227



What is interesting  about  Buddhism, from a deconstructive  point  of
view,is that it is both onto-theological  (therefore what-needs-to-be-
deconstructed)  and deconstructive  (providing  a different example of
how-to-deconstruct).  What  is interesting  about  Derrida's  type  of
deconstruction,  from  a  Buddhist  point  of  view,  is  that  it  is
logocentric.

    What   Derrida    says   about   philosophy,   that   it   "always
re-appropriates for itself the discourse that delimits it", is equally
true  of Buddhism.  Like  all  religions, Buddhism  includes  a strong
onto-theological element, yet it also contains the resources that have
repeatedly deconstructed this tendency.  Thanks to sensitivities  that
Derrida's  texts have helped to develop, it is possible  to understand
the  Buddhist  tradition   as  a  history  of  this  struggle  between
deconstructive delimitation and metaphysical re-appropriation, between
a  message   that   undermines   all  security   by  undermining   the
sense-of-self  that seeks security, and a countervailing  tendency  to
dogmatize  and  institutionalize  that  challenge.  According  to this
version  of  deconstruction,  however,  Derrida's  approach  is  still
logocentric, for what needs  to be decon-


                                228


structed  is not just language but the world we live in and the way we
live in it, trapped  within a cage of our own making --  "bound by our
own rope," to use the Zen phrase.(1)

    The consequence  of this  struggle  has been  a self-consciousness
about those aporias of negative  theology  that Derrida  points out in
"Denegations": hyperessentiality;  the secret  society's  secret  that
there is no secret;  "the homology  of hierarchy  which  leads to that
which situates itself beyond all position"; the promise, the order and
the  waiting.  All these  aspects  are  to be found  in Buddhism, but,
rather than being tendencies  that need to be exposed, the history  of
Buddhist  thought is the history of making these problems  central and
deconstructing  them by revealing  the logocentricity  that  motivates
them.  As we shall see, Buddhist philosophy has been preoccupied  with
refuting  any  tendency   to  postulate   a  transcendental-signified,
including any "hyperessentialism."  The Buddha himself emphasized that
he had no secret, although  that did not stop later  generations  from
attributing one to him;  insofar as the solution to Zen koans might be
considered a secret, Zen teachers emphasize that that answer is always
quite obvious;  in fact, our inability to see the obvious is precisely
the point.  The sangha  (community  of monks and nuns) that the Buddha
established  has been called the world's first democracy;  in contrast
to the Hindu caste system, hierarchy was determined solely by when one
joined.  There  is  no "order"  from  any  transcendental  being  that
requires  one to practice  Buddhism;  in contrast  to Mosaic  law, the
Buddhist  precepts  (to avoid  killing, stealing, etc.)  are vows  one
makes to oneself  to try to live in a certain  way.  The "promise"  of
Buddhism  is quite pragmatic;  in his talk to the Kalamas (praised  as
the first "charter of free inquiry")  the Buddha emphasized  that they
should not accept any religious  doctrine  until they had tried it out
for themselves and seen how it changed their lives. Finally, "waiting"
(more generally, any expectations)  has been repeatedly  identified as
the most problematic tendency in meditative practice.(2)

    Buddhism begins with the Buddha (literally,"the Awake"), c.  563 -
483 B.C. The usual problem of legendary origins is further complicated
by the fact that the Buddha, like Socrates  and Christ, wrote nothing;
I don't know why, since as far as I know he had no objections  against
writing. (Given the


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difficulties of translation, the Buddha's attitude is noteworthy: When
two disciples sought permission to translate his vernacular  teachings
into classical  Sanskrit verse, he refused, saying that in each region
the teachings  should be presented in the local language.)  Unlike the
brief  career  of Christ, the Buddha  lived  for  45 years  after  his
enlightenment, leaving behind extensive oral teachings  later recorded
in the Pali Canon, which is approximately  eleven times the length  of
the Bible.  One of the most  striking  things  about  this  voluminous
material  is that it says so much  about  the path  to nirvana  and so
little about nirvana itself.  The Buddha's attitude seems to have been
that it's not helpful to talk about it very much;  so that If you want
to know what nirvana is, you must experience  it yourself.  Except for
some terms of praise, the few descriptions are negative: they say what
nirvana is not.

    The Pali Canon contains several different accounts of exactly what
the Buddha  realized  in his paradigmatic  enlightenment  under the Bo
tree.  Perhaps most significant from a deconstructive approach is that
none   of   these   earliest   accounts   invokes   an   inexpressible
"self-presence."  According  to  the  most  common  story, the  Buddha
realized  the  Three  Knowledges: he was  able  to remember  his  past
lifetimes  as far back  as he wanted, to see  the  karmic  connections
between  those lifetimes, and to understand  the Four Truths: how life
is duhkha(the usual translation "suffering" is too limited;  better is
something  like  "dissatisfaction/frustration"),  that  the  cause  of
duhkha  is desire  and ignorance, that  there  is an end to duhkha  --
nirvana -- and an eightfold path leading to that end, which he himself
had reached.  "Ignorance was dispelled, knowledge arose." According to
another account, the Buddha realized  the truth of pratitya-samutpada,
"dependent  origination," which  was  to  become  the  most  important
doctrine of Buddhism;  according to a third, he realized that there is
no persisting  self, and  that  the  impersonal  physical  and  mental
processes   whose  interaction   creates  the  illusion  of  self  are
impermanent and cause suffering.(3)

    In contrast  to the other main Indian  tradition, the Upanishadic,
which emphasizes  the identity  of self, substance, and transcendental
Absolute, the Buddha emphasized that there is no self, that everything
without exception  arises and passes away according to conditions, and
hence there is


                                230


no personal  or impersonal  Absolute.  The Buddha's  mostly  impromptu
talks were in response to questions, but there were some questions  he
would not answer, because  they "are not conducive  to enlightenment."
These included  whether or not the world had an origin or will have an
end, whether or not it is finite, whether or not a Buddha exists after
death, and whether or not the life-principle  (jiva) is identical with
the body.  Buddhism postulates  no "golden age" of plenitude  before a
fall  into  the  suffering  of history  and  self-  consciousness, and
therefore harbors no dream of returning to any such pure origin. There
is no attempt  to explain  (and  without  a God  there  is no need  to
explain) suffering as a result of original sin;  nor is there any Last
Judgment.

    The Buddha emphasized  that he who understands  pratitya-samutpada
understands  the  dharma  [his  teaching], and  vice-versa."Dependent-
origination"  explains our experience by locating all phenomena within
a set of twelve factors, each conditioned by and conditioning  all the
others.  The twelve  links  of this chain  (which  integrates  shorter
chains  that  the  Buddha  elaborated  on  different  occasions)   are
traditionally  explained  as follows:
    The  presupposition  of the whole  process  is (1) ignorance.  Our
basic problem  is ignore-ance, because something  about experience  is
overlooked in the rush to gratify desires.  Due to this ignorance, (2)
volitional  tendencies  from  a  person's  previous  lifetime  survive
physical  death and tend to cause a new birth.  The original  Sanskrit
term  samskarah  is  especially  difficult  to  translate;   literally
something  like  "preparation, get  up," it refers  to  acts  of  will
associated with particular states of mind.  The continuation  of these
volitional  tendencies  explains  how rebirth  is possible  without  a
permanent  soul or persisting  self: they survive  physical  death  to
affect  the new (3) consciousness  that arises  when they influence  a
fertilized  egg to cause conception.  But there is no substance  here:
both volitional tendencies and the resulting rebirth-consciousness are
impermanent, conditioned  by earlier  factors  and conditioning  later
ones,  in  an  apparently  ceaseless  cycle.
    Conception  causes (4)mind-body,the fetus, to grow, which develops
(5)  the  six  sense-organs,  including   the  mental  organ  of  mind
understood  as that which perceives  mental objects.

