the clôture of deconstruction- a mahāyāna critique of derrida

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he Cloture of Deconstruction: A Mahayana Critique of Derrida

ahyna Buddhism, and many consider his Mdhyamika to be "the central philosophy ofuddhism."[2] Its influence in India, Tibet, Mongolia, China and Japan can hardly be

verestimated. The Vajrayna Buddhism of Tibet treasures Ngrjuna's works as the mostofound possible expression of philosophical truth; and while Zen Buddhism neither is nor philosophy, it is no less true that Mdhyamika (along with Yogcra) provided the theoret

erspective which made the development of Zen practice possible. Even some of theevotional schools of Pure Land Buddhism look back to Ngrjuna as their founding father.

Given this historical significance, it is an intellectual scandal that Mdhyamika is so littlenown in the West. But Ngrjuna's subtle and complicated dialectical method is often diffic

follow, perhaps because it cuts too much to the bone, challenging commonsense more the are able or willing to understand. Ngrjuna is more systematic than Derrida in his critiqnd refutation of all possible metaphysical views, including any that might be called his owno what end? To anticipate, the debate between them will turn on the following issues.

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Ngrjuna's dialectic works by undermining such "commonsense" dualities as that betwebjects and their causal relations, or that between things and time. In both of these exampleo be discussed later), the latter term may be used first to deconstruct the former and to de

at there is anything self-existing or self-present. Derrida's demonstration of the ineluctabilidiffrancemakes the same point. But that alone is incomplete. The interdependence of brms in such dualities implies that the negation of either must also lead to negation of theher. We use "cause-and-effect" to explain the relationships between supposedly discreteings, which means that our concepts of objects and causal relations, being relative to eacher, must stand or fall together: if there are no objects, then there can be no causality (as

sually understood). We shall see that the same paradox holds true for time: if there is onlyme, because there are no objects "in" time, then there is notime. Each pole deconstructs ther. It is the necessity for this second and reverse movement that Derrida does not see.

xpressed in his categories, Derrida, although aware that each term of a duality is theffranceof the other, does not fully realize how deconstructing one term (transcendentalgnified, self-presence, reference, etc.) must also transform the other (diffrance,mporization, supplementation, etc.).

What is the result of this double-deconstruction of "commonsense" dualities? Derrida'sngle-deconstruction leads to the "temporary" reversal of their hierarchy, and/or to ascontinuous, irruptive "liberation" from reference grounded in the search for unattainableigins, into the dissemination of a free-floating meaning beyond any conceptual clture. Fo

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grjuna, this would be only the illusion of liberation, while remaining trapped in a textualad infinity" which tends to become increasingly playful. What is needed is not just "a chanstyle," however seductive or frustrating that may be. Rather, the complete deconstruction

uch dualities can lead, not merely to their more self-conscious "reinscription," but to a modxperience which is not governed by them. Ngrjuna agrees that such dualities areeluctably inscribed in language, and thus are fundamental categories of thought; this meaowever, not that they are inescapable, but that their deconstruction points finally to an

xperience beyond language -- or, more precisely, to a different way of experiencing languand thought.

In other words, the ultimate irony is that deconstruction ends in the elusive "origin" whichetaphysics has always sought and which Derrida believes he has refuted. They are both

ght. Philosophy will never come to rest in such an origin, for no "transcendental signified" ce located with/in language, and philosophy is a language-game. The rhetorical operationshich produce supposedly logical proofs cannot be eliminated: philosophy, like all languageasically metaphorical. This is Derrida's positive and, I hope, lasting contribution. But the

econstruction of thought vialanguage -- for this is what Ngrjuna understood himself to boing -- offers a different mode of approach to the problem. "There is nothing outside the temore true for us now than Derrida realizes, but it is not necessarily true. In order to

nderstand this, let us consider: What is the paradigm "transcendental signified," accordinguddhism? Not nirvna, as two centuries of Western interpretation have led us to believe, fs we shall see, nirvnais neither transcendental ("The ontic range ofnirvnais the onticnge of the everyday world. There is not even the subtlest difference between the two." MMXV, 20)[3] nor signified ("No truth has been taught by a Buddha for anyone,

