Radical Metaphysical Parcimony in Nāgārjuna and Chuang-tzu

Nick Shere

 

 

The men of old, their knowledge had arrived at something: at what had it arrived? There were some who thought there had not  yet begun to be things—the utmost, the exhaustive, there is no more to add.

(Graham, 54)

 

AStIit zañt¢ahae naStITyu½eddzRn<

tSmadœ AiStTvnaiStTve naïIyet ivc][>, 15,10

[To say] “Is” is eternity-grasping; [to say] “Is not” is a nihilist view;

Therefore, those of discerning vision would not have recourse to isance and isnotance.

(MMK 15:10[1])

 

Reality comes into view when we see that nature is not only an obstacle which allows us to act in an ordered way but it is also an obstacle which infinitely transcends us.—Simone Weil, Lectures on Philosophy, p.111

 

 

Problems of Loy’s “Zhuangzi and Nāgārjuna on the Truth of No Truth”

 

            In his article, “Zhuangzi and Nāgārjuna on the Truth of No Truth,” David Loy attempts to argue that Chuang-tzu’s and Nāgārjuna’s philosophies have “remarkably similar” “targets and conclusions.” One experiences a certain degree of discomfort in evaluating this claim, because while there is considerable evidence to support the argument that Chuang-tzu and Nāgārjuna undertake similar philosophical projects (albeit through highly different methodologies), Loy’s article does a relatively shoddy job of presenting this evidence, and also depends in several places on untenable claims or assumptions. We will begin by first sketching out some of the problems with Loy’s presentation of the issue, and then move to a better articulation of the relationship between these two monstrously significant thinkers.

            We may begin by pointing out, as the most general level of criticism, that the reader of an academic work—indeed, we might hope, the reader of any piece of nonfiction—has the right[2] to demand that language be used clearly, and that argumentation be characterized by self-critical intellectual rigor. The point here is not that texts should be subjected to constant nitpicking, but that due diligence should be used in their construction, and that the reader should not have the sense that the author is indifferent towards his own clarity. This is particularly important when dealing with problems of translation—and no attempt to grapple with ancient texts can escape problems of translation[3]. It is fair and right that we should have to strive to understand the words of long-dead writers communicating in languages long since consumed by time, but we should be spared the sense that we are simultaneously struggling to come to grips with the modern language in which the current article is being written. It is often uncomfortable to make this explicit, as it leaves one feeling rather too much like Caesar’s wife, but when we find constructions like,

“For Zhuangzi the fundamental error is to suppose that life presents itself with issues which must be formulated in words so that we can envision alternatives and find reasons for preferring one to the other” (Graham 1981, 6). This error is quite a good characterization of what Nagarjuna does… (Loy, 51, emphasis added)

 

it is hard to keep silent. The “error” specified in the first sentence is “to suppose that life presents itself with issues which must be formulated in words so that we can envision alternatives and find reasons for preferring one to the other,” and it is not a good characterization of what Nagarjuna does. One might argue that Nagarjuna attacks the same error, or an error which is intimately related, but in no case is the error a characterization of Nagarjuna’s work. We grant that this faulty construction does not detract from Loy’s ability to make clear his point—we understand what it is he’s getting at. But when we attempt to deal with truths—whether to establish them, clarify them, or attack the very idea of their existence—we are obligated to take care with the language we use to do so, and it is sometimes hard to take seriously scholarly works which do not take sufficient care as to avoid such bald misstatements.

            That said, much more serious than the stylistic problems in Loy’s article are the problematic claims and assumptions which undergird his arguments, or which, in some cases, seem almost to cling to them parasitically. Two of the most suspect claims in the article appear on page 52. The first is that,

We cannot understand whether Zhuangzi is a relativist without first considering what the rest of us expect from the truth. We cannot appreciate their skepticism without considering what motivates the common sense belief in objective knowledge. Instead of inquiring into what kind of a skeptic or relativist Zhuangzi is—that is, which of our boxes he would fit into (and what fun he would have with that!)—it will be more fruitful to inquire into the relationship between knowledge and other important themes for him: no-self, mind-fasting, and dreaming. The interesting issue, then, is not whether the skepticism of Zhuangzi or Nagarjuna is consistent with other claims such as no-self, but to turn this around: What context do no-self, meditation, dreaming and waking up, etc., provide for their understanding of our understanding of knowledge?

 

And the second is that “Daoism and Buddhism are unique among the great religions in denying the ontological self.”

            The first claim is problematic on multiple levels. At the most basic, it is unclear on what authority or for what reason we should believe Loy. “We cannot understand whether Zhuangzi is a relativist without first considering what the rest of us expect from the truth”? Why not? What is it about Zhuangzi or about us that requires that we so consider before we can so understand? Rather than providing us with an answer to these questions—and such an answer is required for any claim about what “can” and “cannot” be done in the realm of philosophy—Loy shifts gears and claims that “it will be more fruitful to inquire into the relationship between knowledge and other important themes.” This further obscures matters, for pragmatic imperatives (any appeal to “fruitfulness” is pragmatic by its very nature, as pragmatism is precisely the measuring of value according to the fruits) can never determine what we “can” and “cannot” do—only what we should or should not do. Pragmatism allows us to say what it is good to believe or do, but not what it is possible to believe or do. Furthermore, pragmatic claims always require further explanation: they demand that it be shown why and how a thing is fruitful. Loy is merely moving his logical debt around, and like a man paying off one credit card with another, he remains thoroughly in the red. Setting aside the further leap from “fruitful” to “interesting”, we observe that Loy caps this chain of profoundly suspect reasoning with a conclusion not only not supported by what has come before, but which is in itself almost ridiculous: “What context do no-self, meditation, dreaming and waking up, etc., provide for their understanding of our understanding of knowledge?”

            Nagarjuna and Chuang-tzu lived and died many centuries ago. They have no understanding of our knowledge; they ceased to have an understanding of anyone’s knowledge long before we acquired ours. This is not to say that they have nothing to teach us, nor is it to say that their work cannot serve as the basis of a critique of our forms of reason. It is to acknowledge simply that the understandings of knowledge that they attacked were those of their particular and respective historical situations, and any attempt to enable us to use them to critique ourselves is a further philosophical attempt, and must be considered separately from the basic project of understanding the writers themselves in their own contexts. What is more, this basic project must always come first, for if it does not, we have no way of guessing whether our attempts to utilize them are successful. Loy could salvage this claim only by showing that “our” understanding of knowledge is the same as the understanding of knowledge held by the contemporaries which Nagarjuna and Chuang-tzu attacked. This is probably not the case, and even if it were it would likely be impossible to prove, and even if it were possible to prove, Loy could hardly do the job in such a short article. What Loy is attempting is not, in fact, to lead us to the more fruitful, interesting, and possible inquiry, as he claims, but rather to subordinate the scholarly attempt to come to terms with Nagarjuna and Chuang-tzu in themselves to an essentially religious standard. He is saying that we cannot proceed to investigate the authors until we have justified ourselves in the light of what he supposes them to have claimed. It is as though Loy had said that we could not attempt to analyze the New Testament without having first accepted Christ as our personal savior. And while a personal spiritual interest in the texts we study is by no means inherently problematic—indeed, without a personal interest, the passion that marks good scholarship is more elusive—we cannot hold scholarship hostage to religious appreciation without taking a fundamentally pre-modern turn away from the intellectual pluralism that undergirds the modern world in which academic scholarship can take place.

            Loy’s second problematic initial assumption is that “Daoism and Buddhism are unique among the great religions in denying the ontological self.” Setting aside the superfluous question of whether there are any other “great” religions which deny the ontological self, which claim Loy does not support, it is still problematic to say that Daoism is. As Jochim points out, it is rather less than clear that one should translate “self” in many of the accounts of apophasis in the Chuang-tzu. He explains that, with more nuanced readings of certain key terms,

Finally, now we may use what we learned about Master Zhuang’s concept of the person to understand what he probably meant in negating the so-called “self” in such phrases as wu ji, xu, shi ji, qu ji, and wang ji; or wu wo, sang wo, and wang wo. We learned that the concepts of shen and xin reflect a pluralistic conception of the person, not a unitary one built concentrically around an inner, spiritual core. We also learned that there is no place within this conception for a mind-body dualism. With this in hand, it is hard to imagine how modern interpreters found distaste for physical dimensions of existence in Zhuangzi. In sum, to the extent that these two concepts define Zhuang’s conception of the person, it is highly improbably that modern concepts of the self could serve any role…(Jochim, 53)

 

Jochim cites Loy’s article as a particularly troubling consequence of the use of the term “self” in translations of the Chuang-tzu:

The same assumption—of “the self” as something to have or lose, to possess or forget, and so forth—underlies the interpretations of those who stress, not Zhuang’s views on “self,” but his views on “no self.” One example of this is David Loy’s attempt to compare Zhaung’s views to Buddhist theories of “no self” in “Zhuangzi and Nagarjuna on the Truth of No Truth.” Loy reads Zhuang as taking the Buddhist position that “self” is an illusion that we possess and must eradicate to reach the realization of “no self.” Buddhist interpretations of Zhuangzi, of course, are not new…(Jochim, 47)

 

And ultimately, it is only on the basis of these passages where terms are translated as “self” that Loy claims that Daoism denies the “ontological self.” While Loy explains the “Buddhism” portion of the statement by appealing to the fundamental concepts of the skhandas and pratītya-samutpāda, all he can offer for Taoism is:

As one would expect from its very different literary style, the Zhuangzi is less systematic in its critique of the self, yet the rejection is no less clear. Chapter one declares that “the utmost man is selfless” and chapter seventeen that “the great man has no self” (Graham 1981, 150). Chapter two, the most philosophical, begins with Ziqi in a trance, to reveal afterwards that “this time I had lost my self, didn’t you know?” Like other anecdotes about mind-fasting, which explain how to lose one’s self, these passages are not concerned with philosophically deconstructing the self into its elements, but they emphasize or presuppose the need to get beyond self. (Loy, 53)

 

            These references, based as they are on misleading translations, cannot establish Chuang-tzu as having a position on self, let alone establish such a position for Taoism as a whole. There is an also odd asymmetry at this point in the article; Loy compares Buddhism to Chuang-tzu rather than Buddhism to Taoism or Nagarjuna to Chuang-tzu. This is telling; together with the phrase “very different literary style,” which in the context can only be interpreted to mean that Chuang-tzu’s literary style is different from that of Buddhism. It suggests that Loy conflates the two broader traditions with these two specific representatives. This is born out by his relatively free and unqualified use of other texts from these traditions (e.g., the Lao-tzu and Aşţasāhasrikā). While Nāgārjuna and Chuang-tzu are certainly two of the most prominent examples of their respective traditions, they are by no means exhaustive of those traditions—nor are those traditions exhaustive of them. Certainly the part cannot in this case be taken to stand in for the whole, nor the whole for the part.

            Not much later, on page 55, Loy makes another disconcerting claim of this sort:

One target is the logical analysis that philosophers go in for, in particular that of the Chinese sophists and Mohists of Zhuangzi’s own time. Yet this by itself is too narrow, for (like Mādhyamika scholars who think Nāgārjuna’s analysis are aimed only at certain Indian philosophical positions) it overlooks the discriminations that we have all learned to make in the process of coming to experience the world in the “ordinary” way other people do.

 

This again flaunts chronology, attempting to pin on our authors an “understanding of our understanding.” But it goes farther. Not only does it burden them with transhistorical vision, it chides those who focus on the importance of contemporary debates in interpreting the texts. And while it is certainly true that it would be improper to assume that there is no trans-polemic intent—certainly there is a soteriological component to the Mūlamadhyamakakārikās[4] (MMK) and there may be one to the Chuang-tzu as well—this is not to say that the texts cannot or should not be analyzed principally in light of sectarian controversy. Such a fundamental concept as yin-shih[5] emerges precisely in relation to sectarian debate[6]. Because the sectarian controversies in which Nāgārjuna and Chuang-tzu engaged are about basic issues of metaphysics and epistemology, there is no reason to separate out the “logical analysis that philosophers go in for” from the “discriminations…[made] in the process of coming to experience the world.” Indeed, what else would be the subject of philosophical analysis, whether by logic or any other means? And if Loy seeks to make a distinction between the attempts of philosophers to analyze experience and existence and the experience of existence by ordinary people, we need only realize that philosophers, especially in the often foundationalist schools reacted to by Chuang-tzu and Nāgārjuna, are engaged precisely in pursuit of the universal, which is to say the absolutely “ordinary,”[7] This does not mean that they speak the common language or have a special interest in the problems of the average man, though they may. But it certainly means that they claim intellectual dominion over the experience of existence had by the ordinary man, and any attempt to understand that experience represents either potentially or explicitly, a challenge on the battlefield of philosophy. By failing to acknowledge this intimate connection between “ordinary” experience and philosophy, Loy attempts to draw a line between “narrow” metaphysical readings and, we can only assume, his own supposedly broad interpretation. But by this very delineation, he demonstrates his failure to realize the full meaning either of metaphysics or of “ordinary” experience.

            As in a cheap suspense novel, these many suspect beginnings lead unsurprisingly (though in a truly meandering course) to equally suspect conclusions. Though Loy correctly emphasizes yin-shih in Chuang-tzu and a separation of two truths in Nāgārjuna as essential factors, he proceeds to muddy matters by cross-ascribing these doctrines. He identifies yin-shih with the “doctrine of upāya, the ‘skillful means’ with which the bodhisattva works for the liberation of all sentient beings, adopting and adapting whatever devices are suitable to the immediate task at hand, disregarding conventional moral codes and even the Buddhist precepts when necessary.” (Loy, 57) This definition of upāya is fatally unnuanced.  Upāya has varying functions in different stages of Buddhism[8] but is typically used either for polemic purposes between schools (relativizing the teachings of a school one does not wish to reject outright) or to justify a partial or tentative truth in a two-truth system. In any case it hardly connotes the sort of free-flowing transformations and generally relative character of yin-shih; it is more or less fixed at one end—the very structure of the word (from the verb upa-I, “to go up to”, to approach a target) indicates its essentially directional nature. One might say that all upāyas will radiate out from (or, more accurately, converge upon) a single soteriological point. The yin-shih paradigm, being defined so often as a negation of wei-shih, is decentralized; rather than being centered on one goal, it is ever-ready for endless evasions of myriad distinctions.

            Loy continues the confusion with an ascription of two-level truth to Chuang-tzu:

“Since the sage does not plan, what use has he for knowledge?” For him our usual knowledge is a curse,” whereas “utmost knowledge doesn’t plan” (Graham 1981, 82).

            As this last quotation suggests, Zhuangzi’s understanding of knowledge and ignorance can be formulated into two levels of truth. Such a two-truths doctrine is also essential to Buddhism, especially Mahāyāna, and its paradigmatic formulation is by Nāgārjuna: “The teaching of the Buddhas is wholly based on there being two truths: that of a personal everyday world and a higher truth which surpasses it.”

 

Problems abound. The principle two difficulties are that (1) the two-truths doctrine in Buddhism assumes two truths, both useful, praiseworthy, and good, while “small knowledge” or “usual knowledge” in Chuang-tzu is something to be avoided, and (2) “great” or “utmost” knowledge is a description of knowledge (or, better, knowing) which attains certain qualities; it does not refer to specific truths or items of knowledge, unlike ultimate (paramartha) truth in Buddhism. So while Chuang-tzu certainly describes two (or more) kinds of knowing, he in no sense has “such a two-truths doctrine” as Buddhism does.

            Unfortunately, this rickety analogy becomes the vehicle which bears us on to Loy’s final assertion of the message of our two authors. He writes,

Nor did Nāgārjuna understand his own writings as committing him to a particular view: “If I had a position, no doubt fault could be found with it. Since I have no position, that problem does not arise.” How could he avoid taking a position? There is no position to be taught because there is no truth that needs to be attained; all we need to do is let go of delusion: “Ultimate serenity [or beatitude: śiva] is the coming to rest of all ways of taking things, the repose of named things; no Truth has been taught by a Buddha for anyone, anywhere” (MMK 25:24). The Aşţasāhasrikā, probably the oldest and most important of the prajñāpāramitā sutras, begins by emphasizing the same point…In the Diamond Sutra, Sūbhuti asks the Buddha if his realization of supreme enlightenment means that he has not acquired anything…

            How does this reconcile with the two-truths doctrine enunciated by Nāgārjuna above, which emphasizes the importance of the higher truth in attaining nirvāņa? No truth is the higher truth: not a more abstract or profound set of concepts, but an insight into the circumstance-changing nature of all truth. That makes it sounds easy, yet the rub is that such a realization requires letting go of oneself, which is seldom if ever easy. (Loy, 62)

 

Now, it is not necessarily incorrect to say that Nāgārjuna counsels no truth. Or at least, this does not stand out as wildly untenable. However, this claim is in no way supported by appeal to Mahāyāna sources outside Nāgārjuna, as his relationship to the developed Mahāyāna tradition is not perfectly clear[9], and while the texts cited may indeed shed light on Nāgārjuna, more textual evidence would have to be presented to make clear their pertinence. The willingness to assume the identity of a given outlying author with what is later adopted as the orthodox tradition is perhaps another mark of Loy’s pre-modern leanings.

