Podcast 18.4 · May 14, 10:39 PM by Kukkurovaca

Mother’s day fesitivites went long, so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow (or, at the latest, Tuesday morning) for the podcast.
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Introduction

Welcome to MūlamadhyamakakārikaCast.

Still here. A day late, but anyone who knows my inevitably casual relationship with time knows that a day is nothing to me.

Last week was not, in particular, my friend. It was centered on a migraine that had me in sunglasses all day and knocked me unconscious just in time to miss Alias, though thank goodness I was able to catch it on AOL’s web site.

The upshot of which, Mūlamadhyamakakārikāḥ-wise, is that I’m going to try to do this without any extra verbiage. In fact, I may skip over whole swaths of essential content.

Oh well.
Text

The text:

mametyahamiti kṣīṇe bahirdhādhyātmameva ca|

nirudhyata upādānaṃ tatkṣayājjanmanaḥ kṣayaḥ||4

(repeat)
Translation

If there is eradication of “I” and “My” within and without oneself,

Grasping is ceased. Because of that destruction, there is destruction of (re)birth
Commentary

There are a couple of key Buddhist concepts here: the first is upādāna, translated here as often elsehwere as “grasping”—which is basically what it sounds like—the ugly, clingy, acquisitive side of human consciousness, which, in Buddhist philosophy, goes beyond temporal desire for shiny objects, encompassing shiny ideas and habits of mind, which are, when you come down to it, much harder to shake.

The second is the concept of rebirth. This is one of those tangled conceptual messes that really isn’t worth half the trouble involved in coming to terms with it. The short version is, it means reincarnation. The long version is, it’s unlike the Hindu conception of reincarnation, in that Buddhism cannot admit a transmigrating subject. However, the problem of the transmigrating subject isn’t really any different from the problem of the peregrinating subject or the somnambulating subject. In fact, the somnambulating subject is probably a little trickier.

Suffice it to say that, from the Buddhist standpoint, being born sucks, and being reborn just perpetuates the sucking. Freedom from rebirth is high on the list of things you’re supposed to get out of Buddhism.

As to how this verse relates to the rest of the chapter, I may pick that up next week. Or, you know, not.
Textual notes

mama(6s) iti(ind) aham(1s) iti(ind) kṣīṇa(m7s) bahirdhā(ind) adhyātma(n1s) eva(ind) ca(ind)

ni-rudh(PastPassSing3rd) upādāna(n1s) tat(n1s) kṣaya(m5s) janman(m6s) kṣaya(m1s)

Again, I’m totally going to short-change you on the textual notes—except that I’m not getting paid, and I don’t have any listeners, so there’s no one being short-changed. And, if we accept the Buddhist critique of self, there’s no one to short-change you, either.

What is the sound of one pod…casting?

Ouch.

Anyway, I’m only going to point out two features here: One, it’s kind of entertaining that the verse more or less does say “inside and outside one*self*,” the term in question being “adhyātma”, as in “ātman”, as in the self. Not doctrinally significant, for reasons Nāgārjuna himself will explain later, but vaguely amusing.

Two, rememer how I said that the “mama” and the “aham” that appeared earlier in compounds should, in a sense, be considered to be “quoted” because they appears in their declined forms? Well, here they appear accomanied by “iti”, which is Sanskrit for “quotation marks.”

Okay, that’s all you’re getting out of me, you bastards. Have a good week.