Some phenomenological reflections

·期刊原文
The cittamatra and its Madhyamaka critique' Some phenomenological reflections

Kennard Lipman
Philosophy East and West, 32, no. 3(July, 1982).
(c) by the University of Hawaii Press.
pp.295-308

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P.295

I

In the introduction to his extensive commentary on
'Saantarak.sita's Madhyamakaala.mkaara, Mi-pham
rgya-mtsho (1846-1912), probably the foremost scholar
of non-Tantric Buddhist philosophy in the history of
the Nyingmapa school of Tibet, sums up
'Saantarak.sita's approach to the Cittamaatra
("Experientialist") philosophy as follows:(1)

By accepting the variety of presences (snang-ba,
aabhaasa) as the magical play (rnam-''phrul) of
experience (sems, citta), one knows the mode of being
(yid-lugs) of the conventional and obtains a trusting
conviction (yin-ches) about the way in which one is
involved in and disengaged from sa.msaara. Regarding
this, in respect of the presence of Being (gnas-lugs)
which is free from all discursiveness,
characteristics, and objectification, even the
statement, 'Presence is experience, is not
established. While this is the ultimate which is
beyond the conventional, when one remains in the
range of conventional presence, since the existence
of an object-in-itself is contradicted by reasoning
and 'experience only' is established by reasoning if
one asserts a conventional which does not go beyond
the level of ordinary perception (tshur-mthong),
there is.no going beyond that (reasoning)....
By virtue of the sedimenting (bzhag) in experience of
various errant habituating tendencies (bag-chags,
vaasanaa), a variety of presences make themselves
felt, like in a dream, in the uninterrupted stream of
projective existence (srid-pa, bhava). Because there
is no other case apart from experience for this,
experience which has come under the power of
emotionality enters into the realm of projective
existence and even the hand of the Tathaagata cannot
put a stop to it.

Elsewhere in his introduction to the
Madhyamakaalamkaara, Mi-pham characterizes the
Cittamaatra-Madhyamaka relation in this way:(2)

Since the very fact of the relative (gzhan-dbang,
paratantra), as the ground of the conceptual
(kun-btags, parikalpita) is not established in truth
(bden-grub), one should be aware of the refutation by
Candrakiirti and others.(3) All such arguments which
refute the horizontal awareness (kun-gzhi rnam-shes,
aalayavij~naana) and reflexive awareness (rang-rig,
svasa.mvedana) although they apply to the acceptance
of reflexive awareness as established in truth by the
Cittamaatra, one should know that they do not apply
to all aspects of the method which affirms the
horizontal awareness and reflexive awareness merely
conventionally. For example, the reasoning which
refutes the establishment in truth of all cause and
result, as well as psychophysical constituents,
components of experience, and sense fields, does not
contradict the acceptance of cause and result and the
establishment of the psychophysical constituents and
experiential components merely conventionally by the
Maadhyamikas. One should know that the atman as an
eternal substance, etc., of the Tiirthikas is
impossible even conventionally. In brief, if
(something) is established as existing on the level
of conventional valid means of knowledge (tha-snyad
tshad-ma), conventionally who is able to refute it,
while if there is a contradiction according to
conventional valid means, who is able to establish
its existence conventionally? If (something) is found
to be non-existent through a logical inquiry from the
ultimate (point of view) (don-dam tshad-ma), then who
is able to establish that it exists ultimately? This
is the reality (chos-nyid) of all particular
existents.
_____________________________________________________

kennard Lipman is Instructor in the Department of
Religious Studies at the University of Calgary.

p.296

We shall focus on the Madhyamaka critique of the
paratantra, rather than the critiques of the
aalayavij~naana and svasa.mvedana, because this forms
the heart of the distinction between the Madhyamaka
and Yogaacaara points of view.(4) The key passage
here involves the application of the Madhyamaka
technical term "existence in truth" (bden-grub) to
the Cittamaatra theories.(5) It is always a difficult
problem when one philosophical approach criticizes
another using its own terms. Is one tradition merely
misrepresenting another? It is clear that the later
Indian and Tibetan Maadhyamikas for the most part
leveled their attacks on later developments among the
Yogaacaaras, that is, on the
Yogaacaara-pramaa.navaada fusion of Dignaaga and
Dharmakiirti. Does this then exempt Asa^nga,
Vasubandhu, and Sthiramati from their critiques? How
can we mediate these claims?
The aim of this article is twofold. First,
through the aid of phenomenology we hope to make
clear, in a way that has never been done before
(discussions of the relation of Cittamaatra to
Madhyamaka being purely descriptive accounts by
Buddhologists), what the different approaches to the
key concept of 'suunyataa (stong-pa-nyid), usually
translated emptiness, voidness, nothingness, or
openness, are in these two traditions. As a result,
the reasons for the Maadhyamika critique will
hopefully become clear. Basically, we will attempt to
interpret the Cittamaatra and Madhyamaka approaches
to 'suunyataa as two accounts of the perspectival
nature of experience. Second, through this
interpretive endeavor we also hope to increase our
self-understanding of contemporary phenomenology, by
revealing, in the course of its encounter with
Buddhist thought, how phenomenology, in trying to
describe experience, leads over into a prescriptive
transformation of experience. This brings it closer
to the traditional Indian conception of philosophy as
a means of liberation.

