brian bocking and youxuan wang

SIGNS OF LIBERATION?A SEMIOTIC APPROACH TO WISDOM IN CHINESE MADHYAMIKA BUDDHISM

I ntroduction
In emptiness: there is . . . no ignorance nor ending of ignorance [up to] no ageing and death nor ending of ageing and death, no suffering nor cause of suffering, nor ending of suffering, and no path, no wisdom and no attainment, because there is nothing obtainable. (The Heart Sutra)

Wisdom, as Foucault would remind us, is a word of power. It has strategic uses and carries no certicate of veridity. Asserting that a particular lineage of thought and practice, whether Confucian, Islamic, Buddhist, Native American, Humanist, Taoist, etc., is a wisdom tradition presupposes a contested ground. What is wisdom to one may be superstition or even ignorance to another. The unsupported testimony of saints and sages in one context may be regarded as a reliable source of knowledge, in another it may not. Conventional wisdom is even a term of disparagement. Buddhism, viewed here philosophically as a path to wisdom rather than a congeries of cultural traditions, presumes a recognition on the part of the investigator that he or she needs to be liberated; that is, needs to acquire wisdom. However, ignorance (Sk: avidya , Ch: wuminga) in Buddhist thought refers not to a simple shortage of information but to a lack of awareness of ones predicament as a sentient being, and this is rst of all a matter of karmic maturation, unrelated to philosophical ability or scientic knowledge.1 Modern scholars have been interested in Buddhist wisdom or insight ( praja , boreb etc.)2 as part of the rationalist project of subjecting Buddhism, along with other religio-philosophical systems, to the scrutiny of reason. Depending on ones perspective, Buddhist
BRIAN BOCKING, professor, the Study of Religions, Department of the Study of Religions, SOAS, University of London. Specialties: Chinese Madhyamika, Sino-Japanese Buddhist thought, and Japanese religions. E-mail: bb@soas.ac.uk. YOUXUAN WANG, research associate, Department of the Study of Religions, SOAS, University of London. Specialties: Chinese thought; Buddhist logic, and comparative literature. E-mail: yw8@soas.ac.uk; w2y3x1@onetel.com 2006 Journal of Chinese Philosophy

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wisdom may be thought entirely sui generis (e.g., inseparable from compassion and the peculiarly Buddhist idea of skillful means),3 or as closely analogous to conceptions of gnosis in, for example, Vedanta, Susm, or Jainism. Wisdom may also be generalized as the English name for a common spiritual heritage of humankind that can, in principle, be discerned under many different religious clothes.4 However, strictly speaking, as a master sign in the Buddhist discourse, the term wisdom should be understood in the context of a project of achieving spiritual freedom. Buddhist teachings afrm that the fundamental condition of our existence, in a world constantly threatened by problems of instability and uncertainty, is suffering. The ultimate cause of our suffering is not, however, undesirable events that may externally befall us; such events are either acts of nature for which no specic individual is responsible, or the karmic actions of other sentient beings who will eventually be held to account. Our suffering in the human worldexperiencing anxiety, frustration, illness, etc.is rather the consequence of actions for which we ourselves are morally responsible. As unenlightened sentient beings, we follow the principle of seeking worldly pleasure, attempting to satisfy desires that are limitless and cannot be satised. Thus, we oat on the river of suffering as we are born, grow old, die, and are born again in a newbut the samebirthdeath cycle. The root of our unreasonable desires is our ignorance, and the antidote to ignorance is wisdom. Hence, wisdom and ignorance are the two terms of a binary opposition that runs through the entire Buddhist discourse on wisdom. In this article, we trace a semiotic strand in the distinctively Chinese Madhyamika Buddhist articulation of the notion of wisdom,5 arguing that, for the Buddhists, ignorance is a form of attachment, and the objects of attachments are signs. Wisdom, therefore, is a form of insight into the empty nature of signs. Different schools of Buddhism have articulated different approaches to signs. In general, doctrines emphasized by the Hinayana6 schools (as these are viewed by Mahayanists) advocate a rationalist approach. These doctrines distinguish three grades of understanding: (i) mere sense perception, which is typical of the vulgar persons ( prthagjana, fanfuc) attempt to grasp at signs; (ii) intellect, which overcomes the limitations of the senses; and (iii) wisdom, which is freedom from ignorance. The Mahayana schools endorse the Hinayana doctrines to the extent that these doctrines are treated as expedient conceptual constructions, but they also level at the Hinayana school the charge of grasping at signs. From the Hinayana perspective, the vulgar person is one who grasps at sense impressions; from the Mahayana point of view, the Hinayana follower is grasping at a substance where there is no substance. In

