their own suffering.
Since they are so attached to themselves, it is hard for them to bear.
VIII: 94 I must eliminate the suffering of others
Just because it is suffering, like my own.
I should work to benefit others
Just because they are sentient beings, as am I.
Third, to single myself out as uniquely deserving of moral concern, or as a
unique source of motivation for action is arbitrary:24
VIII: 95 Since I am just like others
In desiring happiness,
What is so special about me
That I strive for my happiness alone?
VIII: 96 Since I am just like others
In not desiring suffering,
What is so special about me
That I protect myself, but not others?
VIII: 97 If, because their suffering does not harm me,
I do not protect them,
When future suffering does not harm me,
Why do I protect against it?
Fourth, the facts of personal identity militate against egoism. There is no strict
identity relation between successive stages of the continuum I regard as denoted
by ‘I.’ So, the fact that I take my future self seriously in practical reasoning
already suggests that I take the welfare or suffering of those not numerically
identical to myself seriously in these ways. It is therefore irrational to distinguish
motivationally between temporally distinct states of my own personal continuum
and states of others’ continua.
VIII: 98 The idea that this very self
Will experience that suffering is false:
Just as when one has died, another
Who is then born is really another.
VIII: 99 If another should protect himself
Against his own suffering,
When a pain in the foot is not in the hand,
Why should one protect the other?
VIII: 100 One might say that even though it makes no sense,
One acts this way because of self-grasping.
That which makes no sense with regard to self or to others
Is precisely the object you should strive to abandon!
Finally, and perhaps most germane to the present topic, neither the self nor
others, nor the relations of identity or difference among persons, nor even the
suffering to be eliminated, exist ultimately. All are conventional. But that
conventional status is not a reason not to take suffering seriously. It is, on the
other hand, a reason to take all suffering seriously. Conventional reality, as we
saw in chapter 4 above, is not, from a Madhyamaka point of view, unreality. It
is, instead, the only way that things can be real. But once we see that, we see that
all suffering has precisely this kind of reality, and hence precisely the same claim
on us. Care is therefore the only appropriate reaction to the actual mode of
existence both of sentient beings and their mode of being in the world. It is the
only rational mode of mitsein and hence of dasein.
To fail to take another’s suffering seriously as a motivation for action is hence,
Śāntideva argues, itself a form of suffering—a kind of mental illness that
manifests in irrationality. This irrationality, I think, goes beyond mere
“enlightened self interest.” The point is not that I myself would be happier or
have more pleasure if other sentient beings were happy, and that this responsive
pleasure or happiness should be the motive for action. The irrationality at issue is
not the irrationality of acting against my own hedonic self-interest. Instead,
Śāntideva thinks, (again, anticipating Sidgwick) it is the irrationality of failing to
be able to give a reason for any distinction between the treatment of similar
cases. Once I grasp the fact that suffering is bad, that is by itself a reason for its
alleviation. It is therefore simply irrelevant whose suffering it is.25
Care, grounded in the awareness of our individually ephemeral joint
participation in global life, Śāntideva argues, is hence the wellspring of the
motivation for the development of all perfections, and the most reliable
motivation for morally decent actions. This is why of all of the brahmavihāras,
or divine states, it is located so centrally in the Mahāyāna framework. Care is
also, on the Mahāyāna view, the direct result of a genuine appreciation of the
essencelessness and interdependence of all sentient beings.26 And this is so
simply because egoism—its contrary—is rational if, and only if, there is
something very special, very independent about the self, something that could
justify the distinction between my suffering or well-being and that of others as a
motive for action.
Care hence emerges not as a positive phenomenon, but as the absence of the
irrational egoism born of taking the self to exist ultimately, and to be an object of
special concern, just as emptiness is not a positive phenomenon, but the absence
of intrinsic nature. The parallel of this account to that of Schopenhauer in On the
Basis of Morality—perhaps the most unjustly neglected moral treatise in the
Western tradition—is intriguing.
As I noted above, this transformation of vision, and consequent transformation
of mode of being, even though it both conduces to and issues from a direct
understanding of ultimate reality, and an understanding of the relation between
this ultimate reality and conventional reality, amounts not to seeing a distinct
truly existent reality behind a world of illusion, but rather to coming to see a
world about which we are naturally deceived just as it is, not being taken in by
the cognitive habits that issue in that deception. For this reason, just as the
historical Buddha emphasized that one’s view of the nature of reality is a moral
matter, Śāntideva, in his analysis of an awakened life, urges that our metaphysics
and epistemology is central to our moral lives. And it is partly for this reason
that ethics is so deeply implicated in conventional reality. There is no other
reality in which it can be grounded, and all that good metaphysics can ever
deliver in the end is a precise understanding of the nature of conventional reality.
I have been emphasizing throughout this chapter the roots of Buddhist ethics
in Buddhist metaphysics and phenomenology. This view of the conventional but
nonetheless fundamentally important status of ethics is no exception. It has its
roots in the earliest Mahāyāna literature. Nāgārjuna makes the same point in a
metaphysical register in Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way XXIV:
8. The Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma
Is based on two truths:
A truth of mundane convention
And an ultimate truth.
9. Those who do not understand
The distinction between these two truths
Do not understand
The Buddha’s profound teaching.
10. Without depending on the conventional truth
The meaning of the ultimate cannot be taught
Without understanding the meaning of the ultimate,
Nirvana is not achieved.
Nāgārjuna here warns against the disparagement of the conventional in favor of
the ultimate in the metaphysical domain and reminds us that the understanding
of ultimate truth does not replace, but rather depends upon our grasp of
conventional truth. He is, of course, on the way to an account a few verses later
of the nonduality of the two truths. But at this point, he is emphasizing not their
unity, but their difference. The conventional is the domain of conceptual thought,
of objectification, of language and of intention. The ultimate transcends all of
that. But one cannot achieve transcendence (especially that transcendence that
amounts to a return to immanence) without a firm grasp of the immanent world
to be transcended (and re-affirmed).
Śāntideva makes the same point in the ethical register. We might be tempted
to disparage ordinary ethical life, or the ordinary motivations for ethical life—a
better life for ourselves and those around us, less suffering, a clearer
understanding of reality, the possibility of advancement of our most fundamental
projects and values—because all of that is ultimately empty, and because the
only real values are unconditional ultimate values. But that impulse to
disparagement must be resisted for two reasons. First, we are on our way to a
nondual understanding of the relation between the ultimate and the mundane,
and so to disparage the latter is to disparage the former. But more importantly,
the state of transcendence that one might think can validate all values can only
be achieved through conventional engagement in conventional actions, directed
by conceptually involved, hence conventional intention. This is the domain of
the path, and this is the domain of ethics. If we disparage this, we have no ethical
world left. In the end, a conventional account of ethics, and a conventional
ground of ethical motivation, must be accepted, simply because that is the only
ethical domain that makes any sense.
This does not, however, amount to an abandonment of a commitment to
serious ethical principles, of a distinction between right and wrong, or a descent
into trivial relativism. Just as conventional truth requires and enables a
distinction between truth and falsity, it enables a distinction between paths that
lead to liberation and those that do not, and a distinction between actions,
attitudes and states of character that are consistent with a correct understanding
of the world and those that are not. The eightfold noble path is ennobling
because of the kinds of beings we are and because of the way the world is, not
optionally, not ultimately, but conventionally.
The bodhisattva path is the means to cultivate a liberative way of being in the
world because of the kinds of beings we are, and because of the nature of reality.
Ethical engagement then requires us to take our ultimate nature and the ultimate
nature of reality seriously. But to take our emptiness and the emptiness of all
around us seriously is to take our conventional reality and the conventional
reality of the world seriously. To take the conventional world seriously is to take
seriously the distinction between conventional truth and conventional falsehood
and to do so in all domains, including the ethical. To take the conventional world
seriously is therefore to take ethical considerations to be conventional, and hence
to be as serious as any concerns could ever be.
Let us return now to the question of the relation between Buddhist moral
theory and the great Western systems with which we began. We started this
chapter by considering a generalization of the Euthyphro problem. That is a
question in the end about the priority in explanation of moral phenomena that
may well be biconditionally connected. That is, it might be, for instance, that an
action is recommended by consequentialism if, and only if, it is one that a
virtuous person would perform, or that an action is deontologically obligatory if,
and only if, it maximizes utility. We might still wonder, though: Is it the
consequences that explain why the action is virtuous, or the fact that it is
virtuous that explains why it has such wonderful consequences? Is an action
obligatory because it maximizes utility? Or does it manage to maximize utility
because it is obligatory? We have now added a new dimension to this problem,
and the Buddhist analysis suggests a bold answer to this generalized Euthyphro
problem. For another way of understanding the good is that it is the mode of
engagement that emerges from an awakened experience of the world, and a
mode of engagement that reflects that awakened awareness.
The Buddhist answer to the problem of explanatory priority is this: the states
of character, the actions and the principles we find morally praiseworthy are
those of the person whose experience of the world is awakened. That experience,
or comportment toward the world, is valuable, on this view, for a
straightforwardly epistemological reason: It gets things right, reflecting an
awareness of selflessness, impermanence and interdependence, and an
attunement to suffering, its causes and the ways of alleviating it. In turn, the
virtues we value are the states of character manifested by one who engages with
reality in this way; the actions we value are those motivated by those virtues.
Those virtues are praiseworthy, but not because of the life they reflect, but
because of the experience in which they are grounded; those actions indeed
conduce to the reduction of suffering and the increase of happiness, but their
value derives from the experience they evidence. Morality, on this view, is a
matter of how we see the world, each other and ourselves; moral cultivation is
the cultivation of an appropriate engagement with reality.
I have been emphasizing thus far the ways in which a Buddhist voice in
contemporary ethics discourse would be distinctive, in particular in offering a
different way of approaching ethics, through a moral phenomenology. Our
current discourse can be enriched by expanding the kinds of questions we ask
about morality, and by envisioning different goals for moral practice and
paedaia. In particular, we can focus more on moral perception and the
development of the relevant skills and sensitivities that enable moral engagement
that enframe moral discourse and decision-making. This can lead both to greater
effectiveness where immediate spontaneous response is demanded, as well as to
more sensitive engagement in complex moral discourse regarding dilemmas and
policy. But it is also important to be cognizant of the affinities between Buddhist
moral theory and Western moral theory, for these allow us to see where there is
common ground, basis for an easier entrée into this different approach. In this
vein, I would point to the work of David Hume and other British sentimentalists.
 Hume emphasizes in Books II and III of the Treatise the degree to which our
passions determine how we see ourselves and others, and the degree to which
moral education—that of our children by their parents, and of all of us by our
collective social and discursive practices—consists in training our passions so
that we come to see ourselves and others differently, in ways that facilitate such
virtues as justice and benevolence, to which Buddhist theorists might refer as
śīla (proper conduct) and karuṇā (care). For Hume to enter into a moral
community is to extend the kind of concern nature determines we extend to
ourselves and those near us to others more distant, and he emphasizes that to
undertake this discipline, to develop this second nature, is a rational thing to do.
It makes our lives individual lives better by making our collective lives better.
In arguing that reason is a “slave of the passions” (415), Hume emphasizes
that the attempt to reduce morality to a set of principles to which one can be
compelled to assent, or even to encapsulate its contents in such a form, is futile,
in part because the domain is so irregular, but also because the transformative
power we desire from morality requires a deeper form of transformation than
reason can deliver. But in arguing that it is rational to engage in that deeper
transformation, Hume locates morality as a good we can defend, and that we can
understand. The Buddhist perspective I have been offering is not so far from this,
although the moral psychology that underlies it is one Hume might not
recognize.
This is not to say that Buddhist ethics is Humean ethics. It is rather to say that,
to the extent that we find Hume a useful partner in contemporary ethical
discussions, as, for instance Annette Baier (1985, 1995, 2008, 2009, 2010a,
2010b, 2011) has urged he is, we can find Buddhist moral theorists to be partners
as well. Their approach is not so different from his to be utterly alien, but
different enough to provide something new.