II

Don Ihde, in his Experimental Phenomenology, has hit
on a brilliant means of introduction to the
complexities of the phenomenological method initiated
by Edmund Husserl, through an investigation of
multistable phenomena (for example, the Necker cube)
along phenomenological, as opposed to conventional
psychological lines. This approach involves a
deconstruction of the phenomena, which is made
possible by the epoch? or "suspension of belief in
accepted reality claims."(6) As Ihde states,(7)

Deconstruction occurs by means of a variational
method, which possibilizes all phenomena in seeking
their structures. In this context, epoch? includes
suspension of belief in any causes of the visual
effects and positively focuses upon what is and may
be seen.

It is important to note here that the epoch?does not
establish a presuppositionless point of view or a
disinterested spectator, as is often thought, (8)
rather it "is needed to open the possibilities of the
seen to their topographical features."(9) That is,
the epoch? is the beginning of the de-struction of
the sedimented (habituating) passivity of ordinary
perception in the "natural attitude" It does

p.297

not reveal a fundamental stratum of reality in a
'pure description', but is the basis for "the
attainment of a new and open noetic context."(10) It
is a matter of educating ourselves to see more, just
as a bird watcher (the example is Ihde's) learns to
'see' the markings of different species of birds not
'seen' by the naive viewer. Here the ambiguous term
'see' is given a precise meaning:(11)

The educated viewer does not create these markings.
(of the birds), because they are there to be
discovered, but--in phenomenological language-he
constitutes them. He recognizes and fulfills his
perceptual intention and so sees the markings as
meaningful.

Although utilizing the dubious Husserlian language of
perceptual intention and fulfillment which has been
much criticized, Ihde tries to steer a middle course
between Husserl and his 'existentialist' critics.(12)
The important point of concern to us here is that
perception is an active process, an activity of
knowing which has especially been stressed in modern
psychology and philosophy since the advent of Gestalt
psychology. Phenomenologists of perception, such as
Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty, have in effect tried to
work out an adequate philosophy of the perceptual
Gestalt. It should be noted here that a rejection of
the passivity of perception does not entail making it
into a judgment--the extreme of "Intellectualism," to
use Merleau-Ponty's term. Rudolf Arnheim, in his
wellknown study in the Gestaltist tradition, of art
and psychology, Art and Visual Perception,
states:(13)

... in looking at an object, we reach out for it.
With an invisible finger we move through the space
around us, go out to the distanct places where things
are found, touch them, catch them, scan their
surfaces, trace their borders, explore their texture.
Perceiving shapes is an eminently active occupation.

Yet, paradoxically it seems, we must struggle to
recover what is already ours: the creativity of
perception. Phenomenology is no longer description,
but prescription, as we shall see.
Sedimented, habitual ways of perceiving limit the
possibility of the 'object' to a static 'essence'
(svabhaava), that is, "an exhaustively specifiable
and unvarying mode of being."(14) For example, for
most people (and the psychologists who test them),
the Necker cube has two possibilities, either as a
forward-downward-facing cube or a
forward-upward-facing cube. But this is merely due to
the laziness of conventionalized viewing. There are
other equally 'essential' possibilities of the
topographical form own as the Necker cube, that is,
other ways to see' (gestalt) it without doing
violence to the form. Ihde reveals three other
possibilities. This is what is meant by opening the
form to its topographical structure. Any of these
possible forms (noema) is correlated with a way of
looking (noesis) . But this does not mean that
perception is a series of 'thin, transparent'
presences. Ihde states:(15)

What is important to note in this account is the
co-presence within experience of both a profile and
latently meant absence which, together, constitute
the

p.298

Presence of a thing. To forget or ignore the latent
or meant aspect of the Presence of the thing reduces
the appearance of the world to a facade, lacking
weightiness and opacity. Phenomenologists also claim
that what makes any object 'transcendent', having
genuine otherness, is locatable in this play of
presence and absence-in-presence in our perception of
things. But note that transcendence is constituted
within experience...

Now, both the Cittamaatra and Madhyamaka trends
within Mahayana Buddhism claim to be exegeses on the
Praj~naapaaramitaasuutras, whose message may be
epitomized as,'Presence is openness (stongpa-nyid,
'suunayataa) and openness is presence.' The Necker
cube example, phenomenologically considered, provides
us with an excellent tool for showing their two
different approaches to this statement.
The Cittamaatra emphasizes the inseparability of
noesis ('dzinpa, graahaka) and noema (gzung-ba,
graahya), in order to establish that there is no
object-in-itself but "only experience" (sems-tsam,
cittamaatra). This dualistic mode of presencing into
an object-in-itself and a subject-for-itself is
occasioned by the maturation (smin-pa) or activation
(sad-pa) of habituating tendencies (bag-chags,
vaasanaa), which in regard to perception, we may
refer to as 'schemata'.(16) This dualism is analyzed
into a tripartite structure in
Mahaayaanasuutraala.mkaara XI, 40 and
Madhyaantavibhaaga III, 23 as follows:(17)

NOEMA NOESIS
world-as-horizon (gnas, emotively-toned ego-act
prati.s.tha or pada) (nyon-yid, kli.s.tamanas)
objects-within-horizon thematization (rnam-rtog,
(don, artha or longs- vikalpa)
spyod, bhoga)
body as focal-point of sense-perception (`dzin-pa
experience (lus, deha) udgraha or rnam-shes,
vij~naana)