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what follows, we will describe three semiotic models that are encountered in a number of key Chinese Buddhist texts. We shall look rst at the vulgar semiotic approach, as the object of the Buddhist critique in general. We shall then trace the Hinayana and Mahayana semiotic models respectively. Our observations are based mainly on a selection of Abhidharma and Madhyamika texts which have exerted a huge and direct impact on the development of Buddhist thought in China, namely,Vasubandhus a), Sanghabhadras Shun zhengli lune Jushe lund (Abhidharma-kos (Nya ya nusa ra-s a stra), Harivarmans Cheng shi linf (Satyasiddhi praja -pa ramita -s a stra) and s a stra), Nagarjunas Dazhidu lung (Maha a stra), and Kuma ra jivas letters to Zhong lunh (Madhyamaka-s Huiyuan Dasheng yizhangi.7 Our critical methods are borrowed mainly from the toolkit of contemporary semiotics, most notably Saussurean structuralism and Derridean deconstruction.8 We are aware that a full understanding of the Buddhist semiotic approach to the question of wisdom demands a study of the full range of canonical texts, but aspects of the main argument presented here are developed in more detail in Youxuan Wangs Buddhism and Deconstruction: Towards a Comparative Semiotics (2001).9 In recent years scholars have shown great interest in the relationship between Buddhism, deconstruction,and spiritual freedom,10 with particular attention being paid to the specic thematic of signs.11 The present article focuses on the prominence of the question of signs in the Chinese Buddhist discourse on wisdom. T he V ulgar S emiotic M odel: G rasping at S igns The notion of ignorance gures in the doctrine of the Twelve Causal Links which the Buddha reportedly discerned in an extended session of meditation under the Bodhi tree. During that session, the Buddha managed to recollect many of his previous birthdeath cycles, and he identied in his own previous experience a consistent pattern that explains why sentient beings are suffering. He realized that a sentient being is driven by desires. It is his/her desires that give rise to rebirth consciousness, which in turn progressively leads to the development of a body and mind as one is born, grows old, and dies. When one birthdeath cycle is completed, a new cycle begins. The behavior patterns guided by nescient desires in the previous cycle lead to the formation of ignorance, which in turn serves as the starting point of a new cycle. Ignorance is designated as such partly because it is an unconscious moment that predates the rise of consciousness in the becoming of a sentient being, and partly because it is the immediate cause of uninformed passions such as craving, anger, and delusion.

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According to the doctrine of the Twelve Causal Links, then, ignorance is not an exclusive characteristic of the vulgar persons mind. It is a fundamental quality of all sentient beings, so long as they have not been able to break the birthdeath cycle. It cannot easily be eliminated since it originates from experiences in previous rebirths, and it lies somehow hidden in the unconscious (an idea which was elaborated in the Yogacara or Mind-only school of Mahayana philosophy). Only the Buddha, who is fully enlightened, and some saints who have achieved the status of Arhat or Bodhisattva, have cured their own illness of ignorance. If ignorance is often associated with the mind of the vulgar person in Buddhist texts, it is employed there as a term to encapsulate a certain epistemological paradigm of which we are all guilty. In Buddhist texts, ignorance is often dened as lack of knowledge of the Four Noble Truths; that is to say a kind of blindness to the fact of suffering as the fundamental condition of the life of a sentient being, regardless of social status. The classic symptoms of this illness are the false notions that a sentient being holds about I and mine. For an ordinary sentient being, the agent who has feelings of pleasure and pain is the I or self. His or her physical body, emotions, experiences, and so on are instances of mine. An ordinary sentient being is said to hold (out of ignorance) four basic positions in relation to his/her sense of self: (1) the body is supposed to be pure and clean; (2) the feeling is supposed to be of pleasure; (3) the mind [belonging to this self] is supposed to be constant and permanent; and (4) mental objects are supposed to signify the functioning of an I (for only an I can see forms, etc.). As these four positions do not in fact reect the fundamental condition of the existence of a sentient being in the mundane world according to the Buddhas perception, they are false. Hence, the term Four False Views (viparya sa-catuk sa, j si diandao ) is the name applied to the general perspective of an unenlightened sentient being, or a vulgar person. It is these false views that underlie our widespread essentialist common-sense perceptions of self, gender, caste, class, society, and so on. When describing the vulgar mind in terms of ignorance, Buddhist texts highlight three main features: (i) the vulgar mind is prone to follow the principle of worldly desires; (ii) it is incapable of distinguishing signs from their referents (which in many cases are nonexistent); and (iii) it is incapable of appreciating anything beyond the sensible level because it is heavily reliant on the use of the senses rather than the use of the intellect. Thus, the Dazhidu lun, like many other Mahayana scriptures, describes a vulgar person as someone who can easily be deceived by a magic illusion, a mirage, a reection in a mirror, an echo in a hollow valley, and so on.When such a person travels across the burning desert

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and sees something glimmering in the distance, he will take what he sees for the sign of water. Driven by his thirst, he will hasten toward what he believes is a lake. He ends up even more thirsty and exhausted when he gets to the spot and nds himself instead in the center of a sandstorm, for it turns out that the water he saw earlier was only an optical effect formed by the sun reecting from clouds of swirling sand. In this case, the traveler was following his desire to quench his thirst when he responded to an illusion of water. Similarly, a simple moonraker believes that the large white pearl that used to hang high in the sky is now before him in the pond, and he can easily drag it from the water and grasp it in his hand. In this case, the reection of the moon is taken literally as the moon itself; the sign and its referent are confused.12 Characteristic of this mode of thinking is picture-thinking, which is an instinctive response to a feeling that has been aroused in the body by a mere sense-impression of an object. A vulgar person ignorant of the nominal nature of sense-impressions is prone to evoke picturethinking by uncritically identifying what is perceived here with a reality over there. In his Satyasiddhi-s a stra, which Kumarajiva (343 413 CE) translated into Chinese (T1646 Cheng shi lun), Harivarman compares this type of person to a lion who swims back and forth endlessly across a river, always empty-handed because it keeps mistaking the woodland on the opposite side of the stream for the presence of prey.13 Sense perception is the dominant means of knowledge for a vulgar person, and all forms of sense perception are contingent upon the sense of touch. In his correspondence with Huiyuan, Kumarajiva links sense perception with the act of grasping. He explains that although each type of sense perception is a function peculiar to a specic faculty, all types depend ultimately on the sense of touch. For instance, visual perception is the specic function of the eye, and aural perception is the specic function of the ear, and so on. However, sense perception arises only when there is contact between a sense organ (e.g., the eye) and a sensible correlate (e.g., a color). Thus, all sense perceptions are essentially a kind of grasping, because they all employ the sense of touch. The trouble is that, if our perception of the world is limited to our faculty of touch, we will not use our intellect to work out deeper truths. A vulgar person who has committed a crime, Kumarajiva points out, will never learn that he has done anything wrong unless you teach him, not with words, but with a stick or whip.14 Hence, the central image in the Buddhist description of the vulgar semiotic model is that of grasping. The sign, as grasped by the vulgar person, is the product of picture-thinking. It is apprehended directly