1 MAHYNA CRITIQUE OF DERR

ny where." XXV, 24). On the contrary, the paradigm transcendental signified is the thing--ere meaning not only physical objects but also the objectified subject. What most needs to

econstructed is the apparent objectivity of the world, which is due to taking perceptions asigns" of the object. The relationship between names and things is the archetypal signifier/gnified correspondence, and the Buddhist goal is nothing less than its completeeconstruction: "... the non-functioning of perceptions as signs of all named things is itselfrvna" (Candrakrti)[4] It is not Buddhism that postulates ametaphysical Reality behindppearance, but our usual "commonsense" view, which distinguishes them by objectifying trmer with a name. Nirvna, in contrast, is nothing other than "the utter dissipation of

ntologizing thought" (Candrakrti).



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Unarticulated and delusive ontological commitments underlie even the most everyday uslanguage. Suddenly, language/thought is no longer the means (as according to

etaphysics) nor even the end (according to Heidegger and Derrida, in very different ways)ut the problem itself. This perspective is essential to Buddhism and to most meditativeaditions. Philosophy cannot grasp what it seeks in any of its categories, but, as languageecoming self-conscious of its function, it can learn to "undo" itself and cease to be anbstruction, in that way allowing what we have long sought to manifest itself. This "origin-wh

annot-be-named" has always been the most obvious thing, but says Ngrjuna, all ways oinking about it -- whether metaphysical or deconstructive -- can only conceal it by dualistic

eparating us from it.

To avoid becoming even longer than it is, this paper must presuppose some familiarity we writings of Jacques Derrida. First I present, in some detail, the approach and perspectivgrjuna, although with reference to Derrida when the similarities suggest such a compari] I hope that this first part is interesting in itself, but in any case it is necessary to the critiqu

at follows. The main differences are reserved for Part Two, where Derrida is subjected to

dhyamika critique.

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Even more than most philosophers, both Ngrjuna and Derrida can be understood onlythin their philosophical context. Like Kant's dialectic, both deconstructive methods are

ependent on philosophy having attained a high degree of sophistication; both are self-onsciously parasitic upon the dogmatism of previous paradigms, "the interminable and totaonflict of reason" (Murti). But otherwise the difference in their contexts is more striking.

Ngrjuna is very much within the Buddhist tradition, which is as much religious ashilosophical (a distinction whose invalidity becomes apparent in such an application),though Mdhyamika constitutes so major a development within Buddhism that it is almosteak with the prior tradition. But Ngrjuna never questions Buddhist methods and goals,though he explains them in a new way. Also, like Kant, he is responding to a conflict ofaditions.

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There are two main currents of Indian philosophy -- one having its source inthe atma-doctrine of the Upanisads and the other in the anatmadoctrine ofBuddha. They conceive reality on two distinct and exclusive patterns. TheUpanisads and the systems following the Brahmanical tradition conceive realityon the pattern of an inner core or soul (tman), immutable and identical amidst anouter region of impermanence and change, to which it is unrelated or but looselyrelated. This may be termed the Substance-view of reality...

The other tradition is represented by the Buddhist denial of substance and allthat it implies. There is no inner and immutable core in things; everything is in flux.Existence for the Buddhist is momentary, unique, and unitary. The substance (theuniversal and the identical) was rejected as illusory; it was but a thought-construction made under the influence of wrong belief.[6]

was the conflict between these paradigms that prompted Ngrjuna's aufheben, whichonetheless did not lead to any merger between the two traditions (although Advaita Vedn

orrowed the dialectical argumentation of Mdhyamika for the same end, refuting the realitye objective world). Ngrjuna, although constituting a "Copernican Revolution" within India

hilosophy, understood himself as only explicating more clearly than others what the Buddhmself had taught.

