philosophical significance of emptiness

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On the soteriological

significance of emptinessMark Siderits

a

aIllinois State University, Normal, IL, USA

Published online: 04 Jun 2010.

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Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2003

On the Soteriological

Significance of EmptinessMark Siderits

Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA

When it comes to interpreting the Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness

(sunyata), we presently find ourselves with an embarrassment of riches. As

concerns the meaning of this doctrine (as it is found in the works of Nagarjuna

and his followers), there is a wide array of competing views, with little evidence

of an emerging consensus. It is nonetheless possible to see these different

readings of emptiness as falling roughly into two kinds, which I shall call

metaphysical and semantic. The interpretation that I favor is of the semantic

sort, and I have elsewhere tried to support it by pointing out difficulties for

various forms of metaphysical interpretation of emptiness (Siderits 1988; 1989;

1994; 1997a). But even if those criticisms are all valid, there still remains one

objection to a semantic understanding of emptiness that many find quite

persuasive. The objection is, in essence, that if emptiness is interpreted in this

way, then it is utterly mysterious how the realization of emptiness might have

the sort of soteriological significance that it is usually understood to have. Ishall explore that objection here. But first I shall try to make clear just what the

metaphysical and semantic interpretations amount to, and I shall say something

about the evidence that I believe supports the second over the first variety. Then

I shall take up consideration of the objection proper. In the end, I shall claim

that the objection can be answered. But I think it will prove worthwhile to give

it careful consideration, for this may reveal some important points concerning

the Buddhist path to liberation.

Madhyamikas claim that all things are empty (sunya). And emptiness, we are

told, is the being devoid of svabhava.1

There has been some confusion overwhat it would mean to say that something has svabhava, for here bhava is

sometimes taken to mean being or existence, so that svabhava should be

translated as own-being or self-existence. But as Candrakrti makes clear,

bhava in this context means nature. So to say that something has svabhava is

to say that its nature is wholly its own; that is, it is not borrowed from or

dependent on those other things on whose existence it depends. Here the stock

example of an entity that does not have svabhava is the chariot, all of whose

properties (including its functional properties) may be accounted for wholly in

terms of the properties of its parts. If this is true of a chariot, this may be takenas establishing that the chariot is not ultimately real, that it would not appear

among the items on the inventory of our final ontology. For it would then

follow that the chariot has no independent explanatory role to play: all the facts

about the world can be explained just in terms of the properties of the parts of

the chariot, so that its presence in our ontological inventory would be com-

ISSN 1463-9947 print; 1476-7953 online/03/010009-15 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/1463994032000140158

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10 M. Siderits

pletely superfluous. This would in turn show the chariot to be a mere conceptual

fiction, something we take to exist only because of certain facts about us and

our conceptual activity. It is only because we happen to have a use for parts

assembled in this way, and because we find it inconvenient to list all the partsand their relations, that we employ the convenient designator chariot, and thus

end up taking there to be such things as chariots.2

So to say that all things are empty is to say that all of the things that we take

to be real turn out to be mere conceptual fictions like the chariot. This was not,

of course, the view of those Buddhists who adhered to the teachings of the

Abhidharma. They held that while most of the entities acknowledged by

common sense including, most importantly, the person are mere concep-

tual fictions, there must be things that do have svabhava, and thus that are

ultimately real. For otherwise, they held, there would be nothing to which the

chariot could be reduced nothing the properties of which explained our belief

in such conceptual fictions. Different Abhidharma schools give somewhat

different accounts of what these ultimately real entities (dharmas) are. But all

agree on the svabhava criterion of dharma-hood: only that is a dharma that

bears its own intrinsic nature.3 To say that all things are empty is to say that

there are no dharmas, no entities that are ultimately real by virtue of having all

their (monadic) properties intrinsically. The arguments of Nagarjuna and his

followers are designed to show that the opposite assumption that there are

such entities invariably leads to results that are either internally incoherent

or else contravened by common sense.What are we to make of this claim? I said earlier that it may be interpreted

as either a metaphysical claim or as a semantic claim. By a metaphysical

interpretation of emptiness, I shall mean any interpretation that takes the

doctrine to be intended to characterize the nature of reality. This approach

yields two rather different readings: nihilism, and the view that ultimate reality

is ineffable and beyond the reach of discursive rationality. Wood (1994) gives

a clear instance of the former variety. He takes the Madhyamika to be

committed to the view that ultimately nothing whatever exists, that all is just

illusion without any underlying ground. Given what the doctrine of emptinessactually claims, such an interpretation might seem to have some initial plausibil-

ity. What is more difficult to see is how one might suppose that a substantial

number of seemingly sensible persons could have held such a view. Meta-

physical nihilism comes about as close to being self-refuting as any

philosophical doctrine one can imagine. This difficulty is probably behind the

popularity of the second sort of metaphysical interpretation, according to which

the doctrine of emptiness is meant to point to an ineffable ultimate that

transcends the capacities of discursive reason. The thought here would be that

since we cannot accept the nihilist consequence that results when we take thedoctrine of emptiness at face value, we must resort to some non-literal

interpretation. And the most plausible of these, presumably, is that the true

nature of reality is beyond the reach of conceptual thought although perhaps

it can be accessed through some non-conceptual faculty of pure intuition.

