Madhyamaka Buddhism dan Postmodernism

[Suchamda]

Introduction

The dialogue between postmodern science and Buddhism is indicative of the
difficulties within scientific inquiry regarding physics and epistemology. While
understanding the nature of particle physics is a difficult task in light of new theoretical
interpretations of the quantum world, it is an even more difficult task to question the
epistemological frameworks that are the foundations of the theoretical interpretations
themselves. Hence, the use of Buddhist philosophy is intended to shed light on the
question of whether or not our epistemic frameworks are adequate to deal with complex
issues within the quantum world. However, within the dialogue between postmodern
science and Buddhism, there is little emphasis on postmodern philosophy.

It is one thing to say that quantum science is a postmodern science, since it deals
with the theoretical break from classical and modern interpretations of physics and
epistemology. However, for contemporary scientists, it is another thing to say that these
epistemologies of the old paradigm should be rejected. Most scientists acknowledge that
conventional epistemic knowledge is questionable or unreliable in the face of quantum
evidence.1 Yet, simultaneously, they refuse to throw out these conventions since there is
nothing to replace the established epistemic systems that are used.
Postmodern philosophers, on the other hand, welcome the rejection of these
epistemic formulations. In fact, postmodernists demand epistemic deconstruction.
Likewise, Madhyamaka Buddhism offers a similar conclusion regarding epistemic
knowledge formulated by the postmodernists. So, if there is to be a comparison between
Buddhism and postmodern science, then postmodern philosophy should be involved de
facto in this dialogue since it shares with Buddhism similar critiques and positions regarding epistemic systems. I contend that there are many similarities between
Madhyamaka Buddhism and postmodern philosophy in their critiques of the legitimacy
of traditional western epistemology. Therefore, the aim of this essay is to uncover
similarities between Madhyamaka Buddhism and postmodernism in regard to critiques of
western rationalism, specifically the assumption that reality can be rationally understood
as a complete or totalized system of knowledge.
In so doing, there are three objectives. The first objective is to describe the
philosophical positions held by postmodernism and Madhyamaka Buddhism that reject,
or at least question, western epistemology. The second objective is to explain the
similarities between postmodernism and Madhyamaka regarding their alternative
philosophical perspectives of epistemic systems. Finally, the third objective is to defend
the postmodernist and Madhyamaka positions against the critiques of those who interpret
postmodernism and Madhyamaka as nihilistic.

[Suchamda]

Postmodernism, Buddhism and Epistemology

Postmodernism is not easy to define. It is an ambiguous term and its ambiguity is
a result of the dynamic changes in the nature of the philosophy, science, culture,
technology, and post-industrial economies it seeks to describe in theory. Hence,
Postmodernism has many definitions depending upon the context. However, an adequate
definition of postmodernism, as it pertains to this discussion, is formulated by Jean
Lyotard. To Lyotard, postmodernism, “designates the state of our culture following the
transformations which, since the end of the nineteenth century, have altered the game
rules for science, literature, and the arts.”2 Thus, postmodernism marks the intellectual and cultural shift from modernity. However, there is more to postmodern theory than
what is implied by this definition.
Modern theory, which began with Descartes and extended on through the
Enlightenment, is criticized by postmodernism for seeking an absolute foundation of
knowledge.3 Thus, modern philosophical thought is critiqued for its universalizing and
totalizing claims, for its “hubris to supply apodictic truth,” and for its “allegedly
fallacious rationalism.”4 In relation to science, postmodern theory provides a “critique of
representation and the modern belief that theory mirrors reality. Instead, it proposes
‘perspectivist’ and ‘relativist’ positions that view theories as partial perspectives on their
objects, since all cognitive representations of the world are historically and linguistically
mediated.”5

The central concern for the postmodernists is the use of epistemic truth-claims
that offer a complete or ‘totalizing’ framework that accounts for or ‘legitimizes’ claims
concerning the knowledge of reality. Above all, postmodernism questions the idea of
metanarrative or ‘grand’ narrative – the attempt to explain all of human endeavor in terms
of a single theory or principle. Thus, the postmodernists reject any over-arching story or
theory that accounts for, explains, or comments upon the validity of any universal or
absolute set of truths which transcends social, institutional or human limitations.
Therefore, what is left is a variety of perspectives on the world which none can be
privileged.
Jean Francois Lyotard is the foremost, and most outspoken, philosophical critic of
metanarratives. To Lyotard, grand or ‘meta’ narratives are seen as specific legitimating
narratives of scientific thought.6 In his work The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard states,“the term modern… designate a science that legitimates itself with reference to a
metadiscourse… making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics
of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working
subject, or the creation of wealth.”7 Hence, the ‘postmodern’ approach for Lyotard
displays an,

incredulity toward metanarratives. This incredulity is
undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that
progress in turn presupposes it. The obsolescence of the
metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most
notably, to the crisis of metaphysical philosophy
[rationalism] and of the university institution which, in the
past, relied upon it. The narrative function is losing its
functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages,
and its great goal.8

