Negation, Nirvana and Nonsense

To do justice to a concept as fundamental as Nirvāṇa is to let it have its context. To this end I have selected the 25th chapter of Chandrakīrti's commentary (Prasannapadā) on Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka Sāstram. Here Chandrakīrti, following Nāgārjuna, is not interested in what Nirvāṇa is; rather he is concerned with how a Buddhist must not say what Nirvāṇa is. The issue is clearly methodological, of showing that a Buddhist must reject epistemology as the methodology of talking about Nirvāṇa. Man, according to Buddhist and Hindu philosophers, is healthy to the extent that he is a cognitive subject, and his world a system of determinable referents such that something about them could be affirmed or denied through language. Such an epistemology, dignified as medicine, involves an either/or logic, its metaphysical argument being that something either exists or it does not. Chandrakīrti, on the other hand, requests us to think therapeutically, which is to show that the either/or logic is not a solution to the problem of life but a drug invented by those who love to “get high.” He equates the logic of ‘is’ and ‘not-is’ with suffering, and argues that the Buddha's silence about Nirvāṇa is a proposal therapeutically to liberate mankind from either/ or logic. In this context I have formulated the issue this way: Can a Buddhist say that “Nirvāṇa does not exist” is a case of significant negation? Chandrakīrti's answer is in the negative. “The pot is not on the ground” is a case of significant negation because, and only because, conditions for the cognition of both pot and the ground are given, and we perceive the empty ground. It is this non-cognition of the cognizable pot that is the reason for saying “The pot is not on the ground” is a case of significant negation. The limit of negation is the limit of cognitive conditions; that which could not be cognitively affirmed cannot be significantly denied. “Nirvāṇa does not exist” is not a significant claim for the simple reason that “Nirvāṇa exists” is not a cognitive claim. Chandrakīrti concludes that Nirvāṇa could neither be affirmed nor denied; it is a ‘scandal’ for logic. The metaphysician making claims about Nirvāṇa is like the man the Buddha encountered in Kapilavastu. The old man suffers because his will-to-be surpasses the medium (body) of being! The metaphysician ‘suffers’ in that his will to claim cognitively surpasses the conditions given which he can claim. Metaphysics is a methodological fantasy, a tool to confuse the wish that “Being be” with the claim that “Being is.”

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis) · Buddhism · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Gautama Buddha · Linguistics · Metaphysics · Negation · Nonsense · Philosophy of religion · Silence · Subject (documents) · Theology · Computer Science · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Medicine · Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions · Philosophy

• Negation – failure or success? Remarks on an Allegedly Characteristic Trait of Dharmakīrti's Anupalabdhi-Theory

  Open Access•Birgit Kellner•Journal of Indian Philosophy•2001

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