Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2003
On the Soteriological
Significance of Emptiness
Mark Siderits
Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA
When it comes to interpreting the Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness
(śūnyatā), we presently find ourselves with an embarrassment of riches. As
concerns the meaning of this doctrine (as it is found in the works of Nāgārjuna
and his followers), there is a wide array of competing views, with little evidence
of an emerging consensus. It is nonetheless possible to see these different
readings of emptiness as falling roughly into two kinds, which I shall call
‘metaphysical’ and ‘semantic’. The interpretation that I favor is of the semantic
sort, and I have elsewhere tried to support it by pointing out difficulties for
various forms of metaphysical interpretation of emptiness (Siderits 1988; 1989;
1994; 1997a). But even if those criticisms are all valid, there still remains one
objection to a semantic understanding of emptiness that many find quite
persuasive. The objection is, in essence, that if emptiness is interpreted in this
way, then it is utterly mysterious how the realization of emptiness might have
the sort of soteriological significance that it is usually understood to have. I
shall explore that objection here. But first I shall try to make clear just what the
metaphysical and semantic interpretations amount to, and I shall say something
about the evidence that I believe supports the second over the first variety. Then
I shall take up consideration of the objection proper. In the end, I shall claim
that the objection can be answered. But I think it will prove worthwhile to give
it careful consideration, for this may reveal some important points concerning
the Buddhist path to liberation.
Mādhyamikas claim that all things are empty (śūnya). And emptiness, we are
told, is the being devoid of svabhāva.1 There has been some confusion over
what it would mean to say that something has svabhāva, for here bhāva is
sometimes taken to mean ‘being’ or ‘existence’, so that svabhāva should be
translated as ‘own-being’ or ‘self-existence’. But as Candrakı̄rti makes clear,
bhāva in this context means ‘nature’. So to say that something has svabhāva is
to say that its nature is wholly its own; that is, it is not ‘borrowed’ from or
dependent on those other things on whose existence it depends. Here the stock
example of an entity that does not have svabhāva is the chariot, all of whose
properties (including its functional properties) may be accounted for wholly in
terms of the properties of its parts. If this is true of a chariot, this may be taken
as establishing that the chariot is not ultimately real, that it would not appear
among the items on the inventory of our final ontology. For it would then
follow that the chariot has no independent explanatory role to play: all the facts
about the world can be explained just in terms of the properties of the parts of
the chariot, so that its presence in our ontological inventory would be comISSN 1463-9947 print; 1476-7953 online/03/010009-15  2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1463994032000140158
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M. Siderits
pletely superfluous. This would in turn show the chariot to be a mere conceptual
fiction, something we take to exist only because of certain facts about us and
our conceptual activity. It is only because we happen to have a use for parts
assembled in this way, and because we find it inconvenient to list all the parts
and their relations, that we employ the convenient designator ‘chariot’, and thus
end up taking there to be such things as chariots.2
So to say that all things are empty is to say that all of the things that we take
to be real turn out to be mere conceptual fictions like the chariot. This was not,
of course, the view of those Buddhists who adhered to the teachings of the
Abhidharma. They held that while most of the entities acknowledged by
common sense — including, most importantly, the person — are mere conceptual fictions, there must be things that do have svabhāva, and thus that are
ultimately real. For otherwise, they held, there would be nothing to which the
chariot could be reduced — nothing the properties of which explained our belief
in such conceptual fictions. Different Abhidharma schools give somewhat
different accounts of what these ultimately real entities (dharmas) are. But all
agree on the svabhāva criterion of dharma-hood: only that is a dharma that
bears its own intrinsic nature.3 To say that all things are empty is to say that
there are no dharmas, no entities that are ultimately real by virtue of having all
their (monadic) properties intrinsically. The arguments of Nāgārjuna and his
followers are designed to show that the opposite assumption — that there are
such entities — invariably leads to results that are either internally incoherent
or else contravened by common sense.
What are we to make of this claim? I said earlier that it may be interpreted
as either a metaphysical claim or as a semantic claim. By a metaphysical
interpretation of emptiness, I shall mean any interpretation that takes the
doctrine to be intended to characterize the nature of reality. This approach
yields two rather different readings: nihilism, and the view that ultimate reality
is ineffable and beyond the reach of discursive rationality. Wood (1994) gives
a clear instance of the former variety. He takes the Mādhyamika to be
committed to the view that ultimately nothing whatever exists, that all is just
illusion without any underlying ground. Given what the doctrine of emptiness
actually claims, such an interpretation might seem to have some initial plausibility. What is more difficult to see is how one might suppose that a substantial
number of seemingly sensible persons could have held such a view. Metaphysical nihilism comes about as close to being self-refuting as any
philosophical doctrine one can imagine. This difficulty is probably behind the
popularity of the second sort of metaphysical interpretation, according to which
the doctrine of emptiness is meant to point to an ineffable ultimate that
transcends the capacities of discursive reason. The thought here would be that
since we cannot accept the nihilist consequence that results when we take the
doctrine of emptiness at face value, we must resort to some non-literal
interpretation. And the most plausible of these, presumably, is that the true
nature of reality is beyond the reach of conceptual thought — although perhaps
it can be accessed through some non-conceptual faculty of pure intuition.
