The Problem of Ontological Independence in Mahāyāna Bud-dhist Philosophy

Abstract

The concept of self-existence or ontological independence (svabhāva) is one of the fundamental concepts in Buddhist philosophy. Its sense is similar to the concept of substance in early modern Western philosophy. In Hīnayāna schools, dharmas (elementary psycho-physiological states) are considered to be self-existent, and wisdom is the comprehension of any existence as the flow of momentary (kṣāṇika) dharmas. The teaching of Madhyamaka, the first Mahāyāna school founded by Nāgārjuna (2nd3rd centuries A.D.), is based on the postulate of emptiness (śūnyatā) of all dharmas, which means that a dharma has no referent on the level of the absolute truth. According to Madhyamaka, the interpretation of enlightenment as the knowledge of the true reality proceeds from the assumption of reality of the difference between the subject and the object. But this assumption itself has a meaning only on the level of relative truth and is empty on the level of the absolute truth. The method used by Nāgārjuna and his commentator Candrakīrti (7th c.) for the demonstration of emptiness of all concepts and conceptual constructions is their reduction to absurdity and proof of their essential contradictoriness. The concept of ontological independence is the same: if everything is bound by the law of dependent origination, then everything exists only by something other and cannot be self-existent. But if there is nothing self-existent, then the opposite conceptother-dependent (niḥsvabhāva) also loses its sense, for, according to the Buddhist doctrine, the postulation of an A in the same time means the postulation of a not-A. Yogācāra, the other Mahāyāna school, formulated the conception of three natures (trisvabhāva): constructed, dependent and absolute. But the really self-existent among them is only the last one, identical with the true reality (tathatā). The store-consciousness, or the fundamental consciousness and the basis of all other forms and levels of individual consciousness, is full of real and potential afflictions and intellectual and behavioral dispositions. They all must be removed from the store consciousness, and only this will be the final liberation. In the moment of enlightenment, the difference between the true reality and the store consciousness disappears, for this difference, like any other, is a conceptual construction generated by unenlightened consciousness and therefore ontologically dependent.