                                231

The  sense-organs  allow  (6)  contact  between  each  organ  and  its
respective  sense-object, giving rise to (7) sensation  which leads to
(8)  craving  for that  sensation.  Craving  causes  (9)  grasping  or
attachment  to  life  in  general.   Such  clinging  is  traditionally
classified  into  four  types: clinging  to  pleasure,  to  views,  to
morality  and external  observances, and to belief  in a soul or self.
This classification  is striking  because it denies any difference  in
kind between physical sense grasping and mental attachment;  it is the
same problematic  tendency that manifests in all four.  Grasping leads
to (10)  becoming, the tendency  after  physical  death  to be reborn,
causing  (11) another  birth and therefore  (12) old age and death and
the suffering associated with them.  And so the cycle continues.

    These  twelve  links  are  usually  understood  to describe  three
lifetimes: the first two factors  give causes  from the past that have
led to our present existence;  the next five are their effects  in the
present;  the following three are causes in the present life that will
lead to another  birth;  the last  two are their  effects  in a future
life.   However,  these  three   "lifetimes"   have  also  been  taken
metaphorically, as referring to the various factors conditioning every
moment of our existence.  In neither case is ignorance a "first cause"
that began the whole process in some distant past.  Although ignorance
is presented as if it were a precondition, the important point is that
there is no first-cause.  All the twelve  factors  are interdependent,
each  conditioning  all  the  others, and  there  is no  reference  in
Buddhism  to some  past  time  before  this  cycle  was operating.  In
response  to the problem of how rebirth can occur without  a permanent
soul  or self  that  is reborn, rebirth  is explained  as a series  of
impersonal  processes, which occur  without  any self that is doing or
experiencing  them.  In one Pali sutra, a monk asks the Buddha to whom
belong, and  for  whom  occur, the  phenomena  described  in pratitya-
samutpada.  The Buddha rejects that question  as misguided;  from each
factor as its preconditions arises another factor; that is all. Duhkha
occurs  without  there  being  anyone  who causes  or experiences  the
duhkha.
    When  the Buddha  died  he did not appoint  a successor: "let  the
dharma be your guide."  Predictably, and "according  to a law that can
be formalized," that dharma  was soon canonized  from a guide  (a raft
that can be used to cross  the


                                232


river  of suffering, but not afterwards  to be carried  around  on our
backs, to use the Buddha's own analogy) into an onto-theology.  Within
a few  generations, the Buddha's  clearly  non--metaphysical  approach
yielded  to the desire to abstract  an abhidharma  or "higher  dharma"
from his extensive and repetitious talks.  Since the sense-of-self  is
due   to  interaction   among   the   various   factors   constituting
pratitya-samutpada,  the  abhidharmikas   concluded  that  reality  is
plural: what exists are these various  elements, which they enumerated
and  classified.   This   process   of  extricating   a  core-teaching
transformed   the  Buddhist   path  of  liberation   into  an  atomism
nonetheless  onto-theological:  in  place  of  the  one  substance  of
Vedanta, Buddhism  was now understood  to assert  that  there  are  in
effect innumerable substances.(4)
    The  reaction   to  this  philosophical   development   and  other
tendencies was the development  of Mahayana, a revolution as important
to Buddhism as the Protestant  Reformation  for Christianity, although
curiously  split into apparently  incompatible  directions: in popular
religious  terms, the paradigmatic  but very human Buddha  (when asked
whether  he was  a man  or a god, he  answered: "I  am a man  who  has
awakened.")  was elevated  into a metaphysical  principle, in fact the
ground  of the universe, and granted  a pantheon  of bodhisattvas  who
help others  attain  salvation.  Philosophically, however, there was a
thorough-going self-deconstruction  of the Buddhist teachings that has
continued to reverberate  through all subsequent  Buddhist thought, so
radical and influential  it has never been completely re-appropriated.
The   locus   classicus   of  this   Madhyamika   school   is  in  the
Mulamadhyamikakarika  (hereafter  "MMK") of Nagarjuna, who is believed
to have lived in the first century  A.D.  The MMK offers  a systematic
analysis of all the important philosophical issues of its time, not to
solve   these   problems   but  to  demonstrate   that   any  possible
philosophical    solution    is   self-contradictory    or   otherwise
unjustifiable.  This is not done to prepare the ground for Nagarjuna's
own solution: "If I were  to advance  any thesis  whatsoever, that  in
itself  would be a fault;  but I advance  no thesis  and so cannot  be
faulted."  [Vigrahavyavartani, verse 29] The best way to bring out the
similarities  and  differences  between  Nagarjuna  and Derrida  is to
consider  separately  what the MMK says about sunyata, nirvana and the
two-truths doctrine.

                                233

Sunyata
 
    The  spiritual  conquerors  have  proclaimed  sunyata  to  be  the
    exhaustion  of all theories  and views;  those for whom sunyata is
    itself a theory they declared  to be incurable.
        The feeble-minded  are destroyed by the misunderstood doctrine
    of sunyata, as by a snake ineptly  seized or some secret knowledge
    wrongly  applied.
        We  interpret  pratitya-samutpada  as sunyata.  Sunyata  is  a
    guiding, not a cognitive, notion, presupposing the everyday. [MMK,
    XII:8, XXIV:11,18](5)

    The first verse of the MMK proclaims its thoroughgoing critique of
being: "No things whatsoever exist, at any time or place, having risen
by themselves, from another, from both or without cause."  Paralleling
the post-structuralist  radicalization  of structuralist  claims about
language, Nagarjuna's  argument  merely  brings  out  more  fully  the
implications of pratitya-samutpada, showing that dependent-origination
should  rather  be  understood  as  "non-dependent   non-origination."
Pratitya-samutpada  does not teach a causal relation between entities,
because  the fact that these  twelve  factors  are mutually  dependent
means that they are not really entities;  none could occur without the
conditioning  of all the other  factors.  In other  words, none of the
twelve  phenomena  --  which  are  said  to  encompass  everything  --
self-exists  because  each  is infected  with  the traces  of all  the
others: none  is "self-present"  for they  are all sunya.  Or, better:
that  none  is self-  present  is the  meaning  of  sunya.  Again, the
important  terms sunya and its substantive  sunyata are very difficult
to translate.  They  derive  from  the  root  su which  means  "to  be
swollen," both  like  a hollow  balloon  and  like  a pregnant  woman;
therefore the usual English translation  "empty" and "emptiness"  must
be supplemented  with  the notion  of "pregnant  with  possibilities."
(Sprung's  translation  uses  the  cumbersome  "absence  of  being  in
things.")  Rather  than  sunyata  being  solely  a  negative  concept,
however, Nagarjuna  emphasizes  that it is only because everything  is
sunya  that  any  change,  including   spiritual   transformation,  is
possible.


