Nagarjuna's Seventy Stanzas: A Buddhist Psychology of Emptiness by David Ross Komito & Nagarjuna

Author:David Ross Komito & Nagarjuna
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Snow Lion
Published: 1999-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

STANZA 10

1)D:min grid las 2)D:byid

There are no four distortions which exist inherently and thus there can be no ignorance arising from them. Because that ignorance does not exist inherently it cannot give birth to karmic formations, which means karmic formations will not arise and so also the remaining limbs too.

If ignorance lacks inherent existence, then what is dependent on it must also lack inherent existence. Thus karmic formations, which arise in dependence on ignorance, must lack inherent existence as do the other ten limbs, each of which in successive order is dependent on the preceeding limbs.

There is a further problem with the opponent's position, for actually he is unable to account for the existence of the four distortions. He believes that characteristics such as impermanence, selflessness, suffering and impurity have inherent existence in the nature of phenomena and that a mind which knows phenomena to have these characteristics is an unmistaken mind. For there to be an unmistaken mind there must be an opposite mind which is mistaken. If an unmistaken mind were to know phenomena to have inherently existing characteristics such as impermanence and selflessness, then a mistaken mind would know phenomena to have inherently existing characteristics such as permanence and self, etc., which are the four distortions. However, we argue that what the opponent calls an unmistaken mind is actually mistaken, for no characteristics exist inherently in the nature of phenomena, and a mind which believes them to exist inherently in the nature of phenomena is mistaken. Now if what the opponent calls an unmistaken mind is actually a mistaken mind, then what he calls a mistaken mind would be unmistaken, and he would be asserting that phenomena do have characteristics such as permanence and self. This is obviously incorrect. Thus both the mind which takes the four distortions to be inherently existing in the nature of phenomena and the mind which takes the opposite of the four distortions to be inherently existing in the nature of phenomena are mistaken and neither mind can be the basis for the arising of four distortions with inherent existence.

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