1. There is hence reason to think of Buddhist ethical thought as particularist in certain respects.
2. This is not, of course, to say that none of these views were held by important Buddhist scholars or that
they were not prevalent in Buddhist cultures.
3. The trope of “self and other” as in “for the benefit of self and others” is common in Buddhist literature.
But this expression does not inscribe but undermines the distinction in question. The point is not that self
and other are to be treated differently, but that they are to be treated in the same way.
4. Once again, this is not to say that nobody in any Buddhist culture has thought this way, and indeed a
good deal of folk morality in Buddhist societies proceeds in just such a manner.
5. The idea that moral evaluation is so multidimensional is not, of course, unique to Buddhism. See Feltz
and Cokely (2013) for evidence that it is in fact part and parcel of our intuitive moral framework.
6. Jenkins (personal communication) notes that this etymology may be spurious. But it is widely cited in
Buddhist literature, and even if it is spurious, canonical Buddhist glosses of karuṇā emphasize this active
dimension of its meaning.
7. For more detailed discussion of the brahmavihāras and the relation of moral and perceptual cultivation
see Buddhaghosa 2003, Heim 2013 and Saddhatissa 1999.
8. It is useful to contrast the role of narrative in, for instance, Platonic dialogues with that in Buddhist moral
literature. Platonic dialogues indeed have narrative structure, but that is more dramatic or dialectical
framing than part of the philosophical story. Any of the dialogues could be written in essay form without
any loss of content. In much Buddhist ethical literature, by contrast, the narrative plays a crucial
hermeneutical role, as the story is essential to making sense of the behavior, comportment and
transformation of the protagonist. (See Haugeland 1979 and Hutto 2007 for more on narrative and
understanding.)
9. It is important to remember that not all narratives are equally good. Some makes good sense of our lives,
or those of others; some are incoherent; some are facile and self-serving; some are profound and revealing.
It is possible for people to disagree about whether a particular event is an action or not, or about the
attribution of responsibility. It is possible for us to wonder about whether we should feel remorse for a
particular situation or not. These questions are in the end, on this account, questions about which narratives
make the most sense. While these questions may not always be easy (or even possible) to settle, the fact that
they arise saves this view from the facile relativism that would issue from the observation that we can
always tell some story on which this is an action of mine, and some story on which it is not, and so that
there is simply no fact of the matter, and perhaps no importance to the question.
10. It is important to note that the scope of ethical concern in all Buddhist moral discussions is universal—
comprising not only human beings, but all sentient beings. While I do not focus on this fact in the present
discussion, it must be taken as understood throughout.
11. We must tread with care, here however. As Susanne Mrozik has pointed out to me, Stephen Jenkins
argues (1998) that “altruism” may be a bit strong, since, as we shall see below, bodhicitta and the
motivations and skills connected to it are beneficial to the bodhisattva as well as to others. It is, as Śāntideva
will emphasize, always in the end in one’s own interest to cultivate bodhicitta.
12. All translations are my own, from the sDe dge edition of the Tibetan text, as reprinted in rGyal tshab
(1999). As Wallace and Wallace note in Śāntideva (1997), the Tibetan version of the text differs in many—
usually minor—ways from the available Sanskrit edition of the text. It appears that even early on there were
at least two versions of the text, and there is no way of determining whether the Sanskrit edition from which
the Tibetan and Indian translators worked was in some respect preferable to that which survives today or
not. But it is worth noting that because of the importance this text attained in Tibet, most of the significant
commentarial literature refers to the Tibetan version. The notable exception is Prajñākaramati’s
Bodhicaryāvatāra-pañjikā, which follows the available Sanskrit.
13. Moreover, as Jenkins points out (1998), in the end there never is a tradeoff—most accounts of virtuous
action end up with the claim that everyone benefits, even those who apparently suffer temporary adversity,
although perhaps one must take the long view to see those benefits.
14. Taking refuge is an essential—perhaps the essential—Buddhist religious practice. In fact, the definition
of a Buddhist, in the religious sense, is one who has taken refuge in what are known as the “three jewels,”
the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha (and often, in Tibetan traditions, a fourth jewel—the lama). The idea is
that the beginning of Buddhist practice is in the recognition of the first two of the four noble truths—that
human existence is fundamentally unsastisfactory, permeated by dukkha, and that the causes of that
situation lie in deep psychological dysfunction, coupled with the confidence that the only solution to this
predicament is that offered in the third and fourth truths and the acceptance of the fact that that requires a
Buddhist practice.
The Buddha as refuge object is twofold: first, the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama is taken as a
refuge object, in the following sense: the fact that he realized full awakening constitutes a proof that it can
be done, just as a mountaineer attempting to scale Chomolungma (Everest) might take refuge in the fact that
Tenzing, Hillary and a few hundred others have done it in the past. This gives rise to the second sense of the
Buddha as refuge, viz., that one takes one’s own confidence in one’s own future awakening as a refuge. The
second refuge—Dharma—is Buddhist doctrine, taken as the only way to dispel the confusion, attraction and
aversion that together constitute the root of dukkha. And the third is the sangha, or spiritual community,
taken in some traditions to be the community of monks and nuns, in others to be the community of
practitioners more broadly, and in some to be the community of already awakened beings. The idea is that
the achievement of awakening is very difficult, and requires support.
15. This is nicely captured in the Sanskrit term ahaṃkāra—the construction of I, a term used frequently to
indicate the manufacture—as opposed to the mere experience—of the illusion of a self.
16. Samantabhadra, Mañjugoṣa and Avalokiteśvara are each celestial Bodhisattvas, or highly awakened
beings, if taken literally, in the Buddhist pantheon. Samantabhadra is associated with meditation,
Mañjughoṣa is a form of Māñjuśrī, and is the bodhisattva of wisdom, and Avalokiteśvara (familiar in China
as Guanyin and in Japan as Kanon) is the bodhisattva of care. So, together this trio represents meditative
insight, intellectual discernment and moral concern. While celestial bodhisattvas such as these are often
understood quite literally as beings, in much Buddhist meditative practice, and in particular in the tantric
meditations in which they figure most prominently, they are taken as iconic representations of aspects of
one’s own mind. So, to invoke Samantabhadra is to resolve to develop one’s meditative insight; to invoke
Māñjuśrī is to resolve to develop one’s understanding, and to invoke Avalokiteśvara is to resolve to
cultivate an attitude of universal care.
17. Indeed—and this is no news to Buddhist scholars or practitioners, though it is sometimes surprising to
non-Buddhist ethicists—the cultivation of ethical discipline is generally regarded in the Buddhist
philosophical tradition as a necessary condition of the cultivation of insight and wisdom.
18. To a reader coming to this text for the first time, this must be one of the stranger lines. The reference is
to a description of a Buddhist hell in which hideous, terrifying women lurk in trees threatening the poor
denizens. Śāntideva’s point is that these women, like the floors or burning iron in other such hell realms, are
not literally existent entities that torment people in some other realm, but are metaphors for the cognitive
states that we generate consequent upon vicious action. That is, we create our own hells.
19. Another standard Buddhist trope, referring to three kinds of universe: the desire realm (where we find
ourselves); the realm of material form (physical, but without desire); and the immaterial realm. This
religious cosmology is irrelevant to our present concerns.
20. The unwary Western reader might think that there is a confusion here between emotional immaturity
and ethical immaturity. This thought should be resisted, as it rests on a presumption that our emotional life
is independent of our moral life. It is central to Śāntideva’s—and indeed, any Buddhist—conception of the
domain of the moral that our emotions are morally significant and morally evaluable. Emotional immaturity
is one dimension of moral immaturity; emotional maturity one dimension of moral maturity. (See Dreyfus
2003.)
21. Of course this means that it is not as easy as it sounds to attain moral perfection. Perfect care requires
perfect wisdom. Nonetheless, this does not mean that it is impossible to cultivate any virtue: the cultivation
even of mundane care increases wisdom; the cultivation of even a basic understanding of emptiness
increases care.
22. A mere addition of insight to injury, as a psychoanalyst friend of mine used to say about some cognitive
therapies.
23. Once again, the fact that meditative practice may be necessary to achieve virtuoso ethical status does not
mean that meditation is the sine qua non of any moral progress.
24. There is a nice anticipation of Sidgwick and his attack on the rationality of egoism on the grounds that it
presupposes a strong metaphysics of personal identity and on the grounds that it privileges one’s own
pleasure and pain as moral considerations over those of others, overlooking the naturalness of care and
affection.
25. It might appear that this is a direct challenge to a Humean theory of motivation, according to which
desire and belief are jointly necessary to motivate action, as egocentric desire is explicitly rejected here as a
defensible motive. But that might be a bit too swift. For in Buddhist moral psychology we can distinguish
between desire, which is always egocentric, and aspiration, which is disinterested. The latter is just as
conative as desire, but represents a positive orientation to action simply because of the good that it does,
emerging from a morally appropriate engagement with the world. Now, a typical Humean might deny that
this is possible; that is a matter for debate in moral psychology. But if it is possible, then, if we take the core
of the Humean doctrine of motivation not to be that belief must join with desire per se to motivate action,
but simply with a non-doxastic conative state, the account might still be Humean.
26. Hence Candrakīrti’s homage to care in the opening verses of Introduction to the Middle Way:

Kindness itself is the seed of the abundant harvest of the conquerors,

The rain that nourishes it over time,
And the ripening agent that yields the bounty.
For this reason, I begin by praising care! (I:2)

Here Candrakīrti emphasizes the role of care as the motivation and the cause for the development of
wisdom and other moral qualities, as that which sustains moral development, and, in its perfected state, as
the consequence of the development of those qualities.
10 METHODOLOGICAL POSTSCRIPT
A late colleague of mine—a very prominent Anglophone philosopher, I might
add—once accosted me at a conference, arguing that my attention to Asian
philosophy is entirely a waste of time. He argued as follows: Either Asian
philosophy is just the same as Western philosophy or it is different. If it is the
same, we can learn all we need to learn philosophically from the West and not
trouble ourselves learning to read difficult languages and texts written in
unfamiliar styles and idioms. Why bother, if all of that effort leads us to what we
already have? On the other hand, if it really is all that different (as he suspected)
it isn’t really philosophy at all, but rather some form of religious discourse or an
oracular “wisdom tradition.” If that is the case, then while it makes all the sense
in the world for anthropologists or philologists or religious studies scholars to
read that material, there is no reason for a philosopher to do so. Philosophy is
what we do in our departments, in the Western tradition. That other stuff is, in
virtue of being different, not philosophy. In either case, no Western philosopher
should waste his (sic.) time reading Asian philosophy.
This book is an extended reply to that screed. I have been arguing that
contemporary philosophy cannot continue to be practiced in the West in
ignorance of the Buddhist tradition. It is too rich, too sophisticated to be
disparaged. Its concerns overlap with those of Western philosophy too broadly to
dismiss it as irrelevant. Its perspectives are sufficiently distinct that we cannot
see it as simply redundant. Close enough for conversation; distant enough for
that conversation to be one from which we might learn. In short, if you have
followed me this far, I hope that you agree that to continue to ignore Buddhist
philosophy (and by extension, Chinese philosophy, non-Buddhist Indian
philosophy, African philosophy, Native American philosophy…) is indefensible.
This is an argument for engagement. But it isn’t, except by a few examples, a
discussion of how to engage. It is with that topic that I now conclude.

