the difference between Prajñāparāmita and Madhyamaka

[Aemilius]

There are different and distinct samadhis that are named and described in the Mahayana sutras. Mahayana Samadhi/Dhyana is based on Dana, Shila, and the other Paramitas, and therefore they are very much different from the Sravakayana samadhis. You can read the names of Mahayana samadhis in Ulrich Pagel's translation of the Bodhisattva Pitaka sutra, these names are fascinating.


"There also appear in Mahayana literature references to a number of specific samadhi, each with a name and associated benefits, and a number of which are associated with specific Sutras [...] one notes the appearance of lengthy lists of samadhi names, which one suspects have acquired their own aura of magical potency.

Thus we can find samadhi-name lists, some of considerable length, in the Akṣayavamatinirdeśa, Bodhisattvapiṭaka, Daśabhhūmīśvara, Gaṇḍavyūha, Kāraṇḍavyūha, Mahāvyutpatti, and various Prajñā pāramitā texts. Section 21 of the Mahāvyutpatti records some 118 Samādhi.

This is reflected in The Heart Sutra, a famous Mahāyāna discourse, in which Avalokiteśvara gives a teaching in the presence of The Buddha after The Buddha enters "the Samādhi which expresses the Dharma called Profound Illumination," which provides the context for the teaching.

Likewise, the Samādhirāja Sūtra ... declares its main theme to be a particular Samādhi that is supposed to be the key to all elements in the path and to all the virtues and merits of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

This state of Mind, or Spiritual practice, is called 'the Samādhi that is manifested as the sameness of the essential nature of all dharmas' (sarva-Dharma-svabhavā-samatā-vipañcita-Samādhi). "

from www.tibetanbuddhistencyclopedia.com/en/ ... le=Samadhi

" Samādhi (समाधि) refers to the “four concentrations” as defined in the Dharma-saṃgraha (section 101):

1. āloka-samādhi (concentration on light),
2. vṛtāloka-samādhi ((concentration on enclosed light),
3. ekādaśa-pratiṣṭha-samādhi (the eleven establishments of concentration),
4. ānantarya-samādhi (the concentration giving immediate result).

Samādhi (समाधि) also refers to the “four concentrations” as defined in the Dharma-saṃgraha (section 136):

1. śūraṅgama (heroic march),
2. gagaṇa-gañja (sky-jewel),
3. vimala-prabha (pure light),
4. siṃha-vikrīḍita (lion’s sport)."

in https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/samadhi#mahayana

[Leo Rivers]

This is why we need to rely on commentaries. Otherwise we end up taking a few characters (以无所得故) and speculating into existence entire approaches to meditation for which we have minimal evidence. Jayarava would have us throw out centuries of writing because he has a different theory about the meaning of five characters, and the main proof of his theory is the absence of a verifiable Sanskrit original. That seems like a poor trade.

This kind of re-orienting of interpretation that had held for centuries if not a common place, not unheard of in looking at the past. Remember, modern research has a corrective sampling unknown to cultures before History became a thing. Jayarava may be correct or incorrect but throwing out centuries of tradition is not itself a deal breaker. The past is a moving target, right?

It is his willingness to challenge tradition that is being criticized. And the risk in doing that is a real risk. But traditions can be mistaken. Look at the confrontation history has presented to Lineage.

Look at the debate in practitioners adjacent to the Theravada.

[PeterC]

This is why we need to rely on commentaries. Otherwise we end up taking a few characters (以无所得故) and speculating into existence entire approaches to meditation for which we have minimal evidence. Jayarava would have us throw out centuries of writing because he has a different theory about the meaning of five characters, and the main proof of his theory is the absence of a verifiable Sanskrit original. That seems like a poor trade.

This kind of re-orienting of interpretation that had held for centuries if not a common place, not unheard of in looking at the past. Remember, modern research has a corrective sampling unknown to cultures before History became a thing. Jayarava may be correct or incorrect but throwing out centuries of tradition is not itself a deal breaker. The past is a moving target, right?

It is his willingness to challenge tradition that is being criticized. And the risk in doing that is a real risk. But traditions can be mistaken. Look at the confrontation history has presented to Lineage.

Look at the debate in practitioners adjacent to the Theravada.

No, it’s the lack of evidence behind his theory and his rather strange reasoning (“show me the Sanskrit original or it must be a forgery!”) that’s being criticized. Anyone can come up with a new theory on a text. Question is whether that theory is worth our time - how much evidence does it have behind it. His has very little and rather than put in the work needed to build that evidence, he’s just shouting “prove me wrong!” at people who have better things to do.

[Leo Rivers]

No, it’s the lack of evidence behind his theory and his rather strange reasoning (“show me the Sanskrit original or it must be a forgery!”)

