256

The idea that the term “truth” is a univocal descriptor, that there is one consistent meaning of the word “truth,” that when propositions are described as “true” this is meant always in a single unambiguous sense, and that therefore all true propositions must be consistent with one another, such that there are no self-contradictions in the total body of truths – let ’ s call this the “One Truth” Position. Such seems to be the default assumption of mainstream European philosophy and religion, indeed one that is assumed to be essential to preventing utter chaos, both epistemologically and ethically. 1

A very different position appears in the Buddhist tradition, where we fi nd, from a very early period, many ways of distinguishing and admitting multiple forms of validity. This can be seen clearly already in the Parable of the Raft and in the Abidhammic distinction between n ī tattha (statements which are to be taken literally) and neyyattha (statements which must be interpreted indirectly, or not at face value). In Mahayana Buddhism, following N ā g ā rjuna, this tendency reaches full fl owering in the distinction between samvritti satya and param ā rtha satya – respectively, “conventional” and “ulti-mate” truths – constituting the so-called Two Truths theory. All Mahayana schools adopt some version of the Two Truths theory, with one exception: the Tiantai school, which alone among all Buddhist schools moves from the Two Truths epistemology to a Three Truths model of truth. This has enormous consequences, which it is our purpose in this chapter to explore.

The Buddhist tendency to distinguish multiple forms of legitimacy can be traced in part to the purely pragmatic (i.e., soteriological) orientation of the Buddhist tradition, which proclaims openly that its one and only purpose is to end suffering . This premise allows all elements in the tradition, both propositions and procedures, to be evaluated in terms of their instrumental value towards achieving this goal. Buddhism is, in other words, completely pragmatic in its approach to truth. The question of what kinds of statements may count as legitimate is the only standard of “truth” in Buddhism, the

16

The Three Truths in Tiantai Buddhism

BROOK ZIPORYN

A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, First Edition. Edited by Steven M. Emmanuel.© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

the three truths in tiantai buddhism

257

only sense in which any proposition can be said to be “true,” and this legitimacy is measured solely in terms of effectiveness in furthering the overriding Buddhist soteri-ological aims. Every statement and every practice is justifi ed solely in terms of its utility for the goal of diminishing suffering . Those statements are valid which are conducive to ending suffering, and those actions are good which are conducive to ending suffering. “True” here does not mean “accurately describing in words an extra-verbal reality”: it means only “valid in the sense of conducive to behaviors that lead to the end of suffering.”

We may understand this in terms of the Parable of the Raft, attested already in the earliest written stratum of the tradition: what helps one get across is good, is useful, is valid, is to be clung to for the duration of one ’ s journey. Strictly speaking, whatever may be on the other shore is neither “true” nor “untrue,” neither “good” nor “bad”; all such terms pertain only to the intermediate realm of what is relevant for the goal of ending suffering – and, of course, this means mainly Buddhist doctrines and practices. True is different from false, as clinging to the raft is different from sinking. But this has nothing to do with contradiction or with the description of facts divorced from specifi c courses of action and the human motivations that endorse them; 2 it has to do with utility in the goal of ending suffering, which is accomplished by ending attachment to desire and defi nitive views about reality.

When this model develops beyond in the hands of N ā g ā rjuna to the full-fl edged Two Truths model, we have the same structure expanded and articulated with greater precision. Here, too, “conduciveness to ending suffering” is the sole criterion for “truth.” But, under conventional truth, N ā g ā rjuna includes two things: ordinary speech (terms such as “I,” “you,” “cause,” “effect,” “world,” “time,” “entities,” etc.) and specifi cally Buddhist doctrines (“non-self,” “nirvana,” “suffering,” “dependent co-arising,” etc.). The criterion for including both of these under the heading of “truth” is exactly the same: not that they correspond to an external reality or can be consistently unpacked without self-contradiction, but that speaking and acting in accordance with them is conducive to the ending of suffering. Without ordinary language, it is impossible to give instructions on how to end suffering, to point out the problem of suffering, to point out the doctrines and practices of Buddhism. Hence N ā g ā rjuna tells us (MMK.18.6) that the Buddha preached both self (ordinary speech) and non-self (Buddhist teach-ings), both for the same reason: they are necessary for giving instructions on how to end suffering and are skillfully deployed in such a way as to lead one to do so.

Both of these belong to conventional truth, which is “truth” only in that it leads beyond itself to “ultimate truth.” Ultimate truth cannot be spoken or conceptualized. In fact it is not a “truth” at all, in the usual sense of some true proposition providing cognitive information about the world. The designation “truth” is just a placeholder indicating the experience of the end of suffering itself, liberation of mind. Liberation of mind is not allegiance to any picture of how the world is. In fact, it is described only negatively, precisely as the lack of any identifi able predicates and of the holding of any views about how the world is at all. The possibility of a defi nitive right view about reality, the bare “being so” of any state of affairs, disappears together with the belief in self-nature ( svabh ā va ). For “being-so” would have to be something that is warranted by the state of affairs itself, acting as a cause which has effi cacy in creating and ensur-ing this “being so” by its own power, and this is just what the most basic of all Buddhist