A particularly clear instance of this sort of reading is to be found in Murti,

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On the Soteriological Significance of Emptiness 11

for whom emptiness is the Absolute, the ineffable ground of all transactional

truths (1955: 141, 232, 2345, 237). He is of course well aware that

Madhyamikas are keen to avoid commitment to any metaphysical views or

theories concerning the nature of reality. Indeed he carefully expounds some ofthe principal strategies they use to try to refute the metaphysical theories of their

opponents without thereby embracing any alternative theories. But he takes this

to mean that for Madhyamaka, the real simply transcends the capacities of

discursive reason, that it is to be known only through a kind of intellectual

intuition that apprehends without superimposing any of the concepts of

phenomenal thought (1955: 135, 139, 140, 142, 151, 158, 160, 207, 212, 218,

228). The dialectical arguments of Nagarjuna and Aryadeva are, in other words,

merely meant to clear the ground by silencing thought so that the pure suchness

of the real may shine through. Enlightenment is achieved and nirvan

a attained

just by apprehending this formless ultimate truth.

I call both the nihilist interpretation and interpretations like Murtis meta-

physical because both take the doctrine of emptiness to be a metaphysical

theory, a theory about the ultimate nature of reality.4 By contrast, a semantic

interpretation of emptiness takes the doctrine to concern not the nature of

reality, but the nature of truth.5 Specifically, it takes the claim that all things are

empty to mean that the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth there

is only conventional truth. To see what this means, it is crucial to recall how

Abhidharma draws the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate

truth. Statements are said to be conventionally true when they are assertable bythe canons of common sense. Thus, supposing that Kr

sn

a did indeed drive

Arjunas chariot at the battle of Kuruksetra, the statement Kr

sn

a drove the

chariot would be conventionally true. By contrast, a statement is said to be

ultimately true if and only if it corresponds with reality, and neither asserts nor

pre-supposes the existence of any conceptual fictions. So even if the facts are

as supposed, Krsn

a drove the chariot would not be ultimately true. Of course,

the statement would then correspond to what we are taking to be the facts. The

difficulty, however, lies not with the correspondence clause, but with the no

conceptual fictions clause. A chariot is a conceptual fiction as is the personKr

sn

a as well so the statement cannot be ultimately true. Nor can it be

ultimately false since its negation would then be ultimately true, in violation

of the no conceptual fictions clause. The statement is simply not admissible at

the ultimate level, and so is not the sort of thing that could have a truth value.

There are, however, any number of statements concerning this state of affairs

that would be ultimately true; namely, statements concerning the dharmas that

make up the two conceptual fictions involved, the chariot and Krsn

a. And it is

the facts that make these statements true that explain the utility of our accepting

the conventionally true Krsna drove the chariot. It is because, for instance,certain atoms are arranged in certain ways that it is conventionally true that

there is a chariot on the field; and likewise for our assertions concerning Krsn

a.

Thus, to say that all things are empty is, on the semantic interpretation, to say

that no statement can be ultimately true. Given that dharmas must be things

with intrinsic natures, if nothing can bear an intrinsic nature, then there is

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12 M. Siderits

nothing for ultimately true statements to be about; hence the very notion of

ultimate truth is incoherent. The doctrine of emptiness is thus equivalent to the

rejection of what Putnam (1981, 49) calls metaphysical realism. This is the view

that there is one true theory about the nature of reality; with truth understoodas correspondence, and reality understood as consisting of a fixed number of

objects with natures that are independent of the concepts we happen to employ.

And herein lies the essence of the disagreement between semantic and metaphys-

ical interpretations of emptiness. What metaphysical interpretations all have in

common is precisely that they pre-suppose metaphysical realism. This is quite

evident in the case of those who equate emptiness with the claim that reality

transcends the capacities of discursive thought. For this requires that there be

such a thing as how the world is, independently of the concepts we use; what

it claims is that the world is of such a nature as to always elude our concepts.

But metaphysical realism is also pre-supposed by the nihilist reading. According

to this as well, there is a fixed number of objects with natures that are

independent of our conceptual resources: there are exactly zero such objects; and

their nature (to be non-existent) clearly cannot depend on facts about our minds,

given that our minds are likewise held not to exist. For someone who

understands emptiness as a semantic doctrine, on the other hand, it is virtually

axiomatic that metaphysical readings of the doctrine of emptiness are misguided.