1. The Hermeneutical Predicament

In the Mahāyāna version of the Sūtra on the Occasion of the Entry of the Buddha
into Final Nirvāṇa (Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra), the Buddha famously
enunciates the four reliances: “Rely on the teaching, not the teacher; rely on the
meaning, not the words; rely on the definitive, not that which requires further
interpretation; rely on direct insight, not conceptuality.” That would seem to
make Buddhist philosophy and interpretation easy: all we need to do in order to
engage successfully with the Buddhist philosophical tradition is to use our non-
conceptual insight to read definitive texts, attending precisely to what they mean.
But of course, that’s not so easy. And why it’s not so easy to implement the four
reliances indicates some of why it’s not so easy to say what we are in fact doing
when we engage philosophically with the Buddhist tradition.
When we pick up a text—any text, no matter where or when it is composed,
or what it is about—all we have are words. Meanings do not lie on the pages but
are at best indicated by what does lie thereon. Perhaps meaning lies ready for
archeological excavation in the mind of a long-dead author; perhaps it emerges
in the sustained engagement with the text by a scholastic commentarial tradition;
perhaps it emerges in our own contemporary interrogation of the text, informed
not only by that tradition, but by our own horizon of philosophical prejudices
and interpretative practices. The terrible thing, though, is this: whatever our
hermeneutic methodological prejudices, we must rely on the words to find the
meaning, even if that meaning eventually releases us from the thrall of the words
themselves.
And how do we choose the definitive from that which requires interpretation?
Traditional Buddhist commentators often provide us with doxographies that
purport to do the job; but of course there are rival doxographies, and choice
between them can only be based on interpretation. So even to know what is
definitive requires that we interpret. The admonition to choose the definitive is
thus the empty advice to buy low, sell high. And as for insight over conceptual
thought, so often valorized in canonical Buddhist hermeneutical thought: that
might work at the end of the path, but nowhere along the way. All we can do is
read, interpret and argue. So, the four reliances, rather than giving us guidance,
only indicate the depth of our predicament as readers and as philosophers.
Despite these formidable obstacles, the last few decades have seen an
explosion in interest in doing Buddhist philosophy. Dozens of articles in journals
such as Philosophy East and West, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Journal of the
International Association of Buddhist Studies, Asian Philosophy and Sophia
might be cited. But I also note monographs and anthologies such as Arnold
(2008, 2012), Cowherds (2011), D’Amato, Garfield and Tillemans (2009),
Goodman (2009), Patil (2009), Tillemans (1999), Siderits (2007), Westerhoff
(2009), Coseru (2012), Ganeri (2007, 2011, 2012), Ganeri and Carlisle (2010),
Carpenter (2014) to name but a few salient examples. By “doing Buddhist
philosophy,” I do not mean developing an account of the history of Buddhist
philosophy—the exegetical project of figuring out what Buddhist philosophers
said. Nor do I mean the mere assessment of the cogency of Buddhist
philosophical arguments. Instead, I mean the attempt to address serious
philosophical problems, of interest in their own right, some arising from the
Buddhist tradition itself, some from the West, in conversation with the Buddhist
tradition, taking it seriously as a source of puzzles and of insights, and taking its
horizon of concerns seriously as a backdrop for philosophical reflection. That is
what I hope to have demonstrated to be possible and valuable in the preceding
chapters.
To take those different horizons seriously is perhaps most important, for what
marks philosophical traditions one from another most clearly is not what texts
they comprise, or what theses they advance, but rather what concerns are salient;
what questions are important; what counts as a problem or a solution. It is only
in the last half century, with a minor explosion only in the last quarter century,
that Western philosophy has taken seriously a Buddhist horizon, in which the
problem of suffering frames philosophical reflection; in which interdependence
is a default metaphysical position; in which questions concerning the nature of
emptiness, the two truths and their relation to one another are central; and in
which questions concerning pramāṇa structure epistemology. This nascent
literature takes the problems arising within that horizon as genuine and
compelling philosophical problems, and takes the insights and critiques offered
by others who have worked within that tradition as a source for solutions or
refutations. This is what marks contemporary Buddhist philosophy. I reflect in
what follows on how that is possible and how it is to be done.
I began this chapter by indicating the familiar predicament of understanding, a
hermeneutical predicament that arises in any philosophical reflection and in any
historical engagement with any intellectual tradition. But there is a second
hermeneutical problem facing those of us who would think philosophically with
classical Buddhist texts, and who would do so by self-consciously reaching
across traditions. What exactly are we doing? If we are just doing philosophy,
relying, as it were, on the teaching, not the teacher, why are we worried about
what a bunch of old books say? We could simply address philosophical
questions on their own, taking the most recent issues of professional journals as
determining the state of play from which we depart. On the other hand, if we are
just doing the history of philosophy, then why do we care about truth, cogency or
contemporary issues? All that would seem to matter is what the texts themselves
say.
Note that this methodological puzzle has nothing specific to do with Buddhist
philosophy, per se. Instead, it is a general problem for that sub-discipline of
philosophy we call “the history of philosophy.” The question, “Why, and how,
do we read Plato or Aristotle?” is no different in principle from “Why, and how,
do we read Nāgārjuna?” Nonetheless, the answer to the more specific question,
“What are we doing when we engage philosophically with the Buddhist
tradition?” forces us to face the often-unacknowledged scholasticism of Western
philosophy, even as it is practiced today. While we often take ourselves to be
asking abstract questions that arise from pure, context-free reflection, this is
serious false consciousness.
Our philosophical questions emerge from our engagement with our tradition,
and are answered often by judicious revisiting of the insights proffered by our
predecessors. While this fact may escape us pre-reflectively, and while many
who identify themselves as “analytic philosophers” might deny it, it is painfully
obvious to some of us that the questions we pose and the range of answers we
take seriously emerge from a specific intellectual tradition. Sometimes in order
to see that the ideas and intuitions we take as bedrock are not transcendental
facts, it is necessary to follow Nietzsche in a genealogy of our thought, to
discover the historical roots of our thought, and thereby to see the singularity or
even arbitrariness of that we take to be necessary, or to see how our current
arguments recapitulate those of our intellectual forbears. This is why the
discipline of philosophy must contain its own history. Without it, we don’t even
know what we are doing, or why. Our engagement with Buddhist philosophy is
hence not novel in its attention to a tradition in the development of a
philosophical problematic, but only in its extension of our purview beyond
Europe and its diaspora.1
The extension of the history of philosophy across cultural boundaries,
however, does introduce problems of its own. Some are philological in character.
To take a textual tradition such as the Buddhist tradition seriously is to undertake
the serious task of figuring out what the texts are, how best to understand and to
translate key terms, and how to adjudicate difficult questions of authorship,
influence, and other such matters. These are non-trivial problems, and while they
certainly emerge even in classical Western scholarship, they emerge with
particular poignancy when we cross so many centuries and deal with so many
languages. Context becomes harder to establish; intertextual relations are harder
to discern; translation is simply more difficult. When we resolve to cross
traditions in this way, we undertake to treat these obstacles seriously, and as
opportunities for further philosophical insight.
As philosophers engaged in this enterprise, we owe our philologist colleagues
debts of gratitude and considerable deference. But beyond the thorny
hermeneutical problems to which we will shortly return, and the philological
problems we will set aside for present purposes, there are significant problems in
the choice of modes of textual engagement. For instance, we sometimes
encounter in the Buddhist traditions texts that urge us to transcend reason and
conceptual thought. Should we set reason and conceptuality aside as we read
them? If so, how? When we address texts whose authors grasp only a classical
Indian categorical logic, is it appropriate to avail ourselves of the tools of
modern mathematical logic? And when we address texts that take certain
possibilities or certainties for granted, such as the possibility of full awakening,
or the probative value of non-conceptual insight, can we take them for granted
when we read those texts, or can we make sense of those texts if we set these
ideas aside? We will return to these questions below, but let us begin with
another question of engagement: Buddhist hermeneutics is avowedly a
hermeneutic of authorial intent, even if authorship and intentionality are often
very differently understood in that tradition. Can we follow that interpretative
path in good faith?

2. Hermeneutics and Intent

If we turn to the Buddhist tradition for guidance, we find ourselves admonished
to interpret texts in order to determine authorial intent. If the text is
Buddhavacana (taken to be the speech of the historical Buddha), we are after the
intention of the Buddha. When Candrakīrti comments on Nāgārjuna or on
Āryadeva, he is clear that he takes himself to be illuminating the author’s intent.
And indeed there are many contemporary commentators who take themselves to
be doing much the same thing. Gombrich (2009) is a good example of a scholar
who takes himself to be revealing precisely what the Buddha thought. But many
of us have become suspicious of this undertaking, and however much we might
take ourselves to be the inheritors and propagators of a Buddhist commentarial
tradition (and for many of us, that is a very great extent), we part with that
tradition in its self-understanding.
This departure from a hermeneutic of authorial intent is motivated by several
considerations. First, with the texts we are considering, it is sometimes hard to
identify authors beyond names that have no more referential force than the
definite description “the author of this text.” (Though to be sure, there are also
many cases where we in fact know quite a bit about authors.) Foucault’s (1982)
insight that often the author is a mere function created to unify a corpus is
apposite here. That is, when we are trying to interpret a text, our only access to
what an author, or a group of authors, might have meant by the words we are
trying to understand is often those words themselves, or perhaps the words of
other texts. Indeed, to the extent that we might think that we have independent
access to the intention of an author, that access is almost always through other
words. Escaping from the evidence of signs to non-semiotic evidence regarding
the meaning of those signs is often simply impossible.
We often, for instance, hear Nāgārjuna identified as “the author of the six
treatises of reasoning,” or something like that, prior to a speculation regarding
whether he is really the author of some other text. And there are serious debates
about whether there were two, three or even more Nāgārjunas. If all we know of
an author is his authorship, and if we are often not even sure of which texts a
single shadowy individual is the author, how are we to pretend that in ascribing
an intention we are doing more than figuring out what the texts mean to the best
of our ability? We do not, as would many of our more canonical colleagues, sort
matters out by assigning texts to authors merely on the authority of classical
categories, and then employ a canonical view of the author’s intentions in order
to interpret them; nor do we sort them into canonical doxographic categories,
imposing a view on the author in virtue of his supposed affiliation. To do so only
raises the same methodological problem one level up in a hermeneutical
hierarchy.2
All suttas/sūtras, even the Mahāyāna sūtras, are traditionally taken to be
composed by the Buddha himself (or at least recited in his presence and
approved by him). But of course he wrote nothing at all. The Pāli suttas purport
to be the written record of oral teachings presented centuries before their literary
ossification. There is so much opportunity for deliberate or accidental editorial
intervention or pure creation that divination of the intent of an author of the
discourses that lie behind these texts, especially at the remove at which we now
stand, would be an impossible task. This situation is bad enough to discredit
such a hermeneutical method. But things get worse. When we turn to sūtra and
tantra literature, the authorship attributions are so murky as to be useless. We
know that the Mahāyāna sūtras were written centuries after the death of their
ascribed author and know nothing about their actual authors. (Even if you
believe that they were composed by the Buddha and entrusted to the nāgas, we
need to worry about the fidelity of ancient undersea preservation techniques!)
Intention-attribution here is even more quixotic a practice.3
The impossibility of determining authorial intent for most of the Buddhist
philosophical texts with which we engage is hence principled. In the case of
sūtra material, we have no idea who the authors were; and even in the case of
many scholastic treatises, we know little more than a name. Many texts, despite
ascription to a single author, in fact coalesce over centuries through the
contributions and editing of many unknown scholars who may have disagreed
among themselves regarding the content of the texts. Some of these texts exist in
multiple versions, rendering even the identity conditions for a text problematic.
In these cases, to figure out what intention lies behind a text is no more or no
less than to work out an interpretation of the text. There is often no extratextual
evidence that could be brought to bear, and so whoever put quill to palm leaf
falls out of the interpretative equation entirely. And once again, even when we
do have an author, we often know no more about him than that he authored the
text in question, and hence an identified author is no better than no author at all.4
This is not to deny that these texts had authors, but to point out that first that
we often don’t know who, or how many people, wrote the texts we had in front
of us. Nor is it to deny that those authors meant something by the words they
wrote. It is only to say that whether one adopts an interpretative theory according
to which the meaning of a text is constituted (at least in part) by authorial intent
(and there are many ways to parse this out)5 In the end, our only access to
authorial intent is textual, and so as interpreters of a tradition, we should focus
not on the psychology of unknown authors, but on the meanings of the words in
front of us.
This inability to locate authors to whom intentions might be ascribed is not
necessarily a bad thing. To regard this as hermeneutical tragedy would make
sense if we also believed that we would get more insight into textual meaning by
knowing the intentions of the authors of these texts. But it is not clear that this
would help us at all. The reason for this is straightforward. Most of these texts
are significant in the first place not because of their origins, but because of their
sequelae. In Buddhist terms, they exist, and are objects of knowledge, precisely
because they are functioning things, that is, objects with effects. The relevant
effects are the commentarial traditions they generate, the insight they generate in
their readers, the debates they initiate or settle. Therefore, when we ask what
these texts mean, it is their effects, rather than their causes, that are most
important. And fortunately, given the richness of the Buddhist scholastic
traditions, we can often say quite a lot about these effects, and so say quite a lot
about textual meaning.
How do we read without attributing intent to shadowy authors? The answer is
simple: we read. We interpret the texts we have on the basis of the words they
contain and on the basis of the intertextual relations we can determine, relying
on the acumen of our philological brothers and sisters for lexical and historical
assistance. Our reading and interpretation is constrained not by imagined
psychobiography of the authors, but rather by our understanding of the language
in which the text is written and the complex web of intertextual relations in
which the text in question figures. This is the great hermeneutical advantage we
are afforded when we work in a scholastic tradition (or family of scholastic
traditions) such as the Buddhist tradition. We are assisted in reading texts, and
forced to interpret them in restricted ways, by the commentaries that reflect on
them, by the texts they take as their foundations, and by those with which they
are in critical dialogue.
Just as in interpreting a text one hermeneutical circle calls upon us to read
each passage in the context of the meaning we assign to the whole, even as we
assign meaning to that whole as a function of the meanings of those parts, a
second, larger circle, forces us to read each text in a tradition in light of our
understanding of the tradition as a whole, even as we assign meaning to that
tradition as a function of those we assign to the texts it comprises. There is
nothing new here, and no reason to incorporate theories about authorial intent
into this procedure.
Moreover, not only does focus on these hermeneutical circles set authors and
their intentions aside as interpretative reference points, but it undermines another
hermeneutical myth that often haunts Buddhist Studies, that of the uniqueness of
textual meaning. Debate about how to read texts is an old and healthy practice in
every Buddhist tradition, and a practice very much alive today, both in Asia and
in the West. The fact that the meaning of any eminent text emerges and develops
in the context of commentarial traditions guarantees that meanings will be
unstable and multiple.
This means that interpretation does not settle meaning—however much that
may the aim of each interpreter—but creates an ineliminable polyvalence in
texts, a polyvalence that must be honestly acknowledged by even the most
passionate partisan of any particular reading. To acknowledge this polyvalence,
however, as opposed to mere diversity of opinion about a text that nonetheless
has a single, determinate meaning, is once again to diverge in hermeneutical
practice from most canonical commentators.
Practicing Buddhist philosophy, then, if it is to be done by contemporary
philosophers in good faith, is necessarily to diverge in important ways from
textual practices on which philosophers in the Buddhist tradition would have
insisted. This is but one respect in which Buddhist philosophy must, true to its
own commitments, evolve as a constantly changing continuum of texts and
textual practices. For once again, whether we are intentionalist or not about
meaning, as scholars, we still have only texts before us. This is not to betray the
tradition, although some traditionalists might see it that way. Instead, to insist on
fossilization even of methodological commitments in the interests of a fetishized
authenticity would be the real betrayal. For this reason, we might add, not only
do we as Western philosophers benefit from taking Buddhist philosophy
seriously, but the Buddhist tradition benefits from engagement with us. Dialogue
is a two-way affair.

