Emptiness in the Ultimate Sense

[Dhivan]

It is wonderful when scholars re-discover some ancient text long since thought lost. In this case, an early Buddhist text entitled the ‘Discourse on Emptiness in the Ultimate Sense’ (Paramārthaśūnyatā Sūtra) has recently come to light after many centuries. In fact, it wasn’t actually lost, as it had been preserved in Chinese translation as Saṃyukta Āgama 335, translated into English by Choong Mun-Keat (1999), and also as Ekottarīka Āgama 37.7. Moreover, the ancient Abhidharma masters such as Vasubandhu preserved quotations of the highlights of this discourse in surviving Sanskrit works, which have been collected and translated into French by Etienne Lamotte (1973) and into English in Lamotte (1993). But still it is something of a miracle for the entire discourse to re-appear after so many centuries. Matsuda Kazunobu (2024) has recently published his edited version of it, recovered from the Tridaṇḍa-mālā, a long manuscript that has been preserved at sPos-khang monastery in Tibet. While the full story is presented in Hartmann, Matsuda, and Szánto (2022), the Tridaṇḍa-mālā consists in forty chapters, each one composed of a canonical discourse and a number of exegetical stanzas connected with it. In one of those chapters, the whole of the Paramārthaśūnyatā Sūtra is preserved. So here it is in an English translation by myself:

Discourse on Emptiness in the Ultimate Sense

Thus have I heard. At one time the Blessed One was living among the Kurus, in a village of the Kurus called Kalmāṣadamya. There the Blessed One addressed the monks:

‘Monks, I will teach you the Dharma that is lovely in its beginning, lovely in its middle and lovely at its conclusion, complete in both spirit and letter, and I will proclaim a fulfilled, purified and perfectly pure holy life – namely, a formulation of the Dharma called “emptiness in the ultimate sense” (paramamārtha-śūnyatā). Listen well and pay good attention, I will speak.

‘What is the formulation of the Dharma called “emptiness in the ultimate sense”? Monks, the eye, when it arises, does not come from anywhere. When it ceases, it does not go into storage somewhere else. Thus indeed, monks, the eye having not existed comes into existence, and having existed goes back again [into non-existence]. There is action (karma ) and there is the result [of action], but no agent is perceived who puts down these constituents (skandhas) and takes some other constituents up again, other than as a convention of the Dharma.

‘Monks, the ear… the nose… the tongue… the body… the mind, when it arises, does not come from anywhere. When it ceases, it does not go into storage somewhere else. Thus indeed, monks, the mind having not existed comes into existence, and having existed goes back again [into non-existence]. There is action (karma ) and there is the result [of action], but no agent is perceived who puts down these constituents (skandhas) and takes some other constituents up again, other than as a convention of the Dharma.

‘In this regard, this is a convention of the Dharma, namely: This being, that becomes; from the arising of this, that arises. Namely, with ignorance as condition there are formative forces. With formative forces as condition there is consciousness. With consciousness as condition there is name and form. With name and form as condition there are the six sense spheres. With the six sense spheres as condition there is contact. With contact as condition there is feeling. With feeling as condition there is craving. With craving as condition there is appropriation. With appropriation as condition there is continued existence. With continued existence as condition there is birth. With birth as condition, ageing and death, grief, sorrow, pain, misery and despair come into existence. In this way there is the origin of this whole mass of unsatisfactoriness.

‘This not being, that does not become. From the ceasing of this, that ceases. Namely, from the ceasing of ignorance there is the ceasing of formative forces. From the ceasing of formative forces there is the ceasing of consciousness. From the ceasing of consciousness there is the ceasing of name and form. From the ceasing of name and form there is the ceasing of the six sense spheres. From the ceasing of the six sense spheres there is the ceasing of contact. From the ceasing of contact there is the ceasing of feeling. From the ceasing of feeling there is the ceasing of craving. From the ceasing of craving there is the ceasing of appropriation. From the ceasing of appropriation there is the ceasing of continued existence. From the ceasing of continued existence there is the ceasing of birth. From the ceasing of birth, ageing and death, grief, sorrow, pain, misery and despair cease. In this way there is the cessation of this whole mass of unsatisfactoriness. I say that this is the formulation of the Dharma called “emptiness in the ultimate sense”.

‘Monks, when I said that I will teach you the Dharma that is lovely in its beginning, lovely in its middle and lovely at its conclusion, complete in both spirit and letter, and I will proclaim a fulfilled, purified and perfectly pure holy life, my reply was this – namely, a formulation of the Dharma called “emptiness in the ultimate sense”.’

This is what the Blessed One said.

So there is the discourse. Now for some notes about it. The discourse has no parallel in Pāli canonical literature, which may make us wonder how authentic it is: is it really an early Buddhist discourse, or is it the product of later schools wishing to authenticate their own views by creating a discourse attributed to the Buddha about them? Shì Hùifēng (2016: 76–85), in his study of emptiness in the Buddhist schools, has considered the possibility that the discourse may be the product of later sectarian developments among the Sthavīra schools. But he argues that the Sthavīra Sarvāstivādin version (preserved as Saṃyukta Āgama 335) and the Sthavīra Mahāsaṅghika version (preserved as Ekottarīka Āgama 37: 7) are nearly identical, suggesting that the Theravādins may have simply lost their version. With this in mind, one can cautiously take the Paramārthaśūnyatā Sūtra to show how at least some early Buddhists understood the Buddha’s teaching of dependent arising.