But if, as the semantic interpretation claims, there is no final truth about

reality, then how can it be true that all things are empty? Surely Madhyamikas

expect us to take their claim that all things are empty to be true, and if so theymust have some conception as to what its truth consists in. What, then, might

it be? If there is no ultimate truth, then apparently the claim that all things are

empty can only be conventionally true. Indeed, the Madhyamaka doctrine that

emptiness is itself empty is actually equivalent to the claim that the only sort

of truth there can be is conventional truth. (If emptiness is itself a mere

conceptual fiction, then the statement that something is empty can at best be

conventionally true.) But how can this be? We understand conventional truth to

be just a useful approximation to the ultimate truth, and if there is no ultimate

truth then conventional truth cannot be understood in this way. And if emptinessmeans that there are no ultimate facts, we may well wonder what then explains

the utility of accepting statements that are merely conventionally true such

as the statement that all things are empty. This makes us wonder how there could

be a semantic interpretation of emptiness that did not, in the end, go

metaphysical; that is, involve some substantive claim about the ultimate nature

of reality.

All these questions are perfectly legitimate, indeed useful, according to those

who espouse the semantic interpretation. We do have great difficulty under-

standing how any statement, let alone a statement of supposedly greatsoteriological significance, could be a mere conventional truth that lacks any

grounding in the ultimate nature of reality. And yet the force of the Madhya-

maka dialectic makes us despair of ever finding a conception of the ultimate

truth that does not dissolve into incoherence. The result is an impasse: the

two-truths scheme seems hopeless, yet we do not see how we could simply

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jettison the notion of an ultimate ground for conventional truths. But this

impasse is, I think, just where the teaching of emptiness was meant to drive us.

For now we will see that the only hope of a resolution lies in rejecting the

metaphysical realist pre-supposition at its heart. It is only because we continueto think of truth as correspondence to mind-independent reality that we take

conventional truth to require some ultimate foundation. To reject this pre-

supposition is to see that the ultimate truth the truth that brings about

liberation is that there is no ultimate truth no one true theory about the

nature of mind-independent reality.

Here is an analogy that may help us see how it might plausibly be claimed

that there is only conventional truth. At one time it was widely believed that a

paper currency required the backing of some precious metal such as gold or

silver. To many people it seemed highly implausible that a mere piece of paper

could have monetary value in itself. They thought that such value as a note had

could only derive from its being convertible into a given quantity of something

with inherent value like gold. The usefulness of a paper currency was obvious,

for it is less bulky than precious metals and is easier to transport. But when it

was proposed that the currency be taken off the gold standard, many people

feared their currency would become worthless. We now know better. How is it

possible that mere paper can have monetary value? Certainly not due to its

intrinsic value; indeed, we can now see that even gold lacks intrinsic value. The

value of a paper currency derives from the role it plays within a set of

institutions and practices shaped by human interests and limitations (e.g., thefact that our interests are best satisfied through a social division of labor).

Likewise the value of being true might be something that accrues to statements

by virtue of the role they play in certain institutions and practices that are

shaped by human interests and cognitive limitations. And recall that what made

a statement only conventionally true was that it employed concepts (such as

the concept of the chariot) that reflect our interests (e.g., in transportation) and

our limitations (e.g., our inability to keep track of all the parts in a transport

system). Once we concede that the notion of how things are, independently of

our interests and limitations, is incoherent, this derogation of conventional truthto the status of mere second-best will fall away.

Because of its rejection of the distinction between conventional and ultimate

truth, the resulting view might be thought of as a sort of semantic non-dualism.

Much more would need to be said to give an adequate defense of semantic

non-dualism. There will be questions to answer concerning its adequacy as an

interpretation of the Madhyamaka texts, and there will be troublesome details

to work out concerning its logical and epistemological consequences. But I shall

not attempt any of that here. Instead, I wish to turn now to the objection that

this interpretation of the doctrine of emptiness robs it of all soteriologicalsignificance.

The objection to the semantic interpretation that I wish to consider has at its

heart the notion that this interpretation of emptiness gives philosophical ration-

ality an inordinately large role to play in the project of liberation. (In this

respect, it resembles one side of the debate early in the Tibetan tradition over

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14 M. Siderits

the respective roles of philosophy and meditation in Buddhist practice; see

Yamaguchi 1997.) In its modern form, this objection is sometimes put as the

complaint that reading Madhyamaka in this way involves reading contemporary

analytic philosophy into a spiritual tradition where it has no place. We can seea clear instance of this from Murti, for whom this was a principal arguments

against the semantic interpretation and in favor of his own metaphysical

interpretation. This comes out most distinctly in his comparison of Madhya-

maka and logical positivism. He makes this comparison because the two schools

share a rejection of all metaphysical theories, which might lead some to see

strong similarities between the two schools. But, he claims, there are crucial

differences: the positivist has neither use for nor knowledge of the transcen-

dent. He is a materialist at heart (Murti 1955, 352). Madhyamaka, by contrast,

is spiritual to the core. Thus, Murti concludes, the Madhyamika should not be

understood as making anything like the positivists point that the very idea of

a language-transcendent realm is incoherent. Instead, Madhyamaka seeks to

safeguard the transcendent realm from all encroachments by discursive ration-

ality. If this is right, then the semantic interpretation would indeed strip the

doctrine of emptiness of its spiritual meaning; for its denial of a transcendent

realm would deprive spirituality of a locus of operation.

