Q. and A. on Nagarjuna and the MMK

 Q.  Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā contains various refutations of causation, change, "self-existence"/essence/svabh̄ava, and that perceptions and conceptions thereof are illusory and there is only "thusness"/tathata. For example, his tetralemma about causation comes to the conclusion that a thing could neither arise from something identical nor from something different, nor from both or neither (I will ignore the last one as I'm not sure anyone actually believes something can be derived from nothing). Therefore causation cannot actually take place. This is not only an attack on causation but also essence. The Platonist position in this framework, I suppose, would be closest to 3): the effect of a cause is both identical and different from that which is caused yet still possesses a certain self-existence/essence (we do not claim that it possesses independent existence other than the One who is beyond existence, nor do I think any spiritual system does). To Nagarjuna this position is absurd - how could an essence that belongs wholly to itself and is by nature eternal be caused and cause something posterior to it in turn, and, in the case of the eternal soul, undergo any sort of change? How do we square away the ascent of the soul from bodily existence to the Absolute if it is by nature unchangeable, especially since the intermediate - nous, the Divine Mind - is itself atemporal and the soul would have to reside there before finally rejoining the One? On a related note, if the soul once fully identified with the One then how could re-joining the One be permanent? This implies the state it had before its "fall" from the One was in some ways imperfect but the state it acquired after rejoining the One permanently is more perfect or absolutely hyper-perfect. All of these issues can be extrapolated I think from Nagarjuna's MMK, and that, given all these contradictions, it seems erroneous to think in terms of essence, change and causation as Nagarjuna claims.

Now, let me state that I don't believe Mahayana Buddhism actually escapes these conundrums. There's a not-so-subtle sophistry in their claim that while conventional reality is illusory we can still use it to arrive at "thusness", as this implies that the illusion somehow participates in "ultimate reality", meaning instead of being totally and fully illusory there are degrees of reality - this is no different from what we call ontology, in fact it mirrors the Plotinian model of reality. The conventional reality we perceive, instead of being totally illusory, is therefore but a mirror image of actual reality. Of course, at the level of the Absolute there is no causation, change, movement, difference, etc. However, if we follow Nagarjuna's logic to its actual conclusion (instead of the sophistic escape of the two truths doctrine) there would actually be no way for anything to arrive anywhere meaningful. In short, Nagarjuna's conclusions are as absurd, if not moreso, then that which he refutes. 

All this infers that Nagarjuna's conclusions must in some important ways be erroneous and that, at the very least, Mahayana Buddhists do not truly believe what the MMK states and escape from their own philosophical foundations by means of sophistry and rhetorical sleights of hand. However, it is just that: inference and not a direct confrontation with Nagarjuna's claims. The actual truth behind the MMK, contra to what Nagarjuna himself claims, would be a sort of staticness and an "absolute un-truth" that we could never hope to escape. The only other option would be a sort of ontology and it is telling Mahayana Buddhism sneakily opted for the latter. However, I find myself unsatisfied by this indirect refutation and at unease. I believe there must be some way to directly confront Nagarjuna's reasoning instead of merely pointing out the absurdity of its consequences.

(Original question abbreviated and edited.)

A.  I wouldn't worry about all this stuff.  These concerns are not necessary and are not based on valid assumptions.  Nagarjuna's/the MMK's analysis or 'logic', along with the doubts that it makes you give rise to, is based on invalid, realist/nominalist, non-idealist, and unexamined premises that limit reality and the possibilities and explanations just to the lowest phenomenal level, which has minimal reality.  These questions and supposed contradictions about causation, change, etc. could only arise if the attempt to explain causation, etc. is limited to just the lowest plane of phenomenal and supposedly material things.  Causation and phenomenal spatial and temporal change are readily understood without contradiction as the projection of the order and structure of nous onto or into the lower level of non-being, as the life of soul in time and space unwilling to take the whole of nous all at once.  There is only, as Plotinus puts it in Ennead 3.8, contemplation--stronger and weaker, fuller and less full, complete and incomplete, clearer and more obscure, but still only contemplation. The One/Good is the completely full clear contemplation; the life of the most degraded souls is the weakest most incomplete and dark contemplation.  The ascent, and also the descent, of the soul is just a change in the state of contemplation, so there is no problem of an eternal essence undergoing some sort of change analogous to a sort of physical change.  Also, it is not like the soul was a physical part of the One before its fall and then physically rejoins the One, as the language of your doubt seems to tacitly suppose.  The potential for not knowing is present within knowing, the potential for darkness is present within light, for non-being within being.  When the soul completes contemplation and fully knows and becomes the light, the not knowing and darkness and non-being is gone.  You don't have to worry about it recurring.  All this is actually kind of ineffable and only really known in contemplative ascetic experience, since all this discussion and questions and process only occurs at the lowest least real level.