These presences characterize the contextuality of
experience (gzhan-dbang, para-tantra) as a duality.
The habituating tendencies which constitute this
experience collectively as a 'stream' or 'stratum'
(compare Husserl: substrate of ha-bitualities)(18)
are known as foundational-horizonal perception
(kun-gzhi rnam-shes, aalayavij~naana), which is an
indistinct awareness of being-in-the-world, in-
eluding the appropriation of these habitualities
(sa-bon, biija) and the body as one's own. These are
technically known as the referents (dmigs-pa,
aalambana) of the foundational-horizonal
awareness.(19) Contextuality is the basis for
straying into a world of fictions (the in-itself and
for-itself) (kun-btags, parikalpita), or, on the
other hand, divesting oneself of these fictions and
recognizing the real in its initial purity
(yongs-grub, parini.spanna). The interpretation of
contextuality, as mentioned earlier, is the crucial
issue in assessing Madhyamaka critiques of the
Cittamaatra. For the Cittamaatra, the parikalpita is
nonexistent(20) in that it is a mere name for the
reality (bdag) on the paratantra level to which the
parikalpita refers.(21) The paratantra is the basis
for the (dualistic) presencing (snang-gzhi)(22) of
the parikalpita. The paratantra is said to be like a
dream, an apparition, and so forth. Tri.m'sikaa 24
explains the reason for this: the contextual is
without actual

p.299

origination (utpattini.hsvabhaavataa, Skye-ba
ngo-bo-nyid med-pa), because it does not come about
by itself but is dependent upon others, which means
contextuality.(23) This contextuality is none other
than the maturation of sedimented and habituating
noetic-noematic contexts, that is, the activity of
the aalayavij~naana, being (cognitive)-in-the-world.
To return, then, to the Necker cube example, we
should understand that gestalts of the form in any of
its possibilities, such as a cube, are not private
sensedata nor are they passive views (mere
appearances) of a single 'object'. Rather, active
ways of looking intend or structure the form in
different ways, but one could equally say that the
seen actualizes the seer. In Ihde's language, the
order of perception (on the 'object'-side) and the
sedimentation of beliefs (on the subject'-side) are
inseparable, but we may focus on either through his
two "strategies, " the transcendental and the
hermeneutic.(24) One should note that the sedimented
order is on the noetic and the noematic sides. Here
is where Husserl's transcendental strategy of
intentions and fulfillments is weak: by fulfilling
one's intentions isn't one just substituting one form
of habituation for another, as in the case of the
bird-watcher example cited by Ihde above. Admittedly,
phenomenological viewing opens up the phenomena more
than naive vie wing does. One does not escape from
contextuality through the epoch? but one does
realizes its openness by freeing oneself from
habituation to a noncontextual subject and object.
One realizes that the object is not just 'there' but
is constituted. That is, one can question the meaning
of objectivity; how does it arise within experience?
But one should not imagine that by this questioning
the possible forms of the cube become 'merely
subjective' and arbitrary. I cannot see the 'cube' as
an ostrich, although I can see it as a strangely cut
gem if I follow Idhe's "strategies." I can learn to
adjust my "noetic focus'' to see the different
possibilities ('If you do so and so, you will see
such and such.'), but there are no intersubjective
instructions for seeing the 'cube' as an ostrich.
This probem of 'appearance' has been a great
stumbling block in the way of the analytic/linguistic
tradition's understanding of phenomenology (and their
tendency, if they consider it at all, to see it as a
kind of phenomenalism). For example, in his book
Sensation and Perception, D. W. Hamlyn expresses his
central critique of phenomenology (with specific
reference to Merleau-Ponty) as follows:(25)

An investigation of this pre-objective world would be
an investigation of the categories applicable to
perceptual consciousness prior (logically and perhaps
temporally prior) to the construction of an objective
world. Merleau-Ponty has much of interest to say
about this. But the question may still be asked
whether he has any right to assume the necessary
'bracketing-off' has been complete. May his account
not be after all another account of how things appear
to us under very special conditions? As befits a
'descriptive psychology', phenomenology may larlgely
be looked upon as an attempt to describe how things
appear under different conditions. But once it is
assumed that a pure experience can be discovered, the
use of words like 'appears' becomes inappropriate. In
saying that

p.300

we are studying how things appear to us, we
presuppose the notion of things and how they really
are (for we use the word 'appears' very largely to
make a contrast with how things really are). It is
difficult in consequence to see how a description of
appearances can be a description of pure experience.
In this respect Phenomenology finds itself in the
same dilemma as Ayer. Either we can look on the
experience as basic or we can define it in terms of
appearance but not both.