But caution is called for here. Warning buzzers should sound in response to

Murtis use of materialist to characterize the logical positivists, who were not

materialists, but empiricists (and many of them phenomenalists to boot). Since

Murti should have known this, one must wonder what ideological work is beingdone by the term materialist. What seems most probable is that he has

accepted without question the characteristically modern dichotomy between

scientific rationality and spirituality. For once these are seen as distinct and

incompatible enterprises, then those who value the spiritual quest will be

motivated to carve out some separate realm for it, so as to protect it from the

hegemonic tendencies of scientific rationality. What Murti is thus suggesting in

calling the logical positivist a materialist is that positivism leaves no room for

the spiritual, that it holds that the only genuine human problems there are are

amenable to scientific-technological solution.Now it is possible that some logical positivists held the view that I have just

described and that Murti seems to have meant by materialist. But is this a

reason for rejecting the semantic interpretation of emptiness? Because notice

that the underlying dichotomy at work here grows out of the modern Western

attempt at reconciling natural science and Christianity; the modern formulation

of the distinction between reason and faith seems to have no parallel in the

classical Indian tradition. It is easy to see how the distinction arose. While

medieval philosophers and theologians made some progress toward reconciling

the teachings of Christianity with the philosophical and scientific rationality thatthey inherited from classical Greek culture (Islamic and Jewish thinkers made

even greater strides), this rapprochement was undermined by developments

peculiar to modern Europe, including the rise of capitalism, and the Protestant

Reformation. As a result, those of us who are products of this culture will

naturally see the application of logic and rationality as inimical to spiritual

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pursuits. But Indian Buddhist philosophers did not see things this way, and it

is possible that they were right not to. It may well be that the practice of

philosophical rationality with its demand that one follow the logic of the

argument wherever it leads will turn out to have great soteriological value.Perhaps those who accuse defenders of the semantic interpretation of reading

Western philosophy into a non-Western tradition are themselves guilty of a bit

of ethnocentrism.

Still, one can understand the desire for a more positive response to the

objection. What reason is there to believe that the practice of philosophical

rationality can help solve soteriological problems? Defenders of the semantic

interpretation have not always been completely forthcoming on this score, and

perhaps for good reason. Semantic non-dualism looks like a rather esoteric

philosophical doctrine, and it is difficult to see how its mastery might help

resolve deep-seated existential difficulties such as the problem of suffering.

Here I can only sketch what I take to be an appropriate response on behalf of

the semantic interpretation; I shall not try to defend this response by citing the

appropriate texts in the tradition. What I shall claim is first that the role

emptiness plays in liberation from suffering is ancillary in nature; it is the

doctrine of non-self that continues to play the chief role in that project, while

emptiness serves just to correct for certain common errors in the application of

non-self. Second, I shall claim that the doctrine of emptiness is intended to

prevent a subtle form of clinging that may grow out of ones appreciation of the

doctrine of non-self, and may thus prove an impediment to complete liberation.My sketch begins with the soteriological project of early Buddhism and

Abhidharma. Central to this project is the correct analysis of the cause of

suffering, for Buddhist practice essentially turns on preventing further suffering

by removing the factors responsible for its origination. It is well known that this

is to be accomplished at least in part by overcoming various forms of desire and

attachment. What is not always fully appreciated is why desire and attachment

are thought to bring about suffering. The Buddha taught that, in addition to

suffering, all sentient existence is characterized by impermanence and non-self;

it is our ignorance concerning the last two facts that is said to explain the first.But it is possible to misconstrue the role of impermanence here. Burton (2002),

for instance, makes suffering seem to be largely a matter of disappointment in

the face of the transience of the objects I desire. Now it is true that Buddhist

teachings sometimes recommend concentrating on the impermanence of the

things and states one desires as a way of overcoming ones craving for them.

But this is not to say that the solution is just to stop desiring transitory things

and states. After all, if suffering were just a matter of disappointment at the loss

of things and states one has become attached to, it could be readily avoided just

by cultivating an aesthetic appreciation of the transitoriness of all. Yet this wouldleave untouched the real source of suffering, the false belief in an I. Desire and

attachment are to be overcome, on the Buddhist path, not because their objects

are unsatisfactory, but because they tend to re-inscribe false belief in the I.

The suffering that the Buddhist project is meant to extirpate is existential

suffering: the frustration, alienation and despair that result from the recognition

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16 M. Siderits

of ones own mortality. The fact of impermanence plays a role here, but it is

the fact of non-self that is primary.6 We are happiness-seeking creatures. In

learning to seek not mere pleasure, but happiness, we have come to think of

ourselves as entities whose lives have meaning, value and purpose. That is, whatis in actuality no more than a causal series of sets of ephemeral psychophysical

elements becomes unified around the concept of a person, an enduring thing that

has those psychophysical elements as its parts. The construction of the person

as happiness-seeker requires that it be something that identifies with and

appropriates its past and future stages. And this, in turn, requires that the life

of a person be constructed as a kind of narrative. Hence arises the need for a

self to serve as what Dennett (1992) calls a center of narrative gravity. Now

this construction of the person is useful up to a point. The difficulty is that the

continued possibility of happiness requires that the self have an open future,

something that is incompatible with the fact of mortality. This is why the

realization of ones own impermanence brings with it frustration, alienation and

despair.

