Robin Beck

Hi Charles, Robin, et al,
I have also been discussing this recently in the SGI Yahoo group, and there has been a very fruitful discussion there between Robin, Colin, Phil (clown hidden) and myself.

One thing that needs to be mentioned is that the term "sunyata" was shocking and provocative even in its original Indian context. The sutras frequently mention that the novice bodhisattvas become fearful upon hearing about it. I don't think the term used was any easier to understand for them than its translation as "emptiness" is for us - and I think this was deliberate. It was a rhetorical tool that was meant to be a bit over the top to hammer home the idea that things don't have a self-nature. But then people like Nagarjuna had to deal with the accusation of nihilism and worked very hard to show that sunyata or "emptiness" must be thought of as a different way of driving home the point of dependent origination. In the Mulamdahyamika-karika (Nichiren calls this the Chu Ron) Nagarjuna even points out that those who falsely apprehend "emptiness" as nothingness will have turned the medicine into a poison and they will then be harder to cure than those who believe in self-nature. So this is not just a problem of English translation, but also has to do with the over the top and paradoxical sounding rhetoric of the Mahayana sutras themselves - even in their original language and context.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Hi,

More comments coming. I see Sunyatta as that which is constant and unconditioned. The brain or manas-vijnana is conditioned. The ego-mind or masno-vijnana is conditioned. Alaya is conditioned.

What is unconditioned, and Empty, IMGO, is amala, which I see as purified alaya.

Udana VIII.3
Nibbana Sutta
Total Unbinding (3)
Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
For free distribution only.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Savatthi, in Jeta's Grove, Anathapindika's monastery. Now at that time the Blessed One was instructing urging, rousing, and encouraging the monks with Dhamma-talk concerned with Unbinding. The monks -- receptive, attentive, focusing their entire awareness, lending ear -- listened to the Dhamma.
Then, on realizing the significance of that, the Blessed One on that occasion exclaimed:

There is, monks, an unborn -- unbecome -- unmade -- unfabricated. If there were not that unborn -- unbecome -- unmade -- unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born -- become -- made -- fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn -- unbecome -- unmade -- unfabricated, emancipation from the born -- become -- made -- fabricated is discerned.

Robin, Ryuei, et al...

I am very impressed with the eloquence of you guys. After reading these exchanges, it is clear to me that concepts like the Three Truths require a change in language that is clear and truthful. When the explanation of Shunyatta is defined as emptiness, but it really doesn't mean emptiness, we arrive at a cunundrum that I have spoken out on before. That problem is that translating vital Buddhist concepts into English and for the Western mind is problematic to say the least.

I applaud the term "interbeing," as the kind of approach we need to continue to make Buddhist ideas inteligible to the Western mind. As an act of contrition, after my two friends disputed my modernization and literary license with santai, I re-read all the materials I had on the subject as well as pondered Ryuei's and Robin's comments. I have no doubt that their conclusions are basically consistent with some schools - but not all. Body, mind, and spirit still rings true to me.

I must confess that my re-interpretation was largely influenced by the old SGI explanations, but with my own additions. As was said before, apparently these old, perhaps spurious definitions are being ammended to reflect the more traditional ideas.

If nothing else, I have had the benefit of reflecting further on this subject and am now determined more than ever to be instrumental in the re-tooling of the language and modern terminology used to explain these subjects. I bow to both of you for encouraging me. As a popular author, I am in the unique position to help disseminate this new terminology. I will in the future confer with you two and others to ensure there is some consensus for future concepts.

Charles

Good question Robin,
Emptiness is also said to be empty. Emptiness, is not a thing but merely a designation for that which arises and ceases due to causes and conditions. So emptiness is not even a phenomena but more of an abstraction used to point out the way things are. And what it is saying about the way things are is that everything we can notice as a thing is actually an abstraction from the flow of causes and conditions. And here we enter the heady territory of Prasangkika Madhyamika which I am convinced is saying just about the same thing as Chih-i. But the bottom line is that emptiness is not a thing, but a method of seeing that there is no-thing to cling to whether mental, physical, or otherwise.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

What are the causes & conditions of Sunyatta?

