Cracking the Walnut, page 14
like someone who does not know how
and grasps a poisonous snake the wrong way.
You need special training to be able to catch a snake—without it, you will not know how to catch the snake skillfully.
12. The World-Honored One knew that this teaching,
so deep and subtle,
would be out of the reach of those of meager intelligence,
so he did not want to teach it to them.
世尊知是法
甚深微妙相
非鈍根所及
是故不欲說
The Buddha knew that the teachings on emptiness were subtle, profound, and wonderful, and that they would be beyond the reach of people of meager intelligence. He did not want to teach it to them—not because he was unwilling to give the teaching, but because if such people heard it they would not understand it, and he did not want to give rise to misunderstanding.
13. You say that I am caught in emptiness,
and so have made many errors.
But the things you call errors
have nothing to do with emptiness.
汝謂我著空
而為我生過
汝今所說過
於空則無有
You say that I am caught in the idea of emptiness and that is why I have made many errors. The things you call errors do not exist in emptiness.
14. Because emptiness is possible,
everything is possible.
If emptiness were not possible,
nothing would be possible.
以有空義故
一切法得成
若無空義者
一切則不成
This verse is renowned. It shook the world in the second century CE and has continued to do so until this day. On the day I first read it I felt a deep happiness. Since all things are by nature empty, they can be there. Emptiness is the foundation of all that is. All things can manifest and be possible thanks to emptiness.
The word emptiness (śūnyatā) means empty of something. Sometimes people misunderstand and think that it means nonexistence. Say you have a cup with some tea in it, and next to it you have an empty cup. Whether there is tea in it or not, there is still a cup. Without the cup, you could not have tea or no tea in it. If there is no tea in the cup, it does not mean the cup is not there. The cup that is empty of tea has other things in it; it is full of air. Empty means empty of something. Even if the cup is empty of tea, it is full of air.
What are all things empty of? They are empty of a separate self. Empty means empty of an own-being, a separate self, a self-nature. All phenomena can only manifest because they do not have a self-nature. If they had a self-nature, they would not be impermanent, and therefore would not be born and die.
Say you plant a seed of corn. If it had a self-nature, it would always remain a seed, because self-nature remains itself and cannot be destroyed. However, the seed of corn does not remain itself; it can be destroyed, and because of this it can sprout and become a corn plant. Due to the absence of a self-nature, the seed of corn has a chance to manifest. A self-nature is an unchanging essence. It is always the same and it cannot become something else. If we say that all phenomena have self-nature, then no phenomenon would be able to manifest. It is because phenomena do not have a self-nature that they can manifest.
Because emptiness is possible,
everything is possible.
If a child were to have a self-nature, they would never be able to become an adult. The corn plant, the adult, and everything else are without a self-nature. It is thanks to emptiness that all things can exist. However, people do not understand emptiness, and when they hear about it they are afraid.
If now you are suffering—drifting and sinking in your life—you will want to be liberated and to find peace and joy. How could you possibly realize this desire if you had a self-nature? If you had a self-nature, you would suffer and be confused forever. Since suffering and confusion do not have a self-nature, they can become enlightenment, happiness, and peace. Instead of being troubled because nothing has a self-nature you will say, “It’s fortunate that there is no self-nature; this truth makes everything possible.” This is a very positive way of looking.
If your headache had a self-nature, then you would have it your whole life. Since it does not have a self-nature, it will come to an end. We can say, “Long live impermanence! Long live emptiness! Thanks to impermanence and emptiness, everything is possible.” This is a wonderful sentence. It turns upside down all the complaints about impermanence and emptiness.
People are terrified of the idea of emptiness because they identify emptiness with the idea of nonbeing. People in the West especially are afraid when they hear the word emptiness, because they do not understand what it is.
The Sanskrit yujyate (Chinese 成) can be translated into English as“possible.” Therefore, the first two verses tell us that “thanks to emptinesseverything is possible.”Nagarjuna’s proclamation is loud and clear; it is wonderful, and profound.
When we understand this teaching, we begin to be in touch with the ultimate dimension, the ultimate truth (paramārtha satya), and with nirvāṇa—which is to say, with the reality of no birth and no death, of no being and no nonbeing.
15. The mistakes you make,
you attribute to me,
just like someone who rides a horse
forgets the horse he is riding.
汝今自有過
而以迴向我
如人乘馬者
自忘於所乘
It is you (in this case, the opponent) who create misunderstandings, not someone else. Still, you bring these misunderstandings and lay them at my door, saying that I am the one who creates them.
You are riding a horse, but you forget you are riding a horse. This is an amusing example. You are riding the horse, and yet you say someone has taken your horse. It is like forgetting you put the car keys in your pocket and blaming someone else for taking them.