3. Textual Dialogue
There is still an obvious question. Why should we 21st-century philosophers
bother reading classical Buddhist texts? Here is one answer, the one I have been
trying to make plausible in this book: They make excellent partners in
philosophical dialogue. That is to say, they engage with questions and problems
in which we are interested, sharing enough common ground for us to understand
what they have to say, and contributing enough that is new that we have some
reason to listen to it. They invite us to inhabit a new philosophical horizon,
different enough from our own to set new questions, and new phenomena in
relief, but familiar enough that many of them will be recognizable as
philosophical puzzles and insights. That is the nature of real dialogue—not
casual conversation, but serious interchange between participants who
voluntarily undertake a common task. And so to take someone, whether a person
or a text, on as a dialogical partner, is to make a set of dialogical commitments.
Without an acknowledgment and respect for these commitments, dialogue in the
full sense is impossible. At best, we get a shouting match.
First among those is a commitment to openness, that is, a commitment to treat
our partner with respect. Openness, or respect, in this case, entails a commitment
to the possibility that our interlocutor is correct about at least a good deal of
what is at issue in the conversation. This is not, of course, the demand to take
our interlocutor—whether a live human or an old text—as oracular, or even the
demand that we end up agreeing about anything at the end of the conversation. It
is merely the demand that when we read a text (for that is what we care about
here) we read with “charity” (Davidson) or an “anticipation of perfection”
(Gadamer). We interpret, insofar as we can, consistent with the constraints of
philology and canonical holism noted above, the claims in the text so as to make
them as true as possible, the arguments so as to make them as compelling as
possible, and the broad pictures sketched so as to make them as interesting as
possible.
Doing so necessarily requires us often to engage in a delicate tightrope walk
between the careful attention to scholastic and textual context that is necessary in
order to fix lexical meaning in the first place and the decontextualization that is
needed in order to yield truth and contemporary engagement. So, for instance,
when we read Candrakīrti’s sevenfold analysis of the self in the sixth chapter of
Introduction to the Middle Way, and we consider his response to the idea that the
self is the shape of the aggregates, we need both to recognize his response to a
particular interlocutor to understand why this is an important position to refute,
and how Candrakīrti’s argument refutes it.
To be sure, it is important to see that Candrakīrti is making this move in the
context of an archaic scholastic debate, refuting the position that the self is an
abstract entity over and above the aggregates, namely, the way that they are
arranged. But it is equally important to see that Candrakīrti is advancing an
argument that has a place in present discussions of constitution and identity. He
is pointing out that while at any time the aggregates so arranged may constitute
the basis of designation of an individual’s conventional identity, neither they, not
their arrangement, nor they so arranged are identical to that individual. To note
that present debates about constitution and identity would have been unknown to
Candrakīrti and his contemporaries is important to the philology, to how we
translate the argument, but not to philosophical methodology, to how we
interpret it. Otherwise, we have little to learn.
To take another example, when we read Reply to Objections and see
Nāgārjuna criticizing Nyāya semantics and epistemology as we did in chapter 7,
there is nothing wrong with extrapolating his arguments as general attacks on
what we would regard as a Fregean program in natural language semantics or a
foundationalism in epistemology, even though these broader categories would
have been unavailable to Nāgārjuna. By doing so, we recognize both the
historical context and the contemporary relevance of Nāgārjuna’s work. If it did
not have this contemporary relevance, there would be no philosophical reason to
engage with his corpus. Moreover, when we appreciate this philosophical
relevance, it allows us a new perspective on the history of Indian philosophy,
allowing us to see nascent concerns that otherwise might escape notice.
When we ask about the logic that Nāgārjuna employed, or might have
endorsed (Garfield and Priest 2003, Priest 2009, Huntington 2007, Garfield
2008), we do not pretend that Nāgārjuna was thinking explicitly about modal
logic. But we do think that he implicitly endorsed certain inference patterns and
not others. For instance, Nāgārjuna was committed to the use of the catuṣkoṭi or
tetralemma as a schema for portioning logical space, and so implicitly to a logic
involving four valuations (in addition, perhaps, as we saw earlier, to no valuation
at all). We also think that he is committed to endorsing some contradictions, and
so to a paraconsistent logic. Of course we do not assert that he explicitly said as
much, or even that logical theory was part of his problematic. Nonetheless, in
conversation with his text, we can make those endorsements explicit so as to
make the best overall sense of his text. While some might see this as violence to
his work, it is in principle no more violent than Candrakīrti’s ascription to him of
a commitment to using only reductio inference, or a conventional endorsement
of the Nyāya prāmaṇas, even though none of this is explicit in Fundamental
Verses on the Middle Way.
Finally, and perhaps most dramatically, in contemporary Yogācāra studies
many scholars have turned to reading Vasubandhu, Sthiramati and their
followers, and even the Discourse Unraveling the Thought not as idealist, but as
phenomenological texts (Lusthaus 2003; Mackenzie 2007, 2008). There is
overwhelming textual evidence that in India and Tibet these were always
regarded as idealistic, and overwhelming textual evidence (viz., the Twenty
Stanzas) that Vasubandhu took himself to be arguing against the possibility of
matter (Schmithausen 2014). But idealism has little traction nowadays, and
phenomenology is interesting; moreover, many of the arguments developed in
the Yogācāra tradition convert quite naturally into phenomenological analysis, in
which context they sustain interpretations that yield rich insight (and indeed
connect them in productive ways to much later phenomenological developments
in the Chan/Zen tradition).
Some might say that this is so tendentious a reading, so philologically
unjustified that it amounts to a distortion of the texts. But this is only textual
distortion if one insists that Vasubandhu’s texts, or the Discourse Unravelling the
Thought have unique, fixed meanings. If we take textual polyvalence seriously,
however, such a reading is instead the kind of creative textual engagement that
marks the best history of Western philosophy as well as the best commentarial
work in the Buddhist tradition.
The second dialogical commitment central to serious, respectful
conversational engagement is what Ricoeur felicitously called “hermeneutical
suspicion.” When we engage with an interlocutor, to treat her seriously is not
only to credit her, ab initio, with cogency and a fair grasp of the truth, but also to
credit her with the same attitude toward us. Otherwise the conditions of genuine
interchange are not satisfied. That in turn means that we have to treat her as
crediting our own cogency and views, even though our views may diverge from
her own, and our arguments might lead down paths she would prefer not to
tread. And that means supposing that we, too, might have some grasp of the
truth, and hence that our partner may well be wrong about a great deal. That is,
in short, while we cannot begin conversation with the assumption that our
conversational partner is crazy, or wrong about everything—that we have
nothing to learn and everything to teach—nor can we begin by assuming that she
is an oracle. That would not be conversation but obeisance.
Transposed to the textual domain, this means that while we strive to get the
best, the strongest reading possible from a text consistent with philological and
historical fidelity, we cannot treat Buddhist texts as oracular. After all, they
disagree with one another, and they were written by fallible human beings in an
epistemological context in which a lot less was known about the world than is
known now. A hermeneutic of suspicion demands a critical reading in which we
locate error and fallacy and diagnose it, just as we locate truth and cogency, and
learn from it. This is textual respect. As Aristotle said of Plato and Platonism,
“our friends are dear, but the truth is dearer” (Nicomachean Ethics 1096a15).
None of this is to provide a recipe for reading, for translating, or for using the
texts we encounter in the classical Buddhist scholastic traditions. It is instead to
identify the challenges implicit in the project of reading this tradition
philosophically, which entails a fusion of our postmodern global horizon and
those of the classical Asian Buddhist traditions, a task necessary even for
philology, even for translation. Understanding requires such a fusion. We can no
more transpose ourselves into the historical context of the texts we read than we
can expect their authors to address directly the literature to which we now
contribute. But the meaning that emerges in our encounter with and deployment
of these texts in our own philosophical activities must be responsive to a new
horizon constituted by elements from each. That new horizon is the
contemporary stage of a continuous scholastic tradition in which—even if we
pretend only to study and to draw from it—we are the most recent, but certainly
not the last, participants.

4. Learning from Old Books and Dead Robed Men

What do we learn when we inhabit this new horizon? For one thing, we
encounter new philosophical problems and new ways of posing those problems.
Thinking about metaphysics through the idea of svabhāva, for instance, forces us
to ask questions distinct from those often asked in the West, and forces us to ask
about the interrelations among our own cluster of concepts such as those of
essence, substance, intrinsic properties, and the like. Are they really independent
of one another? How do they connect to causation and to impermanence? Doing
epistemology in terms of pramāṇa is different from thinking about knowledge as
justified true belief.6 Epistemology may be more easily naturalized in a
framework in which epistemic instruments are treated causally, and in which
there is no principled distinction drawn between the cognitive and perceptual
aspects of knowledge-acquisition. Ethics, I have argued, is constructed
differently in Buddhist philosophy. By addressing classical Buddhist texts, we
may therefore gain a new window on our own concerns.
 Buddhist philosophy introduces us to the fecund—although perhaps, to a
Western audience, at first a bit strange—doctrine(s) of the two truths or two
realities. The very fact that, as we have seen, the Sanskrit satya and Tibetan bden
pa are equally well translated as truth or reality raises both philological and
philosophical issues worthy of close attention. The precise nature of the truths,
the characterization of each, and the account of their relationship to one another
are matters of extensive debate and subtle philosophical analysis in the history of
Buddhist philosophy. This extensive literature involves Buddhist theorists in
sophisticated investigation into the nature of truth itself and of reality, and into
equally sophisticated investigation of the relation between language, truth,
thought and reality. I do not want to claim here that this tradition of inquiry is
necessarily philosophically more sophisticated than that developed in the West
(or, for that matter, that it is less sophisticated), only that the framework of the
debate is sufficiently different that Western philosophers can learn from it, while
the problematic is sufficiently similar to that of Western philosophy that Western
philosophers would benefit from that learning.
Addressing the Buddhist canons also forces us to think explicitly about, and
even to revise, our normal textual practices. Our attention is drawn in this
tradition to the role of commentary to a greater degree than it is in much
contemporary philosophy. The difficulty of mapping important philosophical
terms in Asian languages to terms of art in European languages forces us to
confront not only questions about translation itself, but also the arbitrariness of
certain distinctions or absences thereof. For example, when we worry about
translating pramāṇa, and realize that it could as well be translated as warrant,
epistemic instrument, warranted cognition, we must pause regarding the
relationship between these terms. We must take seriously an epistemology that
combines a kind of process reliabilism with a naturalistic psychology of
knowledge, and allow the epistemic categories and questions that frame that
tradition call into question those that frame our own. When we consider essence,
substance, intrinsic nature, or some neologism as translations of svabhāva,
similar questions arise. Is there a single concept or a cluster of concepts here, as
the Buddhist might take there to be, or a confusion of ideas that need to be kept
distinct, as some Western philosophers would argue?
Karma (action, object of action, consequence of action), dharma (truth, entity,
fundamental constituent, virtue, duty, doctrine…) and other essential Buddhist
terms of art each raise a host of similar issues. Each draws together what appears
from a Western point of view to be a vast semantic range into what appears from
a Buddhist perspective to be a semantic point. Translation, and the cross-cultural
encounter in which it plays such a central role, thus forces us to reconsider, and
to appreciate the somewhat arbitrary character of, our own fundamental
philosophical vocabulary and the topology of our conceptual apparatus.
We also encounter philosophical texts composed in forms that challenge our
sense of what an argument looks like, texts composed in highly allusive verse,
for instance, or arguments framed from the standpoint of doxography. All of this
is a good thing—stretching our conceptual boundaries and methodological
perspective. Reading texts that are often antinomian, or at least highly suspicious
of the role of reason and language in human cognitive life, also raises significant
and difficult methodological questions about the role of reason and of reasoning
in philosophical practice. Is it permissible, or appropriate, to take reason as a
transcendental condition of the possibility of philosophical inquiry? After all, if a
text argues that reason and conceptual thought inevitably distort reality, and that
the truth is inexpressible, eschewing reason as probative, is it appropriate for us
to demand arguments, or even to seek for them in the text, to assess them, or to
mobilize arguments of our own in understanding those texts?
This is an intriguing challenge. Huntington (2007), for instance, answers in
the negative, arguing that to employ reason, and in particular, the techniques of
logic, to interpret or to criticize texts that reject the probative force of logic and
rational arguments is to do violence to those texts, begging the question against
them in the very act of interpreting them. I have argued in (2008) that this is
wrong. Even arguments against the probative force of logic must use logic; even
claims to the non-discursivity of certain knowledge must themselves be
discursive, and even if we read texts to offer these arguments, even if we accept
their conclusions, our arguments for those readings, and even for the correctness
of those conclusions must themselves be discursive, rational, and probative.
Reason is thus a transcendental condition of interpretation both in the sense that
we can only vindicate an interpretation to the extent that we read the text as
rational, and we can only justify a reading rationally. Paradoxically, this is true
even if, on the most antinomian reading of these texts, they are correct in their
radical critique of reason itself. (See Dreyfus and Garfield as well as Dreyfus in
Cowherds 2011.)