So what is ‘emptiness in the ultimate sense’? The discourse explains that:

‘the eye, when it arises, does not come from anywhere. When it ceases, it does not go into storage somewhere else. Thus indeed, monks, the eye having not existed comes into existence, and having existed goes back again [into non-existence]. There is action and there is the result [of action], but no agent is perceived who puts down these constituents (skandhas) and puts some other constituents back together, other than as a dharmasaṃketa.’

This reference to ‘the eye’ (cakṣu) can be taken to mean the experiential domain or sphere (āyatana) of sight, which is a condition for the ordinary, unawakened experience of self and world. The Buddha repeats the teaching for the other five sense spheres, namely, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. This implies that common-sense realism about sense experience is unwarranted; the world constituted by the senses is empty in an ultimate sense. Therefore, the agent (kāraka) who does good and bad actions based on the assumptions of common-sense realism, who believes they exist as a self or person identical through time, and who undergoes the process of rebirth, is a ‘convention of the teaching’ (dharmasaṃketa) in the sense of a worldly convention. The Buddha goes on to say:

‘In this connection, this is a convention of the teaching’ (dharmasaṃketa), namely: This being, that becomes; from the arising of this, that arises. Namely, with ignorance as condition there are formative forces…’

The discourse goes on to rehearse the rest of the standard formula of dependent arising in its natural and contrary course.

The idea that karma and rebirth as well as dependent arising is all a ‘convention of the teaching’ might seem unusual in an early Buddhist discourse, and more like later Prajñāpāramitā discourses. However, it’s important to bear in mind that there is nothing in the discourse which is at odds with the Pāli discourses we may be more familiar with. Yet the ‘Discourse on Emptiness in the Ultimate Sense’ also allows us to appreciate how some of the great teachings on emptiness in the Mahāyāna may not have seemed quite so novel in a context in which our newly re-discovered discourse was well-known.

Paramārthaśūnyatā-sūtra

Sanskrit text from Matsuda (2024), retrieved from the Tridaṇḍa-māla, = SĀ 335

§1 evaṃ mayā śrutam ekasmin samaye bhagavān kuruṣu viharati | kalmāṣadamyo nāma kuruṇor nigamaḥ | tatra bhagavān bhikṣūn āmantrayate sma | dharmam vo bhikṣavo deśayiṣyāmi | ādau kalyāṇaṃ madhye kalyāṇaṃ paryavasāne kalyāṇaṃ svartham suvyañjanaṃ kevalaṃ paripūrṇaṃ pariśuddhaṃ paryavadātaṃ brahmacaryaṃ saṃprakāśayiṣyāmi | yad uta paramārtha­śūnyatā nāma dharmaparyāyaḥ | taṃ śṛṇuta sādhu ca suṣṭhu ca manasikuruta bhāṣiṣye ||

§2 paramārthaśūnyatādharmaparyāyaḥ katamaḥ | cakṣur bhikṣava utpadyamānaṃ na kutaścid āgacchati | nirudhyamānaṃ na kvacit saṃnicayaṃ gacchati | iti hi bhikṣavaś cakṣur abhūtvā bhavati bhūtvā ca prativigacchati | asti karmāsti vipākaḥ kārakas tu nopalabhyate | ya imāṃś ca skandhān nikṣipaty anyāṃś ca skandhān pratisaṃdadhāti nānyatra dharmasaṃketāt |

§3 śrotraṃ ghrāṇaṃ jihvā kāyo mano bhikṣava utpadyamānaṃ na kutaścid āgacchati | nirudhyamānaṃ na kvacid saṃnicayaṃ gacchati | iti hi bhikṣavo mano ʼbhūtvā bhavati bhūtvā ca prativigacchati | asti karmāsti vipākaḥ kārakas tu nopalabhyate | ya imāṃś ca skandhān nikṣipaty anyāṃś ca skandhān pratisaṃdhatte nānyatra dharmasaṃketāt |

§4 tatrāyaṃ dharmasaṃketo yad utāsmin satīdaṃ bhavaty asyotpādād idam utpadyate | yad utāvidyāpratyayāḥ saṃskārāḥ saṃskārapratyayaṃ vijñānaṃ vijñānapratyayaṃ nāmarūpaṃ nā- marūpapratyayaṃ ṣaḍāyatanaṃ ṣaḍāyatanapratyayaḥ sparśaḥ sparśapratyayā vedanā vedanā- pratyayā tṛṣṇā tṛṣṇāpratyayam upādānam upādānapratyayo bhavo bhavapratyayā jātir jātipratyayā jarāmaraṇaśokaparidevaduḥkhadaurmanasyopāyāsāḥ saṃbhavanti | evam asya kevalasya mahato duḥkhaskandhasya samudayo bhavati |