In contrast to Indian pluralism, where conflicting systems evolved adjacently by adding sommentaries to commentaries on revered works, Derrida is heir to a more integrated tradithich has developed by repeatedly revolutionizing itself. Each philosophical generationefines its own identity by cannibalizing what its forebears have left. Since the failure of the

egelian synthesis, this has meant killing not only one's own father but all one's forefathershis difference is important because it affects their respective deconstructions. In contrast toerrida's "hierarchy reversal" (e.g., a grammatology to replace phono- and logocentrism) thno such reversal, temporary or not, in Mdhyamika because Ngrjuna was reacting to a

onflict between diametrically opposed paradigms.

Yet these differences should not overshadow what the two deconstructions share. Oneten-overlooked aspect of Buddhism, unusual for a religion but common with Derrida, is thauddhism assumes no "golden age" in the past, no mythical pure point of historical origin to

hich Buddhists yearn to return. Because of their belief in an all-loving God, the Semiticligions must postulate a Garden of Eden from which man fell because of his own sin.uddhism, accepting no such Creator, is silent about the origin of the world and of ourduhkuffering in the broad sense: including dissatisfaction, frustration, angst). The most theuddha ever said about this was that "a beginning cannot be found." Insofar as nirvnamige taken as such an origin, it is not something that needs to be regained or even gained, bunly to be realized by ending the delusion that keeps us from understanding the way thingsave always been. On other occasions, the Buddha pointed out that whether or not there w



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beginning really makes no difference, since what is important is that there is an end. Heten stated that he came to teach only two things: that our lives are duhkha(suffering), andere is a way to end that duhkha.

Most central to Buddhist doctrine is the denial of an ontological self. This brings us back e paradigm conflict between Vednta and early Buddhism. Essential to the Vedantic

Substance-view" is not only its postulation of an immutable soul (tman)

3 MAHYNA CRITIQUE OF DERR

ut also the identification of that soul with the Ground of the universe (Brahman). The Budd

jection of self should be understood as a critique of any such self-existent, self-presentanscendental signified, and the most important Buddhist doctrine, prattya-samutpda, isothing less than a systematic deconstruction of any claim to self-reflexive "pureonsciousness" (cit).

Prattya-samutpda("dependent origination") refutes any such conception byemonstrating the interdependence of all elements of our experience. Everything, includingonsciousness, may be located within a set of cause-and-effect, differing-and-deferringlationship ("when X exists, then Y arises") which precludes any simple" self-presence." Th

arly Pali sutras contain various versions of this "interlocking chain," but the standard doctriompilation presents twelve factors.

(1) ignoranceof the interdependent nature of all things (constituting not only thefirst "link" but the basic presupposition of the whole process) leads to theactivation of(2) mental formations(psychological causal factors derived from past thoughtsand actions and usually understood as karmic tendencies persisting from pastlifetimes) leads to

(3) (rebirth) consciousness(necessary for impregnation) leads to(4) name-and-form(the developing mind-body complex of the fetus) which leads to(5) the six sense-organs(including the mind as the organ of thinking) which lead to(6) contactbetween such organs and sense-objects (including mind and "mindobjects") and thus(7) sensation(pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) leading to(8) craving(not only desire for objects of pleasure but also aversion to unpleasantones and indifference to neutral ones) and hence(9) graspingat sense-objects, the manifestation of craving, leading to



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ck of "thingness" in things implies a mode of experience in which there is no awareness oause and effect. Things and their causal relations must stand or fall together, because ourotion of cause-and-effect is dependent on that of objectively-existing things. If causalityxplains the interaction among things, then things themselves must be "noncausal." And thiecisely our commonsense notion of what an "object" is: that thing whose continued existe

oes not need to be explained -- i.e., once in existence, it "self-exists." The objectivity of theorld (including the objectivization of myself, my own sense of being a discrete, persisting s

epends upon this dualism. It is the bifurcation between them that Ngrjuna shows to bentenable, by using each pole to deconstruct the other.

