An Analysis of Madhyamaka Particle Physics by Dan Haig
In the course of discovering and analyzing the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist worldview, a westerner will find many ideas and processes that seem alien to the Occidental scientific tradition. This should not be surprising, since these two traditions evolved largely unaware of each other, in different geographic, social, and intellectual environments. Given the fairly short history of Buddhism in the West, and the formidable barriers that face any who try to transcend the cultural packaging of ideas (language being just one of the more obvious), it is little wonder that only relatively recently has there been any effort to compare anything within Buddhism to the physics of the West. When we consider the centuries-old schism in the West between religion and science, it is not hard to understand why so few Western scientists have even looked to see what value there is, if any, in this alien and curiously packaged set of ideas.
With Buddhism pigeonholed into the "religion" slot, for many reasons good and bad, a serious and rigorous analysis of the "physics" paradigm in Buddhist thought has been long in coming. Conversely, only recently have many experts in the disciplines required to understand Madhyamika, the Middle Way, a core element of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist worldview, been exposed to the ideas and physical sciences of the West. This paper thus attempts to make the subjects discussed intelligible to one who may know western physics but little Buddhism, as well as to one who may know Buddhism but little physics.
For the first part of this paper, I set aside the achievements of western science to embark on a description of the fundamentals of the Madhyamika theory of existence. My intent is to shed light on certain aspects of Tibetan methodology while exposing the elementary assertions of their "particle physics". The second part of the paper will try to describe concepts and positions in modern quantum physics, and then relate them to analogous Buddhist concepts detailed in the first part. Finally, we'll take a look at what the confluence of ideas might mean for each tradition, from a historical perspective, with the interpretation of the status of particles providing a focus for the greater questions.
I will not presume to exhaustively delineate the subtle differences between schools of thought in Madhyamika, which is a vast and heavily debated body of literature and oral tradition. Our way will be to access the logic of Madhyamika by means of a side door, the issue of "particles", as referred to by the Madhyamika traditions in pursuit of the correct understanding of the Buddha's statements regarding key concepts such as Emptiness, Dependent Arising and the Two Truths. Arguments over how much (if any) substantiality should be attributed to conventional phenomena can be addressed at the level of the hypothetical "smallest particle". In this context the concept of "selflessness of phenomena" will arise and be addressed, and we'll look into the question of whether truths found at the smallest level may be applied to "composite" phenomena.
After examining Madhyamika and physics on their own, we will describe a continuum between two extremes in western scientific philosophies, those of Realism and Instrumentalism, which parallels classical Buddhist lines of thought and suggests a Middle Way for science, one which avoids the untenable conclusions inherent in abiding in either of the extremes. Curiously, support for this use of Madhyamika tactics comes from western particle physics.
Of all the subjects discussed by Madhyamika philosophers, particle analysis has perhaps the strongest analog in the West. A comparison of concepts and methodology used by modern Tibetan Buddhists and modern quantum physicists can provide a deeper understanding of both disciplines, if one is willing to entertain the notion that the logic and insight of Madhyamika addresses the same world that science describes. Western physicists do not seem to have taken much interest in Madhyamika to date, but Tibetan monasteries in exile have begun to require the monks to study Western physics along with their traditional curriculum.
I have long thought that Western science and Eastern philosophy should join together to create a really complete and full-fledged human being for the modern world. Only in this way will we emerge strengthened from our present condition and become whole. (1)
-His Holiness The Fourteenth Dalai Lama
Many schools of Mahayana Buddhism have an inscrutable quality that can be both compelling and maddening to non-Buddhists. Indeed, sometimes Mahayana seems more Dadaist than religious. Phenomena are both real and not-real; things exist, yet nothing exists. No intellectual position is ever the correct one.
Much of this quality comes from Madhyamika, “school of the Middle Way,” that began about the 2nd century. Madhyamika profoundly influenced the development of Mahayana, especially in China and Tibet and, eventually, Japan.
Nagarjuna and the Wisdom Sutras
Nagarjuna (ca. 2nd or 3rd century) was a patriarch of Mahayana and the founder of Madhyamika. We know very little about Nagarjuna’s life. But where Nagarjuna’s biography is empty, it has been filled with myth. One of these is Nagarjuna’s discovery of the Wisdom Sutras.
The Wisdom Sutras are about 40 texts collected under the title Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) Sutra. Of these, the best known in the West are the Heart Sutra (Mahaprajnaparamita-hridaya-sutra) and the Diamond (or Diamond Cutter) Sutra (Vajracchedika-sutra).
Historians believe the Wisdom Sutras were written about the 1st century. According to legend, however, they are the words of the Buddha that were lost to humankind for many centuries. The sutras had been guarded by magical beings called nagas, which looked like giant snakes. The nagas invited Nagarjuna to visit them, and they gave the scholar the Wisdom Sutras to take back to the human world.
Nagarjuna and the Doctrine of Shunyata
Whatever their provenance, the Wisdom Sutras focus on shunyata, “emptiness.” Nagarjuna’s principle contribution to Buddhism was his systematization of the sutras’ teachings.
Older schools of Buddhism maintained the Buddha’s teaching of anatman. According to this doctrine, there is no "self" in the sense of a permanent, integral, autonomous being within an individual existence. What we think of as our self, our personality and ego, are temporary creations of the skandhas.
Shunyata is a deepening of the doctrine of anatman. In explaining shunyata, Nagarjuna argued that phenomena have no intrinsic existence in themselves. Because all phenomena come into being because of conditions created by other phenomena, they have no existence of their own and are empty of a permanent self. Thus, there is neither reality not not-reality; only relativity.
Shunyata and Enlightenment
This emptiness is not nihilistic. All phenomena are void of self-essence, but it is incorrect to say that phenomena exist or don’t exist. Form and appearance create the world of myriad things, but the myriad things have identity only in relation to each other.
Related to shunyata are the teachings of another of the great Mahayana Sutras, the Avatamsaka or Flower Garland Sutra. The Flower Garland is a collection of smaller sutras that emphasize the interpenetration of all things. That is, all things and all beings not only reflect all other things and beings but also all existence in its totality. Put another way, we do not exist as discrete things; instead, as the Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh says, we inter-are.