                        234


    The point  of sunyata  is to deconstruct  the self-existence/self-
presence  of things.  Nagarjuna  was  concerned  not  only  about  the
supposedly self-sufficient atomic elements of the Abhidharma analysis,
but also about the repressed,unconscious metaphysics of "commonsense,"
according  to which  the  world  is  a collection  of existing  things
(including   us)  that  originate   and  eventually   disappear.   The
corresponding   danger   was  that   sunyata   would   itself   become
re-appropriated  into a metaphysics, so Nagarjuna  was careful to warn
that sunyata  was a heuristic, not a cognitive  notion.  Although  the
concept  of sunyata  is so central  to Madhyamika  analysis  that  the
school  became  known as sunyavada  ("the  way of sunya"), there is no
such  "thing"  as sunyata.  Here the obvious  parallel  with Derrida's
differance runs deep.  Sunyata, like differance, is permanently "under
erasure," deployed  for tactical  reasons  but denied any semantic  or
conceptual  stability.  It "presupposes  the everyday"  because  it is
parasitic  on the notion  of things, which it refutes.  "If there were
something  not sunya  there  would be something  sunya;  but there  is
nothing  not  sunya, so  how  can  anything  be  sunya?"  (MMK  XII:7)
Likewise, to make the application  of sunyata into a method would miss
the point of Nagarjuna's deconstruction as much as Derrida's.  Derrida
is concerned  that we not replace the specific, detailed  activity  of
deconstructive  reading with some generalized idea about that activity
that presumes  to comprehend  all its different  types of application.
For  Nagarjuna, however,  sunyata  aims  at  "the  exhaustion  of  all
theories  and views" because he has another ambition, as we shall see;
the  purpose  of sunyata  is to help  us "let-go"  of our concepts, in
which case we must let-go of the concept of sunyata as well.
    For both, differance/sunyata is a "non-site" or "non-philosophical
site"  from  which  to  question  philosophy  itself.  But, as Derrida
emphasizes,  the  history  of  philosophy  is  the  metaphysical   re-
incorporation  of such non-sites.  Nagarjuna warned, as strongly as he
could, that sunyata  was a snake  which, if grasped  at the wrong end,
could be fatal;  yet that is precisely what happened --  repeatedly --
in later Buddhism.  If "those for whom sunyata is itself a theory" are
"incurable", the question why so many people seem to be incurable must
be addressed.  The other important  philosophical  school  of Mahayana
Buddhism   was  Yogacara,  which  became   known  as  the  "Mind-only"
(Vijnanavada)  school.  I shall  not review  the


                                235

controversies  about whether or not Yogacara is an idealism (therefore
a reversion to logocentrism) and how compatible it is with Madhyamika,
except  to emphasize  that its methodology  was different: rather than
offering a logical analysis of philosophical  categories, it attempted
to work out the implications  of certain meditative  experiences.  But
later Chinese permutations of Yogacara did effect such a philosophical
"transcendentalization"   of  "Mind"  and  "Buddhanature",  which  had
occurred  even earlier  on the popular  level.  Thus what happened  in
Buddhism parallels what occurred in other traditions  such as Yoga and
Vedanta  in India, Taoism in China: contrary  to what we might expect,
in each case the theistic  and devotional  tendency evolved relatively
late, for the most part after the philosophical  developments that are
of greater intellectual  interest.  Perhaps this is a warning to those
such  as Kant  who  believe  in  philosophical  progress.  Is  eternal
vigilance the price of freedom from onto-theology, as Derrida implies?

    Saussure taught that meaning in a linguistic  system is a function
not  of  any  straightforward   relationship   between  signifier  and
signified, but of a complex  set of differences.  Barthes pointed  out
that the text is a tissue of quotations, not a line of words releasing
the   single   "theological"   meaning   of   an  author-god   but   a
multi-dimensional  space in which a variety  of writings  blend and/or
clash.  Derrida  shows  that the meaning  of such a line of words  can
never   be  completely   fulfilled,  hence   the  text  never  attains
self-presence;  the continual circulation of signifiers signifies that
meaning has no firm foundation or epistemological  ground.  What would
we end up with if we extrapolated these claims about textuality to the
whole universe? Nagarjuna's  logical and epistemological  analysis did
not appeal  to the Chinese, who  preferred  a more  metaphysical  (and
therefore onto-theological) way to express the interconditionality  of
all phenomena: the metaphor of Indra's net described in the Avatamsaka
Sutra and developed in the Hua-yen school of Mahayana.

    Far away in the heavenly  abode of the great god Indra, there is a
    wonderful net that has been hung by some cunning artificer in such
    a manner that it stretches  out infinitely  in all directions.  In
    accordance  with the


                                236


    extravagant  tastes  of deities, the artificer  has hung  a single
    glittering  jewel  in each  "eye"  of the net, and  since  the net
    itself in infinite  in all dimensions, the jewels are infinite  in
    number.  There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first
    magnitude, a wonderful  sight  to behold.  If we  now  arbitrarily
    select one of these jewels for inspection  and look closely at it,
    we will discover that in its polished  surface there are reflected
    all  the other  jewels  in the net, infinite  in number.  Not only
    that, but each of the jewels  reflected  in this one jewel is also
    reflecting  all  the other  jewels, so that  there  is an infinite
    reflecting process occurring.... [I]t symbolizes a cosmos in which
    there is an infinitely  repeated  interrelationship  among all the
    members  of the cosmos.  This  relationship  is said  to be one of
    simultaneous mutual identity and mutual inter-causality.


Every "individual" is at the same time the effect of the whole and the
cause  of the  whole, and  the totality  is a vast, infinite  body  of
members each sustaining  and defining all the others.  "The cosmos is,
in  short,  a  self-  creating,  self-maintaining,  and  self-defining
organism."  This world is non-teleological: "There  is no theory  of a
beginning time, no concept of a creator, no question of the purpose of
it all.  The universe  is taken  as a given".  Such a universe  has no
hierarchy: "There  is no center, or, perhaps  if there  is  one, it is
everywhere." (7)
    If "even  today  the  notion  of a center  lacking  any  structure
represents  the unthinkable  itself"(8) (Writing and Difference, 279),
is Indra's Net an "unthinkable  structure"? Nagarjuna would not accept
such an onto- theological trope, for obvious reasons, but the metaphor
is  not  without  value.  Of Grammatology  criticizes  the  system  of
s'entendre-parler  [hearing/understanding-oneself   speak]  which  has
"produced  the  idea  of the world, the idea  of world-origin, arising
from  the difference  between  the worldly  and  the  non-worldly, the
outside  and  the  inside, ideality  and  non-ideality, universal  and
non-universal,transcendental  and empirical, etc." [8] In Indra's  Net
those  categories  and  binary  oppositions  do not apply.  That  this
"textuality"  extends  beyond  language  means  that right now you are
reading more than the insights of Nagarjuna and Derrida, and more than
the effects of Professor Coward's

                                237

invitation  to contribute  this paper: for in this page  is the entire
universe.  The Vietnamese  Zen master  Thich Nhat Hanh makes the point
better than I can:

        If you are a poet, you will see clearly  that there is a cloud
    floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no
    rain;  without  rain, the trees cannot grow, and without  trees we
    cannot make paper.  The cloud is essential for the paper to exist.
    If the  cloud  is not  here, the  sheet  of paper  cannot  be here
    either....
        If we look into this sheet  of paper  even more deeply, we can
    see the sunshine in it.  If the sunshine is not there, nothing can
    grow.  In fact, nothing  can grow.  Even  we cannot  grow  without
    sunshine.  And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet
    of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue
    to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought  it to
    the mill to be transformed  into paper.  And we see the wheat.  We
    know that the logger  cannot  exist  without  his daily bread, and
    therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of
    paper. And the logger's father and mother are in it too....
        You cannot  point  out one thing  that  is not here  --  time,
    space,  the  earth,  the  rain, the  minerals  in  the  soil,  the
    sunshine, the cloud, the  river, the  heat.  Everything  co-exists
    with this sheet of paper.... As thin as this sheet of paper is, it
    contains everything  in the universe in it.(9)