In order to understand the Mdhyamika critique, we must begin with a clear sense of whthat is being criticized: not primarily metaphysics, but our commonsense understanding oe world, which sees it as a collection of discrete entities (including myself) interacting

ausally "in" space and time. This understanding (one or the other aspect of which isbsolutized in systematic metaphysics) is what makes the everyday world samsra for us, as this samsrathat Ngrjuna is concerned to deconstruct. The implication of Ngrjuna'

guments against self-existence (e.g., MMK Chapters I, XV) is to point out the inconsistenconcealed within this everyday way of "taking" the world: we accept that things change, yet e same time we assume that they remain "essentially" the same -- which is necessary if the to be "things" at all. Other Indian philosophers, recognizing this inconsistency, tried to soby absolutizing one of these at the expense of the other. The satkryavdasubstance-vieSamkhya emphazied permanence at the price of not being able to account for change, a

e asatkryavdamodal-view of early Buddhism had the opposite problem of not being abaccount for continuity. The basic difficulty with all such views is that any understanding of

ause and effect which tries to relate two separatethings togethercan be reduced to the

ontradiction of both asserting and denying identity.

As the first prong of his attack on the bifurcation, Ngrjuna refutes our common-sensestinction between things and their causal relations simply by sharpening the distinction tobsurdity. If things are to be self-existent, then they must be distinguish able from theironditions, but their existence is clearly contingent upon the conditions which bring them inteing and eventually cause them to disappear. If it is objected that one cannot live withoutifying such fictitious entities, at least to some extent, then the Mdhyamika agrees; but thi

ower truth" (samvrti), while not denied completely, must not be taken as a correct

nderstanding of the way things really are.

But that is only the first step, for now the critique dialectically reverses. The category ofausality turns out to be just as dependent upon things as things are on their causalonditions. This second step is easy to state but harder to understand. Granted, if there is oause-and-effect, then there is no thing which causes and no thing which is effected; but ifere is nothing to cause or be effected, then there is no reason to perceive the world in termcause-and-effect. For example, implicit in our concept of change is the notion that a thing

ecoming other than it was, so unless one reifies something self-existent in order to provide



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hich incessantly fall away to become the past -- but a very different present whichcorporates what we normally call the past and the future, because it always stays the sam

We cannot be separated from time. This means that because, in reality, there isno coming or going in time, when we cross the river or climb the mountain weexist in the eternal present of time; this time includes all past and future time....Most people think time is passing and do not realize that there is an aspect that is

not passing (Dgen).[21]

hat is the aspect of time that is not passing? It is always now. Alternatively, this non-dualay of experiencing time may be described as living in eternity: again, not eternity in the usense, an infinite persistence intime which presupposes the usual duality between things ame. There is "an eternity on this side of the grave" if the present is not devalued, asittgenstein realized:

For life in the present there is no death.

If by eternity is understood not infinite temporal duration but non-temporality, thenit can be said that a man lives eternally if he lives in the present. [22]

So there is nothing outside the incessant flux of change, yet there is also something whicoes not change at all. Transformation is experienced very differently if one is the changether than an observer of it. The same is true for causality. The interdependence of time an

ausality means that to live (in) the Now-which-does-not-fall-away is freedom, for that Now in unconditionality which is not incompatible with conditions as long as I amthose conditiono be the Now means to be one with whatever is happening, in which case conditions are nconstraint but constitute the everchanging web of possibilities which may be actualized (o

ot) freely. Such freedom is not a delusion born of ignoring the causal factors that determiney behavior, but just the opposite: it is motives, conscious or unconscious, which pull me outhe Now by objectifying both time and things (including, first, me) in order to provide a fie

-play for the network of intentions. Of course, there is nothing wrong with such an objectifield as long as it is realized to be a mental construction, for then I am not objectively trappethin my own objectifications. But, from the "highest point of view," we have always lived o

n) the Eternal Now. Any other sense of time is the result ofprapacathought-projection wiat Now. That is why philosophy -- not only metaphysics but even deconstructive anti-

hilosophy, including this paper -- cannot be the Way, but must finally yield to something elso identify with any thought-construction is to be objectified by it and lose the Now, whereaseditation -- zazen, yoga, etc. -- is learning how to dwell in that Now.