brook ziporyn

258

ideas, the doctrine of dependent co-arising, and the concomitant denial of self-nature, excludes. The state of affairs would be the cause; the fact that the state of affairs is thus and so, is unambiguously one way or another, would be the effect – a one-to-one cau-sality that is defi nitely excluded by all Buddhist theory from the Abidhamma on. “This cup is red” means “this cup alone is the cause of the redness attributed to the cup.” This is what it would mean to have a “self-nature” – i.e., a self-determining essence. But every view about “the way things are,” on any level of abstraction, means that it is the self-determining essence for the world to be this way and no other. The essence alone acts as a cause that makes certain determinations and not others the case. Emptiness of self-nature, then, really means simply ontological ambiguity : not the usual epistemo-logical ambiguity, where we assume that in itself each thing is simply what it is, but our perception of it is vague or admits of multiple readings; rather, ontological ambiguity, where any possible something is in and of itself incapable of simply being one way or another to the exclusion of other ways – to be is to be ambiguous. Defi nitive views about reality – that any given thing simply is one way or another, is this or that, in isolation from a relation to other things – are shown to be incoherent and actually meaningless.

N ā g ā rjuna also tells us that the teaching of emptiness is dangerous if grasped wrongly, like a snake (MMK.24.11). “Grasped wrongly” seems to mean “taken as a defi nitive view about what is so,” as if “empty” were a property that belongs to things in a single-cause, self-nature way. Emptiness is also empty, and those who cling to the view of emptiness are declared incurable. The absence of self-determining essence should not itself be viewed as a self-determining essence. This means that the view that things are “empty,” and all propositions to that effect, is only the highest (i.e., most powerfully effective) conventional truth. Ultimate truth is itself not a description of any facts, and regarded as a description it is merely a conventional truth. Ultimate truth is neither “emptiness” nor “not-emptiness.” These are, as they say, mere “concepts.” But a concept is precisely what we normally call a truth : a proposition about what predicates actually, unambiguously, in all contexts, from all perspectives , apply to a particular entity – the essence or marks of that thing, which it alone, simply by being what it is, makes it so. This is what “objective” means: that things are so on their own , without the par-ticipation of some other , some observer, some perspective. Clinging to emptiness, attach-ment to emptiness, means no more and no less than regarding emptiness as objectively true . “Clinging” and “assuming something to be objectively true” are synonyms.

There is of course an obvious self-contradiction here , the usual relativism paradox: is it true that there is no truth? The answer is that it is true only in the way in which truth is defi ned in Buddhism: saying so is conducive to the liberation of living beings from suffering. Contradiction is no objection to this kind of truth. Another contradic-tion: is it always true that this way of talking and viewing is conducive to ending suf-fering? This is where, as we shall see shortly, Tiantai provides a further insight.

To understand this, we must be clear on the exact criterion for conventional truth. Conventional truth is what is conducive to the end of suffering. The end of suffering is the end of all statements and views. So conventional truth is precisely those views that are conducive to ending all views . Like the raft, they are self-transcending, and this alone is the criterion of what makes any statement count as a truth at all. If it did not contradict itself, it would not be a truth. That is, if, when taken literally and fully unpacked, it

the three truths in tiantai buddhism

259

allowed one to continue to cling to it as a consistent statement about how the world really is, it would ipso facto not be a truth – i.e., a conventional truth, a statement or belief that leads to its own overcoming. And conventional truth is the only kind of truth that is describable or speakable at all . Hence, only those statements and beliefs that lead to their own self-cancellation are true. Only self-contradictions are true.

Note that, on this Two Truths theory, not all statements are included in conventional truth. What is excluded are cosmological theories, statements meant to be taken literally about how the world is, how the world began, what the world is made of. These are not conventional truths, much less ultimate truths, because they do not lead to their own self-overcoming, they do not encode their own demise. They claim to be literal repre-sentations of how the world really is, without qualifi cation. Precisely because they do not contradict themselves, they cannot be truths. They are, for N ā g ā rjuna, just plain falsehoods or errors.

This changes decisively in Tiantai Buddhism, which takes its clue from N ā g ā rjuna, but as read through the lens of the up ā ya theory of the Lotus S ū tra . Simply stated, if we assume N ā g ā rjuna ’ s model of truth, the distinction between the three categories of his Two Truth system falls apart. Again, those three are: (1) just plain false state-ments, such as the metaphysical and theological-religious theories of non-Buddhists, absolutist claims of science, etc. – all theory, in short, which is not inherently self-transcending; (2) conventional truths such as untheorized common-sensical everyday language, which says “I” and “you” and “cause and effect” but without claiming a theory or systematic objective worldview to unpack them consistently, fuzzy around the edges; and (3) further conventional truths of Buddhist rhetoric, including the concept of emptiness. Above and beyond all of these is ultimate truth, which has no cognitive content at all, but is determined precisely as the leaving behind of all con-ventional truth. The criterion of truth, recall, was “what is conducive to liberation from suffering” – which means, what will, if given full play, contradict and cancel itself, serving as a vehicle by which to pass beyond itself, like a raft. So (2) and (3) are both truths (conventional truth), while (1) is just false. Ultimate truth, on the other hand, is the end of suffering, and thus also given the honorifi c name of truth, though it has no propositional content. The negation of all the propositional content of the other categories, falsehood and conventional truth, is not to be viewed as a propositional content in its own right. So it stands for N ā g ā rjuna (on most but not all readings of MMK.18.6).

