This was my Essay describing Lama Tsongkhapa's Chapter 17 in Great Treatise on the Path of Enlightenmnet Book 3. In this chapter Tsongkhapa is pointing out the actual object of negation. The essay was to explain Tsongkhapa's approach to someone who was not familiar with the Prasangika view and/or methodology.
All of Buddhism can be summarized in the initial teachings given by the Buddha at Deer Park - The 4 Noble Truths. Despite how lofty our view or how intricate our explanation we still always come back to these 4 very simple and earth shaking ideas.
- There is suffering
- There is a cause of suffering - ignorance
- There is cessation from suffering - nirvana
- There is a path that leads to the cessation of suffering
At all times, at the heart of Buddhism is the recognition of our state in samsara and the quest to find its release. To do this we must understand the true cause of this suffering which is ignorance. It is extremely interesting that this is “mostly” central to all schools of Buddhism and how divergent humanity has answered this riddle of what is ignorance.
Ignorance - the fact that we do not see the world correctly but instead through our own rose colored distortions of self/other, grasping/aversion, and ignorance. Theravadan, Zen/Chan, all 4 Tibetans schools - all hold this central tenet but the approaches are vastly different.
LTK and the Gelugs are the closest to holding to the original teachings of the Indian tradition and Nalanda. Hence the ignorance quest is kept very central to their approach. That it can be “solved” or understood under analysis and that only through utilizing all the tools we possess which includes the very conceptual mind that in a sense can be seen as the cause of our problems to begin with. If we discount the Mind what tools are we left with?
Ignorance, the second noble truth, is also the first link in the chain of dependent origination. From ignorance comes karma, consciousness .. and the rest of the chain which leads ultimately to death and rebirth and back to ignorance.
So what is this ignorance? We defined it above but that definition can be seen as course or overly broad. We learned in the Foundations course in Buddhist psychology that there are two principle types of ignorance - learned and innate. Learned ignorance is principally those ideas we have developed in this life. Cultural ignorance due to customs, religion, painful childhoods, parents, teachers, - our environment. Innate ignorance falls much deeper and from traditional Buddhist text lie deep in our Mind stream and are ideas we have learned and carried with us as habitual patterns since our beginningless existence.
Certainly learned ignorance causes problems for us in this life. Discrimination, racism, etc... are examples. But these can also be unlearned. Innate ignorance is so subtle and yet exerts an extremely powerful influence on us that we rarely notice. Rarely, but as we study/contemplate/analyze it we can begin to see ignorance more clearly.
This idea of ignorance first taught by the Buddha was selflessness. The fact that there is no singular, self perpetuating self. Central to Buddhism this idea is almost universally accepted. But what does this mean?
The answer is so clear in the beginning of our Buddhist journeys. Impermanence, the ever changing elements of our existence - the second form of suffering. Its a breath of fresh air that we seemed to have always known but our culture prefers the idea of a ME and we are taught that counter intuitive selfishness instead.
If we go deeper into the Buddhist journey we come across another central tenet that is often spoken about to the point of Buddhist pop culture - Emptiness. Thich Nhat Hanh’s great contribution to western dharma is his simple, elegant, explanation of Dependent Arising. Which is noted by the Prasangika’s as the first level of emptiness. That all things arise in dependence upon each other. The flower would not be a flower without water, earth, worms, minerals, sun light, wind, birds, etc.. all the way to the Big Bang.
But we must bring this to a much bigger space in our Mind. All those things that we state that are factors to the flowers existence are also dependent upon another 10,000 things which are also empty and rely on another 10,000 things. Through the elucidation of Emptiness by these great scholars (and ultimately the Buddha himself) we see how the entire universe exist in this amazing balanced state of dependent arising. Everything arises in dependence upon everything.
Innate ignorance though is not necessarily being ignorant of dependent arising. Dependent arising is more of a physics fact - like gravity. We do not stumble in the thick fog of samsara simply because we have not been taught dependent arising. This innate ignorance is much more subtle and insidious.