            We will discuss more fully what we believe Nāgārjuna’s actual “final answer” (paramārthasatya) is, but we may note here that in any case “no truth,” which has a distinctly Mahāyāna-in-America ring to it, would be an inadequate translation of any Indian concept, as it seems inspired by the American versions of Chinese and Japanese versions of Indian concepts, and that twofold abstraction process tends to strip away the Indo-European linguistic analyzability that is so key to Indian philosophy. A more-acceptable construction would be “The truth of things is that they are devoid of truth,” echoing (if imperfectly) the logic of MMK 22:16 (“What is the essence[10] of the Tathāgata, that is the essence of this world; The Tathāgata is completely devoid of essence; this world is completely devoid of essence.”) Indeed, even had Nāgārjuna broached the question of whether or not there is truth, he would most likely have used the four-fold rejection: not true, not not true, not true and not not true, not neither true nor not true.

            Another problem is Loy’s belief that insight into the true nature of things is dependent on “letting go of oneself”; this is precisely a reversal of the order of things in Nāgārjuna’s text. For Nāgārjuna, the self is predicated upon false views, and destroying these false views is a privileged route of attack in undermining the self, not the other way around. Nāgārjuna is, in fact, an exercise in soteriological logic—of liberation by means of reason. (Cf. MMK 27:1, 12, which, respectively, specify ignorance as the first link in the chain of causes leading to the self, and indicate ignorance’s contrary as the privileged means of liberation.

            Despite his claims to harbor no “view”, Nāgārjuna makes quite a few bald, unqualified statements, that he obviously intends as truths, if only in the conventional (lokasamvŗtisatya) sense. The overall gist of the MMK, however, can probably be summed up in the claim that all things are empty. This simultaneously acts as the refutation of all the metaphysics that Nāgārjuna seeks to deny[11] and as the equivalent or the basis of the Buddhist principles and concepts which he advocates (pratītya-samutpāda, nirvāņa, etc.). And while Nāgārjuna would grant that nothing that can be said in words constitutes the full and ultimate truth (Cf. MMK 22:11), he would almost certainly say that emptiness comprises the best, and an adequate, approximation of the truth. Certainly there is plenty of textual evidence for this as the central message of the MMK; Nāgārjuna says it, in a number of ways, whereas he at no point uses any term approaching “no truth”—indeed, he nowhere pairs truth with a negating adjective, prefix, or verb. And indeed, what Loy does not quote in citing Nāgārjuna’s articulation of two-truths is the verse immediately preceding it, “We say here that you do not know the point of emptiness; so thus emptiness and the purpose of emptiness are torn asunder.” (MMK 24:7) This statement is what sets the stage for the discussion of the two levels of truth. In the same section, we also find,

Openness[12] wrongly conceived destroys the dimly witted.

It is like a snake grasped by the head or a garbled incantation.

And hence the Sage’s thought was turned against causing the Truth to be taught.

The purpose of Teaching is difficult to fathom for the lazy.

MMK 24:11-12 (tr. McCagney, p.201)

 

This is the typical sectarian use of the upāya-concept: as a relativization of others’ beliefs. Nāgārjuna is implying that the reason why emptiness is not part of the inherited tradition is that the Buddha despaired of his lazy disciples’ ability to fathom it. It, then, is privileged as a higher truth than others, though not a  highest truth. This does not preclude an argument that şūnyatā is what Loy calls “no truth”; this would be more tenable if it were “no view,” as şūnyatā functions broadly as a negative metaphysical principle (the marker of the non-being of metaphysical posits), and having a view (dŗşti) is usually associated with a positive metaphysics, while truth is more flexible, and should be able to accommodate a negative principle without thereby becoming “no truth.” And while an argument still could perhaps be mounted on this front, it would require confrontation with the issues here enumerated, which argument Loy does not provide.

            Loy’s final treatment of Chuang-tzu is rather less problematic. He spends about two pages attempting to wax eloquent on the subject of dreams—and specifically of the use of dreams to question reality in the Qi Wu Lun. He quite accurately recognizes that the point of these dream passages is not to undermine the reality of the world in favor of some other world, but rather to break the distinction between some real and some less real world. “To wake up then, is to realize there is only the dream…To dream I am a butterfly, etc., is to wake up to my selfless, endlessly transforming nature.” (Loy, 65) This is fine so far as it goes, but Loy goes farther. He embeds it in a Mahāyānist, almost crypto-Vedantin discourse of dreams and awakenings, lading the dream passages of the inner chapters with Buddhist connotations. The shibboleth attack on “dualist categories” segues into a self-based interpretation of the phrase “the oneness of the featureless sky”, a probable reference to mystic experience which does seem to connote a breakdown of barriers between particular personal identities (“leave the transformations behind”) but not necessarily on that basis a rejection of self, as Loy takes it. And while “the oneness of the featureless sky” might well be said to overlap Nāgārjuna’s emptiness (particularly given McCagney’s discussion of the frequent use of sky (ākāśa) imagery in relation to şūnyatā in the prajñāpāramitā literature), it is not necessarily anything to do with what Loy describes as “no-thing-ness”—“It is important to forget oneself and experience this no-thing-ness—to become no-thing—because that extinguishes the self; and it is just as important not to remain in that featureless oneness because, in Buddhist terms, that is ‘clinging to emptiness.’” (Loy, 65) While it may be important to experience this featurelessness and oneness (not zero-ness, we note), it is not because of its self-extinguishing capacities, and Chuang-tzu certainly does not warn against clinging to emptiness.

 

Radical Metaphysical Parcimony

 

            But, having dispensed with Loy’s arguments, what, we may ask, of his claim that Nāgārjuna’s and Chuang-tzu’s philosophies share motivations and targets? There is a difficulty here of vagueness—what does Loy mean by “target,” for example? Does he mean the goal that the philosophies seek to achieve (or to enable others to achieve) or does he mean those who are targeted for attacks? If the latter, then we must throw this claim out, at least as far as Loy is concerned, for we have acknowledged the silliness of his claim that Nagarjuna and Chuang-tzu are not centrally concerned with debating other philosophies. If we take as the “targets” of their attacks a certain genus of philosophy and the philosophers that expound it, it may indeed be true that the authors share a goal.

            If, on the other hand, it is construed positively and in the most general sense—i.e., the author’s soteriological vision—then the claim is somewhat suspect, as the goal-states of mystical traditions are not amenable to the sorts of descriptions and, especially, comparisons that would enable us to say whether or not Nāgārjuna and Chuang-tzu had similar “goals.” But it is probably safe to say that, at a less ultimate level, Nāgārjuna and Chuang-tzu were engaged in versions of essentially the same broad project.

            We might dub this project radical metaphysical parcimony[13], meaning something related to, though not identical with, Okham’s Razor, “the leading principle of the nominalism of William of Occam (see OCCAMISM), that for purposes of explanation things not known to exist should not, unless it is absolutely necessary, be postulated as existing.” (OED) The parcimony of Nāgārjuna and Chuang-tzu is metaphysical in being directed at metaphysical entities[14], and radical in that it is not merely reluctant to multiply entities, but more or less refuses to posit any at all.

            It is worth noting that, logical pretensions to the contrary, there is nothing particularly necessary about parsimony in any form; there’s no special logical reason why a solution which posits fewer entities should be truer than one that invents them freely. James would note that parcimony is from the beginning more an aesthetic matter, a personal preference for explanations which are sparse, clean, and simple. It may later develop into well-reasoned, persuasive, coherent, complex, and consistent philosophy, but it begins merely as a yearning for clarity, and remains a factor not as a law, but more as a rule of thumb, guiding inquiry, rendering some questions “live” and some “dead.” It is a tendency, much as is anti-foundationalism in more recent philosophy. This tendency drives those who possess it to question foundations wherever they are supposed to occur, and to be suspicious of the quest for them, but being non-foundational itself, it cannot enable them to declare foundations to be fundamentally unfounded; it can only encourage its possessors to avoid foundations systematically.[15]

            In the case of Nāgārjuna and Chuang-tzu, the tendency toward radical parcimony manifests itself in their attacks upon contemporary metaphysical and epistemological concepts. There is a double movement in both their texts: first they tear down received metaphysical and epistemological frameworks (systems of posits about what is and what is not, what is true and what is false), then they replace them with something better. With Nāgārjuna, the negative movement takes the form of a practical demonstration of the impracticality of metaphysical postulation (the assertions that a thing or things really exist), while the positive movement provides adequate truths which do not involve metaphysical posits (e.g., şūnyatā, pratītya-samutpāda, nirvāņa-samsāra, etc.), and which open the door for an individual’s striving to attain ultimate realization, paramārthasatya, which cannot be expressed linguistically, but which can be reached toward by means of linguistically expressible samvŗtisatya truths.[16] This ultimate realization, the condition of attaining nirvāņa, is not a particular knowledge, but would rather have to be a state of awareness, the adoption of a correct attitude toward all conventional truths.