5. Reflexivity: Reading Our Own Texts

A pernicious version of the subject–object duality that Buddhism targets so
assiduously arises quite naturally in Buddhist Studies itself, and demands
vigilance. That is the conceit that we as contemporary Western scholars are
writing about the scholastic Buddhist tradition, and that our own texts are to be
read in a fundamentally different way from the canonical texts we interpret. We
thus set ourselves up as privileged subjects writing hermeneutically closed texts
that illuminate the Buddhist philosophical tradition with the cool light of
scholarly objectivity. This is doubly dangerous. On the one hand, it hides the
intertextuality and scholastic context of our own texts, their liability to
interpretation by others and their own polyvalence. On the other hand, it
fossilizes the Buddhist tradition as a complete, mummified object of primarily
curatorial interest. Each of these errors cuts off dialogue. We expect to be heard,
but not to be interrogated; our presumed interlocutor is the object only of an
epitaph.
In fact nothing could be further from the truth. The Buddhist philosophical
tradition is so fascinating in large part because it is alive, because the discussions
that proceed in our own time and the texts we and others publish are not about,
but are moments within that tradition, extending the practice of critical
reflection, reinterpretation and dialogue that has characterized the tradition from
the very beginning. We sometimes do what Candrakīrti and Śāntarakṣita did,
sometimes what Śaṅkara or Gaṅgeśa did. We just have more hair, wear different
clothes and speak in strange tongues. And of course there are many living,
practicing Buddhist philosophers—Asian and Western—who see the Buddhist
tradition as constituting the primary horizon of their own philosophical practice.
Contemporary Buddhist philosophical thought thus reflects the fact that the
continuum of Buddhist thought, like the personal continuum, is neither
permanent nor terminated; it is a constantly changing, dependently originated
sequence of dialectical events, beginning in the indefinite past, and stretching
into an indefinite future.
The contemporary dialogue of Buddhist thought with Western textual
traditions, Western hermeneutical methods and presuppositions, Western science
and Western academic practice is thus, while new in one sense, old in another. It
is new in that the conversational partner and the cultural context are new, only
about 150 years old. For this reason, we are still feeling each other out, adjusting
vocabulary, assimilating conceptual categories and scholarly presuppositions.
Hence the present project.
But it is also old. While it is true that Buddhism officially denies its own
progressive character, depicting itself as a tradition with roots in an omniscient
founder that has been steadily declining from a golden age, as insights are lost in
transmission and translation, this self-image is hard to sustain. In fact, Buddhism
has been self-reflective, internally complex, and philosophically progressive
from the start. Buddhist philosophy has evolved in response to debate with and
influence from other traditions from the beginning, including classical Indian
traditions, traditions from East Asia, and more recently from the West. While the
teachings of the Buddha obviously form the foundation for this vast and diverse
scholastic edifice, it is equally obvious that many of the later developments in
Buddhism that we now regard as so central to Buddhist philosophy were not
present in the Pāli canon (including much of the Mahāyāna), even if they were
somehow, or to some degree, implicit. Buddhist philosophy, like all philosophy,
has developed and become more sophisticated over time. This is as it should be
—it is a sign of life, not of weakness.
A corollary of this fact is that the impact of Buddhist philosophy on the West
is both old and new. It is old in that, first, Buddhism has transformed many
civilizations and intellectual traditions in the past, and there is no reason to
expect that that should cease now, and in that, second, the Western tradition has
never been closed, Eurocentric commentators to the contrary notwithstanding.
But it is new in that, perhaps with the exception of some early interaction
mediated by Bactria, until the nineteenth century, the Buddhist tradition has not
been one of its principal sources of ideas. (See McEvilley 2002 for an excellent
history of the interaction of early Buddhist and Mediterranean thought.) That,
however, is a rather insignificant matter in the grand scheme of intellectual
history.
While all of this history of ideas may seem to be nothing but truisms, it is
nonetheless worth bearing in mind as we find our way in contemporary Buddhist
philosophy. It is important to distinguish between the role of a curator of
philosophical mummies and that of the role of a participant in an ongoing
dialogue, and it is all too easy, for instance to treat Śāntarakṣita as a distant,
isolated curio, while treating Aristotle as one of us. When we do that, we
distinguish living philosophy from dead ideas on the basis of an arbitrary
criterion of cultural proximity, and in doing so, license an intellectual attitude
toward that which we designate as distant that we would never permit toward
that which we regard as proximate. Another way of putting this point is that in
commenting on Buddhist texts, or in using them for our own philosophical
purposes, we must be careful of pretending to transcendence, of adopting a view,
if not from nowhere, at least from some Archimedean point outside of the
tradition we take ourselves to study, permitting an objectivity that we would
never ascribe to one within the tradition, and in the end distinguishing ourselves
as scholarly subjects from our interlocutors as philosophical native informants.
This reflexivity in practice therefore also demands that we treat our own work
and that of our contemporaries in the same way that we treat the older canon. We
are participants, not curators. We must thus extend the same principle of charity
in reading to contemporary texts, making the best of them, as opposed to
constructing the straw men that fuel the bushfires of academic debate. In that
way, we can learn from each other’s insights, and move Buddhist philosophy
along. But we must also approach our own texts and those of our colleagues with
the same hermeneutic of healthy suspicion, alert for heresy, apology and all the
ills that hermeneutical flesh is heir to.
The Buddhist and Western traditions (and indeed we could say the same of the
great Chinese traditions of Confucianism and Daoism) are made for each other,
as each is articulated through an open canon, each is internally diverse, each
constantly in dialogue both internally and with external critics and interlocutors.
Our task as Western Buddhist philosophers (however we understand that
deliberately ambiguous phrase) is to do our part to advance both traditions along
the increasingly broad and pleasant path they tread together. That won’t be so
hard, as long as we remember that that is what we are doing.
Here is the place; here the way unfolds. The boundary of realization is not distinct, for the
realization comes forth simultaneously with the mastery of Buddha-dharma.

Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge and is grasped by your
consciousness. Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent. Its
appearance is beyond your knowledge.
—Dōgen, Genjōkōan (trans. R. Aitken and K. Tanahashi)

1. Now, to be sure, there are philosophers who would reject this historicist reading of our discipline, and
who see philosophy as an ahistorical search for the truth in which contemporary philosophy has no more
connection to its history than does physics. I find this self-understanding very foreign, although I know
many who adopt it. Even on that view, however, to the extent that one takes the history of Western
philosophy to be a legitimate or an important domain of study for philosophers (and I don’t know anybody
who disputes that) it is, I hope, clear that to restrict that study to the history of Western philosophy is
irresponsible.
2. One is reminded here of Huxley’s alleged quip that the author of the Iliad is either Homer, or if not,
someone else of the same name!
3. To be sure, there are well-known cases of Indian texts, particularly the Vedas, being preserved orally with
astonishing fidelity, but we have no independent evidence that a similar textual practice preserved the oral
teachings of Śakyamuni Buddha.
4. Note that although it may appear to be, this refusal of a hermeneutic of authorial intent is not inconsistent
with a neo-Gricean theory of meaning, according to which understanding a speaker’s intent is essential to
understanding an utterance. For when we read these texts, no speakers are present. Instead, we construct, or
posit a speaker to whom we assign a Gricean intention. It is the fact that this speaker or author is our
construction, and that the only evidence we have on the basis of which to construct that authorial voice is
what is on the page, that constitutes the truth of the Gadamerian approach, even if one is a Gricean about
utterance meaning.
5. For an excellent discussion see Avramides (1989). For instance, one does not need to commit to the view
that authorial intent is irrelevant (Gadamer 1976, 2004). One might argue that the divination of intent is
essential, but that one can only do so by interpreting the text itself (Sellars 1997, Brandom 1998).
6. Stoltz (2007), for instance, argues that Gettier problems may not arise in this context (although it is
arguable that Śrīharṣa does indeed develop a version of the Gettier problem [Ganeri 2007]).
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INDEX

Abhidhammatthavibhāvini (see Reality According to the Abhidhamma)

Abhidharma 16, 18, 24, 28, 59–62, 79, 182, 194, 258, 287
on emptiness 59–61
and Madhyamaka 111
Pāli Abhidharma 16, n.46
Sanskrit Abhidharma 32, 46, 59
on two truths 81–82
Academic skepticism 37
action selection 287
Actualizing the Fundamental Point 69
Additapairyaya-sutta (see Fire sutta)
adhipati-pratyaya (immediate condition) 30
affective state 96, 104, 125
agency 128, 280
aggregates (skhandas) 12, 106–108, 117, 126–127, 196
ahaṃkāra (self-construction) 117–118, 128–129, 302, n. 15
ākara 50, 133–134, 148, 158–159, 162, 221, 50, 95
Alaṃbanāparikṣā svavṛtti (see Autocommentary to Examination of the Percept)
alambanā-pratyaya (see supporting condition)
ālaya-vijñāna (see foundation consciousness)
Alexander, B. (see Ling, X.)
ālika 57
Anatta-lakkhaṇa-sutta (see Discourse on the Characteristic of No-Self)
anātman 97, 102
anitya 2
Anscombe, G.E.M. 95, n. 5
Anthology of the Mahāyāna 258
anti-realism 27, 31, 62–63, 65, 83, 87–88
anumāna 216
anyapoha 218–219
apoha 48–54, 160, 216, 218–219, 221–222, 225, 236
apperception 95, 103, 155, 184
applicatio 14
apprehension 239
mode of apprehension 240
arhat 16, 239
Aristotle 14–15, 81, 96, 281
Armstrong, D. 92, n. 2
artha (see intentional object)
arthakrīyā 220, 236
āryan 233
āryas 233, 238
Asaṅga 20, 71, 114, 258
Astahaṣrika-prajñāparamitā-sūtra (see Perfection of Wisdom sūtra in 8,000 verses)
Atīśa 21
ātman 97, 104, 105, 117, 184
attachment 70
and self 120
Aurobindo Ghosh 273, n. 13, 274, n. 14
authoritative cognition 145, 214–217, 222–226, 228–229, 232–238, 243
Autocommentary to Examination of the Percept 75, 134–135
Autocommentary to Introduction to the Middle Way 39–40, 193–195
Avatamsika Sūtra (see Flower Garland Sūtra)
aversion 70, 120
avidya (primal confusion) 2, 9, 28, 52, 68, 89, 114–115, 208, 225, 260, 302 306, n.50
Avramides, A. 325, n. 20
awakening 2, 11, 14, 18

B B principle 150
Baier, A. 119, n. 14
Baker, L. R. 209, n. 12
Bar-On, D. 147, n. 15
Being 257–258
Being (wu) 259
Being and Time 75
Berkeley, G. 38, 87, 159, 190–191, 195
Bhattacharyya, K. C. 95, n. 5, 96, n. 6
Bhāvacakra (wheel of life) 302
Bhāviveka 19, 244
blindsight 170–171
Block, N. 123, n. 1
Blumson, B. 256, n. 4
bodhi 2, 11, 14, 18
Bodhicaryāvatāra (see How to Lead an Awakened Life)
bodhicitta 18, 299–300, 307–308, 310
bodhisattva 18–19, 64, 231, 294, 315
Bodhisattva Stages 71
Bodhisattvabhūmi (see Bodhisattva Stages)
bracketing 176–177, 187, 189–203
Bradley, T. 38, 81
Brandom, R. 325, n. 5
Brahmavihāras 313
Buddha-nature 21
Buddhapālita 19, 66
Buddhavacana 17, 243

