Dragon Tree < Middle Theory >: Immortal
It's not what you think.
Those who think every morning that color is emptiness and emptiness is color
How many people actually know what this empty word is talking about?
I'm not talking about you
tell the truth
It's been misunderstood for 2,000 years.
When most people hear it, it's completely empty.
Or you call it nihilism.
It doesn't make sense anyway
Just lie down
Or it's some kind of mystical experience
Everything is one
out of body
Into some kind of white light
But Nagasu wrote < Middle Theory >
I'm not talking about these two kinds of emptiness.
He made a very precise philosophical statement.
And he proved it by pure logic.
There is no mysticism.
He uses a set of argumentation tools called imputation
Take every philosophical position you can think of
Existence, non-existence, existence and non-existence
Neither exists nor does not exist
One by one
All proofs make no logical sense
What is the level of difficulty in achieving this?
It's like being alone.
Mathematical proof of all human thought systems
Are fundamentally flawed
And then offered a way out
Hello
Hello.
I am Wang Lijie
This series brings together the core Buddhist scriptures one by one
Take it apart in modern language
Before we started from the Ahan Sutra and the Diamond Sutra
All the way to the Heart Sutra
Established the basic framework of dependent origin, prajna and emptiness
Today we will look at Nagasu's < Middle Theory >
About the life of Nagarjuna
And why he appeared at that moment in history
I talked about it specifically in the historical context series
And it just goes by in one sentence: somewhere between the second and third centuries A.D.
Mahayana Buddhism encountered a serious philosophical crisis
Dragon tree appears
Solved the crisis
By the way, the philosophical foundation of the entire Mahayana Buddhism was rebuilt
Today we only focus on one thing
What exactly does this < Zhonglun > say?
Let me give you a context.
Let you understand why Nagarjuna wrote this book
In previous issues, we talked about the Prajna system
Talked about emptiness in 260 words
He talked about the Diamond Sutra, which should be born without dwelling, and pointed out the direction of non-attachment
The prajna system is very powerful
But it has a side effect.
It's just that someone started to go astray
Which way do you go?
After someone listens to emptiness
Start to think
Since everything is empty
Then all morality is meaningless
Karma is dead.
What's the difference between doing good and doing bad?
It's empty anyway
Some people go to the other extreme
Transforming emptiness into an experience
Pursuit of a certain sense of nothingness, ethereal feeling
I mistakenly thought that was liberation
Nagasu writes < Zhonglun >
It is necessary to completely correct these two deviations
What he wants to prove is
Emptiness is not anything you can describe
Including nothingness, including nothing
Neither
Emptiness is an exact logical proposition
Not a realm
It's not a feeling.
Is a very specific analysis of the way things exist
OK
Now look at the opening chapter of < Zhongluo >
Nagarjuna has a verse before the text begins
Just these twenty-four words
It came to be known as the path of the eight noes: neither birth nor destruction
Unoften and constantly
different or different
No come no go
Can be said to be karma
On the good destruction of all plays
I preach to Buddha
The first of all
The second half is the cliché of the Buddha
We skip
The first four sentences are the core
immortal
Not often, constantly
different
no come no go
The first time you read this
There is a high probability that this is a poem
Is some kind of artistic expression
But it's not poetry.
It's an exact philosophical proposition.
Four pairs of concepts
Eight negatives
Nagarjuna is in the entire < Middle Lecture >
Are making concrete logical arguments for these eight negatives
To understand what these eight negatives say
We must first understand a core concept
It's called the Self.
Self
It refers to the nature of things themselves
It's inherently prescriptive.
The core that it exists independently of any relationship or condition
The root cause that makes it what it is and nothing else is.
Our daily thinking
They assume things have a nature of their own.
You said this flower
It presupposes that flowers have their own floral properties
The essential requirement to make it a flower and nothing else
You say this, I
It presupposes that I have my own nature
An eternity runs through all states
The self-core independent of changes in the body and changes in the mind
Nagarjuna said
This self
You can't find it anywhere in the universe.
Notice that he's not saying that flowers don't exist
It's not that you don't exist
What does he mean?
