Yoga v. negation

The real battle between Yogachara and Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka is the difference between a middle-way that is the unchanging substance (vastu) of all finite existence, and the middle-way as the interplay of illusory antitheses that add up to nothing (shunyata).  

Of Nagarjuna’s postion, there is no real basis for the world we perceive.  Such a basis is vastu-shunya, i.e., substantially absent.  By comparison, for Yogachara appearance depends on pure reality, i.e., vastu-matra.  In fact, there is nothing except vastu-matra in the analogy of a clay pot, that despite its form—and its destruction into fragments—the clay-ness remains unaffected.  The pot, in other words, is an appearance of clay of which it could be said, hides the clay-ness.

The authority for the Yogachara postion comes through direct meditative conformaiton in which the absolute is cognized, directly.  Over against this, for the Madhyamika, there is thorough negation with no positive implication beyond.  One simply stops clinging to the belief in an absolue (vastu-matra).  The Madhyamika accepts the interdependent play of antithetical phenomena—internally and externally.  

Madhyamaka, to be sure, is evocative of nihilism.  For what else can nihilism be except surd phenomenalism?  In addition, as we might draw from this, there can be no deep gnosis, either.  Nor is this non-noetical position exactly in accord with the Lankavatara Sutra which affirms vastu (reality) in which mind is purified leaving no traces of defilement, save that vastu is the truth that is pure (LS X: 250).

Comments

[The Zennist]

Carl Jung has summed it up beautifully. The bulk of Western men are only interested in the gross and the crude.

[TGL]

Reading your article I recall Carl Jungs comment on the Psyche (greek. life force);

"The psyche is the greatest of all cosmic wonders and the "sine qua non" (latin. essential action, condition, or ingredient) of the world as an object. It is in the highest degree odd that Western man, apparently pays so little regard to this fact.

Swamped by the knowledge of external objects, the subject (psyche) of all knowledge has been temporarily eclipsed to the point of seeming nonexistence.
CG. Jung. 1945"

Best regards

TGL