Podcast 18.7 · Jun 3, 11:05 PM by Kukkurovaca
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Introduction

You’re listening to MūlamadhyamakakārikaCast. Today’s episode covers chapter 18, verse 17, of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikāḥ of Nāgārjuna.

This is another one of my favorite verses; in fact, I have it taped up at my desk at work.
Text

nivṛttamabhidhātavyaṃ nivṛtte cittagocare|

anutpannāniruddhā hi nirvāṇamiva dharmatā||7

(repeat)
Translation

The designable is ceased when the range of thought is ceased,

for phenomenality is like nirvana, unarisen and unstopped

(repeat)
Commentary

Over the last few weeks, we’ve kept bumping into the issue of language versus reality, and the first line of this verse continues this.

    The designable is ceased when the range of thought is ceased.”

Now, that’s an extraordinarily clumsy-sounding sentence, but I have to say, I have made no attempt at any point in this process to produce good-sounding English. The reason I haven’t held this to be a goal is that I’m interested in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikāḥ not primarily as a literary work, but as a philosophical one, meaning that—while the language of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikāḥ is quite beautiful, it’s much more valuable for its presentation of ideas than for its esthetic virtue. What’s more, when dealing with ideas of this kind, especially ideas that are expressed beautifully, it’s very easy for the Western mind to skim over the surface without actually considering what’s really being said.

So. What is being said? I translate “ahbidhātavya” as “the designable”; it means that which is able to be pointed out or indicated, for example by speech. To say that what is designable is ceased or ended is to say that we can no longer specify subjects and objects, etc.

Now, the condition under which this occurs is when the “cittagocara” is first ceased or ended. A gocara is “range” in not just the abstract sense but also in the same sense as the “open range”; it’s where put your cows. “Citta” is one of many words for one of many concepts for mind; a cittagocara is thus where you put your mind out to chew the cud, or where the routine operations of the thinking mind take place.

I’m being a little silly with the metaphor here, but the gist is more or less accurate.

Now, what does this mean? It means that if one were to suspend the field of conscious thought, then it would not just be that the process of designating things and associating them with dieas would stop, but that there would be nothing to be designated, nothing to be pointed at. In other words, it is not that there are dumb objects existing in a state of brute existence which are subsequently assigned identity and meaning by the mind, but rather that the universe of things and objects cannot be spoken of prior to the operation of the mind.

The second line gives part of Nāgārjuna’s justification for the first line:

    for phenomenality is like nirvana, unarisen and unstopped

“Phenomenality” is “dharmatā,” which is a combination of “dharma” and the “tā” suffix, which is the same as the suffix “ness” in English, as in “empti-ness.” Now, it’s important to note that “dharma” does not here mean the teachings of the Budda, but rather - and quite confusingly—it means “phenomenon,” as in a metaphysical/psychological event. The world of phenomena or events is the apparent world of selves and activities and desires and so forth. The world of things which are designated and of minds which designate.

Nāgārjuna is saying—and here he is making a departure from traditional Buddhist views—that this world of phenomena is in some sense “like” nirvāṇa. Nirvāṇa is the condition of liberation and, more specifically, of extinction; it’s where the flame of reincarnation, according to the classic metaphor of a flame passing from candle to candle, is blown out. The relationship between nirvāṇa and the phenomenal world gets its own chapter in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikāḥ, so we can safely focus on the specific aspect Nāgārjuna mentions in this verse—that neither is arisen and neither is stopped. In other words, while it appears that the phenomena of the world are subject to the creation and distruction, this is no more an accurate account of them then it would be of the condition of a liberated being.

To say that the nature of phenomena—more specifically, phenomena-ness, the property of being pheneomena—is “like” the condition of liberation is, as I said, not something you’d find in earlier versions of Buddhism. However, it is in some respects consistent, specifically in the sense that what makes us experience the world as the world is a basic delusion or dysfunction internal to our perception of the world; we don’t see things as they are—or, as Nāgārjuna suggests here, seeing things is missing the point.

I hate to needle-drop Lao-tzu, simply because the Tao Te Ching has become such a watered-down pop culture cliche, but it’s worth pointing out that the first chapter of Lao-tzu talks about the difference between the way which can be named and how it is different from the “eternal” way.

Now, I should point out that if you’re at all interested in Lao-tzu, you should absolutely read Boodberg’s article on the first chapter, in which he gets deep into the nitty gritty of the classical Chinese characters and tries to render them in a way that preserves their complexity and relationships. In Boodbergese, I’m referring to the passage, “Lodehead lodehead-brooking, no forwonted lodehead.”

What’s fun about Boodberg is that the English he uses to translate Lao-tzu’s chinese is almost as opaque to everyday English speech as the original Chinese is. To meta-translate, what Boodberg is saying is, “The way which allows itself to be “way-ed” (i.e., called or used as a way) is not the reliable/persistent/constant way.” In other words, if you can point to it or grab hold of it, it’s not what you’re really looking for.

As a small sneak preview of subsequent issues, I should point out that this is all getting at the question of how one is supposed to get from the state of bondage to the state of liberation. The reason there’s a question there is that if there’s a specific process which takes you from one state to the other, then liberation is subject to causal processes, which is rejected in Buddism. But if the state of liberation is totally free from causal processes, it must be a state possessed of a different kind of existence, set apart from the mundane world. This is essentially the standpoint of non-Buddhist Indian philosophy, and it crops up in a number of schools of Buddhism later on, but it is not a viable standpoint in orthodox Buddhism prior to Nāgārjuna, and it is not Nāgārjuna’s position either.

It would getting closer to accuracy to say that Nāgārjuna argues that the state of liberation is separated from the state of non-liberation only by the a wrong perception on the part of the person experiencing it. It’s more complicated than that, but let’s save that for the chapter on nirvāṇa.
Textual notes

I’m considering eliminating the textual notes entirely, because once again I wound up putting basically all the text notes in the philosophical commentary—the trouble being that so much of the conceptual stuff is bound up with the language that it’s hard to separate them.

However, for now at least, I’ll keep giving you the lexical items:

nivṛtta(n1s) abhidhātavya(n1s) nivṛtta(n7s) cittagocara(n7s)

anutpannāniruddhā(f1s) hi(ind) nirvāṇa(n2s) iva(ind) dharmatā(f1s)