caitta 178
Cabezón, J. 158, n. 17
Candrakīrti
and convention 39–40, 222–224, 225–228
and conventional truth 46–47, 82–84, 155, 200, 202–203, 222, 230–236
and epistemology 216, 222–224, 225–228, 230–236
and non-egocentrism 39–40
and emptiness 66–67
 and idealism 193–198
and pramāṇa 222–224, 225–228
and prāsaṅgika (reductio-wielders) 19
and Pudgalavāda 110–112
and reflexive awareness 133, 137, 140–144, 148–149, 212
and the self 106, 110–115, 205–207, 209
and self-knowledge 133, 137 155, 169–170, 184, 197–198
and the two truths 80, 82–84
and Yogācāra 71, 130, 137, 140–144, 193–198
canon 17
care (karuṇā) 2, 11, 14, 18, 289, 295–297, 310–316, 313, n. 26, 317
Carpenter, A. 18, n. 9, 102, n. 11
Carruthers, P. 153–155, 184, n. 3
Cārvaka 97, 102
catuṣkoti (tetralemma) 120, 204–205, 242–245, 246–248, 274–275, 257–260, 265
causation 25–26, 28, 29–31, 39, 47, 54, 93, 115, 142
causal condition 29
causal continuity 118
causal dependence 26–28, 78
and language 29
cessation 13, 16, 116
cetanā (intention) 105, 117, 120, 128, 128, n. 8, 198, 283, 287
Chalmers, D. 125, 131–132, 167–172
Chan 20–21, 173–174, 211
chanda (see action selection)
Chapman, T. 179
chariot simile 106, 108–109, 112–115, 196
Chi, R.S.Y., 244, n. 2
Chinese Buddhism 20–21
Churchland, P. 97, n. 7, 190, n. 8
Cittamātra (see Yogācāra)
Cogito 150
cognitive practice 233–234
cognitive science 72, 95, 142, 176, 183
coherentism 216, 230–236
Commentary on Sixty Stanzas of Reasoning 229
Commentary on the Encyclopedia of Philosophy 160, 215
Commentary to the Ornament of Mahāyāna Sūtras 268
comparative philosophy 3
compassion (see care)
conceptual imputation 27, 33, 35–36
conditions 28–29
causal condition 29
dominate condition 30
immediate condition 30
observed condition 29
Confucian philosophy 20, 97
consciousness, 185, 211
access consciousness 122–125, 210
creature consciousness (see subjective consciousness)
 and introspection 153–156
Mipham on 85–87
phenomenal consciousness 122–125, 210
and qualia 156–162
and reflexive awareness 135–152
responsive consciousness 123–125
and self 163–167
and self-knowledge 171–174
skandha 128, 130–131
subjective consciousness 123–125
unity of consciousness 102–105
Yogācāra theory of 73–74
Zombies 167–171
constitution 54, 59, 106–107, 169
consummate nature 73–74
contact (sparsa) 287
continua 45–48, 54, 60–61, 118, 129
convention
Candrakīrti on 39–40, 196, 222–224, 225–228
conventional falsehood 57, 226
and emptiness 31–32, 39–40, 46, 65, 79–87
and epistemology 225–227
and ethics 120–121
and identity 45
and language 25, 39–40, 54, 57, 266–268, 271–272
and personal identity 94, 102, 108–109, 111–113, 120–121, 128–129, 196
Tsongkhapa on 39–40
and upāya (skillful means) 57
conventional nature 227, 230, 232
conventional reality
Candrakīrti on 46–47, 80, 82–84, 111–113, 155, 196, 200, 202–203, 222, 227, 230–236
and dependent designation 26, 54, 64–65, 108–109, 111–113, 196
and emptiness 31–32, 39–40, 46, 64–68, 79–87
and epistemology 198, 226–240
and essence 88–89
and ethics 120–121
Heart Sūtra on 80
and hermeneutics 24, 26
Jizang on 257–258
and Mahāyāna 18–19,
Nāgārjuna on 64–65, 80, 82
as obscurational 46–47
Śāntarakṣita on 82–87, 200
Tsonkghapa on 39–40, 46–48, 155, 226–234, 267, 271–272
and skepticism 64–65
and supervenience 58–59
in Yogācāra 81, 87, 200
conventional truth 226–234
correspondence 250
Coseru, C. 159, n. 19, 172, n. 21, 178, 186, n. 4, 215, n. 1
Critique of Pure Reason 38–39, 99, 95, 99, 103–104, 116–117, 191, 197–198, 208

dancing girl 103

Daoism 20–21, 97
Dasheng xuanlun (see Profound Meaning of Mahāyāna)
De Beauvoir, S. 98, 176
deception 232, 239–240, 243, 249, 265, 271
and conventional truth 232, 239–240
inference as deceptive 243
and introspection 134–136, 200–203
language as deceptive 249–254, 265–266, 271
bden pa (see satya)
Deguchi, Y. 260–261, n. 6
Dennett, D. 101, 167, 172–173
dependence 34–35, 37, 196, 269
and conceptual imputation 33–40
causal dependence 27–32
mereological dependence 27, 32–33
dependent designation 26, 54, 65, 108–109, 111–113, 196
dependent nature 73–74, 81–82, 199–200
dependent origination 24–40, 64–65, 252, 279, 281
and emptiness 64–65
and ethics 279
and language 252
Nāgārjuna on 64–65, 252
Tsongkhapa on 26
Derrida, J. 257
Descent into Lanka Sūtra 20, 71, 143, n.268
Dewey, J. 236, n. 16
Dhammacakkapavatana-sutta (see Discourse Setting in Motion the Wheel of Doctrine)
dharma 16, 18, 32, 46, 58–61, 79, 111, 314
as trope 16
as substantially existent 18, 32, 46, 58–61,
and the two truths, 58–61, 79
as empty 111
as doctrine 314
Dharmakīrti 20, 49–51, 71, 137, 139, 146–148, 160, 164, 215, 219–220,
On apoha 50–51
role in Buddhist epistemology 20
doctrine of apoha 49–51, 215–220
on phenomenal properties 160
on pramāṇa 215–220
on reflexive awareness 137, 139, 146–148
on subjectivity 164
on universals 50–51
and Yogācāra 71
Dharmottara 160
diachronic identity 91–92, 94, 96, 99, 102
Diamond Cutter sūtra 65
Dignāga 20, 49, 50, 71, 75, 133–139, 145–146, 157, 209, 212, 224, 186, n.4
 and Buddhist epistemology 20
and doctrine of apoha 49–51
on perception 75, 133–139
on phenomenal properties 157
as phenomenologist 209
on reflexive awareness 145–146, 186, n. 4, 212
on self-knowledge 137–138
and Yogācāra 71
Discourse of Vimalakīrti 18, 20, 63–64, 68, 70, 255–266, 258, 260
Discourse on the Characteristic of No-Self 105
Discourse Setting in Motion the Wheel of Doctrine 6, 27, 101, n.2
Discourse Unraveling the Thought 20, 71, 72–75, 77, 187, 268–269, 329
divine states (see Brahmavihāras)
divinities 35
dmigs rkyen (see supporting condition)
Dōgen 69–71, 115–116, 155, 212–213,
on language 261–265
on the self 215–216
on subjectivity 212–213
on the two truths 70–71
don (see intentional object)
don dam bden pa
doubt 198–199
doxography 19–20, 158
dran pa (see mindfulness)
dravyasāt (substantial existence) 18, 46, 59, 62
Dreyfus, G. 159, n. 19, 215, n. 1, 301, n. 20
’du shes (see saṃjñā)
dualism 96, 192
Duckworth, D. 134, n. 14, 272, n. 11
dukkha (suffering) 2, 6–7, 10, 13, 16, 18, 126, 240, 281–283, 286, 301
cessation of, 16
and consciousness 26
of change 8
and ethics 18, 281–282, 286
Ferlinghetti on 6
as fundamental commitment 2
of pervasive conditioning 8
pervasiveness of 6–7
and primal confusion 10, 13
’dun pa (see action selection)
Dunne, J. 215, n. 1

Eckel, M. 134, n. 14
ego-identity 116–117, 120
egoism 10, 13, 290, 301, 310–312
eightfold path 2
elephant simile 187–192, 205–206
eliminativism 60, 102, 111, 97, n.7
Elucidation of Epistemology 148
embodiment 96, 203–204
emptiness
Abhidharma conception of 59–61
and appearance 202, 232
Candrakīrti on 66–67
with respect to characteristic 74, 269
and conventional truth 64–68, 240
Dōgen on, 69–71
and convention 31–32, 39–40, 46, 65, 79–87
and dependent origination 24
Fazang on 76–79
Heart Sūtra on 63
Hua Yan doctrine 76–79
And impermanence 59
and ineffability 245–246
Jizang on 257–260
and language 252–253
Madhyamaka doctrine 18–19, 62–71
Mipham on 202
Nāgārjuna on 31, 64–68, 167–168, 251–253
And the object of negation 56, 232
of other 22
and paradox 81, 245–246
with respect to production 74, 279
and subject-object duality 192–193, 205
Sūtra Unraveling the Thought on 72–75
And three naturelessness 72–75
Tsongkhapa on 31–32, 58, n. 1, 67
Vasubandhu on 75, 192–193
Yogācāra doctrine 71–76
Encyclopedia of Epistemology 49, 138, 145
Encyclopedia of Ontology 102
engagement 14
entailment 217
Entangled Vines 260
epistemic warrant (see pramāṇa)
Epitome of Philosophy 160
epochē 190, 193
equanimity 289–290
Essay on the Three Means of Valid Cognition 224
essence 2, 18, 97–98
Essence of Eloquence 267, 270
essentialism 98–99
Examination of the Percept 32, n. 8, 75, 134, 159,
experience 70, 131, 132, 151, 157, 168, 175, 182, 191, 193, 203, 211
expressibility 245–246, 248, 254
expressibility paradox 254
expressivism 147, n. 15
externality 74, 81, 134, 188, 205
extrinsic nature 67
fallibilism 234, 236–237
fāngbiàn 272
Fazang 21, 75–79
fear 301–303
Feltz, A. 287, n. 5
Ferlinghetti, L. 6
fiction 58, 108, 210–211, 248–254
Fire Sutta 12
Flower Garland Sūtra 20, 76, 268, n. 9
for-me-ness 165–166
foundation consciousness 114, 117, 129–130, 161, 183, 188, 192
foundationalism 216, 224, 234–235
four noble truths 2, 279–281, 289, 315, 381, n. 14,
four-dimensionalism 52–53, 88
Franco, E. 215, n. 1
Freud, S. 126, 150
Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way 19, 31–32, 41, 64, 66–67, 70, 80, 82, 204, 223, 227, 230, 244, 247,
251, 314

Gadamer, H-G. 325, n. 20

dgag bya (see object of negation)Ganeri, J. 100, 102, 102, n. 11, 330, n. 6
Gangeśa 102
Geluk tradition 3, 22, 83, 136, 148, 151
Genjōkōan (see Actualizing the Fundamental Point)
Gennaro, R. 156
Gettier, E. 99–100, n. 10
Gibson, J. 158
Gold, J. 268–270
Gopnik, A. 45, n. 13
Gorampa (Go rams pa bsod nams seng ge) 22, 136, 148, 155
Great Discourse on Mindfulness 305
Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path 81, n. 5
Great Vehicle (see Mahāyāna)
Gregory, P. 158, n. 17
Guererro, L. 236, n. 16, 221, n. 6
Gungthang (Gun thang dkon mchog bstan pa’i sgron me) 86, n. 10, 134, 191
Gyeltsab (rGyal tshab dar ma rin chen) 22, 83, 83, n. 7, 86, 203,

Hansen, C. 233, n. 4, 273, n. 12

Harman, G. 125, n. 5
Hattori, M. 215, n. 1
Haugeland, J. 291–292, n. 8
Hayes, R. 215, n. 1
Heart of Wisdom Sūtra 18, 63, 77, 80
hedonic tone 185, 287
Hegel, G. 81
Heidegger, M. 9, 66–67, 75, 98, 126, 174, 176–177, 187, 195, 198, 211–212, 257, 125, n. 4
Heim, M. 8, n. 5, 46, n. 14, 128, n. 8, 291, n. 7
hermeneutics 14–15, 24, 26, 273, 292–293
hetu 28–29
hetu-pratyaya 29
higher-order cognition 103–104, 147
higher-order perception 135–136, 139, 145, 149, 151, 156
higher-order state 136–137, 140, 143, 145, 147, 151, 208–209
higher-order thought 135–136, 139–140, 149, 152, 156
Hinayāna 16
Hopkins, J. 158, n. 17
How to Lead an Awakened Life 119, 279, 299, 303, 305–310
Hu, R. (see Alexander, B.)
Hua yan 20–21, 67, 76, 79
Huiyuan 224–225
Huizao 225
Hume, D. 317, n.119
on abstract ideas 50–51
on causation 25–26, 29
on ethics, 119, n. 14, 317
on identity over time 45, 92
on the self 94, 107
and skepticism 37–38
on substance 195
Husserl, E. 99, 136, 139, 144, 146, 162, 164, 175–176, 187, 190, 197, 209, 211, 130, n. 10
Hutto, D. 101, 291–292, n. 8
Huxley, A. 323, n. 2
idealism
British idealism 38, 159–160, 190–191
Candrakīrti on 193–198
German idealism 38
Kant’s refutation, 190–191
Yogācāra 20, 27, 33–34, 72–76, 82–83, 203

identity
and construction 117
and convention 94, 102, 108–109, 111–113, 120–121, 128–129, 196
diachronic 39, 54, 91–97, 99, 102
and existence 36
personal 91–97, 99, 102, 107–109, 111–113, 115–117, 120–121, 128–129, 196
synchronic 91, 94–96, 97–101
Illumination of the Ascertained Object 148
illusion 10–11, 34, 48, 50, n. 15. 57, 65, 85, 87, n. 11, 89, 103, n. 12, 114, 166, 173, 226, 233, 238–239,
246, 268, 273, 302, 309, 314,
imagined nature 72–73, 181, n. 2, 188, 192, 199
immediate condition 20
impermanence 2, 8, 10, 24, 40–48,
and 3D-4D debate 52–54
and emptiness 59
gross 41–42, 60
and identity 40–42
and self 43–45, 104
and dukkha 8, 10
 Sarvastavādin theory of 42, n. 11
subtle 41–42, 60
“In Praise of Dependent Origination” (rTen ‘brel pa legs bshad snying po) 31
inattentional blindness 170, n.181
Indigo Girls on primal confusion, 9
ineffability 245–246, 254–266
inference 216–222, 236
inherent existence 228–229, 232, 238, 240
inner sense 177, 191, 193
Instructions on the Profound Middle Path of the Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka Tradition (dBu ma thal ‘gyur
pa’i lugs kyi zab lam dbu ma’i lta khrid0 26
intensional semantics 251
intention (cetanā) 105, 117, 120, 128, 128, n. 8, 198, 283, 287
intentional object 134–135, 192
interdependence 2, 8, 48, 26, 71, 76, 142, 280
intrinsic existence 32
intrinsic identity 18, 24, 71, 75, 111
intrinsic nature 2, 31, 62, 66, 67–68, 142, 202
Introduction to the Middle Way 39, 53, 54, 106, 110–111, 134–135, 202, 226–227, 231–234, 234, n. 15,
279, 286, 313, n. 26, 327,
introspection 208, 210
and consciousness 122–126
fallibility of 85, 154–156, 170–173, 177–179, 181–182, 183–184, 201
as higher order thought 151–152
Kant on 95
as mediated 95, 177–179
Mipham on 201
and mental sense faculty 151
and neurophenomenology 208, 210
Śāntarakṣita on 85, 103
Thompson on 208, 210
Tsongkhapa on 133, 151–152, 169–170, 184