A particularly clear instance of this sort of reading is to be found in Murti,
On the Soteriological Significance of Emptiness
11
for whom emptiness is the Absolute, the ineffable ground of all transactional
truths (1955: 141, 232, 234–5, 237). He is of course well aware that
Mādhyamikas are keen to avoid commitment to any metaphysical views or
theories concerning the nature of reality. Indeed he carefully expounds some of
the principal strategies they use to try to refute the metaphysical theories of their
opponents without thereby embracing any alternative theories. But he takes this
to mean that for Madhyamaka, the real simply transcends the capacities of
discursive reason, that it is to be known only through a kind of intellectual
intuition that apprehends without superimposing any of the concepts of
phenomenal thought (1955: 135, 139, 140, 142, 151, 158, 160, 207, 212, 218,
228). The dialectical arguments of Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva are, in other words,
merely meant to clear the ground by silencing thought so that the pure suchness
of the real may shine through. Enlightenment is achieved and nirvāna attained
˚
just by apprehending this formless ultimate truth.
I call both the nihilist interpretation and interpretations like Murti’s ‘metaphysical’ because both take the doctrine of emptiness to be a metaphysical
theory, a theory about the ultimate nature of reality.4 By contrast, a semantic
interpretation of emptiness takes the doctrine to concern not the nature of
reality, but the nature of truth.5 Specifically, it takes the claim that all things are
empty to mean that the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth — there
is only conventional truth. To see what this means, it is crucial to recall how
Abhidharma draws the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate
truth. Statements are said to be conventionally true when they are assertable by
the canons of common sense. Thus, supposing that Krsna did indeed drive
˚˚ ˚ ‘Krsna drove the
Arjuna’s chariot at the battle of Kuruksetra, the statement
˚
˚ said to be
chariot’ would be conventionally true. By contrast, a statement˚˚ is
ultimately true if and only if it corresponds with reality, and neither asserts nor
pre-supposes the existence of any conceptual fictions. So even if the facts are
as supposed, ‘Krsna drove the chariot’ would not be ultimately true. Of course,
˚˚ ˚ then correspond to what we are taking to be the facts. The
the statement would
difficulty, however, lies not with the ‘correspondence’ clause, but with the ‘no
conceptual fictions’ clause. A chariot is a conceptual fiction — as is the person
Krsna as well — so the statement cannot be ultimately true. Nor can it be
˚˚ ˚
ultimately
false — since its negation would then be ultimately true, in violation
of the ‘no conceptual fictions’ clause. The statement is simply not admissible at
the ultimate level, and so is not the sort of thing that could have a truth value.
There are, however, any number of statements concerning this state of affairs
that would be ultimately true; namely, statements concerning the dharmas that
make up the two conceptual fictions involved, the chariot and Krsna. And it is
˚ accepting
the facts that make these statements true that explain the utility of˚˚our
the conventionally true ‘Krsna drove the chariot’. It is because, for instance,
˚ certain ways that it is conventionally true that
certain atoms are arranged˚˚in
there is a chariot on the field; and likewise for our assertions concerning Krsna.
˚
Thus, to say that all things are empty is, on the semantic interpretation, to˚˚say
that no statement can be ultimately true. Given that dharmas must be things
with intrinsic natures, if nothing can bear an intrinsic nature, then there is
12
M. Siderits
nothing for ultimately true statements to be about; hence the very notion of
ultimate truth is incoherent. The doctrine of emptiness is thus equivalent to the
rejection of what Putnam (1981, 49) calls metaphysical realism. This is the view
that there is one true theory about the nature of reality; with truth understood
as correspondence, and reality understood as consisting of a fixed number of
objects with natures that are independent of the concepts we happen to employ.
And herein lies the essence of the disagreement between semantic and metaphysical interpretations of emptiness. What metaphysical interpretations all have in
common is precisely that they pre-suppose metaphysical realism. This is quite
evident in the case of those who equate emptiness with the claim that reality
transcends the capacities of discursive thought. For this requires that there be
such a thing as how the world is, independently of the concepts we use; what
it claims is that the world is of such a nature as to always elude our concepts.
But metaphysical realism is also pre-supposed by the nihilist reading. According
to this as well, there is a fixed number of objects with natures that are
independent of our conceptual resources: there are exactly zero such objects; and
their nature (to be non-existent) clearly cannot depend on facts about our minds,
given that our minds are likewise held not to exist. For someone who
understands emptiness as a semantic doctrine, on the other hand, it is virtually
axiomatic that metaphysical readings of the doctrine of emptiness are misguided.