This sounds like fair criticism. In science it is finding a fact that doesn't fit the frame that gives one the go ahead to try a new frame.

[gelukman]

Completely different things.
Study prajnaparamita texts. You will do fine and know what most 90% Buddhists dont know.
Madhyamika is secondary studies.

[Atom]

The question is whether "non-apprehension" is a meditative state. This is what Jayarava has been claiming but I don't think that's supported by the texts. I also am not sure Orsborn suggests that.

This is why we need to rely on commentaries. Otherwise we end up taking a few characters (以无所得故) and speculating into existence entire approaches to meditation for which we have minimal evidence. Jayarava would have us throw out centuries of writing because he has a different theory about the meaning of five characters, and the main proof of his theory is the absence of a verifiable Sanskrit original. That seems like a poor trade.

Jayarava does not claim that nonapprenhension is a "meditative state". Rather he observes that in Buddhist texts it is a meditative technique that leads to various meditative states such as the four āyatanas, the animitta-samādhi, and finally suññatāvihāra (as per the Pāḷi Cūḷasuññata Sutta MN 121).

We know that this approach has deep roots, especially since Anālayo published his article "Being Mindful of What is Absent". https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _is_Absent. Anālayo, Huifeng, and Attwood have all independently proposed a connection between Prajñāpāramitā and the Cūḷasuññata Sutta which refers to the technique as amanasikāra "inattention" (a word that is more often used negatively in Pāḷi as in "inattention spoiled my meditation"). Here it means "withdrawing attention from sensory experience". This is one of a small number of practices with some detailed instruction in the sutta literature (along with ānāpānasati and satipaṭṭḥāna). As Anālayo mentions, if we take the Ariyapariyesana Sutta seriously, this technique predates Buddhism.

The idea that anupalambhayoga/以無所得故 is an epistemic term was not Jayarava's. The idea should be credited to Dr Matthew Orsborn, aka Shi Huifeng, as Attwood does in his published works. Orsborn left Fo Guang Shan and is now a lecturer at Oxford University. The original argument can be found in his 2014 article:

• Huifeng. (2014). ‘Apocryphal Treatment for Conze’s Heart Problems: “Non-attainment”, “Apprehension”, and “Mental Hanging” in the Prajñāpāramitā.’ Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. 6: 72-105. http://www.ocbs.org/ojs/index.php/jocbs/article/view/75

This article is available for free download on the JOCBS website and various other places. It repays a close reading, but will be impenetrable to a superficial reading. Huifeng discussed this important article on this forum repeatedly both before and after it was published. Attwood has simply followed up on Orsborn's research (with all the proper citations) and explored the implications of it. This is Huifeng's conclusion:

It is our view that this shifts emphasis from an ontological negation of classical lists, i.e. “there is no X”, to an epistemological stance. That is, when the Bodhisattva is “in emptiness”, i.e. in the contemplative meditation of the emptiness of phenomena, he is “engaged in nonapprehension” of these phenomena.

Huifeng's argument had nothing to do with the "absence of a verifiable Sanskrit original", whatever that means. His argument was based on a forensic comparison of the copied passages in the Heart Sutra in both Chinese and Sanskrit, with the same passages in the extant Large Sutra texts, in both Chinese and Sanskrit. That is to say, Huifeng (2014) used the method pioneered by Jan Nattier in her 1992 article showing that the Heart Sutra was composed in Chinese. A method and conclusion recently studied in detail and endorsed by Prof Sarah Mattice (2021) Exploring the Heart Sutra.

Huifeng was able to show that

1. 以無所得故 was a term coined in a language that was still largely monosyllabic, by Kumārajīva, for a specific purpose
2. 以無所得故 always reflects anupalambhayogena "by the application of nonapprehension" or tac cānupalmbhayogena "And that through the application of nonapprehension" in Sanskrit.

This nice piece of research is a powerful confirmation of Nattier's "Chinese origins" conjecture, since the mistaken translation aprātitvāt could really only occur when translating 以無所得故 into Sanskrit. The word aprāptitvāt is not used in the Sanskrit Large Sutra, but is a plausible mistranslation of 以無所得故. Keep in mind that we know, and have known since the late 7th century, that the passages were copied because Woncheuk and Kuījī tell us in the commentaries attributed to them (as noted by Nattier 1992; see also Attwood 2020 and 2021). Any honest dealer who puts the texts side by side can see that one copied the other and which order that copying had to occur in.

Interestingly, in his assessment of this research by Huifeng, Attwood turned up the synonymous expression: 以不可得故. Each chapter of T 223 uses one or the other term, but not both. But in each case when you track down the Sanskrit, it is always anupalambhayogena. Thus both 可得 and 所得 reflect an Indic upa√labh in Kumārajīva'd oeuvre, despite 得 being used to convey Indic pra√āp.