Good Dharma Friends (Charles and Robin and whoever else is reading this),

I just read more closely what Robin said in his responses and I was thinking along the same lines. Now I am going to try again:

The teaching of emptiness in the sutras was to get people to stop fixating on the dharmas or reality-elements as something to grasp. These dharmas include mental and physical phenomena. So everything is empty without exception, therefore not graspeable. Therefore grasping is senseless.

But this led to a nihilistic understanding of emptiness, so in the Mulamadhyamikakarika (Verses on the Middle Way) Nagarjuna equated emptiness with dependent origination. Dependent Origination means that things do exist providing the right causes and conditions. He even wrote that what dependenly arises is empty. It is not that they are empty and then arise, they are empty of a fixed-nature by virtue of the fact that they arise interdependently according to causes and conditions. So this view of emptiness as the nature of being caused and conditions restores the importance of dealing forthrightly with causes and conditions. If emptiness brings freedom from fixation, then realizing that emptiness is conditioned arising (provisional existence) restores our responsibility for dealing with causes and conditions.

Nagarjuna also equated all this with the Middle Way. I will have to find the verse where he equates all these - it is the verse that inspired Chih-i to teach the unity of the three truths. Anyway, it is all the Middle Way because both emptiness and provisionality and the Middle Way are teachings that are trying to get us to see that no phenomena (dharmas) whether physical or mental, gross or subtle, can be categorized as simply existing or as non-existent. All phenomena we experience, mental of physical, can be dealt with (touched, tasted, seen, smelled, heard, or mentally cognized or ruminated on) but has no permanent independent essence to grasp or which can disappear.

This is a very subtle perspective to attain, but it is key to the Buddha's Middle Way according to Mahayana thinker/practitioners like Nagarjuna, Chih-i, and others. I think the best contemporary presentation of this is Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching about Interbeing. The teaching of Interbing does not rely on Sanskrit jargon or T'ien-t'ai technical terms (like ku, ke, and chu) but it is conveying the same idea.

Other more metaphysical ideas relating to appearance and disappearance in accord with causes and condition from the field of potential (the alaya) to the mental realm (6th and 7th consciousness) to physical manifestation (conscious experience in the first five consciousnesses) are best accounted for in terms of Consciousness Only teachings and terms.

Again, Thich Nhat Hanh's book "Zen Keys" is the clearest and most accessible presentation of these core ideas of Mahayana Buddhism, which are common to Zen, T'ien-t'ai, Nichiren, and other schools of East Asian Buddhism. Frankly, I think it is not too far off from the Dalai Lama's explanations of Prasangika Madhyamika but far more accessible.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Hi Charles,
Well, I hesitated to even do a critique of your discussion in the book as I regard you as a friend and I didn't want to seem to be carping, but since you and Robin were discussing it and I was asked to comment I figured I had to say something. And yes, I certainly can live with you disagreeing with me. I don't want there to be any hard feelings.

It is not that I am trying to quibble or trying to criticize you personally. But in general over the past several years I have been trying to correct the mistaken presentation of the three truths that SGI used to promulgate and which I have noticed other popular writers on Buddhism from Japan present. The problem is that the Japanese themselves do not understand this very well. And neither did the Chinese, or the Chih-i would not have dedicated so much of his efforts to explaining the views of Nagarjuna precisely so that people would not think of emptiness as a "nothingness" or as any kind of field or entity or something distinct from causality itself in the present moment.