But if, as the semantic interpretation claims, there is no final truth about
reality, then how can it be true that all things are empty? Surely Mādhyamikas
expect us to take their claim that all things are empty to be true, and if so they
must have some conception as to what its truth consists in. What, then, might
it be? If there is no ultimate truth, then apparently the claim that all things are
empty can only be conventionally true. Indeed, the Madhyamaka doctrine that
emptiness is itself empty is actually equivalent to the claim that the only sort
of truth there can be is conventional truth. (If emptiness is itself a mere
conceptual fiction, then the statement that something is empty can at best be
conventionally true.) But how can this be? We understand conventional truth to
be just a useful approximation to the ultimate truth, and if there is no ultimate
truth then conventional truth cannot be understood in this way. And if emptiness
means that there are no ultimate facts, we may well wonder what then explains
the utility of accepting statements that are merely conventionally true — such
as the statement that all things are empty. This makes us wonder how there could
be a ‘semantic’ interpretation of emptiness that did not, in the end, go
‘metaphysical’; that is, involve some substantive claim about the ultimate nature
of reality.
All these questions are perfectly legitimate, indeed useful, according to those
who espouse the semantic interpretation. We do have great difficulty understanding how any statement, let alone a statement of supposedly great
soteriological significance, could be a mere conventional truth that lacks any
grounding in the ultimate nature of reality. And yet the force of the Madhyamaka dialectic makes us despair of ever finding a conception of the ultimate
truth that does not dissolve into incoherence. The result is an impasse: the
two-truths scheme seems hopeless, yet we do not see how we could simply
On the Soteriological Significance of Emptiness
13
jettison the notion of an ultimate ground for conventional truths. But this
impasse is, I think, just where the teaching of emptiness was meant to drive us.
For now we will see that the only hope of a resolution lies in rejecting the
metaphysical realist pre-supposition at its heart. It is only because we continue
to think of truth as correspondence to mind-independent reality that we take
conventional truth to require some ultimate foundation. To reject this presupposition is to see that the ultimate truth — the truth that brings about
liberation — is that there is no ultimate truth — no one true theory about the
nature of mind-independent reality.
Here is an analogy that may help us see how it might plausibly be claimed
that there is only conventional truth. At one time it was widely believed that a
paper currency required the backing of some precious metal such as gold or
silver. To many people it seemed highly implausible that a mere piece of paper
could have monetary value in itself. They thought that such value as a note had
could only derive from its being convertible into a given quantity of something
with inherent value like gold. The usefulness of a paper currency was obvious,
for it is less bulky than precious metals and is easier to transport. But when it
was proposed that the currency be taken off the gold standard, many people
feared their currency would become worthless. We now know better. How is it
possible that mere paper can have monetary value? Certainly not due to its
intrinsic value; indeed, we can now see that even gold lacks intrinsic value. The
value of a paper currency derives from the role it plays within a set of
institutions and practices shaped by human interests and limitations (e.g., the
fact that our interests are best satisfied through a social division of labor).
Likewise the value of being true might be something that accrues to statements
by virtue of the role they play in certain institutions and practices that are
shaped by human interests and cognitive limitations. And recall that what made
a statement ‘only’ conventionally true was that it employed concepts (such as
the concept of the chariot) that reflect our interests (e.g., in transportation) and
our limitations (e.g., our inability to keep track of all the parts in a transport
system). Once we concede that the notion of how things are, independently of
our interests and limitations, is incoherent, this derogation of conventional truth
to the status of mere second-best will fall away.
Because of its rejection of the distinction between conventional and ultimate
truth, the resulting view might be thought of as a sort of semantic non-dualism.
Much more would need to be said to give an adequate defense of semantic
non-dualism. There will be questions to answer concerning its adequacy as an
interpretation of the Madhyamaka texts, and there will be troublesome details
to work out concerning its logical and epistemological consequences. But I shall
not attempt any of that here. Instead, I wish to turn now to the objection that
this interpretation of the doctrine of emptiness robs it of all soteriological
significance.