Relative and Absolute
Another related doctrine is that of the Two Truths, absolute and relative truth. Relative truth is the conventional way we perceive reality; absolute truth is shunyata. From the perspective of the relative, appearances and phenomena are real. From the perspective of the absolute, appearances and phenomena are not real. Both perspectives are true.
For an expression of absolute and relative in the Ch’an (Zen) school, see the Ts’an-t’ung-ch’i , also called the Sandokai, or in English “The Identity of Relative and Absolute,” by the 8th century Ch’an master Shih-t’ou His-ch’ien (Sekito Kisen).
Growth of Madhyamika
Along with Nagarjuna, other scholars important to Madhyamika were Aryadeva, Nagarjuna’s disciple, and Buddhapalita (5th century) who wrote influential commentaries on Nagarjuna’s work.
Yogachara was another philosophical school of Buddhism that emerged about the same time as Madhyamika. Yogachara is also called the “Mind Only” school because it teaches that things exist only as processes of knowing. Put another way, what we think of as reality is a creation of mind. Thus, the world of things and objects is Mind Only.
Over the next few centuries a rivalry grew between the two schools. In the 6th century a scholar named Bhavaviveka attempted a synthesis by adopting teachings from Yogachara into Madhyamika. In the 8th century, however, another scholar named Chandrakirti rejected what he was as Bhavaviveka’s corruptions of Madhyamika. Also in the 8th century, two scholars named Shantirakshita and Kamalashila argued for a Madhyamika-Yogachara synthesis.
In time, the synthesizers would prevail. By the 11th century the two philosophical movements had fused. Madhyamika-Yogachara and all variations were absorbed into Tibetan Buddhism as well as Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism and some other Chinese Mahayana schools.
Logic's Point of Departure
It was stated above that in Tibet, the final division of Svatantrika and Prasangika was dictated by the way each produces an understanding of emptiness in the mind of an opponent. The very names of the schools reflect their insistence on certain argumentative procedures: Svatantra means Autonomous Reason, while Prasanga means Consequence. In practice, this means that a Prasangika will be satisfied that any intelligent being, upon hearing the absurd consequence of some position, will perceive the correct understanding of the matter. A Svatantrika will insist that the implied result of the consequence must be explicitly stated in a syllogism of its own.
It seems that the Svatantrikas' and Prasangikas' logical modes of attack are based on preliminary preference for their respective beliefs regarding the mode of existence of conventional phenomena. According to Tsongkapa's Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, "The reason why they assert autonomous signs [proofs] in their [Svatantrika] system is this conventional existence of own-character, that is, establishment by way of the object's own entity conventionally" (7). So it can be said that a Svatantrika's choice of reasoning methods derives from his view that conventional phenomena exist by way of their own character. Conversely, a Prasangika's use of the consequentialist method derives from her (7) view that phenomena don't exist by way of their own character. The difference of opinion may ultimately be traced back to the beliefs regarding scriptural interpretation rules as stated above.
Some might claim that by using scripture as a reference point, Buddhists employ a pre-rational methodology that can only lead to irrational results. However, the scriptural reference points described are just one aspect of the schools' theories of existence. A proponent of either view might easily maintain that due to the correctness of his logical methodology one can see that the rules chosen for scriptural interpretation were the correct ones. The axioms as well as the methodology are part of a system that is held up, as a whole, to the light of experience. A considered analysis of western science shows that it too has axiomatic truths founded on beliefs rooted in the cultures that gave it life. In a more concrete sense, just as a researcher working at a particle accelerator will refer to the works of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg when elaborating on his own ideas, so a Prasangika will refer to a well-known argument by Kaydrup or Tsongkapa to make a point that is generally accepted by the community in which he works. In both cases, it is the present experience and reasoning of the experimenter that supports or denies the theory, not the voice of authority. The Buddha himself insisted that followers test his ideas rather than accept them just out of respect for him. Thus armed with the axioms of their tradition, Buddhists rationally explore the implications of their theories as they can be applied to experience. Leaving the paradigm comparisons for later, we can proceed to analyze the tools used to dissect existence in Madhyamika tradition.
The Lack of Being One or Many
When asked what an object, let's say a baseball, is made of, many people today will reply that it is made of atoms. If pressed, some can describe the world of subatomic particles, protons, electrons and so forth. Upon further investigation, a small army of different kinds of particles can be found inside that baseball, and the largest machines ever built are employed to find out just how many more are in there. Regardless of our current ability to physically dissect the components, however, questions remain; which part(s) of an entity can be described as "being" that entity? Is there any part of a baseball that can be said to exist absolutely as itself?
There are tests, independent of current technology, that a baseball can be put through which, if carefully pursued, can shed light on the nature of its existence. These tests, while very ancient, are still employed by the best of theoretical physicists today, who refer to them as "thought experiments". Our thought experiment comes to us from Santaraksita, the eighth century Indian scholar who, along with Tibet's King Trisong Detsen, was responsible for the founding of Tibet's first monastery. In a treatise entitled Ornament for the Middle Way, Santaraksita explains the meaning of various sutras that relate to the concept of the lack of being one or many. The Descent into Lanka Sutra says:
The entities of things are like
Appearances [of things] in a mirror
Which do not exist there
Because of lacking oneness or otherness (8)
Santaraksita renders this in syllogistic form:
A] These things propounded by ourselves and others [i.e. baseballs, etc.],
B] do not inherently exist, like a reflection,
C] because they lack in reality a nature of unity or plurality (9)
This argument captures the crux of the Madhyamika theory of emptiness and existence. An excellent elaboration of the proofs was produced by the 18th century Tibetan scholar Jang-gya, and it is with his guidance that we will find a way through the complexities of establishing the logical consistency of the argument. The criteria for establishing proof in Buddhist logic are threefold, in that there are three relationships or "modes" within the syllogism that must be correct in order for the proof to be established. In the above syllogism, A and B together make up the probandum, or that which is to be proved. A is the subject, and B is the predicate, of the probandum. C is the sign, or reason.
The first of the three modes is called the property of the subject - the sign must be a property of the subject (C must be a property of A). Here, "lacking in reality a nature of unity or plurality" is said to be a property of "things", including our baseball of course.
The second of the three modes is called the forward pervasion - the sign is pervaded by the predicate (C is pervaded by B). The sign must be a member of the class of phenomena represented by the predicate. This means that "lacking in reality a nature of unity or plurality" is pervaded by (is coextensive with or a subclass of) "not inherently existing".