            With Chuang-tzu, the negative movement is composed of varied attacks (logical, pragmatic, ad hominem, etc.) on metaphysical and epistemological projects and their participants, while the positive movement consists of articulations of modes of praxis which provide viable alternatives to certain knowing and certain being (e.g., extrovertive mystical practice based on introvertive cultivation, pragmatic standards of value such as the use of the useless, flexible models of language, etc.). The core of this effort is located in Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and certain passages which Graham classifies as “relating to the inner chapters,” and the shibboleths here are shih-fei, wei-shih, and yin-shih. Chuang-tzu designates shih-fei distinctions which are of the wei (deeming, fixed, unconditional) type as the bad guy in his account of epistemology and metaphysics, and yin-shih the good guy.

            In both cases, an or the essential goal of the text is to make clear to the reader that reality constantly and inevitably exceeds our descriptions, and to find ways of accommodating ourselves to this reality. For Nāgārjuna, this is accomplished by the subordination of all descriptive truths to the level of samvŗtisatya used instrumentally in the interest of paramārthasatya, which is non-descriptive. For Chuang-tzu, this is accomplished by observing that all descriptions are true for some and false for others—that all linguistic determinations (shih-fei) are contingent on the observer, and that the method which is in line with the ultimate does not depend on any specific determinations, but constitutes a way to get around, among, and through them.

            Both authors are engaged in making clear the limitations of metaphysical postulation and epistemological truth-claims, and helping the reader come closer to understanding what it is that they sometimes obscure—the excessive, protean world which is not amenable to any sort of delimiting fixation. The two authors use very different methods to achieve this goal; Nāgārjuna chooses to use reason to demonstrate the problems of reason, employing the razor-fine Indian logic which is the characteristic tool of the very metaphysicians he opposes; Chuang-tzu chooses a loose, flowing, heterogeneous discourse that embodies the opposite of this. In their choices of textual style, each is providing a valuable model—Nāgārjuna’s being a negative model, adopted the better to show and test its limits, Chuang-tzu’s a positive model, adopted to serve as an example of the alternatives.

Nāgārjuna

            Nāgārjuna’s methods of argument are rigorous, exacting, exhaustive, and to the modern western eye quite often strange. In order to understand him, we must understand Indian thought and his place in it. Nāgārjuna, unlike most Buddhist thinkers, wrote in (proper) Sanskrit, which is a language uniquely suited to classic, logic-centered forms of philosophy. Its elaborate system of declension, conjugation, and nominal derivation from verbs, as well as its extremely nuanced compound analysis, enable it to express relationships with singular precision, and to isolate in concise, individual terms subtly distinguished alternatives that can be expressed only clumsily in English. Furthermore, Indian philosophers developed over time an especially abstract style of Sanskrit, drawing heavily on the –ness suffices, the passive voice, and nominal derivates, which enabled the isolation of qualities and properties. It is virtually impossible to translate philosophical Sanskrit without sacrificing either readability or fidelity to structure; standard English simply does not permit many of the key features.

            The abstract language is especially suited to foundationalist philosophies. While it would be perhaps going too far to say that abstract Sanskrit’s tendency to isolate qualities and properties as abstract nouns apart from their concrete individual appearances is a determining factor in the emergence of such philosophies, it is certain that they flourish in this medium, which allows for constant and fluid reification of, well,…anything.

            Much of this philosophy is concerned with the relation of Being to existence; the problem is usually addressed either cosmogenically (creation by diversification of a primal one or admixture of a primal two or three or so) or monistically (through the hypothesis that existence is illusory).Ability to resolve the problem of the relation of the experienced world to the ideal realm was one of the prime requirements of any philosophy, the two principle others being internal non-contradiction and avoidance of undesired logical consequences (prasannas). For what we now call “Hindu” philosophies, non-contradiction of canonical texts was also a requirement.

            As a Buddhist metaphysician, Nāgārjuna is primarily interested in the first two, especially the very first. For Buddhism’s primary and original break from prior Indian philosophy is precisely an inversion of the monistic metaphysics. Where advaita and its precursors denied the validity of the world, Buddhism denied the validity of the ultimate reality which was supposed to underlie it. Of course, there are certain necessary similarities—both deal with the being-existence problem by avoiding one side of it. The difference is that, while non-dual monism merely makes action in the world somewhat more difficult to justify, Indian Buddhism is left trying to clarify its philosophies on the more basic level, that of first principles, without the ability to posit metaphysical entities. And without clarity at this level, it is highly vulnerable to attack by other metaphysicians of other sects.

            The first attempt to establish a Buddhist metaphysics was the Abhidharma project of systematic pluralism: psycho-physical analysis, breaking the world down into smaller pieces. The problem with this is that the pieces are still amenable to metaphysical questioning and postulation—Abhidharma rephrases the question rather than either answering or dismissing it. The question of Nāgārjuna’s stance on the Abhidharma literature is contested (cf. Kalupahana), but in any case, he objected to certain forms or adaptations of it (cf. Kalupahana, McCagney) inasmuch as they led towards metaphysical postulation.

            Nāgārjuna’s metaphysics differed; he realized that much of the problem was in the reification of qualities implied by philosophical abstraction. But one could not simply deny the existence of a given posit, for this implied a (nihilistic) posit in itself. Nāgārjuna needed a concept that could compete directly with metaphysical postulates without being one; something that, even when abstracted, would lack the thingness that allowed metaphysical reification. Nāgārjuna found and adapted şūnyatā from the early Mahayana literature (cf. McCagney, pp. 22ff.)—“emptiness” which had in Hindu philosophy had a nihilistic tinge, which in the Mahāyāna became part of the poetry of the sky (McCagney pp. 24ff.), in Nāgārjuna’s hands became a profound metaphysical weapon.

            The key to understanding şūnyatā is recognizing the structure of the term. Şūnyatā is emptiness, and a statement that there is emptiness will always implicitly add “of things.” Such a statement can always, according to the rules of abstraction, be translated “things are empty”, and “things are empty” means, “things are empty of essence/being.”[17] Thus şūnyatā is not a thing but a sort of null marker, comparable to a zero affix in grammar or empty category in linguistics. Zero-affices are used in classical Indian linguistics where a sound does not occur but in its absence still has a functional value that factors in the transformations of speech; the marker is a convenient fiction that enables the grammar of linguistics to function even in situations where it clearly lacks the necessary referents.

            Where most abstractions are reifications of qualities or properties of things (the redness of an apple), şūnyatā is a quasi-reification of a principle for action—a way of dealing with things. It is the abstract nominalization of a rule for doing philosophy—the rule that things are empty—and not some metaphysical being (or, for that matter, non-being (i.e., emptiness). Thus şūnyatā allows Nāgārjuna to enter the struggle over metaphysics despite not having any metaphysical posits of his own.

            McCagney writes,

            The paramārthasatya is not more true than samvŗtisatya, it is simply true of a wider domain. Samvŗtisatya is a true description of the world (loka) and of the Buddhist teachings, paramārthasatya is a true description of the descriptions of world and of the Buddhist teachings. Paramārthasatya derives from parama (higher) and connotes a broader range. Robinson argues that paramārthasatya is a meta-language, a language about language, but this is unlikely. Paramārthasatya is simply a caveat about samvŗti expressed on the same, not a higher, “level.”

(McCagney, pp. 86-7)

 

This is not quite clear. First off, Nāgārjuna does not provide any descriptive truths which are called paramārtha; indeed, it is difficult to see how he can be said to have espoused anything which he took more seriously than śūnyatā, which he specifically identifies as a concept used only for teaching. This emptiness is the emptiness of observations, including the observation of emptiness, as much as it is of the emptiness of things. Ultimate truth, for Nāgārjuna, must be held to be something experiential or attitudinal, a way of taking the world, not a way of speaking about it. As to the “meta-lingual” question, McCagney is correct that Nāgārjuna does not create a meta-language, but incorrect in saying that one can express a caveat about language without it being meta-linguistic. Any caveat about language is going to be language used to evaluate language, that is to say, language which is on a meta-level in relation to the ortho-level of the language it judges. But this does not make such a language “a” language, i.e., a whole linguistic system. It is merely some words used a certain way.

            Nāgārjuna couples this ingenious strategy to a particularly thoroughgoing attack on metaphysical concepts on their own merits, continuing the Buddhist tradition that began with the first declaration of the doctrine of anātman. Thus he provides his readers with both a stick and a carrot, discursively speaking—he provides both something to move away from in speaking about the how things are, and something to move towards.

            The distribution of the two strategies in the text is characteristically Indian, beginning with disproof of the opposing view and ending with articulation of ones own, with occasional foreshadowing spread through the middle sections. The early kārikās are mostly demonstrations of the untenability of various first principles—e.g. conditions for being, mover and movement, sensation, action, time, space—and only later, with the chapters on self, tathāgata, nirvāņa, and the four noble truths, do we get extensive elaboration of the positions of Nāgārjuna himself.