Your understanding of flowers and your way of being
The understanding that postulates the Self
Is wrong
Now look at the pair who are neither born nor die
We say a tree grows from a seed
What does that presuppose?
It presupposes that at some point the tree goes from nothing to something
That is, produced
gave birth
But Nagarjuna began to analyze this life in the first product of < Zhongluo >
So he says.
Anything needs to be born
There are only four possibilities: born from oneself
Born of other things, born of self and other things
Or born for no reason
These four situations
He proved it doesn't make sense one by one
What does it mean to be born from oneself?
The tree is born from the tree itself
But if the tree is already there
Does it still need to be born?
It already exists.
One more time
And what's even more ridiculous is
If a thing can give birth to itself from itself
Then it should be able to live forever
Because the living conditions have always been there
Trees become countless trees
Finally fill the universe
Obviously not established
From other things
For example, a tree grows from a seed
Is this seed another existence with its own nature?
If so
Where did the seed itself come from?
Going back is an endless chain
Can't find the starting point
If the seed has no self
How can something that has no nature give rise to the nature of another?
This logic doesn't hold either
It's more complicated.
But it brings in the first two questions
Equals problem stacking
To be born without a cause means to appear without any reason
So anything can come out of thin air under any conditions.
The world is completely messed up
That's clearly not true.
All four possibilities are blocked.
And what does that mean?
It's not that trees don't exist.
I think we should be talking about this.
What you think
The process of going from what to what
The event you named life
When you really pursue it
Can't find a consistent way to describe it
The same logic applies to annihilation
same
Therefore, it is called neither birth nor death
Which brings me to the conservation of energy in modern physics.
Energy is immortal
They're just going from one form to another.
A log burned
We say it's gone.
But it becomes heat, light, carbon dioxide, water vapor
Those things are still there
Just changed the form
So...
Disappear
Did that really happen?
Or say
What we do is we label transformation as vanishing.
I don't see this pair often and constantly
Chang means eternal
Broken means to disappear completely, and then nothing is left.
This is for continuity issues
And it's one of the most common questions that we face when we think about ourselves.
The you of today and the you of yesterday
Is it the same you?
If it is exactly the same
Then you are immutable
That is, often
But that's clearly not right.
Your cells are constantly being replaced
Your mind is changing
The self in your memory and the self in this moment
And every day is subtly different.
If not the same
Every moment, an old you dies and a new you appears
That is, broken
But who is saving the memory?
Who's to say I did this yesterday?
Who is recognizing this body as mine?
Nagarjuna said
Constant and broken are two extremes
Presupposes some kind of fixed self
say often
An invariant kernel is preset
break
Preset something that really disappears
But these two
It's all the concepts we posted
Can't find a real foothold
Have you looked at the photos from five years ago?
Look at that person
I felt like he was almost a stranger
But you also know that you are the same person
Where is the continuity?
In memory
In identity
In that story you tell yourself
These things are very real
Also very useful
But they're narrative entities.
Not the existence of some fixed kernel
Different or different, this pair
It's about identity.
Yesterday's glass of water and today's glass of water
Is it the same glass of water?
After you drink half of it
Is the remaining half glass still the same glass of water?
If you pour water into another cup
Is it still the same glass of water?
These questions sound like tongue twisters
But what Nagarjuna wants to point out is that
The judgment system that we use to define the boundaries of difference
There is no stable foothold in itself
The world is continuous.
We put a grid on it with concepts.
The things in the grid don't exist because of the grid.
It becomes a self-sustaining entity
Neither come nor go, this pair
To analyze motion
A moving object
You say it goes from point A to point B
Where was it during this time?
On the way.
Where is it on the road?
You name any point
It's just a momentary stop at that moment
It's actually moving.
The movement itself
Where to start?
Where is the moment of movement?
Can never seem to be pinpointed
Because once located
It stops exercising
Which brings me to the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics.
The position and momentum of a particle cannot be precisely measured simultaneously
The moment you measure the location
Momentum is uncertain
The moment you measure momentum
The location is uncertain.
Nagarjuna predates quantum mechanics by nearly two thousand years
He used conceptual analysis to reach a conclusion in a similar direction
A conceptual framework for describing motion
It's got inherent tension.