Such critiques of phenomenology are very helpful, for
they push it on to better self-understanding, that
is, that phenomenology at a certain point ceases to
be descriptive and becomes prescriptive, as we have
noted.(26) Merleau-Ponty himself realized that "The
most important lesson which the reduction teaches us
is the impossibility of a complete reduction."(27)
Phenomenology is not pure presuppositionless
description of the perceived-intended-as-such, but
the opening of phenomena as illustrated in the Necker
cube example. The "very special conditions" of
phenomenological seeing are not just another
habituated, naive way of seeing. The "pure
experience" of phenomenology is the open
noetic-noematic complex which discovers presences and
not mere phenomenal appearances. Hamlyn's appeal to
the proper usage of the word "appears' is based on
naive (prereduction) presuppositions. For reasons
such as these misunderstandings of "appearance' we
have avoided this term as a translation of snang-ba
(aabhaasa) in the Yogaacaara or Madhyamaka context,
preferring 'presence'. It is unfortunate that one
speaks of phenomenological description, where
explication would be the better term. Phenomenology,
in its ultimate possibility, is not description of
ordinary experience so much as prescription for that
experience as transformed by radical reflection or
explication. That is, reflection modifies the
reflected-on by opening it up and situating it, such
as to make presuppositionless description impossible.
Ultimately, there is nothing to describe, as
Merleau-Ponty stated: "nothing exists... everything
is temporalized".(28) But in order to understand this
one must try to reflect radically, to undertake the
reduction. Once one is on one's way, experience, the
dialectic of reflection and reflected-on, or as
Merleau-Ponty put it, "the communication of a finite
subject with an opaque being from which it emerges
but to which it remains committed,"(29) widens and
deepens. As the old saying goes, "You can lead a
horse to water but you can't make him drink," as two
critics of Merleau-Ponty have noted:(30)

But there is no way of proving a priori that a
phenomenoiogical description of perception will
provide an account of the genesis of experience.
Those who refuse to undertake the experiment will
remain forever unconvinced. This MerleauPonty readily
admits.'In this sense (phenomenological) reflection
is a system of thought as self-enclosed as madness.'
'But', he maintains, 'this change of standpoint is
justifted in the outcome by the abundance of
phenomena which it makes comprehensible'.

The goal of a prescriptive phenomenology, as we have
called it, which is a kind of deconstruction, is to
deconstruct until there is nothing left to
deconstruct, or rather, to realize that there has
never been anything to deconstruct, the world not
being a construction or constitution of
'transcendental' experience.

p.301

This is an important point, for now we can begin
to consider how a subtle constructivism remains
within the Yogaacaara phenomenology, and this is
bound up with their theory of the three constitutive
principles of reality (ngo-bo nyid gsum,
trisvabhaava). There is a crucial ambiguity here
which forms the basis for the later developments in
Indian Buddhist philosophy of the
saakaara-j~naanavaada and niraakaaraj~naanavaada,
that is, the theories which held that consciousness
was intentional, always 'containing' a noema
(rnam-pa, aakaara) , and those which held that
consciousness ultimately transcended intentionality,
and was without noema. The crucial question is: does
presence (snang-ba, aabhaasa) as the noema belong to
the parikalpita or the paratantra? (31) Compare the
Husserlian question: "Is the perceptual sense
(Wahrnehmungssinn) to be understood as the
interpretive sense (Auffassungssinn) or as the
intuitive sense (Anschauungssinn)?"(32) If the noema
belongs to the parikalpita, then this is the position
of the niraakaaraj~naanavaada or aliikaaj~naanavaada
(rnam-rdzun-pa) .(33) If presence belongs to the
paratantra, then this is the position of the
saakaaraj~naanavaada.
The earlier (classical) Yogaacaara (of Asa^nga,
Vasubandhu, and Sthiramati) avoided this problem by
stating that the habituating tendencies, as cause and
effect, were simultaneous. The structuring
(sedimenting) arises and ceases together with the
structured (sedimenting), like the odor of a flower
perfuming sesame seeds.(34) Or, they held that the
relation between the parikalpita and the paratantra
is one of 'both... and' or 'neither... nor', as Ruegg
has pointed out in analyzing the
Madhyaantavibhaaga:(35)

On the ontological level, the Vij~naanavaadin speaks
both of sattva "existence" with respect to
abhuutaparikalpita and 'suunyataa, and of asattva
'non existence' with respect to duality (MV I,3)...

and,(36)

... if abhuutaparikalpita is then neither as it
appears, i.e. as affected by duality-nor altogether
non-existent-because it is the condition for error
and for release--this is to be understood in terms of
the theory of the three natures (svabhaava) of the
Yogaacaara. That is, abhuutaparikalpa as
paratantrasvabhaava exists as such: where as it is
not as it appears when affected by the subject/object
duality of the parikalpitasvabhaava, once freed from
the latter it is the perfect nature of the
parini.spannas vabhaava (MVBh 1.6).

Why this ambiguity? Because, from the
phenamenological point of view, the perceived-as-such
is never completely isolatable and implicates the
rest of the phenomenal field. The 'object' is always
determinable but never determinate. The
intentionality of perception is not a transparent
positing of meaning by a consciousness. As
Merleau-Ponty says of 'Intellectualism':(37)

The object is made determinate as an identifiable
being only through a whole open series of possible
experiences, and exists only for a subject who
carries out this identification. Being is exclusively
for someone who is able to step back from it and thus
stand wholly outside being. In this way the mind
becomes the subject of perception and the notion of
'significance' becomes inconceivable.

p.302

And then he says of the intentionality of
sensation:(38)

The sensation of blue is not the knowledge or
positing of a certain identifiable quale throughout
all the experiences of it which I have, as the
geometer's circle is the same in Paris and Tokyo. It
is in all probability intentional, which means that
it does not rest in itself as does a thing, that it
is directed and has significance beyond itself. But
what it aims at is recognized only blindly, through
my body's familiarity with it. It is not constituted
in the full light of day, it is reconstituted or
taken up once more by a knowledge which remains
latent, leaving it with its opacity and its thisness.