The objection to the semantic interpretation that I wish to consider has at its
heart the notion that this interpretation of emptiness gives philosophical rationality an inordinately large role to play in the project of liberation. (In this
respect, it resembles one side of the debate early in the Tibetan tradition over
14
M. Siderits
the respective roles of philosophy and meditation in Buddhist practice; see
Yamaguchi 1997.) In its modern form, this objection is sometimes put as the
complaint that reading Madhyamaka in this way involves reading contemporary
analytic philosophy into a spiritual tradition where it has no place. We can see
a clear instance of this from Murti, for whom this was a principal arguments
against the semantic interpretation and in favor of his own metaphysical
interpretation. This comes out most distinctly in his comparison of Madhyamaka and logical positivism. He makes this comparison because the two schools
share a rejection of all metaphysical theories, which might lead some to see
strong similarities between the two schools. But, he claims, there are crucial
differences: the positivist ‘has neither use for nor knowledge of the transcendent. He is a materialist at heart’ (Murti 1955, 352). Madhyamaka, by contrast,
‘is spiritual to the core’. Thus, Murti concludes, the Mādhyamika should not be
understood as making anything like the positivists’ point that the very idea of
a language-transcendent realm is incoherent. Instead, Madhyamaka seeks to
safeguard the transcendent realm from all encroachments by discursive rationality. If this is right, then the semantic interpretation would indeed strip the
doctrine of emptiness of its spiritual meaning; for its denial of a transcendent
realm would deprive spirituality of a locus of operation.
But caution is called for here. Warning buzzers should sound in response to
Murti’s use of ‘materialist’ to characterize the logical positivists, who were not
materialists, but empiricists (and many of them phenomenalists to boot). Since
Murti should have known this, one must wonder what ideological work is being
done by the term ‘materialist’. What seems most probable is that he has
accepted without question the characteristically modern dichotomy between
scientific rationality and spirituality. For once these are seen as distinct and
incompatible enterprises, then those who value the spiritual quest will be
motivated to carve out some separate realm for it, so as to protect it from the
hegemonic tendencies of scientific rationality. What Murti is thus suggesting in
calling the logical positivist a ‘materialist’ is that positivism leaves no room for
the spiritual, that it holds that the only genuine human problems there are are
amenable to scientific-technological solution.
Now it is possible that some logical positivists held the view that I have just
described and that Murti seems to have meant by ‘materialist’. But is this a
reason for rejecting the semantic interpretation of emptiness? Because notice
that the underlying dichotomy at work here grows out of the modern Western
attempt at reconciling natural science and Christianity; the modern formulation
of the distinction between reason and faith seems to have no parallel in the
classical Indian tradition. It is easy to see how the distinction arose. While
medieval philosophers and theologians made some progress toward reconciling
the teachings of Christianity with the philosophical and scientific rationality that
they inherited from classical Greek culture (Islamic and Jewish thinkers made
even greater strides), this rapprochement was undermined by developments
peculiar to modern Europe, including the rise of capitalism, and the Protestant
Reformation. As a result, those of us who are products of this culture will
naturally see the application of logic and rationality as inimical to spiritual
On the Soteriological Significance of Emptiness
15
pursuits. But Indian Buddhist philosophers did not see things this way, and it
is possible that they were right not to. It may well be that the practice of
philosophical rationality — with its demand that one follow the logic of the
argument wherever it leads — will turn out to have great soteriological value.
Perhaps those who accuse defenders of the semantic interpretation of reading
Western philosophy into a non-Western tradition are themselves guilty of a bit
of ethnocentrism.
Still, one can understand the desire for a more positive response to the
objection. What reason is there to believe that the practice of philosophical
rationality can help solve soteriological problems? Defenders of the semantic
interpretation have not always been completely forthcoming on this score, and
perhaps for good reason. Semantic non-dualism looks like a rather esoteric
philosophical doctrine, and it is difficult to see how its mastery might help
resolve deep-seated existential difficulties such as the problem of suffering.
Here I can only sketch what I take to be an appropriate response on behalf of
the semantic interpretation; I shall not try to defend this response by citing the
appropriate texts in the tradition. What I shall claim is first that the role
emptiness plays in liberation from suffering is ancillary in nature; it is the
doctrine of non-self that continues to play the chief role in that project, while
emptiness serves just to correct for certain common errors in the application of
non-self. Second, I shall claim that the doctrine of emptiness is intended to
prevent a subtle form of clinging that may grow out of one’s appreciation of the
doctrine of non-self, and may thus prove an impediment to complete liberation.
My sketch begins with the soteriological project of early Buddhism and
Abhidharma. Central to this project is the correct analysis of the cause of
suffering, for Buddhist practice essentially turns on preventing further suffering
by removing the factors responsible for its origination. It is well known that this
is to be accomplished at least in part by overcoming various forms of desire and
attachment. What is not always fully appreciated is why desire and attachment
are thought to bring about suffering. The Buddha taught that, in addition to
suffering, all sentient existence is characterized by impermanence and non-self;
it is our ignorance concerning the last two facts that is said to explain the first.
But it is possible to misconstrue the role of impermanence here. Burton (2002),
for instance, makes suffering seem to be largely a matter of disappointment in
the face of the transience of the objects I desire. Now it is true that Buddhist
teachings sometimes recommend concentrating on the impermanence of the
things and states one desires as a way of overcoming one’s craving for them.