The solution to the problem of suffering lies in overcoming our ignorance

concerning what we are. (It is this claim that Buddhism shares with other Indian

paths to liberation.) Suffering can be overcome if we can learn to live without

the illusion of a self and with the knowledge that the person is a mere useful

fiction. Hence arises the early Buddhist project of coming to see oneself and

others as strictly impersonal causal series of psychophysical elements. The

Abhidharma program of cataloguing the ultimate elements of reality (thedharmas) and their causal relations is meant to facilitate this Reductionist project.

Here, philosophical rationality is used to construct and defend the theoretical

framework that shows how a thoroughly impersonal description of persons and

their states is possible. But since our lives are organized around the practice of

seeing ourselves and others as persons, mastery of this theoretical framework

does not by itself suffice to undermine the tendency to think of oneself as the

author of ones life narrative. This requires a variety of practical techniques, such

as uprooting various self-affirming desires, and developing ones introspective

observational powers through meditation. The practice of such techniques incombination with the cultivation of philosophical rationality is said to eventually

culminate in enlightenment. This is the thorough internalization of the truth of

non-self, and thus enlightenment issues in a state of being wherein one no longer

behaves inappropriately with respect to oneself, others, and the world. One thus

overcomes suffering in oneself, and becomes adept at helping others overcome

it as well.

This last point may be controversial. My characterization of Buddhist

practice so far is meant to apply to Abhidharma, and it is widely held that it is

only in Mahayana that there first arises the teaching that the enlightened personwill naturally seek to help others overcome suffering. This is generally taken to

imply that the compassion of the enlightened person must result from realiza-

tion of that other distinctively Mahayana teaching, the emptiness of all

dharmas. But the textual evidence does not bear this out. Instead, the texts

suggest that compassion issues directly from realization of non-self.7 But I have

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discussed the connection between non-self and compassion elsewhere (Siderits

and Williams 2000; Siderits 2003), and I shall not go into that here. What does

require discussion is the resulting suggestion that insight into emptiness does

not play the central role in enlightenment for the Mahayana schools, includingMadhyamaka. This is indeed a consequence of the semantic interpretation. On

this view, the realization of the emptiness of all dharmas plays an essentially

ancillary role, deepening insights that the aspirant acquires through the realiza-

tion of non-self by correcting a serious misunderstanding that commonly arises

in the attaining of that realization. This is the view that the truth of non-self is

the ultimate truth. Recall that for the Abhidharma schools the ultimate truth is

the completely impersonal description of the evanescent dharmas and their

causal interactions. Now a Madhyamika will agree that coming to see how all

conventional truth may be reduced without remainder to truths about impersonal

dharmas has great soteriological value. But there is a great danger in this

method as well. For remember that suffering is said to arise out of the felt need

for a center of narrative gravity, which in turn results from the demand that

the events in a causal series of psychophysical elements be incorporated in a

unified narrative. Now to suppose there to be such a thing as the one true

description of the ultimate nature of reality is to posit a grand unified narrative.

Granted it may be difficult to make oneself the hero of such a story. For this

is a narrative without characters (i.e., persons), but only strictly impersonal

dharmas. Still the thought that this is the ultimate truth can give rise to a subtle

form of clinging that may prove quite difficult to extirpate.This is, I think, nicely illustrated by a remark in Coopers recent discussion

of emptiness. Now he is not there discussing the truth of non-self, but rather the

question of the correct interpretation of the doctrine of emptiness. Cooper

argues that the semantic interpretation should be supplemented with a variety of

metaphorical extensions of the concept of emptiness (e.g., of emptiness as an

ineffable source from out of which the world discloses itself through a process

of emptying). And his evidence stems from the soteriological role that

emptiness is said to play. Thus, Cooper in effect claims that the semantic

interpretation is inadequate because it fails to give any positive content to theultimate truth, something that is needed for it to be soteriologically efficacious.