The ambiguities of the phenomenology of
perception seem only to get richer. Is there perhaps
another way to attack the problem, to deal with the
contextuality of experience?
To return again to our example of the Necker
cube, the Madhyamaka offers what I would call a more
radical de-construction of multi-stable phenomena. We
have seen that each variation is a gestalt. The
Cittamaatra has shown how a gestalt does not come
into being apart from its sedimented contextuality.
They make use of contextuality to show that this very
contextuality is devoid of ('suunya) the duality of
neoesis and noema as independent entities. But what
is the internal structure of a gestalt-as-noema it
self? A gestalt has a dynamic," "hidden structure,"
to use Arnheim's terms, who also states: "Visual
perception consists in the experiencing of visual
forces."(39) These Forces seem occult and subjective
to the psycho-physiologist still under the spell of
the "stimulus error" and the "constancy hypothesis,"
those psychological counterparts of the atomism of
British Empiricism.(40) These "forces" are the
expression of the famous gestalt part-whole complex.
A part is a "whole-part":(41)

What a person or animal perceives is not only an
arrangement of objects, of colors and shapes, of
movements and sizes. It is, perhaps first of all, an
interplay of directed tensions. These tensions are
not something the observer adds, for reasons of his
own, to static images.... Notice further that if the
disk is seen as striving toward the center of the
square, it is being attracted by something not
physically present in the picture. The center point
is not identified by any marking in figure 1; as
invisible as the North Pole or the Equator, it is
nonetheless a part of the perceived pattern, an
invisible focus of power, established at a
considerable distance by the outline of the square.
It is 'induced', as one electric current can be
induced by another. There are, then, more things in
the field of vision than those that strike the retina
of the eye.... Such perceptual inductions differ from
logical inferences. Inferences are thought operations
that add something to the given visual facts by
interpreting them.

p.303

These "perceptual forces" and "tensions" make
multistable phenomena possible. A given variation is
actualized, say as in a forwarddownward-facing cube,
when point A is seen forward and down (as part of a
forwarddownward-facing cube). It is difficult to
focus on A in the rear of a forward-upward-facing
cube, but B can easily be seen as forward and up as
part of such a cube. A and B have completely
different significances in these cases, different
meanings (which are not intellectual judgments) as
"partwholes" in different variational structures.
Intentions are "fulfilled" not as 'ideal' variations
of positings by a transparent consciousness, but, as
Merleau-Ponty states,(42)

a sensible datum which is on the point of being felt
sets a kind of muddled problem for my body to solve.
I must find the attitude which will provide it with
the means of becoming determinate,... I must find the
reply to a question which is obscurely expressed.

But what makes such gestalts possible? The
Gestalt psychologists, as natural scientists, looked
to the structure of the nervous system,
phenomenologists to noetic-noematic correlations. But
this phenomenon can be opened up further, and here is
where the Madhyamaka critique enters. What is the
relation between the whole and the part? Does seeing
the part produce the whole? Which comes first, or are
they simultaneous? How do they depend on each other?
How are they contextual? The Yogaacaara accepts that
the y are; contextuaiity exists, but no separate,
individual existence comes into being. This is how
the Yogaacaara interprets the 'essencelessness'
(ni.hsvabhaava) of the paratantra: as
utpattini.hsvabhaava, as we noted earlier (see p. 7).
Now, the part-whole relation is just one of many
relations referred to by the Madhyamaka as upaadaaya
praj~napti (brten-nas btags-pa),
ida.mpratyayataamaatra (rkyen-nyid 'di-pa tsam),
parasparaapek.sikiisiddhi (phan-tshun bltos-pa'i
grubpa).(43) These terms indicate the Madhyamaka
interpretation of pratiityasamutpaada as 'suunyataa.
In his commentary on Muulamadhyamakakaarikaa VIII,
13c-d, Candrakiirti gives us a list of such
relations: act and agent, appropriated and
appropriator, producer and produced, mover and
movement, seer and seen, characteristic and
characterized, originator and originated, part and
whole (literally, "part-possessor"), substance and
quality, .and means of knowledge and object of
knowledge.(44) These are not merely intellectual
constructions but have their source in experience
which the Madhyamaka calls prapa~nca (sprospa),
discursiveness, linguistic proliferation [which is
intimately related to vikalpa (rnam-rtog),
dichotomous conceptualization, thematization].(45)
Not to understand relation in this way is to
'establish things in truth' (bden-grub). That which