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and uncritically as the desired object itself, which may not even be existent. When the Buddhist texts describe picture-thinking and ha) or an attempt to grasp at sense-perception as quxiangk (lak sanagra signs, they are not merely evoking a metaphor. They are actually developing a semiological concept on the basis of a psychological analysis: all sense perceptions hinge on the sense of touch.

T he H inayana S emiotic M odel: A bandoning the S igns The Hinayana system of thought is a project of rationalism that advocates the cultivation of reason.15 The development of reason is described as a progression from sense perception to rational understanding. For instance, the San zhuan falun jingl (T109 Sutra on the Turning of the Dharma Wheel, Dharma-cakra-pravartana su tra) describes the understanding of the Four Noble Truths as a three-step process: revelation, resolution, and declaration. In this process, the individual is rst shown the Four Noble Truths. When the truths have been revealed, the Buddhist follower resolves to understand them. Having understood them, she/he declares that she/he has understood them. Each of these three steps in turn consists of four phases: visual perception, afrmation, clarication, and understanding. The individual rst perceives one particular truth. Having perceived it, she/he afrms its existence. Having recognized its existence, she/he seeks to clarify the reasons for it. When she/he has found the reasons, she/he is said to understand it. The idea is that a determinable truth is not only available within the Buddhas teachings but can also be read from real life. You can obtain it either by hearing the Buddhas discourses and becoming a Sravaka (a Hearer), or by independently contemplating reality and becoming a Pratyekabuddha (a self-awakened one). But, either way, you must rst perceive the truth with your senses, and then rationally reect upon it with your intellect before you can achieve a full insight into reality. The rst step toward an understanding of the Four Noble Truths is to make the distinction between the sensible and intelligible. In this distinction, the physical body is revealed to be empty of an I or a mine. The body is not pure and clean but a bag of lthy rubbish, feeling is in reality pain rather than pleasure, mind is constantly subject to the law of impermanence, and mental objects are not in fact the signs of a thinking agent or a self. This is the doctrine of the Four Common Characteristics of All Dharmas (as opposed to the Four False Views). In many canonical texts, the Buddha is said to have demonstrated the nonexistence of I and mine by talking about the bodymind complex in terms of the doctrine of the Five Aggregates of

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Dharmas (pacaskandha, wuyunm): matter, feeling, picture-thinking, volition, and consciousness. He demonstrates that what the vulgar person grasps as the evidence of I is only a nominal entity consisting of these ve aggregates of factors. If a soul exists, one should be able to identify it with one of these aggregates of factors. Since it is not any of the aggregates, there is no soul to be found anywhere. The distinction between the sensible (form) and the intelligible (notion) also leads to the distinction between the faculty of sense and the faculty of intellect. An empirical object may manifest itself in a variety of sensible forms: sound, color, smell, and so on. These forms are separate aspects of an object, and as such they are considered as parts. Each sense organ is able to perceive only that part which is peculiar to its faculty, and not a different kind of part. For instance, the eye can see a color, but not a smell. It is the job of the intellect to piece together the separate sensible data that are picked up individually by the different sense organs and form a synthetic picture of the whole object. Intellect performs the further function of analyzing an intelligible dharma into its imperceptible constituent primary elements such as earth, water, re, air, and the nest particles of these elements. Each element has its distinctive essence that sets it apart from other elements. Thus, the distinctive essence of re consists in its properties of being able to illuminate and consume another object, while the distinctive essence of water is its property of being able to moisturize and dilute, among other things.16 In the Hinayana systems, most notably in the Sarvastivada and Sautrantika schools, dharmas at the atomic level are treated as existent entities, each with its own distinctive property. The schools did not necessarily agree with each other on every issue, but the debates among them generally revolve around the manner in which a dharma exists. With regard to its temporality, can we say that a dharma exists in all three periods of time (past, present, and future)? If each conditioned (caused) dharma bears the four marks of arising, abiding, altering, and perishing, then, where does the dharma come from, and where does the dharma go? A common answer is that a dharma comes from a future period and goes to a past period. But then, is a dharma of the past an existent? And is a dharma of the future an existent, just as a dharma of the present is? The Sarvastivada masters insist that dharmas of all the three periods are existents, while the Sautrantika masters argue that only dharmas of the present period are existents. Such a concern with truth and knowledge carries with it a concern with the question of signs. This is evident in the Abhidharma literature. One good example is the debate between the Sarvastivadins and Sautrantikas over the ways in which letters, words, and sen-

