Through the middle way

1. Through the middle way By virtue of Peirce’s triadicity,…

2. And, Nagarjuna

3. Peirce’s triadicity, in a nutshell

4. Mahayana Buddhism, of which 2nd century Indian philosopher Nagarjuna is a chief actor, offered a broader definition of soullessness and declared that, not only are persons devoid of ‘a self’, but that all of the elements comprising existence are also without essence. They are ‘empty’, sunya, of the very notion of ‘self-nature’.

5. From ‘emptiness’ as nothing but the mere Possible possibility of…

6. to …

7. An analogy from the history of Western physics (Western) might help clarify the aparent conflict between the ‘emptiness’ and ‘something’. Classical Newtonian physics saw everything as comprised of irreducible atoms with a determinable location and momentum. Belief in the determinism made possible by such a reified existence led French mathematician Pierre de Laplace to declare that, could he theoretically know the location and momentum of every monad in the universe, he could predict the exact future history of the entire cosmos. Quantum physics revolutionized this view by describing the qualities of the monadic elements of existence as being inherently unknowable (‘emptiness’, or mere possible possibility as devoid of the very idea of ‘self-nature’).

8. Further, the utter smallness of the particles and the sheer distances between them shows matter to be little more than empty space and existence ultimately nothing more than interactions of abstract energy fields. That the truest cosmological quality of things is emptiness, sunyata, came to be regarded as the central notion of Buddhism.

9. ‘Fire’ burns, but it cannot burn itself. The word ‘fire’ is ‘empty’. Fire itself is empty, since its very nature outside the nature of everything else is ‘empty’. Everything Is ‘empty’, even ‘emptiness’ itself

10. Not only are things ‘empty’, the Mahayana school declared, but the very notion of ‘emptiness’ is itself ‘empty’ (sunyata).

11. In this respect contemplate the sense of music As self-contained Sound, rhythm

12. On the one hand, early Buddhism saw ‘emptiness’ as a lack of being but, on the other, something remains which cannot be negated. These statements will not make sense in Buddhist terms unless reconciled with the Buddha's absolute rejection of an ultimate ground of reality. The meaning of the paradox, according to the Perfection of Wisdom writings, is that ‘emptiness’ is both and neither being and non-being, both and neither negation and affirmation . ‘Emptiness’ is not really a thing any more than a thing is really ‘empty’, for reality cannot be pinned down in concepts.

13. Or, contemplate the notion of universals

14. This paradoxical, non-conceptual use of the notion of ‘emptiness’ is reflected in the fact that certain of the Perfection of Wisdom writings used the notion without ever mentioning the term. The Diamond Sutra, for example, taught that the notion of ‘emptiness’ was to be used like a hard diamond to ‘cut away all unnecessary conceptualization’, including the idea of ‘emptines’s itself. The discourse accomplished this by presenting a series of paradoxes that demonstrated ‘emptiness’ without using the word.

15. For example, the Buddha is made to say: • "As many beings as there are in the universe of beings, ...all these I must lead to nirvana, into that realm of nirvana which leaves nothing behind. And yet, although innumerable beings have thus been led to nirvana, no being at all has been led to nirvana."

16. Or, as an Alternative…

17. The actual use of the term ‘emptiness’ (sunyata) was likely avoided in the Diamond Sutra because, even though the paradoxes were half affirmative and half negatory, • the potential for misunderstanding and seeing only the negative side of the equation was great. • Equally dangerous was the possibility of clinging to the notion of ‘emptiness’ as yet another, albeit apophatic, theory. • These were dangers the Buddha was quite aware of. He said that, following his death, ‘the monks will no longer wish to hear and learn [my teachings], deep, deep in meaning, ...dealing with the void (sunyata), but will only lend their ear to profane [teachings], made by poets, poetical, adorned with beautiful words and syllables’.

18. For a different Take on ‘emptiness’: • Nagarjuna’s ‘Tetralemma’, the standard for Mahayana Buddhism, is comprised of four propositional formulations expressed positively or negatively. Where x is any proposition and –x is its negation, a positive tetralemma takes the form of: • X! • -X! • Both X and –X! • Neither X nor –X!

19. Regarding the ‘self’: • The self is real (conventionally true, i.e., it exists in a dependent reality along with everything else we derive from experience) • The self is not real (ultimately true, i.e., it has no essence) • The self is both real and not real (conventionally real but ultimately unreal) • The self is neither real nor not

20. Conventionally ‘real’ (= word, concept, perspective  interpretation). • Nonconventionally ‘real’ (= neither a word nor a concept nor a perspective nor an interpretation). • Conventionally ‘real’ (= either what is or what is not, in whichever case: a sense of permanence). • Nonconventionally ‘real’ (= both what is and what is not and neither what is nor what is not, in whichever case: impermanence).

21. In other words, we have the following as the pure possible possibility of a sign, prior to signness becoming, or…

23. Or…

24. It is like the difference between ‘Game’ and ‘Play’ • Game (either winners or losers). • Winner (+), loser (-). • Play (neither winners nor losers). • + • – • Both + and – • Neither + nor –

25. ‘IT’ • Is ‘this’ (+) • Is ‘that’ (not-’this’) (–) • Is possibly both ‘this’ and ‘that’ (both + and –) • Is neither ‘this’ nor ‘that’ but something else(neither + nor –, but: )

26. But: ‘There is no inconsistency, no cause for disagreement and nothing to discuss’ (Nagarjuna) • And: ‘Openness wrongly conceived destroys the dimly-witted. It is like a snake grasped by the head or a garbled incantation’ (Nagarjuna)

27. Hence it is possibly an impossible task to describe a changing reality in words because they inevitably make it appear fixed and unchanging.

28. To ask ‘What is it?’ or ‘How does it change?’ To describe the domain of becoming in essentialist language leads to contradiction and incommensurability. To describe becoming in nonessentialist language leads to paradox.

29. Any description of becoming taken literally is incoherent, but can be loosely described as an open-ended process.

30. The open-ended process is Nagarjuna’s ‘middle way’, or in a manner of speaking, it is the ‘mediating third’ way in Peirce’s triadicity, that is, if we take the ‘0’ in • into consideration.