    To emphasize  Nagarjuna's  point, the metaphor of Indra's Net does
not actually  refer  to our interdependence, for that would presuppose
the existence  of separate things which are related together.  Rather,
just as every  sign is a sign of a sign, so everywhere  there are only
traces and those traces are traces of traces.
    If such is the case here and now, there is nothing  that needs  to
be attained  or could  be lost;  in that  sense  it is a past that has
always  been  present.  Then  what  is our  problem? Why do we suffer?
Buddhism provides no "first cause"

                                238

to explain duhkha, but accounts  for our dissatisfaction  by referring
it back to the delusive sense-of-self which is a manifestation of this
web yet feels separate from it. The difficulty is that to the extent I
feel separate I am insecure, for the ineluctable  trace of nothingness
in  my  fictitious  (because  not  self-existing/self-present)  sense-
of-self  is experienced  as a sense-of-lack;  in reaction, the  sense-
of-self  becomes  preoccupied  with  trying  to become  self-existing/
self-present, in one or another symbolic fashion.  The tragic irony is
that the ways we attempt  to do this cannot  succeed, for the delusive
sense-of-  self can never expel the trace of lack that constitutes it;
while  in the  most  important  sense  we are  already  self-existing,
insofar  as the infinite  set of differential  traces that constitutes
each of us is the whole Net.  "The self-existence  of a Buddha  is the
self-existence  of this  very cosmos.  The Buddha  is without  a self-
existent  nature;  the cosmos too is without a self-existent  nature."
(MMK  XXII:16) I think  this  touches  on the enduring  attraction  of
logocentrism  and onto-theology, not just  in the West but everywhere:
Being  means  security, the  grounding  of  the  self, whether  it  is
experiencing  God  immediately  or intellectually  sublimated  into  a
metaphysical  arche.  We want  to meet  God  face-to-face, or see  our
essential Buddha-  nature, but trace/sunyata  means we never catch it.
The   sense-of-self   wants   to   gain   nirvana/enlightenment,   but
trace/sunyata means it can never attain it. The problem, again, is our
desire for self-presence, and emphasis here is as much on the self- as
on  the  -presence.   Then  the  solution   somehow  has  to  do  with
not-catching, with no longer needing to bring these fleeting traces to
self-presence.  It is the  difference  between  a bad-infinity  and  a
good-infinity:  a  shift  in  perspective   that  changes  everything.

    Subhuti: How is perfect wisdom [prajnaparamita]  marked?
    The Lord: It has non-attachment for its mark....To the extent that
    beings take hold of things and settle down in them, to that extent
    there  is defilement.  But no one is thereby  defiled.  And to the
    extent  that one does not take hold of things  and does not settle
    down in them, to that extent  can one conceive  of the absence  of
    I-making  and mine-making. In that sense


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    can one form the concept  of the purification  of beings, i.e., to
    the extent  that they do not take hold of things and do not settle
    down in them, to that extent there is purification.  But no one is
    therein purified.  When a Bodhisattva  courses thus, he courses in
    perfect wisdom.(10)

    The most famous line in the Diamond Sutra encapsulates  this as an
injunction:"Let  the mind  come  forth  without  fixing  it anywhere."
Nagarjuna  sees the consequences  of all this:"When  there is clinging
perception (upadane), the perceiver generates being.  When there is no
clinging  perception, he will be freed  and there  will  be no being."
(MMK  XXVI:7)  As  long  as I am motivated  by  lack, I will  seek  to
real-ize  myself by fixating  on ("settling  down in") something  that
dissolves  in my grasp, for everything  is an elusive trace of traces.
Lack is "the hunger  for/of  self"  which  seeks  fulfillment  in "the
absolute phantasm"  of "absolute  self-having."(11)
    What  might  a Buddhist  teacher, concerned  to help  his students
realize  this  freedom,  say  about  Derrida's   deconstruction?  That
Derrida's  freedom  is too much  a textual  freedom, that it is overly
preoccupied  with language because it seeks liberation  through and in
language -- in other words, that it is logocentric.  The danger is not
only that we will try to find a "fully  meaningful"  symbol  to settle
down  with, but that  we will  live  too much  symbolically, inscribed
within an endless recirculation of concepts even if we do not grasp at
the ones that are supposed to bring Being into our grasp. This becomes
a source of duhkha because we still retain a ground: in language  as a
whole.  It  is  the  difference  between  a restricted  and  a general
economy.

The two truths

    The teaching  of the Buddhas  is wholly  based on there  being two
truths: that of a personal  everyday  world and a higher  truth  which
surpasses  it.
    Those who do not clearly know the true distinction between the two
truths cannot clearly know the hidden depths of the Buddha's teaching.


                                240

        Unless  the  transactional  realm  is accepted  as a base, the
    surpassing sense cannot be pointed out; if the surpassing sense is
    not comprehended nirvana cannot be attained. [MMK XXIV:8-10].

    At the end of "The Ends of Man," Derrida  declares  the importance
of a double  strategy: on the  one  hand, to "attempt  an exit  and  a
deconstruction  without changing  terrain," which uses the instruments
of language against language; at the risk of ceaselessly consolidating
at a deeper level that which one allegedly deconstructs.  On the other
hand, to "decide  to change terrain, in a discontinuous  and irruptive
fashion, by brutally  placing  oneself  outside, and  by affirming  an
absolute break and difference"; at the risk, again, of inhabiting more
naively  than  before  that  which  one claims  to have  deserted, for
"language  ceaselessly  reinstates  the  new  terrain  on  the  oldest
ground."(12) Derrida speaks repeatedly about "the necessity of lodging
oneself within traditional conceptuality  in order to destroy it," for
"we cannot give up this metaphysical complicity without also giving up
the  critique  we  are  directing   against  this  complicity."(13)The
resources to make one's critique of metaphysics  must be borrowed from
that which  one wants  to undo.  Notice, however, that both strategies
are threatened  by the same fate: the metaphysical  dilemma is between
reinscribing the new on the old terrain or having one's new terrain be
reinscribed  on the old, a negligible difference.  The danger is being
trapped  somewhere  within  language;  the possibility  is "the joyous
affirmation of the play of the world and of the innocence of becoming,
the affirmation  of a world of signs without fault, without truth, and
without  origin which is offered  to an active  interpretation"(14)--a
Nietzsche-like but only textual liberation from Being.  The difference
is between being stuck somewhere within language and being free within
language.
    Lyotard defines postmodernism as suspicion of all meta-narratives,
yet it is when we think  we are escaping  meta-narratives  that we are
most  susceptible  to them.  This is the basic  problem  not only with
"discontinuous and irruptive" works such as Anti-Oedipus but also with
such "non-metaphysical"  theories such as empiricism, pragmatism  and,
even more fundamentally, the unconscious  metaphysics  that passes  as
"commonsense."  Nagarjuna's  analyses  address  the