Nagarjuna/the MMK is maybe just being what the Platonic dialogs call an "antilogikos" or a "sophist taking refuge in the darkness of non-being".  Perhaps, you might want to review the discussion about not becoming "misologikos" that refers to "antilogikos" people that are pleased within themselves when they turn everything up and down to make it seem that no definite conclusions are possible in the Phaedo at 89b-90d.  (Actually, it wouldn't be a bad idea to read the whole Phaedo carefully say 50 or 100 times!).  Other dialogs also deal with this problem and the kind of difficulties that the antilogikoi and sophists of the world cause.  You also may want to eventually read through all of the Enneads, even though this is a big project and you won't likely understand much of what you read for a long time, as Plotinus deals with the kinds of concerns you have.  You don't have to be able to understand everything at the discursive level before proceeding with the ascesis.  Indeed, it is impossible to do so.  And being and working as a celibate, vegan, teetotalling, etc. ascetic practicing contemplation is as necessary for coming to even a discursive level understanding of these things as racking your brains over Nagarjuna's attempts at logical contortion.

I don't know if it will be of any help or interest, but here is a link with an added introduction of the original sort of non-sectarian version of one of my pieces that perhaps you have seen in the specific Platonist form that I was asked several years ago to write for an old English language Indian magazine:   https://www.csp.indica.in/an-indo-hellenistic-understanding-of-contemplative-asceticism-eric-s-fallick/

Perhaps, it will be some consolation to you to see that there is a great deal one can do to proceed on the Path and that the essentials of doing so are clear even before necessarily resolving all the possible conceptual doubts that may arise on reading the different texts of the different systems.

Flesh-eating as the Fall of the Soul in Plato's 'Republic'

Flesh-eating as the Fall of the Soul in Plato’s ‘Republic’

by Eric S. Fallick


The Politea or ‘Republic’ of Plato is an allegorical, symbolic manual and description of individual contemplative ascetic spiritual practice. As the text itself repeatedly states and makes clear, the ‘city’ is just an analogy, a blown-up symbolic picture, for the individual soul. It has nothing at all to do with politics, political ‘philosophy’, or governance of states. ‘Socrates’ represents nous, intellect, and the higher, divine part of the soul and its divine understanding. Nous descends from the noetic realm to this lower realm of the senses and lower soul, ‘goes down (from the town) to the Piraeus’, and in doing so becomes associated with a lower soul and faculties, ‘with Glaucon (son) of Ariston’. Nous initially descends only so far as to participate in divine spiritual activities and contemplation in the lower realm of soul, ‘will be offering prayers to the goddess and wanting at the same time to view the festival’. It then is immediately returning to the noetic realm, but is restrained by more lower souls and faculties, ‘Polemarchus’ and the others, and compelled to remain for a time and instruct them in righteousness and divine matters.