However, his critique is not primarily concerned with scientific knowledge, but
with the epistemic systems in which scientific knowledge rests. Thus, rationalism is
problematic for Lyotard since it attempts to explain the totality of social and intellectual
practices in terms of their conformity to a universal pattern.9
Moreover, Lyotard asserts the play of language-games as an alternative
viewpoint. For him, theory – and the rational epistemology on which theory depends –
must respect the contingencies and tensions involved in the process of thought by
focusing on the actual practice or ‘language-games’ in which practical life is conducted.
Ordinary and practical language-games are, “not susceptible to the requirements of a
meta-game for they neither observe necessary, logical conditions nor conform to
essentialist, common criteria.”10 Therefore, Lyotard emphasizes the difference between a
multiplicity of language-games toward other language-games as incommensurable with
the notion of a metanarrative, since reality itself is recalcitrant to rational schemes of
thought and “harbors the disruptively contingent and different.”11
The ‘meta’ in metanarrative can be understood as what Jacques Derrida refers to
as ‘the metaphysics of presence.’ Presence in western metaphysics leads to what Derrida
characterizes as logocentrism. Derrida argues that,

All the terms related to fundamentals in western
metaphysics depend upon the notion of constant presence.
Thus, the history of metaphysics rests upon the false
premise that words refer to meanings present in their
utterance. The premise is false because meaning is created
through a play of differences between signifier and
signified: a sign has no independent meaning for it always
contains traces of the other, absent signs, whether spoken
or written. The present itself, e.g., always contains traces of
what it is not.12

In other words, the ‘metaphysics of presence’ is the idea of an overarching meaning
present in language and thought on which ordinary speech and the constructs of thought
depend. Hence, epistemological systems are forms of presence insofar as processes of
thought are contingent upon an overall presence that determines the legitimacy of
meaning within the construction of the substance of thought, including the structure of
the thought itself. Therefore, rationalism claims to have access to knowledge and truth by
virtue of the presupposition of logos as presence.
This problem is especially evident in the signification of truth. Derrida states, “All
the metaphysical determinations of truth… are more or less immediately inseparable
from the instance of the logos, or of a reason thought within the lineage of the logos, in
whatever sense it could be understood: in the pre-Socratic sense or the philosophical
sense, in the sense of God’s infinite understanding or in the anthropological sense, in the
pre-Hegelian or the post-Hegelian sense.”13 Thus, the presence of substance, essence,
existence, temporal points of the now or of the moment (time), the self-presence of the
cogito, consciousness, subjectivity, the co-presence of the self and the other,
intersubjectivity as the intentional phenomenon of the ego, and so forth – which were
central to the philosophies of the rationalists from Descartes through the Enlightenment -
are supported by Logocentrism as ‘sub-determinations’ of being as presence.14 Therefore,
the Derridian notion of the metaphysics of presence can be considered as the overarching
‘meta’ in all narratives within rationalistic epistemology since Rationalism presupposes
the presence of logos to which rationalistic truth claims refer.

As a consequence, Derrida, like Lyotard, emphasizes differences over totalizing
epistemic systems, but on different grounds. While Lyotard asserts the plurality of
language-games, Derrida criticizes logocentrism (rationality) because it requires the use
of binary affirmations. Binaries, like dualities, are claims, words, and thoughts that assert
the distinctions between true and false, validity and invalidity, subject and object, without
acknowledging intermediaries, or traces, from one to the other. The relation to their
negation is that their ‘meaning’ is intimately linked to what they are not. Thus, Derrida
rejects the notion that aspects of this binary are singular and independent meanings that
stand alone. Derrida’s deconstruction reveals the interplay of meanings and their
contingency in relation to logocentric structures present in speech and thought.
Furthermore, that ‘presence’ as logos is itself a binary fabrication of thought in relation to
the world at large. Therefore, Derrida emphasizes the endless play of Différance - the
constant ‘differing-deferral’ which marks every act of language, thought and perception -
in the acquisition of meaning over the assumption of an over-arching ‘presence’ to which
all meaning refers.15

[Suchamda]