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main philosophical  theories  of his day, but his real target  is that
automatized, sedimented metaphysics disguised as the world we live in.
If philosophy  were merely the sport of philosophers, one could ignore
it, but we have no choice in the matter. "It was a Greek who said, 'If
one has to philosophize, one has to philosophize; if one does not have
to philosophize, one still  has  to philosophize  (to say it and think
it).  One always has to philosophize.'"  The fundamental categories of
"everydayness" are self-existing/self-present  things --  including us
--  that  are  born, change, and eventually  pass  away;  in order  to
explain  the relations  among  these things, space, time and causality
are also necessary.  And the vehicle of this commonsense  metaphysics,
creating and sustaining  it, is language, which presents us with a set
of nouns  (self-subsistent  things)  that  have  temporal  and  causal
predicates  (arise, change  and disappear).  But, given  that  we find
ourselves  inscribed  within language  --  that "language  has started
without  us, in us and before  us"  ("Denegations")  --  how shall  we
proceed? Thus the double  strategy  of Buddhism, the "two truths."  On
the one hand, language  must be used to expose  the traps of language:
in addition  to Nagarjuna's  deconstruction  of self-existent  things,
there are, for example, all the binary dualisms (purity vs.  impurity,
life vs.  death, being vs.  nothingness, success vs.  failure, men vs.
women, self vs. other) whereby we "tie ourselves without a rope" as we
vainly try to valorize one half and reject the other.  The danger with
this  strategy  is that, as long as my sense-of-lack  motivates  me to
seek  Being  in some sublimated  form, I shall  escape  from  one trap
merely  to  fall  into  another.  So  the  other  strategy  is  a more
disruptive  one: a "higher" or "surpassing  truth" which points beyond
language  and therefore  beyond  truth, raising  the question  of "the
truth of truth" and the very possibility of truth in philosophy.
    In "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy" Derrida
analyzes  Kant's critique  of certain  "self-styled  mystagogues"  and
questions  Kant's  attempt  to distinguish  what they do from what  he
does.  If  such  mystagogery  is due  to a deterioration  in the  true
essence  of philosophy, then the problem  is that philosophy  lost its
first  signification  very early, since Kant must distinguish  between
Plato the "good"  Academician  and Plato  the presumed  author  of the
letters,  "the   father   of  the  delirium,  of  all  exaltation   in
philosophy."


                                242

[39].It  is another  instance  where  a pure  origin  turns  out to be
already infected with the supplement that supposedly corrupts it.
    But Derrida is more interested  in the truce Kant proposes between
the two parties: a concordat acknowledging that the difference between
them  is their  different  manner  of presenting  the same moral  law.
Philosophy  didactically  leads  the moral  law in us back to distinct
concepts  according  to  logic, whereas  the  other  procedure  is  to
personify  this  moral  law  in an esthetic  manner.  Derrida  wonders
whether this really exorcises  the "apocalyptic  tone" that Kant found
objectionable in the "mystagogues," or rather reveals it within Kant's
own discourse:
    Can't  we say  then  that  all  the receiving  parties  of such  a
    concordat  are the subjects  of eschatological  discourses?...  if
    Kant denounces those who proclaim that philosophy is at an end for
    two thousand years, he has himself, in marking a limit, indeed the
    end  of a certain  type  of  metaphysics, freed  another  wave  of
    eschatological  discourses  in philosophy.  His progressivism, his
    belief in the future  of a certain  philosophy, indeed  of another
    metaphysics, is not contradictory to this proclamation of ends and
    of the end.  And I shall now start again from this fact: from then
    on...  the West has been dominated  by a powerful program that was
    also an untransgressible contract among discourses of the end. The
    theme of history's  end and of philosophy's  death represent  only
    the  most  comprehensive, massive, and  assembled  forms  of this.
    [47-48]

Derrida acknowledges  the differences  between  Hegelian, Marxist  and
Nietzschean eschatology:

    But aren't  these differences  measured  as gaps or deviations  in
    relation  to the fundamental  tonality  of this  Stimmung  audible
    across  so many thematic  variations? Haven't  all the differences
    taken the form of a going-one-better  in eschatological eloquence,
    each newcomer, more lucid  than the other, more vigilant  and more
    prodigal  too than the other, coming to add more to it: I tell you

                                243

    this in truth;  this is not only the end of this here but also and
    first  of that  there, the end  of history, the  end  of the class
    struggle, the  end  of philosophy...  And whoever  would  come  to
    refine, to tell the extreme  of the extreme, namely the end of the
    end, the end of ends, that the end has always already  begun, that
    we must still  distinguish  between  closure  and end, that person
    would, whether wanting to or not, participate in the concert.  For
    that is also the end of the metalanguage concerning eschatological
    language. And so we can ask ourselves if eschatology is a tone, or
    even the voice itself.  Isn't  the voice  always  that of the last
    man?[48-49]

    We do not need to ask where  Derrida  himself  fits into all this.
The tone Derrida identifies within all Western philosophical discourse
is  even  more  audible  from  outside,  especially  from  the  Indian
(including  Buddhist) tradition  which, in contrast, consists of a set
of  more-or-less  distinct  schools  that  developed  side-by-side, as
commentators added their notes to sub-commentaries  to commentaries on
sacred  texts.  From the Western  perspective, the Asian  respect  for
tradition  (e.g.,  Confucian  gerontocracy)  may  look  and  often  is
stultifying, but from the other side the Western need to revolutionize
tradition  is the tradition.  Despite recent critiques  of Oedipus and
patriarchy, there is still the same tendency to kill the father;  and,
as Derrida  implies, to kill  the myth of Oedipus  is to re-enact  the
myth.  I think Derrida's  phrase puts a finger on it: whence this need
to be "the last man"? The one who stands on everyone else's shoulders,
on whose  shoulders  no one stands, with  whom history  stops, through
whom signifiers  do not recirculate  because his/hers grasp the Truth?
Why is it that philosophers  can accept their own physical  death more
readily  than  the  refutation  of their  ideas? The  issue, as we are
beginning  to understand, is that  there  are many ways to seek Being.

    Whoever  takes  on the apocalpytic  tone comes  to signify, if not
    tell, you something. What? The truth, of course, and to signify to
    you that it reveals the truth to you; the tone is the revelator of
    some  unveiling   in  process...Truth   itself   is  the  end, the
    destination,

                                244

    and that truth unveils  itself is the advent of the end.  Truth is
    the end and the instance  of the Last  Judgment.  And that  is why
    there  would  not be any truth  of the apocalypse  that is not the
    truth of truth.  (53)