OK
Saying so much
I want to stop here.
Let me ask you a question.
Nagarjuna uses these eight negatives
Proving that birth and death are concept constructs
Constancy is concept building.
One difference is concept construction
It comes and goes as concept building.
And?
What does this actually mean for us?
The answer is what Nagarjuna calls emptiness.
But what is emptiness?
Emptiness is not that everything does not exist
Emptiness means
All the things you can describe with words and concepts.
They're not self-sufficient.
Leave all relationships and conditions still in place
Everything exists in relationships
Exists in conditions
Water is wet
But wetness is relative to our sensory system.
For particles in the universe that don't have nervous systems
Wet doesn't exist at all
Water is liquid
But it depends on temperature and air pressure
Water turns to ice or steam.
Flowers are red
But what if your visual system only senses ultraviolet light?
This flower may be a completely different color to you
These existences
It's a web of relationships and conditions.
Left this net
What is water?
What are flowers?
What is red?
Can't stand alone at all
Nagarjuna calls this dependent emptiness
Dependent origin is the emergence of dependence on conditions
Emptiness is the absence of self-nature
The two are not contradictory
It's two sides of the same coin.
It is because there is no self
So you can live by it.
It is because of dependence
So there is no self
Here's a very important argument from Nagarjuna: if things have a nature
The Self is unchanging.
What is constant cannot be influenced by any conditions.
Then this thing can't do anything
Cannot be changed
It can't grow.
Can't practice
Can't realize
And the other way around.
It is because there is no self
Everything can change
Practice is meaningful
Enlightenment is possible
Empty is not devaluation
Is value added
It means the world is open
Not locked in by some immutable self
Now I want to change the angle.
Let you feel this more directly
Have you ever had a moment like this?
You have a very fixed judgment about somebody or something.
That's how it is
And then one day...
That person did something that completely surprised you.
Or maybe it went completely beyond your expectations.
And you get confused.
Not anger
Not sadness
It's the dizziness of the frame being broken.
You stop in that dizziness and feel it carefully
You will find that there is a sense of panic
It's not about panic.
It's panic at the sudden failure of one's own way of understanding
This Moment
You find yourself preset with a self.
You think this person is like that in the first place
How do you think this is supposed to be?
That would have been
It's the kernel you added yourself.
What Nagarjuna wants to do is not to make you stop feeling this way
It allows you to see clearly from an earlier time
That one was originally added by you.
It doesn't exist in the real world
What happens when you see it clearly?
It's not that you've become apathetic
I don't care.
It's the framework that supports you.
That fixed concept of this person, this thing, this self
There will be a strange loosening.
After loosening
Your connection to the world
Will have a different texture
Not so hard
Don't get stuck as often
Nagarjuna has a sentence in "Middle Lecture"
I think it is the core expression of the whole book
He said: The truth of all dharmas
Heart line speech break
law
It's the way things really are.
Reality
Is how it really exists
The mind is any activity you think about it
Words are any expression you make of it
Nagarjuna said
The way things really exist
Is beyond the reach of all thought and language
It's not silencing you.
This is saying
Language and concepts are tools
Very useful.
It allows us to communicate.
Capable of division of labor and cooperation
Can build civilization
But these tools have a fundamental limitation.
It's the grid that they actually cut out.
Is not equal to reality itself
You can use tools.
But don't get caught up in the grid of tools
Think of the grid as the original boundary of things
Before I made this video
Try to find that boundary in your own meditation.
Find something that I think should be
And ask yourself this question.
Where did this come from?
Tried a few times
Can find that derivation chain
catch up to the end
Discovery is some presupposition formed a long time ago
It's never been questioned.
It became a matter of course
Nagarjuna's Argument Two Thousand Years Ago
In this experience
There is a strange landing sensation
How about you?
Is there something in your life?
It's what you've long believed it should be
But then you found out that it should be
You actually added it yourself.
What was that moment like?
I especially want to see your story in the comment section.
"The Middle Lecture" is an endless book
Every time you open it, you can find something new inside.
This issue is just an entrance
Which angle do you most want us to dig deeper from next time?
I am Wang Lijie
See you next time.