[Buddha-l] Acting on emptiness

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Richard P. Hayes schreef:
> Denizens of buddha-l,
>
> Every now and then I teach a graduate seminar on an individual
> philosopher. This year I am cheating a little bit and teaching a
> seminar on two philosophers, Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti. We spend two
> hours a week reading selected texts in Sanskrit and another two hours
> discussing key secondary sources. This past couple of weeks we have
> been talking about "the" theory of two truths in Buddhism. (In fact
> there are many theories of two truths in Buddhism. I am not sure any
> two Buddhists agree on a given theory of two truths.)
>
> Jay Garfield was recently in Albuquerque and visited the seminar. If I
> understand him correctly, he claims that for Candrakīrti (who,
> according to Jay, got Nāgārjuna pretty much right) ultimate truth just
> is conventional truth; between the two truths there is no difference.
> The ultimate truth is that no being anywhere has an intrinsic nature.
> The conventional truth is also that no being anywhere has an intrinsic
> nature. Delusion is the belief that things do have intrinsic natures.
> It is said that ultimate truth leads one to nirvāṇa while conventional
> truth leads one to saṃsāra, but Nāgārjuna explicitly says there is not
> even the slightest difference between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra. And this
> claim is the basis of Garfield's saying that conventional truth just
> is ultimate truth. (I may be simplifying Garfield's argument, but I
> don't think I am misrepresenting it very much.)
>
> Quite a few other modern scholars have given different accounts of the
> relation of the two truths. Let me not bore everyone with details.
> There is one claim, however, that intrigues me. That claim, made in
> various ways by a couple of scholars, is that there is no way of
> telling by what a person says whether or not she grasps the ultimate
> truth. One can tell whether someone has grasped the ultimate truth
> only by the way she acts. Candrakīrti says that one who has acquired
> ultimate truth does not act as if things either exist or do not exist. 
>
> Now what I am wondering is this: how would one act if one believed
> that things either exist or do not exist? How would one's behavior
> differ if one believed in existence and non-existence from one's
> behavior if one did not have such beliefs? How could one's
> observations of one's own behavior, or the behavior of another,
> indicate whether or not one is acting on emptiness?
>
> A stock answer, of course, is that a person who acts on emptiness
> clings to nothing, despises nothing and does not find anything scary.
> (Not even Sarah Palin? I ask in mock astonishment.) A person who acts
> on emptiness is called akutobhaya (has no fear of anything). That
> answer is not entirely satisfactory, since a psychopath may well be
> fearless. Another stock answer is that one who acts on emptiness is
> compassionate toward all beings and responds to try to eliminate all
> suffering wherever it may be and no matter who thinks (falsely, it
> turns out) that the suffering is his. That answer also seems
> inadequate, since universal love can be based on things other than an
> awareness of emptiness (unless one wishes to beg the question and say
> that whatever a person may say is the basis of her unconditional love,
> such as a love of Jesus, the REAL basis of her unconditional love is
> just an awareness of emptiness).
>
> That is perhaps enough to give folks some idea of what I am thinking
> about. Now I would be interested in hearing what some of you think
> about what it might mean to act on emptiness, and what some of you
> think the relationship is between the two truths.
>
>   
I have a hard time understanding the statement 'conventional truth just is ultimate truth'. What is the meaning of 'is' here? A dollar is about 100 yen, means it has the same value, but it doesn't mean that you can do the same thing with them or that they occupy the same amout of space, look the same etc. Are CT and UT synonimous? Well in that case read Quine's Empiricism without dogma's and you'll see that this is problematic. 
The question of how to tell if a person grasps the ultimate truth seems  to me ot have two sides. At one side it seems to boil down to the question 'what does it feel like to be enlightened?' At the other side you could say that if one can tell if a person grasps UT by her actions then it is possible to identify these actions or kind of actions, so a pragmatist would say that grasping UT is acting in the way of A. This seems at odds with what Nāgārjuna has to say.

Erik

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