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tences, and so on function as mental operations dissociated from sensuous experience. For instance, how do letters become meaningful signs when they combine to form words, which in turn make up sentences? When in his Abhidharma-kos a (Jushe lun) Vasubandhu treats these linguistic notions as empirically existent meaningconveying vehicles, he is criticized by Sanghabhadra, a staunch defender of Sarvastivada. Sanghabhadra says that these linguistic items are not to be confused with empirical entities, since the essence of a letter is a phoneme and not a vocal sound, the essence of a word is a concept not a written mark, and the essence of a sentence is a proposition. Such debates over the question of whether language should be classied as picture-thinking or as a mental operation dissociated from sensuous experience led to the production of many original semiotic ideas. For the Sarvastivada philosophers, language remains, as a subject matter, an intelligible dharma to be examined by the intellect. It is neither a material mark nor a physical sound, but a pure form.17 However, the intellect deals only with conditioned and nite dharmas, albeit at a rational level. The knowledge it acquires is still limited, although it represents a higher grade of understanding than mere picture-thinking. Real insight, that is to say wisdom that amounts to the elimination of ignorance and hence the achievement of freedom, cannot be a limited view. It is supposed to embrace something unlimited, comparable to empty space. Thus, the doctrine of the Seventy-Five Factors (dharmas) lists three unconditioned dharmas: (i) empty space; (ii) a trance which is free from thought; and (iii) the trance that results from the extinction of thought. Empty space is a classic example of the antithesis of nite, conditioned dharmas. It is unmediated by language or thought since it is not matter, nor thought, nor mental operations, nor mental operations dissociated from sensuous experience. Innite and ineffable, it is not subject to arising, abiding, altering, and perishing. As such, it is not even an object of rational meditation. If anything, it is conceptualized as a model for a mental state of freedom from all forms of picturethinking and grasping. This mental state is to be achieved not by rational reection but by a setting-free from all forms of thought and an extinguishing of all mental activities. These two types of trance are not to be identied with a state of consciousness in which feelings of pleasure and pain are temporarily abolished. Such an experience lasts only for a short period of time and will soon come to an end. As such, it is like an arrow shot into the empty sky, only to be pulled down soon afterward by gravity. To remain sustained in such a nirvanic empty space without falling back to the mundane, one has to abide permanently in a state of trance, absolutely free from thinking and not

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dependent upon the (temporary) cessation of thinking. Such a trance marks the achievement of Arhathood.18 But how is this to be achieved? By passing through the san jietuo menn (Three Doors to Liberation, vimok sa mukha traya). These are: The Door of Emptiness: This is a meditative state in which the contemplating subject relinquishes vulgar notions of I and mine by focusing on the ontological status of the psycho-physical body in terms of the ve aggregates of conditioned dharmas. In this process the objectivity of all sensible signs arising from the empirical world is made empty. The Door of the Signless: In this mental state, the contemplating subject seeks to undo the whole range of conceptual constructions such as: the doctrine of the Five Aggregates, the binary opposition of male and female, and ideas about the marks of conditioned dharmas (i.e., arising, abiding, altering, and perishing). In this process the objectivity of all sorts of signs, as the products of conceptualization, is made empty. The Door of Resignation: In this state, the meditating subject seeks to remain focused on the undesirable character of everything sensually experienced or conceptually apprehended. Informed by an unshakeable understanding of suffering as the fundamental condition of mundane existence, the contemplating subject resolves to eliminate all forms of attachment or grasping. These Three Doors are construed as three entrance gates to the citadel of nirvana.19 Thus, wisdom for the Hinayana thinkers is a resolute abandonment of all signs, or a thoroughgoing appreciation of the signless. The Hinayana approach to signs can therefore be described as an intellectual progression that begins at sense perception (i.e., afrming the presence of a sense object) and proceeds to a rational reection (in which the ontological status of sensible forms is revealed, and resolved in terms of intelligible dharmas). It aims at the acquisition of wisdom (in which all forms of spiritual bondage are cleansed from the mind). This model of the sign is articulated predominantly through the logical relation of difference; rst, the merely intelligible (dharma) is set apart from the sensible, and then the signless is set apart from the sign of a dharma, with the former being superior to the latter.

T he M ahayana S emiotic M odel: D econstructing the S ignless Viewed as an innovative religious and intellectual movement within the Buddhist tradition, the Mahayana thought system can be construed as a revolt against certain essentialist tendencies in Hinayana.