§5 yad utāsminn asatīdan na bhavaty asya nirodhād idaṃ nirudhyate | yad utāvidyānirodhāt saṃskāranirodhaḥ saṃskāranirodhād vijñānanirodho vijñānaniro dhād nāmarūpanirodho nāmarūpanirodhāt ṣaḍāyatananirodhaḥ ṣaḍāyatananirodhāt sparśanirodhaḥ sparśanirodhād vedanā- nirodho vedanānirodhāt tṛṣṇānirodhas tṛṣṇānirodhād upādānanirodha upādānanirodhād bhava- nirodho bhavanirodhāj jātinirodho jātinirodhāj jarāmaraṇaśokaparidevaduḥkhadaurmanasyopāyāsā nirudhyante | evam asya kevalasya mahato duḥkhaskandhasya nirodho bhavati | ayam ucyate paramārthaśūnyatā nāma dharmaparyāyaḥ |

§6 dharmaṃ vo bhikṣavo deśayiṣyāmi | ādau kalyāṇaṃ madhye kalyāṇaṃ paryavasāne kalyāṇaṃ svarthaṃ suvyañjanaṃ kevalaṃ paripūrṇaṃ pariśuddhaṃ paryavadātaṃ brahmacaryaṃ saṃpra- kāśayiṣyāmi | yad uta paramārthaśūnyatā nāma dharmaparyāya iti me yad uktam idam etat pratyuktam || idam avocad bhagavān ||

References

Choong, Mun-keat. 1999. The Notion of Emptiness in Early Buddhism. 2nd ed. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

Hartmann, Jens-Uwe, Kazunobu Matsuda, and Péter-Dániel Szánto. 2022. ‘The Benefit of Cooperation: Recovering the Śokavinodana Ascribed to Aśvaghoṣa’. In Dharmayātrā: Papers on Ancient South Asian Philosophies, Asian Culture and Their Transmission, edited by Mahinda Deegalle, 173–80. Paris: Nuvis.

Hùifēng, Shì.2016. Old School Emptiness: Hermeneutics, Criticism & Tradition in the Narrative of Śūnyatā. Kaohsiung City, Taiwan: Fo Guang Shan Institute of Humanistic Buddhism.

Lamotte, Étienne. 1973. ‘Trois Sūtra Du Saṃyukta Sur La Vacuité’. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London XXXVI (2): 313–23.

———. 1993. ‘Three Sūtras from the Saṃyuktāgama Concerning Emptiness’. Translated by Sara Boin-Webb. Buddhist Studies Review 10 (1): 1–23.

Matsuda, Kazunobu. 2024. ‘Aśvaghoṣa’s Criticism on Ātman: Sanskrit Text and Japanese Translation of the 8th Tridaṇḍa-Paramārthaśūnyatā-Sūtra’. Journal of School of Buddhism CVIII:1–22.

[Jayarava]

Hi Dhivan,

This is très intéressant. Sādhu. Any plans to formally publish this?

I can easily believe that this is “early Buddhist”. My sense is that the stream of ideas that manifests in Prajñāpāramitā texts is connected with exactly these kinds of discourses. As you suggest, there’s not much that is wholly new in Prajñāpāramitā, and the idea that it represents a complete break with the past is not tenable.

I’m particularly interested in this passage:

@Dhivan

‘What is the formulation of the Dharma called “emptiness in the ultimate sense”? Monks, the eye, when it arises, does not come from anywhere. When it ceases, it does not go into storage somewhere else. Thus indeed, monks, the eye having not existed comes into existence, and having existed goes back again [into non-existence]. There is action (karma ) and there is the result [of action], but no agent is perceived who puts down these constituents (skandhas) and takes some other constituents up again, other than as a convention of the Dharma.

§2 paramārthaśūnyatādharmaparyāyaḥ katamaḥ | cakṣur bhikṣava utpadyamānaṃ na kutaścid āgacchati | nirudhyamānaṃ na kvacit saṃnicayaṃ gacchati | iti hi bhikṣavaś cakṣur abhūtvā bhavati bhūtvā ca prativigacchati | asti karmāsti vipākaḥ kārakas tu nopalabhyate | ya imāṃś ca skandhān nikṣipaty anyāṃś ca skandhān pratisaṃdadhāti nānyatra dharmasaṃketāt |

I find this completely consistent with the ideas about śūnyatā that I have developed from Orsborn’s comments on the Heart Sutra and Sue Hamilton’s phenomenological approach to Pāli.

Sensory experience may arise, but in arising (utpadyamānaṃ ) it does not arrive from anywhere (na kutaścid āgacchati). And in ceasing it does not go into storage anywhere (na kvacit saṃnicayaṃ gacchati ). In short, having ceased, sensory experience is simply absent (śūnya). And this is absence is the ultimate sense (parama-artha) of śūṇyatā, at least prior to Nāgārjuna’s interventions.

This is because, when sensory experience ceases—for example, because we stop paying attention to it (anupalambha; Pāli amanisakāra) in meditation—there is nothing; i.e. we know nothing. Of course, there are many interesting states one can be in prior to cessation, in which one may see visions and feel bliss and many other kinds of rarified sensory experience. People speak very highly of these states, but a strand of ancient Buddhism has always been primarily aimed at cessation and dwelling in absence (suññatāvihāra).

My sense is that it was precisely this that distinguished Buddhists from other srāmaṇa groups. Everyone was practising sensory deprivation or some form of austerity, but Buddhists discovered that if you keep going into sensory deprivation, eventually everything just stops, there is a gap in the stream of consciousness which may last for up to 6 or 7 days, until it starts up again. NB: this is something that living meditators talk about, not something that only happens in the texts.

