Cracking the Walnut, page 8
I call empty
things that arise from conditions.
They are conventional designations
and they are the Middle Way.*
Everything that manifests on the basis of conditions is empty, conventional designation, and the Middle Way. The Middle Way transcends all pairs of opposites: being and nonbeing, arriving and going, one and many, birth and death. Therefore, the Middle Way is the nature of nirvāṇa—in other words, the reality that transcends pairs of opposites. The nature of phenomena can be described by the terms conditioned arising (pratītyasamutpāda), emptiness (śūnyatā), conventional designations (prajñaptir upādāya) and the Middle Way (madhyama-pratipad).
Conditioned co-arising is the essence of all phenomena. When we can see deeply into the interdependent nature of phenomena we see that all phenomena are empty: there is nothing firm, eternal, and unchanging.
The word “empty” (in Chinese 空, in Sanskrit śūnya) can be misunderstood as “not existing.” The English adjective “empty” does not imply that something is not there. The trunk of a banana tree is made up of many different layers. If we peel them away one by one, we will see that in the end there is nothing inside. The same is true for an onion. We might peel off all the layers, but we will never arrive at its core. This is how we understand the word emptiness. It simply means that inside there is no solid core, no firm entity that does not change. Things are just a reflection—a synthesis of different causes—and are empty of a solid reality. Emptiness is not being, nor is it nothingness; emptiness is hollow of all reality.
Conventional designations are like that. They are there, we receive them and we have a perception of them, but when we look carefully we see that they are empty. This is because they are interdependent. They are like the film projected on the screen. The images are there—they are not nonexistent—but when examined closely, we see there is nothing firm; if the electricity is cut, they vanish. The banana tree, the onion, our body, and five skandhas are also like that, and so they are called empty, which also means they are conventional designations. I, you, appearing, vanishing, arriving, going, climbing the mountain, or not climbing the mountain, all of these words are conventional designations. If we know that the ideas of birth, death, being, nonbeing, continuing, and ceasing are all conventional designations, then we are free. To be free is to dwell in nirvāṇa and in the Middle Way. The Middle Way is nirvāṇa. It is the reality that transcends the ideas of continuing, ceasing, being, nonbeing, real, and not real.
Let us contemplate an elder brother of our sangha, Thầy Giác Thanh. We say he has gone. When we were made aware of what people called “the passing of Thầy Giác Thanh,” we were all deeply moved. It was a bell of mindfulness for me and my disciples. It was a chance for us to look deeply. All of us, to a greater or lesser extent, were able to touch the no-arriving, no-going nature of Thầy Giác Thanh. Some of us touched this deeply, some more superficially, but we all touched it. We practice this kind of looking deeply too rarely. We wait until there is a great bell of mindfulness—like what we call a death—to look deeply. Instead, we have to practice signlessness at every moment, in our daily life, in terms of our own body and in terms of other signs around us.
For example, for how many years more do you think that I will be with you? This question is a mindfulness bell, giving us a chance to look deeply. Am I still there, or not? Am I going, or am I not? These questions help us to avoid being caught in signs and conventional designations. If we are caught, we will suffer. We ask the same questions about ourselves, the people we love, and those we hate. All of them are conventional designations. We need to see the nature of conditioned co-arising in ourselves and between ourselves and others; when we do, our suffering, despair, regrets, and anger will automatically disappear. What saves us from suffering is not a superhuman being, but our insight into the Middle Way.
We have all been to a funeral home and witnessed a corpse lying in the coffin or at a cremation. We have heard the heart-rending cries and laments for a close relative who has departed. We may fall into deep despair and want to die along with our loved one because we believe so strongly that there is being and nonbeing, life and death, continuing and not continuing, going and not-going. In these situations, however, if we are able to tear apart the veil of concepts—the covering of conventional designation—and get in touch with a deeper dimension, we will not cry or grieve in this way. If we look deeply in the years and months before the departure of our beloved, at the moment they go into hiding we will not suffer so much.
Someone does not need to wait until they have gone into hiding to manifest in a new form. You do not need to wait two or three years after I have gone into hiding and then go and look for a young child who is somewhat like me and who can stand in my place, as in the Tibetan tradition. If you look deeply, you see that going into hiding and manifesting anew takes place at every instant; this is true for us all, not only for me. At every moment we go into hiding and manifest in new forms. We need to see our new manifestations in us and around us. If we are imprisoned by the outer form—our body or our five skandhas—and think that they are ours and are unchanging while that which lies outside of them is not ours, then we are caught in signs and conventional designations.