P.304

is not established in truth is not worthy of the name
"existence" in the Madhyamaka understanding, but is a
mere appropriation of one relatum to the other, which
may become a mutual conspiracy, if we may use such
language, when not properly understood. This
"dependent origination" is not causality or even
conditionality (the conditions (pratyaya, rkyen),
having been refuted by Nagarjuna in MMK I).
Our common-sense and the common natural
scientific notions of causality are deeply rooted in
the experience of 'making things happen'. Many of
Husserl's problems with intentionaiity and its
'object' stem from such an 'agency' perspective: I
can, I "hold sway," as Husserl liked to say.(46) I
can push this away. I can also raise my arm. In the
second case, the problem is compounded by trying to
subsume the mental and physical (the willing and the
raising of my arm) under this notion of causality.
But in both cases, a question remains which is not
addressed by these causal notions: what 'gives' my
arm to that which it pushes, what 'gives' my
intention to the movement of my arm. How do they
belong together?(47) (With the Yogaacaara we have
inquired into the role of habituating tendencies in
making the contextual 'relate'). Our question is not
how are they coordinated or correlated, but how do
they co-respond? How are they appropriated and
appropriate to one another? An object I move
must'beiong' to my movement in the 'order' of mover
and moved. Although my arm which I move is not just
an object, it is also a part of this 'order' of mover
and moved. Mover and moved are a field of action; in
moving my arm this field is the expressive space of
gesture. Because of this, the symbolism of bodily
gesture is not 'merely subjective'. That is, the
gesture is solicited, but this solictitation is
already interpreted (appropriated) through what has
been called the hermeneutical 'as' of
understanding.(48) For example, aesthetic theories
centered on 'expression' neglect the solicitation
with which expression "belongs together," just as
theories of scientific discovery which emphasize
psychological factors, neglect the hermeneutical
situation of the scientist in his tradition.(49)
To return to our example, the part and the whole
belong together through a field called space, which
is not an empty container, but, from the earliest
times in Buddhism was defined as having the function
of "opening up a place," "making room" (go-'byed) for
events.(50) 'Saantideva, in the Praasa^ngika context,
has provided us with a radical deconstruction of the
body (which can be taken as paradigmatic for all
gestalts) as a part-whole gestalt in
Bodhicaryaavataara IX, 78-87, in his presentation of
Kaayasm.rtyupasthaana (lus dran-pa nye-bar bzhagpa),
the application of attentiveness to the body.(51) If
the body (as whole) is composed of parts, is the body
contained in each of its parts? If so, this would
lead to the absurd consequence of as many bodies as
parts. No, my body is partially contained in its
parts, that is what it means to be a part. But what
is a 'part' apart from this circular definition as 'a
part of the body?' A part, for its own sake (if you
try to give it some independent, 'absolute' status),
may be continually divided and so never become a
solid basis to be built up into a body. Only the

p.305

part-whole gestalt holds it, but this relation is
untenable. The body is not a partwhole relation, but
is open like space or, rather, the opening of the
space of motility and gesture, the body's essential
'activities'.(52)

III

Thus, through the Madhyamaka analysis a more radical
deconstruction of a gestalt is accomplished and we
can understand why they critique the Yogaacaara
conception of the paratantra. The Yogaacaara must
distinguish between the fictional parikalpita and the
factual paratantra, because according to his
phenomenological method the evidence for the latter
(relativity, contextuality) is indubitable. As
'Saantarak.sita states:(53)

Therefore, if the conventional is without a (real)
causal basis, then says [the reductionist (dngos-po
smra-ba), its presence] is not possible. This is not
so. If the founding basis is real, then say so (with
reason).

To state this in phenomenological terms: for the
Cittamaatra, as for Husserl, the concepts of
"evidence, " "intuition, " and "presence" remain
indubitable and unquestioned. But with the
Maadhyamika understanding of 'suunyataa we can
question even these experiences of "evidence," and so
on, in a way that is reminiscent of the critiques of
Husserlian phenomenology by Heidegger and
Merleau-Ponty, whom we have utilized in making our
analyses. One should especially note Merleau-Ponty's
critique of intuition, entitled "Interrogation and
Intuition," in The Visible and the Invisible,(54) as
well as Heidegger's basic objection, which may be
summed up in his famous questions:(55)

Whence and how is it determined what must be
experienced as 'the things themselves' in accordance
with the principle of phenomenology? Is it
consciousness and its objectivity or is it the Being
of beings in its unconcealedness and concealment?

Like Heidegger, the Maadhyamika tries to uproot
every last vestige of ontic, representational
thinking in order to reveal the openness of Being,
'suunyataa, which is 'devoid of' all the limitations
placed on 'it' by representational thinking (which in
Buddhism may be summed up by the term citta [sems],
"mind"). In this respect, Heidegger's later
understanding of Being as a "clearing" in which
presence and absence can play, like the play of light
and shadow in a forest clearing, bears further
comparison with the Madhyamaka.(56)
One should not conclude from this that the
Cittamaatra and phenomenological approaches
contradict the Madhyamaka and Heideggerian. As long
as one is still within the realm of conventional
criteria, that is, of establishing evidence according
to 'indubitable' conventional criteria, which in
Buddhist epistemology is called tha-snyad tshad-ma
(the Madhyamaka, on the other hand, employs a dondam
tshad-ma, a logical inquiry from the ultimate
standpoint), then the Cittamaatra approach is
justified.(57) In fact, in the view of
'Saantarak.sita, with whom we began, there can be no
conventional theory superior to that of

p.306

"Experience-only" (Cittamaatra), As Merleau-Ponty
recognized, one must undertake the phenomenological
reduction because of the Husserlian motive of
overcoming naive, 'worldly' prejudices and the
resulting "abundance of phenomena which it makes
comprehensible."(58) But the impossibility of ever
completing the epoch? should take us beyond
philosophy (here Merleau-Ponty is one with Heidegger)
to what Merleau-Ponty called "Wild Being" or "The
Flesh of the World" ("one knows there is no name in
traditional philosophy to designate it, "(59) he
adds), and Heidegger simply, "Being."

NOTES

1. Collected Writings of 'Jam-mgon 'Ju Mi-pham
rgya-mtsho, vol. 12 (Gangtok, 1976), f.52, 5-53,
6. Hereafter cited as UG.