Madhyamaka Buddhism

Madhyamaka Buddhism’s philosophical concern regarding epistemic systems is
similar to those of Lyotard and Derrida. Madhyamaka’s emphasis on Sunyata, or
‘emptiness,’ is at the core of their philosophy. Sunyata in Sanskrit connotes, “The
emptiness of all things as such.”16 More precisely, emptiness is the notion that, “any
belief in an objective reality grounded in the assumption of intrinsic, independent
existence is untenable. All things and events, whether material, mental, or even abstract
concepts like time, are devoid of objective, independent existence.”17 This includes
intellectual conceptualizations and categorizations of nature and reality. Hence, all
intellectual constructs of concept and category (abstraction) that assert knowledge of
reality are epistemic discriminations. They presuppose an ‘essence’ and ‘substance’ of
that construct, thereby implying a permanence of knowledge concerning ‘that’ concept
and category.

In the Madyamaka tradition, however, “Emptiness is not… simply nothingness. It
is… immediately and necessarily the being of dependent co-arising. The statement that
things are empty and non-existent is intended to clarify the reality of things, the true
characteristics of our ‘self-existence.’ Thus, emptiness is intended as an expression of
true being.”18 The notion of dependent co-arising can be formulated as: 1) If this is, that
comes to be; 2) From the arising of this, that arises; 3) If this is not, that does not come to
be; 4) From the stopping of this, that stops.19 While this seems to imply the necessity of
causal relation, the notion of dependent co-arising paradoxically rejects causal necessity.
Gadjin Nagao clarifies this implied causality in his book The Foundational Standpoint of
Madhyamaka Philosophy. He states, “Dependent co-arising is movement from cause to
result and in this sense refers to the conditioned states brought about by the agent.
However, one must keep in mind that such causal relationship is not the action of an
essential subjective reality upon an equally essential objective reality.”20 Since there is no
substantial reality in Madhyamaka philosophy, there is no essentialistic causal
relationship between substantial entities. No entity essentially exists apart or separate
from the other. Therefore, dependent co-arising refers to a causal relationship where
essences are not present in the cause or in its result.21

This can be seen in Nagarjuna’s view of dependent co-arising. Nagarjuna “went
so far as to claim that dependent co-arising entails the emptiness of beings and their
absence of essence, and that it cannot be explained from an essentialist perspective.”22
Thus, Nagarjuna’s statement, “An entity does not arise from itself, It is not arisen from
another” (MMK 21:13)23 stands as a refutation of essence as ‘presence.’
Furthermore, the Madhyamaka notion of the two-fold truth (Samvrti-satya and
Paramartha-satya) is pertinent to this discussion. In the most basic sense, they are the
truths of worldly convention (dependent co-arising) and the ultimate meaning
(emptiness). James Garfield explains in his book The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle
Way that “There is a conventional world of dependently arisen objects with properties, of
selves and their properties and relations.”24 In this world, there is conventional truth such
as the snow is white or the grass is green. Furthermore, individuals are distinct from
themselves and from their material possessions. However, there is an ultimate truth about
the conventional world. “It is empty (of inherent existence). None of these objects or
persons exists from its own side (independent of convention). From the ultimate point of
view there are no individual objects or relations between them.”25
However, it must be noted that the two truths are themselves empty constructions.
Nagarjuna understood that it was possible to develop an attachment to 1) dependentlyoriginated
entities as reified things and 2) to emptiness as an absolute. He, therefore,
developed a two-part strategy to prevent this. He demonstrated that 1) things are not
independent but dependent upon other things for their existence and 2) stressed that this
dependence empties things of their inherent existence.26 Thus, they are opposites which
are interdependently mediated and interpenetrated by emptiness. In relation to the points
given above, Nagarjuna states:
     1) A different thing depends on a different thing for its difference. Without a
         different thing, a different thing wouldn’t be different. MMK 14:527
     2) Whatever is dependently co-arisen, that is explained to be emptiness. That,
         being a dependent designation, is itself the middle way. MMK 24:1828