But this is not to say that the solution is just to stop desiring transitory things
and states. After all, if suffering were just a matter of disappointment at the loss
of things and states one has become attached to, it could be readily avoided just
by cultivating an aesthetic appreciation of the transitoriness of all. Yet this would
leave untouched the real source of suffering, the false belief in an ‘I’. Desire and
attachment are to be overcome, on the Buddhist path, not because their objects
are unsatisfactory, but because they tend to re-inscribe false belief in the ‘I’.
The suffering that the Buddhist project is meant to extirpate is existential
suffering: the frustration, alienation and despair that result from the recognition
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M. Siderits
of one’s own mortality. The fact of impermanence plays a role here, but it is
the fact of non-self that is primary.6 We are happiness-seeking creatures. In
learning to seek not mere pleasure, but happiness, we have come to think of
ourselves as entities whose lives have meaning, value and purpose. That is, what
is in actuality no more than a causal series of sets of ephemeral psychophysical
elements becomes unified around the concept of a person, an enduring thing that
has those psychophysical elements as its parts. The construction of the person
as happiness-seeker requires that it be something that identifies with and
appropriates its past and future stages. And this, in turn, requires that the life
of a person be constructed as a kind of narrative. Hence arises the need for a
self to serve as what Dennett (1992) calls a ‘center of narrative gravity’. Now
this construction of the person is useful up to a point. The difficulty is that the
continued possibility of happiness requires that the self have an open future,
something that is incompatible with the fact of mortality. This is why the
realization of one’s own impermanence brings with it frustration, alienation and
despair.
The solution to the problem of suffering lies in overcoming our ignorance
concerning what we are. (It is this claim that Buddhism shares with other Indian
paths to liberation.) Suffering can be overcome if we can learn to live without
the illusion of a self and with the knowledge that the person is a mere useful
fiction. Hence arises the early Buddhist project of coming to see oneself and
others as strictly impersonal causal series of psychophysical elements. The
Abhidharma program of cataloguing the ultimate elements of reality (the
dharmas) and their causal relations is meant to facilitate this Reductionist project.
Here, philosophical rationality is used to construct and defend the theoretical
framework that shows how a thoroughly impersonal description of persons and
their states is possible. But since our lives are organized around the practice of
seeing ourselves and others as persons, mastery of this theoretical framework
does not by itself suffice to undermine the tendency to think of oneself as the
author of one’s life narrative. This requires a variety of practical techniques, such
as uprooting various self-affirming desires, and developing one’s introspective
observational powers through meditation. The practice of such techniques in
combination with the cultivation of philosophical rationality is said to eventually
culminate in enlightenment. This is the thorough internalization of the truth of
non-self, and thus enlightenment issues in a state of being wherein one no longer
behaves inappropriately with respect to oneself, others, and the world. One thus
overcomes suffering in oneself, and becomes adept at helping others overcome
it as well.
This last point may be controversial. My characterization of Buddhist
practice so far is meant to apply to Abhidharma, and it is widely held that it is
only in Mahāyāna that there first arises the teaching that the enlightened person
will naturally seek to help others overcome suffering. This is generally taken to
imply that the compassion of the enlightened person must result from realization of that other distinctively Mahāyāna teaching, the emptiness of all
dharmas. But the textual evidence does not bear this out. Instead, the texts
suggest that compassion issues directly from realization of non-self.7 But I have
On the Soteriological Significance of Emptiness
17
discussed the connection between non-self and compassion elsewhere (Siderits
and Williams 2000; Siderits 2003), and I shall not go into that here. What does
require discussion is the resulting suggestion that insight into emptiness does
not play the central role in enlightenment for the Mahāyāna schools, including
Madhyamaka. This is indeed a consequence of the semantic interpretation. On
this view, the realization of the emptiness of all dharmas plays an essentially
ancillary role, deepening insights that the aspirant acquires through the realization of non-self by correcting a serious misunderstanding that commonly arises
in the attaining of that realization. This is the view that the truth of non-self is
the ultimate truth. Recall that for the Abhidharma schools the ultimate truth is
the completely impersonal description of the evanescent dharmas and their
causal interactions. Now a Mādhyamika will agree that coming to see how all
conventional truth may be reduced without remainder to truths about impersonal
dharmas has great soteriological value. But there is a great danger in this
method as well. For remember that suffering is said to arise out of the felt need
for a ‘center of narrative gravity’, which in turn results from the demand that
the events in a causal series of psychophysical elements be incorporated in a
unified narrative. Now to suppose there to be such a thing as the one true
description of the ultimate nature of reality is to posit a grand unified narrative.
Granted it may be difficult to make oneself the hero of such a story. For this
is a narrative without characters (i.e., persons), but only strictly impersonal
dharmas. Still the thought that this is the ultimate truth can give rise to a subtle
form of clinging that may prove quite difficult to extirpate.