2. UG, f.45, 1-5. Mi-pham also states in his
commentary on the Dharmadharmataavibhaaga:

So, if this presence as a noema by its very mode
of being is established as not existing apart from
a noesis, it is established that this presence as
a noesis also does not exist. On account of this,
although the noesis is established dependent upon
the noema, it is never found separately. Thus,
cognitiveness (rig-pa) in which there is no object
nor subject and which is free from all the aspects
of the duality of noesis and noema, naturally
lucent and just inexpressible, is the completely
established (yongs-grub) which is devoid of the
two forms of ontological status. If this
non-dividedness and as-it-is-ness is necessarily
realized even by the Cittamaatra, then it is even
more the case for the Madhyamaka. According to the
Cittamaatra, the essential existence of this is
the complete meaning of the sixteen (facets) of
Openness, which they assert as freedom from
discursiveness because it is inexpressible and
inconceivable as any noesis or noema, internal or
external, etc. Now, it is just this residue
(Ihag-mar lus-pa) of a very subtle philosophical
position which posits the very fact of this
inexpressible noetic (shes-pa) as established in
truth, which should be refuted by a reasoned
inquiry. As to this noetic in which there is no
noesis or noema, if one claims one's own
experience (sems) which has been unified with
openness which doesn't exist in truth, as sheer
lucency, pure from the very beginning,(this) is
the true Middle. (Chos dang chos-nyid rnam-par
'byed-pa'i tshig-le'ur byas-pa'i grel-pa ye-shes
snang-ba rnam-'byed, in Collected Writings of
'Jam-mgon 'Ju Mi-pham rgya-mtsho, Vol. 3 (Gangtok,
1976), f.626, 1-627, 1).

Any mention, however, of a "non-dual noetic
(shes-pa)" is absent from classical Yogaacaara
literature. The Madhyaantavibhaaga.tiikaa of
Sthiramati speaks of an advayaj~naana (ed.
Yamaguchi, Suzuki Research Reprint Series, No. 7,
p. 1 33.3), but this refers to the parini.spanna
and is translated into Tibetan as gnyis-su
med-pa'i ye-shes (Peking ed., Vol. 109, 166, 4,
5). Once again, the Maadhyamikas seem to be
referring to the later Cittamaatra of the
Logicians. Perhaps the source of this "non-dual
noetic" is Pramaa.navaarttika III, 212, where
Dharmakiirti says: "j~naanasyaabhedino
bhedapratibhaaso hy upaplava.h" which is rendered
into Tibetan as: "tha dad med can shes pa yi/tha
dad snang ba bslad pa nyid" (ed: Miyasaka, p. 69).

3. This refers to critiques of the Cittamaatra by
Candrakiirti in the sixth chapter of the
Madhyamakaavataara, by 'Saantideva in the ninth
chapter of the Bodhicaryaavataara, and by Bhavya
in his Tarkajvaalaa. There is a great deal of
misunderstanding and controversy regarding these
critiques. Maadhyamika scholars of the dGe-lugs-pa
tradition of Tibetan Buddhism claim that the
Svaatantrikas and Praasangikas are distinguished
by whether they accept "essences" (svalak.sa.na,
rang-gi mtshannyid) conventionally or not. This
interpretation is by no means universally
accepted. Mi-pham rgyamtsho, for example was
engaged in heated debate over this and other
questions raised by his commentary on the
Bodhicaryaavataara in the last century. On this
see my "A Controversial Topic from Mi-pham's
Analysis of 'Saantarak.sita's
Madhyamakaala.mkaara," in Wind Horse (Proceedings
of the First Annual Conference of the North
American Tibetological Society, Berkeley,
California, August, 1977), in press.

4. As has been noted by Iida and Hirabayashi,
"Another Look at the Maadhyamika vs Yogaacaara
Controversy Concerning Existence and
Non-Existence, " in Lancaster, ed.,
Praj~naapaaramitaa and Related Systems (Berkeley,
California: Berkeley Buddhist Series, 1977) pp.
341-360.

p.307

5. Note that the term bden-grub is not a translation
from the Sanskrit but a Tibetan formulation of
Indian Madhyamaka ideas.

6. Don Ihde, Experimental Phenomenology (New York: G.
P. Putnam's Sons, 1977), p. 69.

7. Ibid.

8. Husserl speaks of the "disinterested spectator" in
The Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Phenomenology, D. Carr trans.
(Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University
Press, 1970), p. 235.

9. Ihde, Experimental Phenomenology, p. 79.

10. Ibid.

11. Ihde, ibid., p. 81.

12. On the problems which have beset an orthodox
Husserlian phenomenology of perception, see
especially Hubert Dreyfus, "The Perceptual Noema:
Gurwitsch's Crucial Contribution", in Lester
Embree, ed., Life-World and Consciousness
(Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University
Press, 1972), pp. 135-170.

13. Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual (Perception, new
ed. (Berkeley, California: University of
California Press, 1974), p. 43.

14. This felicitous phrase is to be found in David
Bohm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1971), p. 153.

15. Ihde, Experimental Phenomenology, p. 63.

16. Compare Neisser, U.; Cognition and Reality (San
Francisco, California: W. H. Freeman, 1976),
chap. 4, for a discussion of a contemporary
theory of schemata.