Huifeng has had ample time and opportunity to refute Attwood and he has not done so. Judging by his positive comments on Jayarava's facebook Heart Sutra group, Orsborn is in agreement Attwood on this issue. This is hardly surprising since most of what Attwood does (on this sub-topic) is restate Huifeng's own conclusions and I think we can reasonably expect Dr Orsborn to agree with himself.

Orsborn and Attwood also seem to be in agreement on the necessity of understanding Prajñāpāramitā as distinct from Madhyamaka - which is a major theme of Huifeng's (2016) book Old School Emptiness. And again, it looks to me like Attwood has simply adopted Huifeng's pov on this without adding much to Huifeng's basic argument that the Madhyamaka telos is fallacious and misleading.

We should see also the work of this bloc of four scholars -- Nattier, Orsborn, Attwood, and Mattice -- in the light of Paul Harrison's (2006) work on the Diamond Sutra, particularly his demonstration that we are not forced to read the negative comments in Vajracchedikā as paradoxical or metaphysical. Harrison's forthcoming book on the Diamond Sutra will likely be yet another bitter pill for traditionalists to swallow since from what he has already published, he is closer to Huifeng's position than to traditional interpretations. Note also, that work by another outsider, Richard H. Jones, independently confirms Harrison's insights about the Diamond Sutra.

If anyone has a logical reason why this bloc of scholars has to be wrong about the provenance of the Heart Sutra, the epistemic emphasis in the Heart Sutra, or the negative impact of the "Madhyamaka telos" I have yet to see it.

[PeterC]

If anyone has a logical reason why this bloc of scholars has to be wrong about the provenance of the Heart Sutra, the epistemic emphasis in the Heart Sutra, or the negative impact of the "Madhyamaka telos" I have yet to see it.

There’s really no reason to prove this theory wrong, because it’s still a very long way from being shown to be plausible: it’s really just interesting speculation at best. It’s a massive leap from a handful of terms that seem idiosyncratic to the positing of an approach to meditation - which is almost entirely inferred, not attested in contemporary meditation instructions - and from there to an entire theory of the provenance of a text. Sure, it’s interesting, but there’s not enough there to come close to justifying Jayarava throwing a tantrum and demanding people disprove him (which a rather unconvincing argumentative technique at the best of times).

[Malcolm]

Harrison's forthcoming book on the Diamond Sutra will likely be yet another bitter pill for traditionalists to swallow...

This assumes people care. Mostly we don't rely on the opinions of textual coroners for what texts mean, even when we find their opinions interesting.

[Abhijñājñānābhibhu]

This assumes people care. Mostly we don't rely on the opinions of textual coroners for what texts mean, even when we find their opinions interesting.

Assuming that is how we people mostly feel about professional academic scholars and postmortem doctrinal forensic examiners, then to what extent should we mostly care to rely upon the interesting, or otherwise, opinions of fulltime forum/discussion board correspondents, sir?

[Malcolm]

This assumes people care. Mostly we don't rely on the opinions of textual coroners for what texts mean, even when we find their opinions interesting.

Assuming that is how we people mostly feel about professional academic scholars and postmortem doctrinal forensic examiners, then to what extent should we mostly care to rely upon the interesting, or otherwise, opinions of fulltime forum/discussion board correspondents, sir?

That’s up to you, bud. You can play with words, or you can practice Dharma. Choose your path wisely.

[Abhijñājñānābhibhu]

That's up to you, bud. You can play with words, or you can practice Dharma. Choose your path wisely.

Indubitably - it was a rhetorical question after all. And that's reasonable advice! No arguments there.

[Atom]

It seems that this needs to be restated: this thread is in the Academic Discussion section of Dharma Wheel. If you don't like Academic Discussion and don't wish to participate in Academic Discussion then stop reading and commenting on this thread. It's not about you so there is absolutely no need to continue to insist on making your negative views known. No one is making you read this. If you don't like it, then just stop reading this Academic Discussion.

If anyone has a logical reason why this bloc of scholars has to be wrong about the provenance of the Heart Sutra, the epistemic emphasis in the Heart Sutra, or the negative impact of the "Madhyamaka telos" I have yet to see it.

There’s really no reason to prove this theory wrong, because it’s still a very long way from being shown to be plausible: it’s really just interesting speculation at best.

Re "this theory", which of the three theories I mentioned are you referring to? Chinese origins, the epistemic reading, or the Madhyamaka Telos?