This is so, we are told, because the thought that appreciation of emptiness

liberates implies that a doctrine of emptiness provides measure for ones

life, something for ones life to be answerable to (Cooper 2002, 18). The

suggestion is thus that liberation requires there to be some standard against

which ones life is to be assessed for meaningfulness. But this will never do,

if it is true that suffering results from a misguided search for the meaning of

ones life. To suppose there to be some substantive ultimate truth that there

are only impersonal dharmas, or that reality is ineffable, or that the Absoluteis non-dual is to prepare the breeding ground for a subtle yet insidious form

of clinging. This is sometimes revealed quite dramatically in the table-pounding

gesture that may accompany the metaphysical realists insistence: There is such

a thing as how the world mind-independently is!. What is at stake here is more

than just the insistence that only realist truth gives a way to resolve disputes

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18 M. Siderits

non-arbitrarily. After all, that demand can be met just by procedural rules that

prevent conversations from terminating prematurely. What is at stake is the

thought that there is the right way for a life to go, and that my life might

go that way. For this depends on the notion of a truth that is somehow biggerthan all of us, that reveals the larger scheme wherein our lives must fit if

they are to have value and purpose. On the semantic interpretation of emptiness,

the truth that liberates is the insight that there can be no truth apart from

the contingent institutions and practices of social existence. It liberates because

it undermines the last vestige of clinging, the belief that there is a mind-

independent ultimate truth.

There is an alternative way of understanding the role that insight into

emptiness plays in liberation, and it would be useful to compare this with my

claim concerning the semantic interpretation. One sometimes hears it said that

the teaching of emptiness liberates by showing that all possible objects of

clinging lack intrinsic essence. This insight presumably makes one disinclined

to desire them, and the resulting quelling of passion is thought to lead to the

state of nirvana. Now I have already indicated that I am not sure that the

cessation of suffering is supposed to come about just through ceasing to desire

objects. But we may set that to one side at least for the moment. One would still

like to know how this extinguishing of passion is to come about. Why should

it make a difference to my desire that the hamburger I crave is empty

that it derives all its properties from the causes and conditions on which it

depends?Burton has recently expressed some doubt about this idea as well, but for

what I shall argue to be the wrong reasons. Still it will prove helpful to follow

his reasoning here. As we saw earlier, Burton takes the Buddhist soteriological

project to be one of preventing suffering by stopping oneself from desiring

inappropriate objects. Having demonstrated what he takes to be the inadequa-

cies in the view that this can be done just by seeing that all objects are

impermanent, Burton then takes up an alternative strategy of showing that the

objects of desire are mere conceptual constructions.8 He takes this basic strategy

to be common to Abhidharma, Yogacara, and Madhyamaka, but with thefollowing differences: in Abhidharma, it is only ordinary objects that are said

to be conceptual fictions; while according to Yogacara, all things save the

evanescent, non-dual consciousness events are conceptually constructed; and in

Madhyamaka, it is all things without exception that are said to be mere

fabrications. The basic idea is said to be that anything so revealed as a mere

construction of the mind will cease to be desired. The Madhyamaka claim that

not only ordinary objects, but all dharmas are conceptually constructed is thus

intended to undermine the subtle basis of clinging that remains on the Abhid-

harma and Yogacara analyses.Against this alleged Madhyamaka strategy, Burton objects that what one

craves is not, for instance, the ephemeral atoms that make up the new car, but

the car itself, so that showing it to be a fabrication should suffice to undercut

attachment (assuming that the general strategy of demonstrating constructedness

succeeds in quelling desire). One need not, he thinks, go all the way with the

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Madhyamika and show that the atoms are likewise conceptually constructed.

But here he misses an important point. If the car reductively supervenes on all

the atoms that make it up, then knowing that the latter are ultimately real does

after all preserve an object of craving: what I crave is really just all those atomsarranged in just that way. Just as car is not a mere empty sound, but turns out

instead to be a convenient way to refer to all the atoms in that particular

arrangement, so the object of my craving likewise will not utterly disappear, but

will continue to be available. While I may be surprised to discover that what I

crave is actually not one thing, but many, this need not have any effect on my

craving. If the route to the cessation of clinging is to go by way of analyzing

the objects of clinging into conceptual constructions, it had better go all the way

with the Madhyamikas.

Burton does not think that going all the way will succeed, however, for he

also thinks it might even then be possible to continue to desire an object that

one believes to be conceptually constructed.9 He claims to be able to imagine

that one might discover that something lacks the kind of objective reality that

we attributed to it and yet continue to crave it because one derives enjoyment

from the experience of it. But caution is called for here. This is, I think,

implausible in the case where there still remains an available contrast between

those things that are not conceptually constructed and those that are. To the

extent that the latter are constructed through the minds conceptualizing

activity, they may well lack the sort of autonomous existence that the former

have, and are thus typically considered less desirable. When I realize that theobject of my romantic interest is partly a product of my wishful thinking, my

ardor and attachment tend to dim. The situation is analogous to what happens

when we wake up from a dream filled with longing for some object or other and

then discover that the object was only a dream.10 In general, where we take

there to be things that are not conceptually constructed, the discovery that some

desired object is at least partly the product of the minds fabricating power will

make us suspect that in reality the object lacks those properties that make it

seem desirable.11

Where Burton may be right, however, is where the discovery is thateverything is conceptually constructed. For, in that case, the requisite contrast

is no longer available. And so to then say of something that I crave that it is

conceptually constructed is not to relegate it to some lower status than is

appropriate for objects of desire; there is no other status that anything might

have on this view. All potential objects of clinging are what they are in part

through facts about our interests; so there cannot arise the concern that any

particular conceptually constructed object will turn out to be other than I would

like it to be just from the fact that it is a conceptual fiction. Once one has

thoroughly assimilated the belief that all things are conceptually constructed,the mere in the phrase mere conceptual fiction will drop out. Indeed, one will

soon revert to referring to objects by their ordinary names: rivers will be rivers,

and mountains will be mountains.