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We might describe this reaction as a deconstruction of the Hinayana doctrine of the signless. According to the Dazhidu lun (The Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise), there is an apparent contradiction between the Hinayana doctrine of the Three Doors to Liberation and the Buddhist notion of compassionate love, and this contradiction results from an ontological attempt to grasp a semiotic issue. In other words, dharmas, both conditioned and unconditioned, have been treated as though they were existent entities. The contradiction here lies in the fact that a movement to avoid certain dharmas (construed as existents marked by suffering, impermanence, etc.) cancels out the compassionate injunction to engage with the suffering of the world. From a Mahayana perspective, both conditioned and unconditioned dharmas are conceptual constructs. As such, they are provisional designations that cannot be conceived in terms of existence or nonexistence. Dharmas belong exclusively to the order of language and thought; they operate in semiological terms (such as in the relations of signier and signied), and they cause confusion if grasped in ontological terms (such as substance and attribute). From a Mahayana point of view, the quality of Buddhist wisdom should be such that it benets both the individual practitioner of the Buddhas teaching and all sentient beings. The value of universal compassionate love is central to the Buddhist project of spiritual liberation. This value is articulated in the doctrine of the Four ni, si wuliang Aspects of Immeasurable Mind (catva ry aprama na xino): love, kindness, sympathetic joy, and impartiality, which is a doctrine defended and practiced by virtually all Buddhists regardless of sectarian afliations. A mind that is commensurate with innite empty space should also have the capacity to share the problems that face all suffering beings, and the capacity to extend the benets of its wisdom to less insightful people. Hence, if the doctrine of the Three Doors to Liberation were to mean the (Hinayanist) absolute abandonment of the mundane world of sentient beings for the safe citadel of nirvana, this would defeat the quest for real wisdom and would amount to a misinterpretation of the Buddhas doctrine of the Four Noble Truths. Mahayanists, as represented by Madhyamaka philosophers, argue that a nave distinction between the sensible and the intelligible proves to be self-contradictory. The Dazhidu lun recounts the parable of an extremely intelligent man who has managed to acquire the Hinayana wisdom of the signless but does not realize his problem until he meets the Buddha. This man desired to be the cleverest person in the world and would not tolerate losing any argument, but one day he lost a debate to his sister. He was surprised that she had become so intelligent all of a sudden, but soon worked out the reason:

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it must be the embryo his sister was pregnant with that was responsible for her unprecedented burst of eloquence. His sister, he predicted, would give birth to a genius. To forestall the possibility of a future rival, he renounced his family and dedicated himself to studying all the books in the world. He worked so hard he had no time to cut his ngernails, thus attracting the nickname Changzhaop or Long Claws (Maha kusthila).20 When he had done enough reading, Long Claws traveled around, practicing the art of debate undefeated. Eventually, he returned home to challenge his now nine-year-old nephew, whom he had never met. Learning that his nephew was called Sariputra and that the boy had left home to serve the Buddha, Long Claws decided to challenge the Buddha himself. When Long Claws came face to face with the Buddha and announced his intention, the Buddha asked kindly, [W]hat is your argument? Long Claws declared, I do not hold any view, and expected the Buddha to present a counter-argument to challenge his position. The Buddha gently asked again, Very well, but do you hold the view that you do not hold any view? Long Claws insisted, No, I do not hold this view either. The Buddha smiled and asked gently again, If you do not hold this view either, how do you distinguish yourself from any other sentient being? Average sentient beings also do not hold the view that they do not hold any view. At this point, Long Claws was rendered speechless, and he admitted to a logical error in his argument. Desiring to make a case for the doctrine of the signless, he had wanted to demonstrate that he had acquired an insight no longer mediated by thought or language. But the Buddhas questioning woke him up: one who declares that he holds no view is holding a view; and one who denies that he does not hold a view is no different from any ordinary sentient being who has not yet intuited the truth of the signless. Thus, while endorsing the Hinayana theory of dharmas as an expedient means of talking about factors of experience, the Mahayana system does not conceive of the cultivation of wisdom as a linear progression from sensible forms, via the stage of nite, conditioned dharmas, to innite unconditioned dharmas. While the Hinayana distinction of three grades of understanding (i.e., sense, intellect, and wisdom) presupposes the existence of three categories of objects (i.e., the sensible, the intelligible, and the signless), the Mahayana contemplation sees all dharmas, both conditioned and unconditioned, as instances of provisional designations (prajapti, jiamingq). As such, dharmas cannot be seen as existent or inexistent by referring to their substance and attributes. For example, chapter 5 of the Zhong lun (The Middle Treatise) considers the problematic nature of the Hinayana ontological notion

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of existence. The Hinayana system speaks of an existent dharma in terms of its substance and attributes. It represents empty space as one of six primordial elements to which are attributed the distinctive properties of being immaterial and being pervasive.The question then is: how can the presence of empty space be manifested? As an unconditioned dharma, the ontological status of empty space is not manifested by the marks of arising, abiding, and perishing, and if empty space has no manifestation, then it can have no attribute(s).This being so, it has no determinable substance. On the other hand, if it had manifestations, then how could the substance of empty space be linked with its distinctive attributes in a cause and effect relation? If empty space existed prior to the rise of its attributes, then there would be a moment when empty space was absent of any attributes. If empty space came into being after the rise of its attributes, there would be a moment when the attributes of empty space were not supported by the substance of empty space. Thus, the chapter concludes, there is something nave about the conception of dharmas in terms of existence and nonexistence.21 Chapter 7 of the Zhong lun is a classic semiotic critique of the Hinanaya ontological theory of the conditioned dharmas. One Abhidharma school holds that the activity of conditioning involves three marks: arising, abiding, and perishing. This is a theory that presupposes an opposition or relation between the marked and the marks. The Madhyamika therefore questions how the two semiological terms can be ontologically related. Are the marks identical with the marked? If so, a mark (such as arising) would be counted as the thing marked (a conditioned dharma). In that case the mark too would have to bear the three marks of conditioning in its own right, manifesting itself by the signs of arising, abiding, and perishing. Similarly, these secondary marks of a mark would each bear their own marks. This would lead to an innite regression in a direction that will never return us to the supposed origin: the marked. It would also lead to a contradiction: the mark arising would also bear marks of different kinds such as abiding and perishing, making signication impossible. On the other hand, if the marks are not identical with the marked, then, the Madhyamika asks: are they different from the latter? If yes, then the marks would be unconditioned dharmas. But since unconditioned dharmas are not mediated by marks, how can such markless entities function as marks? As conceptual constructs, the chapter concludes, dharmas are mere designations, and in a mere designation, there is no substance. When ontological categories are imposed on a name, they become causes of a new form of attachment: grasping at dharmas. The Zhong lun likens such confusion to that of the vulgar person who mistakes an illusion, a mirage, and so on for