The idea that disproving something is not a legitimate strategy or not appropriate in an academic environment is misguided. Knowledge progresses by conjecture and refutation (something impressed on me by Richard Gombrich who actually knew Karl Popper). If any of the three theories was merely "interesting speculation" it would not have passed peer-review and been published in an academic journal (Attwood has published 13 articles on the Heart Sutra). Of course this academic system has its limitations and problems, but we've got a bit beyond the "blog post" or "forum post" level of competence or interest at this point. This really is an "academic discussion". Which is why it seems weird to me that anyone should repeatedly contribute "I hate academics and all they stand for" under the heading Academic Discussion.



Re Chinese origins, anyone who honestly assessed the evidence, method, and conclusions would be bound to admit that they are sound or to say why they are not. Sarah Mattice did this in her excellent book Exploring the Heart Sutra (2021). And Mattice was ignorant of Huifeng and Attwood, so did not know that major progress in validating Nattier's method had already been published. Huifeng (2014) pushed Nattier's theory beyond even the complaints of the clerics in Japanese academia. Attwood's (2021) review article in the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (the premier Buddhist Studies journal), sums up a huge amount of evidence from a variety of sources, including inscriptional evidence, to provide a comprehensive account of the provenance. The Heart Sutra was composed in China and in Chinese. The burden of proof was amply met by Nattier (1992). Huifeng (2014) made it certain. Attwood also made a number of minor contributions, such as noticing that tryadhvavyavasthitāḥ sarvabuddhāḥ is a calque of 三世諸佛; the latter is an expression coined by 4th century Chinese translators for atītānāgatapratyutpannā buddhāḥ (Attwood 2018).

And we can say when the Heart Sutra was composed with some precision. Jeffrey Kotyk pinned down the terminus pro quem at 656 CE. Back in the 1980s the late Fukui Fumimasa had already noted that the dhāranī in the Heart Sutra was likely copied from the «陀羅尼集經» (T 901) translated by Atikūṭa in 654 CE. This fact is repeated by John McRae (1988), Nattier (1992), and Attwood in various places. This gives us a terminus ante quem. So the Heart Sutra was composed in China. ca 654-656 CE.

Huifeng's idea of the need for "an epistemic stance" with respect to the Heart Sutra is certainly less well developed, partly because he himself has not followed up on it although, arguably, the theme emerges in his book Old School Emptiness (2016). To my mind OSE is the most important contribution to Prajñāpāramitā studies in at least a century. Let us hope Dr Orsborn can rescue the book from Fo Guang Shan obscurity and republish it with a more accessible imprint (and with an index, please!). Structural problems and overblown academese will mean that most people will struggle to read Huifeng (2014) at all, let alone at the level of detail needed to understand his argument and comment on it intelligently. Attwood's recent article ""The Cessation of Sensory Experience and Prajñāpāramitā Philosophy" (2022) in the International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture outlines one way that an epistemic stance might work based on Sue Hamilton's reading of Pāli suttas: the idea that the Buddha only spoke about [sensory] experience, never about reality (which Gombrich embraced and evangelised for). This is certainly plausible and eliminates most of the paradoxes produced by to reification of experience, while focussing on the real effects of meditation and particularly cessation. Whether this is the only way to read with a view to epistemic concerns remains to be seen, but no one is going to make any progress by refusing to think about it. Moreover no one is going to make progress by posting snide comments on a forum. If you think you have a better idea, then submit it to Buddhist Studies journal and see how you get on.

Huifeng's notion of the "Madhyamaka telos" is by far the most novel of the three theories and the one that most obviously runs counter to major Buddhist historical narratives. But given his discovery re 以無所得故, the absence of the term 自性 in the Chinese Heart Sutra, and the links back to Pāḷi texts like Cūḷasuññata Sutta, it makes Huifeng's ideas a bit more than "interesting". Many scholars (including Richard Gombrich, Sue Hamilton, Eviatar Schulman, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Rupert Gethin, and (yes) Jayarava Attwood) have noted that dependent arising appears to describe the arising of sensory experience, that it doesn't really generalise to the objective world (despite the widespread modern belief that it does). The idea that we might only be talking about sensory experience and its cessation is certainly consistent with a good deal of Buddhist doctrine, ancient and modern. And this alone necessitates a rethink of the Madhyamaka telos.

I already know at least a dozen people who have read this "academic" material (often Anālayo's book Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation) and totally changed their approach to Buddhism and meditation. These people have taken up the practice as described and rapidly progressed to cessation of sensory experience. I know of at least 20 neuroscience studies of people who are in a state of cessation, most have appeared in the 2020s.