There are two types of truth spoken of by the Buddha and mentioned by Nāgārjuna. The first type is “worldly truth” (loka-saṃvṛti-satya). Loka means the world. This is the kind of truth that we have come to an agreement about together. This truth is the birth certificate that has to be made when someone is born, and the death certificate when someone dies. We have established a convention with each other that the baby who was not, now is, and so we have to certify the date when the baby began to be. Similarly, the old man who used to be has now ceased to be, and so we have to certify the time of his death. This is what is meant by worldly truth. We have to recognize this worldly truth, but if we live only in worldly truth we will experience an infinite amount of suffering. Therefore, while we are still alive, we should practice so as to be in touch with the second, deeper kind of truth, which is the “ultimate truth” (paramārtha-satya).
Nāgārjuna did not intend to deny the conventional truth. He only wanted to say, “You should not live with the conventional truth alone. You should transcend it and practice to be in touch with the ultimate truth.” All these verses are to help us look deeply at the conventional truth so that we can be in touch with the ultimate truth that lies deep in the heart of things. The way to be in touch with the ultimate truth is very clear: when we look deeply into the interdependent nature of things, we realize that they all are empty. When we see that all conceptualized and named phenomena are simply conventional designations we can dwell in the reality of no birth and no death, of no being and no nonbeing. This is called the Middle Way.
The world suffers a great deal because people are caught in ideas that are based on only the first type of truth (worldly truth). We have to open up a way for the world to be in touch with the ultimate truth, so that we can all suffer less. How can we help the wave be in touch with the water? The wave does not need to go far; without going anywhere it can be in touch with the water. When the wave knows it is water all of its fear, sadness, and jealousy ceases.
When we look carefully we discover that the time of going either is or is not taking place at every instant. When we see the impermanent nature of all things we transcend the notion of a time of going. The time of going is not a stage that we shall reach one day. It is happening at every moment of our daily lives. When we see this clearly our ideas about going simply disappear, along with ideas of a person who goes. We quoted above the following lines from a poem I wrote:
The cloud is floating,
the white cloud is floating
We saw that the cloud is the floating, is the drifting. If a cloud does not float or drift it is not a cloud, it is rain. If we remove floating and drifting from a cloud, it is no longer a cloud. Therefore, we cannot differentiate the cloud and the floating as two separate realities. In Confucian philosophy it is said that the king kings, the subject subjects, the father fathers, the son sons. This means that the king has to be a king. A nun has to nun—if she doesn’t, she cannot be a nun. The subject has to subject. If a father does not father, he cannot be called a father, and the son to be called a son, has to son. In the sentence the king kings, the second word is the verb. This is called the rectification of names, 正名, by Confucian scholars (a king can only rightly be called a king if he kings), but the name that has been rectified is also a conventional designation.
Every noun can be a verb. In English “mother” can be a verb as well as a noun, as in the sentence “Please don’t mother me!” The action of mothering cannot be separated from the actor, the mother. In English we can also say “the house houses many people.” House was originally a noun, which then became a verb. In the poem we have: The cloud floats; the cloud is the floating. The flower blooms; the flower is the blooming.
We imagine a person, and then we say that this person makes use of the action “going” and we call the person “the one who is going.” The danger in this is that we think that the one who is going is separate from the action of going. The one who is going and the action of going depend on each other to manifest. This is clarified in verses nine to eleven. Verse five reads:
If there is going in the time of going
Here we have not yet seen the reality of going. Being in the act of going means that there is also a sense of remaining—we are still there in the act of going. This way of looking results in two ideas: the idea of the going (remaining in the going), and the idea of the going of this going! Verse six says:
without a subject who goes,
how can we establish the fact of going?
When the one who is going is still there, how can there be the reality of going? The person is obviously there (on the side of being); if they have gone, how can they be there? Is going also means has not yet gone. When we say, they have gone (from this life), we mean they are already dead and they do not need to go any more. We must reexamine our unreasonable idea of is going.
Verses seven to eleven elucidate the fact that the one who is going cannot go. As long as they are present, they are not going. See verse eight:
The goer does not go,
the non-goer does not go.
Apart from goer and non-goer,
there is no third possibility.
The realities of going and not going cannot be established, and neither can we establish a third possibility apart from these.
9. How can we conceive
of the goer going?
Without the act of going,
how could there be a goer?
若言去者去
云何有此義
若離於去法
去者不可得
You cannot conceive of a goer without the action of going. Therefore, to talk about a goer going—as if the goer were something separate from the going—does not make sense. A father can only rightly be called a father if he fathers. A flower can only rightly be called a flower if it flowers.
10. If you say that there is a goer going
there would be two kinds of going:
the going of the goer
and the going of the act of going.
若去者有去
則有二種去
一謂去者去
二謂去法去
For example, imagine someone is eating: there is a person, and there is the action of eating. At the time of eating, the person eating and the action of eating happen simultaneously. Before the person began to eat, were they someone eating? If there is no one eating, how can there be the eating? If there is no action of eating, how can there be someone eating?