Hence, Nagarjuna’s ‘Middle Path’ is the path between the two truths – between worldly
convention and ultimate meaning – in which only emptiness can be affirmed.29 Therefore,
Nagarjuna proclaims that, “if one does not know the distinction between the two truths,
one cannot attain the true meaning of the Buddha doctrine.”30
Given all that has been said above, it seems that Madyamaka utilizes, to a certain
degree, reason and rationality to derive its position concerning the two truths. However,
Madhyamaka does not use or place reason in the same ‘metanarrative’ or ‘presencial’
stance found in the modern philosophical sense of the western tradition. Madhyamaka
philosophy makes a clear distinction between reason as ‘truly reasoned understanding’
and reason as ‘knowledge based upon criteria.’ Reason, thus, takes a two-fold character.
“Truly reasoned understanding is a critical examination of questions of being and nonbeing,
arising and non-arising, relative to the things that constitute the content of that
reasoning. Beings are not able to stand up under the weight of such an examination by
true reasoning, and unable to maintain their essence [and] are revealed without essence
and empty. In contrast, ‘knowledge based on criteria’ is the affirmation of being to
conventional things.”31 More precisely, ‘knowledge based on criteria’ is not just an
empirical epistemology, it includes the rational abstractions derived from sense
experience into what Nagao calls ‘sense-patterned knowing’. Thus, this type of knowing
never sees reality, for in the realm of ultimate meaning, ‘nothing in the world’, whether
objects of vision, hearing, smell, or so forth, ‘can be validated by such criteria.’32
Therefore, while truly reasoned understanding has access to ultimate meaning, no
knowledge based on criteria can ever reach the ultimately meaningful. It is bound to the
conventional world and gives rise to it.

Knowledge based on criteria is the epistemic foundation of the conventional
world’s deluded construction. Conversely, truly reasoned understanding is not grounded
in phenomological being since it focuses on an essence-free emptiness of beings.
Therefore, true reasoned understanding is distinct from knowledge based on criteria since
true reasoned understanding is epistemologically grounded in ultimate meaning, while
knowledge based on criteria is grounded in the conventional world.

These two forms of rational knowledge are distinct but they are not independent.33
They do not contradict each other since truly reasoned understanding cannot negate
knowledge based on criteria. Take, for example, the fact that green is green. This is
knowledge of the ordinary world of experience which is Upayic in nature insofar as it is
one of the various mental processes that facilitate the pursuit of wisdom.34 In this sense,
knowledge based on criteria is a practical means of leading one to the awareness of
emptiness and is somewhat dependent (as a matter of dependent origination) upon it, but
knowledge based upon criteria cannot achieve this awareness in and of itself. Therefore,
ultimate meaning cannot be considered in isolation from conventional wisdom. They are
mutually interdependent. The problem comes when we mistake conventional wisdom for
ultimate meaning. However, I will save this discussion for the next section when we
come to the critical similarities between Madhyamaka Buddhism and postmodernism.

[Suchamda]

Critical Similarities

The postmodernist critique of presence and metanarratives, and Madhyamaka
emptiness all assume that things cannot be distinguished from one another. There is no
central, static, unmoving ‘presence’ on which all things are contingent or depend. While
it is asserted in Madhyamaka Buddhism that the only true nature that permeates
throughout existence is emptiness, it is itself impermanent and changing. Hence, it is not
a singular aspect of existence that is fixed or separated from existence; a reified object. In
this sense, emptiness cannot be ‘pointed to’ as a matter of extension, but only
experienced as the nature of all things as change and impermanence. So, if we look at the
idea of emptiness in light of Derrida’s metaphysics of presence and through the
Lyotardian critique of metanarratives, we can see that emptiness is neither a presence nor
a metanarrative since there is ‘nothing there’ to deconstruct.

Similarly, Nagao describes how Madhyamaka philosophy deconstructs the
conventional world. He states, “True reasoning must be concerned with an ‘examination
of reality’, and not simply with questions of being a non-being within the conventional
world.”35 Ordinarily, people of the conventional world do not question the being or nonbeing
of the conventional world; they accept things as they are presented through
conventional norms and language. However, “if true reasoning is turned against this
world, the world would succumb to it; it cannot avoid being negated and falling into
nihilism. This would be a direct incursion of ultimate meaning into the conventional
world.”36 On the other hand, if worldly convention goes beyond the world of everyday
living (through abstraction) – when it turns into an inflated scholasticism – it is,
“validated by means of a theory of immutable essences that affirms the reality of its being
[rationality and logos = logocentrism].”37 Thus, true reasoning must guard against such
delusions. “It is because such people hold to the notion of ‘essential being’ [presence]
that they must be refuted through true reasoning of emptiness and the absence of essence
[deconstruction].”38

If the notion of emptiness is radically imposed, by way of direct incursion, into
the ordinary world, then it would evolve into nihility. But since the ordinary interdepends
on the empty, then any such incursion or supplantation should not, and cannot, be made.
It would create a monism as nihilism, which is antithetical to Madhyamaka Buddhism.
Conversely, if the ordinary, conventional world is affirmed as ‘totality,’ then we are stuck
in the deluded, rational structures of essences. What is needed, however, is a careful
deconstruction of the ordinary, worldly convention by means of ‘emptying out’ its notion
of essence.