This is, I think, nicely illustrated by a remark in Cooper’s recent discussion
of emptiness. Now he is not there discussing the truth of non-self, but rather the
question of the correct interpretation of the doctrine of emptiness. Cooper
argues that the semantic interpretation should be supplemented with a variety of
metaphorical extensions of the concept of emptiness (e.g., of emptiness as an
‘ineffable source’ from out of which the world discloses itself through a process
of ‘emptying’). And his evidence stems from the soteriological role that
emptiness is said to play. Thus, Cooper in effect claims that the semantic
interpretation is inadequate because it fails to give any positive content to the
ultimate truth, something that is needed for it to be soteriologically efficacious.
This is so, we are told, because ‘the thought that appreciation of emptiness
“liberates” … implies that a doctrine of emptiness provides measure for one’s
life, something for one’s life to be answerable to’ (Cooper 2002, 18). The
suggestion is thus that liberation requires there to be some standard against
which one’s life is to be assessed for meaningfulness. But this will never do,
if it is true that suffering results from a misguided search for the meaning of
one’s life. To suppose there to be some substantive ultimate truth — that there
are only impersonal dharmas, or that reality is ineffable, or that the Absolute
is non-dual — is to prepare the breeding ground for a subtle yet insidious form
of clinging. This is sometimes revealed quite dramatically in the table-pounding
gesture that may accompany the metaphysical realist’s insistence: ‘There is such
a thing as how the world mind-independently is!’. What is at stake here is more
than just the insistence that only realist truth gives a way to resolve disputes
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M. Siderits
non-arbitrarily. After all, that demand can be met just by procedural rules that
prevent conversations from terminating prematurely. What is at stake is the
thought that there is the right way for a life to go, and that my life might
go that way. For this depends on the notion of a truth that is somehow ‘bigger
than all of us’, that reveals the larger scheme wherein our lives must fit if
they are to have value and purpose. On the semantic interpretation of emptiness,
the truth that liberates is the insight that there can be no truth apart from
the contingent institutions and practices of social existence. It liberates because
it undermines the last vestige of clinging, the belief that there is a mindindependent ultimate truth.
There is an alternative way of understanding the role that insight into
emptiness plays in liberation, and it would be useful to compare this with my
claim concerning the semantic interpretation. One sometimes hears it said that
the teaching of emptiness liberates by showing that all possible objects of
clinging lack intrinsic essence. This insight presumably makes one disinclined
to desire them, and the resulting quelling of passion is thought to lead to the
state of nirvana. Now I have already indicated that I am not sure that the
cessation of suffering is supposed to come about just through ceasing to desire
objects. But we may set that to one side at least for the moment. One would still
like to know how this extinguishing of passion is to come about. Why should
it make a difference to my desire that the hamburger I crave is empty —
that it derives all its properties from the causes and conditions on which it
depends?
Burton has recently expressed some doubt about this idea as well, but for
what I shall argue to be the wrong reasons. Still it will prove helpful to follow
his reasoning here. As we saw earlier, Burton takes the Buddhist soteriological
project to be one of preventing suffering by stopping oneself from desiring
inappropriate objects. Having demonstrated what he takes to be the inadequacies in the view that this can be done just by seeing that all objects are
impermanent, Burton then takes up an alternative strategy of showing that the
objects of desire are mere conceptual constructions.8 He takes this basic strategy
to be common to Abhidharma, Yogācāra, and Madhyamaka, but with the
following differences: in Abhidharma, it is only ordinary objects that are said
to be conceptual fictions; while according to Yogācāra, all things save the
evanescent, non-dual consciousness events are conceptually constructed; and in
Madhyamaka, it is all things without exception that are said to be mere
fabrications. The basic idea is said to be that anything so revealed as a mere
construction of the mind will cease to be desired. The Madhyamaka claim that
not only ordinary objects, but all dharmas are conceptually constructed is thus
intended to undermine the subtle basis of clinging that remains on the Abhidharma and Yogācāra analyses.
Against this alleged Madhyamaka strategy, Burton objects that what one
craves is not, for instance, the ephemeral atoms that make up the new car, but
the car itself, so that showing it to be a fabrication should suffice to undercut
attachment (assuming that the general strategy of demonstrating constructedness
succeeds in quelling desire). One need not, he thinks, go all the way with the
On the Soteriological Significance of Emptiness
19
Mādhyamika and show that the atoms are likewise conceptually constructed.
But here he misses an important point. If the car reductively supervenes on all
the atoms that make it up, then knowing that the latter are ultimately real does
after all preserve an object of craving: what I crave is really just all those atoms
arranged in just that way. Just as ‘car’ is not a mere empty sound, but turns out
instead to be a convenient way to refer to all the atoms in that particular
arrangement, so the object of my craving likewise will not utterly disappear, but
will continue to be available. While I may be surprised to discover that what I
crave is actually not one thing, but many, this need not have any effect on my
craving. If the route to the cessation of clinging is to go by way of analyzing
the objects of clinging into conceptual constructions, it had better go all the way
with the Mādhyamikas.