What this should suggest, however, is not the conclusion that Burton draws:

that the Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness is ill-suited to the Buddhist

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20 M. Siderits

soteriological task of ending attachment and clinging. To draw this

conclusion is to give a distinctly uncharitable reading of Madhyamaka. It would

be far more charitable to conclude that ending all attachment by showing the

object of attachment to be empty was never the real point of the doctrine. Sincethe knowledge that all things are empty cannot make any particular object

appear less desirable, its soteriological value must lie in something other

than an alleged tendency to diminish cravings for objects. And where else

might that lie? Such value might come instead from its ability to contri-

bute to the cessation of suffering by undermining any residual belief

in a self that remains after one has seen that the person is just a causal

series of psychophysical elements. And only the semantic interpret-

ation can explain how this might be. Metaphysical interpretations of

emptiness share with the Abhidharma reductionist project the crucial notionthat there is a key to all mythology, some grand narrative that unlocks the

final secrets of the universe.12 The point of emptiness is to undermine the

very idea of such a grand narrative. As the Madhyamika sees things,

the project of liberation is not complete until one has abandoned this last

vestige of belief in an I whose existence can have independent meaning

and value.

So while Burton is, I think, right to see in the doctrine of emptiness

a tool to help us overcome a subtle form of clinging, he is wrong in his

conception of how this tool is to work, and on what objects. Clinging resultsin suffering, on the Buddhist analysis, just because it reinforces the false

belief in I and mine. The Buddhist reductionist program of early Budd-

hism and Abhidharma is meant to reveal the falsity of this belief. But

to the extent that that program relies on the view that there is such a

thing as the ultimate nature of reality, it still leaves room for a covert

and thus insidious form of self-assertion. The doctrine of emptiness is

said to be the remedy that purges itself along with the cause of ones

lingering illness.13 One sometimes senses that critics of the semantic inter-

pretation believe it would be just too disappointing if this turned out tobe all there were to the doctrine of emptiness. Perhaps the feeling of disap-

pointment is a sign that emptiness is doing the purging work for which it

was intended.

Notes

1 See, for example, Candrakrtis Prasannapada on MulamadhyamakakarikaXV.2.

2 Of course, for the Buddhist, the important point is to see that strictly speaking thereare likewise no persons. See Siderit (1997b) for a discussion of the role of this sortof reductionist treatment of wholes in early Buddhism and Abhidharma.

3 See, for example, Abhidharmakosa 2 and Yasomitras comments; Abhidharmakos-abhas

ya 12; Visuddhimagga 8.

4 I may appear to be overlooking another metaphysical interpretation of emptiness;namely, that which takes emptiness to be equivalent to dependent origination

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(pratatya samutpada). Here the authority of Mulamadhyamakakarika 24.18 is usuallyinvoked. If one takes this verse at face value, one might then take the doctrine ofemptiness to claim that since reality is inherently causal in nature, and the productsof causal processes necessarily derive their natures from their causes, the relata of

causal relations must lack intrinsic natures. And given the assumption that anultimately real entity must be one that bears an intrinsic nature, it would then followthat reality cannot be characterized as consisting of discrete entities. But if this isunderstood as a characterization of the ultimate nature of reality (as is suggested bythe claim that reality is inherently causal in nature), this begins to look like the viewthat reality is ultimately ineffable. For how is one otherwise to make sense of theclaim that there are causal relations but no discrete entities that are the relata of thoserelations? One sometimes sees this sort of view put in positive terms as the claim thatreality consists of a process or flow that cannot be divided up into discrete entitiesor moments. But if this is not to lead to a kind of Eleatic monism of pure Being, thenall such talk of process or flow must be taken as merely figurative intimations ofan ineffable reality.

As Cooper (2002, 11) suggests, however, it may be a mistake to take the verse atface value. For while Nagarjuna does hold that everything that originates independence on causes is empty (i.e., devoid of intrinsic nature), he does not assertthat the emptiness of a thing is its being dependent on causes. The emptiness of athing is rather said to be its being dependent on a certain kind of cause; namely, ourconceptual construction. To say that all things are empty is then just to denymetaphysical realism: there is no such thing as how the world is independently ofthe concepts we happen to employ. This denial is at the core of the semanticinterpretation.

5 Truth has been classed by philosophers as a semantic property at least since the workof Tarski, who showed how the methods of philosophical semantics could be usedto construct a theory of truth that is immune to certain logical paradoxes.Cooper (2002, 9) uses the term quietism for what I am here calling a semanticinterpretation of emptiness. My reasons for not adopting his terminology will emergeshortly.