I wrote a whole chapter about this in Dharma Flower (going back to lectures I have gave in 1998), and there is a section on it in Lotus Seeds, and I have written about it online. So I have been researching and contemplating the true meaning of the three truths for some time - and that has led me to a careful consideration of what Chih-i wrote, what Nagarjuna wrote, what is written in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras (like the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra), how that appears in the Lotus Sutra, and even the way in which emptiness is discussed in the Pali Canon. The view is actually pretty consistent and not that difficult to understand once you get past the technical jargon and mystical obfuscation. In fact, I think that Thich Nhat Hanh presents the mainstream Mahayana view of emptiness in a very clear way in his book Zen Keys. That book, btw, also does a great job of discussing the eight consciousnessnes in a very clear and accessible way.

I certainly don't presume to stop people from talking about emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle Way in any manner that seems edifying to them. And perhaps what for me misses the point may inspire another to take up Buddhist practice in a way that will enable them to go beyond mere theory to a direct insight of their own. But I do feel an obligation to share what I have been able to discern about the actual meaning of this teaching and to do my best to present it in a way that I feel is accurate, accessible, and of practical value. Probably I have yet to succeed in this, but I will keep trying.

As one of my great mentors Fr. Maurice Schepers once said to me, "Everyone is doing their best."

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Ryuei:

Thanks for the insight. This is just one of those things we'll have to disagree on. My intention in using the Three Truths and body, mind, and spirit in Riding the Wheel to Wellness was not to distort Buddhism but make it clearer, as the the way the Three Truths is presented in the various schools is - in my opinion - convoluted, and perhaps in error.

It is also likely that people don't really care about the technicalities of the Three Truths, but readily understand body, mind and spirit. I must restate for the record that I pondered this parallel and did extensive research on this subject before I elected to put it in the book. Weighing all sides, I wrote what I wrote and stand by it as a proper expedient and not a distortion, but rather a reintepretation of a "theory."

Understanding that my words would put under a microscope, I decided to proceed, even though what I concluded was at odds with the theories and words of past masters. Because much of what I actually wrote needed to hit the cutting room floor so my book would be compact and not immersed in conflicting theories or too esoteric, I presented what I believe is a more comprehensible version of the Three Truths.

But I have also included in my book signing presentation a disclaimer of sorts that presents the alternative version of the Three Truths - it's only a one minute explanation, but I am doing so for the purists.

In no way have I distorted the intention of the Buddha. The whole subject is nothing more than background so my readers can appreciate the fact that their lives are as dynamic and vast as the cosmos. With all due respect, have we been reading the same subject? When I read it and meditate on it, the Three Truths are consistent with what I wrote.

Thanks for your opinion which I respect very much. But I stand by what I wrote.

Respectfully, Charles

Hi everyone,
I came into this late, but I do have a comment or two. And I want to apologize beforehand if this comes off as harsh or pedantic, but I really think that a proper understanding of emptiness, the conditionality of all things, and the Middle Way in accord with the actual insights of the Buddha, Nagarjuna, and Chih-i is important enough to reflect on deeply.

The three truths are at the heart of the Buddha's insight, and I think that if misrepresented it distorts everything. The unity of three truths was actually more important in T'ien-t'ai Buddhism than ichinen sanzen. I have also found that it is a good corrective for those who fall into a nihilistic view of emptiness. Unfortunately it has been badly taught in earlier SGI publications, though their recents pubs seem to have made a correction.

Emptiness is the ongoing emptiness of all five aggregates - form, feeling, sensation, volition, and consciousness (all of the consciousnesses are implied). It is not that form is opposed to emptiness - "form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form is not other than emptiness, emptiness is not other than form". That is from the Heart Sutra and the Lotus Sutra carries that forward without change (see chapter 14 esp.) though it does apply it to the Buddha's lifespan.

Emptiness, Provisional Existence, and the Middle Way are just different ways of looking at the same phenomena. It is not that things are sometimes one or the other. All things are always all three.

I am right now empty of a fixed, independent self, but this means that I am a provisional existence of causes and conditions, and I exemplify the Middle Way which is the emptiness of causes and conditions and the conditionality of emptiness. This may be tricky to understand, but it is the key insight. It is not that each term applies to different phenomena or to different states of being or non-being. All three apply to all phenomena and all three avoid the extremes of being and non-being.