            The early negatives are not as original, important, or interesting as Nāgārjuna’s own positions, and are extremely repetitive to boot, so we can spare ourselves an extensive analysis of them, instead briefly discussing one characteristic example:

Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, mentating[18],

These are the six faculties. The seeable, etc. are the range (of those faculties).

 

The seeing just does not see the (seeing which is) its own self.

How will that which does not see itself see others?

 

The fire-demonstration is not an adequate establishment of seeing.

It, along with seeing, is refuted by the going, the gone, and the un-gone.

 

When there is some seeing that is not seeing,

How, thus, would “seeing sees” be appropriate?

 

Seeing just does not see; non-seeing just does not see;

The seer has been explained by seeing, and…[19]

 

The seer does not exist either taken apart from seeing or not taken apart.

The seeable, seeing—in the absence of the seer, where are they?

 

As a son’s becoming is said to be dependent upon a mother and father,

Thus the becoming of vignition[20] is said to be dependent on an eye and forms[21].

 

Because of the non-existence of seeables and seeing, the foursome beginning with vignition

does not exist. How, again, will there be grasping?

 

Hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and mentating are explained

By seeing, because the origin [of these is similar]; and [so] the hearer, the hearable, etc., [are explained].

(MMK 3)

 

Nāgārjuna calls up several classic problems—if sensation is supposed to primary, it should be expected (in Indian-Rules Metaphysics) to be self-founding, that is, to encompass itself. But it is a notorious problem in philosophy (east and west) that seeing cannot encompass itself; the eye can, in fact, see everything but itself. (Obviously, Nāgārjuna is making an assumption that touch and mentation function similarly, though this is open to debate.) 3:4 raises a point that Nāgārjuna returns to again and again—if a thing is not always itself—i.e., if whatever is “seeing” is not always “seeing,” then it cannot be defined as “seeing” in terms of an enduring and unique essence, a “svabhāva.”[22] 3:6 asserts another vital point for Nāgārjuna—the codependence of agent, action, and object. He demonstrates at multiple points in the text, particularly in the second chapter—“the going, the gone, and the un-gone”—that none of the terms in such a relationship can make sense outside of that relationship. In other words, none can be philosophically prior, and thus it is impossible to account for any one member without already having the others. In a sense, this is similar to the popular modern philosophical metaphor of Neurath’s boat, according to which one can modify part of a system only by depending on the other parts—i.e., one cannot question everything at once, as Descartes once tried, because in order to question anything you must assume others.

            Nāgārjuna goes on to observe that higher levels of human consciousness (in the particular psychology he happens to be using) are dependant on lower levels—i.e., the varied factors of consciousness arise depending on the senses. This includes both the mind in its many parts and also grasping (attachment) itself. As a result of this dependence along with the demonstrated incomprehensibility of the components of the act of seeing, Nāgārjuna has demonstrated the insubstantial nature of the human mind and of its attachments—putting us a goodly step on the way to liberation. All in nine verses. And this, while short and sweet (and thus fitting for demonstration) is by no means the most accomplished of the early chapters.

            Meanwhile, Nāgārjuna’s own positive conceptualization emerges largely with reluctance, occurring very sparingly in the midst of negative critiques, and at length almost exclusively in reply to attacks by opponents or in chastisements of well-meaning misinterpreters. Indeed, every positive stance he takes must be taken carefully and in consideration of his claim to have no view, which forces us to either judge him incoherent or to accept that his direct and unflinching statements of fact are not meant as ultimately true, but only conventionally so, as he himself states:

It is not to be said that either the “empty” or the “nonempty” might exist,

Or both or neither; it is said for the purpose of prognification.[23] (i.e., of teaching)

(MMK 22:11)

 

We say here that you do not know the point of emptiness;

So thus emptiness and the purpose of emptiness are torn asunder.

 

The teachings of the Dharma of the Buddhas rest completely on two truths,

The conventional truth of the world and ultimate truth.

 

Those who do not vignize[24] the great divide between the two truths,

They do not vignize the depth in the Buddha’s instruction.

 

Ultimate truth is not taught without dependence on convention;

Nirvāņa is not achieved to without having attained[25] ultimate truth.

 

(MMK 24:7-10)

 

What(ever) is pratītya-samutpāda, that we call emptiness.

Having taken up this prognification, it is the path of the middle way.[26]

 

Nāgārjuna is not here undermining his own statements. On the contrary, the limitation of şūnyatā—the emptiness of emptiness—is implicit in the thing from the beginning. Anything which is capable of receiving an essence of its own receives instead the marker “empty,” and any concept, precept, or statement that can be phrased in words is capable of receiving an essence. While şūnyatā makes it possible (or at any rate, easier) for us to work without the comforting structure of a solid metaphysics (as opposed to the very sparse metaphysics of Nāgārjuna), it does not prevent us from misusing it. Thus Nāgārjuna is required to caution us against doing so.

            As a result, we cannot look to him to give us a specific, textual summation of the ultimate truth; the ultimate truth is ineffable for Nāgārjuna. However, he does give us truths—things said “for the purpose of teaching,” but not to be mistaken for things in themselves, or for truths in themselves. Nonetheless, they are indispensable.

            There are four key words here, forming two pairs of identifications. The first is şūnyatā=pratītya-samutpāda, the second is nirvāņa≈samāra. (Of course, the last is not precisely an identification, and the two pairs together really from a single close-knit concept. But on the level of conventional truth…)

            We have already discussed şūnyatā, “emptiness,” in itself; pratītya-samutpāda can be called emptiness viewed as a process. That is, şūnyatā is emptiness in itself, or emptiness in general, while pratītya-samutpāda is emptiness in time. It is the shape emptiness takes in the process of origination—things flowing seamlessly and interdependently together, unanalyzeable. (It is important not to lose sight of the fact that emptiness here does not really “take” any form; on the contrary it is simply a general term for the character of all the phenomenal flux that is pratītya-samutpāda.)

            In Chapter 24, Nāgārjuna asserts that everything that ever happens—up to and including the path to Buddhist enlightenment—can occur only through pratītya-samutpāda, which is the same as emptiness. Having played all sides against the middle throughout the early chapters, raising and then exhausting dozens of theses, he has demonstrated that a metaphysics either of substance or of nothingness cannot provide a sustainable account of existence; pratītya-samutpāda-şūnyatā is the last term standing.

            Nirvāņa and samsāra follow directly from pratītya-samutpāda-şūnyatā. The key to connecting the two pairs is MMK 7:16: “Whatsoever dependent thing becomes, is essentially peaceful. Therefore arisal[27] and the process of arising are peaceful.” That this is key for Nāgārjuna’s nirvāņa is clear on the basis of several prominent statements found in the MMK:

“Free of clinging, I will be extinguished;” “I will have nirvāņa;”

Of those who say this, there is a huge grasping of clinging.

 

Where there is neither an addition of nirvana nor a removal of samsāra;

There, what samsāra is discriminated from what nirvāņa?

(MMK 16:9-10)

 

There is nothing whatsoever of samsāra distinguishing (it) from nirvāņa.

There is nothing whatsoever of nirvāņa distinguishing it from samsāra.

 

(That?) is the limit which is the limit of nirvana and the limit of samsāra;

Even a very subtle interval is not found of (between) them.

 

Views of an end, etc., and permanence, etc., after cessation (death?)

Have recourse to a beginning and an end nirvana.

 

When all dharmas are empty, what is endless? What has an end?

What is endless and with an end? What is not endless and not with an end?

 

What is “it”? What is “other”? What is permanent? What is impermanent?

What is impermanent and permanent? What is neither?

 

Auspicious is the pacification of phenomenal metastasis[28], the pacification of all apprehending;

There is no dharma whatsoever taught by the Buddha to whomever  whenever, wherever.

 

(Or,

 

There is no auspicious dharma whatsoever (which would be) the pacification of phenomenal metastasis, the pacification of all apprehending

Taught by the Buddha to whomever, whenever, wherever.)

(MMK 25:19-24)

 

By saying that nirvānā is neither an addition to nor a removal from samsāra, Nāgārjuna makes clear that he does not require a metaphysical justification for enlightenment. Nirvānā is not an escape from the phenomenal world; it does not need to be because dependently arisen events are essentially peaceful. Nagarjuna supports this line of reasoning by appealing to the traditional concept that inquiry into the status of the Buddha after death is not useful.

            He admonishes the reader,

It is not held that “The Lord exists beyond ceasing (death).”

And it is not maintained that he is both or neither (existent and nonexistent).

It is not held that the Lord, (while) staying in the world, exists;

It is not held that he is both or neither.

(MMK 25:17-18)

 

The ultimate implication of which is that,

In the essentially empty, this thought just does not follow,

“the Buddha exists or does not exist after ceasing.”

Those who phenomenologically metastasize the indepletable Buddha (to be) phenomenologically metastasized; they are all struck down by phenomenological metastasis; they do not see the Buddha.