Just to repeat, if you are not interested in academic discussion, or incapable of contributing to it, there is absolutely no need to keep telling everyone about it. Just let those of us who are interested and capable get on with it without trying to make us feel bad about it or ourselves. Thanks. Alternatively you could start a "We hate academics and academia" section of the forum for those people who cannot contain their negative emotions and feel compelled to bring everyone down to their level of misery.

[PeterC]

It seems that this needs to be restated: this thread is in the Academic Discussion section of Dharma Wheel. If you don't like Academic Discussion and don't wish to participate in Academic Discussion then stop reading and commenting on this thread. It's not about you so there is absolutely no need to continue to insist on making your negative views known. No one is making you read this. If you don't like it, then just stop reading this Academic Discussion.

If anyone has a logical reason why this bloc of scholars has to be wrong about the provenance of the Heart Sutra, the epistemic emphasis in the Heart Sutra, or the negative impact of the "Madhyamaka telos" I have yet to see it.

There’s really no reason to prove this theory wrong, because it’s still a very long way from being shown to be plausible: it’s really just interesting speculation at best.

Re "this theory", which of the three theories I mentioned are you referring to? Chinese origins, the epistemic reading, or the Madhyamaka Telos?

Chinese origin

The idea that disproving something is not a legitimate strategy or not appropriate in an academic environment is misguided. Knowledge progresses by conjecture and refutation (something impressed on me by Richard Gombrich who actually knew Karl Popper).

You should go back and read Popper again. Nothing in Jayarava’s writing comes close to meeting his standard of falsifiability. And if it did, which it doesn’t, Popper would say that the burden of proof is first on Jayarava to refute the prevailing theory of Indic origins. Which he clearly does not, and that is made abundantly clear by Jayarava ending his rant by saying that someone needs to produce a dateable Sanskrit original to prove *him* wrong.

If any of the three theories was merely "interesting speculation" it would not have passed peer-review and been published in an academic journal (Attwood has published 13 articles on the Heart Sutra).

Jayarava’s work wasn’t, and that’s the theory I’m talking about here. And honestly why should it be. Peer review takes time and researchers generally should be spending their time reviewing work of people who have established a track record.

Of course this academic system has its limitations and problems, but we've got a bit beyond the "blog post" or "forum post" level of competence or interest at this point.

Have we, though? We will come to that shortly. But let’s maybe ask first why we’re even talking about this. There are plenty of minor sutras for which you could quite convincingly argue for a Chinese origin. Jayarava doesn’t critique those - maybe he doesn’t read them. Then there’s useful critical work he could have done comparing different editions of the heart sutra. Again he doesn’t do that. Why? Presumably because he wants to bag the elephant, and doesn’t have the patience for the boring work that academics usually go through before they hit on a major new idea.

This really is an "academic discussion". Which is why it seems weird to me that anyone should repeatedly contribute "I hate academics and all they stand for" under the heading Academic Discussion.

Dicta.

Re Chinese origins, anyone who honestly assessed the evidence, method, and conclusions would be bound to admit that they are sound or to say why they are not. Sarah Mattice did this in her excellent book Exploring the Heart Sutra (2021). And Mattice was ignorant of Huifeng and Attwood, so did not know that major progress in validating Nattier's method had already been published. Huifeng (2014) pushed Nattier's theory beyond even the complaints of the clerics in Japanese academia. Attwood's (2021) review article in the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (the premier Buddhist Studies journal), sums up a huge amount of evidence from a variety of sources, including inscriptional evidence, to provide a comprehensive account of the provenance. The Heart Sutra was composed in China and in Chinese. The burden of proof was amply met by Nattier (1992). Huifeng (2014) made it certain. Attwood also made a number of minor contributions, such as noticing that tryadhvavyavasthitāḥ sarvabuddhāḥ is a calque of 三世諸佛; the latter is an expression coined by 4th century Chinese translators for atītānāgatapratyutpannā buddhāḥ (Attwood 2018).

And we can say when the Heart Sutra was composed with some precision. Jeffrey Kotyk pinned down the terminus pro quem at 656 CE. Back in the 1980s the late Fukui Fumimasa had already noted that the dhāranī in the Heart Sutra was likely copied from the «陀羅尼集經» (T 901) translated by Atikūṭa in 654 CE. This fact is repeated by John McRae (1988), Nattier (1992), and Attwood in various places. This gives us a terminus ante quem. So the Heart Sutra was composed in China. ca 654-656 CE.

Still speculative,and conspicuously confined to a very small number of writers. I note you omit all the academics that argue for the Indic origin. There are specific refutations of Mattice’s work on this topic out there - mostly in Japanese, which I presume Jayarava doesn’t read.