The third of the three modes is called the counterpervasion. Here, the negative of the sign is pervaded by the negative of the predicate (-C is pervaded by -B). In other words, the sign must not belong to the class of phenomena represented by the negative of the predicate. Thus, anything that did have a nature of unity or plurality would have to exist inherently.
In less technical terms, the argument can be reduced to a few basic points. There is no such thing as a truly existent unity, for reasons given below. If there is no particle that exists as an inherent unit, no amount of (non-inherently existing) particles will ever amount to an inherently existing plurality or composite. If a carbon atom is not a truly existing unit, the baseball made of carbon (and other) atoms must also not exist inherently. Since "one and many" exhaust the possibilities (nothing could be more than one and less than many), the conclusion is that there is no thing that exists inherently. All things are empty of true existence.
The First Mode
Now to analyze the modes in more detail; Jang-gya points out that the proof of the sign being a property of the subject has two parts, the proof of the lack of being a truly existent unity and the proof of the lack of being a truly existent plurality (10). As for the first, we may begin with our baseball. Can the baseball be considered a truly existent unity? Well, to begin with it has smaller parts that we can see. Let's then consider the smallest particle within the ball. Can this particle be said to be a truly existent unity, a single thing? Again, no. The argument is that if a particle is to occupy space, it must have sides. Just as the baseball itself has a north side and a south side, so must each of the particles that it consists of. Without this aspect, the particles would have no "extension". By occupying no space, all the particles surrounding it would be in contact with the central particle at the same place. It follows that the whole universe, if it were made of these hypothetical particles, would occupy zero volume. If it is admitted that the central particle has sides that face the surrounding particles, then it must be accepted that they have parts and are not truly existent unities. The north side depends on the south side for its existence.
In addition to having extension in space, the particle also endures for some length of time. If there were no distinction between the particle now and the particle ten minutes from now, it would be absurdly held to occur over a period of zero time. The temporal series of this "one" particle is another aspect of its lack of inherent existence as a unity.
By implication of these arguments it is clear that the baseball also is not a truly existent unity, being a composite of particles as well as having sides, duration, etc. The fact that there is no such thing as a truly existent unity directly proves that there can be no truly existent plurality; if there is no truly existent unity, of what could the plurality be composed that would endow it with true existence? If there are no trees, there can be no forest.
This situation gives rise to the doctrine of the Two Truths, Conventional Truth and Ultimate Truth. It should be stressed that denying a truly existent baseball does not deny that a baseball can exist as a conventionally existent plurality. Tsongkapa's Essence of the Good Explanation says: When phenomena are established as having many parts, it is not contradictory for one phenomenon to exist as an entity of many parts, within conventionalities. However, damage is done to ultimate establishment [that is, true existence is called into question] because if parts and whole are different entities, they would be unrelated, and if they are the same entity, the parts would become one or the whole would become many. (11)
The Second and Third Modes
So far, we have briefly looked at the arguments that establish just the first mode, showing that the sign is a property of the subject. An exhaustive assesment of all possible objections would require more space than we have. It will not be possible to do more than establish the basic proofs of the pervasion and counter-pervasion, leaving the thorough evaluation of possible inconsistencies aside. Once these premises are described, we will have an adequate basis for comparison of Svatantrika and Prasangika differences regarding selflessness.
Once again Jang-gya, as the voice of Tibetan logic, explains the requirements for our proof. In order for the pervasions to be established, two more things are necessary: 1) a valid cognizer that refutes that there is a common locus of the sign (lack of one or many) and the object of negation (true existence), and 2) a valid cognizer that ascertains that the predicate of the probandum (non-inherent existence) and the object of negation are a dichotomy (12). While this sounds complicated, the short explanation is that there is a dichotomy of existence and non-existence, which are mutually exclusive, and do not allow for a third possibility. This answers the second part of the requirements. To refute that "lack of one or many" and true existence have a common locus (which would violate the rule of counterpervasion, which states that the sign cannot exist in the dissimilar class of the predicate), Jang-gya points out that that there is no common locus that both truly exists and lacks being a truly existent unity or plurality.
So finally, the hypothesis regarding one and many, by satisfying the three modes, becomes a plank in the Madhyamika platform. Like a mirror image, things seem to exist but they do not truly exist. Santaraksita's syllogism about the true nature of phenomena is accepted by Prasangika and Svatantrika alike; it is the nature of the reflection that they dispute.
To Be or Not To Be
By way of the above logical demonstration, Madhyamika raises its own peculiar questions regarding ontology, the way in which things exist. To say that nothing truly exists is all well and good, but what are we to make of the fact that existence generally seems to be happening? If things do not truly exist, how substantial is any object that conventionally exists? There is a broad spectrum of ontological possibilities between the extreme of true existence and the extreme of nihilism. Aside from the non-Buddhist schools of Indian thought, there are four main divisions of Buddhism that hold their respective positions regarding the status of external objects. In the interests of brevity the Vaibhasika, Sautrantika and Yogacara positions will be left aside so that we may concentrate on the disputes within Madhyamika.
It should be reiterated that within the Madhyamika systems there are different ways of cutting the pie of conventional existence. Some of the same labels are used by the systems to designate aspects of theory whose definitions are not in fact interchangeable. More specifically, both Prasangika and Svatantrika consider that phenomena are 'posited by the power of an awareness', but they do not agree as to how this happens. A commonly used tool for sorting out the fine points is the analogy of the horse and pebble as described in Tsonkapa's Clarifier of the Meaning of the Middle Way. When the meaning of the analogy is described in terms of both Prasangika and Svatantrika interpretation, then their differences in the meaning of 'existing by way of own character' and 'posited by the power of awareness' will be clear.
There is a magician and an audience. The magician places on the ground a pebble. By casting a spell, the magician causes a horse to appear on the 'underlying base' of the pebble. The audience is affected by the spell in such a way that they see the horse, and believe that it is really there. The magician also sees the horse, but in his mind he knows that it is not really there. A third party comes along and, having been absent when the spell was cast, sees no horse and does not believe that there is a horse. For him, there is only the pebble.