Here, the term nopalabhyate “is not apprehended” is probably not incidental. Verbs from upa√labh, which have an epistemic flavour, feature prominently in Prajñāpāramitā. In Aṣṭa, for example, Subhuti (speaking as if from the absence of sensory experience) often says things like

so 'haṃ bhagavan bodhisatvaṃ vā bodhisatvadharmaṃ vā avindan anupalabhamāno 'samanupaśyan, prajñāpāramitām apy avindan anupalabhamāno 'samanupaśyan katamaṃ bodhisatvaṃ katamasyāṃ prajñāpāramitāyām avavadiṣyāmi anuśāsiṣyāmi? (Vaidya 1960, 3)

Bhagavan, not finding, apprehending, or perceiving a dharma “bodhisatva”, also not finding, apprehending, or perceiving “prajñāpāramitā”… what bodhisatva could I teach about and instruct in prajñāpāramitā.

Subhūti seems to carefully avoid ever saying that dharmas don’t exist (nāsti). Sometimes, Śāriputra will ask if something exists, and Subhūti will admonish him and insist on an epistemic perspective: avindan anupalabhamāno 'samanupaśyan “not finding, not apprehending, not perceiving”. Subhūti never concludes that because a dharma is not perceived that it doesn’t exist.

Subhūti makes a great deal more sense if we take him to reflect the state of absence. In David Chapman’s immortal phrase, Subhūti is “effing the ineffable”. But these early texts stop short of taking the absence of sensory experience to be reality. I believe that Nāgārjuna does take this step of equating absence with reality and it is precisely this that distinguishes him from early Buddhists and the Prajñāpāramitā-kāra.

Even more striking in this text is the admission that phenomena (dharmāḥ) do come into and pass out of being. In other contexts, we might expect a text talking about śūnyatā to insist that dharmas simply don’t exist, in the sense that they are not permanent or unchanging.

It is interesting, therefore, to see Choong’s English translation say:

“Thus, the eye, being not real, arises;” Which ought to correspond to
如是眼不實而生。(SA 335)

Which ought to, but doesn’t quite, correspond to

iti hi bhikṣavaś cakṣur abhūtvā bhavati bhūtvā ca prativigacchati

I agree with Dhīvan that here abhūtvā bhavati must mean something like “having not existed, it comes into existence”. And I would argue that this is not quite the same are “not being real, it arises”. The problem is in the Chinese translation which has caught the wrong connotation of (a)bhūtvā. What we might expect here is simply wú 無 “nonexistent” (Skt. asat) contrasted with yǒu 有 “existent” (Skt. sat). The fact that the Chinese translator chose shí 實 “real” has obscured the meaning somewhat. Ironically, the translator uses the characters 無有 in a different (non-technical) sense:

眼生時無有來處
Choong: “when the eye arises, there is no place from which it comes;”
i.e. When 時 eye 眼 arises 生: [it] does not have 無有, a coming-from 來 place 處.

Coming back to the Sanskrit text, I’ve always found this definition of “real” in terms of being eternal and unchanging rather arbitrary and problematic. In the Paramārthaśūnyatā-sūtra, it appears to be unproblematic for a nonexistent dharma to come into existence and later pass out of existence. Because, here, a dharma is a phenomenon in the strict sense (i.e. something perceived) and not a noumenon (something that exists in it’s own right). In this sense, all phenomena are “mental” phenomena by definition.

My sense here is that early Buddhists were making a nascent and imprecise distinction between the ontology of experience and the ontology of the world. I have also used the term “common sense realism” to describe the early Buddhist ontology of the world: there are objects, they give off sensory “information” (rūpa, śabda … dharmāḥ) that our sense organs discriminate (vijānāti) into “objects”. As I say, rūpa is to the eye as śabda is to the ear; but also as dharma is to the manas. And rūpaskandha is just a metonymic generalisation of this for all sensory modes. Ancient India philosophers generally, unlike their Greek counterparts were not much interested in an ontology of the world. They were almost entirely focussed on the ontology of experience. The discovery of nirvāṇa/śūnyatā only intensified this focus for Buddhists.

This is followed by another very interesting passage:

ya imāṃś ca skandhān nikṣipaty anyāṃś ca skandhān pratisaṃdadhāti nānyatra dharmasaṃketāt |

but no agent is perceived who puts down these constituents (skandhas) and takes some other constituents up again, other than as a convention of the Dharma.

(FYI: the agent (kāraka) is actually in the previous sentence—kārakas tu nopalabhyate— and is here referred to by a pronoun ya “that one”. This is just an observation for anyone trying to follow the text, it’s not a criticism.).

It is common to take the skandhas to be a temporary collocation of elements that constitute the agent. We are probably all familiar with the Vajira Sutta ( SN 5:10) passage about the khandhas and the chariot. This argues that a being “exists” when the khandhas are present and arranged in the right way, but is not more than this. We usually forget the last verse, though, which says

Dukkhameva hi sambhoti,
dukkhaṁ tiṭṭhati veti ca;
Nāññatra dukkhā sambhoti,
nāññaṁ dukkhā nirujjhatī”ti.

For, only dukkha arises
Dukkha remains, and ceases
Nothing other than dukkha arises
Nothing other than dukkha ceases.