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a nonexistent object.22 Thus, from a Mahayana perspective, the Hinayana system is guilty of the same type of navety that plagues an ordinary sentient being. The Dazhidu lun takes the matter forward by articulating the Mahayana semiotic model in terms of the notion of the Same (samata , pingdengr) which transcends the binary relation of identity and/or difference. The text explains that in a designation, the name and the named are neither identical nor different. If identical, one would be able to take the object in ones hand simply by grasping the name. If different, there would be no connection between word and world. For instance, if the word re were identical with the empirical object of re, one would burn ones mouth when uttering the word re. If the name were different from the named, when making a verbal request for re one would get a cup of water instead. The fact that we do get re instead of water when asking for the former indicates that there is some link between word and world. However, this connection is not to be represented in terms of either identity or difference, but sameness in which one term of a binary relation (such as the name) carries the trace of the other (such as the named) in the same way in which Long Claws nonview carries the trace of a view, or the Hinayana doctrine of the signless turns out to be a form of sign-grasping in a new guise. Thus, the Same is, according to the Madhyamaka texts, the true sign of all dharmas. It is also designated here as fashens or dharma body (dharma-ka ya), which lies beyond the horizon of an arhat and falls only within the purview of a bodhisattva. It should be clear from the foregoing that the Same is not an ontological or transcendental presence (or absence) beyond the sign (whether of speech or writing) but a cipher for the true sign of all dharmas, that is, the iterative Madhyamika deconstruction of the sign. The parable of Long Claws cited earlier is closely linked to the Chinese understanding of the Two Truths. It articulates the moral message that there is no rigid distinction between silence and speech, nirvana and samsara, and so on, and that the Mahayana approach to wisdom is an active engagement with the problems of the mundane world. This includes the practical work of disseminating the Buddhas teachings. Kuma raj va actually uses the highly deconstructive term pleasure of speaking (le shuot) when summarizing the moral of this parable.23 Since the semiotic notion of the Same afrms a connection between word and world, it offers a solution to the moral dilemma that faces the Hinayana interpretation of the Three Doors doctrine. From the Mahayana perspective, the rst door, the Door of Emptiness, is not a doctrine of reifying intelligible dharmas at the cost of sensible forms, but a thoroughgoing, critically vigilant rejection of all essentialist conceptions, whether these are based on obviously nave perspectives

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or on seemingly rational theories.The Door of the Signless, the second door, is not to be interpreted as a doctrine of relinquishing both senses and intellect in the false hope of acquiring a supernatural faculty commensurate with the innite empty space unmediated by thought, but a nondualistic insight into the subtle trace in which one term of a binary opposition (for such an opposition underlies the structure of all signs) carries the trace of the other. Finally, the Door of Resignation is not to be interpreted as a doctrine of abandoning sentient beings in the mundane world in favor of the citadel of nirvana, but a doctrine of altruistic practice that benets not only oneself but all sentient beings. To ensure that an arrow that is shot into the innite empty sky will not fall back onto the restricted ground of naivety and vulgarity, another arrow is needed that comes from behind to add extra resistance to the pull of gravity, and this process must recur without end. In the same way, the doctrine of the Three Doors to Liberation should be applied to itself.24 It would take us beyond the scope of this article to explore the full ramications of this Chinese Madhyamika understanding of the relation between word and world for the later history of Buddhist thought in China, but we might, for example, point to a congruence between this notion of the Same (as a deconstruction of the binary opposition of nirvana and samsara, etc.) and characteristically Chinese interpretations of Mahayana Buddhism as a form of spiritual practice that is located fully within the real, mundane world. This thread of meaning may be traced inter alia in Kumarajivas correspondence with Huiyuan (334416 CE), in the debate between Shenxius (ca. 606706 CE) Northern Chan and Huinengs (638713 CE) Southern Chan in early China, and in modern times in the thought of Taixu (1889 1947 CE), and in Yinshuns (19062005 CE) idea of Buddhism of the Human Realm25 in contemporary Chinese Buddhist thought.

