Cracking the Walnut, page 7
For example, contemplate the air in your room. It seems to be still. It has no color, shape, or sound. However, you know that at every moment television and radio stations are sending out signals to a satellite and that the satellite sends these signals down to you. You only need a radio or a television set and as soon as you turn it on you will hear people shouting or gunshots and you will see white, black, yellow, and red. At that time you say that those sounds and images exist, but before you turned on the television or the radio they were not nonexistent. Radio and television signals fill up space, but in our everyday habits of perception we forget that they exist. We live in ignorance, caught in ideas of being and nonbeing. The problem is our ignorance and not the question of whether the flame exists or not. We always think that the flame makes us suffer: “Why did you come into my life? Now that you have gone, I suffer.” The existence or nonexistence of a person is not the true cause of our suffering, our ignorance is.
To be born in the spiritual family of the Buddha is to be given a chance to achieve freedom. A practitioner’s time should be used to achieve freedom—the most important thing. We can only help liberate others once we have been able to liberate ourselves. Our freedom is our weapon. Without freedom, we cannot help anyone. Such freedom is not achieved by the grace of God, but by our own practice of looking deeply. If we are still in the grips of notions and of grief, we are not yet free. In this state we cannot help ourselves, let alone someone else.
When we witness that there is no one who goes and no action of going, it is strange to think that there is a time of going. It seems as if the time of going goes on its own, which is unreasonable. This method of dialectics is devised to help Nāgārjuna’s opponent see the unreasonableness of what they are saying and to let go of their view.
5. If there is going in the time of going,
then there are two goings:
the first is the time of going,
and the second is the act of going.
若去時有去
則有二種去
一謂為去時
二謂去時去
If in the present moment of going, the reality of that going is happening, we create two kinds of going: the going and the the going that is going. However, there is nothing or no one going. If they have gone they would no longer be there, yet we see that they are still alive and present. Are we looking at the one who goes with the eyes of impermanence and nonself, or with the eyes of permanence and self? If we look at them with the eyes of impermanence and nonself, we discover the ideas we have been caught in and grasping at. We discover our ignorance.
In our daily life, while washing dishes, cleaning vegetables, or gardening, we should know how to use this time to look at ourselves, other people, the trees, and the plants in such a way that we see the true nature of all things. In doing so we gradually untie the ropes that bind us. This is our daily practice. It is the cream of Buddhism: seeing that all mental formations (such as fear, sadness, and complexes of superiority and inferiority) arise from ideas of being, nonbeing, coming, going, self, and other.
For example, in the countryside of Vietnam if you were a poor person, you might walk past the gate of a rich person and envy their heaps of straw, hencoop, and granary full of rice and say, “Good heavens! What a blessing it would be to have a hencoop like that! But the greatest blessing would be that granary full of grain. With a heap of straw like that I could cook my meals for an entire year.” You are caught in and long for these things. Yet you are not aware that inside the rich person’s house are custom-made, ornate wooden cabinets, rare calligraphies, expensive paintings, and valuable gems.
The same is true for the Buddha’s teachings. When we come to the practice we see a couple of Dharma doors that help us to feel relaxed and well. We like these practices very much and we master them in our daily life. Most of us are satisfied just to know how to breathe, survive, and smile, but we are not interested in going into the depths of Buddhism—into the rich person’s house—to discover its most precious treasures. This cream of the Dharma is our true inheritance; with it, we can attain fearlessness, nirvāṇa, and insight capable of snapping all of the ropes that bind us. That is the greatest aspiration of a practitioner. To be caught in our monastery, in our organization, in our particular group of friends—the shared joys, sadness, and dreams—is a real waste.
Therefore, to learn to transform our anger so that we can survive, smile, say a few kind words to another person, and be just a little less angry is good, but it is not our deepest aspiration. Our deepest aspiration is complete freedom. Therefore, we have to devote our lives to the practice with true determination. That is the heroic resolve we need to commit to in order to realize freedom.
6. If there are two goings,
there must be two subjects who go.
Without a subject who goes,
how can we establish the fact of going?
若有二去法
則有二去者
以離於去者
去法不可得
7. If there is no subject who goes,
the act of going will be impossible.
When there is not an act of going,
how can there be someone who goes?
若離於去者
去法不可得
以無去法故
何得有去者
8. The goer does not go;
the non-goer does not go.
Apart from goer and non-goer,
there is no third possibility.
