Podcast 18:1 · Apr 23, 09:05 AM by Kukkurovaca
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Notes

Okay, the podcast is back, but I had to ditch the loudblog interface (no more flash player goodness), due to some glitch I don’t entirely understand. That’s okay; nothing wrong with a good textpattern installation, right?

The new podcast is an enhanced feed, because enhanced feeds are cool. You’re going to want to play it back in itunes or using quicktime, as a result. Less accessible than MP3s? Yes. But it has pretty, pretty pictures. And by pictures, I mean screencaps with the text, translation, and textual notes in them. This is definitely an improvement over just the audio, thank god.

This podcast covers ohttp://kukkurovaca.textdriven.com/textpattern/textpattern/index.phpnly the first verse of chapter 18, but you can find the whole chapter in the “MMK Chapters” section of the site. (Okay, it’s here, you lazy bastard.)

Sorry about the microphone pops—that’s something I’ll try to fix in future instances. I may also get a little crazier with the images in the feed—for example, I may do pada-by-pada for the textual notes section for greater clarity. If anyone knows of a good program for working with text that outputs 300×300 image files, let me know. (I may need to look into a slideshow program for this.)
Bibliography (short version—long forthcoming, maybe)

    Oxford Dictionary of Buddhism
    Monier Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit-English Dictionary
    Nancy McCagney, Nāgārjuna and the Philosophy of Emptiness
    David Kalupahana, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā of Nāgārjuna

Links

    Podcast Maker
    MacZot

Rough script

This is the script I used when I was recording the ‘cast. No assertions regarding its coherence are made, at any time.

Introduction:

Welcome to Mulamadhyamakakaricast. This is a largely notional podcast covering my theoretically ongoing translation of the Mulamadhyamakakarikas of Nagarjuna. The idea is that I’m supposed to take one or two verses each week (or other arbitrary time period) and translate them, give some notes, etc. In practice, it’s something that I tried once ages ago and then totally gave up on. My reasons were many, but a couple of them have now been resolved. For example, I bought a cheap microphone from Amazon, so that I no longer have to press my face against the screen of my computer in order for the built-in mic to pick up my voice. I also ordered from MacZot a cheap copy of the excellent “Podcast Maker” by Potion Factory, which does great job of handling everything but the actual recording process.

None of which is to say that I”m going to keep it up from here on out this time—for that, only time will tell.

Now, I had to scrap the prior incarnation of the podcast, because loudblog (which is a nifty but still very beta podcast system) decided to do something hinky. So, I’m starting over. I’ll be beginning with Verse I of Chapter 18—the atmapariksa.

ātmā skandhā yadi bhaved
udayavyayabhāgbhavet|

skandhebhyo ‘nyo yadi bhaved
bhavedaskandhalakṣaṇaḥ||1

If the self were the skandhas, it would
participate in coming about and passing away.

If it were other than the skandhas,
it would not be
characterized by them.

So, let’s start with some background. “Atman” is a Sanskrit word that means more or less the same thing as “soul”—it’s this big, metaphysical thing that sits behind the visible self—something behind the body, behind the psyche. The Atman is the “true” or “real” self, as opposed to the apparent or mundane self.

One of the basic differences between Buddhism and other Indian religions (e.g., Hinduism) is that Buddhism is founded on the doctrine of anatman and that’s “an” as in English—“unwise,” “unkind,” “unwilling,” etc., meaning the rejection of the belief that there is a “real” self sitting behind the apparent self.

This is a tricky subject, and it has meant different things at different times and to different versions of Buddhism. In fact many versions of Buddhism exert a lot of exegetical effort to basically reinstate the idea of the atman. There’s no saying which branch of Buddhism is “right” or “wrong” on this point, and must Buddhist teachers would probably say if you’re getting hung up on points of language and sectarianism, you’re probably worried about the wrong thing. But suffice it to say that Nagarjuna is interested in taking the idea of anatman per se (again—that there is no self) and reconciling it with other Buddhist principles and with empirical observations.