In Tiantai, however, this same criterion of truth is now applied across the board. Category 1 also can serve as a raft – and, in fact, all purported metaphysical systems, while claiming to arrive at a consistent, non-self-contradictory complete objective view of the universe, can all be shown to fail in their own terms : they can be shown to con-tradict themselves when taken absolutely seriously and when their key theoretical terms are absolutized. Even purportedly unsurpassable absolute claims are truths, for precisely their claims to absoluteness is what undermines their absoluteness and allows them to serve as a raft beyond themselves. Tiantai theory uses N ā g ā rjuna ’ s method to perform these instances of reductio ad absurdum on all existing theories. But the dem-onstration that they contradict themselves is not meant to show that they are false; rather, it is precisely what shows that they are true ! For “true,” as we have seen, simply means “capable of leading beyond itself, capable of destroying itself, conducive to the

brook ziporyn

260

move beyond all clinging to fi xed views, conducive to ending suffering.” When a meta-physical view is shown to involve contradictions, it is shown to be a conventional truth rather than a mere falsehood: it serves as a raft to the abandoning of views. Further-more, categories (2) and (3) are also not always effective as rafts. There are infi nite sentient beings with infi nite differing needs, and in some circumstances one view will work (to transcend itself and all views) while in other circumstances others will work. Even “ordinary speech” and “emptiness” are not always true (for “true” means only “conducive to . . . ”). All three categories can serve as rafts leading beyond themselves, while none of them always does so. So the buddhas preach both self and non-self, not because one is conventional and the other is ultimate truth (as MMK.18.6, might lend itself to being read, both pointing to the higher neither-self-nor-non-self of experienced ultimate truth): both are conventional truths, meaning that both can, in given circum-stances, lead to the dropping of both views. Neither is intrinsically more true than the other (for to be “intrinsically” anything would be to have a self-nature). Hence we have the other enormous change in Tiantai: ultimate truth is no longer “beyond” conven-tional truth, no longer a “higher” truth. They are equal, and in fact the very idea of “ultimate truth” is itself a conventional truth. However, they are not only equal. The most radical Tiantai move is that conventional and ultimate truth are identical . They have exactly the same content . Whatever is conventional truth is also ultimate truth, and vice versa. Indeed, this is the only kind of truth there is.

This point is illustrated nicely in the interpretation of the story of the lost son from chapter 4 of the Saddharmapundarikas ū tra (known in Chinese as Miaofalianhuajing and in English usually as The Lotus S ū tra ), offered by Zhiyi, the founder of Tiantai Buddhism. The Lotus S ū tra has just announced that all the Buddha ’ s disciples are bodhisattvas – buddhas-to-be, nascent buddhas – even those who are not aware of being so or in fact explicitly deny that they are so (namely the disciples, called Ś r ā vakas, of what is polemi-cally called here the “Lesser Vehicle” – the teaching aimed at achieving arhatship, at transcending forever the suffering of the wheel of samsara, instead of remaining life-time after lifetime in the world as bodhisattvas and eventually becoming buddhas, as is aspired to by the disciples of the “Great Vehicle,” or “Mahayana”). In this story, Ś ā riputra offers a parable to explain the impact of this news for himself and his fellow Ś r ā vakas. Now that we have heard this Lotus S ū tra , which proclaims that all along, unbeknown to ourselves, we have been working towards buddhahood, he says, we realize that we are like a son who, while still a youth, had been separated from his father, went off on his own, and became lost. The father searches all over for him, but fi nally gives up in despair; he can fi nd him nowhere. Instead he settles in a certain town and becomes very rich. Meanwhile the son has to fend for himself and lives hand to mouth in extreme poverty, taking whatever odd jobs come his way. In his wanderings, quite by chance, he eventually comes to the gate of his father ’ s opulent mansion. He is greatly intimi-dated by the splendor of this palatial estate, seeing nothing there that seems remotely relatable to his own condition; this is someone as different from himself as imaginable, someone with whom he has nothing at all in common. Indeed, he fears this must be a king of some sort, a person of great authority and might who will force him into mili-tary service or corvée labor if he doesn ’ t fl ee as quickly as possible. The father, instantly recognizing this broken impoverished man at the gate as his own long lost son, is over-joyed. He sends his servants to apprehend him – but the son is terrifi ed and falls into a

the three truths in tiantai buddhism

261

faint. Realizing that his son has forgotten his own identity and is in no condition to take in the news, he devises a “skillful means”: the son is allowed to return to the poor part of town, and two ragged-looking messengers are sent, pretending to be searching ran-domly for cheap day laborers, paid at the minimum wage. This the son can accept; it accords with his own concept of himself and his worth. He takes the job, and works shoveling out manure for 20 years.