去者則不去
不去者不去
離去不去者
無第三去者
When the Buddha walked together with his attendant, the monk Ānanda, he used conventional language, as we do: “Ānanda, do you want to climb that mountain with me?” Here the Buddha used the words you, me, and climb or not climb. Though the Buddha uses conventional language like this in the sutras, we need to know when he is using conventional language and when he is talking in terms of the ultimate truth. The Sautrāntika school used to quote the following: “There is a person whose appearance on earth benefits so many living beings. Who is this person? The Buddha.” In this quote we see distinctly that there is a person, there is the appearance of that person, and there are benefits for others. Based on this sentence the teachers of the Sautrāntika school affirmed that there is a person and that there is the arriving of that person (their appearance on earth). This is language that all of us can easily accept.
When an enlightened person says these words, they are not caught in them. They look on the words as conventional designations. When we use someone’s name it is to point to a certain reality; the name is a conventional designation used for convenience, just like the words “person,” “appearance,” “benefit,” and “living beings.” These terms are things we have mutually agreed upon and are convenient to use.
If we go deeply into the heart of reality, we will see clearly that the person whose name we use—whether it be the Buddha or Śāriputra—transcends this name. The name is merely a convenience that gives us a narrow and relative notion of reality. When we go deeper, we see that the reality of a thing is not contained in its conventional designation.
In our daily speech we say that something arrives or goes, that something is you, is me, is them, is born or dies. When we go deeper into the heart of reality we see that those conventional designations no longer speak the truth. For example, someone may say, “I hate my father and my mother because they have made me suffer my whole life.” That hatred and suffering arise from being caught in a perception that father, mother, and myself are separate realities. When we are caught in conventional designations, our suffering and anger flare up. When we look deeply we see that we are in our father and our father is in us. When we see this we go beyond conventional designations and get in touch with a deeper dimension of reality. Quite naturally, our sadness and anger will vanish.
The aim of our practice is to go from the plane of phenomena to the plane of suchness, from the plane of conventional designation to the plane of the Middle Way. The Middle Way transcends conventional designations. When someone sees that they are the continuation of their father and that their father is intact in every cell of their body, the idea of not wanting to have anything to do with him will not arise. We cannot possibly be an independent reality separate from our father. Therefore, anger and hatred towards our father cannot continue, and gradually the situation is transformed.
A wave is only afraid of continuing or ceasing, of being high or low, of going up or going down if it does not know that it is water. Once the wave knows that it has always been water it is not afraid to go up, not afraid to go down. It no longer fears taking this or that form. The important thing is to transcend conventional designations and touch a deeper dimension—nirvāṇa. Nirvāṇa is a reality that transcends every idea: I, you, going up, going down, arriving, going, one, and many.
Nāgārjuna has his way of helping us transcend conventional designations. His dialectics show us that our speech—based on conventional designation—is deceptive. He invites us to inspect conventional designations to see that they are full of contradictions. Seeing these contradictions, we transcend conventional designation and see deeply into reality. As long as we are caught in ideas of I and you, this wave and that wave, and so forth, we have anxiety and fear. When we can transcend I and you, our suffering and anxiety naturally come to an end. We see that we are everything; the wave sees that it is also water.
Now let us imagine—and this is just imagination, because it does not occur in reality—that there is a border between what is and what is not, between being and nonbeing. Someone is standing on the side of being and gradually they approach the side of nonbeing; once they cross the border, they no longer are. They go from being to nonbeing. We could also imagine the inverse: starting from the opposite side of nonbeing someone goes toward being. This is the idea we all have of birth and death (arriving and going).
Let’s imagine again that this person is gradually crossing the border between being and nonbeing. This is the time of departing from being and of arriving at nonbeing or of departing from nonbeing and arriving at being. We can think of this process being divided into four stages:
In the first stage we see the person wholly on the side of being.
In the second stage they have become 2/3 being and 1/3 nonbeing.
In the third stage they are only 1/3 being and 2/3 nonbeing.
At the fourth stage they are wholly nonbeing.
In the first three stages the person is still living, but gradually they are dying. This is the time of gradual going. At the time of going there must be a person going, a time of going, and an action of going. Nāgārjuna invites us to examine this. In the first stage the person who goes is still completely there. They can speak, make their last will, and say their last prayer. After this they begin to decompose, and when the decomposition is complete we say that they have gone out of existence. If having arrived on the other side they were still alive, they would not have become nothing. Therefore we have to reexamine our way of thinking, which is deceptive.
Imagine a monastic who wants to go back to lay life. In the beginning they have not gone back, then they have gone back a little, then a little more, and then they go back completely. Those of us who are monastics can ask ourselves: “Where am I?” You may think that you have not gone back to lay life because you still wear the monastic robe and you are called “sister” or “brother.” This, however, is not certain. Look again, because you may have begun to go back without being aware of it. Your mind of love and your sense of purpose in the monastic life may have begun to wither. You may be going back to lay life without knowing it. Nothing happens all at once, it happens gradually. The death of a monastic takes place slowly. You think someone is on this side of the border, but in fact they have gone across to the other side. So we have to examine the matter of arriving and going carefully.