What is the essence of the tathāgata, that is the essence of the world.

The tathāgata is devoid of an essence; the world is devoid of an essence.

(MMK, 22:14-16)

Where later Mahāyāna Buddhism dwells on the concept of Buddha-nature, by which things are liberated, Nāgārjuna emphasizes that, on the contrary, it is the Buddha which has the nature of things—or, more accurately, which lacks any nature, any essence, just as all things do.[29] Thus we see that the  principle of śūnyatā is the core of both the positive and negative movements of Nāgārjuna’s thought; it is the essential refutation of those who come before, and it is the essential operating principle of the Buddhist insights he is defending.

Chuang-tzu

 

            Chuang-tzu’s style differs radically from Nāgārjuna ’s; this embodies a different attitude towards language, rhetoric, and philosophical method. When confronted with the inadequacy of received philosophical language techniques for dealing with the ultimate problems of metaphysics and epistemology, Nāgārjuna used a form of discourse which built on that used by his contemporaries; he attacked their ideas by examining them systematically in the same context from which they emerged, while, as we have argued, his own chief contribution, śūnyatā, invaded that context in the shape of its inhabitants. Chuang-tzu chose to move away not only from the results of other contemporary metaphysicians, but also to use a radically different style. One might say that while Nāgārjuna chose to “use a horse to show that ‘a horse is not a horse’” Chuang-tzu preferred to “use what is not a horse.” (Graham, 53) It is impossible to say with certainty what might have motivated their different choices of rhetorical style; perhaps they had to meet different standards of proof, or perhaps Chuang-tzu wanted a more radical break from the work of his contemporaries than Nāgārjuna wanted from his. Or perhaps it was simply a matter of temperament. In more recent times, one might say that it was a question of modern vs. post-modern methods—whether it’s more efficacious in philosophy to confront ones opponents’ answers with ones own better answers, or instead to generate new and better questions.[30]

            With Nāgārjuna, there is the unmistakable sense that the answer he provides to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, takes its shape (though not its content) from the language in which it is phrased; with Chuang-tzu, one has a sense that the reverse is true: that the language in which the answer is phrased is in fact a product of Chuang-tzu’s particular insight apart from and contrary to the discourse of his opponents.

            In one of the Outer Chapters, we find an extremely useful summation of the Zhuangzian[31] rhetorical strategy:

'Saying from a lodging-place works nine times out of ten, weighted saying works seven times out of ten. "Spillover" saying is new every day, smooth it out on the whetstone of Heaven.'

 

"Saying from a lodging-place works nine times out of ten'--You borrow a standpoint outside in order to sort a matter out. A father does not act as marriage broker for his own son; a father praising his son does not impress as much as someone not the father. The blame for the standpoint is not on me, the blame is on the other man. If my standpoint is the same as his he responds, if it is not he turns the other way. What agrees with his standpoint he approves with a 'That's it' which deems, what disagrees he rejects with a 'That's not' which deems.

            'Weighted saying works seven times out of ten'--It is what you say on your own authority. This is a matter of being venerable as a teacher. To be ahead in years, but without the warp and woof and root and tip of what is expected from the venerable in years, this isn't being ahead. To be a man without the resources to be ahead of others is to be without the Way of Man; and a man without the Way of Man is to be called an obsolete man.

            '"spillover" saying is new every day, smooth it out on the whetstone of Heaven'--Use it to go by and let the stream find its own channels, this is the way to last out your years. If you refrain from saying, everything is even; the even is uneven with saying, saying is uneven with the even. Hence the aphorism 'In saying he says nothing'. If in saying you say nothing, all your life you say without ever saying, all your life you refuse to say without ever failing to say.

            What from somewhere is allowable from somewhere else is unallowable, what form somewhere is so from somewhere else is not so. Why so? By being so. Why not so? By not being so. Why allowable? By being allowable. Why unallowable? By being unallowable. It is inherent in the thing that from somewhere that's so of it, that from somewhere that's allowable of it; of no thing is it not so, of no thing is it unallowable. Without '"Spillover" saying is new every day, smooth it out on the whetstone of Heaven', who could ever keep going for long? The myriad things are all the seed from which they grow:

 

In unlike shapes they abdicate in turn,

With ends and starts as on a ring.

None grasps where to mark the grades.

Call it the 'Potter's Wheel of Heaven'.

 

The 'Potter's Wheel of Heaven' is the whetstone of Heaven.

(Graham, pp. 106-7)

 

This passage seems to be either an elaboration by later interpreters/olators of three categories defined by Chuang-tzu, or else his own elaboration of preexisting categories. Graham notes, of a group of passages to which this one belongs, that they

resume themes otherwise absent after the Inner chapters…It is only in ‘The sorting which evens things out’ and in these Mixed chapters episodes that we find his idiosyncratic variations on shih, ‘That’s it’ (the shih which deems, the shih which goes by circumstance, the common shih, the shifting shih), the contrasting of ‘It’ and ‘Other’, judging from a ‘lodging-place’, the ‘whetstone of Heaven’, the potter’s wheel of Heaven’…The Syncretist editors of the second century BC must have found this material uninviting if not unintelligible, which may be why they relegated so much of it to the chapters which served as ragbags instead of incorporating it in ‘The sorting which evens things out’. (Graham, 100)

 

And later, in the Syncretist portions of the text, it is written that

[Chuang Chou] thought that ‘spillover’ saying lets the stream find its own lodging channels, that weighty saying is the most genuine, that saying ‘from a lodging-place’ widens the range. Alone with the quintessential-and-daemonic in heaven and earth he went to and fro, but was not arrogant towards the myriad things. He did not make demands with a ‘That’s it, that’s not’, and so he got along with conventional people.

(Graham, 283)

 

But even if he did not provide us with the full elaboration of them, these categories are accurate and insightful descriptions of the rhetorical style that he used. All three strategies are to be found throughout the text, and while the proportional distributions are probably rough rules of thumb that might not be statistically born out, they are significant as well..

            The three-fold method seems to recognize a three-fold goal: to convince (or at least to engage) one’s opponents, and to “say without saying”—that is, to accomplish the communication-act, but not in a way that commits one to the errors of speech. These goals Chuang-tzu shares with Nāgārjuna, or at least are goals toward which śūnyatā aspires, as previously discussed—but where Nāgārjuna does so by using a single concept which allows him to use existing rhetorical styles without suffering their detriments, Chuang-tzu uses a diversified, decentralized strategy, new and different, which slips around his contemporaries’ logic rather than infiltrating it.

            Saying from a lodging-place and weighted saying are probably existing rhetorical styles. Certainly arguing by beginning from an opponent’s position is one of the primary modes of debate from time immemorial. The shih-fei distinction, which is Graham notes is uniquely characteristic of Chuang-tzu, is used in describing the context in which saying from a lodging-place occurs, but only the negative—not its positive transgression/scendence. Chuang-tzu seems, meanwhile, to criticize weighted saying, or rather to place limits on it by criticizing those who are “ahead in years, but without the warp and woof and root and tip of what is expected from the venerable”—those who are old but not wise. Thus this must be an accepted rhetorical strategy already.

            The last style, which seems to be Chuang-tzu’s characteristic style, is the spillover saying. He draws on the sort of paradoxical conception which surrounds the general Taoist “wu-wei” concept—saying without saying, or the non-saying which says, corresponding to acting without acting, or the nonaction which accomplishes everything. What this describes, in either case, is not a total abstention from saying or doing—the former is impossible to achieve in the course of a text, the latter is impossible to achieve in the course of a life. It is saying or doing without being caught up in these things and without suffering the prasannas, to borrow from Sanskrit, that sometimes follow from them. Where Nāgārjuna asserts that things have the property of not being open to being posited as metaphysical entities, Chuang-tzu advocates a saying which tends to evade such questions entirely. This saying is fluid, easygoing, and premised upon the relativity of all things that are linguistically assertable. It is yin-shih, pure and simple—circumstantial determination, “that’s it which goes by circumstance.”

            While Nāgārjuna’s implicit phenomenology begins from the testing of first principles, Chuang-tzu’s explicit phenomenology hits its primary moment with asking the basic question of the validity of language:

Do we really say something? Or have we never said anything? If you think it different from the twitter of fledgelings, is there proof of the distinction? Or isn’t there any proof? By what is the Way hidden, that there should be a genuine or a false? By what is saying darkened,  that sometimes ‘That’s it’ and sometimes ‘that’s not’?...The Way is hidden by formation of the lesser, saying is darkened by its foliage and flowers. And so we have the ‘That’s it, that’s not’ of Confucians of Mohists…(Graham, p. 52)

 

By beginning with the question of language—with more epistemological rather than metaphysical elements—Chuang-tzu forces himself to begin with a fundamentally different method, rather than merely appropriating existing ones. One might say that Nāgārjuna and Chuang-tzu are on this point working towards each other from opposite ends—Nāgārjuna begins by attacking metaphysical categories, and comes around to attacking linguistic ontological distinctions[32] Chuang-tzu beings by questioning the possibilities of language and quickly winds up attacking metaphysical distinctions.