This is one of those texts which confirms that dukkha is sensory experience. Which Rupert Gethin noted in 1986 and Sue Hamilton (2000) took up in her book. I.e. it’s not that we have experiences and some are characterised by dukkha. Rather dukkha is a Buddhist synonym for sensory experience. Another closely related synonym is loka “world”. When Early Buddhists talk about “the world” they often mean the world of sensory experience. This is most obvious in the Pāli suttas that talk about the “end of the world” (loko anto) as a synonym of vimokkha. For example, the Rohitassa Sutta (SN 2.26)

Na kho panāhaṁ, āvuso, appatvā lokassa antaṁ dukkhassa antakiriyaṁ vadāmi. Api ca khvāhaṁ, āvuso, imasmiṁyeva byāmamatte kaḷevare sasaññimhi samanake lokañca paññapemi lokasamudayañca lokanirodhañca lokanirodhagāminiñca paṭipadanti.
“However I say, friend, there is no making an end of dukkha, without reaching the end of the world (lokassa antaṁ). And, friend, it is right here in this arm-span measure of body endowed with perception and cognition that I declare the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the way leading to the cessation of the world”.

The end of the world is not to be found “in the world” but within one’s own mind and body. But the phrasing in the Paramārthaśūnyatā-sūtra seems inconsistent with the traditional reading. Rather, here, the skandhas appear to constitute sensory experience. And thus in this context: skandha = dukkha = loka.

When one puts down the skandhas—in my terms, when one dives deeply into sensory deprivation by withdrawing attention from sensory experience—its not the case that one discovers an agent lurking behind experience. Following cessation there is just nothing: an absence (śūnyatā). And it’s not that one is aware of an absence, because awareness itself is an experience that is absent. There’s just a gap in our internal timeline followed by a changed perspective on sensory experience and an ability to act without conscious volition (cetanā). And since cetanā = kamma, one is no longer creating karma, and thus (eventually) liberated from rebirth.

However, if one stops short of cessation, one may well perceive an agent. I believe, but cannot prove, that this is what Sāṃkhyadarśana is, for example. Except they put it differently. Bringing the phenomenal world, i.e. sensory experience, into a state of quiescence, the Sāṃkhya discovered what seemed to be a passive observer—the puruṣa—who they decided was real, i.e. permanent and unchanging; unaffected by sensory experience.

The point of departure for Buddhism was that, with cessation, even this sense of being an observer of experience stops. And there is simply an absence (śūnyatā). Then when sense experience begins again, it does not seem to be centred on an “I”. In my view, this was originally an epistemic observation that gradually ossified into the nonexistence of “self”.

This line of dharmaparyāya was not embraced by Theravādins and thus it is downplayed in, though not entirely absent from, their canon of Buddhist texts. And Prajñāpāramitā goes back to the dawn of Buddhism, even if it wasn’t called that at the time.

I will be working this text into my Heart Sutra book, thanks.

Just a thought, since your Sanskrit text has numbered sections, perhaps you could add these to the translation to facilitate studying the text?

[Jasudho]

Thanks for this.

@Jayarava

The point of departure for Buddhism was that, with cessation, even this sense of being an observer of experience stops. And there is simply an absence (śūnyatā).

And yet, there’s been so much papañanizing about absence.
AN4.173 and AN4.174:

"The scope of the six fields of contact extends as far as the scope of proliferation.
yāvatā papañcassa gati tāvatā channaṁ phassāyatanānaṁ gati.
When the six fields of contact fade away and cease with nothing left over, proliferation stops and is stilled.”
Channaṁ, āvuso, phassāyatanānaṁ asesavirāganirodhā papañcanirodho papañcavūpasamo”ti.

Or as in SA249:
" “To ask ‘Is there no remainder?’ that is meaningless talk.

“To ask ‘Is there both remainder and no remainder?’ that is meaningless talk.

“To ask ‘Is there neither remainder nor no remainder?’ that is meaningless talk.

“But if one says that after the extinction of the six sense-spheres of contact, and the fading away of desire, after cessation, after ending, there is fading away of all meaningless argument and the attaining of nirvāṇa, then this is the teaching of the Buddha.”

[thomaslaw]

@Jayarava

Prajñāpāramitā

This term is not found in the sutra-anga portion of SN/SA.

Does it refer to the middle way of conditioned arising?
E.g. SN 12.15 and SA 301 in SN/SA suttas:

Dependent Origination = Neutral? - The Watercooler - Discuss & Discover (suttacentral.net)

[Vaddha]

@Jayarava

This line of dharmaparyāya was not embraced by Theravādins

Ah, but it was. I had began working on a post about this topic from a slightly different angle. Maybe this could be motivation to continue that, in the case that it is of use to others.

[Malunkyaputta]

Something in me immediately cries “fake” when I look at the level of philosophical elaboration in that Sutta.