A practitioner of the spiritual path, just like any other phenomenon, is like a candle or a match. When a flame arises it needs to be nourished by fuel, for example by wood and oxygen. The conditions that nourish the flame depend on the amount of wood and the presence of oxygen, both of which keep the flame burning. Once the matchstick comes to an end, the flame can be kept alive by more wood or another match. The life of a practitioner, just like a flame, needs to be nourished by the nutriments necessary for practice. These nutriments are the mind of love and the aspiration to practice in order to transform oneself and to help others. If you are not nourished, you are on the way to death as a practitioner. You are already going back to the life of no practice, and you do not need to wait until you leave the sangha to go back to that life.
As far as our body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness are concerned, we experience constant change, loss, and death. The cells of our body are dying in every moment. Our feelings and perceptions also change and die at every moment of our daily life. Birth is also happening at every moment. There is input and output at every moment. We do not need to wait for death to happen at a certain moment. Birth gradually gives way to death. Birth and death are taking place at every moment of our daily life. Life and death support each other.
If you say there is going, it means there is going at every moment. If you say there is arriving, it means there is arriving at every moment. When you breathe out, your out-breath is a departure from the inside to the outside of your body. When you breathe in, your in-breath brings outside elements into you. Your in-breath could be the out-breath of someone else. There is no doubt that someone else’s breath is in your breath. Look and you will see. When there are two hundred people sitting in a hall, they are all breathing. Without a doubt the out-breath of one person will become the in-breath of someone else. You breathe in through your nose and the air is in contact with your flesh. The air goes back and forth between people all the time, making a close connection between us.
Our ever-changing body, feelings, perceptions, and mental formations—including our joy and our sorrow—are also closely connected to each other. Clusters converging and diverging at every moment show us that arriving and going happen at every moment. When we look carefully, we do not see a goer that can be recognized as an identical and unchanging reality.
We imagine that we go through space and time and that the one who is going is always the same. In truth it is not like this because impermanence takes place at every instant. We cannot find a real, unchanging person who goes. The one who goes is the going, and the one who goes at this moment is not the one who goes in the next moment.
If we imagine that the one who goes remains intact while going, we are wrong. We are caught in the idea of someone who goes, in the idea of going, and in the idea of a time in the present when there is going. We are caught in conventional designations. The line of demarcation between being and nonbeing is being crossed at every moment—even while someone is seen to be on the side of being. Thus we are able to remove the line of demarcation that we have imagined to exist. We can see that the thing which we think is not there actually exists in the present moment. Being and nonbeing, arriving and going, always go together, like a form and its shadow.
As far as the opposites of arriving and going are concerned, when we say arrive we think that from nothing something comes into existence. As far as the flame is concerned, if we say that it comes from nothing, we are wrong. We imagine that there is a side called nothing and that from there something arrives at the side called being. This is a perversion of the truth. If we are caught in the signs of the flame, caught in the color red, the heat, and the burning, then we have not yet seen the flame. Our view is caught in the signs. The Buddha said: “If someone attempts to see me by means of my physical form, they have not yet seen me.”
The flame could also say: “If you want to recognize me by my physical form, color, or sound, then you will not recognize me!” We ourselves are not different from the flame. When other people have an idea about us, we can say to them, “Dear friend, do not think that I am the image you have of me in your mind. It’s not like that!” The flame says the same. Maybe it is smiling at us.
Not only the Buddha or the flame, but all of us—all things in the world—can say the same: Do not recognize me by means of signs, because it will make you suffer. When conditions are sufficient for something to manifest, do not say that it exists. Before it has manifested do not say that it does not exist. In truth there is no arriving and no going.
While the flame is manifesting it is nourished by wood, oxygen, and other supporting conditions. When a contradictory condition arises, the flame ceases to manifest. It does not go from being into nonbeing. The flame did not go anywhere. We ask, “Dear flame, where have you gone?” and the flame says, “I have gone nowhere, just as I have come from nowhere.” That is the authentic voice of the flame. Consider the final line of my poem,”*
You are not a creation. You are a manifestation.
This line is an expression of the teachings on the Middle Way. The three notions of the goer, the time of going, and the action of going are not real. They depend on each other in order to be. They are simply conventional designations. If we are deceived by them, we will suffer and continue to suffer. These teachings are not philosophy. They are a Dharma teaching to help us see the true face of reality to overcome our suffering.
Nāgārjuna says that goer, going, and time of going are just notions. Each notion is a conventional designation: words that we agree with each other to use, but which have no absolute, independent value. When we use these conventional designations we have to use them in such a way that we do not become caught in them. We are free if we dwell in the insight of the Middle Way when we use conventional designations. In the chapter on “Examination of the Four Noble Truths” there is a famous verse:
