signs of liberation - a semiotic approach to wisdom in chinese madhyamika buddhism

brian bocking and youxuan wang

SIGNS OF LIBERATION?—A SEMIOTICAPPROACH TO WISDOM IN CHINESE

MADHYAMIKA BUDDHISM

Introduction

In emptiness: there is . . . no ignorance nor ending of ignorance [upto] no ageing and death nor ending of ageing and death, no sufferingnor cause of suffering, nor ending of suffering, and no path, nowisdom and no attainment, because there is nothing obtainable.(The Heart Sutra)

“Wisdom,” as Foucault would remind us, is a word of power. It hasstrategic uses and carries no certificate of veridity. Asserting that aparticular lineage of thought and practice, whether Confucian, Islamic,Buddhist, Native American, Humanist,Taoist, etc., is a “wisdom tradi-tion” presupposes a contested ground. What is “wisdom” to one maybe “superstition” or even “ignorance” to another. The unsupportedtestimony of saints and sages in one context may be regarded as areliable source of knowledge, in another it may not. “Conventionalwisdom” is even a term of disparagement. Buddhism, viewed herephilosophically as a path to wisdom rather than a congeries of culturaltraditions, presumes a recognition on the part of the investigator thathe or she needs to be liberated; that is, needs to acquire wisdom.However, “ignorance (Sk: avidya, Ch: wuminga)” in Buddhist thoughtrefers not to a simple shortage of information but to a lack of aware-ness of one’s predicament as a sentient being, and this is first of all amatter of karmic maturation, unrelated to philosophical ability orscientific knowledge.1

Modern scholars have been interested in Buddhist wisdom orinsight (prajña, boreb etc.)2 as part of the rationalist project of sub-jecting Buddhism, along with other religio-philosophical systems, tothe scrutiny of reason. Depending on one’s perspective, Buddhist

BRIAN BOCKING, professor, the Study of Religions, Department of the Study ofReligions, SOAS, University of London. Specialties: Chinese Madhyamika, Sino-JapaneseBuddhist thought, and Japanese religions. E-mail: [email protected]. YOUXUAN WANG,research associate, Department of the Study of Religions, SOAS, University of London.Specialties: Chinese thought; Buddhist logic, and comparative literature. E-mail:[email protected]; [email protected]

© 2006 Journal of Chinese Philosophy

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wisdom may be thought entirely sui generis (e.g., inseparable fromcompassion and the peculiarly Buddhist idea of skillful means),3 or asclosely analogous to conceptions of gnosis in, for example, Vedanta,Sufism, or Jainism. Wisdom may also be generalized as the Englishname for a common spiritual heritage of humankind that can, inprinciple, be discerned under many different religious clothes.4

However, strictly speaking, as a master sign in the Buddhist dis-course, the term “wisdom” should be understood in the context of aproject of achieving spiritual freedom. Buddhist teachings affirm thatthe fundamental condition of our existence, in a world constantlythreatened by problems of instability and uncertainty, is suffering.Theultimate cause of our suffering is not, however, undesirable eventsthat may externally befall us; such events are either acts of nature forwhich no specific individual is responsible, or the karmic actions ofother sentient beings who will eventually be held to account. Oursuffering in the human world—experiencing anxiety, frustration,illness, etc.—is rather the consequence of actions for which we our-selves are morally responsible. As unenlightened sentient beings,we follow the principle of seeking worldly pleasure, attempting tosatisfy desires that are limitless and cannot be satisfied. Thus, we floaton the river of suffering as we are born, grow old, die, and are bornagain in a new—but the same—birth–death cycle. The root of ourunreasonable desires is our ignorance, and the antidote to ignoranceis wisdom. Hence, wisdom and ignorance are the two terms of a binaryopposition that runs through the entire Buddhist discourse onwisdom.

In this article, we trace a semiotic strand in the distinctively ChineseMadhyamika Buddhist articulation of the notion of wisdom,5 arguingthat, for the Buddhists, ignorance is a form of attachment, and theobjects of attachments are signs. Wisdom, therefore, is a form ofinsight into the empty nature of signs. Different schools of Buddhismhave articulated different approaches to signs. In general, doctrinesemphasized by the Hinayana6 schools (as these are viewed byMahayanists) advocate a rationalist approach. These doctrines distin-guish three grades of understanding: (i) mere sense perception, whichis typical of the vulgar person’s (prthagjana, fanfuc) attempt to graspat signs; (ii) intellect, which overcomes the limitations of the senses;and (iii) wisdom, which is freedom from ignorance. The Mahayanaschools endorse the Hinayana doctrines to the extent that these doc-trines are treated as expedient conceptual constructions, but they alsolevel at the Hinayana school the charge of “grasping at signs.” Fromthe Hinayana perspective, the vulgar person is one who grasps atsense impressions; from the Mahayana point of view, the Hinayanafollower is grasping at a substance where there is no substance. In

376 brian bocking and youxuan wang

what follows, we will describe three semiotic models that are encoun-tered in a number of key Chinese Buddhist texts.We shall look first atthe vulgar semiotic approach, as the object of the Buddhist critique ingeneral. We shall then trace the Hinayana and Mahayana semioticmodels respectively.

Our observations are based mainly on a selection of Abhidharmaand Madhyamika texts which have exerted a huge and direct impact onthe development of Buddhist thought in China, namely,Vasubandhu’sJushe lund (Abhidharma-kosa), Sanghabhadra’s Shun zhengli lune

(Nyayanusara-sastra), Harivarman’s Cheng shi linf (Satyasiddhi-sastra), Nagarjuna’s Dazhidu lung (Mahaprajña-paramita-sastra) andZhong lunh (Madhyamaka-sastra), and Kumarajiva’s letters toHuiyuan Dasheng yizhangi.7 Our critical methods are borrowedmainly from the toolkit of contemporary semiotics, most notablySaussurean structuralism and Derridean deconstruction.8 We areaware that a full understanding of the Buddhist semiotic approach tothe question of wisdom demands a study of the full range of canonicaltexts, but aspects of the main argument presented here are developedin more detail in Youxuan Wang’s Buddhism and Deconstruction:Towards a Comparative Semiotics (2001).9 In recent years scholarshave shown great interest in the relationship between Buddhism,deconstruction,and spiritual freedom,10 with particular attention beingpaid to the specific thematic of signs.11 The present article focuses onthe prominence of the question of signs in the Chinese Buddhistdiscourse on wisdom.

The “Vulgar” Semiotic Model: Grasping at Signs

The notion of ignorance figures in the doctrine of the Twelve CausalLinks which the Buddha reportedly discerned in an extended sessionof meditation under the Bodhi tree. During that session, the Buddhamanaged to recollect many of his previous birth–death cycles, and heidentified in his own previous experience a consistent pattern thatexplains why sentient beings are suffering. He realized that a sentientbeing is driven by desires. It is his/her desires that give rise to rebirthconsciousness, which in turn progressively leads to the developmentof a body and mind as one is born, grows old, and dies. When onebirth–death cycle is completed, a new cycle begins. The behaviorpatterns guided by nescient desires in the previous cycle lead to theformation of ignorance, which in turn serves as the starting point of anew cycle. “Ignorance” is designated as such partly because it is anunconscious moment that predates the rise of consciousness in thebecoming of a sentient being, and partly because it is the immediatecause of uninformed passions such as craving, anger, and delusion.

377semiotic approach to wisdom

According to the doctrine of the Twelve Causal Links, then, igno-rance is not an exclusive characteristic of the vulgar person’s mind. Itis a fundamental quality of all sentient beings, so long as they have notbeen able to break the birth–death cycle. It cannot easily be eliminatedsince it originates from experiences in previous rebirths, and it liessomehow hidden in the unconscious (an idea which was elaborated inthe Yogacara or Mind-only school of Mahayana philosophy). Only theBuddha, who is fully enlightened, and some saints who have achievedthe status of Arhat or Bodhisattva, have cured their own illness ofignorance. If ignorance is often associated with the mind of the vulgarperson in Buddhist texts, it is employed there as a term to encapsulatea certain epistemological paradigm of which we are all guilty.

In Buddhist texts, ignorance is often defined as lack of knowledgeof the Four Noble Truths; that is to say a kind of blindness to the factof suffering as the fundamental condition of the life of a sentientbeing, regardless of social status. The classic symptoms of this illnessare the false notions that a sentient being holds about “I” and “mine.”For an ordinary sentient being, the agent who has feelings of pleasureand pain is the “I” or “self.” His or her physical body, emotions,experiences, and so on are instances of “mine.” An ordinary sentientbeing is said to hold (out of ignorance) four basic positions in relationto his/her sense of “self”: (1) the body is supposed to be pure andclean; (2) the feeling is supposed to be of pleasure; (3) the mind[belonging to this self] is supposed to be constant and permanent; and(4) mental objects are supposed to signify the functioning of an “I”(for only an “I” can see forms, etc.). As these four positions do not infact reflect the fundamental condition of the existence of a sentientbeing in the mundane world according to the Buddha’s perception,they are false. Hence, the term “Four False Views” (viparyasa-catuksa,si diandaoj) is the name applied to the general perspective of anunenlightened sentient being, or a vulgar person. It is these false viewsthat underlie our widespread essentialist “common-sense” percep-tions of self, gender, caste, class, society, and so on.

When describing the vulgar mind in terms of ignorance, Buddhisttexts highlight three main features: (i) the vulgar mind is prone tofollow the principle of worldly desires; (ii) it is incapable of distin-guishing signs from their referents (which in many cases are non-existent); and (iii) it is incapable of appreciating anything beyond thesensible level because it is heavily reliant on the use of the sensesrather than the use of the intellect.

Thus, the Dazhidu lun, like many other Mahayana scriptures,describes a vulgar person as someone who can easily be deceived bya magic illusion, a mirage, a reflection in a mirror, an echo in a hollowvalley, and so on.When such a person travels across the burning desert


and sees something glimmering in the distance, he will take what hesees for the sign of water. Driven by his thirst, he will hasten towardwhat he believes is a lake. He ends up even more thirsty andexhausted when he gets to the spot and finds himself instead in thecenter of a sandstorm, for it turns out that the “water” he saw earlierwas only an optical effect formed by the sun reflecting from clouds ofswirling sand. In this case, the traveler was following his desire toquench his thirst when he responded to an illusion of water. Similarly,a simple moonraker believes that the large white pearl that used tohang high in the sky is now before him in the pond, and he can easilydrag it from the water and grasp it in his hand. In this case, thereflection of the moon is taken literally as the moon itself; the sign andits referent are confused.12

Characteristic of this mode of thinking is picture-thinking, which isan instinctive response to a feeling that has been aroused in the bodyby a mere sense-impression of an object. A vulgar person ignorant ofthe nominal nature of sense-impressions is prone to evoke picture-thinking by uncritically identifying what is perceived here with areality over there. In his Satyasiddhi-sastra, which Kumarajiva (343–413 CE) translated into Chinese (T1646 Cheng shi lun), Harivarmancompares this type of person to a lion who swims back and forthendlessly across a river, always empty-handed because it keeps mis-taking the woodland on the opposite side of the stream for the pres-ence of prey.13

Sense perception is the dominant means of knowledge for a vulgarperson, and all forms of sense perception are contingent upon thesense of touch. In his correspondence with Huiyuan, Kumarajiva linkssense perception with the act of grasping. He explains that althougheach type of sense perception is a function peculiar to a specificfaculty, all types depend ultimately on the sense of touch. For instance,visual perception is the specific function of the eye, and aural percep-tion is the specific function of the ear, and so on. However, senseperception arises only when there is contact between a sense organ(e.g., the eye) and a sensible correlate (e.g., a color). Thus, all senseperceptions are essentially a kind of grasping, because they allemploy the sense of touch. The trouble is that, if our perception ofthe world is limited to our faculty of touch, we will not use our intel-lect to work out deeper truths. A vulgar person who has committeda crime, Kumarajiva points out, will never learn that he has doneanything wrong unless you teach him, not with words, but with a stickor whip.14

Hence, the central image in the Buddhist description of the vulgarsemiotic model is that of grasping. The sign, as grasped by the vulgarperson, is the product of picture-thinking. It is apprehended directly


and uncritically as the desired object itself, which may not even beexistent. When the Buddhist texts describe picture-thinking andsense-perception as quxiangk (laksanagraha) or an attempt to grasp atsigns, they are not merely evoking a metaphor. They are actuallydeveloping a semiological concept on the basis of a psychologicalanalysis: all sense perceptions hinge on the sense of touch.

The Hinayana Semiotic Model: Abandoning the Signs

The Hinayana system of thought is a project of rationalism thatadvocates the cultivation of reason.15 The development of reason isdescribed as a progression from sense perception to rational under-standing. For instance, the San zhuan falun jingl (T109 Sutra on theTurning of the Dharma Wheel, Dharma-cakra-pravartana sutra)describes the understanding of the Four Noble Truths as a three-stepprocess: revelation, resolution, and declaration. In this process, theindividual is first shown the Four Noble Truths. When the truths havebeen revealed, the Buddhist follower resolves to understand them.Having understood them, she/he declares that she/he has understoodthem. Each of these three steps in turn consists of four phases: visualperception, affirmation, clarification, and understanding. The indi-vidual first perceives one particular truth. Having perceived it, she/heaffirms its existence. Having recognized its existence, she/he seeks toclarify the reasons for it. When she/he has found the reasons, she/he issaid to understand it. The idea is that a determinable truth is not onlyavailable within the Buddha’s teachings but can also be read from reallife. You can obtain it either by hearing the Buddha’s discourses andbecoming a Sravaka (a Hearer), or by independently contemplatingreality and becoming a Pratyekabuddha (a self-awakened one). But,either way, you must first perceive the truth with your senses, and thenrationally reflect upon it with your intellect before you can achieve afull insight into reality.

The first step toward an understanding of the Four Noble Truths isto make the distinction between the sensible and intelligible. In thisdistinction, the physical body is revealed to be empty of an “I” or a“mine.” The body is not pure and clean but a bag of filthy rubbish,feeling is in reality pain rather than pleasure, mind is constantlysubject to the law of impermanence, and mental objects are not in factthe signs of a thinking agent or a self. This is the doctrine of the FourCommon Characteristics of All Dharmas (as opposed to the FourFalse Views). In many canonical texts, the Buddha is said to havedemonstrated the nonexistence of “I” and “mine” by talking about thebody–mind complex in terms of the doctrine of the Five Aggregates of


Dharmas (pañcaskandha, wuyunm): matter, feeling, picture-thinking,volition, and consciousness. He demonstrates that what the vulgarperson grasps as the evidence of “I” is only a nominal entity consistingof these five aggregates of factors. If a soul exists, one should be ableto identify it with one of these aggregates of factors. Since it is not anyof the aggregates, there is no soul to be found anywhere.

The distinction between the sensible (form) and the intelligible(notion) also leads to the distinction between the faculty of sense andthe faculty of intellect. An empirical object may manifest itself in avariety of sensible forms: sound, color, smell, and so on. These formsare separate aspects of an object, and as such they are considered as“parts.” Each sense organ is able to perceive only that part which ispeculiar to its faculty, and not a different kind of part. For instance, theeye can see a color, but not a smell. It is the job of the intellect to piecetogether the separate sensible data that are picked up individually bythe different sense organs and form a synthetic picture of the “whole”object. Intellect performs the further function of analyzing an intelli-gible dharma into its imperceptible constituent primary elementssuch as earth, water, fire, air, and the finest particles of these elements.Each element has its distinctive essence that sets it apart from otherelements. Thus, the distinctive essence of fire consists in its propertiesof being able to illuminate and consume another object, while thedistinctive essence of water is its property of being able to moisturizeand dilute, among other things.16

In the Hinayana systems, most notably in the Sarvastivada andSautrantika schools, dharmas at the atomic level are treated as exis-tent entities, each with its own distinctive property. The schools didnot necessarily agree with each other on every issue, but the debatesamong them generally revolve around the manner in which a dharmaexists. With regard to its temporality, can we say that a dharma existsin all three periods of time (past, present, and future)? If each condi-tioned (caused) dharma bears the “four marks” of arising, abiding,altering, and perishing, then, where does the dharma come from, andwhere does the dharma go? A common answer is that a dharmacomes from a future period and goes to a past period. But then, is adharma of the past an existent? And is a dharma of the future anexistent, just as a dharma of the present is? The Sarvastivada mastersinsist that dharmas of all the three periods are existents, while theSautrantika masters argue that only dharmas of the present periodare existents.

Such a concern with truth and knowledge carries with it a concernwith the question of signs. This is evident in the Abhidharma litera-ture. One good example is the debate between the Sarvastivadins andSautrantikas over the ways in which “letters,” “words,” and “sen-


tences,” and so on function as mental operations dissociated fromsensuous experience. For instance, how do letters become meaningfulsigns when they combine to form words, which in turn make upsentences? When in his Abhidharma-kosa (Jushe lun) Vasubandhutreats these linguistic notions as empirically existent meaning-conveying vehicles, he is criticized by Sanghabhadra, a staunchdefender of Sarvastivada. Sanghabhadra says that these linguisticitems are not to be confused with empirical entities, since the essenceof a letter is a phoneme and not a vocal sound, the essence of a wordis a concept not a written mark, and the essence of a sentence is aproposition. Such debates over the question of whether languageshould be classified as picture-thinking or as a mental operation dis-sociated from sensuous experience led to the production of manyoriginal semiotic ideas. For the Sarvastivada philosophers, languageremains, as a subject matter, an intelligible dharma to be examined bythe intellect. It is neither a material mark nor a physical sound, but apure form.17

However, the intellect deals only with conditioned and finitedharmas, albeit at a rational level. The knowledge it acquires is stilllimited, although it represents a higher grade of understanding thanmere picture-thinking. Real insight, that is to say wisdom thatamounts to the elimination of ignorance and hence the achievementof freedom, cannot be a limited view. It is supposed to embracesomething unlimited, comparable to empty space.

Thus, the doctrine of the Seventy-Five Factors (dharmas) lists threeunconditioned dharmas: (i) empty space; (ii) a trance which is freefrom thought; and (iii) the trance that results from the extinction ofthought. Empty space is a classic example of the antithesis of finite,conditioned dharmas. It is unmediated by language or thought since itis not matter, nor thought, nor mental operations, nor mental opera-tions dissociated from sensuous experience. Infinite and ineffable, it isnot subject to arising, abiding, altering, and perishing.As such, it is noteven an object of rational meditation. If anything, it is conceptualizedas a model for a mental state of freedom from all forms of picture-thinking and grasping. This mental state is to be achieved not byrational reflection but by a setting-free from all forms of thought andan extinguishing of all mental activities. These two types of trance arenot to be identified with a state of consciousness in which feelings ofpleasure and pain are temporarily abolished. Such an experience lastsonly for a short period of time and will soon come to an end. As such,it is like an arrow shot into the empty sky, only to be pulled down soonafterward by gravity. To remain sustained in such a nirvanic emptyspace without falling back to the mundane, one has to abide perma-nently in a state of trance, absolutely free from thinking and not


dependent upon the (temporary) cessation of thinking. Such a trancemarks the achievement of Arhathood.18

But how is this to be achieved? By passing through the san jietuomenn (Three Doors to Liberation, vimoksa mukha traya). These are:

The Door of Emptiness: This is a meditative state in which thecontemplating subject relinquishes vulgar notions of “I” and “mine”by focusing on the ontological status of the psycho-physical body interms of the five aggregates of conditioned dharmas. In this processthe objectivity of all sensible signs arising from the empirical world ismade empty.

The Door of the Signless: In this mental state, the contemplatingsubject seeks to undo the whole range of conceptual constructionssuch as: the doctrine of the Five Aggregates, the binary opposition ofmale and female, and ideas about the marks of conditioned dharmas(i.e., arising, abiding, altering, and perishing). In this process the objec-tivity of all sorts of signs, as the products of conceptualization, is madeempty.

The Door of Resignation: In this state, the meditating subject seeksto remain focused on the undesirable character of everything sensu-ally experienced or conceptually apprehended. Informed by anunshakeable understanding of suffering as the fundamental conditionof mundane existence, the contemplating subject resolves to eliminateall forms of attachment or grasping.

These Three Doors are construed as three “entrance gates to thecitadel of nirvana.”19 Thus, “wisdom” for the Hinayana thinkers is aresolute abandonment of all signs, or a thoroughgoing appreciation ofthe signless.

The Hinayana approach to signs can therefore be described as anintellectual progression that begins at sense perception (i.e., affirmingthe presence of a sense object) and proceeds to a rational reflection(in which the ontological status of sensible forms is revealed, andresolved in terms of intelligible dharmas). It aims at the acquisition ofwisdom (in which all forms of spiritual bondage are cleansed from themind). This model of the sign is articulated predominantly throughthe logical relation of difference; first, the merely intelligible (dharma)is set apart from the sensible, and then the signless is set apart fromthe sign of a dharma, with the former being superior to the latter.

The Mahayana Semiotic Model: Deconstructing the Signless

Viewed as an innovative religious and intellectual movement withinthe Buddhist tradition, the Mahayana thought system can be con-strued as a revolt against certain essentialist tendencies in Hinayana.


We might describe this reaction as a deconstruction of the Hinayanadoctrine of the signless. According to the Dazhidu lun (The GreatPerfection of Wisdom Treatise), there is an apparent contradictionbetween the Hinayana doctrine of the Three Doors to Liberation andthe Buddhist notion of compassionate love, and this contradictionresults from an ontological attempt to grasp a semiotic issue. In otherwords, dharmas, both conditioned and unconditioned, have beentreated as though they were existent entities. The contradiction herelies in the fact that a movement to avoid certain dharmas (construedas existents marked by suffering, impermanence, etc.) cancels out thecompassionate injunction to engage with the suffering of the world.From a Mahayana perspective, both conditioned and unconditioneddharmas are conceptual constructs. As such, they are provisional des-ignations that cannot be conceived in terms of existence or nonexist-ence. Dharmas belong exclusively to the order of language andthought; they operate in semiological terms (such as in the relations ofsignifier and signified), and they cause confusion if grasped in onto-logical terms (such as substance and attribute).

From a Mahayana point of view, the quality of Buddhist wisdomshould be such that it benefits both the individual practitioner of theBuddha’s teaching and all sentient beings. The value of universalcompassionate love is central to the Buddhist project of spiritualliberation. This value is articulated in the doctrine of the FourAspects of Immeasurable Mind (catvary apramanani, si wuliangxino): love, kindness, sympathetic joy, and impartiality, which is adoctrine defended and practiced by virtually all Buddhists regardlessof sectarian affiliations. A mind that is commensurate with infiniteempty space should also have the capacity to share the problems thatface all suffering beings, and the capacity to extend the benefits of itswisdom to less insightful people. Hence, if the doctrine of the ThreeDoors to Liberation were to mean the (Hinayanist) absolute aban-donment of the mundane world of sentient beings for the safe citadelof nirvana, this would defeat the quest for real wisdom and wouldamount to a misinterpretation of the Buddha’s doctrine of the FourNoble Truths.

Mahayanists, as represented by Madhyamaka philosophers, arguethat a naïve distinction between the sensible and the intelligibleproves to be self-contradictory.The Dazhidu lun recounts the parableof an extremely intelligent man who has managed to acquire theHinayana wisdom of the signless but does not realize his problemuntil he meets the Buddha. This man desired to be the cleverestperson in the world and would not tolerate losing any argument, butone day he lost a debate to his sister. He was surprised that she hadbecome so intelligent all of a sudden, but soon worked out the reason:


it must be the embryo his sister was pregnant with that was respon-sible for her unprecedented burst of eloquence. His sister, he pre-dicted, would give birth to a genius. To forestall the possibility of afuture rival, he renounced his family and dedicated himself to study-ing all the books in the world. He worked so hard he had no time tocut his fingernails, thus attracting the nickname Changzhaop or LongClaws (Mahakusthila).20 When he had done enough reading, LongClaws traveled around, practicing the art of debate undefeated. Even-tually, he returned home to challenge his now nine-year-old nephew,whom he had never met. Learning that his nephew was called Saripu-tra and that the boy had left home to serve the Buddha, Long Clawsdecided to challenge the Buddha himself.

When Long Claws came face to face with the Buddha andannounced his intention, the Buddha asked kindly, “[W]hat is yourargument”? Long Claws declared, “I do not hold any view,” andexpected the Buddha to present a counter-argument to challenge hisposition. The Buddha gently asked again, “Very well, but do you holdthe view that you do not hold any view?” Long Claws insisted, “No, Ido not hold this view either.” The Buddha smiled and asked gentlyagain, “If you do not hold this view either, how do you distinguishyourself from any other sentient being? Average sentient beings alsodo not hold the view that they do not hold any view.” At this point,Long Claws was rendered speechless, and he admitted to a logicalerror in his argument. Desiring to make a case for the doctrine of thesignless, he had wanted to demonstrate that he had acquired aninsight no longer mediated by thought or language. But the Buddha’squestioning woke him up: one who declares that he holds no view isholding a view; and one who denies that he does not hold a view is nodifferent from any ordinary sentient being who has not yet intuitedthe truth of the signless.

Thus, while endorsing the Hinayana theory of dharmas as an expe-dient means of talking about factors of experience, the Mahayanasystem does not conceive of the cultivation of wisdom as a linearprogression from sensible forms, via the stage of finite, conditioneddharmas, to infinite unconditioned dharmas. While the Hinayanadistinction of three grades of understanding (i.e., sense, intellect, andwisdom) presupposes the existence of three categories of objects (i.e.,the sensible, the intelligible, and the signless), the Mahayana contem-plation sees “all dharmas,” both conditioned and unconditioned, asinstances of provisional designations (prajñapti, jiamingq). As such,dharmas cannot be seen as existent or inexistent by referring to theirsubstance and attributes.

For example, chapter 5 of the Zhong lun (The Middle Treatise)considers the problematic nature of the Hinayana ontological notion


of existence. The Hinayana system speaks of an existent dharma interms of its substance and attributes. It represents empty space as oneof six primordial elements to which are attributed the distinctiveproperties of being immaterial and being pervasive.The question thenis: how can the presence of empty space be manifested? As an uncon-ditioned dharma, the ontological status of empty space is not mani-fested by the marks of arising, abiding, and perishing, and if emptyspace has no manifestation, then it can have no attribute(s).This beingso, it has no determinable substance. On the other hand, if it hadmanifestations, then how could the substance of empty space belinked with its distinctive attributes in a cause and effect relation? Ifempty space existed prior to the rise of its attributes, then there wouldbe a moment when empty space was absent of any attributes. If emptyspace came into being after the rise of its attributes, there would be amoment when the attributes of empty space were not supported bythe substance of empty space. Thus, the chapter concludes, there issomething naïve about the conception of dharmas in terms of exist-ence and nonexistence.21

Chapter 7 of the Zhong lun is a classic semiotic critique of theHinanaya ontological theory of the conditioned dharmas. One Abhid-harma school holds that the activity of conditioning involves threemarks: arising, abiding, and perishing. This is a theory that presup-poses an opposition or relation between the marked and the marks.The Madhyamika therefore questions how the two semiological termscan be ontologically related. Are the marks identical with themarked? If so, a mark (such as arising) would be counted as the thingmarked (a conditioned dharma). In that case the mark too would haveto bear the three marks of conditioning in its own right, manifestingitself by the signs of arising, abiding, and perishing. Similarly, thesesecondary marks of a mark would each bear their own marks. Thiswould lead to an infinite regression in a direction that will neverreturn us to the supposed origin: the marked. It would also lead to acontradiction: the mark “arising” would also bear marks of differentkinds such as “abiding” and “perishing,” making signification impos-sible. On the other hand, if the marks are not identical with themarked, then, the Madhyamika asks: are they different from thelatter? If yes, then the marks would be unconditioned dharmas. Butsince unconditioned dharmas are not mediated by marks, how cansuch markless entities function as marks? As conceptual constructs,the chapter concludes, dharmas are mere designations, and in a meredesignation, there is no substance. When ontological categories areimposed on a name, they become causes of a new form of attachment:grasping at dharmas. The Zhong lun likens such confusion to that ofthe vulgar person who mistakes an illusion, a mirage, and so on for


a nonexistent object.22 Thus, from a Mahayana perspective, theHinayana system is guilty of the same type of naïvety that plagues anordinary sentient being.

The Dazhidu lun takes the matter forward by articulating theMahayana semiotic model in terms of the notion of the Same (samata,pingdengr) which transcends the binary relation of identity and/ordifference. The text explains that in a designation, the name and thenamed are neither identical nor different. If identical, one would beable to take the object in one’s hand simply by grasping the name. Ifdifferent, there would be no connection between word and world. Forinstance, if the word “fire” were identical with the empirical object offire, one would burn one’s mouth when uttering the word “fire.” If thename were different from the named, when making a verbal requestfor fire one would get a cup of water instead. The fact that we do getfire instead of water when asking for the former indicates that there issome link between word and world. However, this connection is not tobe represented in terms of either identity or difference, but samenessin which one term of a binary relation (such as the name) carries thetrace of the other (such as the named) in the same way in which LongClaws’ nonview carries the trace of a view, or the Hinayana doctrineof the signless turns out to be a form of sign-grasping in a new guise.Thus, the Same is, according to the Madhyamaka texts, “the true signof all dharmas.” It is also designated here as fashens or “dharma body”(dharma-kaya), which lies beyond the horizon of an arhat and fallsonly within the purview of a bodhisattva. It should be clear from theforegoing that the Same is not an ontological or transcendental pres-ence (or absence) “beyond” the sign (whether of speech or writing)but a cipher for “the true sign of all dharmas,” that is, the iterativeMadhyamika deconstruction of the sign. The parable of Long Clawscited earlier is closely linked to the Chinese understanding of the TwoTruths. It articulates the moral message that there is no rigid distinc-tion between silence and speech, nirvana and samsara, and so on, andthat the Mahayana approach to wisdom is an active engagement withthe problems of the mundane world. This includes the practical workof disseminating the Buddha’s teachings. Kumarajıva actually uses thehighly deconstructive term “pleasure of speaking (le shuot)” whensummarizing the moral of this parable.23

Since the semiotic notion of the Same affirms a connection betweenword and world, it offers a solution to the moral dilemma that facesthe Hinayana interpretation of the Three Doors doctrine. From theMahayana perspective, the first door, the Door of Emptiness, is not adoctrine of reifying intelligible dharmas at the cost of sensible forms,but a thoroughgoing, critically vigilant rejection of all essentialistconceptions, whether these are based on obviously naïve perspectives


or on seemingly rational theories.The Door of the Signless, the seconddoor, is not to be interpreted as a doctrine of relinquishing both sensesand intellect in the false hope of acquiring a supernatural facultycommensurate with the infinite empty space unmediated by thought,but a nondualistic insight into the subtle trace in which one term of abinary opposition (for such an opposition underlies the structure ofall signs) carries the trace of the other. Finally, the Door of Resigna-tion is not to be interpreted as a doctrine of abandoning sentientbeings in the mundane world in favor of the citadel of nirvana, but adoctrine of altruistic practice that benefits not only oneself but allsentient beings. To ensure that an arrow that is shot into the infiniteempty sky will not fall back onto the restricted ground of naivety andvulgarity, another arrow is needed that comes from behind to addextra resistance to the pull of gravity, and this process must recurwithout end. In the same way, the doctrine of the Three Doors toLiberation should be applied to itself.24

It would take us beyond the scope of this article to explore the fullramifications of this Chinese Madhyamika understanding of the rela-tion between word and world for the later history of Buddhist thoughtin China, but we might, for example, point to a congruence betweenthis notion of the Same (as a deconstruction of the binary oppositionof nirvana and samsara, etc.) and characteristically Chinese interpre-tations of Mahayana Buddhism as a form of spiritual practice that islocated fully within the real, mundane world. This thread of meaningmay be traced inter alia in Kumarajiva’s correspondence withHuiyuan (334–416 CE), in the debate between Shenxiu’s (ca. 606–706CE) “Northern” Chan and Huineng’s (638–713 CE) “Southern” Chanin early China, and in modern times in the thought of Taixu (1889–1947 CE), and in Yinshun’s (1906–2005 CE) idea of “Buddhism of theHuman Realm”25 in contemporary Chinese Buddhist thought.

Conclusion

Semiotics is a key issue in the Buddhist approach to spiritual freedom.For Buddhist thinkers, the acquisition of wisdom means a criticalengagement with the question of signs.Wisdom is defined as a detach-ment from signs, while a naïve vulgar perspective is defined as sign-grasping. We are aware of the risk of oversimplification in using theterms Mahayana and Hinayana here as the names of two generalstages in the history of Buddhist semiotic development, withoutattempting to provide details of the specific achievements of manydifferent individual writers affiliated with the disparate early schools.However, we hope that this distinction is of some use as an expedient


way of outlining two master semiotic models: the Hinayana doctrineof the signless, based on the binary opposition between the sensibleand the intelligible, and the Mahayana doctrine (or rather deconstruc-tion) of the signless, based on a notion of the Same that transcends theontological categories of identity and difference.

UNIVERSITY OF LONDONLondon, United Kingdom

Endnotes

1. “Karmic maturation” here refers to a propensity to seek enlightenment, which, likeobtaining a human birth, is something not taken for granted in Buddhism. It isattributed in the texts to various prior causes (in the case of the Buddha, a long seriesof exemplary births as animals, birds, humans, etc. retold in the popular “birth stories”of the Buddha) and is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the development ofany particular Buddhist philosophical perspective or practice during a human life.

2. The –jna element in prajna is cognate with ken in the German “kennen” and inAnglicized terms such as “canny,” “know,” “gnosis,” (and indeed “cognate”), but ofcourse each of these terms trails its own clouds of quotidian, philosophical, andreligious connotations. Michael Pye many years ago proposed “insight” as a bettertranslation of prajna since it denotes “penetratingly seeing the true nature of things”rather than a body of accumulated knowledge (Michael Pye, Skilful Means [London:Duckworth, 1978], 4, n. 6), while the meaning of “wisdom” as Xinzhong Yao haspointed out (see note 4 below) may range widely from common sense to transcen-dental gnosis. Since the current article is a contribution to a volume on the theme of“wisdom,” we use this term as a convenient rendering of prajna, etc.

3. Gadjin Nagao, The Foundational Standpoint of Madhyamika Philosophy (Albany:State University of New York Press, 1989), 24, 59, 61.

4. This point of view is eloquently stated by Xinzhong Yao in the pages of this journal inJune 2005 as follows: “Wisdom lies at the centre of all philosophical and religioustraditions. [ . . . ] On the surface, wisdom appears to be simply a collection of proverbs,maxims, and aphorisms arising from life experiences [ . . . ] This is so-called practicalwisdom, [ . . . ] There is another, deeper meaning of wisdom, however . . . It permeatesreligious, social, and personal matters, but it often does not come to the front;rather it hides itself in the somewhat mysterious revelation of the patterns by whichpeople and events shape themselves.” (See Xinzhong Yao, “Knowledge andInterpretation—A Hermeneutical Study of Wisdom,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy32 [2005]: 297.)

5. In modern Western Buddhist Studies since the nineteenth century “MadhyamikaBuddhism” has been routinely represented as an Indian system of thought importedwithout much change—and with more or less understanding of its logical or episte-mological subtleties—to China. In fact, early Chinese Madhyamika exegetical texts,such as the Middle Treatise, the Hundred Treatise, the Twelve-Topic Treatise, and theGreat Perfection of Wisdom Treatise, which exist only in Chinese constitute the ear-liest commentarial sources of Madhyamika (their Sanskrit “titles” are only putativereconstructions from the Chinese). “Indian” Madhyamika, epitomized in the work ofCandrakirti (ca. 600–650 CE), has largely been viewed through the lens of TibetanBuddhism. The Indo-Tibetan specialist Paul Williams observes that Jizang followedKumarajiva’s interpretation/reading of Nagarjuna, avoiding an onto-epistemologicalreading of Madhyamaka: “For Candrakırti the two truths are two natures (Tibetan:ngo bo = svabhava/prakrti) in all entities (dngos kun = sarvabhavah). And the ulti-mate truth is a “reality” (de nyid = tattva; see Madhyamakavatara 6:23). For Chi-tsang [Jizang] it appears that the two truths are not “natures”—essentially embeddedin ontology, or perhaps epistemology—at all. Rather, the two truths for Chi-tsang are


involved in pedagogy. They are stages of teachings, hence pragmatic articulations,that can be used to take the student through a step-by-step dialectical ascent tosilence, the denial of all views and concepts. Thus, for Chi-tsang the distinctionbetween two truths is essentially a practical matter of how best to teach nonduality.For the Madhyamika all articulation is only for the removal of errors: “The refutationof wrong views is the illumination of right views.” (Paul Williams, “Foreword” toChangqing Shih, The Two Truths in Chinese Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal, 2004), xvi.Donald S. Lopez identifies the influence of Tibetan scholastic traditions on contem-porary presentations of Madhyamika in his chapter “The Field” in Prisoners ofShangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1998), 156ff. Chinese Madhyamika should therefore be recognized as an intellectualtradition in its own right, in which key figures such as Kumarajıva (343–413 CE) andhis circle, and later Jizang (549–623 CE), developed the Madhyamika discoursewhich nourished mainstream Far Eastern Buddhist traditions such as Tiantai. ThisMadhyamika discourse, like other forms of Chinese Buddhism, displayed a preoccu-pation with the semiotic notion of the Same which is discussed in this article. We aregrateful to Professor Chung-ying Cheng for his encouragement to clarify this andother issues in our article.

6. “Hinayana” as a term of opprobrium is now often avoided in academic discourse, butit is routinely used by Kumarajıva and other Mahayana writers to mean presentationsof the Buddha’s teachings that do not adopt the Mahayana perspective.

7. These Chinese Buddhist texts are found in the “Taisho Tripitaka,” the Taisho ShinshuDaizokyo, ed. Junjiro Takakusu and Kaikyoku Watanabe (Tokyo, Taishô IssaikyôKankô-kai, 1924–34) (hereafter T) as follows: T1558 Jushe lun, T1562 Shun zhenglilun, T1646 Cheng shi lun, T1509 Dazhidu lun, T1564 Zhong lun, and T1856 Dashengyizhang. Electronic versions of Taisho texts are available at the Chinese BuddhistElectronic Text Association Web site (http://www.cbeta.org/index.htm).

8. For instance, the present article invokes Saussure’s opposition of signifier and signi-fied, and Derrida’s notion of trace. See Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in GeneralLinguistics.Translated from the French by Wade Baskin (London: Fontana, 1974) andJacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (London: The Athlone Press,1981); Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Brighton: HarvesterPress, 1982); Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press, 1974); Jacques Derrida, Positions,(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference,trans. Alan Bass (London: Routledge, 1978).

9. Youxuan Wang considers the semiotic strand in the San lun zongu (the masters of thethree Madhyamaka treatises as represented by Kumarajıva’s translation of Nagar-juna, Aryadeva et al.), the She lun zongv (the masters who were associated withParamartha, who were credited with the transmission of Asanga’s and Vasubandhu’sthought) and the Fa xiang zongw (the masters associated with Xuanzang, credited withthe transmission of a later version of Asanga’s “mind-only” doctrine and with therenovation of Dignaga’s and Dharmapala’s logical theories) in his Buddhism andDeconstruction: Towards a Comparative Semiotics (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001).Texts explored there include Sanghabhadra’s Shun zhengli lun (T1562 Treatise onConforming to Correct Reasoning); Trans. Xuanzang; Aryadeva’s Bai lunx (T1569Treatise in One Hundred Verses, Sata-sastra) Trans. Kumarajıva; Paramartha’s Shi bakong luny (T1616 Treatise on the Eighteen Points about Emptiness); Kumarajıva,Dasheng yi zhang (T1856 The Mahayana Doctrine Explained: Letters to Huiyuan) ed.Huiyuan and other works.Wang presents a semiotic reading of the Buddhist notion ofpingdeng (samata; the same) with Derrida’s conception of the Same as the trace in asign, arguing also that there is an articulate “theory” of deconstruction in Paramar-tha’s doctrine of fei anliz (undoing conceptualization).

10. As early as in 1984, certain semiotic themes in Chinese Chan Buddhism were pickedup in Robert Magliola Derrida on the Mend (West Lafayette: Purdue UniversityPress, 1984), where Magliola made an interesting comparative study of Buddhism andDerridean deconstruction. Later on, David Loy brought forth his impressive workHealing Deconstruction (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996).


http://www.cbeta.org/index.htm

11. The question of the sign has been an issue for some studies of Theravada Buddhism,Buddhist logic, and certain Mahayana Buddhist sutras. Examples of contributors tothis debate are Peter Harvey, “Signless: Meditations in Pali Buddhism,” Journal of theInternational Association of Buddhist Studies 9, no. 1 (1986): 25–52, and Richard P.Hayes, Dignaga on the Interpretation of Signs (Dordrecht: D. Reidel PublishingCompany, 1988). Since language is used by semioticians as a model of the sign, manystudies of linguistic thought in Nagarjuna, Vasubhandu, Dignaga, or Dharmapalaactively engage with the question of the sign. Recently, Mario D’Amato has beenparticularly interested in this specific question from a purely semiotic view, arguingthat Western semioticians have already been drawing on Asian materials in formu-lating their own semiotic theory. See Mario D’Amato, “The Semiotics of the Signless:The Buddhist Doctrine of the Signs,” Semiotica. Journal of the International Associa-tion of Semiotic Studies 147 (2003): 185–207. As this article goes to press, a newcollection of articles edited by Jin Y. Park has just appeared: Buddhisms and Decon-structions: New Frameworks for Continental Philosophy (Lanham: Rowman & Little-field, 2006).

12. Dazhidu lun (Treatise on the Large Prajnaparamita-Sutra), trans. Kumarajıva, T1059,101f. See also Étienne Lamotte, Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse. Tome I,(Louvain: Bibliothèque du Muséon, 1944), 357ff.

13. Wang, Buddhism and Deconstruction, 28.14. Ibid., p. 112.15. This brief characterization of Hinayana Buddhism (from the Mahayana point of

view) as a project of rationalism should not be confused with the nineteenth- totwentieth-century Western orientalist construction of Theravada Buddhism as therationalist, empirical “other” of a European theistic religiosity which was under siegefrom post-Enlightenment rationalists.

16. These meticulous distinctions are the intellectual preoccupations of the schools, espe-cially the Sarvastivadins and Sautrantikas, and they permeate almost every branch ofthe entire Abhidarma canon.

17. Wang, Buddhism and Deconstruction, 19–62.18. Ibid., p. 31.19. Vasubandhu, Jushe lund (Abhidharma-kosa; Treasure-house of the Abhidharma),

trans. Xuanzang, T1558, 149c28–29.20. See Dazhidu Lun, T1509: 61b18–62a28.21. Brian Bocking, Nagarjuna in China: A Translation of the Middle Treatise (Lewiston:

The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995), 152. The Middle Treatise is T1564 Zhong lùn, trans-lated by Kumarajıva.

22. Bocking, Nagarjuna in China, 183.23. See Dazhidu lun, T1509: 61b18–62a28 and Wang, Buddhism and Deconstruction,

119–27. For a fuller explanation of the notion of the Same, see chapters 3 and 6 ofWang, Buddhism and Deconstruction.

24. Wang, Buddhism and Deconstruction, 32–33.25. On Yinshun and “Buddhism for the Human Realm,” see, for example, Charles B.

Jones, Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State, 1660–1990 (Honolulu: Universityof Hawaii Press, 1999). Stefania Travagnin’s PhD thesis (SOAS, University of London,2006) examines in depth Yinshun’s relationship to Madhyamika.

Chinese Glossary

a. wuming

b. bore

c. fanfu

d. Jushe lun

e. Shun zhengli lun

f. Cheng shi lun

g. Dazhidu lun

h. Zhong lun


i. Dasheng yizhang

j. si diandao

k. quxiang

l. San zhuan falun jing

m. Wuyun

n. san jietuo men

o. Si wuliang xin

p. Changzhao

q. Jiaming

r. pingdeng

s. fashen

t. le shuo

u. San lun zong

v. She lun zong

w. Fa xiang zong

x. Bai lun

y. Shi ba kong lun

z. fei anli


signs of liberation - a semiotic approach to wisdom in chinese madhyamika buddhism

Documents

kuma raj va

twelve causal links

mental operations dissociated

long claws

dazhidu lun

zhong lun

jushe lun

semiotic approach