Huifeng's idea of the need for "an epistemic stance" with respect to the Heart Sutra is certainly less well developed, partly because he himself has not followed up on it although, arguably, the theme emerges in his book Old School Emptiness (2016). To my mind OSE is the most important contribution to Prajñāpāramitā studies in at least a century. Let us hope Dr Orsborn can rescue the book from Fo Guang Shan obscurity and republish it with a more accessible imprint (and with an index, please!). Structural problems and overblown academese will mean that most people will struggle to read Huifeng (2014) at all, let alone at the level of detail needed to understand his argument and comment on it intelligently. Attwood's recent article ""The Cessation of Sensory Experience and Prajñāpāramitā Philosophy" (2022) in the International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture outlines one way that an epistemic stance might work based on Sue Hamilton's reading of Pāli suttas: the idea that the Buddha only spoke about [sensory] experience, never about reality (which Gombrich embraced and evangelised for). This is certainly plausible and eliminates most of the paradoxes produced by to reification of experience, while focussing on the real effects of meditation and particularly cessation. Whether this is the only way to read with a view to epistemic concerns remains to be seen, but no one is going to make any progress by refusing to think about it. Moreover no one is going to make progress by posting snide comments on a forum. If you think you have a better idea, then submit it to Buddhist Studies journal and see how you get on.

Huifeng's notion of the "Madhyamaka telos" is by far the most novel of the three theories and the one that most obviously runs counter to major Buddhist historical narratives. But given his discovery re 以無所得故, the absence of the term 自性 in the Chinese Heart Sutra, and the links back to Pāḷi texts like Cūḷasuññata Sutta, it makes Huifeng's ideas a bit more than "interesting". Many scholars (including Richard Gombrich, Sue Hamilton, Eviatar Schulman, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Rupert Gethin, and (yes) Jayarava Attwood) have noted that dependent arising appears to describe the arising of sensory experience, that it doesn't really generalise to the objective world (despite the widespread modern belief that it does). The idea that we might only be talking about sensory experience and its cessation is certainly consistent with a good deal of Buddhist doctrine, ancient and modern. And this alone necessitates a rethink of the Madhyamaka telos.

All very interesting but it’s an edifice constructed on a vanishingly small amount of substantive material. May be correct, may not be, but we lack the textual basis to say anything very definitive about what people might have thought if such a school had existed.

I already know at least a dozen people who have read this "academic" material (often Anālayo's book Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation) and totally changed their approach to Buddhism and meditation. These people have taken up the practice as described and rapidly progressed to cessation of sensory experience. I know of at least 20 neuroscience studies of people who are in a state of cessation, most have appeared in the 2020s.

Please let’s not drag neuroscience into it.

Just to repeat, if you are not interested in academic discussion, or incapable of contributing to it, there is absolutely no need to keep telling everyone about it. Just let those of us who are interested and capable get on with it without trying to make us feel bad about it or ourselves. Thanks. Alternatively you could start a "We hate academics and academia" section of the forum for those people who cannot contain their negative emotions and feel compelled to bring everyone down to their level of misery.

More dicta. Nice field of straw men you’re putting up there.

Part of the process of academic research - indeed a very important part - is deciding which questions can be usefully researched - ie that there is an interesting question tractable to research methods for which adequate evidentiary material exists. Maybe this can, but nothing on this thread really demonstrates that.

[stong gzugs]

Huifeng's notion of the "Madhyamaka telos" is by far the most novel of the three theories and the one that most obviously runs counter to major Buddhist historical narratives. But given his discovery re 以無所得故, the absence of the term 自性 in the Chinese Heart Sutra, and the links back to Pāḷi texts like Cūḷasuññata Sutta, it makes Huifeng's ideas a bit more than "interesting". Many scholars (including Richard Gombrich, Sue Hamilton, Eviatar Schulman, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Rupert Gethin, and (yes) Jayarava Attwood) have noted that dependent arising appears to describe the arising of sensory experience, that it doesn't really generalise to the objective world (despite the widespread modern belief that it does). The idea that we might only be talking about sensory experience and its cessation is certainly consistent with a good deal of Buddhist doctrine, ancient and modern. And this alone necessitates a rethink of the Madhyamaka telos.

I already know at least a dozen people who have read this "academic" material (often Anālayo's book Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation) and totally changed their approach to Buddhism and meditation. These people have taken up the practice as described and rapidly progressed to cessation of sensory experience. I know of at least 20 neuroscience studies of people who are in a state of cessation, most have appeared in the 2020s.

Thanks for this comment. I agree about the value of an academic discussion and don't think it has to be pitted against tradition. I haven't yet read Anālayo's book, but I'm intrigued by your comment. If you're open to it, I'd love to hear more about how one's approach to meditation practice changes when they see dependent arising in terms of the phenomenology of subjective experiences rather than the ontology of the objective world? Presumably they spend less time trying to realize the emptiness of the outside world and more time focused on the emptiness of the skandhas, and maybe they drop the interpretation of dependent origination as explaining transitions across multiple lifetimes?