The central disagreement between Prasangika and Svatantrika concerning the nature of external objects is their difference over the conventional existence of an object's own character. The Svatantrikas describe the pebble's mode of being as conventionally existent from its own side, that is, it has an objective mode that is established by way of its own character. That is not the end of the story - the horse does not exist as 'horse' until somebody looks at the pebble, or to be precise, until it appears to a non-defective mind. So the objective mode of subsistence of the object that exists from its own side does not exist independently of the consciousness apprehending it, thus avoiding the extreme of permanence. On the other hand, the consciousness does not impute phenomena without any objective basis, for if external objects had no objective basis of existence this would be, according to Svatantrika, an extreme of annihilation. The mode of being established from own side, which is posited through the consciousness apprehending it, is the conventional/dependent mode of being.
In terms of our analogy, the magician understands that while he is seeing a horse, that horse's appearance is due to its objective mode of existence (the pebble) posited by the power of the magician's own mind. The pebble is dependent on the mind affected by the spell for its appearance as a horse. The magician represents those who understand emptiness inferentially, that is, he knows that the appearance of the horse is false, yet the horse nevertheless appears to him. The audience does not understand the nature of the dependence of the horse on their awareness for its existence, so they think there is a real horse in front of them and that it would be there if they left the room. The latecomer represents one who understands emptiness directly and sees only the inherently existing base of the pebble.
It is this inherent existence of the pebble that the Prasangikas protest. The Svatantrikas claim that existence by way of the object's own character, existence by way of the object's own entity, existence by way of the object's own entityness, existence capable of withstanding a search for the object designated, and inherent existence, do not ultimately exist, but are necessarily conventionally existent. If they were not, annihilation would result. The Prasangikas feel that asserting inherent existence of objects logically leads to the extreme of permanence, even though they are only conventionally inherently existent. Taking the lead from the Kasyapa Chapter Sutra, which says that phenomena are empty of themselves as being established as their own mode of being (13), Prasangikas constructed a different paradigm of conventional existence.
For the Prasangikas, because of the lack of a true self of an object, the awareness by which the object is posited imputes all the qualities of that object. If, because of the lack of being one or many, an object has no part that can be found to exist as the self of that object, then it is not possible to find any existence from own side, even conventionally. Tsongkapa describes how one might see a coiled rope in the dark and mistakenly impute the presence of a snake. The snake is real to the mind positing it, causing a fearful reaction etc., although the snake is not to be found there. "As a snake is imputed on a coiled rope, so should own character be understood as unestablished", wrote Candrakirti in the commentary on Aryadeva's Treatise of Four Hundred Stanzas (14). The root text says, "If there is no existence of attatchment,etc., without conceptual thought, who of the wise would hold these conceptual things as inherent objects?" (15)
Supposing that the pebble represents the mode of existence from own side of a horse that is not appearing to an awareness, there remains the dilemna of finding which part of the so-called inherently existing pebble becomes the horse. Another famous analogy, that of the chariot, describes how an object can be logically dissected into any number of different groups of parts. This analysis depends entirely on the awareness that is dissecting the chariot. Any part of the chariot you care to name, from the wheel to any of its constituent atoms, is analytically unfindable. Therefor all of these parts, and the whole chariot as well, exist only through the power of the consciousness designating them. The Prasangikas denounce the Svatantrika refutation of a self of phenomena as 'coarse', because although the Svatantrikas reject the notion that phenomena exist as their self without appearing to an awareness, they still accept a 'subtle' self of phenomena, inherent existence. The Prasangika find this contradictory and reject the subtle self as well. They assert that phenomena are posited by a conceptual awareness that entirely subjectively designates an object to its basis of designation.
The Eye of the Beholder
So far much has been said about the nature of phenomena perceived by an awareness, but this act of perception has not been described. The four schools of Buddhism maintain that there are 'sense consciousnesses', such as an eye consciousness, which perceive objects. Since Svatantrikas accept that phenomena are established by way of their own character, they believe that sense consciousnesses perceive objects as they exist, barring any superficial causes of error. The Prasangikas claim that this is like saying that our horse is appearing as it really is although it is actually an illusion. To perceive an object as existing by way of its own character is mistaken, but to avoid contradicting the world, it is said that sense-direct perceivers are non-mistaken conventionally. It bears stating at this point that throughout all of this talk about the false appearance of objects, it is not permissible to traffic with totally imaginary phenomena. The classic example of this is the horn of a rabbit. No such thing exists; any argument based on the existence of such is false, and any argument that fails to account for the ear of a rabbit, which does exist conventionally, is false.
A theory of how an object is perceived is dependent on a theory of what the sense object is made of. The founder of Svatantrika, Bhavaviveka, states that objects composed of minute particles are connected to each other such that each particle contributes to the entity of the object. (16) He rejects the Yogacarin claim that minute particles, while substantially established, are too subtle to serve as sense objects, and that therefor external objects do not exist. Since every particle is an aggregate (going back to the lack of one or many), a group of substantially established aggregates large enough to be seen ought to be substantially established as well. If not, at what magnitude do the particles become unestablished? (We will use an inverse form of this argument to poke holes in the western concept of particle-based existence.) Bhavaviveka's assertion that sense consciousnesses are generally non-mistaken due to perceiving an object that is objectively established as a composite of particles is similar to the position of the Sautrantikas. Although the Sautrantikas assert that sense objects exist ultimately, while Bhavaviveka says they are only conventionally existent, the similarity in conception of external objects is the basis for calling Bhavaviveka's system Sautrantika-Svatantrika-Madhyamika.
Again, Bhavaviveka states that external objects exist conventionally by way of their own character, and so a sense consciousness can correctly perceive an object. According to Lopez, it is Tsongkapa's conclusion that "since Bhavaviveka asserts that each particle in a composite of particles serves as a cause of a sense consciousness and that each of the particles is substantially existent and seems to assert that each particle is final (that is, most subtle), Bhavaviveka asserts that partless particles are observed-object-conditions of sense consciousnesses". (17) However, the notion of 'partless particles' (not 'minute particles') runs counter to the lack of being one or many and the doctrine of dependent arising. It seems unlikely that Bhavaviveka would have overlooked such an obvious point. This statement of Tsongkapa's is an essential part of the Prasangika contention that Svatantrikas assert existence by way of own character, so perhaps there is some overlooked contradiction here in their claim.