16. If you see that all things
must have a self-nature,
then you also maintain
that they have no causes and conditions.
若汝見諸法
決定有性者
即為見諸法
無因亦無緣
If you see that all phenomena have to have a self-nature, since the self-nature must already be there, they will not need causes and conditions to arise.
17. You deny cause and effect,
action, the actor, and what is made.
You also deny
the arising and ceasing of all things.
即為破因果
作作者作法
亦復壞一切
萬物之生滅
If you think or say that all phenomena have a self-nature you deny the law of causality, deny the action, the one performing the action, and the result. For example, the seed of corn has the ability to create. It creates the sprout and the initial corn plant. The seed is the one who creates. Its action is creating, and the sprout or the plant of corn are what is created. You, who say that there is a self-nature, deny the law of causality, the act of creating, the one who creates, and the object that is created. It also means that you refute and negate the arising and the ceasing of all phenomena.
If you see that all phenomena must have a self-nature, they will not need to be caused and conditioned. You refute the idea of cause and result, of creating, of the one that creates, and of what is created. At the same time, you also refute the idea of the arising and ceasing of all things. Nāgārjuna deflects back to his opponent all the accusations they raise. The opponent says, “If you teach emptiness, you refute all the teachings.” Nāgārjuna replies, “If you say that emptiness does not exist, you say that there is a self-nature; in this way you—not I—refute all the teachings.”
The next verse (verse 18), which we looked at earlier, is also well known in the Buddhist world; it is the foundation for the teachings and practice of an important Chinese Buddhist school, known as Tiantai. Master Zhiyi, (538–597) of this school, took this verse and created a Dharma door called the Threefold Contemplation (三觀): the contemplation on emptiness, conventional designation, and the Middle Way. The teachings of the Tiantai school are also practiced in Vietnam; when I was a novice, I practiced according to this school. Although we belonged to the Chan school, we used the teachings of the Tiantai school. Tiantai practitioners practice meditation, but the school is not called a Chan school.
As I mentioned, when I was sixteen and seventeen I studied the Tiantai textbook on meditation practice entitled, The Practice of Śamatha and Vipaśyanā for Young Beginners or The Smaller Book on Śamatha and Vipaśyanā. This book teaches how to harmonize the breath, the body, and the mind and how to meditate. In The Smaller Book on Śamatha and Vipaśyanā there is no mention of the contemplations on emptiness, conventional designation, and the Middle Way. Only later on in the book entitled The Larger Book on Śamatha and Vipaśyanā did we learn about these three contemplations. For now, all we need to know is that the Three Contemplations of the Tiantai School come from the following verse of the Verses on the Middle Way.
18. I call empty
things that arise from conditions.
They are conventional designations
and they are the Middle Way.
眾因緣生法
我說 即是空
亦為是假名
亦是中道義
This is Nāgārjuna’s proclamation: all things arise from conditions and I proclaim that they are all empty. How is it possible to proclaim that everything is empty? It is because they arise from causes and conditions. They are empty because they arise from conditions.
They are also conventional designations (prajñapti), which we examined earlier in Chapter 2 on arriving and going. Prajñapti is the name we give something—we agree together to use that name for practical purposes. For example, the Euro coin on its own does not have a value. We come to an agreement to give it a certain value. If we did not have that agreement, the coin would just be a piece of metal. Its whole value is due to a convention invented by the human brain; that is why we can use it. Since the Euro coin is a conventional designation, it has a value, and you can exchange it for a few kilos of rice.
The Middle Way (madhyamapratipad) is the way that transcends all pairs of notions like being and nonbeing, coming and going, birth and death. The essence of all phenomena transcends these opposing concepts. It is neither coming nor going, neither being born nor dying, neither being nor nonbeing, neither the same nor different. That is the nature of nirvāṇa, and it is called the Middle Way. The reason all things are empty, conventional designations, and the Middle Way is because their nature is conditioned co-arising.
This chapter on the Four Noble Truths is important because it shows how the theory is applied in real life, whereas the first two chapters, “The Examination of Conditions” and “The Examination of Coming and Going,” illustrate the fundamentals of Nāgārjuna’s theory.
In this chapter we read the three most famous of the Verses on the Middle Way. The first is the tenth verse, which mentions the two truths: the conventional truth and the ultimate truth. When we bring the light of the two truths to shine upon the Buddhist teachings, we see that the teachings that seem to be most contradictory are not in conflict at all. If we do not do this, we will think that the Buddha at one time says one thing and at another time says the opposite. Those who are caught in the ultimate truth cannot see the conventional truth, and those who are caught in the conventional truth cannot see the ultimate truth. The teaching on the two truths (saṃvṛti and paramārtha) is therefore a light that helps us see that the two truths, which seem to present two different views, in fact depend on each other. Without one of them. there would not be the other.