Burton does not think that going all the way will succeed, however, for he
also thinks it might even then be possible to continue to desire an object that
one believes to be conceptually constructed.9 He claims to be able to imagine
that one might discover that something lacks the kind of objective reality that
we attributed to it and yet continue to crave it because one derives enjoyment
from the experience of it. But caution is called for here. This is, I think,
implausible in the case where there still remains an available contrast between
those things that are not conceptually constructed and those that are. To the
extent that the latter are constructed through the mind’s conceptualizing
activity, they may well lack the sort of autonomous existence that the former
have, and are thus typically considered less desirable. When I realize that the
object of my romantic interest is partly a product of my wishful thinking, my
ardor and attachment tend to dim. The situation is analogous to what happens
when we wake up from a dream filled with longing for some object or other and
then discover that the object was ‘only a dream’.10 In general, where we take
there to be things that are not conceptually constructed, the discovery that some
desired object is at least partly the product of the mind’s fabricating power will
make us suspect that in reality the object lacks those properties that make it
seem desirable.11
Where Burton may be right, however, is where the discovery is that
everything is conceptually constructed. For, in that case, the requisite contrast
is no longer available. And so to then say of something that I crave that it is
conceptually constructed is not to relegate it to some lower status than is
appropriate for objects of desire; there is no other status that anything might
have on this view. All potential objects of clinging are what they are in part
through facts about our interests; so there cannot arise the concern that any
particular conceptually constructed object will turn out to be other than I would
like it to be just from the fact that it is a conceptual fiction. Once one has
thoroughly assimilated the belief that all things are conceptually constructed,
the ‘mere’ in the phrase ‘mere conceptual fiction’ will drop out. Indeed, one will
soon revert to referring to objects by their ordinary names: rivers will be rivers,
and mountains will be mountains.
What this should suggest, however, is not the conclusion that Burton draws:
that the Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness is ill-suited to the Buddhist
20
M. Siderits
soteriological task of ending attachment and clinging. To draw this
conclusion is to give a distinctly uncharitable reading of Madhyamaka. It would
be far more charitable to conclude that ending all attachment by showing the
object of attachment to be empty was never the real point of the doctrine. Since
the knowledge that all things are empty cannot make any particular object
appear less desirable, its soteriological value must lie in something other
than an alleged tendency to diminish cravings for objects. And where else
might that lie? Such value might come instead from its ability to contribute to the cessation of suffering by undermining any residual belief
in a self that remains after one has seen that the ‘person’ is just a causal
series of psychophysical elements. And only the semantic interpretation can explain how this might be. Metaphysical interpretations of
emptiness share with the Abhidharma reductionist project the crucial notion
that there is a ‘key to all mythology’, some grand narrative that unlocks the
final secrets of the universe.12 The point of emptiness is to undermine the
very idea of such a grand narrative. As the Mādhyamika sees things,
the project of liberation is not complete until one has abandoned this last
vestige of belief in an ‘I’ whose existence can have independent meaning
and value.
So while Burton is, I think, right to see in the doctrine of emptiness
a tool to help us overcome a subtle form of clinging, he is wrong in his
conception of how this tool is to work, and on what objects. Clinging results
in suffering, on the Buddhist analysis, just because it reinforces the false
belief in ‘I’ and ‘mine’. The Buddhist reductionist program of early Buddhism and Abhidharma is meant to reveal the falsity of this belief. But
to the extent that that program relies on the view that there is such a
thing as the ultimate nature of reality, it still leaves room for a covert
and thus insidious form of self-assertion. The doctrine of emptiness is
said to be the remedy that purges itself along with the cause of one’s
lingering illness.13 One sometimes senses that critics of the semantic interpretation believe it would be just too disappointing if this turned out to
be all there were to the doctrine of emptiness. Perhaps the feeling of disappointment is a sign that emptiness is doing the purging work for which it
was intended.
Notes
1 See, for example, Candrakı̄rti’s Prasannapadā on Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
XV.2.
2 Of course, for the Buddhist, the important point is to see that strictly speaking there
are likewise no persons. See Siderit (1997b) for a discussion of the role of this sort
of reductionist treatment of wholes in early Buddhism and Abhidharma.