Autonomy vs. Consequence
As stated earlier, the issue of existence by way of own character is strongly linked to logical methodology. When there is a debate involving the use of syllogisms, the Svatantrikas claim that the subject of a syllogism (as defined above in the syllogism of the lack of one or many) must be established as appearing commonly to both parties by a valid cognizer which is non-mistaken with respect to the subject's being established by way of it's own character. If two opponents are going to debate, they must agree as to the nature of the subject, predicate and sign, as well as the three modes. Svatantrikas, by asserting establishment by way of own character, believe that the appearance of the subject's own character to a consciousness or consciousnesses results in valid cognition. In this system, both sides agree as to the appearance of the subject.
Having arrived at this understanding, the definition of Svatantrika/Autonomous Syllogism by Jang-gya can be plainly understood: Autonomous means that an inferential consciousness realizing the thesis is generated without taking the lead merely from the opponents assertions, but by his having ascertained the establishment of the modes of the sign with respect to a subject that is established as appearing commonly to non-mistaken valid cognizers of both parties in the debate through the force of an objective mode of subsistence from the side of the basis of designation. Madhyamikas who assert the correctness of the necessity for such are Svatantrika-Madhyamikas. (18)
The Prasangikas, for their part, reject the use of autonomous syllogisms because of the necessary use of a commonly appearing subject, which implies the existence of phenomena by way of own character. This is a difficult position for one who is trying to teach Prasangika doctrine, since without a commonly appearing subject for debate it is impossible to prove anything positively. The solution is to use reasons that are known to the opponent in a way that generates valid understanding. Since only another Prasangika would hold that the modes of a sign do not inherently exist, a non-Prasangika opponent would hold that the three modes may be ascertained and validly established. The task, then, is to take the lead from the opponent's assertions and demonstrate the absurd Consequences of his position. By generating the three modes in terms of his own incorrect assertions, the opponent sees the logical errors. This way the Prasangika is free from asserting the subject and three modes herself.
One thing that Prasangika and Svatantrika do have in common with each other, and all other Mahayana schools, is the pursuit of realization of selflessness of phenomena. The 'lower' schools practices are aimed at realization of selflessness of persons. The path systems of the lower schools, the Sravaka (Hearer) and Pratyekabuddha (Lone Buddha) vehicles, are designed to root out the afflictive obstructions (desire,hatred,etc.) which prevent liberation from the cycle of birth and death. The Mahayana Boddhisattva path is designed to root out the knowledge obstructions that prevent achievement of a Buddha's omniscient consciousness. To attain this end, a Prasangika or Svatantrika aspirant must come to grips with sunyata of phenomena, and also sunyata of sunyata - for ultimate truth itself does not exist ultimately.
Buddhism and Scientific Method
If we recall the analogy of the horse and pebble, the magician and the latecomer represented the two ways in which sunyata can be understood: inferentially and directly. Direct understanding of sunyata is often described by way of the Greek term gnosis. This gnosis is achieved by means of meditational practices of various kinds, but it is based on a correct inferential understanding of emptiness, which is brought about by reason. The experience in meditational equipoise is rooted in the conceptual understanding of emptiness, but that conceptual understanding is also altered by the meditational experience. There is a feedback loop that can eventually lead the practitioner to the fruits of the path being followed, be it Sravaka, Pratyekabuddha or Boddhisattva. These paths to salvation are unique to Buddhism, as are some of the methods employed on the paths. It is this soteriological aspect of Buddhism that accounts for the western tendency to categorize it as a "religion".
However, the practice of testing a hypothesis (one's inferential understanding of sunyata) against reason and experiment (meditation) has been the cornerstone of the "scientific method" since it took form in the days of Galileo, Bacon and Descartes. For a thousand years, Tibetans have used the techniques that came to them from Indian civilization. In the West, the inheritance of Greek, Roman and other influences helped shape the nature and direction of inquiry. Since we have already explored, very briefly, the results of Tibetan modes of inquiry into physical existence, let's turn to Western physics to see how it has fared.
Atoms and the Mechanical Worldview
The concept of the atom is an old one. The idea of little building blocks of matter was current among a number of philosophical schools in ancient Greece as well as in ancient India. In the East, the importance of 'minute particles' for scholarship and research has been in proportion to their size - there was no way to observe such particles directly, and while they figured in many schools' paradigms of physical existence they were generally relegated to the baggage compartment while other topics were more hotly debated. In the West, speculation on the nature of 'atoms' eventually led to the rise of the mechanical worldview and a technology-based investigation into the realms of natural philosophy.
In the 17th century, Rene Descartes created a model of the universe that was, physically, nothing more than collisions of particles playing out their endless chain of cause and effect. Although Descartes spoke of both mind and matter in his system, the followers of the mechanical worldview that he helped to create left the mind behind in pursuit of what we call the laws of physics.
The unique combination of thought and technology through the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries has led western science down a long trail of discovery in areas which the philosophers of Indian traditions could only try to investigate with their minds. Physicists focused on the nuts and bolts of matter, looking at ever smaller pieces and trying to fit them into the broader scheme of the mechanical tradition's insistence on an absolute ontology, that is, the axiomatic belief that things have an objective existence which scientific method can uncover. It was this relentless poking around the insides of atoms which inadvertently led to discoveries that challenged the idea that phenomena exist wholly independent from our methods of investigation. One of these discoveries is known as wave-particle duality.
Wave-Particle Duality
Atomic models began to resemble the still-popular image of electrons orbiting a nucleus at the beginning of this century. The electron was, of course, considered a real physical chunk. The first sign of trouble came in 1905 with Albert Einstein's work on the photoelectric effect. At that time it was easy to demonstrate and widely accepted that light traveled in waves, but the production of electricity from light striking metal led Einstein to hypothesize that a light wave also has the nature of a particle, now called the photon. The success of this theory inspired Louis de Broglie to turn the tables and describe the electron as a wave, which helped explain many features of the atomic model of that time. To make a long history of research and theorizing short, physicists developed a way to describe the behavior of sub-atomic phenomena in terms of both waves and particles by means of mathematics, specifically through the use of Max Planck's constant. (19)
The mechanical worldview from which these theories of waves and particles sprang had a pronounced streak of determinism. It had long been felt that it was possible, in theory, to know the future of the universe, if only all the collisions of particles could be charted at once. The human observer was merely a passive chronicler of events that were occurring absolutely, that is, independent of the observer's frame of reference or method of investigation. The dual wave-particle nature of electrons flew in the face of such beliefs. While Erwin Schrodinger came up with a mathematical equation that nicely described de Broglie's waves, others saw definite evidence of particulate behavior, which made the cloudlike wave pattern of the electron ontologically distasteful.