Provisional existence is not just the form. Even the various forms of consciousness are also provisional existence because they are all what they are due to causes and conditions. And consciousness is also empty of fixed self, but so is form. And both body and mind are empty but contingent and so exemplify the Middle Way. The Middle Way is not a spiritual energy, but simply the way things are - empty of self but provisionally arising in accord with causes and conditions. I suppose you could call the flow of causes and conditions an energy field - but it is not an underlying field, the causes and conditions are the field.

I truly feel it is not a simplification or a Westernization but a distortion to say that ku is a field from which things arise, or that ke is only the form, or that Chu is something like the Force in Star Wars. Chih-i went to a lot of trouble to explain why early Chinese interpretations along these lines were missing the point of the Buddha's and Nagarjuna's insights. This is recounted in Paul Swanson's book "T'ien-t'ai Philosophy".

There are other Buddhist concepts which fit what Charles was trying to say in Riding the Wheel. I think it would have been less misleading to use the terminology of the Consciousness Only school and the nine consciousnesses when talking about rebirth rather than associating the three truths with body, mind, and spirit in a way distorts the insights they are trying to convey. Ancient Greek metaphysics and Madhyamika dialectics do not make for a good mix.

My point is that all three truths apply equally to all phenomena (body, mind, and spirit) at all times. They are not presentng a metaphysic, but three different but ultimately complimentary ways of deeply observing the true nature of things just as they are right here and now.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

***********************************************

Robin:

"Chutai is not a separate reality, it encompasses both. Kutai is the ultimate, unconditioned, deathless Reality."

That's because the theorists didn't talk to me first.

Charles

I see the 6th V, 7th V, and conditioned aspects of alaya as still ketai. Kutai as unconditioned alaya or amala. Chutai is not a separate reality, it encompasses both. Kutai is the ultimate, unconditioned, deathless Reality. There is the difference.

Many people are puzzled that good dharma friends can disagree without shooting arrows. LOL.

r

Robin:

It is my contention that the mind - the conscious mind that includes the ego, the subconscious, and the collective unconsciousness are all contained in kutai. Ketai denotes form, whether physical bodies like our own, other dimensional beings, or astral bodies of light. It is also my contention that chutai is the spiritual energy that interpenetrates all existence.

Your points, as usual, are well taken. But ku is in my way of understanding a local and nonlocal phemonena - existing, yet without substance. Moreover, each of the Three Truths contains all the others.

This was fun. Who else can weigh in on this subject and perhaps refute both of us?

Charles

"It is my opinion that the Three Truths are embodied by form (body), mind, and spirit."

That assigns the ego to Sunyatta ot Kutai, which is the ultimate reality -- and that does not work.
````````````````````````````````````
"The Three Truths:
1. Conventional Truth or Ketai
2. Ultimate Truth or Kutai
3. Chutai Both are True at the same time."
{Marc Strumpf}
````````````````````````````
I think the point is better illustrated by the Vijnana/Citta concept:

*six sense organs, shadindriya, or rokkon would be the Physical.

The Mano-vijnana, the seat of the ego, and the conditioned aspect of Alaya would be the Mental. The mental is not Ke, not Ku

The unconditioned or purified Alaya-Citta and/or Amala-Citta would be the Spiritual. And it is Ku, Empty, & unconditioned.

r

"Thanks for your opinon - I do understand that in relationship to the exact wording of the past masters, your preliminary idea is correct. However, it is my contention that my take on the Three Truths is closer to the truth that can be expediently conveyed to contemporary non- Buddhists."

That is cool. I by no means think I undestand it well enough to declare other opinions heretical. :}.What you wrote is what I would have said until fairly recently.

My recent comments at
alt . religion . buddhism . nichiren
in a different context.