    Nietzsche  and Heidegger point out that nihilism is the essence of
metaphysics  because  metaphysics  seeks to ground itself in being and
therefore is preoccupied  with nonbeing;  the truth, for them, is that
there  is no such ground.  The problem  with this realization  is that
even such apparently  modest truth claims  are just as much an attempt
to  ground  oneself  in Being, and  therefore  are  disrupted  by  the
inability  of language  to attain any self-presence  in the sublimated
form of self-contained  meaning.  Even as "the secret is that there is
no secret," so for Buddhism  the "higher truth" (and now we shall make
it  the  lower  truth)  is that  there  is no truth  (and  now  we can
appreciate why it is necessary to accept the "transactional  realm" in
order to point to the surpassing truth: that is, why Nagarjuna insists
there are two truths).  There is no problem with "your lunch is in the
refrigerator," but there  is a problem  insofar  as philosophy  is our
attempt to grasp the concepts  that grasp Being.  If the truth is that
conceptual  place where we may rest, the search  for truth is also the
search  for that  which  will fill up our lack, and philosophy  is the
conceptual  attempt  to find  God in the  net  of our  concepts.  Then
philosophy  can never  escape  its  apocalyptic  tone  insofar  as its
destiny is to seek truth. If it were possible for our sense-of-lack to
be resolved, for  our  bad-infinity  to be  transformed  into  a good-
infinity, then truth too would be transformed: from nothing  (our lack
allows us no rest) into everything.  According  to a famous Zen story,
the Buddha sat before a large audience who expected  him to speak, but
he  said  nothing, twirling  a flower  between  his  fingers.  No  one
"understood"  except Mahakasyapa, who "cracked  a smile" --  whereupon
the Buddha acknowledged  his realization.
    "Shall we continue, in the best apocalyptic tradition, to denounce
the false  apocalypses? "[59].  The fact  --the  truth--  is that  all
philosophy, including Derrida's and including mine, cannot escape this
apocalyptic "tone" insofar as it is motivated by sublimated lack.  And
not just philosophy.  Derrida  wonders  if the apocalyptic  tone is "a
transcendental  condition of all discourse, of all experience  itself,
of every

                                245

mark or of every  trace."  And not only a tone: insofar  as we hope to
overcome  our lack, we are thrust into the future, toward that awaited
moment when self-presence  will be gained;  as Derrida implies, belief
in  progress, in the  future  itself, is a version  of  it.
    There  is another  way to make this point  about  truth, which has
implications  for  the  future  of the  conversation  between  Western
philosophy  and Buddhism.  According to the established  myth, Western
philosophy  begins  with  the  Greek  discovery  of  reason, with  the
emancipation  of thought from myth and religion, in an awakening  that
(according  to Plato and Aristotle) observes the world with wonder and
curiosity. In India, however, philosophy is said to begin with duhkha:
the fact of our suffering  motivates  the search  for a way to end it.
But this  is also  the origin  of religion, which  is why there  is no
sharp  distinction  between  the two in India;  the path to liberation
encompasses  both.  From  the Indian  perspective, then, the originary
Greek distinction  between philosophy and religion is suspect;  and if
there is something unnatural about their bifurcation, we should expect
to detect "traces" of each in the other. If their common ground is the
need to end duhkha and overcome lack, we shouldn't  be surprised  by a
religious tone, an apocalyptic urgency at the very heart of philosophy
itself.  No wonder, then, that a secularized  rationalism will have to
keep revolutionizing itself, killing its fathers: only in that way can
it avoid  the  fact  that  philosophy  cannot  grant  what  is sought.
    Furthermore: what  does  this tone  infecting  its innermost  core
imply  about reason? I am wondering  about this: Was the discovery  of
reason  more  a  matter  of  creating  a place  of  self-grounding  as
thinking? Cogito ergo sum. Or rather trying to make thinking into such
a "space"  of self-grounding, given  Derrida's  and  Buddhism's  point
about  the impossibility  of self-presence? If the larger  meaning  of
deconstruction is that language/reason is deconstructing itself as our
place  of  self-grounding, the  full  consequences  of  deconstruction
remain  to be seen.  This puts us on delicate  ground, since  we don't
want to "lose our reason" in the way that, for example, Nietzsche did.
But  Buddhism  offers  other  ways  to  do so.
    Derrida concludes by announcing "an apocalypse without apocalypse,
an apocalypse  without vision, without  truth, without  revelation, of
dispatches  (for  the  'come'  is  plural

                                246

in  itself, in oneself), of  addresses  without  message  and  without
destination,  without  sender  or  decidable  addressee, without  last
judgement, without  any other eschatology  than the tone of the 'Come'
itself, its very difference, an apocalypse  beyond  good and evil."  A
Buddhist apocalypse, congenial  to any jewel in Indra's Net that isn't
trying to fixate itself. "Here the catastrophe would perhaps be of the
apocalypse  itself, its pli and its end, a closure without end, an end
without  end." The sense-of-self  can never fill up its sense-of-lack,
but it can realize  that what it seeks it has never lacked.  "And what
if this outside  of the apocalypse  was within the apocalypse? What if
it was the apocalypse itself, what precisely breaks-in in the 'Come'?"
[67]Perhaps this is what we have always sought: not to become real but
to realize that we don't need to become real. In the end, is there any
difference between them?

Nirvana 

    There is no specifiable  difference whatsoever between nirvana and
    the everyday world;  there is no specifiable  difference  whatever
    between the everyday world and nirvana.
        The ontic range of nirvana  is the ontic range of the everyday
    world.  There is not even the subtlest difference between the two.
        That which, taken  as causal  or dependent, is the process  of
    being born and passing  on, is, taken non-causally  and beyond all
    dependence, declared to be nirvana.
        Ultimate serenity  is the coming to rest of all ways of taking
    things, the repose of named things;  no truth has been taught by a
    Buddha for anyone, anywhere. [MMK, XXV:19, 20, 9, 24]

    The climactic  chapter of the MMK addresses  the nature of nirvana
in order  to prove  that  there  is no transcendental-signified: since
nothing is self-existent, nirvana  too is sunya.  The everyday  world,
which is the process of things being born, changing, and passing away,
is for that  reason  a world  of suffering, samsara.  Yet there  is no
specifi-

                                247

able difference  between this world and nirvana.  There is, however, a
difference  of perspective, or rather a difference in the way they are
"taken", which has not yet been brought  out fully  in our discussions
of pratitya-samutpada  and  Indra's  Net.  The  irony  of  Nagarjuna's
approach  to pratitya-samutpada  is that its use of causation  refutes
causation: having deconstructed the self-existence  or being of things
(including  us) into their  conditions  and interdependence, causality
itself then disappears, because without anything to cause/be effected,
the world will not be experienced  in terms of cause and effect.  Once
causality  has been  used  to refute  the apparent  self-existence  of
objective  things, the  lack  of  things  to  relate-together  refutes
causality.  If things originate  (change, cease to exist, etc.), there
are no self-existing things; but if there are no things, then there is
nothing to originate  and therefore  no origination.
    It is because we see the world as a collection  of discrete things
that  we superimpose  causal  relationships, to  "glue"  these  things
together.  Therefore the victory of causality is Pyrrhic, for if there
is only causality, there  is no causality.  This  self-refutation  has
religious  consequences: Cause-and-effect  is essential to our project
of attempting to secure ourselves "within" the world;  its evaporation
leaves  behind it not chance (its dualistic  opposite)  but a sense of
mystery, of being part of something  that we can never grasp, since we
are a manifestation  of it.  When there is no need to defend a fragile
sense-of-self, such mystery is not threatening and rather than attempt
to banish  it one  is able  to yield  to it.
    In Derridean terms, the important thing about causality is that it
is the equivalent  of textual  differance  in the world of things.  If
differance  is the  ineluctability  of textual  causal  relationships,
causality is the differance of the "objective" world.  Nagarjuna's use
of  interdependence   to  refute  the  self-existence   of  things  is
equivalent  to what Derrida does for textual meaning, as we have seen.
But Nagarjuna's  second and reverse  move is one that Derrida  doesn't
make:   the   absence    of   any   self-existing    objects   refutes
causality/differance.   The  aporias  of  causality  are  well  known;
Nagarjuna's  version  points  to the  contradiction  neces-