The picture became clearer after Max Born hypothesized that the cloud was in fact a probability wave. If one finds an electron, plots its position, then repeats the process many times, eventually a pattern shows up. However, the wave pattern does not say where the particle is at any given moment, merely where it is likely to be. The rule established is that the square of the wave amplitude at any point in space gives the probability of finding the electron at that point. (20) Conversely, knowing where the particle is does not tell us anything about its wave function. It turns out that there is no way to simultaneously know both the position and path of the particle, not because of inadequate technology but because of the very act of observation.
The Uncertainty Principle
In order to predict the future position of an object, be it a baseball or an electron, you need to know its position, its momentum and its direction. A baseball in flight can be checked for each of these factors and its ultimate fate easily determined, as any outfielder can attest. Electrons and other subatomic phenomena are more slippery, due to the fact that they have the nature of a wave as well as the nature of a particle. For an object to be seen, it must give off light. Physics tells us that for an electron to be observed, a photon must be bounced off it. This photon may be detected by a microscope, which gives us information on where the electron was - but then the photon causes the electron to recoil in a direction that cannot be known to us without making another observation. Thus, an electron cannot be observed without changing its state.
The dual wave-particle nature we use to describe these micro-entities is to blame for our frustration. If the microscope lens has a large diameter, the image on the film will be small, but due to the wave nature of the photon it will make an image somewhere within one wavelength-not an exact point that can be replicated, but a general cloud of spots will appear if the experiment is repeated. It is possible to know the speed of the electron's recoil, but it is impossible to know the exact direction of the photon upon entry into the wide lens. Thus momentum is fairly certain, but position is not, so we can't know the direction of the electron's recoil. If the lens is narrowed, the wave property of the photon causes it to diffract, making its wavelength much greater, so while the momentum of both photon and electron can be pinned down, the greater wavelength makes it impossible to accurately assess where the electron actually was. In a nutshell, the wide lens allows for an accurate measure of the electron's position, but makes it impossible to know where it is going, while the narrow lens reduces momentum uncertainty while making knowledge of the position less accurate. (21)
There is an inverse proportional relationship between knowledge of position and momentum that seems to preempt any attempt at prophesying the future of a single atom. The mechanists' old dream of plotting the future vector of each particle in the universe was destroyed, but this was not the most disturbing feature of the new atomic model. What really astonished the physicists of the 1920's, when quantum theory assumed the shape it still has today, was the implication that the existence of the phenomena they were studying was dependent on the event of their observation.
Rough Interface
Simply put, science had no theoretical framework on which it could hang these experimental data. Consciousness was banned altogether in the behaviorist psychology theories of the day. Consciousness was an unquantifiable, unknowable phenomenon for the strict mechanists. Philosophy, the caretaker of the other half of Descartes' world, had made some progress in the field of mind, but in a way that was not subject to rigorous experiment. The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard had said that the effort to understand our sense data caused part of the reality which we falsely attribute to an objectively existing world, a strikingly Svatantrik position which in no small way prodded the work of Bohr and his colleagues in Copenhagen. One of them, Johann von Neumann, went so far as to say that it is not possible to formulate the laws of physics without direct reference to human consciousness. (22) He argued that if the unmeasured electrons are merely potentialities, as the wave equation of Schrodinger describes them, the particles that compose the measuring device which records the electrons must also be mere potentia, unable to collapse their own or any other wave potential into existence. His conclusion was that consciousness is directly responsible for calling any particle into being. Here it almost seems as if quantum physics and Madhyamika independently produced a related concepts of what happens at the subject-object "boundary". (23)
Physicists of a more 'realist' bent often claim that there is a boundary between events on the subatomic scale and events at our macroscopic scale. The momentum uncertainty is dependent on the mass of the particle in question, and the value of Planck's constant h is so small that any object much larger than the atomic scale will no longer be susceptible to uncertainty. (24) However this does not excuse physics from having to explain how any number of subatomic particles, whose existence is dependent on conceptual designation, can get together to create objects that are not also dependent on conceptualization. This awkwardness, caused by the fundamental incompatibility of classical and quantum physics, remains a thorn in the side of modern physics.
In contrast, the Madhyamika paradigm has no need to posit this seemingly arbitrary boundary between micro and macro. Madhyamika makes no statements concerning uncertainty or wave-particle duality, nor does it refer to any Newtonian laws of motion, thus it avoids the paradoxes that inhere in descriptions of objects when they are cast into the molds of classical and quantum physics. The issue at hand is not whether our current laws of physics are valid or complete, but rather to understand why the paradoxes exist for us. Is it possible the western tradition's axiomatic belief in absolute ontology is the problem in physics, and might the relative ontology of Madhyamika offer a way forward through the quantum paradoxes and impasses?
The intersection of Western science and Madhyamika principles is explored by B. Alan Wallace, a physicist trained in Buddhist doctrine, in his book Choosing Reality. He states in the introduction that to the best of his knowledge his is the first attempt to "apply the mode of inquiry of the Buddhist centrist view to the foundation of physics". (25) Wallace describes a spectrum of attitudes about the nature of scientific theory and discovery, bounded by the two extremes of 'realism' and 'instrumentalism'. This spectrum closely parallels the extremes of permanence and nihilism in Madhyamika. The truth, in both systems, is found somewhere between the extremes.
Instrumentalism vs. Realism
Generally speaking, the realist position is the belief that everything that exists has a 'self', an intrinsic nature, which scientific method, over the decades and centuries, is capable of cataloging in a way that is both correct and exact. The Universe exists in a way that is just exactly so, and by carefully sifting the evidence we get from asking the right questions humans can discover that absolute nature. Instrumentalism, on the other hand, holds that scientific theories and models of the universe are valid only in the sense that they are useful in predicting events and explaining data consistently, while at the same time making no claim that anything they describe actually exists.