            Because of the decentralization of Zhuangzian method that follows from the principle of yin-shih or “spillover saying,” it is harder to straightforwardly analyze Chuang-tzu’s arguments. This problem is, of course, further compounded by the much greater degree of pseudepigraphy and invasive editing that we find in Chuang-tzu. For our present purposes, we will confine ourselves to the Inner Chapters, especially chapter two, which is the philosophical heart of the text, the kernel from which so much of the rest of the text is articulated, and to the chapters which expand upon it.    

            Below, I’ve attempted to break down the second chapter (as it appears in Graham[33]) into various topical points. These points are then clustered into groups which, it might be argued, show a progression more or less beginning from distinctions as they occur within the body, then going from distinctions toward the way (going phenomenologically beyond the problem to find the solution), then going from the way to distinctions (explaining analytically the arisal of the problems in the first place), then articulating positive practical examples and suggestions for life. This ordering would reflective a natural order that manifests itself in human confrontations with philosophical issues—first apprehending a philosophical problem seriously because it arises “in me,” then exploring the problem and delving through it towards the solution, then using this solution to explain the problem, then examining its impact on how we should live. There are a number of gaps in this sequence which represent gaps in my ability to account effectively for some of the things that Chuang-tzu says. I have attempted to limit my own interpretations of him to those aspects of which I do feel I have a fair understanding.

Group A: Going (phenomenologically) from unitive mystical experience to the pluralistic world.

1. Pipes of Heaven

i. Withered wood/dead ash—Introvertive, unitive mystical experience transcends subject/object dichotomy.

ii.

Pipes of Earth—the wind whistling off junk

Pipes of Man—actual pipes

Pipes of Heaven—the puffing out of the myriad things

Group B: Distinctions arising within the body

2. The Heart

i. Great wit and Petty wit, etc.

ii. Sleeping, waking, etc.

iii. The Supreme Fear [Death!]

iv. The source of variations and distinctions is also the source of the heart.

3. The Parts

i. Other>Self>Preference

ii. “As way it can be walked”, but no seeing it

ii. The body’s parts, incl. heart-mind, are all equally manifestations of the way.

Group C: Going from distinctions to the way (i.e., beginning with distinctions as problem, then finding the solution or answer in going beyond distinctions)

4. Relativity and Contingency of Opinions

i. Proposition: “Isn’t it sad that we work only to die?”

ii. Is everyone stupid, or am I?

iii. All alike have constructed beliefs evolved from experience with no “existence prior to construction.”

5. What is speech?

i. Proposition: “Speech is not merely noise.”

ii. How could we prove this?

iii. It and other are (a) mutually dependent, (b) interchangeable, (c) not metaphysically viable as independent entities in a world of becoming

iv. One must not only use a that’s it which goes by circumstance, but use it circumstantially.

6. Are there really It and Other?

i. Are it and other the same as each other or different?

ii. “Where neither it nor other finds its opposite is called the axis of the way”

iii. From this, one responds freely.

iv. Horse…

7. Three in the Morning

i. “The way comes about as we walk it.” “Call it something and that’s so.”

ii. The way unifies by interchanging (transforming?) things into one another which the that’s it which deems differentiates.

iii. “The man who sees right through knows how to interchange and deem them one.”

iv. The way is at the end of the that’s it which goes by circumstance.

v. Monkeys.

Group D: Going from the way to distinctions. (i.e., discussing the problem of how distinctions arise from an original way)

8. The Descent from No Things

i. No things

ii. Things without borders

iii. Borders without “that’s it-that’s not it”

iv. “that’s it-that’s not it”àflawed way

v. Is there “complete” and “flawed”?

If yesàExpert having paid opportunity cost of choosing specific path

If noàSame expert abiding in inexhausted possibility prior to choosing.

9.

10. One and Speech

i. One and the saying makes two—(an objection to speaking philosophically of the unity of things; thus to doctrines of monism)

11. “The Way has Never had Borders”

i. The sage’s reluctance to make distinctions (ordered descent a la 8.)

ii. Division always has  a remainder.

Group E: Articulation of positives (i.e., speech, sagehood, comportment, etc., in forms of which the author approves)

12. Corners Rounded

i. The greatest X is less than the most intense X and does not suffer the flaws of immoderacy of X.

ii. “To know how to stay within the sphere of our ignorance is to attain the highest.”

iii. The untold way is the highest.

13. Smiting is Uncalled For.

14. Can We Know?

i. No tenable position on knowing.

ii. Trying to get past perspectival right and wrong to “know” the “real” truth is dumb.

iii. The geisty man is beyond “benefit and harm”

15. Dialogue on the Sage

i. The description of the sage may be beyond Confucius, but the student is in error who mistakes the pellet for the owl—i.e., mistakes a mere instrument for the object the instrument is intended to procure.

ii. Enigmatic poem—Huh?

iii. The values of dream/life may be discontinuous of those of waking

iv. No objective base of knowledge---“I who call you a dream am also a dream.”

16. Referee/Whetstone

i. No person qualified to act as objective judge of any dispute.

ii. “Use them to go by and let the stream find its own channels”

iii. Treat ~x as x

Group E: The Butterfly

17. Penumbra vs. Shadow.

18. Butterfly

i. No knowing whether he is x dreaming he is y, or vice versa.

ii. There is a necessary dividing between x and y ; “this is called the transformation of things.”

 

In Group A, Section one provides the basic structure of the whole chapter: it constitutes the varied attempts of one who has emerged from mystical experience to explain the insight he has thus gained to one who has not had the same experience. In Group B, Sections two and three begin the discussion by placing the seeds of doubt at the very basic level of bodily self-identity. Because I cannot know who I am at the very basic level of bodily experience, because I do no know the seat of myself in that body, I am discomfited. If Group B has no parallel in Nāgārjuna; while he includes, early on, a number of psychological and epistemological categories in his negative critiques, he does not present them phenomenologically, but entirely analytically, and they are given no pride of place relative to more strictly metaphysical concepts.

            Next, and critically, for here begins the application of Chuang-tzu’s philosophical inquiry to the problem which is defined in two and three, in Group C, section four establishes the relativity[34] of all opinions and beliefs, and section five establishes that, while we strive to make speech meaningful, there is no foundation for a claim that such is the case; rather, speech is relative and we must navigate it by means of a yin-shih principle. Section six begins to hint at going beyond the relative position, and at providing a basis for the yin-shih principle; it identifies an “axis of the way” where “neither it nor other finds its opposite” and from which one can respond freely. [FILL] This axis is not something on the level of the shihs and feis that it governs, but rather has an authority stemming from something else, probably mystical experience, or mystically informed experience[35]. Section seven provides a (somewhat) concrete demonstration for the previous sections in the case of the Monkey-Keeper. Here the relation to Nāgārjuna is more clear; like Nāgārjuna, Chuang-tzu relativizes all epistemological and metaphysical postulation, and also like him, provides a distinction between instrumentally and temporarily adopted views and the ultimate experience in relation to which these views are chosen. The difference is that for Nāgārjuna, views are chosen with an eye only toward the teaching (prognification) that enables the student to achieve liberation, while for Chuang-tzu, this is reversed—achieving the axis of the way is valued because it allows one to “respond freely” to the various shihs and feis. (This is not to say, of course, that Chuang-tzu does not value the experience of this axis on its own merits as well.)

            In Group D, Chuang-tzu turns around and follows the path back again to the realm of the human condition which formed the problem which prompted his previous philosophizing. This establishes a check on his previous argumentation, a rhetorical reinforcement of it, and an added dimension of time. The temporal element is expressed in section eight cosmogenically, in section ten linguistically or logically, and in section eleven historically. Very loosely, these temporal movements might be said to parallel pratītya-samutpāda in representing diachronically what has previously been discussed synchronically. Also, section 11, with the reluctance of the sages to make distinctions, is suggestive generally of the parcimonious project in which both our authors are engaged.

            Group E articulates positives and sets limits. In section twelve, the pursuit of extremes is advices against, in section thirteen violence, and in section fourteen the pursuit of foundational epistemology. Section fifteen is essentially a curb on the student mistaking what he has been taught for some sort of ultimate truth—it is made explicit that what is espoused in the Chuang-tzu is only an instrument (shot) for obtaining insight (fowl), not the prize itself. Indeed, drawing on classic dream imagery, it asserts that it has no special basis for knowledge or value claims—“I who call you a dream am also a dream.” [FILL] This section in particular resembles Nāgārjuna, for he partakes very deeply of the concern for keeping students from mistaking śūnyatā for some new postulate and thus repeating the cycle of ignorance.

