Tathāgatagarbha, Emptiness, and Monism
نویسنده
چکیده
The tathāgatagarbha doctrine is one of the most significant Buddhist doctrines to have come under the scrutiny of scholars in recent times. One of the more interesting aspects of this doctrine is that it focuses attention on the nature of the Buddhist “absolute” or highest truth in such a way as to make clear many of the problems and concerns of the Buddhist community after the advent of the doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā). This is so because, while on the one hand the tathāgatagarbha is identified with emptiness (“The wisdom of the tathāgatagarbha is nothing but the Tathāgata's wisdom of emptiness”), on the other hand this emptiness, which for Nāgārjuna and more so for Candrakīrti was a “non-affirming negation,” is redefined in terms of affirmative predications of the highest order (e.g. astitva, mahā-ātman, eternal, etc.). That an investigation of the tathāgatagarbha requires one to ask fundamental questions about the nature of the Buddhist absolute— e.g. is there an “absolute” in Buddhism, and if so, what are its characteristics, how does it differ from the substantialism of the ātmavāda, etc.— is also indicated by the fact that both those who assert tathāgatagarbha to be an absolute or monistic doctrine and those who interpret it in orthodox Buddhist terms do so based on the same line of reasoning, i.e. that tathāgatagarbha is but an expression of pratītyasamutpāda and śūnyatā. The
منابع مشابه
The Meaning of Emptiness and Its Role in Islamic Architecture (Case Study: Historical Houses of Yazd)
In this study emptiness is considered as a transcendental and effective concept that appears in the form and content of things. What is seen as internally present in an entity is existent in the first instance because of the external presence of its opposite. The entity and its opposite are intertwined through the principle of inverse correspondence, a higher level of accord that emerges from t...
متن کاملDispositional Monism and the Circularity Objection
Three basic positions regarding the nature of fundamental properties are: dispositional monism, categorical monism and the mixed view. Dispositional monism apparently involves a regress or circularity, while an unpalatable consequence of categorical monism and the mixed view is that they are committed to quidditism. I discuss Alexander Bird's defence of dispositional monism based on the structu...
متن کاملDual-Aspect Monism à la Pauli and Jung
Dual-aspect monism and neutral monism offer interesting alternatives to mainstream positions concerning the mind-matter problem. Both assume a domain underlying the mind-matter distinction, but they also differ in definitive ways. In the 20th century, variants of both positions have been advanced by a number of protagonists. One of these variants, the dual-aspect monism due to Wolfgang Pauli an...
متن کامل