                                248

sary  for a cause-and-effect  relationship: the effect  can be neither
the same as the cause nor different from it. If the effect is the same
as the cause, nothing  has been  caused;  if it is different, then any
cause   should   be   able   to  cause   any   effect.(18)
    Therefore  pratitya-samutpada  is  not  a doctrine  of  "dependent
origination"  but an account of "non-  dependent non-origination."  It
describes, not the  interaction  of realities, but  the  sequence  and
juxtaposition of "appearances" --  or what could be called appearances
if there were some non-appearance to be contrasted with.  Origination,
duration and cessation are "like an illusion, a dream, or an imaginary
city in the sky." (MMK VII:34) What is perhaps  the most famous of all
Mahayana  scriptures, the Diamond Sutra, concludes  with the statement
that  "all  phenomena  are like  a dream, an illusion, a bubble  and a
shadow, like  dew and lightning."  As soon  as we abolish  the  "real"
world, "appearance"  becomes the only reality, and we discover

    a world  scattered  in pieces, covered  with  explosions;  a world
    freed  from the ties  of gravity  (i.e., from relationship  with a
    foundation);  a world made of moving and light surfaces  where the
    incessant  shifting  of  masks  is  named  laughter, dance,  game.
    (19)

For both Nietzsche  and Buddhism, our way of trying to solve a problem
turns out to be what maintains the problem.  We try to "peel away" the
apparent  world to get at the real one, but that dualism between  them
is our  problematic  delusion, which  leaves, as  the  only  remaining
candidate  for real world, the apparent  one --  a world  whose actual
nature  has not been  noticed  because  we have  been so concerned  to
transcend  it.  This allows us to see more clearly  how "everydayness"
and "commonsense" are not alternatives to metaphysical speculation but
a disguised --  because automatized and unconscious --  version of it.
As Berkeley pointed out, no one has ever experienced matter;  from the
other  side, it is "commonsense"  that  is  idealistic  in postulating
minds-inside-bodies;  as Nagarjuna would emphasize, the refutation  of
either does not imply the truth of the other.
    One such "appearance" --  no more or less so than anything else --
is   what   is   called   "a   Buddha."    Derrida   points   to   the
"hyperessentiality," the being (or nonbeing -- an


                                249

hypostatized  sunyata  can work  as well)  beyond  Being  whose  trace
lingers in most negative theologies, infecting them with a more subtle
transcendental-signified.  Nagarjuna  is also sensitive to this issue.
Like other negative theologies, Nagarjuna begins by dedicating the MMK
to the Buddha, but  then  he devotes  the most  important  chapter  to
proving  that there can be no such thing as a Buddha, just as there is
no  other  self-present  transcendental-signified.  The  serenity  (or
"beatitude": sivah)  we seek  is the  coming-to-rest  of all  ways  of
taking things, the repose of named things (sarvopalambhopasamaprapanc-
opasamah).  His commentator  Candrakirti  (7th C.) glosses this verse:
"the very coming to rest, the non-functioning, of perceptions as signs
of all named  things, is itself  nirvana....  When  verbal  assertions
cease, named  things  are in repose;  and the ceasing  to function  of
discursive  thought  is  ultimate  serenity."(20)   Contrast  this  to
Derrida's  problematization  of the difference  between signifier  and
signified: "from the moment that one questions the possibility of such
a transcendental signified, and that one realizes that every signified
is in the position  of a signifier, the distinction  between signified
and signifier  becomes  problematical  at its root."(21)  For Derrida,
what is problematic is the relationship  between name and concept;  so
it is not surprising  that he concludes  with an endless recirculation
of concepts.  But notice what is signifier  and what is signified, for
Candrakirti: the non-functioning  of perceptions  as signs  for  named
things is nirvana.  The problem is not merely that language  acts as a
filter, obscuring  the nature  of things.  Rather, names  are used  to
objectify perceptions  into the "self-existing"  things we perceive as
books, tables, trees, you  and  me.  In other  words, the  "objective"
world of material things, which interact causally "in" space and time,
is metaphysical through-and-through.  It is this metaphysics that most
needs to be deconstructed, according  to Buddhism, because this is the
metaphysics, disguising itself as commonsense  reality, which makes me
suffer  --  especially  insofar  as I understand  myself  to be such a
self-existing   being   "in"  time  that  will  nonetheless   die.[Our
fundamental  duhkha may be expressed  as this contradiction:on the one
hand,  we  feel   that   we  are   or  should   be   self-existent,  a
self-sufficient  self-consciousness,on the other hand, we know that we
were  born, are growing  old, and will die.]  The impor-

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tant thing in Buddhism  is that the coming-to-rest  of our using names
to take perceptions as self-existing objects actually deconstructs the
"objective"  everyday  world.  Since that world is as differential, as
full  of  traces, as  the  textual  discourse  Derrida  works  on, the
Buddhist response is to use those differences/deferrals to deconstruct
that objectified  world, including  ourselves, since we sub-jects  are
the first to be ob-jectified. If there are only traces of traces, what
happens  if we stop trying  to arrest  those  elusive  traces  into  a
self-presence? If we do not take perceptions as signs of named things,
the most fundamental and problematic dualism of all -- that between my
fragile  sense of being and the nothingness  that threatens  it --  is
conflated;  if we do not need to fixate ourselves, we unfind ourselves
"in" the dream-like world that the Diamond Sutra describes, and plunge
into the horizontality of moving and light surfaces where there are no
objects, only  an incessant  shifting  of masks;  where  there  is  no
security and also no need for security, because everything that can be
lost has been, including oneself.
    in  order  for  this  to  occur,  however,  another  strategy   is
necessary: a discontinuous, irruptive  one that does not constitute  a
discontinuous, irruptive  one that  does  not  constitute  a different
philosophical approach but a non-philosophical  one because it lets-go
of thoughts.  I refer, of course, to the various meditative  practices
that are so important in Buddhism.  Are such practices  the "other" of
philosophy, feared  and ridiculed  because  they  challenge  the  only
ground philosophy knows? When we are not so quick to grasp at thoughts
(truth  as grasping  the  concepts  that  grasp  Being), there  is the
possibility  of  another  praxis  besides  conceptualization,  a  more
unmediated  way of approaching  that  issue.  I do not see how, within
language, it can  be  proven  or disproven  that  we remain  inscribed
within  the circulations  of its signifiers.  Derrida  shows only that
language  cannot  grant  access  to  any  self-present  meaning;   his
methodology  cannot settle the question  whether  our relationship  to
language  and the  so-called  objective  world  is susceptible  to a
radical  transformation.  The  other  possibility  is  that  what  all
philosophy  seeks, insofar  as it cannot escape its apocalyptic  tone,
may  be accessible  in  a different  fashion.  The  fact  that  other,
non-conceptual  forms of mental discipline and concentration have been
so important, not only in Buddhism  but in many other non-Western  and
Western  traditions, suggests  that we need  to find out what they may
contribute to these issues.(22)