[Leo Rivers]

I just got Compassion and Emptiness and it seems a clear and informed discussion. I appreciate the comments here a lot.

[MiphamFan]

It seems that this needs to be restated: this thread is in the Academic Discussion section of Dharma Wheel. If you don't like Academic Discussion and don't wish to participate in Academic Discussion then stop reading and commenting on this thread. It's not about you so there is absolutely no need to continue to insist on making your negative views known. No one is making you read this. If you don't like it, then just stop reading this Academic Discussion.

If anyone has a logical reason why this bloc of scholars has to be wrong about the provenance of the Heart Sutra, the epistemic emphasis in the Heart Sutra, or the negative impact of the "Madhyamaka telos" I have yet to see it.

There’s really no reason to prove this theory wrong, because it’s still a very long way from being shown to be plausible: it’s really just interesting speculation at best.

Re "this theory", which of the three theories I mentioned are you referring to? Chinese origins, the epistemic reading, or the Madhyamaka Telos?

The idea that disproving something is not a legitimate strategy or not appropriate in an academic environment is misguided. Knowledge progresses by conjecture and refutation (something impressed on me by Richard Gombrich who actually knew Karl Popper). If any of the three theories was merely "interesting speculation" it would not have passed peer-review and been published in an academic journal (Attwood has published 13 articles on the Heart Sutra). Of course this academic system has its limitations and problems, but we've got a bit beyond the "blog post" or "forum post" level of competence or interest at this point. This really is an "academic discussion". Which is why it seems weird to me that anyone should repeatedly contribute "I hate academics and all they stand for" under the heading Academic Discussion.



Re Chinese origins, anyone who honestly assessed the evidence, method, and conclusions would be bound to admit that they are sound or to say why they are not. Sarah Mattice did this in her excellent book Exploring the Heart Sutra (2021). And Mattice was ignorant of Huifeng and Attwood, so did not know that major progress in validating Nattier's method had already been published. Huifeng (2014) pushed Nattier's theory beyond even the complaints of the clerics in Japanese academia. Attwood's (2021) review article in the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (the premier Buddhist Studies journal), sums up a huge amount of evidence from a variety of sources, including inscriptional evidence, to provide a comprehensive account of the provenance. The Heart Sutra was composed in China and in Chinese. The burden of proof was amply met by Nattier (1992). Huifeng (2014) made it certain. Attwood also made a number of minor contributions, such as noticing that tryadhvavyavasthitāḥ sarvabuddhāḥ is a calque of 三世諸佛; the latter is an expression coined by 4th century Chinese translators for atītānāgatapratyutpannā buddhāḥ (Attwood 2018).

And we can say when the Heart Sutra was composed with some precision. Jeffrey Kotyk pinned down the terminus pro quem at 656 CE. Back in the 1980s the late Fukui Fumimasa had already noted that the dhāranī in the Heart Sutra was likely copied from the «陀羅尼集經» (T 901) translated by Atikūṭa in 654 CE. This fact is repeated by John McRae (1988), Nattier (1992), and Attwood in various places. This gives us a terminus ante quem. So the Heart Sutra was composed in China. ca 654-656 CE.

Huifeng's idea of the need for "an epistemic stance" with respect to the Heart Sutra is certainly less well developed, partly because he himself has not followed up on it although, arguably, the theme emerges in his book Old School Emptiness (2016). To my mind OSE is the most important contribution to Prajñāpāramitā studies in at least a century. Let us hope Dr Orsborn can rescue the book from Fo Guang Shan obscurity and republish it with a more accessible imprint (and with an index, please!). Structural problems and overblown academese will mean that most people will struggle to read Huifeng (2014) at all, let alone at the level of detail needed to understand his argument and comment on it intelligently. Attwood's recent article ""The Cessation of Sensory Experience and Prajñāpāramitā Philosophy" (2022) in the International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture outlines one way that an epistemic stance might work based on Sue Hamilton's reading of Pāli suttas: the idea that the Buddha only spoke about [sensory] experience, never about reality (which Gombrich embraced and evangelised for). This is certainly plausible and eliminates most of the paradoxes produced by to reification of experience, while focussing on the real effects of meditation and particularly cessation. Whether this is the only way to read with a view to epistemic concerns remains to be seen, but no one is going to make any progress by refusing to think about it. Moreover no one is going to make progress by posting snide comments on a forum. If you think you have a better idea, then submit it to Buddhist Studies journal and see how you get on.