For myself, I am not real attached to any specific doctrines. I have no need for others to agree with me. In fact, I learn the most from
mutually respectful dialogue with those who have different conclusions than my own -- most of whom are not particularly attached to specific
ideas as well. What I mean, is we know what we do know, know what we do not know, have some tentative hypotheses, and seek to better
understand. We try to understand one another, rather than the constant 'knee jerk' refuting and self righteous frowns of disapproval.

It seems like, in some Nichiren circles, many have a pressing need to be right. People like that are threatened by diverse ideas. So they tend attack the persons presenting them. Much like the way Ninsho Ryokan, who was highly respected as a living saint, reacted to Nichiren.

The weekness of my position is that it can, at times, be viewed as lacking conviction, loyalty, etc. I do center on the Three Great Secret Dharmas, though I do not require that of other Buddhists. People who are new to Buddhim should feel safe exploring the various traditions. I do not think we should trash other schools, as there is no established religion {here} to refute. There is no government ordination platform that grants empowerments.

That is what I am thinking right now.

r

Robin:

It is my opinion that the Three Truths are embodied by form (body), mind, and spirit. This is my contemporary take on the subject. One of the problems that I have (personally) with Buddhist terms, concepts and theories is that they have been for the most part been taken wholesale forward into contemporary life without new, enlightened revision where applicable.

In my mind, people like yourself, myself, Brian Holly, and the esteemed Reverand Ryuei are in a sort of vangaurd of updating Buddhist cosmology, based on the wisdom of the Lotus Sutra. I am not talking about slash and burn of concepts and theories, but re-interpretation where applicable. After all, these concepts "are" theories.

Thanks for your opinon - I do understand that in relationship to the exact wording of the past masters, your preliminary idea is correct. However, it is my contention that my take on the Three Truths is closer to the truth that can be expediently conveyed to contemporary non- Buddhists.

Charles

"Being well aware of all that you wrote and referenced in your blog - including the SGI misinterprtation, I decided to explain those Three Truths of existence in terms of body, mind, and spirit to make it more accessible to non-Buddhists. Of course, there is way more to it as you have clearly indicated, but for me, my approach is a good place to start."

My opinion right now is that misses what santai means. Sunyatta, or ku, is a quality of both body & mind. As is substantiality. Chu simply means both views are correct. What Chih-I was doing was reconciling conflicting views held by opposing camps. Chutai is not a third view; it encompasses both.

That is whast I think right now. I am hoping Brian Holly & Ryuei have a chance to comment.
Here is a question. Are Heaven & Hell real places, or transient life conditions?

Another topic I eant to cover is that of the 6 sensory faculties, 6 types of objects of sensation, citta & vijnana, & the 8 or 9 vijnana, 2-4 of which are really citta. That might be a more accurate way to explain the material, mental, & spiritual.

r

Robin:

Thanks for a terrific post - once again.

What is your opinion regarding such concepts like santai that are made more readily understandable for non-Buddhists?

I gave the discussion of the Three Truths a great deal of study, meditation, and thoughtful consideration when broaching this subject in my new book. Being well aware of all that you wrote and referenced in your blog - including the SGI misinterprtation, I decided to explain those Three Truths of existence in terms of body, mind, and spirit to make it more accessible to non-Buddhists. Of course, there is way more to it as you have clearly indicated, but for me, my approach is a good place to start.

By way of experience and observation, I have noticed that there are many Buddhist concepts that are beyond Western understanding, if presented in their originally intended context. The Three Truths is just one example. It's clear to me that any number of people are put off by the more deeply esoteric concepts, but when they are explained in a simpler - more identifiable context, they can to some degree "connect the dots," as you say.

In your opinion, is making such Buddhists concepts more readily accessible to the Western mind an "expedient means," or is it a distortion of Buddhism? My opinion is that Buddhism will fail to take root again if we do not change the language and make it understandable to the non-Buddhist layman.

Charles