This is precisely what the postmodernists want to do. Lyotard, for example, wants
to reject metanarratives as grand super-positions of presupposed essences that attempt to
create ultimate meaning. This requires that we must unthink what has already been
thought through thinking. Lyotard states in his work The Inhuman, “The unthought hurts
because we’re comfortable in what’s already been thought. And thinking, which is
accepting this discomfort, is also, to put it bluntly, an attempt to have done with it.”39

More importantly, Derrida’s rejection of ‘presence’ through deconstruction aims
at disseminating the presence of logos as a derivative of the ordinary, conventional world
of representation and thought as a construct of ultimate meaning. For Derrida, western
thought “has always been structured in terms of dichotomies and polarities such as good
vs. evil, being vs. nothingness, presence vs. absence, truth vs. error, and so on.”40
However, these polar opposites do not stand as independent and equal entities. “The
second term in each pair is considered negative, corrupt, undesirable version of the first, a
fall away from it… In general, what these hierarchical oppositions [in the first terms] do
is to privilege unity, identity, immediacy, and spatio-temporal presence over distance,
difference, dissimulation, and deferment.”41

In Madhyamaka terms, what Derrida is referring to is the affirmation of presence
derived from the conventional world of opposites as an active disregard for the ‘negative’
– the empty – that permeates throughout these distinctions. Hence, Derrida’s Différance
is an acknowledgement of the ‘deferring’ from the ‘differences’ within the western
epistemic binaries of opposites as a way to explicate the mistake of presencing the
conventional world as a representation of ultimate meaning. In this sense, then,
Différance is itself an act of emptying and, thus, leads to the affirmation of emptiness
itself.

Thus, emptiness is the absence of presence in the Derridian sense. Secondly,
emptiness is not a metanarrative since it does not offer a substantivist or essentialist
‘story’ or structure that accounts for the nature and reason of all things. It simply declares
the limitations of such stories given that substantivist stories are a product of the intellect
(rational or empirical epistemology) and a byproduct of the discriminating mind that
asserts conventional wisdom as ultimate meaning. Therefore, Madhyamaka sunyata,
Lyotard's ‘metanarrative,’ and Derrida’s ‘metaphysics of presence’ share complementary
philosophical features and perspectives in regard to deconstructing modern epistemic
legitimizations and systems of philosophy.42

[Suchamda]

Nagarjuna


Jean-Francois Lyotard


Jacques Derrida


Salah satu karya Gadjin M.Nagao

[Suchamda]

Untuk memahami Deconstruction :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction

[GiNong]

Pusing kk baca nya ada bahasa indo nya ngga kk ??
maklum bahasa inggris wa D
hiks
 
 

[Suchamda]

Wah, saya kulakannya juga dari  bahasa Inggris , so karena ga bisa olah maka jualannya juga dalam bentuk bahan baku aja deh :p

Aniwe, tujuan saya sebenarnya adalah untuk men'stretch' horizon para Buddhist disini.
You know, kemampuan manusia itu memiliki sifat seperti karet. Kita senantiasa men'stretch' (merentangkan) kemampuan kita utk lebih maju dan meluas lagi.
Tapi --alas-- krn spt karet, maka bila karet sepanjang 5 cm ditarik sepanjang 10cm, paling-paling molor (bertambah panjang) menjadi 6 cm. Untuk menjadikan karet tsb 10cm, maka mau tak mau harus kita tarik --misalnya-- sepanjang 30 cm.
Maka mohon dimaklumi bila saya memunculkan bahan-bahan berat dan mengejutkan, aneh, tak umum, sulit, dsb. Ini adalah untuk men'stretch' wawasan dan kemampuan sahabat2 disini, termasuk kemampuan berbahasa Inggrisnya    So, its worth to try! 

Kalau mau versi mudahnya, ya kita diskusi. Anda bertanya , nanti saya mencoba menjawab. Krn nurut saya, dari dialog maka lebih mudah jelasinnya. Mengapa? Krn saya akan mengetahui dimana / sampai dimana pengetahuan anda dan dimana ketidaktahuan anda , yg tentu saja perlu di elaborasi scr lebih intensif.

Salam.

[andrew]

Kalau mau versi mudahnya, ya kita diskusi. Anda bertanya , nanti saya mencoba menjawab. Krn nurut saya, dari dialog maka lebih mudah jelasinnya. Mengapa? Krn saya akan mengetahui dimana / sampai dimana pengetahuan anda dan dimana ketidaktahuan anda , yg tentu saja perlu di elaborasi scr lebih intensif.

Salam.

nanya dong...

Madhyamaka buddhism itu apa 

postmodernism itu apa