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uality already latent in ordinary language. Whether both terms resulting from the bifurcatione taken to be real (both "container" and "contained" being real, as presented above in Parthe reality of one is used to deny the reality of the other (as with Aristotle) is irrelevant to

ain point.

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From a Mdhyamika perspective, what is most interesting is that Derrida's essay takes foanted the very metaphysical determination of time that Heidegger and (to a lesser extent)

ven Hegel are attempting to bring into question. Ironically, the many passages which Derriuotes from Hegel and Heidegger repeatedly point to the second and reverse movement, a

ove which Derrida himself cannot see. It would be difficult to find another text thateconstructs itself so well. For example:

...this Hegelian determination of time permits us to think the present, the very formof time, as eternity... Eternity is another name of the presence of the present.Hegel also distinguishes this presence from the present as now (pp. 45-6).

errida's critique arises from not seeing the distinction which Heidegger makes between twfferent types of present: fallen and primordial, gegenwrtigand anwesen. Derrida introduc

eidegger's footnote by placing it in its context.

The Note belongs to the next to last section of the last chapter ("Temporalityand Within-Time-ness as the Source of the Ordinary Conception of Time"). Timeis usually considered as that in whichbeings are produced. Within-time-ness,intratemporality, is taken to be the homogeneous medium in which the movementof daily existence is reckoned and organized. This homogeneity of the temporalmedium becomes the effect of a "leveling off of primordial time"..., and constitutesa world time more objective than the object and more subjective than the subject

(p. 35).

errida sees that the "leveling" of which Heidegger speaks as due to the exorbitant privilegee "now" and the "point" (p. 36). Yet, after reproducing the entire footnote, he can understa

s significance only as calling into question, not some conceptionof the present, but, simplyhe present":

Has not the entire history of philosophy been authorized by the "extraordinaryright" of the present?... How could one think Being and time otherwise than on the



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etaphysical reading of him.[33] For Heidegger, forgetfulness of Being -- which is metaphys

is to be in a "remembering back" (Wiedererinnerung). It is this still-metaphysicalemembering back" to Being which Derrida wishes to eliminate in his deconstruction of anyanscendental signified. This leaves him with what he thinks is an active Nietzscheanrgetfulness, expressed in the "free play" of dissemination. The question already raised ishether such a forgetfulness of metaphysics is only a more subtle form of bondage to thenarticuiated metaphysical categories implicit in our everyday understanding.

The "forgetfulness" of Zen meditation is different from these. For Buddhism, thendamental duality in need of deconstruction is that between subject and object, between

onscious self and the external world. As with the bifurcations already discussed in Part Ondeconstruct one of the two terms must result in a new understanding of the other. Dgen

gain:

To learn about Buddhism is to learn about yourself. To learn about yourself is toforget yourself. To forget yourself is to perceive yourself as all things. To do this is

to let "fall away" the body and mind of self and others. [34]

I came to realize clearly that mind is nothing other than mountains and rivers andthe great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars.[35]

uch a nondual experience requires actually deconstructing one's own sense-of-self whicheans some form of meditation to unravel the self-reflexive thought-constructions whichaintain the sense of self.

Derrida's view of the subject is similar -- up to a point:

It [the economic aspect ofdiffrence] confirms that the subject, and first of all theconscious and speaking subject, depends upon the system of differences and themovement of

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diffrance, that the subject is not present, nor above all present to itself beforedifference, that the subject is constituted only in being divided from itself, inbecoming space, in temporizing, in deferral...[36]



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the clôture of deconstruction- a mahāyāna critique of derrida

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