The important thing here is to examine the actor and the action. As long as there is the idea that the actor can exist independently from the action there is a fundamental mistake and we are caught in the idea of a self. Slowly, as we go deeper into these teachings, we shall begin to see this in detail.
Let’s take the example of a meter-long measuring tape. We roll it up and put it in a bag. The tape in its bag exists independently of the length and breadth of the room it is in. When we take the measuring tape out and begin to measure, there is an action of measuring. While the tape is still in its bag we cannot say it is measuring. We cannot call it a measuring tape because it is not measuring. We could use it to tie something up or to do something else with, but at that point there is no act of measuring.
If we conceive of a goer independent of the act of going, we make a mistake. When the goer is identified with the act of going, the goer is no longer an independent reality. If you say that the goer goes, then there are two goings: the going of the goer and the going of the going. The goer is going, and the going itself is also going. Two goings happen.
11. If you say that the goer goes
that would be a contradiction:
there would be a goer apart from the going
that the goer undertakes.
若謂去者去
是人則有咎
離去有去者
說去者有去
If you say that the goer goes, you are making a mistake. Only if there is an independent goer who goes with no relation to the action of going, can you say that the goer goes.
The three following verses will speak about whether the action of going begins. Everything has a beginning (in Chinese, 發). According to the Sarvāstivāda, every phenomenon has four signs: beginning or arising (jāti), abiding (sthiti), decaying (jarā), and ending (anitya).
Future monastics anxiously waiting to know whether they will be accepted by the sangha and become part of the monastic family are an example of a beginning. Four days before the Lunar New Year* is the proposed date of their birth. On that day, they will manifest a sign traditionally called round head, square robe. The aspiring monastics are waiting for that sign. If they are deceived by the sign, they will continue to wait with anticipation—anxious and afraid—and will easily become caught in joy or sadness. But if they look carefully, they will see that even though things manifest in this or that way, their true nature is that of no-arising.
When we have a box of matches, we do not yet see a flame, As soon as we strike a match, we see a flame arise. That is the sign “beginning” or “arising.” If we have insight, we only need to look at the matchbox to see a flame in it. We can see the flame hiding in the conditions that give rise to it. We can see the flame without needing to see the sign “arising.” We talk about “manifesting” rather than “arising.”
If you are wondering, anxious, or sad because you don’t know whether something will arise or not, it is because you do not know how to look deeply into conditions. If conditions are sufficient, you have nothing more to worry about—sooner or later that thing will arise. You can already see whether it will arise or not. You have to see the no-arising nature of the thing you long for.
When we look at the matchbox we can already see the flame clearly. All the conditions necessary for the flame are present inside and outside of the matchbox. Inside the matchbox there is the sulfur and the wood; outside there is the air and our fingers—all important elements for the flame to manifest. Therefore, we should not be caught in the sign “arising.” Likewise, we should not be caught in the sign “going” or “ending” the equivalent of “death” or “going out of existence” in the four signs of arising, abiding, decaying, and ending.
For example, when our grandfather is dying we may ask ourselves, “Has grandfather gone yet?” “He has gone” in this case means he has died. Death is a sign that we take as the opposite of the sign birth. The idea of death is closely linked to the idea of birth. We have to look deeply into the nature of birth and death so as not to be deceived by the signs.
Besides the signs “birth” and “death” there is the sign “abiding.” To abide means to stay on. There is the person who stays on and the person who goes; the one who has gone is no more, while the one who stays on still exists. From the phenomenological point of view, the sign abiding is opposed to the signs of arising (birth) and ending (death). The newly-arisen is a tiny baby or an embryo after conception. Between the stage of arising and the stage of ending there is a longer-lasting stage called abiding. In this stage we have the impression that something stays on and remains itself, but in fact it is also changing at every moment; we cannot see this because of ignorance. It is only at the moment someone begins to lose their teeth that we begin to see the sign of “decaying.” “My goodness! There is that beautiful picture I took when I was twenty, why do I now look so decrepit?” We have to practice looking deeply so that when we contemplate the four signs we are not trapped by them and do not become worried and depressed. Only then are we liberated.
The following verse investigates the matter of beginning (發). The action of being born can last for a time—any action whatsoever has a beginning and an ending. The sign “birth” has a beginning and an ending, just as the sign “death” has a beginning and an ending—that is, the time of being born and the time of dying. Nāgārjuna, by inviting us to contemplate the starting point, helps us to see more clearly what we mean when we speak of the time of birth and death.
12. The starting point is not in what has gone,
nor is it in what will go,
nor is it in the present going.
So when does the starting point happen?