David Loy
Omachi 3-20-8
Kamakura 248
Japan

1.Derrida, like Heidegger, has been careful to confine  to the Western
  tradition  his  conclusions   about  the  continual  attraction   of
  onto-theology, but the case of Buddhism suggests how they can and
  perhaps must be generalized.  Buddhism  is a religious/philosophical
  tradition  not originating  in or overtaken by Greek presence (e.g.,
  Plato's  eidos),  yet  Sanskrit  and  Pali  are  also  Indo-European
  languages  whose categories  (in contrast with Chinese and Japanese)
  tend towards  a strong transcendental-phenomenal  distinction.  Then
  one of the most striking things about Buddhism in its Indian context
  is how it both reflects and resists this bifurcation.
2.As an example of  the  last  problematic, here  is  a famous  story
  about  Ma-tsu  (709-788), one of the most  important  Chinese  Ch'an
  (Zen) masters:
      Abbot Huai-jang  visited the young Ma-tsu in his cell and asked:
  "In practicing  sitting-meditation, what do you aspire  to attain? "
  "To attain Buddhahood," was the answer. Huai-jang took up a piece of
  brick  and began  to grind  it against  a rock.  After  some moments
  Ma-tsu became curious  and asked: "What are you grinding  that for?"
  "I want to grind  it into a mirror."  Amused, Ma-tsu  said, "How can
  you  hope  to  grind  a piece  of  brick  into  a mirror?" Huai-jang
  replied, "Since a piece of brick cannot be ground into a mirror, how
  can you sit yourself  into a Buddha?" "What  must I do then?" Ma-tsu
  asked.  "Take the case of an ox-cart," said Huai-jang.  "If the cart
  does  not move, do you whip  the cart  or the ox? " Ma-tsu  remained
  silent.  "In learning sitting-meditation, do you aspire to learn the
  sitting-Ch'an, or do you aspire to imitate the seated Buddha? If the
  former, Ch'an does not consist  in sitting or in lying down.  If the
  latter, the Buddha  has no fixed  postures.  The Buddha-way  goes on
  forever, and never  abides  in anything.  You must not therefore  be
  attached to nor abandon any particular phase of it.  To sit yourself
  into a Buddha is to kill the Buddha.  To be attached  to the sitting
  posture  is to fail  to comprehend  the essential  principle."  When
  Ma-tsu  heard these instructions, he felt as though he were drinking
  the most exquisite nectar.... (from John C. H. Wu, The Golden Age of
  Zen [Taipei: United Publishing  Center, 1975], 92.)
3.According  to the most common Mahayana  account, however, the Buddha
  attained  enlightenment  when he looked up from his meditations  and
  saw the morning  star, whereupon  he exclaimed: "Now I realize  that
  all beings have the Buddhanature."
4.A similar and equally predictable  formalization  occurred  with the
  rules  that monks  and nuns followed.  In order  to create  the best

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  environment for meditative practice, numerous regulations evolved in
  this  fashion: some problem  in daily  life  arose, which  made  the
  disciples  ask the Buddha, what should  be done in such  a case? His
  answers  were along the lines  of "let's  do it like this."  Shortly
  before  his death  the  Buddha  said  that  the sangha  might, if it
  wished, abolish the minor disciplinary  rules (which constituted the
  vast  majority);  instead, these  several  hundred  rules-of-  thumb
  became canonized into the vinaya, the complicated "discipline"  that
  came to constitute the main (for some monks and nuns, the only) form
  of spiritual practice.  (Digha Nikaya 16.6.3)
5.The tranlation  used in this paper is Mervyn Sprung's in his edition
  of Lucid Exposition  of the Middle  Way (Boulder, CO: Prajna  Press,
  1979), Candrakirti's classic commentary on the MMK.
6.Francis   H.   Cook,  Hua-yen  Buddhism:  The  Jewel  Net  of  Indra
  (University  Park,  PA: The  Pennsylvania  State  University  Press,
  1977),p.2.
7.Cook, ibid.

8.Derrida,Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass [Chicago:University
  of Chicago Press, 1978),p.279.
9.Thich    Nhat    Hanh,   The   Heart    of   Understanding[Berkeley,
  Calif.:Parallax Press, 1988),pp.3-5.
10.   The Perfection  of Wisdom in Eight Thousand  Lines and its Verse
  Summary,   trans.   Edward   Conze(Bolinas,   Calif.: Four   Seasons
  Foundation, 1973), pp.237-8.A  key  Mahayana  term  is apratisthita-
  nirvana, usually understood  as "not dwelling  in nirvana": that is,
  the bodhisattva's  compassion  causes him/her  to reject  entry into
  final nirvana in order to help all suffering sentient beings. But it
  may also mean "non-dwelling  nirvana" or "non-abiding cessation."

11.In"An   Apocalyptic   Tone"  Derrida  quotes  his  own  Glas:  "The
  apocalyptic, in other  words, capital  unveiling, in truth lays bare
  the  hunger  for/of  self."  "The  absolute  phantasm   as  absolute
  self-having  in its most mournful  glory." (pp.  90, 91) For more on
  the  sense-of-lack  as  "shadow"  of  the  sense-of-self,  see  "The
  Nonduality  of  Life  and  Death: A Buddhist  View  of  Repression",
  Philosophy  East And West  40 no.  2, April  1990.pp.151-174.

12.Derrida,  The  Margins  of  Philosophy, trans.  A.  Bass  (Chicago:
  University of Chicago Press, 1982),p.135.

13.Writing and Difference, pp.111,281.

14.Writing and Difference,p.292.

15.Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. H. R. Lane,
  Robert Hurley, and Mark Seem (New York:Viking Press, 1977).

16.Derrida, Writing  and Difference, 152.Traditionally  attributed  to
  the Protrepticus  of Aristotle,but now disputed.  See Anton  Hermann
  Chroust,  Aristotle:  Protrepticus,  A  Reconstruction(Notre   Dame:
  University of Notre Dame Press,1964)pp.48-49.

17."Reason, n., an imaginary process onto which the responsibility for
  thinking is off-loaded."  (Rene Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking,
  trans. David Coward and E. A. Lovatt [Boston: Shambhala, 1979], 51)

18.MMK X:19, 22.  Cf. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, no.  112: "Cause and
  effect: such  a duality  probably  never  exists;  in  truth  we are
  confronted  by a continuum  out  of which  we  isolate  a couple  of
  pieces, just as we perceive  motion only as isolated points and then
  infer it without ever actually seeing it.... An intellect that could
  see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux and not, as we do, in
  terms  of an arbitrary  division  and dismemberment, would repudiate
  the concept  of cause and effect  and deny all conditionality."  For
  more on this issue, see Nonduality  (Yale  University  Press, 1988),
  chapter six.

19. Michel Haar, "Nietzsche  and Metaphysical  Language," in David B.
  Allison,   ed.,   The   New   Nietzsche:  Contemporary   Styles   of
  Interpretation  (New  York: Delta, 1977), 7.

20.In Sprung's Lucid Exposition, p.262.

21.Derrida, Positions, trand. A. Bass(Chicago: University of Chicago
  Press, 1981),p.20.

22.The  relation  between  Nagarjuna's  Madhyamika  and Ch'an  (Zen)
  Buddhism  is a fascinating  one.  From one perspective, Ch'an may be
  said to put into practice  the approach of Nagarjuna.  From another,
  Ch'an  practice  is  a deconstruction  of  Madhyamika  theory, whose
  anti-metaphysics  is still  philosophical.  If the  dualism  between
  inside  and outside  is a construct, the result of an "invagination"
  of the outside  (which  is therefore  not an outside), it raises the
  possibility  of a "de-vagination."  The  Japanese  Zen master  Dogen
  (1200  -  1253)  described  his experience  thus: "I came to realize
  clearly that my mind is nothing other than rivers and mountains  and
  trees, the sun and the moon and the stars."