3 See, for example, Abhidharmakośa 2 and Yaśomitra’s comments; Abhidharmakośabhāsya 12; Visuddhimagga 8.
4 I may˚ appear to be overlooking another ‘metaphysical’ interpretation of emptiness;
namely, that which takes emptiness to be equivalent to dependent origination
On the Soteriological Significance of Emptiness
5
6
7
8
9
21
(pratātya samutpāda). Here the authority of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24.18 is usually
invoked. If one takes this verse at face value, one might then take the doctrine of
emptiness to claim that since reality is inherently causal in nature, and the products
of causal processes necessarily derive their natures from their causes, the relata of
causal relations must lack intrinsic natures. And given the assumption that an
ultimately real entity must be one that bears an intrinsic nature, it would then follow
that reality cannot be characterized as consisting of discrete entities. But if this is
understood as a characterization of the ultimate nature of reality (as is suggested by
the claim that reality is inherently causal in nature), this begins to look like the view
that reality is ultimately ineffable. For how is one otherwise to make sense of the
claim that there are causal relations but no discrete entities that are the relata of those
relations? One sometimes sees this sort of view put in positive terms as the claim that
reality consists of a process or flow that cannot be divided up into discrete entities
or moments. But if this is not to lead to a kind of Eleatic monism of pure Being, then
all such talk of ‘process’ or ‘flow’ must be taken as merely figurative intimations of
an ineffable reality.
As Cooper (2002, 11) suggests, however, it may be a mistake to take the verse at
face value. For while Nāgārjuna does hold that everything that originates in
dependence on causes is empty (i.e., devoid of intrinsic nature), he does not assert
that the emptiness of a thing is its being dependent on causes. The emptiness of a
thing is rather said to be its being dependent on a certain kind of cause; namely, our
conceptual construction. To say that all things are empty is then just to deny
metaphysical realism: there is no such thing as how the world is independently of
the concepts we happen to employ. This denial is at the core of the semantic
interpretation.
Truth has been classed by philosophers as a semantic property at least since the work
of Tarski, who showed how the methods of philosophical semantics could be used
to construct a theory of truth that is immune to certain logical paradoxes.
Cooper (2002, 9) uses the term ‘quietism’ for what I am here calling a semantic
interpretation of emptiness. My reasons for not adopting his terminology will emerge
shortly.
Indeed, in the Nikāyas, the fact that the psychophysical elements (skandhas) are all
impermanent is used primarily to establish non-self.
See Bodhicāryāvatāra 8.98 ff. Also see Buddhaghosha’s discussion of the virtue of
loving-kindness at Visuddhimagga ch. 9.
This is suggested, for example, by Hastavālaprakarana 5: having shown that such
˚ extended objects (due to the
ordinary things as the pot must be unreal if construed as
problem of infinite divisibility), Din̊nāga claims that this analysis leads to the
abandonment of desire and the other klesas. This outcome is compared with the
dissolution of fear when one realizes that˚ the snake is really a rope. On the other
hand, at Bodhicāryāvatāra 9.30, a Yogācārin opponent asserts that desire can
continue to arise even in one who recognizes that the object is no more than an
appearance.
Burton’s terminology here is actually stronger than ‘conceptual construction’: he uses
‘mere fabrication’, ‘completely a mental construct’, and ‘nothing more than a
fantasy’ (Burton 2002, 337). With respect to Madhyamaka, this stronger language is,
I think, a mistake. While Candrakı̄rti does sometimes use the analogy of the
magician’s illusions to explicate what it means to say that something is empty, he is
criticized by other Mādhyamikas for this. To say that something is conceptually
constructed is not to say that it is created ex nihilo by the mind. It is to say instead
that, because the mind has played a role in its individuation, it does not possess the
kind of mind-independent nature and ontological status that the metaphysical realist
hankers after. The anti-realist is not a linguistic idealist. The anti-realist simply holds
22
10
11
12
13
M. Siderits
that the notion of how things are completely independent of all conceptualization is
incoherent.
The dream analogy is, of course, a favorite of Yogācāra with its teaching of
cittamātra or mind-only. But notice that the point of their teaching that all
supposedly external objects are really just states of consciousness is not to end all
attachment to physical objects. It is rather to call into question the distinction
between cognizer and object cognized. And this in turn is meant to help one
realize the truth of non-self. On this point, see Vasubandhu’s comments on Vimśatikā
˚
10.
Although notice that this is not the case with the car seen as the collection of atoms.
What matters here is whether the mind-independent basis of the conceptual construction itself has the properties that the desired but mind-dependent object had. The
atoms do have the capacity to transport one at a high rate of speed. On the contrary,
those states that are the real basis of the object of desire in the erotic dream do not
have the capacity to bring about sensual pleasure.
It was, of course, the life project of Mr Casaubon in Middlemarch to find the key to
all mythology.
See, for example, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā XIII.8, where Nāgārjuna pronounces
incurable those who become attached to the remedy that is meant to rid one of all
metaphysical views.
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Correspondence address: Mark Siderits, Department of Philosophy, Box 4540, Illinois
State University, Normal, IL 61790-4540, USA. E-mail: [email protected]