            The immediately following chapters are principally concerned with applying the insights of chapter two. Largely these are about reevaluating mistaken assumptions regarding the value of things and qualities—asserting the “use of the useless” and so forth. These are of no concern in a comparison with Nāgārjuna’s MMK, as he limits himself to the philosophical side of thing, and gives no time to more practical matters, including the practice of enlightenment, except insomuch as that is an intellectual practice. (This is not to say he does not value such practical concerns, but simply that he does not feel they are appropriate to the discussion in the MMK. Also, he would probably join in saying with Chesterton and James that “A man’s philosophy is the most practical thing about him.)

            But one thing contained in them which should be mentioned here is the continuing extension of the positive elements that Chuang-tzu suggests to replace the epistemological and metaphysical deeming he tears down in two—these elaborations of yin-shih are essential in understanding chapter two, and thus in understanding the essence of the inner chapters. One particularly provocative statement is,

If to embrace them all we have heaven and to stay on course have its light, if in obscurity we have the axis on which things turn, and to start from have that which is other than ourselves, then our unraveling will resemble failing to unravel, our knowing will resemble ignorance. The questions which we put to that which we know only by being ignorant cannot have confines yet cannot be without confines…can it be denied that there is a grand total of all? Why not after all put your questions to it?...Use the untested to test and your testing will not test. The sight of the eye is only something which it employs, it is the daemonic in us which tests…Therefore that there is no end to ruined states and massacred peoples is because we do not know how to put our questions to it.”

(Graham, p.63)

The if-clause summarizes much of chapter two, which makes repeated reference to illuminating things and to taking the position of the axis of the way; these are used to describe how one gains the ability to properly utilize yin-shih. Saying that we “to start from have that which is other than ourselves,” recognizes the cosmogenic (and metaphysical-primacy) implications of section 8.

            But what is interesting here is the investigation into the consequences of these things; the then-clause elaborates that there will be a perceived collapse of “raveling” and “unraveling”, of “knowing” and “ignorance.” This follows because the bases for seriously differentiating opposites has been removed. The passage asks, in this circumstance, how can we know—more precisely, how can we ask questions and evaluate answers? Traditional philosophy uses some fundamental, assumed principle—the untested—to test all else. But having acknowledged the relativity of all such principles, what is used to test? The “daemonic in us,” one might say, the “spiritually informed.” How does such testing operate? “the questions which we put to that which we know only by being ignorant cannot have confines yet cannot be without confines.” This seems to Chuang-tzu’s equivalent of Nāgārjuna’s fourfold denials; Chuang-tzu is asserting that he is trapped between a thing and its denial, unable to assert either. In this situation, Chuang-tzu appeals to “a grand total of all”—the sum, presumably, of the world’s phenomena. It is this to which we are to put our questions. But how do we interact with the grand total of all?

            There is a comment in the outer chapters which may help explain the situation:

The existence of life is fraught with obscurities. Expansively, we refer to these as mutable referents. We may attempt to speak of mutable referents, but they are not that which can be spoken of, and, in any event, are not something that can be known. At the winter sacrifice, there are tripe and hoofs that can be thought of as separable but they are really inseparable parts of the sacrificial animal. When we examine a house we go all around its sleeping quarters and shrines and we even visit its toilet, all of which are mutable referents of the house as a whole.

(Graham, 233)

 

The diversity of the phenomena of the world can be taken holistically, even monistically. Chuang-tzu tends toward a monistic view, and describes his mystical experience as being monistic in character, but stops short of asserting a monistic view of the world, because such an assertion is philosophically contradictory. (chapter two, section ten) His compromise is to discuss the “grand total of all” or the “whole” which is composed of “mutable referents” as a house is composed of rooms and walls. These referents themselves, and not merely the whole, are excessive of our descriptions. Why? It is quite possible that what Chuang-tzu is here paralleling the insight we observed earlier in Nāgārjuna regarding the mutual dependence of the various elements of metaphysical postulation—that you cannot have a seer with seeing and seen, nor seeing with seer and seen, etc. A toilet is only properly itself in the concrete functional existence of a whole household, and to speak of it as a thing apart, a thing in itself, is a basic error.

            If this interpretation is correct, then “putting our questions to it” consists in taking the inextricability of all mutable referents into account, by means of mystically informed experience, in the process of our daily implementation of our yin-shih, our determinations which are contingent on the illumination of heaven and the perspective of the axis of the way. Indeed, it might be said that what is to be remembered—or at least a part of what is to be remembered—is that all things are merely mutable referents. This insight is more or less coreferential—or, rather, cofunctional, then, with śūnyatā. Indeed, the very procedural nature of the passage advising us on to what we should put our questions parallels the procedural nature of śūnyatā. There are still some caveats to be kept in mind, of course; one is that Nāgārjuna shows little or no evidence of mysticism in the MMK—which is not to say he is anti-mystical, but for him śūnyatā is sufficient as a logical maneuver, and requires no appeal to special experience. Another is that, unlike Nāgārjuna, Chuang-tzu cannot be summed up so easily or totalizingly. His decentralized style encourages him to push outward, to pick up a myriad of topics, to address each topic a myriad of ways. Metaphysical parcimony does not translate to rhetorical parcimony; on the contrary; a very simple way of viewing the world may require infinite varieties of expression to approximate it. And while Nāgārjuna’s MMK is but the most central of a diversity of writings, Chuang-tzu’s writings (and many others’) are collected wholesale and edited after the fact, forcing upon them a certain additional and unnecessary heterogeneity. Most importantly, we should not make the mistake of thinking that Nāgārjuna and Chuang-tzu were “in agreement” or “harmony” in any substantial way. There is much about the methodology of each that would be problematic to the other, and it is entirely likely that if they were contemporaries they would be bitter enemies (or perhaps merely playful sparring partners, like Chuang-tzu and Hui Shih).

            However, it does seem warranted to assert that both Nāgārjuna and Chuang-tzu possess a certain shared project. They are both engaged in attacking systems of metaphysical postulation by showing that individual postulates have no foundational authority or special being, and cannot be separated out from their concrete and interrelated conditions of existence. Both make the recognition of this, and the development of ways of navigating it, a priority in the development of their positive visions. To this extent, if perhaps to no greater an extent, Nāgārjuna and Chuang-tzu can be said to share “motivations and targets,” as Loy originally claimed.

McCagney, Nancy. Nāgārjuna and the Philosophy of Openness. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997

Streng, Frederick. Emptiness; a study in religious meaning. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967

Kalupahana, David. Nāgārjuna: The Philosophy of the Middle Way, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986.

Graham, AC. Chuang-tzu : the inner chapters. London; Boston: Unwin Paperbacks, 1986

Jochim, Chris. “Just Say No to No-Self.” In Ames, Roger. Wandering at ease in the Zhuangzi. Albany: State University of New York Press, c1998

Loy, David. “Zhuangzi and Nāgārjuna on the Truth of No Truth.” In Kjellberg and Ivanhoe, Essays on skepticism, relativism and ethics in the Zhuangzi. New York: State University of New York Press, c1996

 

 

 

           

Appendix

Graham1= in Roth, Harold. A companion to Angus C. Graham's Chuang Tzu : the Inner chapters. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003

Graham2= Graham, AC. Chuang-tzu : the inner chapters. London; Boston: Unwin Paperbacks, 1986

Mair= Mair, Victor. Wandering on the way : early Taoist tales and parables of Chuang Tzu. New York: Bantam Books, c1994

	Graham1	Graham2	Mair
Pipes of Heaven	1	1 (48-49)	1
The Heart	2	2 (50-51)	2
The Parts	3	3 (51)	3
Growth and Decay	4	4 (51-52)	3
Viet Today/Yesterday	4	4	4
What is Speech?	5	5 (52-53)	5
Are there really It and Other?	6	5	5
A Horse is not a Horse, of course…	7	6 (53)	6
The end of the adaptive “that’s it”	8	7 (53-54)	6
Three every morning	9	7	6
The Descent from No Things; the experts…	10	8 (54-55)	7
Kinds/Categories	11	9 (55-56)	8
One and Speech	12	10 (56)	8
“The Way has Never Had Borders	13	11 (57)	9
Outside the universe…	13	11	9
The Impossibility of a Referee	13	[16 (60)]	[12]
The Whetstone of Heaven	14	[16]	[12]
Behind Disputation	14	11	9
Corners Rounded	15+	12 (57)	9
Smiting is Uncalled For	16	13 (58)	10
Can we Know?	17	14 (58-59)	11
Dialogue on the Sage	18	15 (59-60)	12
The Impossibility of a Referee	[13]	16 (60)	12
The Whetstone of Heaven	[14]	16	12
Penumbra and Shadow	19	17 (60-61)	13
Butterfly	20	18 (61)	14