We can accept the idea and usually embrace the idea of a fundamental lack of inherent self or intrinsic existence. But what does that mean? LTK’s principle quest in Chapter 17 is the elucidation of the actual object of negation. Which means very basically - finding the fundamental flaw that is the concept of intrinsic existence. Where does the idea come from? On its deepest levels THAT idea of intrinsic existence is the innate ignorance that must be brought into the light and disproven.
If we simply go with the idea that “yes, i have no intrinsically existing self” that is a first step but at this point we are simply creating another conception. We analyze and negate this concept we have of what is this self that is intrinsically existent. But this Buddhist concept of non inherently existing self is not the deep innate ignorance that we view the world from. We have to go much deeper to begin to realize the truth.
But in the beginning we can only begin to look at Emptiness from a conceptual framework and recognizing this “negation of the idealized conceptual intrinsic existence” is a first step. Then we must also turn outward as well as inward. This conceptual self Prasangika refer to as “merely labelled” as we learned in the Foundation course.
Basically everything we that come in contact with in the world our Mind places a very subtle conceptual overlay onto. We create a persona for our friend Mark that is our own interpretation of him. This is driven by our own innate ignorance of the “belief” in an intrinsic self. The trick is that this persona concept is the subtle ignorance’s way of creating an intrinsically existing Mark. Therefore in my Mind, I have this person named Mark who is my friend and imbued with all the qualities that I believe him to have. He may or may not have all those qualities I assign to him but then I interact with this “Mark” I have created (and believe in) and it causes me grasp onto or shy away from him based on if “Mark” behaves in a way that reifies my own conceptual persona of myself (based on innate ignorance of intrinsic existence in myself).
Thats a lot of words but it is an example of how our innate ignorance of the belief in an intrinsically existing self (or phenomena as in “Mark”) has a grip on our lives. LTK and Prasangika’s unique assertion of ignorance seems to me to be in keeping closest with the Buddha’s original idea.
Here LTK brings the subtleties of the ignorance more to the fore. That if we, in fact, through our innate ignorance and very deep habituated patterns imbue everything with an intrinsic identity then those things we interact with (including ourselves, our own Mind, etc...) actually would not exist without that interaction. In a sense, without the Mind perceiving the object (and therefore interacting with the Mind’s conception of the object) the object, as perceived, would not exist. This the deeper level of dependent arising and is the actual object of negation.
This can get very skewed very quickly. This is not the Cittamatrin’s approach that the subject and object arise together and that outside the Mind apprehending the object there is nothing. Reality exist conventionally. My dogs exist conventionally. However, the dogs that my Mind believes exist do not exist. I interact with my dogs but I’m really interacting with my Mind’s concept of the dogs and that subtle intrinsic identity of the dogs. Someone else coming to my house and meeting my dogs for the first time will have a different conceptual idea of my dogs. The conceptual dogs we both interact with don’t exist though my dogs exist.
When LTK points out the actual object of negation. It is not the conceptual I or conceptual phenomena that our Mind is creating in relation to conventional reality. It is the referent object of the conception - the intrinsic nature of the I. In our conceptualization of a conventionally existent I, our latent tendancies also imply a intrinsically existant nature to that concept. This is the true object of negation.
Conventional reality exist. Ultimately it is empty of inherent existence because of dependent arising. With our Mind we view and interact with our world. Through both or learned and more so through our innate ignorance we misperceive the world and ourselves. Because of the deeply ingrained habits called cognitive obscurations our Mind projects inherence on the object it perceives. This is called afflictive obscurations.
Ignorance keeps us in samsara just as the Buddha taught in the second Noble Truth. LTK and the Prasangika’s view of ignorance encompasses the grossest forms of ignorance to the extremely subtle. I always describe myself (with humor) as completely Prasangika. It is the clearest elucidation of reality and totally logical.