[Dhivan]

Thanks Jayarava for your interest and comments. I would say that paramārtha-śūnyatā in this sūtra should be understood to be true of both the six sense spheres and dependent arising, which are both equally a dharma-saṃketa or ‘convention of the teaching’. So they are ‘emptiness in the ultimate sense’ in that conventionally it is necessary to suppose that the world known via the sense spheres is real, and so is the person who is an agent, and so is karma and the result of karma, and so is the teaching on dependent arising as a way of explaining how the experience of a self stuck in transmigration works; but ultimately all this is empty. So I wouldn’t read the discourse as necessarily implying that śūnyatā means ‘absence’ and implying the cessation of sensory experience. Rather, I would understand śūnyatā as a way of talking about a deep insight experience. I understood Matt Orsborn, in Old School Emptiness, to be arguing for this understanding too. It’s about the only way to understand the meaning of the śūnyatā-samādhi. It’s also possible to read the Cūlasuññatā Sutta in this way too. One advantage of this non-revisionary reading of śūnyatā is that it allows us to understand Nāgārjuna as true to early Buddhist teachings, while making some decisive new interventions. However, I would agree with you that the exact meaning of śūnyatā in early Buddhism is open to study and discussion, and it is valuable to question what Orsborn calls the ‘Madhyamaka telos’ of much contemporary scholarly discussion of it.

[Ceisiwr]

@Dhivan

Monks, the eye, when it arises, does not come from anywhere. When it ceases, it does not go into storage somewhere else.

You see this explanation in the Pali commentaries, and in the Visuddhimagga. I suspect this is some old commentary we are seeing in the sutra here. I think it’s to negate the doctrines of something like Samkhya.

[cdpatton]

Pretty interesting topic! Yes, emptiness theory was developed in the early India schools before it became the full blown Prajnaparamita literature. For one reason or another, it isn’t evident in Theravada sources, which has played a part in the bifurcation of modern Buddhism into Theravada vs. Mahayana as a doctrinal split.

@Jayarava

The fact that the Chinese translator chose shí 實 “real” has obscured the meaning somewhat.

That would assume that the Chinese translator was looking at the same words as this later Sanskrit recension. It was probably very similar, but you’d be surprised how little differences in pronunciation changed readings - even something as small as long vowels becoming short. Sometimes Sanskrit conversions made editorial changes, too. 實 may have translated a word like bhūtārtha rather than sat. Generally speaking, 實 is the antonym of emptiness, meaning “substantial, concrete, content, genuine” and so forth. It actually makes better sense to me than mere non-existence.

When I look at EA 37.7, I see that it doesn’t include this elaboration that’s in SA 335 and the Sanskrit. It reads differently in what it does include, too:

若眼起時則起，亦不見來處，滅時則滅，亦不見滅處 。

and

耳、鼻、舌、身、意法亦復如是，起時則起，亦不知來處，滅時則滅，亦不知滅處

It seems as though the verb was chosen to fit the senses being commented on. 見 for the eye, and 知 could mean “to perceive” in general when referring to the senses.

It’s not clear to me what language SA was translating, but EA definitely translated some Prakrit dialect like Gandhari judging by its transliterations. Since the Tridaṇḍa-mālā was recovered from a Tibetan monastery, I’m guessing without looking it up that it postdates the SA and EA by several centuries. It would make more sense to me to judge the Sanskrit against the Chinese translation and notice the later development of the text. Like many others, EA is simpler, SA includes more elaboration, and the Sanskrit would represent the endpoint of the text’s development, more than likely. Which came to rest in Tibet, and was forgotten there.

[Jayarava]

@Dhivan

but ultimately all this is empty.

This is the very view that I mentioned in my comments above, i.e. the idea that the absence of sensory experience is reality. And this view inevitably leads to a certain kind of paradoxical metaphysics, most often associated with Madhyamka.

I have never found this perverse metaphysics very interesting since it entails contradictions and paradoxes: everything both is and is not at the same time. A philosophical cul de sac.

One thing that other Prajñāpāramitā scholars agree with me on, is that contradictions play no formal role in Prajñāpāramitā doctrine (and most of the apparent contradictions are due to poor editing and translation errors). The law of noncontradiction holds. As Jayatilleke long ago observed, early Buddhists also held to the law of noncontradiction. Although I would add that while early Buddhists routinely applied this law of logic, they never stated it as a principle in the way that Aristotle did.

As noted by Hamilton, the early Buddhists were largely unconcerned with metaphysics (i.e. with debating what is “real”; or what “exists”). For example, there are no arguments in Pāli over whether dharmas or cittas “exist” or “do not exist”. Instead, they focussed on describing the mechanisms of sensory experience (skandha, āyatana, dhātu).

What I have added to Hamilton is that early Buddhists mainly studied experience with a view to making it stop, i.e. that, from this point of view, the acme of Buddhism was the cessation and absence of sensory experience. As Anālayo recently commented, this appears to be what Āḷāra the Kālāma and Udaka Rāmaputta were trying to do as well. So it was unlikely to be specific to Buddhism.

For me there is no mileage in reconciling this material with Nāgārjuna (or vice versa).

@Dhivan

Rather, I would understand śūnyatā as a way of talking about a deep insight experience.

What exactly does “a deep insight experience” mean? I’ve heard statements like this for 30 years now, and I still don’t know what anyone means by it.

As I also said above, there are many apparently profound experiences that have content, which we can interpret as “insight”, “bliss”, “visions” etc. But as far as Prajñāpāramitā literature is concerned, these are examples of sensory experience and thus not connected with liberation from rebirth.

The problem with “insight experience”, from the perspective of Prajñāpāramitā, is that it is an experience. The goal is to make experience cease. What Daniel Ingram calls “fruition”. I cite him because his description of fruition is more or less identical to how I read Prajñāpāramitā. e.g.