To illustrate these positions, we can again use our particles as a base. The Cartesian model said that the world is made of particles of matter, whose behavior was described in classical terms of collisions like the ones that we see on our scale. As research exposed more of the microworld, physicists continued to describe it in visual terms that had analogues in the macroworld. When the electron was first introduced into the theories, the two main atomic models were the Plum Pudding (electrons embedded in the nucleus) and the Planetary (electrons orbiting the nucleus) models. The effect of the quantum revolution was to force the experts to admit that there was no longer any way to visualize the electron wave/particle by analogy to anything on our scale. (26) To relate what they considered to be the reality of the electron, all they could use was mathematical description.
Here, an instrumentalist could enter and explain that we can never do more than 'save the appearances'. One should develop a hypothesis that 'doesn't contradict the world', explain the data neatly and cleverly, but don't expect to describe ontological reality. The realist may retort that the mathematical description is valid as the 'visualization' of the atom - in fact, it is really the most accurate model. Stemming back to the days of Pythagoras, who maintained that numbers were reality itself, western thought has tended to accord mathematics special status as axiomatic truth. However, developments such as non-Euclidian geometry in the last century, as well as Karl Godel's incompleteness theorem of the 1930's, have made it difficult to rely on the axioms of math for absolute proof of anything other than statements made within the framework of the math itself. In fact, says Wallace's instrumentalist, mathematical truths are just as conventional as the laws of physics we use math to describe. These things are handy as experience filters, but they have no reference to physical fact. Theories of subatomic particles can be as logically self-consistent as you like, but the whole scheme is entirely arbitrary.
Wallace contends that when discussing the pre-rational assumptions of realism, most working scientists and mathematicians admit to the relative nature of their work. However, in practice and in education, the metaphysical assumption of absolute existence from the mechanical worldview is rarely considered, much less challenged. In spite of the quantum and relativity revolutions, contemporary physical sciences have not shed the legacy of Newtonian ontology and ancient Greek reasoning.
The Middle Way
History reveals that scientific theories are as impermanent as anything else. They are replaced by newer theories that account for observations in a more satisfactory way. So what are we to make of contemporary scientific accounts of nature? Are terms such as 'particle' and 'wave' nothing more than conceptual links in a theory, as the extreme of instrumentalism insists, to be written out of existence later when they no longer serve? What are the implications on the macrosopic level? How could it be that without some kind of independent physical reality, people generally share many experiences of their environment in common? What about causality and the fact that interactions occur in an apparently very regular way in the natural world, regardless of anyone's awareness of them? In short, what alternative is there to 'independent existence'?
The answer is, 'dependent existence'. In the analysis of the lack of one or many, a particle was said to have various attributes, such as extension and duration, which result from the dependence of one part to another. With the help of modern physics we can speak of electrons, mass, charge, wave functions and the uncertainty principle. But the existence of these sophisticated modern concepts does not negate any of the reasoning applied from ancient Buddhist manuscripts. Investigation of the relationship between the electron and its attributes shows that there is no one attribute that can be said to be that particle's intrinsic existence. These attributes, and therefore the entity we have endowed with these attributes, exist, but only in dependence on our conceptualization of them.
Autonomy vs. Consequence - Part Two
Again, physicists like to posit a boundary between the quantum scale of existence and our own. It is one thing to say that a vanishingly small particle we cannot directly apprehend exists as dependent on our conceptualization. It's harder to dispute that a normal object such as a baseball has any existence other than the one we usually attribute to it. A Svatantrika would agree that the baseball, due to having an objective mode of subsistence, can appear to two observers as it exists conventionally. On the basis of this common appearance, the two can proceed to 'generate inferential consciousnesses' in each other's mental continuums, that is, produce a train of thought through reason that will bestow a conceptual, not direct, understanding of the emptiness of the baseball.
The Prasangika view is that the baseball can not appear commonly because it has no objective mode of existence. The Consequentialist maintains that the Autonomist's position (that the baseball exists by way of its own character) can by logic be lead to the (absurd) consequence, 'It follows that a baseball is not a dependent arising because of inherently existing', which may generate in the opponent the (correct) understanding that a baseball does not inherently exist due to being dependently arisen.(31)
The Roots of Buddhism and Science
If we connect just the various points made above, a larger picture of the relationship between science and Buddhism already begins to emerge. We can see that it is possible to interpret physics within a Madhyamika relative paradigm of existence, and that this interpretation avoids many contradictions inherent in the traditional western claims about truth and knowledge. But will the west have any interest in utilizing or learning from such an interpretation?
It has been pointed out that the successes of Christianity and Buddhism in the ancient world were due to their flexibility in accommodating the ways of many different tribes and nations. As 'universal' religions, each was able to perform a role as a unifier and homogenizer of the peoples in their respective empires. It can be said that there was a relationship, in the states of Ashoka and Constantine, between the growth of the empire and the need for such a common faith - local religious chauvinism is still a threat to the security and welfare of any state. In medieval times, both these religions ceased to exist in their homeland, surviving instead in foreign countries where they continued to exert forces of cultural change. There are many peoples in the world that saw their first glimpse of 'civilization', literacy and so forth, because these religions had the ability to adapt themselves to general human conditions, rather than holding to a strict cultural identity that potential believers would have to adopt.
But one point where these two religions diverged is in the development of their 'natural philosophies'. Christian Europe inherited a worldview that was a synthesis of Greek and Roman thought and the Bible - in effect, a pagan European science coexisting with an alien religion. Medieval Islamic science featured a similar hybrid background. The revealed word of God did not always agree with Aristotle's logic, however, which pretty well assured that at some point one of them would have to go. Islamic culture was actually a leading force in science, math and medicine until the absolute nature of the Islamic faith put an end to much of the speculation necessary to develop ideas. In Western Europe, Christianity waged a long, ultimately unsuccessful campaign for supremacy in the interpretation of natural philosophy. Today, science looks back to the Enlightenment of the 18th century as the triumph of reason over religion.
On the other hand, the Tibetan Buddhist worldview grew out of and is compatible with much of classical Indian thought. Just like other 'personal philosophies' of ancient Greece, such as Stoicism or Epicureanism, Buddhism emphasized the need for logical consistency from the outset. While Europe was ultimately unable to reconcile its religion with its natural philosophy, in Tibet the two remained inextricably linked, having come from one and the same source.