C onclusion Semiotics is a key issue in the Buddhist approach to spiritual freedom. For Buddhist thinkers, the acquisition of wisdom means a critical engagement with the question of signs. Wisdom is dened as a detachment from signs, while a nave vulgar perspective is dened as signgrasping. We are aware of the risk of oversimplication in using the terms Mahayana and Hinayana here as the names of two general stages in the history of Buddhist semiotic development, without attempting to provide details of the specic achievements of many different individual writers afliated with the disparate early schools. However, we hope that this distinction is of some use as an expedient

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way of outlining two master semiotic models: the Hinayana doctrine of the signless, based on the binary opposition between the sensible and the intelligible, and the Mahayana doctrine (or rather deconstruction) of the signless, based on a notion of the Same that transcends the ontological categories of identity and difference.
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON London, United Kingdom

Endnotes
1. Karmic maturation here refers to a propensity to seek enlightenment, which, like obtaining a human birth, is something not taken for granted in Buddhism. It is attributed in the texts to various prior causes (in the case of the Buddha, a long series of exemplary births as animals, birds, humans, etc. retold in the popular birth stories of the Buddha) and is a necessary but not sufcient condition for the development of any particular Buddhist philosophical perspective or practice during a human life. 2. The jna element in prajna is cognate with ken in the German kennen and in Anglicized terms such as canny, know, gnosis, (and indeed cognate), but of course each of these terms trails its own clouds of quotidian, philosophical, and religious connotations. Michael Pye many years ago proposed insight as a better translation of prajna since it denotes penetratingly seeing the true nature of things rather than a body of accumulated knowledge (Michael Pye, Skilful Means [London: Duckworth, 1978], 4, n. 6), while the meaning of wisdom as Xinzhong Yao has pointed out (see note 4 below) may range widely from common sense to transcendental gnosis. Since the current article is a contribution to a volume on the theme of wisdom, we use this term as a convenient rendering of prajna, etc. 3. Gadjin Nagao, The Foundational Standpoint of Madhyamika Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 24, 59, 61. 4. This point of view is eloquently stated by Xinzhong Yao in the pages of this journal in June 2005 as follows: Wisdom lies at the centre of all philosophical and religious traditions. [ . . . ] On the surface, wisdom appears to be simply a collection of proverbs, maxims, and aphorisms arising from life experiences [ . . . ] This is so-called practical wisdom, [ . . . ] There is another, deeper meaning of wisdom, however . . . It permeates religious, social, and personal matters, but it often does not come to the front; rather it hides itself in the somewhat mysterious revelation of the patterns by which people and events shape themselves. (See Xinzhong Yao, Knowledge and InterpretationA Hermeneutical Study of Wisdom, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 32 [2005]: 297.) 5. In modern Western Buddhist Studies since the nineteenth century Madhyamika Buddhism has been routinely represented as an Indian system of thought imported without much changeand with more or less understanding of its logical or epistemological subtletiesto China. In fact, early Chinese Madhyamika exegetical texts, such as the Middle Treatise, the Hundred Treatise, the Twelve-Topic Treatise, and the Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise, which exist only in Chinese constitute the earliest commentarial sources of Madhyamika (their Sanskrit titles are only putative reconstructions from the Chinese). Indian Madhyamika, epitomized in the work of Candrakirti (ca. 600650 CE), has largely been viewed through the lens of Tibetan Buddhism. The Indo-Tibetan specialist Paul Williams observes that Jizang followed Kumarajivas interpretation/reading of Nagarjuna, avoiding an onto-epistemological reading of Madhyamaka: For Candrak rti the two truths are two natures (Tibetan: va h). And the ultingo bo = svabha va/prakr ti) in all entities (dngos kun = sarvabha mate truth is a reality (de nyid = tattva; see Madhyamaka vata ra 6:23). For Chitsang [Jizang] it appears that the two truths are not naturesessentially embedded in ontology, or perhaps epistemologyat all. Rather, the two truths for Chi-tsang are

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6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

involved in pedagogy. They are stages of teachings, hence pragmatic articulations, that can be used to take the student through a step-by-step dialectical ascent to silence, the denial of all views and concepts. Thus, for Chi-tsang the distinction between two truths is essentially a practical matter of how best to teach nonduality. For the Ma dhyamika all articulation is only for the removal of errors: The refutation of wrong views is the illumination of right views. (Paul Williams, Foreword to Changqing Shih, The Two Truths in Chinese Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal, 2004), xvi. Donald S. Lopez identies the inuence of Tibetan scholastic traditions on contemporary presentations of Madhyamika in his chapter The Field in Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 156ff. Chinese Madhyamika should therefore be recognized as an intellectual tradition in its own right, in which key gures such as Kuma raj va (343413 CE) and his circle, and later Jizang (549623 CE), developed the Madhyamika discourse which nourished mainstream Far Eastern Buddhist traditions such as Tiantai. This Madhyamika discourse, like other forms of Chinese Buddhism, displayed a preoccupation with the semiotic notion of the Same which is discussed in this article. We are grateful to Professor Chung-ying Cheng for his encouragement to clarify this and other issues in our article. Hinayana as a term of opprobrium is now often avoided in academic discourse, but it is routinely used by Kuma raj va and other Mahayana writers to mean presentations of the Buddhas teachings that do not adopt the Mahayana perspective. These Chinese Buddhist texts are found in the Taisho Tripitaka, the Taisho Shinshu Daizokyo , ed. Junjiro Takakusu and Kaikyoku Watanabe (Tokyo, Taish Issaiky Kank-kai, 192434) (hereafter T) as follows: T1558 Jushe lun, T1562 Shun zhengli lun, T1646 Cheng shi lun, T1509 Dazhidu lun, T1564 Zhong lun, and T1856 Dasheng yizhang. Electronic versions of Taisho texts are available at the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association Web site (http://www.cbeta.org/index.htm). For instance, the present article invokes Saussures opposition of signier and signied, and Derridas notion of trace. See Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics. Translated from the French by Wade Baskin (London: Fontana, 1974) and Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (London: The Athlone Press, 1981); Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982); Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Press, 1974); Jacques Derrida, Positions, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London: Routledge, 1978). Youxuan Wang considers the semiotic strand in the San lun zongu (the masters of the three Madhyamaka treatises as represented by Kuma raj vas translation of Nagarjuna, Aryadeva et al.), the She lun zongv (the masters who were associated with Paramartha, who were credited with the transmission of Asangas and Vasubandhus thought) and the Fa xiang zongw (the masters associated with Xuanzang, credited with the transmission of a later version of Asangas mind-only doctrine and with the renovation of Dignagas and Dharmapalas logical theories) in his Buddhism and Deconstruction: Towards a Comparative Semiotics (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001). Texts explored there include Sanghabhadras Shun zhengli lun (T1562 Treatise on Conforming to Correct Reasoning); Trans. Xuanzang; Aryadevas Bai lunx (T1569 Treatise in One Hundred Verses, Sata-s a stra) Trans. Kuma raj va; Paramarthas Shi ba raj va, kong luny (T1616 Treatise on the Eighteen Points about Emptiness); Kuma Dasheng yi zhang (T1856 The Mahayana Doctrine Explained: Letters to Huiyuan) ed. Huiyuan and other works. Wang presents a semiotic reading of the Buddhist notion of pingdeng (samata ; the same) with Derridas conception of the Same as the trace in a sign, arguing also that there is an articulate theory of deconstruction in Paramarthas doctrine of fei anliz (undoing conceptualization). As early as in 1984, certain semiotic themes in Chinese Chan Buddhism were picked up in Robert Magliola Derrida on the Mend (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1984), where Magliola made an interesting comparative study of Buddhism and Derridean deconstruction. Later on, David Loy brought forth his impressive work Healing Deconstruction (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996).