In this non-state, there is absolutely no time, no space, no reference point, no experience, no mind, no consciousness, no awareness, no background, no foreground, no nothingness, no somethingness, no body, no this, no that, no unity, no duality, and no anything else. “Reality” stops cold and then reappears.

What Ingram is describing is not an experience, but an absence of experience. I think this crops up all over the place, but since modernist traditions downplay the traditional literature on this state, we don’t see it in perspective.

As Aṣṭasāhasrikā says, if there is any kind of rūpa appearing, even if it is merely the thought that “rūpa is absent” that is not Prajñāpāramitā: rather Prajñāpāramitā is the complete absence of rūpam ādi. This is set out, for example, in Chapter 1 of Aṣṭa (though Conze’s translation effectively obscures it).

@Dhivan

It’s about the only way to understand the meaning of the śūnyatā-samādhi.

Not the “only way” at all. As Choong (1995) already noted in his discussion of these terms: Skt śūnyatāsamādhi is simply equivalent to Pāli suññatāvihāra.

I understand śūnyatā-samādhi as the state in which all sensory experience is absent: hence it is called the “Samādhi of Absence”.

This samādhi is a real state that can last up to 6 or 7 days during which time there is no sensory experience whatever (which in Buddhist terms includes all mental experiences also). And recently this state has become the focus for investigation by some consciousness researchers, notably Thomas Metzinger and Ruben Laukkonen. This state is also known as śūnyatā “absence”, nirvāṇa “extinction”, and the asaṃskṛta-dharma (since the samādhi occurs only when all conditions for the arising of sensory experience are absent).

Without an exact definition of “deep insight experience” you can’t use that vague concept to explain śūnyatāsamādhi or vice versa. So not only can I explain śūnyatāsamādhi in another way, my explanation is clearly better than the one you float, such as it is.

@Dhivan

However, I would agree with you that the exact meaning of śūnyatā in early Buddhism is open to study and discussion,

There are already numerous studies of how the terms śūnya and śūnyatā are used in early Buddhist texts, including in the āgama texts. The technical and nontechnical usages are all very well-documented. It’s just that some people seem to filter out the sources that support my Hamiltonian reading of the texts. Most especially where it conflicts with the axioms of Madhyamaka.

That fact that śūnya and śūnyatā may mean “absent” and “absence” is indisputable. All the standard lexographical and etymological references agree that “absence” is one of the primary senses of the word. BTW our mutual friend Eivind is fully behind me on this.

Just as Hamilton’s epistemic approach opens up a whole new and incredibly useful way of thinking about Buddhism, I believe my extension of her approach to Prajñāpāramitā both demonstrates how profound her original insights were and also opens up a new and useful way of thinking about Prajñāpāramita. And my explanation makes no appeal to faith or Buddhist exceptionalism.

The following article sums up my best attempt to apply Hamilton’s insights to Prajñāpāramitā to date.

Attwood, J. (2022) “The Cessation of Sensory Experience and Prajñāpāramitā Philosophy” International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture 32(1):111-148.

Having been peer-reviewed and edited, this article does a far better job of explaining my evidence, methods, and conclusions that any ad hoc comments can. It’s not perfect, but it is progress.

[Onze]

@Jayarava

I have never found this perverse metaphysics very interesting since it entails contradictions and paradoxes: everything both is and is not at the same time. A philosophical cul de sac.

Is it necessarily? While I agree it might very well lead to the sort of mumbo-jumbo that ends up at one extreme with the sad mutterings of, say, “nonduality” YouTube, it might also lead one to quite a different place.

Since nothing in the conditioned sphere holds any quality purely and completely and forever, what must be done is investigate just to which extent they are held and how and why, i.e. to a refined inquiry about conditionality and good philosophy and science.

I’m reminded of this passage of Simone Weil which I’ll quote in French on the assumption that you’ll understand it - please correct me if I’m wrong.

« Pour s’en tenir aux affaires humaines, notre univers politique est exclusivement peuplé de mythes et de monstres; nous n’y connaissons que des entités, que des absolus. Tous les mots du vocabulaire politique et social pourraient servir d’exemple. Nation, sécurité, capitalisme, communisme, fascisme, ordre, autorité, propriété, démocratie, on pourrait les prendre tous les uns après les autres. Jamais nous ne les plaçons dans des formules telles que : Il y a démocratie dans la mesure où…, ou encore : Il y a capitalisme pour autant que… L’usage d’expressions du type « dans la mesure où » dépasse notre puissance intellectuelle. Chacun de ces mots semble représenter une réalité absolue, indépendante de toutes les conditions, ou un but absolu, indépendant de tous les modes d’action, ou encore un mal absolu; et en même temps, sous chacun de ces mots, nous mettons tour à tour ou même simultanément n’importe quoi. Nous vivons au milieu de réalités changeantes, diverses, déterminées par le jeu mouvant des nécessités extérieures, se transformant en fonction de certaines conditions et dans certaines limites; mais nous agissons, nous luttons, nous sacrifions nous-mêmes et autrui en vertu d’abstractions cristallisées, isolées, impossibles à mettre en rapport entre elles ou avec les choses concrètes. Notre époque soi-disant technicienne ne sait que se battre contre des moulins à vent. »

Ne recommençons pas la Guerre de Troie dans Œuvres, pp. 473-4.