The father, of course, represents the Buddha. The son represents Ś ā riputra and the other Ś r ā vakas disciples. Though the text is a little vague on this point, it makes sense to assume that the father was not yet rich at the time of the estrangement: the Buddha and all sentient beings began together as sentient beings, bound by consanguinity, in the same state of samsara. During their separation, the father gets rich – the Buddha becomes enlightened. But his bond with all beings from before that time, as one deluded suffering being among them, remains. Shoveling the manure is a metaphor for the practice of the Ś r ā vaka path – cleaning out delusion, just trying to get pure, with no greater purpose or positive goal beyond that – a rather shocking critique of earlier Buddhism!

Sometimes the father himself dresses in ragged clothes, impersonating a foreman, and goads the son to work hard or compliments his diligence. Sometime later, the father tells the son that, because he ’ s been such a good laborer, he ’ s being promoted to a “house” servant, no longer having to labor in the muck.

The irony here, of course, is that the real reason the son gets promoted has nothing to do with the quality of his work. He was a blood son from the beginning; he is just gradually coming into his own patrimony. Similarly, the Ś r ā vakas think that their progress on the path is due to their good work, that they have attained something new, that their state of relative peace and small enlightenment is achieved by their practices; actually, it is a meager fi rst taste of what was always already theirs, which they are only gradually getting mentally prepared to accept as their own.

In fact, the son is made treasurer of the estate. His job will be to oversee all the busi-ness transactions, to know exactly what the father owns, and all his expenditures and income.

This is a metaphor for the Ś r ā vakas' knowledge of the Bodhisattva Way and the glory of the buddhas, and even their retelling of it to others: they were “counting someone else ’ s treasure,” could enumerate all these qualities, but thought that it all pertained to another, not realizing they were enumerating things about themselves, about their own possessions, their own destiny.

The father tells his trusty accountant that he is “like a son” to him – just as the Buddha “metaphorically” describes his students as his children. But then, on his death-bed, the father calls a meeting of all sorts of kings and dignitaries and offi cially announces the truth: this man is my own blood son, and always has been. All that I have, I leave to him: all these treasures he ’ s been counting belong to him! And always have!

The key point to note here, in the context of our present discussion, is, as Zhiyi points out, that the status of the “skillful means” is confi gured here very differently than it is in the Two Truths schema of emptiness theory, the “raft” model, where the means are transcended and discarded once the goal is reached. The resources of the estate are what the father uses as a skillful means to draw his son to the fi nal recognition of his

brook ziporyn

262

own status, to his fi nal enlightenment – the servants, the buildings, the treasury. But these are not abandoned when the son fi nally does come into his inheritance. On the contrary, these are the inheritance! This means that what one is enlightened to when one is enlightened is not the dropping away of all skillful means, the letting go of the raft, the transcendence of all determinate phenomenal concepts, ideas, practices, forms. Rather, these things are the very content of enlightenment. Enlightenment is not the renunciation of skillful means. Enlightenment is the mastery of all skillful means, the integration of skillful means, the more thorough possession of them, rather than the discarding or elimination of them. Conventional truth is not what you renounce when you reach ultimate truth, as in the parable of the raft and the Two Truths theory. Conventional truth is what you get when you reach ultimate truth. The content of the two is the same. Ultimate truth is simply a name for the totality of con-ventional truths and the virtuosic mastery of being able to move unobstructed from one conventional truth to another, as the situation demands, to the comprehension of the way they fi t together or can function together, or the way in which they are each, as it were, “versions” of the other. Ultimate truth is the non-obstruction between con-ventional truths, the fact that they all interpenetrate, that in their non-absoluteness each is simply a different way of saying what the others say. Ultimate truth is the free fl ow of conventional truths, their co-presence in spite of their apparent oppositeness (e.g., you are a worker, you are a son).

For Tiantai, “conventional truth” means “anything that can be conducive to the elimination of suffering – which is clinging, attachment, desire, and fi xed views of objectivity.” Not “will” or “must,” but “can.” For no idea, not even “emptiness,” always conduces thereto. It is situational, and this is the sole criterion and meaning of truth. Now, given this defi nition, anything and everything is a conventional truth: anything can , under the right conditions, dislodge an attachment and lead to less suffering. Nothing always does so, but everything, without exception, in the right context, can do so. Everything, without exception, is therefore a conventional truth. But conven-tional truth, as we just saw, is in Tiantai not merely a means to ultimate truth, but is ultimate truth itself. Ultimate truth is just the coexistence and maximally skillful appli-cation of any and all conventional truths. Since everything is conventional truth, everything is ultimate truth. But they are ultimate truth because of their interpenetra-tion and mutual non-obstruction, because what would be mutually exclusive if taken as “truths,” in the sense of “corresponding to how things really are simpliciter , inde-pendently of any other factors, including experiencers of them as such,” are now seen to be true in the sense of “conducive to liberation from suffering sometimes.” This renders their coexistence not only possible but necessary for ultimate truth. Ultimate truth is the co-presence of what would, on the naïve “objective” defi nition of truth, be contradictory (self/non-self, son/worker, suffering/bliss, permanence/impermanence, samsara/nirvana, etc.), the interchangeability of the two apparently contradictory forms of conventional truth. This is the Mean, the Center – the Third Truth.

In the Tiantai “Three Truths” theory, in contrast to the Two Truths model, instead of concluding that every particular view and proposition and thing is ultimately false, we conclude that all is, ultimately, true. Every possible view is equally a truth. There is no longer a hierarchy between the levels and no category of plain falsehood. Zhiyi, the de facto founder of the Tiantai school, teases out the transition from Two to Three Truths

the three truths in tiantai buddhism

263

in his Fahuaxuanyi by delineating seven distinct modes of understanding the Two Truths model:

1 The Conventional Truth is that there exist real entities. The Ultimate Truth is [what is revealed when] these real entities cease to exist.

2 The Conventional Truth is that all that exists is illusory. The Ultimate Truth is that these illusory existences are [already] devoid of a self-

determining essence [i.e., “empty”]. 3 The Conventional Truth is that all that exists is illusory.

The Ultimate Truth is that these illusory existences are at once both devoid of self-determining essence and not devoid of self-determining essence [“empty and non-empty”].

4 The Conventional Truth is that all that exists is illusory. The Ultimate Truth is that these illusory existences are all at once both devoid

of self-determining essence and not devoid of self-determining essence at once, and that for something to be at once both devoid and not devoid of self-determining essence is to have all possible phenomena converge into [and discoverable within] it.

5 The Conventional Truth is that all that exists is illusory and that all these illusory existences are devoid of self-determining essence.

The Ultimate Truth is that all this illusory existence is neither devoid of self-determining essence nor existent as some particular essence.

6 The Conventional Truth is that all that exists is illusory and that all these illusory existences are devoid of self-determining essence.

The Ultimate Truth is that all this illusory existence is neither devoid of self-determining essence nor existent as some particular essence, and that for some-thing to be neither devoid of self-determining essence nor as some particular essence is to have all possible phenomena converge into [and discoverable within] it.

7 The Conventional Truth is that all that exists as some particular essence is illusory and that all these illusory existences are devoid of self-determining essence.

The Ultimate Truth is that all this illusory existence is neither devoid of self-determining essence nor existent as some particular essence, and that for some-thing to be devoid of self-determining essence is to have all phenomena converge into [and fi ndable within] it; and that for something to exist as some particular essence is to have all phenomena converge into [and fi ndable within] it; and that for something to be neither devoid of self-determining essence nor existent as some particular essence is to have all phenomena converge into [and fi ndable within] it. 3

From number 4 onwards, we fi nd two new ideas being added to the traditional Two Truths. First is the idea of a third thing which is neither one extreme nor the other, neither an affi rmation nor a negation of how things appear within a particular con-ventional framework, or which is both simultaneously: a “neither/nor” or “both/and” judgment on what had previously been opposed as conventional and ultimate truth (and thus as means and ends) in the previous levels. This is the Third Truth, which in Tiantai is called “the Center” or “Middle.” And second is the idea that somehow this implies that “all possible phenomena converge into [and are discoverable within]

brook ziporyn

264

something”: fi rst this “Center” alone, but fi nally, in the seventh level, as in the mature Tiantai Three Truth theory, in all three of the other determinations, and indeed in all determinations without exception. This is the derivation of the idea of mutual penetra-tion and interfusion, the idea that all possible entities interpervade that is so distinctive to the Tiantai and Huayan schools of Chinese Buddhism.

The Center is said to denote “the identity” between conventional truth and ultimate truth – the idea that they are synonyms, that “conventional” and “empty” are alternate words for one and the same meaning. But this is a peculiar type of “sameness,” and we cannot understand in what sense this sameness implies “all possible entities converge into and are fi ndable in” the Center, the second of the new ideas in Tiantai Three Truths theory, unless we understand in just what sense these two are “the same.” This peculiar mode of sameness is explained in the Tiantai doctrine of “opening the provisional to reveal the real” ( kaiquan xianshi ). This is a means of further specifying the relation between local coherence and global incoherence, illustrating the way in which these are not only synonymous but also irrevocably opposed, and indeed identical only by means of their opposition. Provisional truth is the antecedent, the premise, and indeed in a distinctive sense the cause of ultimate truth, but only because it is the strict exclusion of ultimate truth.

The clearest way to explain this structure is to compare it to the contrasting relation between the setup and the punch line of a joke. To use a suitably silly example:

Setup : It takes money to make money. Punch line : Because you have to copy it really exactly.

Let ’ s talk about that structure. When I said, “It takes money to make money,” it seemed as if, and it was interpreted as, a serious remark, a real piece of information, perhaps about investment strategies or the like. It had the quality of seriousness, of factuality, of non-ironic information. It does not strike anyone as funny; there is nothing funny about that statement. But, when the punch line comes, retrospectively, that setup is funny. That setup is funny because it has been recontextualized by the pun on the word “make,” which is made to have more than one identity when put into a new context.

The interesting thing here, most closely relevant to relation of identity between conventional and ultimate in the Tiantai Three Truths, is that it is precisely by not being funny that the setup was funny. In other words, if it were already funny, if you didn ’ t take it seriously for at least a moment, the contrast between the two different meanings of this thing could never have clashed in the way that is necessary to make the laughter, to create the actual effect of humorousness. We have a setup, which is serious, and a punch line, which is funny, but, when you look back at the setup from the vantage point of having heard the punch line, that setup is also funny . After all, we don ’ t say that just the punch line is funny. We say the whole joke is funny. The setup is funny, however, in the very strange mode of “not being funny yet.” It is only funny because it wasn ’ t funny. This is the sense in which the Third Truth, the Mean, reveals the “identity” between provisional positing and emptiness. Provisional positing is emptiness only inasmuch as it is the very opposite of emptiness, the temporary exclusion of emptiness. It is by being non-empty (i.e., something in particular) that it is emptiness (i.e., devoid of any unambiguous or unconditionally self-determining self-nature). It is only because

the three truths in tiantai buddhism

265

it is locally coherent that it is globally incoherent. Its global incoherence is present as local coherence, just as humor is present in the deadpan setup as seriousness. This same form of “identity” – really neither identity nor difference, or both identity and difference – then applies at the meta-level between the Center itself and the other Two Truths: they “are” the Center precisely because they are not the Center, because they are the two opposed extremes.

The same structure is applied in the Tiantai reading of The Lotus S ū tra . You ’ re enlightened! That is what Mahayana Buddhism says – everyone is enlightened! Every-body is a buddha! But the way in which you are a buddha is the way in which the setup of a joke is funny: you are a buddha precisely by not being a buddha. By desiring and struggling to become something you are not – whether buddhahood or something else – but in addition by revisualizing or recontextualizing or expanding awareness of that struggle, the details of dealing with conditions and suffering which constitute that struggle are not just a means to buddhahood, they are buddhahood itself. They are themselves buddhahood qua the life of a sentient being, expressing itself in the form of the life of a sentient being, as the funniness of a joke is expressed in, present in, the serious unfunniness of its setup.

The “provisional,” conventional truth, local coherence, is the setup. The “ultimate truth,” emptiness, global incoherence, ontological ambiguity, is the punch line. What is important here is to preserve both the contrast between the two and their ultimate identity in sharing the quality of humorousness that belongs to every atom of the joke considered as a whole, once the punch line has been revealed. The setup is serious, while the punch line is funny. The funniness of the punch line depends on the seriousness of the setup and on the contrast and difference between the two. However, once the punch line has occurred, it is also the case that the setup is, retrospectively, funny. This also means that the original contrast between the two is both preserved and annulled: neither funniness nor seriousness means the same thing after the punch line dawns, for their original meanings depended on the mutually exclusive nature of their defi ning contrast. Is the setup serious or funny? It is both: it is funny as serious and serious as funny. Is the punch line serious or funny? It is both, but in an interestingly different way. It is obviously funny, but is it also serious? Yes. Why? Because now that the setup has occurred, both “funny” and “serious” have different meanings. Originally, we thought that “funny” meant “what is laughed at when heard,” or something like that, and “serious” meant “what gives me non-funny information,” or something similar. But now we see that “funny” can also mean: “What I take to be serious, what I am not laughing about, what I am earnestly considering, or crying over, or bewailing even.” But this means also that “serious” means “what can turn out to be either funny or serious.” So both “funny” and “serious” now both mean “funny-and-serious, what can appear as both funny and serious.” Each is now a center that subsumes the other; they are intersubsumptive. As a consequence, the old pragmatic standard of truth is applied more liberally here: all claims, statements, and positions are true in the sense that all can , if properly recontextualized, lead to liberation – which is to say, to their own self-overcoming. Conversely, none will lead to liberation if not properly contextualized.

We can restate the above somewhat more formulaically as follows. Every phenomenal object is a coherence: that is, it is a joining (cohering) of dispa-

rate elements – (1) the factors that comprise it, its internal parts, or (2) its temporal

brook ziporyn

266

antecedents, or (3) its contrasting conceptual contexts (i.e., its qualitative contrast to whatever it is “not,” which is regarded as essential to its determination as this particular entity). Context and content are in the same boat on this view, in that, for this object to appear phenomenally – to be “coherent” or legible, discernible – requires the coming together of multiple factors: fi gure and ground, elements in a structure, causal conditions. What is crucial here is that these factors are heterogene-ous and differ phenomenally in some discernible way from the object they come to constitute.

Every coherence is a local coherence: it remains coherent as such and such only within a limited horizon of relevance. That is, its legibility depends on the fi xing of a certain scale, frame, or focal orientation; its identity as this precise thing depends phe-nomenally on restricting the ways in which it is viewed or the number of other factors which are viewed in tandem with it.

Every local coherence is globally incoherent. When all contexts are taken into account at once, and all applications and aspects are brought to bear, the original coherence vanishes into ambiguity.

Every globally incoherent local coherence subsumes all other local coherences. Every subsuming is an intersubsumption. Each entity is readable as every other

entity, as part of every other entity, and as the whole that subsumes all other entities as its parts. Each entity is identifi able, ontologically ambiguous, and all-pervaded as all-pervading.

In the story of the lost son from chapter 4 of The Lotus S ū tra , the “skillful means” (the resources of the father ’ s estate) were not just what gets the son to the realization of enlightenment but also what he actually received when he got there. In the same way, “conventional truth” in Tiantai is not something to be left behind when we reach enlightenment, but rather what is obtained and mastered there. Moreover, nothing is left out of it – all possible statements, viewpoints, ideas, concepts, positions are conven-tional truths. The criterion is still the same: all things can be used as “skillful means” to lead to buddhahood, just as even Ś r ā vakahood and the behavior of Devadatta, the extreme rejection of the Buddha, were in fact causes and antecedents to the attainment of buddhahood. So now we have Three Truths, which are not a raft-like instrument to get beyond all statements and concepts, and a fi nal higher truth that allows us to have no biased and particular view of things, but rather three true ways of viewing any particular thing. However you may be viewing a particular part of the world or the world as a whole, it is “conventionally” true. There are not just a few conventional truths but an infi nite number of them, even when they are directly opposed and con-tradictory. So, in Two Truths theory, we would say that “This is a cup” is conventionally true and that “This cup is empty” is a higher conventional truth, which fi nally leads us to a direct inconceivable experience of the emptiness of this cup and the liberation from all suffering. If I were to point to this “cup” and say, “This is an elephant,” however, that would not even be a conventional truth, because that is not how most people think of it. That would be a plain error. And if I said, “This is an expression of the will of God,” that would also be an error, not even a conventional truth, since it tried to make a claim beyond that of conventional usage to an ultimate, universally applicable, absolute truth. But, in Tiantai Three Truths theory, it is just as true to say, “This is an elephant,” as to say, “This is a cup.” And neither of these is less true than saying, “This

the three truths in tiantai buddhism

267

is empty,” or indeed any less true than “experiencing” the emptiness of this cup/elephant.

In both cases, what I have is a locally coherent way of viewing this thing – it just means that it looks that way from some perspective, within some set of parameters, for some length of time. It doesn ’ t matter any more whether those parameters are shared by the common sense of a particular community or speech group; all that matters is that it is possible to make it look that way, that it looks that way from anywhere , for even one moment . In Two Truths and emptiness theory, nothing is really true. In Tiantai Three Truths theory, everything is true. We don ’ t need an extra “emptiness” outside of this locally coherent way of seeing things; emptiness just means that whatever is locally coherent is also, ipso facto , globally in coherent. That is, when all factors are taken into consideration, the original way any thing appears is no longer unambiguously present.

To understand this, consider the following. What is this symbol?

O

What is it now?

− 1 − 2 O 1 2

What is it now?

MN

− 1 − 2 O 1 2PQ

When we looked at the original symbol together with only one context, it had a clear identity: it was the number zero. But when we added another context at the same time, the fi gure became ambiguous: it could now be read as either a zero or the letter O. As we keep adding more contexts, its identity becomes more and more ambiguous. And when we consider all things in the universe at the same time, the initial identities we assigned to them are supplemented by more and more ambiguity. Looking at just the single series of letters, it was a zero: this is local coherence. When I see this cup simply as a cup, I am doing the same thing: ignoring a lot of other factors, contexts, points of view, ways of viewing, and narrowing down the relevant factors to allow it to appear as a single unambiguous something: a cup. If I consider the molecules of which it is made, or the energy it expresses, or the uses to which it might be put in the context of various narratives, or its deep past and deep future, its “cupness” becomes ambiguous: it is simultaneously lots of other things, part of many different stories. It is a blip on the screen of energy transformations, or a murder weapon, or an art object, or a door-stop. The same is true of yourself, and your actions right now. They are unambiguous only to the extent that we narrow our vision around them. This is the meaning of emptiness in Tiantai: ontological ambiguity. The term “ambiguity” usually refers only to how we see things. We assume that, in themselves, all things are simply what they

brook ziporyn

268

are; but we may have an unclear view of something; we can ’ t yet tell if it ’ s this or that. We assume that, at least in principle, it must be one or the other. The idea of emptiness is the idea that this is true “ontologically”: that is, it pertains to the very being of things. To say they are empty does not mean they are a blank – for that would be a defi nite something. It means that they are, in themselves, ambiguous . Put another way, every-thing is more than it seems to be, or than it can seem to be, no matter from what angles it is seen, no matter how thoroughly it is known, no matter how comprehensive a sum of information is gathered about it. It has the character of being a “something” (a cup, a chair, an elephant), with a number of specifi able characteristics, but every “some-thing,” just to be there as something, has the additional characteristic of “moretoitiv-ity” – of always overfl owing whatever is determined about it, of being more than what can be seen from any angle.

This “more,” however, does not leave the original “known” part unchanged. Rather, it recontextualizes it. We are always seeing the tip of an iceberg. But even the “tip” is no longer what we thought it was before we knew it was a tip of something more. Imagine that you come upon what looks like a white marble lying on the ground. You experience it as round, as small, as white, and immediately you construct a lived atti-tude towards it – something that can be picked up, rolled, played with, pocketed. But then you go to pick it up and fi nd that it is stuck to the ground. You cannot lift it. You try to dig it out and fi nd that it extends downwards, further than you can dig: it is the tip of a larger item. It appears to be a long rod or cylindrical pipe of some kind. But, as you dig further, you fi nd that after about 5 inches of narrow thinness it starts to expand outwards; it is a spire on top of a cone. This cone expands outwards as you keep digging down. When you get about 20 feet down, the cone ends, embedded in a soft, scaly material. Then the earth rumbles and an enormous two-horned monster emerges from underground; it is 500 feet tall, and each of its horns is 20 feet high, with a long sharp tip. You had been digging out one of the horns. What you had seen as a marble on the ground was in fact the very tip of one of the horns. Now look again at that tip. You had experienced it as round. But it turns out it was not round at all: it is sharp. Yet it has not changed at all: you are still seeing what you saw. It is not white, either: the tip had looked white against the ground, but now, looking at the monster ’ s horn as whole, you see it as a pattern of mostly green spots interspersed here and there with white: looked at as a whole, the horn, including its tip, looks green. Nor is it movable, pocketable, playwithable – it is rather dangerous, razor sharp, to be avoided. And yet nothing of what you saw was taken away: it was just supplemented with further information, with its larger context.

Tiantai views all things this way. To see something is to see “not-all” of it. We are always seeing a little fragment of the world, but every bit of the world is changed by the fact that it is a part of the world, is recontextualized by the rest of the world, by the rest of space and the rest of time. In fact, if we ever saw all, we would see nothing. For to see, to take something as “there,” as “real,” is to place it within a context, to contrast it to something outside of itself, something which is not it. To see all is to see nothing. If I were to say that the entire universe is “round,” this would make no sense. This round would not be round: for round requires a non-round outside it to be round. It would have to be bordered by something to shape it into roundness, but the universe would also include that outside-the-roundness part. If I were to say the entire

the three truths in tiantai buddhism

269

universe is sharp, this would also make no sense. This sharp would not be sharp; for sharp requires a non-sharp outside it to be sharp. To say the whole universe is sharp, then, means no more and no less than saying the whole universe is round. We can make no specifi c determinations about the whole, about the entire universe, for that outside of which nothing exists; for all particular specifi cations require a contrast to something outside of them. Everything we can say or think comes from the realm of the fi nite and cannot be applied to the infi nite. But the Tiantai point is that we cannot speak of anything fi nite without also involving some determination of the Whole, of the infi nite. If I were to say this thing is sharp, I would have to be assuming that “the whole universe is such that this thing is sharp.” I cannot say that the whole universe cannot be “such that this marble is sharp” any more than the whole universe can be “sharp.” But this also means I cannot say the whole universe is “such that this marble is not-sharp.” Either is equally legitimate, either is equally illegitimate. What I can say, then, is that “this marble appears to be round, but round is such that it is always turning out also to be more than round, to be non-round, and vice versa. Roundness is moretoitive. Round and non-round intersubsume each other.”

The Three Truths, then, are actually three different ways of looking at any object or state. Each implies the other two, and each is one way to describe the whole of that object, including its other two aspects. This cup is a cup : that is provisional truth, con-ventional truth, local coherence. This cup is not a cup : that is ultimate truth, its empti-ness, its global incoherence. To be a cup is not to be a cup: that is its Centrality, its Non-duality, its Absoluteness. To be a cup is to be any other locally coherent thing or state: a non-cup, an elephant, a superhighway, a chair, perfect enlightenment: that is the further implication of Centrality, the intersubsumption of all coherences, the pres-ence of all in and as each. This cup is all things, all possible ways of being, all universes, as this cup. You are the entire world and all states of all things seen from all possible angles as you.

Notes

1 Although quite a few European systems, beginning with Plato, admit the permissibility of a kind of “pious fraud” – the promulgation of doctrines and ideas that are not strictly true but which are of value for the education or control of masses of people who are unequipped to access philosophical truth – this is presented not, strictly speaking, as an alternate type of truth, but as falsehood which is nonetheless morally good to propagate in certain situations. It may be true that it is good to propagate this falsehood, but this is not the same as saying that this falsehood is itself a kind of truth.

2 It should be noted as well that the endeavor to end suffering is itself something one may choose to embark upon or not; Buddhism is good and true only to the extent that this is one ’ s goal. It may be that all goals can be (not “must be”) reduced to this goal – all human activity can be seen (not “must be seen”) as various attempts to reduce suffering in one way or another. But this is different from asserting that something that is useful for this goal is true or good outside of the context of having adopted this goal explicitly.

3 Zhiyi, Miaofalianhuajing xuan yi , in Taisho Tripitaka [T] 33.702c.