James, W. 236, n. 16
Jamyang Shepa (‘Jam dbyangs bzhad pa ngag dbang brtson ‘grus) 22
Jangya (lCang bya) 22
Japan 21
Jātaka 279
Jenkins, S. 289, n. 6, 299, n. 11, 301, n. 13
Jewel Rosary of Advice to the King 17, 279
Jin Shi Zi Zhang (see Treatise on the Golden Lion)
‘jig rten bden pa 58
Jinpa, T. 81, n. 5
Jizang 257–260, 265
Jonang (Jo nang) 22

Kagyu (‘bkad brgyud) tradition 22

Kalupahana, D. 236, n. 16
Kamalaśīla 71
Kania, A. 256, n. 4
Kant, I.,
on introspection 95
on phenomena and noumena 38–39
Refutation of Idealism 197–198, 208
Schematism 99
subjectivity 10, 103–104, 116–117
transcendental unity of apperception 95, 99, 103–104, 116–117
karma 189, 284–285
karuṇā (see care)
Katsura, S. 215, n. 1
Kattō (See Entangled Vines)
Kegon 21
Kellner, B, 158, n. 18, 159, n. 19, 215, n. 1, 221, n. 5
khanda 12
Khaydrup (mKhas grub dge legs dpal bzang) 22
A King Requests Saindhava 265
Kleśas (dysfunctional cognitive states) 290, 305
kliśṭamanas (see distorted consciousness)
knowledge 145–152, 198, 214–216, 225–241
Candrakīrti on 230–234
coherentism 234–236
and convention 225–234
fallibilism 236–237
and illusion 238–239
Nāgārjuna on 234–236
and ontology 237–238
pragmatism 236–237
and pramāṇa 214–216
self-knowledge 145–152, 198
Tsongkhapa on 230–234
and the two truths 239–241
Kriegel, U. 138–139, 149, 165–166, 178
Kumārila 102
kun brtags (see imagined nature)
kun ‘dro (see sarvaga)
kun gzhi (see foundation consciousness)
kun rdzob [(see samvṛti)

lakṣana-niḥsvabhāvataḥ (see emptiness with respect to characteristic)

Lam rim chen mo (see Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path)
language
and causation 29
and conception 249–250
and convention 25, 39–40, 54, 57, 120, 266–268, 271–272
Dōgen on 261–265
and introspection 126, 153
inexpressibility 68, 254–266
Jizang on 257–260
as metaphor 268–270
Nāgārjuna on 251–254, 267
 and paradox 68, 254–266
and propositional content 250–254
and tantra 273–277
Tsongkhapa on 245, 267, 270–271
and universals 250–251, 274
and use 266–273, 275–276
and the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa 255–256, 258, 260
Wittgenstein on 275–276
and Yogācāra 268–270
Lankāvatāra sūtra (see Descent into Lanka Sūtra)
law of the excluded middle 204
lebenswelt 35, 39, 87, 180, 186, 205
lectio 14
Legs bshad snying po (see Essence of Eloquence)
Leibniz, G. 92
Levine, J. 157
Lewis, D. 89, 152
Lin, C-K, 224, n. 11
Ling, X. (see Hu, R.)
Liuzu Tanjing (see Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch)
logic 20, 243–249
categorical logic 242–244
catuṣkoṭi 243–249
formal logic 242–243
modal logic 88
paraconsistent logic 248
lokavyavahāra-satya 57
Lotus Sūtra 20, 21
Lucid Exposition 66, 84, 110, 202, 223, 226
Lusthaus, D. 134, n. 13, 187, n. 5

Madhyamaka 3, 18–19, 61–68

and Abhidharma 111
and anti-realism 65
and consciousness 130
on conventional truth 82–83, 85
on dependent origination 27, 29–32, 35
on emptiness 18–19, 46, 66–68, 74–76
epistemology 216, 233–237, 239–240
on intrinsic nature 61–64
logic 248–249, 271
and modality 87–89
and realism 65, 111
Śāntarakṣita on 201–202
and self 110–115, 120
sūtras 18–19
on the two truths 46, 64–65, 80–81
and Yogācāra 22, 77, 86–87, 199–200, 202, n.83
Madhyamakālaṃkāra (see Ornament of the Middle Way)
Madhyamakāvatāra (see Introduction to the Middle Way)
Madhyamakāvatārabhāṣya (see Autocommentary to Introduction to the Middle Way)
Mahāsatipaṭṭāna-sutta (see Great Discourse on Mindfulness)
Mahāyāna 16–18, 20, 24, 30–32, 39, 59, 79, 294, 313, 268, n. 9
Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra (see Sūtra on the Occasion of the Entry of the Buddha into Final
Nirvāṇa)
Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra (see Ornament to the Māhāyana sutras)
Mahāyāna-saṃgraha (see Anthology of the Mahāyāna)
manas-vijñāna 103, 191
Makeham, J. 134, n. 14
Mañjuśrī 64
mantra 274
McClintock, S. 158, n. 18, 159, n. 19, 221, n. 5
materialism 60, 102, 152
Matilal, B. 244, n. 2
meditation 21–22, 140, 183–184, 155, n. 16
memory 93, 105, 116, 136–137, 140–141
mereological dependence 27, 32–33
Merleau-Ponty, M. 176, 211
metaphor 268–270
mettā 2, 11, 14, 289
Meyer-Dunn semantics 242
Meyers, K. 128, n. 8
Middle Way (see Madhyamaka)
Milindapañha (see Questions of King Milinda)
mindfulness 127, 303–304
minimalism 99–101, 110–111, 115, 118–119
Mipham (Mi pham ‘jam dbyangs rnam rgyal rgyam tso)
on consciousness 155–157
on introspection 201, 206–207
on Madhyamaka 200–202
and nonsectarianism 23, 71
on reflexive awareness 139
on Śāntarakṣita 83–86, 146, 200–202
on Yogācāra 83–86
Mitchell, J. 171
monasticism 16, 23
mu 204, 246, 259
muditā 2, 11, 14, 289–290, 295
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (see Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way)
mutual dependence 226–227
Myth of the Given 35, 75, 85, 204
Nāgārjuna 223, 227, 244, 314
and anti-realism 87–88
and the catuṣkoṭi 204–205
on causation 26, 30–33
and coherentism 234–236
on conventional reality 64–65, 80, 82
on emptiness 31, 64–68, 167–168, 251–253
on epistemology 234–236
on impermanence 41
 on intrinsic nature 67–68
on knowledge 234–236
on language 251–254, 267
and the Mahāyāna 17, 19
on paradox 80–81
and skepticism 65–66
on the two truths 59–61, 64–65, 80–81, 82

Nāgasena 42–44, 106–109

Nagel, T. 131, 178
Nālandā University 21–22, 82
rnam pa (see ākara)
Nattier, J. 63, n. 2
negation 14, 219, 246, 252, 253, 259
net of Indra 76, 79
neurophenomenology 176, 192, 208,
Ngas don rab gsal (see Illumination of the Ascertained Object)
Ngawang Dendar (Ngag dbang bstan dar lha ram pa) 134–135
Ngog Loden Sherab (rNgog lo ts’a ba blo ldan shes rab) 22
nibbāna 12–13, 16
Nicomachean Ethics 14–15
Nida-Rümelin, M. 157
Nietzsche, F. 98
nihilism 46–48, 63, 71, 105, 114
nirodha 12
nirvāṇa 2, 11–14, 40, 247
niścaya (see determination)
niácaya-pratyaya 160
Nishida, K. 115, 116
nominalism 26, 51, 217, 240
non-being 13, 257, 259
non-duality 205, 255, 261,
and ethics 10–11, 290–291, 295, 315
and hermeneutics 332–333
and language 274–275, 276–277
subject-object 10–11, 74–75, 80–81, 166–167, 188–213
and the two truths 63–65, 70, 80–81, 315
non-egocentrism 40
non-sectarianism 23
noumena 39
numerical identity 92–93
Nyāya 102, 104, 112, 216, 223–224, 234–235, 242, 244, 251–252
Nyāyabindu (see Epitome of Philosophy)
Nyingma (sNying ma) tradition 22

object of negation 56, 59, 61–62, 66, 71, 75, 111, 115, 129, n. 9, 130,
On Certainty 47, 142, 198, 223
On the Basis of Morality 10
On the Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness 9
oral lineage 22
ordination lineage 21
Ornament of Mahāyāna Sūtras 268
Ornament of the Middle Way 82–83, 144, 199, 200
Ōsakusendaba (see A King Requests Saindhava)
outer sense 177, 193
Outlines of Pyrrhonism 37

pain 7
Pāli 16–17
Abhidharma 16, 46, n. 14
Buddhism 16
canon 15, 25, 105
suttas 16, 244, 268, n. 9
tradition 17
Panchen Chokyi Nyima (Thub bstan chos kyi nyi ma) 22
parabhāva 61, 67
paracompleteness 248
paraconsistent logic 68, 81, 248
paradox 65–70, 80–81, 204, 245–246, 254–256
Paramārthasamutgtāta 71
paramartha-satya (see ultimate truth)
paratantra (see dependent nature)
Parfit, D. 45, n. 13, 93–94
parikalpita (see imagined nature)
pariniṣpanna (see consummate nature)
Path of Purification (see Visuddhimagga)
perception
and consciousness 132–135
and dukkha 13
and experience 122
and illusion 86, 180–181
as a pramāṇa 216, 218, 236
and qualia 156–162
and reflexive awareness 136–144
as a skhanda 127, 130
Tsongkhapa on 151–152
Perdue, D. 244, n. 2
Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra in 8,000 verses 18, 65–66
Perfection of Wisdom sūtras 18, 59, 61, 65, 77, 194, 244, 269
personal identity
and convention 94, 102, 108–109, 111–113, 120–121, 128–129, 196
diachronic 91–92, 94, 96, 99, 102
ego-identity 116–117, 120
personalist 109
pervasion (vyapti) 217
pessimistic induction 237
phenomenal concept 132–133, 155, 157
phenomenal properties 133, 136, 156–157, 160, 162
phenomenology 175–179
deep phenomenlogy 179–180, 183
 and emptiness 35, 72–76
moral phenomenology 279, 294–317
and ontology 199
and self-consciousness 162–167, 172–174, 212–213
surface phenomenology 179–184, 188
Tracy Chapman on 179
and the three natures 72–76, 186–206
Vasubandhu’s 87, 155, 186–193, 205–206, 210
and Yogācāra 72–76, 186–209
Philosophical Investigations 33, 75, 112, 126, 178, 198, 201, 250, 254, 257, 267
Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch 20
Plato 96
Possible worlds 88
Powers, J. 134, n. 14
pragmatism 234, 236–237, 246
Prajñāparamitā sūtras (see Perfection of Wisdom sutras)
Prajñāparamitā-Hṛdāya sutra (see Heart of Wisdom Sūtra)
prajñāptisāt 18, 46, 59
pramāṇa 145, 214–217, 232–238,
and apoha 222
Candrakīrti on 222–234
Huiyan on 224–225
conventional Pramāṇa 226–234
Nyāya theory 222–223
ultimate Pramāṇa 233
Pramāṇasammucāya (see Encyclopedia of Epistemology)
Pramāṇavāda 20, 215, 223
prameya 215–216, 224–225, 235, 237–238
Prapañca 89
prāsaṅgika (see reductio-wielders)
pratītya-samutpāda 2, 279
pratijñā 215, 250, 267
pratyakṣa 216
pratyaya 28–29
pratyekabuddhas 231
preta 35
primal confusion 9–11
Candrakīrti on 114–115
as origin of dukkha 2, 11, 28, 52
and ethics 306
Indigo girls on 6
and introspection 208
and intuitions 89
and pramāṇa 50, n. 15
as superimposition 9–11, 52, 68
primitive identity 96–97
primordial awakening 21
Profound Meaning of Mahāyāna 257
protension 102
Pudgalavāda 109–111
puruṣārthas 220, 222, 236
Pyrrhonian skepticism 37

qualia 122–123, 152, 156–162, 169, 206–207

qualitative consciousness (see phenomenal consciousness)
qualitative state 167–168, 169
Questions of King Milinda 42–44, 46, 47, 53–54, 106–109, 112
Quine, W.V. 36, 50, 96, 190

rang rgyud pa (see those who advance their own argument)