Huifeng's notion of the "Madhyamaka telos" is by far the most novel of the three theories and the one that most obviously runs counter to major Buddhist historical narratives. But given his discovery re 以無所得故, the absence of the term 自性 in the Chinese Heart Sutra, and the links back to Pāḷi texts like Cūḷasuññata Sutta, it makes Huifeng's ideas a bit more than "interesting". Many scholars (including Richard Gombrich, Sue Hamilton, Eviatar Schulman, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Rupert Gethin, and (yes) Jayarava Attwood) have noted that dependent arising appears to describe the arising of sensory experience, that it doesn't really generalise to the objective world (despite the widespread modern belief that it does). The idea that we might only be talking about sensory experience and its cessation is certainly consistent with a good deal of Buddhist doctrine, ancient and modern. And this alone necessitates a rethink of the Madhyamaka telos.

I already know at least a dozen people who have read this "academic" material (often Anālayo's book Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation) and totally changed their approach to Buddhism and meditation. These people have taken up the practice as described and rapidly progressed to cessation of sensory experience. I know of at least 20 neuroscience studies of people who are in a state of cessation, most have appeared in the 2020s.

Just to repeat, if you are not interested in academic discussion, or incapable of contributing to it, there is absolutely no need to keep telling everyone about it. Just let those of us who are interested and capable get on with it without trying to make us feel bad about it or ourselves. Thanks. Alternatively you could start a "We hate academics and academia" section of the forum for those people who cannot contain their negative emotions and feel compelled to bring everyone down to their level of misery.

To start off, I have nothing against academic presentations of Buddhism, especially in this sub forum.

But it doesn’t seem to me that this interpretation really flies in light of broader Buddhist meditation manuals. In contemporary Buddhism, states of sensory cessation are actually known and described, but not as something to be striven for.

Ajahn Thanissaro describes what Ajahn Fuang considered to be wrong concentration as follows:
The best state of concentration for the sake of developing all-around insight is one that encompasses a whole-body awareness. There were two exceptions to Ajaan Fuang's usual practice of not identifying the state you had attained in your practice, and both involved states of wrong concentration. The first was the state that comes when the breath gets so comfortable that your focus drifts from the breath to the sense of comfort itself, your mindfulness begins to blur, and your sense of the body and your surroundings gets lost in a pleasant haze. When you emerge, you find it hard to identify where exactly you were focused. Ajaan Fuang called this moha-samadhi, or delusion-concentration.

The second state was one I happened to hit one night when my concentration was extremely one-pointed, and so refined that it refused settle on or label even the most fleeting mental objects. I dropped into a state in which I lost all sense of the body, of any internal/external sounds, or of any thoughts or perceptions at all — although there was just enough tiny awareness to let me know, when I emerged, that I hadn't been asleep. I found that I could stay there for many hours, and yet time would pass very quickly. Two hours would seem like two minutes. I could also "program" myself to come out at a particular time.

After hitting this state several nights in a row, I told Ajaan Fuang about it, and his first question was, "Do you like it?" My answer was "No," because I felt a little groggy the first time I came out. "Good," he said. "As long as you don't like it, you're safe. Some people really like it and think it's nibbana or cessation. Actually, it's the state of non-perception (asaññi-bhava). It's not even right concentration, because there's no way you can investigate anything in there to gain any sort of discernment. But it does have other uses." He then told me of the time he had undergone kidney surgery and, not trusting the anesthesiologist, had put himself in that state for the duration of the operation.

In both these states of wrong concentration, the limited range of awareness was what made them wrong. If whole areas of your awareness are blocked off, how can you gain all-around insight? And as I've noticed in years since, people adept at blotting out large areas of awareness through powerful one-pointedness also tend to be psychologically adept at dissociation and denial. This is why Ajaan Fuang, following Ajaan Lee, taught a form of breath meditation that aimed at an all-around awareness of the breath energy throughout the body, playing with it to gain a sense of ease, and then calming it so that it wouldn't interfere with a clear vision of the subtle movements of the mind. This all-around awareness helped to eliminate the blind spots where ignorance likes to lurk.

This is a quote from a contemporary Theravadin accomplished in meditation, granted it has no direct correlation with what 2nd-5th century Prajnaparamita practitioners might or might not have done, but I remember reading similar accounts of meditative states without sensation or thoughts being not something to be striven for in Mahayana sources as well, in fact leading to rebirth in the animal realm.

It seems to me that these people are basing themselves on a very idiosyncratic interpretation of the prajnaparamita. Do the meditation manuals preserved in Chinese around this period actually advocate for this kind of practice?

This state also seems similar to nirodha samapatti:
https://unbornmind.com/2019/11/16/nirodhasamapatti/