Book 1 then proceeds to establish the correct divine understanding based on the noetic realm and the Forms of righteousness and holiness and their necessity and superiority for living a well-off life against the naturalistic, materialist (in both senses of the word!), physicalist, immoral, worldly understanding, ‘Thrasymachus’. Books 2 through the first part of Book 5 then, using the analogy and symbolism of the ‘city’, though constantly reminding that it is only just that and showing how it is a projection for understanding the individual soul, and the ‘guardians’, the thoughts, understandings, and discursive reasoning and cognitive state of the soul, describes the cognitive and emotional condition and training and disposition and ordering of the soul in this world as a whole with both its true higher part and the lower soul and faculties endemic to being at the lowest level that is the sense world of the beginning and, for a long time, conditioned ascetic practitioner. That is, initially and for long time on the Path, the contemplative ascetic practitioner has proper orientation, thoughts, and ordering of soul only as a conditioned state attained through practice without actual direct realization and understanding and ordering directly from the higher hypostases and spiritual realities. This is a necessary preliminary and stage of the practice, and, indeed, one at which the practitioner will likely remain for many births as he progresses, but is still a conditioned relative state, one of right opinion rather than true knowledge, and, as such, is unstable and has the possibility of being disrupted or lost until it is made into true knowledge and permanence through direct experience of the higher hypostases. The latter part of Book 5 through Book 7 then describe the further practice of actual direct contemplative experience of the higher hypostases, the attaining of actual true knowledge of the way things are and correct renunciant, ascetic practice, the mode of practice with this knowledge and experience, and the transformation of the conditioned contemplative ascetic practitioner liable to the possibility of falling from his conditioned state of practice, however wonderful it is, into a truly divine renunciant with actual stable knowledge and a permanent understanding and ordering of the soul that is not liable to regress until the final end is attained. Book 8 and the first part of Book 9 then describe how the conditioned practicing soul might fall and the various types of lower souls in this world down to the very worst. The rest of Book 9 and Book 10 show the superiority of righteousness and contemplative asceticism over the worldly way and cover various important topics of spiritual practice and metaphysics and transmigration.

In Book 2, ‘Socrates’ initially proposes and begins to develop the model of the ‘city’ as a blown-up analogy for understanding righteousness in the individual soul. The ‘city’, the complex soul in individuated sensate existence in space-time with higher and lower souls and faculties together in relation to each other, develops upon the initial fall of the true soul into the lower realm of soul and body and the senses from the noetic realm due to the need for now dealing with the senses, maintaining the psychophysical organism and body, and dealing with individual apparent objects appearing one after another in space-time. At this point, at its initial minimal descent, the soul and its thoughts and faculties naturally live a simple, reclusive, contemplative ascetic life with only the minimum lower faculties and minimum possessions and involvements in worldly affairs to maintain bodily existence. It, or now the person, just has enough clothing, shoes, and shelter for protection from the elements as necessary according to the season. He reclines on the ground on simple mats and eats from simple utensils made from leaves, etc. He, most significantly for this discussion, eats a simple grain based vegetarian diet with the addition of some modest vegetarian ‘relishes’ for complete nutrition. Note that when the text refers to the modest and moderate drinking of ‘wine’ that ‘wine’ is a symbol for the senses, which are intoxicants to the soul. So the text is saying that the contemplative ascetic recluse living in peace makes use of the senses only to a moderate degree as necessary to the minimum extent possible. A contemplative ascetic and philosophos, of course, never drinks even a drop of wine in the literal sense or any sort of alcohol, and the divine Plato never would suggest that he may. (Incidentally, this symbolism of ‘wine’ as representing the senses and sense experience occurs elsewhere in the dialogs, most notably, of course, in the Symposium.) He passes his leisure in divine contemplation, ‘hymning the gods’, and content in himself with the higher and lower faculties in order, ‘pleasantly being together with each other’. He produces no thoughts of wanting any more, ‘not making children beyond the (present) substance, taking care to avoid want or war’. He passes his life in peace and health maturing these renunciant and contented thoughts and mental states and continuing such as further circumstances continue or develop, ‘reaching old age and handing down another life of such a sort to the offspring’. This, the text makes clear, is the true, healthy, and proper way of life, the minimum declension of the fallen soul if it has to be here in this realm, the reclusive contemplative ascetic renunciant life.