Ratnakīrti 49, 51, 221–222
Ratnāvalī (see Jewel Rosary of Advice to the King)
realism 63, 85, 87, 203
Geluk 151
Madhyamaka 65, 111
about the self 119
Reality According to the Abhidhamma 60
rebirth 18
reduction 58, 60
mereological reduction 59
ontological reduction 59
phenomenological reduction 199
reductio-wielders 19, 58, n. 1
reflexive awareness, 135–149, 186, n. 4
Candrakīrti on 133, 137, 140–144, 148–149, 212
and consciousness 135–144
memory argument 140–142
and self-knowledge 135–152
and subjectivity 136–144
Tsongkhapa on 136, 148–152
reg pa (see contact)
reification 13, 46–48, 70, 116, 118, 208, 211
Reply to Objections 234–236, 251–254
representation 50, 95, 133–134, 148, 158–159, 162
responsiveness 123
retention 102
Ri-meh (Ris-med, non-sectarianism) 23, 71
“rock” problem 142
Routley, R. 242
rūpa (matter) 12, 127
śabda (testimony, scriptural authority) 216, 225

Saddharma Puṇḍarīka Sūtra (see Lotus Sūtra)

Saddhatissa, H, 291, n. 7
Sakya tradition 22, 136
Sakya Chokden (Sha skya mchog ldan) 22, 136
Sakya Pandita (Chos rje sa skya pan di ta kun dga’ rgyal mtshan) 22, 147, 148, 267
samanantara-pratyaya 30
saṃdhinirmocana sutra (see Discourse Unraveling the Thought)
saṃjñā 127, 127 n. 7, 287
sammuti 46, n. 14
samprajaña 127, 304
saṃsāra 28, 254
samskāra 12, 59
saṃveda 127
samvṛti 39, 46, n. 14, 57, 84, 166, 277
samvṛti-satya 57
San Lun 257
Sanskrit 17, 22
Śāntarakṣita
on conventional reality 82–87, 200
on introspection 201, 203
on reflexive awareness 136, 144, 212
on the self 103–105
synthesis of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra 82–87, 83, n. 7, 89, 199–203
and transmission to Tibet 21
on the two truths 82–87
on unity of consciousness 103–104, 111
and Yogācāra as phenomenology 71, 82–87, 199–203
Śāntideva 119, 140–142, 303, 307–310, 315
Sarnath 279
Sartre, J-P. 147, 176
sarvaga (continuously operative) 287
Sarvastivāda 42, n. 11
satya 56–57, 228
Sautrāntika 158–159, 164
schemata 116
Schopenhauer, A. 10, 38, 181
Schwitzgebel, E. 178
scriptural authority (śabda) 216, 225, 236
Seal, B. 3
self
and aggregates 106
basis of designation 48
Candrakīrti on 106, 110–115, 205–207, 209
and consciousness 166, 186, 205–206, 211–213
Dōgen on 69–71
and ethics 120
and experiential integration 104
and identity 91–93, 95–96
and illusion 115, 118, 166
and intentionality 117–118
and impermanence 104
Madhyamaka conceptions of 109–116
Milindapaña on 105–109
Orthodox Indian views 102–104
Pāli account of 105–106
self-knowledge 145–152, 198
mere self 48
narrative self 101
 physical basis 100–101
Śāntarakṣita on 103–105
Tsongkhapa on 48
Uddyokatara on 102–103
Western positions 91–101
self-awareness 142, 212
self-consciousness 99, 162–163, 166, 174, 176, 185
self-grasping 13, 111, 114, 117–118, 130
self-knowledge 193, 201–202
Candrakīrti on 133, 137 155, 169–170, 184, 197–198
Dignāga on 137–138
Kriegel on 138–139
and consciousness 171–174
higher-order models 152–156
Mitchell on 171
and reflexivity 135–146
and self-luminosity 147–152
self-luminosity 135–136, 146–147
Sellars, W. 75, 85, 90, 99–100, n. 10, 126, 133, 136, 142, 198, 325, n. 20
sensation 127, 206
sentience 144
sevenfold analysis (Candrakīrti’s) 112–113, 197
Sextus Empiricus 37
Sharf, R. 266, n. 7
shes bzhin(see mindfulness)
Shoemaker, S. 147, n. 15
Siderits, M. 3, 18, 32, 59, 60, 62, n. 8300
silence 243, 254–266
skandha 12, 106, 117, 126–127
and consciousness 128, 130–131
and khanda 12
five skandhas 12, 106, 196
skepticism 65–66
skillful means (upāya) 57–58, 272, 297
skye ba ngo on yid med pa (see emptiness with respect to production)
smṛti (see mindfulness)
sortal 53–54
sous erasure 257–258
sparsa (see contact)
specific identity 92–93
Spelman, E. 98, n. 9
spontaneity 21, 70–71, 145, 174, 261, 267, 288, 289, 309, 317
śrāvaka 231
Śrāvakayāna 16–18, 42, 268, n. 9
srid ‘khor (see bhāvacakra)
Steinkellner, E. 215, n. 1
Sthiramati 34, 71, 267–268
Stoltz, A. 330, n. 6
Strawson, G. 178
structuralism 67
Stubenberg, L. 142–143
subjectivity 35, 206–213
and consciousness 123–126
Dōgen on 213
higher order theories of 152–156
expert 70–71, 174
Merleau-Ponty on 211–212
Nishida on 115
and reflexivity 136–144
and the self 95, 99, 119–120, 162–167
and self-luminosity 146–152
transformation of 70–71
and qualia 156–162, 206–207
and unity of consciousness 102–104
and “what it is like” 206–209
Yogācāra accounts of 186–206, 209–210
Zen accounts of 211
and zombies 170–171
subject-object duality 75, 115, 160, 167, 192–193, 200, 205, 208, 213
substantial existence (see dravyasāt)
suffering (dukkha) 2, 6–7, 10, 13, 16, 18, 39, 126, 179, 240, 282–283, 286, 301
cessation of, 16
and consciousness 26
of change 8
and ethics 18, 281–282, 286
as fundamental commitment 2
of pervasive conditioning 8
pervasiveness of 6–7
and primal confusion 10, 13
Sumaṅgala 60
śūnya 2
śūnyatā 18
supporting condition 29, 77
sūtra 6, 18, 20
and sutta 6
Mahāyāna sutras 17
Sūtra on the Occasion of the Entry of the Buddha into Final Nirvāṇa 319
sutta 6, 17, 57
and sūtra 6
Pāli Suttas 16, 244, n. 268
svabhāva 2, 61–67, 98, 251
svaprakaśa (self-illumination) 143
svasaṃvedanā (reflexive awareness) 127, 136
svatantrika (see those who advance their own argument)

Takṣaśilā 22
Tanaka, K. 238, n. 11
tantra 273–277
Tattvasaṃgraha (see Encyclopedia of Ontology)
Tendai 21
tetralemma (catuṣkoti) 120, 204–205, 242–245, 246–248, 257–260, 265, 274–275
tha snyad (conventional, nominal) 57, 238
tha snyad bden pa (nominal or conventional truth) 58
thab mkhas (upāya, skilful means) 272–273
Thakchöe, S. 81, n. 5, 134, n. 14
thal ‘gyur pa (see reductio-wielders)
Theravāda 16, 289, 291
Thirty Stanzas 34, 71, 258
Thompson, E. 35, n. 9, 100, 117–118, 130, n. 10, 164, 172, n. 21, 175–176, 208, 211–212
those who advance their own argument 19, n.58
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous 38, 159
Three Treatise Shool (Sanlun) 257
Three-dimensionalism 52–53, 88
Three-natures 72–74, 77–78, 186, 188
Three-naturelessnesses 72–75, 78
Thurman, R. 224, n. 10, 273–277
Tiantai 20–21
Tibet 21–23
Tibetan schools 21–22
Tillemans, T. 244, n. 2
Transcendental Aesthetic 191
transcendental subject 104
translation 4, 5, 21–22, 56, 289, 322, 330–333
Treatise of Human Nature 107
Treatise on the Golden Lion 77
Treatise on the Three Natures 71, 187, 193, 202,
Trimsikakārikā (see Thirty Stanzas)
Trisvabhāva (see three natures)
Trisvabhāvanirdeśa (see Treatise on the Three Natures)
tropes (dharmas as) 16
Tropes of Anasedemus 34, 37
truth 47, 56, 88, 201, 226, 228, 238–239, 269
Tshad ma rnam ‘grel (see Elucidation of Epistemology)
tshad ma (Pramāṇa) 214, 215
mtshan nyid ngo bo nyid med pa (see emptiness with respect to characteristic)
Tsongkhapa (Tsong kha pa)
And convention 39–40,
on conventional reality 39–40, 46–48, 155, 226–234, 267, 271–272
on conventional truth 226–234
on dependent origination 26
on doxography 19–20
on emptiness 31–32, 58, n. 1, 67
and the Geluk school 22
on ignorance or primal confusion 9
on introspection 133, 151–152, 169–170, 184
on karma 284
on knowledge 230–234
on language 245, 267, 270–271
on the object of negation 71
on reflexive awareness 136, 148–152
 on the self 48
on transformation 13
on the two truths 81, n. 5
and Wittgenstein 39–40, 133
on Yogācāra 130
tshor ba (see hedonic tone)
Twenty Stanzas 34, 71
Twenty Verses 32, 75
Twilight of the Idols 98
two realities (see two truths)
two truths 56–59, 112, 120, 195, 202, 239–240, 258
Abhidharma conception 79–80
Candrakīrti on truths 80, 82–84
Dōgen on 70–71
fourfold two truths 258
and knowledge 239–241
in Madhyamaka 46, 64–65, 80–81
in Mahāyāna 18–19, 79–87
Nāgārjuna on 59–61, 64–65, 80–81, 82
and paradox 80–81
Śāntarakṣita on 82–87
Tsongkhapa on 81, n. 5
In Yogācāra 81–82
Tzohar, R. 268–270

Uddyotakara 102–104
ultimate existence 47, 59, 61, 79, 232, 245
ultimate nature 227, 231, 232
ultimate non-existence 245
ultimate Pramāṇa 238
ultimate reality 19, 46, 63, 81, 121, 206, 314
ultimate truth 18, 58
as emptiness 80
and ethics 315
as identical to conventional truth 80, 88, 227–228, 239–240
as ineffable 255–266
as literal truth 24, 58
unconscious 115
universals
and apoha 48–54, 221–222
and continua 51–54
Dharmakīrti on 50–51
Dignāga on 49–50
Huizhao on 225
and inference 217
and meaning 250–251, 274
meaning universal 274
Ratnakīrti on 221–222
term universal 274
upadāna-niḥsvabhāvataḥ (see production)
upamāna (inference) 216, 229, 236
upāya (see skillful means)
upekkhā (see equanimity)
upekṣā (see equanimity)

Vaibhāśika 133, 158, 159

Vajrachedika (see Diamond Cutter)
Vasanas (predispositions) 219, 222
Varela, F. 35, n. 9
Vasubandhu
on emptiness 75, 192–193
idealism 34, 75
phenomenology 87, 155, 186–193, 205–206, 210
and Yogācāra 20, 71
vedanā 12, 127, 185, 287
Vedānta 80
Vigrahavyāvārtanī (see Reply to Objections)
vijñāna 12, 127–130, 185
Vijnānavāda 20, 71
Vijñaptimātra 20, 71
Vikramśīla 22
Vimalakīrti 64, 260
Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sūtra (see Discourse of Vimalakīrti)
Vimśatikā (see Twenty Verses)
Vinaya 15–16
visual field 180–181, 188
Visuddhimagga (see Path of Purification)
vyapti 217
vyāvahāra 39, 227, 238

Walser, J. 19, n. 10
Westerhoff, J. 87, n. 11, 238, n. 17, 251, n. 3
“what it is like” 206–207
without-thinking 173
Wittgenstein, L. n. 58, n.99–100
on analogy 223
and Candrakīrti 39–40
on causality 31
on convention 37–38, 112
on conventionalism 39–40, 47, 99–100, n,. 10, 142, 257
on epistemology 47, 142
on language as a tool 58, n. 1, 250, 254, 257, 267, 275–276
on mereological dependence 33
on nominalism 51–52
on self-knowledge 75, 126, 133, 178, 198, 201
on subjectivity 10
and Tsongkhapa 39–40, 133
yid dbang shes (see manas-vijñāna, introspective consciousness)

Yogācāra 71–76,
 Candrakīrti on 71, 130, 137, 140–144, 193–198
conventional reality 81, 87, 200
and Madhyamaka 22, 77, 86–87, 189, 199–200, 202, n.83
and consciousness 129, 173–174
and dependent orgination 27, 33
on emptiness 72–76
idealism 20, 85, 201
on language 268–270
Mipham on 85
and metaphysics 72
and perception 160–161
and phenomenology 20, 85, 87–89, 186–193, 203, 209
and reflexive awareness 136–144
and subjectivity 186–206, 209–210
and three natures 72–74
and three naturelessnesses 72–75
on the two truths 81–82
Tsongkhapa on 130
yongs su grub pa (parinispanna, see consummate nature)
Yuktiṣaṣṭikāvṛtti (see Commentary on Sixty Stanzas of Reasoning)

Zahavi, D. 130, n. 10, 162–165, 178

Zen 21, 69, 173–174, 204, 211–212
gzhan dbang (see dependent nature)gzhan stong 22zombies 122, 125, 132, 133, 167–171 206