17. Mahaayaanasuutraala.mkaara, ed. S. Levi (Paris:
Champion, 1907), p. 64;
Madhyaantavibhaagabhaa.sya, ed. G. M. Nagao
(Tokyo: Suzuki Research Foundation, 1964), p. 48.

18. Husserl, Crisis, p. 193.

19. See Tri.m'sikaa 3,
Vij~naptimaatrataasiddhi--Tri.m'sikaa, ed. S.
Levi (Paris: Champion, 1925), pp. 19-21.
Merleau-Ponty expresses beautifully the idea of
an aalayavij~naana as a "setting," as follows (M.
Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception,
trans. C. Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1962), p. 320):

But in reality all things are concretions of a
setting, and any explicit perception of a thing
survives in virtue of a previous communication
with a certain atmosphere (p. 320).

20. Mahaayanasa.mgraha, ed. E. Lamotte, Publications
de L'Institute Orientaliste de Louvain, No. 8
(Louvain: Universit? de Louvain, 1973), II,
26; hereafter cited as MS.

22. Ibid., II, 2. Mi-pham's term is snang-gzhi; MS
uses snang-ba'i gnas.

23. Tri.m'skaa 24.

24. Ihde, Experimental Phenomenology, pp. 88-90.

25. D. W. Hamlyn, Sensation and Perception (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), pp. 183-184.

26. I wish to thank Dr. David Levin for opening up
this possibility of phenomenology to me in a
course he gave at the Nyingma Institute,
Berkeley, California, Summer 1978.

27. M. Merleau-Ponty, p. xiv.

28. Ibid. p. 332.

29. Ibid., p. 219.

30. M. Kullman and C. Taylor, "The Pre-objective
World," Review of Metaphysics (1958): 113.

31. See Y. Kajiyama, "Controversy between the
Saakaara and Niraa-kaara-vaadins of the
Yogaacaara School--Some Materials," Journal of
Indian and Buddhist Studies 14, no. 1 (December,
1965); and "Later Maadhyamikas on Epistemology
and Meditation", Mahaayaana Buddhist Meditation,
M. Kiyota, ed. (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of
Hawaii Press, 1978).

32. Dreyfus, "The Perceptual Noema," p. 152.

33. Compare Kajiyama, "Later Maadhyamikas," p. 128.

34. See MSI, 15.

35. D. Seyfort Ruegg, "The Uses of the Four Positions
of the Catu.sko.ti and the Problem of the
Description of Reality in Mahaayaana Buddhism,"
Journal of Indian Philosophy 5 (1977): 23.

36. Ibid., p. 25.

p.308

37. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception,
p. 212.

38. Ibid., p. 213. On the meaning of "reconstitution"
see ibid., p. 326.

39. Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, p. 42.

40. Compare Neisser; and Gurwitsch, "Some Aspects and
Developments of Gestalt Psychology, " in his
Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology
(Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University
Press, 1966).

41. Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, pp. 11-12.
Note the importance of the part-whole relation in
Gurwitsch's theory of the perceptual noema; see
his Studies, pp. 346-347.

42. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Pesception,
p. 214.

43. See May, Prasannapadaa (Paris:
Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1959), pp. ]53-154, etcetera.

44. Ibid., p. 155, 380.

45. See Madhyamakakaarikaa, XVIII, 5.

46. See, for example, Husserl, Crisis, p. 212.

47. Compare M. Heidegger, Identity and Difference,
trans. J. Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row,
1969), p. 29ff.

48. The locus classicus for the hermeneutical theory
of understanding is M. Heidegger, Being and Time,
trans. J. Macquarrie, and E. Robinson (New York:
Harper & Row, 1962), p. 189.

49. See T. Kisiel, "The Logic of Scientific
Discovery," in D. Carr and E. Casey, Explorations
in Phenomenology (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973).

50. See Abhidharmako'sa I, 5d; Vyaakhyaa of
Ya'somitra, ed. U. Wogihara (Tokyo: Sankibo,
1971), p. 15, 7: "avakaasa.m dadaatiiti
akaa'sam".

51. Tibetan Tripitaka, Peking ed., Vol. 49, 259, 4,
1-5, 1.

52. On motility, see Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology
of Perception, Part I, Chapt. 3; and the many
works of H. V. Guenther on Tibetan tantrism.

53. Madhyamakaala.mkaara, v. 66.

54. Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the invisible, A.
Lingis, trans. (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern
University Press, 1968), chapt. 3.

55. Heidegger, On Time and Being (New York: Harper &
Row, 1974), p. 66.

56. This process has been begun, although with only
one explicit reference, by H. V. Guenther in his
Introduction to Part III of his translation,
Kindly Bent to Ease Us, of Klong-chen
rab-'byams-pa's Ngal-gso skor-gsum (Emeryville,
California: Dharma Publishing, 1976).

57. On the different tshad-ma (pramaa.na) according
to the Tibetan tradition, see my "What is
Buddhist Logic?," in Wind Horse II (Proceedings
of the Second Annual Conference of the North
American Tibetological Society, Berkeley,
California, August, 1980), in press.

58. Ibid., p. 10. Here, one might add, Western
philosophy needs to pay more attention to the
frustration and suffering caused by the naive,
worldly perspective (which includes science and
philosophies which do not undertake the epoch?.
In this respect Heidegger also has made a start
in the analyses he has made of the inadequacies
of representational thinking.

59. Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, p.
139.