How, then, does this true ascetic pure life degenerate into the mess of ordinary human life and the world as we see it and the people around us, this mess having been such since time immemorial? How does the soul after its initial fall then fall even deeper into becoming, samsara, genesis, the cycle of birth and death? The lowest faculty of the soul embedded in the body, ‘Glaucon’, seeing the bad way of sensual pleasures and desires lived by most all in samsara, is not satisfied with the simple ascetic life and wants all the sensual pleasures and sense experiences and desires that it sees around it. It turns and corrupts the whole person and soul to consider these necessary and desirable and to pursue them and dive headlong into the karmic mess of samsara and create the kind of lives we see around us. Not only does it now require comfortable furnishings and utensils to use while indulging its now excessive and luxurious desire for food and feasting, but, most crucially, now wants, and even thinks it necessary, to eat meat, to eat animal flesh and to kill for this purpose, as it sees those doing around it. This creates the inflamed, unhealthy, licentious ‘city’/soul. In true Orphic fashion, flesh-eating and killing is shown to be a critical turning point in the fall of the soul, leading to the wandering as an alien in the cycle of repeated birth and death. (And, of course, reversing this and becoming vegetarian again is a crucial and essential step in escaping from becoming and returning to the soul’s pristine state.) Once the soul has imbibed the greed for flesh and meat and has abandoned the true ascetic life that no longer suffices for it and has come to require its life of continual killing and production of meat for its consumption, this leads in snowball fashion to desires for all manners of luxuries, possessions, entertainments, etc., as listed in the text, and even for sex, ‘female companions’ and ‘the things concerning feminine adornment’. Following from the perverse desire for flesh-eating, the soul and its thoughts are darkened, and it becomes firmly ensconced in pursuing the desires of this world and ever binding itself to and suffering on the wheel of birth and death (a true Orphic as well a Platonic image).

The explication of the complete meaning of the Politea would be a great task. Perhaps, this short essay has given a tiny pointer in that direction. At any rate, the Politea reminds us that flesh-eating is a great crime and primal transgression, and that vegetarianism is an indispensable prerequisite of genuine spiritual life and practice.


Ⓒ 2018 Eric S. Fallick

Purification of the Unalterable Soul from "Matter"

The Platonic/Plotinian teaching is pure idealism, even if it is expressed in a vocabulary and language that we may not immediately understand as such. (Incidentally, 'matter' is a very misleading translation for the Greek hule in Plotinus. In Plotinus, it carries none of the connotations of 'matter' in the modern physical sense, but is rather the extremity or principle, so to speak, of non-being, of darkness, of nescience. I have toyed with the idea of using 'anti-stuff' as a translation for hule.) There is only knowing, experience, 'mind', 'consciousness' or, as Plotinus puts it, contemplation. All is, as Plotinus says (Ennead 3.8), contemplation. The One is complete pure knowing or contemplation beyond knowing/contemplation. Nous is already lesser, incomplete, impure, adulterated to some extent but still unified knowing/contemplation having already been mixed, so to speak, to a certain extent with nescience/darkness/non-being, which Plotinus sometimes refers to as noetic hule/'matter'. Soul is knowing/contemplation mixed to the greatest extent with nescience/darkness/non-being to the point that it appears as individuated as our souls and in space-time and sense-perception, etc. It is still, though, the same knowing/contemplation, in its reality unchanged and unalterable and indestructible, as knowing/contemplation is still only in itself purely knowing/contemplation as such and can't be anything else, but is now turned or looking in the direction of the extremity of nescience/darkness/non-being and thus no longer knows itself or complete pure knowing/contemplation. The soul, thus, needs to turn around back to, to redirect back its attention to, to regain the complete pure knowing/contemplation of and that is the One, to re-become that complete pure knowing/contemplation without any admixture of nescience/darkness/non-being. Thus, renunciation and asceticism is of the very essence of the purification process, and also is not just of instrumental value but remains of the very essence of the fuller knowing/contemplation state(s), since involvement in and pursuit of the world of diversified individuated sense data in space-time more than is absolutely necessary, which is what worldly life is, is the very fact of looking in the direction of darkness, of only knowing/contemplating in a very darkened, impure, incomplete, ignorant way--being in worldly life is by definition knowing/contemplating/seeing the darkness and non-being of sense perception. The practice of purification, on the other hand, is more and more only seeing/knowing/contemplating the Forms and Nous and then the One/Good, and thus being in the very state of Nous and eventually the One Themselves, and thus obviously involves knowing/contemplating/seeing worldly life and its things of the senses less and less. The One is, of course, always there and unchanged, but we don't know it without turning away from the sense world, which is really non-being, in both life and mind, and turning the imperishable knowing of the soul back to the One.