Gratiude to all involved and you in particular for this very interesting discussion.

[Dhivan]

Thanks Jayarava for your further comments. Let me start with your article, ‘The Cessation of Sensory Experience and Prajñāpāramitā Philosophy’. I am very familiar with it as I was one of the anonymous peer-reviewers of it for IJBTC (I told them I knew the author but they told me that was OK). As you know, I recommended it for publication due to its good scholarly arguments and potential for opening up discussion, even though I did not personally agree with your interpretation of śūnyatā or Madhyamaka.

I think one of the weaknesses with your argument is that it does not engage with the more mainstream understanding of śūnyatā in early and mainstream (non-Mahāyāna) Buddhism as ‘being empty of a self and what belongs to a self’ . The Buddha is reported to have said that this is what emptiness means (in S 35: 85 and parallels). Matt Orsborn discusses the applied meanings of emptiness very fully in his excellent Old School Emptiness, and Anālayo uses it as his basic understanding in Compassion and Emptiness, which opens up contemporary ways to enter into insight meditation concerned with emptiness. In your article I didn’t think you managed to establish the meaning of śunyatā as ‘absence’ or as the cessation of sensory experience against this evidence that śūnyatā rather means ‘being empty of a self and what belongs to a self’. As I’d sure you know, there is meditative state described as nirodha or nirodha-samāpatti in early and mainstream Buddhist texts. But this is not generally described as śūnyatā but as nirodha. I certainly agree that śunyatā can mean ‘absence’, that’s no problem. ‘Absence of self and what belongs to self’ is equally a way to translate śūnyatā. However, the word ‘emptiness’ is slightly preferable as an equivalent term, in my view.

It’s not possible to talk about insight meditation or meditation experience on an internet forum, but the śūnyatā-samādhi certainly doesn’t imply the absence of sensory experience. The group of meditative states called the apraṇahīta-samādhi, animitta-samādhi and śūnyatā-samādhi are described in early Buddhist literature and on into mainstream literature, and they are connected with meditation on the duḥkha, anitya and anātman characteristics respectively. So the śūnyatā-samādhi involves dwelling in an awareness of the non-self characteristic of experience.

Therefore I would understand śūnyatā in the Paramārthaśūnyatā-sūtra in terms of ‘being empty of a self and what belongs to a self’. ‘Emptiness in the ultimate sense’ would then refer to the sense spheres, the agent etc. as lacking a self or what belongs to it, even though all these are treated as conventionally real in Buddhist canonical teachings. Apologies for these blunt or at least hesitant replies to your comments, but that’s all that this kind of context of discussion allows.

[Dhivan]

This is a reply to Charles Patton’s reply to Jayarava. It’s worth considering that the Paramārthaśūnyatā Sūtra is quoted in part by Vasubandhu in the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya which I think rules out the idea that it was composed after the Chinese translations. Orsborn’s logic with regard to the parallel versions of the sūtra in EĀ and SĀ is that it must go back to a period before the bifurcation of Sarvāstivāda and Mahāsaṃghika schools, i.e. to the early Buddhist period. This of course would not preclude the sūtra being preserved in Prakrit rather than Sanskrit, but it’s not controversial to think that the Sanskrit represents a very exact transliteration of a Prakrit version, such that the newly-rediscovered Sanskrit Paramārthaśūnyatā Sūtra does possibly represent an early Buddhist text.

[Dhivan]

This is a reply to Ceisiwr. Thanks for this comment about the relationship of this passage about the senses not arising anywhere and not going anywhere to the Pāli commentaries. Orsborn discusses this in Old School Emptiness p.264. He refers to Karunadasa The Theravāda Abhidhamma p.30, where the author indicates that the non-arriving and non-going-anywhere character of the senses is a response to Sarvāstivāda theories of the dharmas as existing in past, present and future. This is a bit more likely than the Theravādins responding to Saṃkhya.

It’s also worth considering that this very passage is quoted in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya so can’t represent the intrusion of commentarial material, unless at some much earlier point in time. But wouldn’t it be an unlikely thing for a Sarvāstivāda text to reproduce Theravādin commentarial material which is in opposition to Sarvāstivādin views?

[Ceisiwr]

I don’t think its the Theravādins responding to Saṃkhya. I think this commentary comes from the pre-sectarian period. Sarvāstivādin texts tend to include commentary in their sutras, whilst Theravādin ones tend to keep them separate (as far as we know). Ven. Anālayo has previously given some examples.

[Ceisiwr]

@Dhivan

It’s not possible to talk about insight meditation or meditation experience on an internet forum, but the śūnyatā-samādhi certainly doesn’t imply the absence of sensory experience. The group of meditative states called the apraṇahīta-samādhi, animitta-samādhi and śūnyatā-samādhi are described in early Buddhist literature and on into mainstream literature, and they are connected with meditation on the duḥkha, anitya and anātman characteristics respectively. So the śūnyatā-samādhi involves dwelling in an awareness of the non-self characteristic of experience.

In Theravāda these are the 3 gateways to nibbāna. For Emptiness and the Desireless, these transcend their object (and so sense experience). The Signless does not in the Theravādin Abhidhamma and so remains with sense experience.