The second important verse is the fourteenth:
Because emptiness is possible,
everything is possible
And the third important verse is the eighteenth:
I call empty
things that arise from conditions.
They are conventional designations
and they are the Middle Way.
The insights in these verses are like precious gifts of nourishing food. When we read them, we feel the kind of satisfaction that comes from being in touch with wonderful teachings. To have the time and opportunity to be in touch with teachings like this and to be able to meditate on them in our daily life is a great happiness for a practitioner. In the world people are very busy. They do not have time to breathe, so how could they have a chance to be in touch with these profound teachings and apply them in their daily lives? As a practitioner you should give rise to gratitude for these teachings; in that way your happiness can be really great and unending.
* The Buddha says that just as the ocean is the abode of many wonderful creatures, so the Dharma is the abode of the four kinds and eight pairs of holy people. (AN 8.19 and MA 45).
4
Examination of Being and Nonbeing
1. The existence of something’s self-nature
is not evident in its conditions.
A self-nature that arises from conditions
is something that is made.
眾緣中有性
是事則不然
性從眾緣出
即名為作法
The self-nature (svabhāva) means “the intrinsic essence” or “the reality” of something. We think that there must be a self-nature that makes Brother Minh Niệm Brother Minh Niệm, and not Brother Pháp Niệm. This self-nature makes it possible for us to distinguish Brother Minh Niệm from Brother Pháp Niệm. Nāgārjuna is asking us whether this self-nature can be found in conditions. If you want to find the self-nature of a flower, what is it that helps you not to confuse it with a table or a cloud? When you look into a flower you see the conditions (pratyaya) that have brought it about—the seed, the earth in which it germinates, the rain, and the sun that give the warmth and the moisture required for growth.
The existence of something’s self-nature
is not evident in its conditions.
Is the self-nature of something in the conditions that give rise to it? Can we find the self-nature of Brother Minh Niệm in the conditions that have made him possible—his parents, his ancestors, the Buddhist institute, his temple, his daily food? The answer must be no. Is there something apart from those conditions in which we can find his self-nature? Again, the answer must be no. Apart from the conditions which give rise to them we cannot find the self-nature of a person or a flower.
The existence of something’s self-nature
is not evident in its conditions.
In summary, the first assertion is: It is false to say there is the self-nature of something lying in the conditions that make it possible.
A self-nature that arises from conditions
is something that is made.
The second assertion is: Something that is made (kṛtaka, 作法) is something that was not there in the beginning and had to be made.
In the commentaries on logic and dialectics (因明論, hetuvidyaśāstra*) it is said that sound is impermanent because it is something made. According to our mind-made definition of self-nature, it is something permanent, eternal, with no beginning and no end. Something that is made cannot have a self-nature; it cannot turn into something from nothing or from something turn into nothing. It has to maintain its intrinsic essence. Things that are made—like a flower, a table, or a sound—cannot have self-nature.
We all believe that we have a self, our self-nature. No one can brush up against our ego, because if they do we will be hurt. If we know that there is no ego, no self-nature, we will not feel hurt anymore. By meditating to see there is no self-nature, we suffer less, our pride is not hurt, and we no longer want to pack up and leave our colleagues, our family and friends, or our community. Someone who wants to leave their community still believes they have a self-nature. We are like a flower, and the flower is something which is made. Something that is made means that it has the nature of being conditioned or made; since it has been made, it does not have a self-nature.
In summary, there are two assertions:
It is not correct to say that the self-nature can be found in the conditions.
It is not correct to say that the self-nature can arise from conditions, because it would be something that is made.
2. What sense does it make to say
that the self-nature is something made?
A self-nature is something not made
and does not come about dependent on things other than itself.
性若是作者
云何有此義
性名為無作
不待異法成
How can you reason that self-nature is made? By definition, a self-nature is something not made. A self-nature does not need other things in order to come about. Something that has to rely on conditions other than itself cannot in principle have a self-nature. The Chinese character 待 in the last line means “wait for.” If the flower had a self-nature it would not need to wait for the sun, the clouds, and the soil in order to come about. We cannot find a flower apart from non-flower elements so the flower does not have a self-nature. The same is true for Brother Minh Niệm; Brother Minh Niệm does not have a self-nature.
3. If things do not have self-nature,
there cannot be an other-nature.
The self-nature of one thing
is the other-nature of another thing.
法若無自性
云何有他性
自性於他性