The Mindless Brain
The schism in the West has produced a science that has disowned vast areas of what use to be natural philosophy. A large section of this turf can be summed up with the word 'consciousness'. The mechanical worldview disapproved of any theory that postulated the existence of something that cannot be established. It suspected any theory that allowed for hypothetical constructs such as 'mind', without attempting to explain events without that construct. Just as many of Newton's contemporaries discredited the theory of gravity because Newton could not postulate a mechanism that accounted for its effect, many sciences now still seem to insist that the mind, as unreachable as it is for our technical measuring devices, can not be granted our license to exist.
To disallow consciousness, though, science must be able to account for the natural world, to save the appearances, without it. Reflection on the uncertainty principle shows that this has not necessarily been accomplished. The July 1992 edition of Scientific American describes the latest failed attempts at cheating the uncertainty principle. The physicists cited seemed largely annoyed at the fact that there was no way to account for the phenomena without positing that there might be an effect from their own experience of the experiments. (27) However, instead of doing so, most work through the problem in the terms of the dominant paradigm, using their established rules to try to reason why their experiments failed to achieve the desired end.
Another recent edition of Scientific American was devoted to an overview of the state of the art in 'mind and brain' sciences. Out of eleven articles, only one addressed the issue of consciousness, and this was a concerted effort at equating consciousness with specific electrochemical events in the brain. "Clearly", writes Sir Francis Crick, "the problem of finding the neurons whose firing symbolizes a particular perception is not going to be easy. It will take many careful experiments to track them down, even one kind of percept". (28)
The reductionist tactics of both physics and psychology are a result of the unconscious acceptance that to know what a thing is, you must take it apart and examine its pieces, and the further belief that things are what they are apart from your experience of them. While this approach is very useful as a means of discovering facts, centuries of reducing natural philosophy questions on ever smaller parts of nature has made it difficult for the right hand to know what the left is doing. In classical Greece and India, questions about existence, knowledge, perception, ethics, and physics were all answered within the single framework of each of the popular philosophies. Buddhist scholarship continues to provide a coherent view of these areas of study, while western science does not. Physics found experimental evidence for consciousness, while psychology bends over backwards in its attempt to deny any such thing exists. Undoubtedly, due evaluation of every proposition is what makes science as successful as it is in so many fields, but it is prone to contradiction on the larger scale when the workload is permanently divided among so many different areas of theory and research.
Paradigm Shift
Historians of science like to point out that when a theory is in question, its demise is often signaled by the appearance of another theory that can make its case by resorting to fewer ad hoc reasons. In the world of Buddhist debate, the trump card of Madhyamika was its aesthetically pleasing refutation of both extremes. Dependent arising is called the "king of reasonings", because it allows the Madhyamikas to refute both extremes simultaneously, while the Yogacarins needed two separate reasons to abandon the two extremes as they saw them. (29) This is Ockham's Razor from another longitude. By postulating the existence of consciousness and adopting the theory of dependent arising, it is possible that many sciences may find a shared ground on which to relate to each other instead of being islands of knowledge separated by the seas of disparate theory and methodology.
Thomas Kuhn, the father of the history of science, has this to say about paradigm shifts:
"Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data. History of science indicates that, particularly in the early developmental stages of a new paradigm, it is not even very difficult to invent such alternates. But that invention of alternates is just what scientists seldom undertake except during the pre-paradigm stage of their science's development and at very special occasions during its subsequent evolution. So long as the tools a paradigm supplies continue to prove capable of solving the problems it defines, science moves fastest and penetrates most deeply through confident employment of those tools. The reason is clear. As in manufacture, so in science - retooling is an extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it. The significance of crises is the indication they provide that an occasion for retooling has arrived."(30)
That the Tibetans have taken to teaching physics in their monasteries in exile is evidence that they see the need for a retooling, or at least a good upgrade, of their traditional system. It is evidence of an open attitude. Mainstream Western physics is likely to work long and hard to solve the problems it defines, using its current set of tools, before it resorts to Buddhist theory. But other branches of science and scholarship in the West might more readily find useful applications of Tibetan Buddhist ideas and methods.
1. The Dalai Lama, My Tibet, 96.
2. Due to the small number of Tibetan names herein, I have adopted a phonetic transliteration, ditto Sanskrit.
3. Lopez, A Study of Svatantrika, 56.
4. Ibid. 57.
5. Ibid. 58.
6. Ibid. 225.
7. To avoid the absurdities of politically correct pronouns, I have arbitrarily assigned 'he' and 'she'.
8. Lopez, A Study of Svatantrika, 356.
9. Ibid.357. I have slightly rearranged this statement in order to facilitate the structure of my explanation.
10. Ibid. 363.
11. Ibid. 370.
12. Ibid. 371
13. Ibid. 151.
14. As cited in Tsongkapa, Uma Gongpa Rap Sal, 134, my translation.
15. Ibid.
16. Lopez, A Study of Svatantrika, 71.
17. Ibid. 72. My Italics.
18. Ibid. 60.
19. March, Physics for Poets, 208.
20. Ibid. 215.
21. Ibid. 219.
22. Ibid. 233.
23. Wallace, Choosing Reality, vi.
24. March, Physics for Poets, 222.
25. Wallace, Choosing Reality, 61.
26. March, Physics for Poets, 224.
27. John Horgan, "Quantum Philosophy", Scientific American (July 1992): 98.
28. Francis Crick and Christopher Koch, "The Problem of Consciousness", Scientific American (Sept. 92): 157.
29. Lopez, A Study of Svatantrika, 40.
30. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 76.
Works Cited
Crick, Sir Francis, and Koch, Christopher. "The Problem of Consciousness." Scientific American (Sept. 1992).
His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. My Tibet. Berkeley, University of California Press/Light Mountain Press, 1990
Horgan, John. "Quantum Philosophy." Scientific American (July 1992).
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Lopez, Donald S., jr. A Study of Svatantrika. Ithaca, Snow Lion Press,1987.
March, Robert H. Physics for Poets. Chicago, McGraw-Hill,1978.
Sopa, Geshe L., and Hopkins, Jeffrey. Cutting through Appearances. Ithaca, Snow Lion, 1989.
Tsongkapa. Uma Gongpa Rap Sal (Clarifier of the Meaning of the Middle Way). India, Vanatolop (?) 1973.
Wallace, B. Alan. Choosing Reality. Boston, Shambhala Press,1989.