Now, what are these “skandha” thingies? MW identifies them as the five constituent elements of being; The Oxford Dictionary of Buddhism says they are the “five aggregates or componenets which collectively constitute the human individicual,” and that “according to buddhism the human subject can be deconstructed into these five categories without remainder.” The skandhas are rupa, vedana, samnja, samskara, and vijanana, and we can come back to the specifics of these at another occasion; the properties of the individual skandhas don’t pertain to the current analysis.

This concept is one of the underpinnings of the doctrine of anatman. According to Buddhism, one of the reasons for rejecting the idea of a metaphysical self is its reducibility: Buddhist psychology says we can analzye (that is to say—take apart) the mind and body exhaustively, meaning that when we’re done there’s nothing left over. No other, magical, metaphysical part left to be explained.

The classical analogy for this is a chariot. A chariot can be taken apart, and then you have wheels, an axel, and other parts; what you do not have is a chariot. There’s nothing left over to which you can point as being the chariot.

Now, to return to Nagarjuna specifically: He says, if the self were the skandhas, it would participate in coming about and passing away— i.e., if the self is composed of all and only the skandhas—which are finite constitutent elements subject to the vagaries of physical and mental existence, i.e., they begin at some specifiable point and they end at some specifiable point. This means, though, that whenever we talk about the self—and language referring to the self, to selfishness, etc. is very common in Buddhism—we are in some sense speaking nonsense—and by “we,” I mean the Buddha and pretty much all subsequent writers in Buddhism. This is a point Nagarjuna will come to later in the chapter. Now, on the other hand, if there is something to the self which goes beyond the skandhas—if there were something there to refer to other than just a combination of bits—than the self would not be characterized by the skandhas—that aspect of Buddhist psychology would be invalid.

Nagarjuna is not reaching a conclusion here—if, in fact, Nagarjuna can ever be said to reach a conclusion. He is, rather, beginning to flesh out a problem. In the later verses of this chapter, we’ll ge a better sense of how Nagarjuna wants to resolve this problem.

Now, a couple notes on the text itself. If you don’t care about the nitty-gritty, feel free to skip this section. Also, I have some footnotes on the site with lexical notes; you should be able to click through from itunes.

ātman(m1s) skandha(m1p) yadi (ind) bhū (ActOptSing)
udayavyayabhaj(m1s) bhū (ActOptSing)

skandha(m5p) anya(m1s) yadi(ind) bhū (ActOptSing)
bhū (ActOptSing) askandhalakṣaṇa(m1s)

In the verse we have two sentences, each using “yadi”—that is, “if”—in conjunction with “bhavet,” the optatitve of bhu. That is, if x were the case, then y; if z were the case, then a. The first pada (a pada, by the way, is, in the present context, a quarter of a verse or a half of a line) is “atma skanhda yadi bhavet”—if the atman is the skandhas. Note that Atma is atman in the nominative singular but skandha is skandha in the nominative plural; the atman stem ends in -an, while the skandha stem ends in -a.

The second and fourth padas—the “then” bits of the if/thens—contain fun compounds, which I would tell you about if I could remember my compound analysis terminology. (Maybe it’s an…upapada? Really, it’s been a very long time, and I don’t have any of my grammar references anymore.) Perhaps Andrew can help me out, as I think he still has our old textbooks. In any case, I had fun with the “bhaj” in “udayavyayabhaj”, because the root refers to sharing or giving out portions; it appears also in Bhagavant, lord, as in the Bhagavad Gita—a lord being someone who gives out shares to the other folks. Kalupahana reflects this in his translation as “partakes of”; I use “participate.” McCagney ignores it.

The other compound is, I believe, a bahuvrhihi or much rice compound—again, I could be totally talking out of my payu here—meaning that the thing to which the compound refers is not actually mentioned in the compound itself; askandhalaksana is “that of which the skandhas are a characteristic”—referring in this case to the self.

The third pada tells us skandhebhyo ‘nyo—“skandhebyah anya” before sandhi, meaning “other than”. Skandhebhyo is the ablative plural; a slightly more literal translation reflecting this would be “different from.”

Well, that should be enough for the time being. If I have enough fun putting the enhanced podcast together, maybe I’ll be back next week.