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11. The question of the sign has been an issue for some studies of Theravada Buddhism, Buddhist logic, and certain Mahayana Buddhist sutras. Examples of contributors to this debate are Peter Harvey, Signless: Meditations in Pali Buddhism, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 9, no. 1 (1986): 2552, and Richard P. Hayes, Dignaga on the Interpretation of Signs (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1988). Since language is used by semioticians as a model of the sign, many studies of linguistic thought in Nagarjuna, Vasubhandu, Dignaga, or Dharmapala actively engage with the question of the sign. Recently, Mario DAmato has been particularly interested in this specic question from a purely semiotic view, arguing that Western semioticians have already been drawing on Asian materials in formulating their own semiotic theory. See Mario DAmato, The Semiotics of the Signless: The Buddhist Doctrine of the Signs, Semiotica. Journal of the International Association of Semiotic Studies 147 (2003): 185207. As this article goes to press, a new collection of articles edited by Jin Y. Park has just appeared: Buddhisms and Deconstructions: New Frameworks for Continental Philosophy (Lanham: Rowman & Littleeld, 2006). 12. Dazhidu lun (Treatise on the Large Prajnaparamita-Sutra), trans. Kuma raj va, T1059, 101f. See also tienne Lamotte, Le Trait de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse. Tome I, (Louvain: Bibliothque du Muson, 1944), 357ff. 13. Wang, Buddhism and Deconstruction, 28. 14. Ibid., p. 112. 15. This brief characterization of Hinayana Buddhism (from the Mahayana point of view) as a project of rationalism should not be confused with the nineteenth- to twentieth-century Western orientalist construction of Theravada Buddhism as the rationalist, empirical other of a European theistic religiosity which was under siege from post-Enlightenment rationalists. 16. These meticulous distinctions are the intellectual preoccupations of the schools, especially the Sarvastivadins and Sautrantikas, and they permeate almost every branch of the entire Abhidarma canon. 17. Wang, Buddhism and Deconstruction, 1962. 18. Ibid., p. 31. a; Treasure-house of the Abhidharma), 19. Vasubandhu, Jushe lund (Abhidharma-kos trans. Xuanzang, T1558, 149c2829. 20. See Dazhidu Lun, T1509: 61b1862a28. 21. Brian Bocking, Nagarjuna in China: A Translation of the Middle Treatise (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995), 152. The Middle Treatise is T1564 Zho ng ln, translated by Kuma raj va. 22. Bocking, Nagarjuna in China, 183. 23. See Dazhidu lun, T1509: 61b1862a28 and Wang, Buddhism and Deconstruction, 11927. For a fuller explanation of the notion of the Same, see chapters 3 and 6 of Wang, Buddhism and Deconstruction. 24. Wang, Buddhism and Deconstruction, 3233. 25. On Yinshun and Buddhism for the Human Realm, see, for example, Charles B. Jones, Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State, 16601990 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999). Stefania Travagnins PhD thesis (SOAS, University of London, 2006) examines in depth Yinshuns relationship to Madhyamika.

Chinese Glossary
a. wuming b. bore c. fanfu d. Jushe lun e. Shun zhengli lun f. Cheng shi lun g. Dazhidu lun h. Zhong lun

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r. pingdeng s. fashen t. le shuo u. San lun zong v. She lun zong w. Fa xiang zong x. Bai lun y. Shi ba kong lun z. fei anli

Dasheng yizhang si diandao San zhuan falun jing

k. quxiang

m. Wuyun n. san jietuo men o. Si wuliang xin p. Changzhao q. Jiaming