6 Indeed, in the Nikayas, the fact that the psychophysical elements (skandhas) are allimpermanent is used primarily to establish non-self.

7 See Bodhicaryavatara 8.98 ff. Also see Buddhaghoshas discussion of the virtue ofloving-kindness at Visuddhimagga ch. 9.

8 This is suggested, for example, by Hastavalaprakaran

a 5: having shown that such

ordinary things as the pot must be unreal if construed as extended objects (due to theproblem of infinite divisibility), Dinnaga claims that this analysis leads to theabandonment of desire and the other kles

as. This outcome is compared with the

dissolution of fear when one realizes that the snake is really a rope. On the otherhand, at Bodhicaryavatara 9.30, a Yogacarin opponent asserts that desire cancontinue to arise even in one who recognizes that the object is no more than anappearance.

9 Burtons terminology here is actually stronger than conceptual construction: he usesmere fabrication, completely a mental construct, and nothing more than afantasy (Burton 2002, 337). With respect to Madhyamaka, this stronger language is,I think, a mistake. While Candrakrti does sometimes use the analogy of themagicians illusions to explicate what it means to say that something is empty, he iscriticized by other Madhyamikas for this. To say that something is conceptuallyconstructed is not to say that it is created ex nihilo by the mind. It is to say insteadthat, because the mind has played a role in its individuation, it does not possess thekind of mind-independent nature and ontological status that the metaphysical realisthankers after. The anti-realist is not a linguistic idealist. The anti-realist simply holds

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22 M. Siderits

that the notion of how things are completely independent of all conceptualization isincoherent.

10 The dream analogy is, of course, a favorite of Yogacara with its teaching ofcittamatra or mind-only. But notice that the point of their teaching that all

supposedly external objects are really just states of consciousness is not to end allattachment to physical objects. It is rather to call into question the distinctionbetween cognizer and object cognized. And this in turn is meant to help onerealize the truth of non-self. On this point, see Vasubandhus comments on Vim

satika

10.11 Although notice that this is not the case with the car seen as the collection of atoms.

What matters here is whether the mind-independent basis of the conceptual construc-tion itself has the properties that the desired but mind-dependent object had. Theatoms do have the capacity to transport one at a high rate of speed. On the contrary,those states that are the real basis of the object of desire in the erotic dream do nothave the capacity to bring about sensual pleasure.

12 It was, of course, the life project of Mr Casaubon in Middlemarch to find the key toall mythology.

13 See, for example, Mulamadhyamakakarika XIII.8, where Nagarjuna pronouncesincurable those who become attached to the remedy that is meant to rid one of allmetaphysical views.

References

Burton, D. 2002. Knowledge and Liberation: Philosophical Ruminations on a BuddhistConundrum, Philosophy East and West, 52, 32645.

Cooper, D.E. 2002. Emptiness: Interpretation and Metaphor, Contemporary Buddhism,3, 720.

Dennett, Daniel C. 1992. The Self as the Center of Narrative Gravity, in Frank S.Kessel, Pamela M. Cole and Dale Johnson (eds.), Self and Consciousness: MultiplePerspectives, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Murti T.R.V. 1955. The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, London: George Allen andUnwin.

Putnam, Hillary (1981). Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Siderits, M. 1988. Nagarjuna as AntiRealist, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 16,311325.

Siderits, M. 1989. Thinking on Empty: Madhyamaka AntiRealism and Canons ofRationality, in Shlomo Biderman and BenAmi Scharfstein (eds), Rationality inQuestion: On Eastern and Western Views of Rationality, Leiden: Brill, pp. 231249.

Siderits, M. 1994.Matilal on Nagarjuna, in Purushottama Bilimoria and J.N. Mohanty(eds), Relativism, Suffering and Beyond: Essays in Memory of Bimal Krishna Matilal,Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 6992.

Siderits, M. 1997a. Distinguishing the Madhyamika from the Advaitin: A Field Guide,in S.R. Saha (ed), Essays in Indian Philosophy, Jadavpur Studies in Philosophy,Calcutta: Allied Publishers, pp. 12943.

Siderits, M. 1997b. Buddhist Reductionism, Philosophy East and West, 47, 45578.Siderits, M. 2003. Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons, London:

Ashgate.Siderits, M. and P. Williams 2000. Altruism and Reality: An Exchange, PhilosophyEast and West, 50, pp. 41259.

Wood, T.E. 1994. Nagarjunian Disputations: A Philosophical Journey through anIndian LookingGlass, Monographs of the Society for Asian and ComparativePhilosophy no.11, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Yamaguchi Zuiho. 1997. The Core elements of Indian Buddhism Introduced into Tibet:

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A Contrast with Japan, in Jamie Hubbard and Paul L. Swanson (eds), Pruning theBodhi Tree: The Storm over Critical Buddhism, Honolulu, HI: University of HawaiiPress, pp. 22041.

Correspondence address: Mark Siderits, Department of Philosophy, Box 4540, IllinoisState University, Normal, IL 61790-4540, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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philosophical significance of emptiness

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