Candrakirti

This research paper examines recent literature that reconsiders the notion of a person and its implications in relation to disjunctures occurring in early Buddhism between for example notions of not self and no self, the unanswered questions of the Buddha, and claims made by the Buddhist Pudgalavadins that there was a person. Doubt concerning a person highlights issues in relation to the formation of knowledge in the function of debates, where opponents of the Pudgalavadins in the Vijnanakaya implied they believed there was "a fifth basis for mindfulness, a basis for mindfulness of the sentient being.” Accounts of debates with Pudgalavadins, provided by their opponents from other Buddhist schools, underpin modern attempts to reconstruct the philosophical framework in which notions of a pudgala functioned in relation to the teachings of the Buddha. Their opponents claims have also led to assertions that the Pudgalavadins were heretical is reconsidered in recent literature, and the heuristic implications are considered. With the recent identification of a number of texts as Pudgalavadin in Chinese translations, outlines of positions they held have been reconstructed and interrogated. For example, Hurvitz (1967, p. 465-468) in his translation of a text which he seemingly did not realise was Pudgalavadin notes in a schematic of its outline, that although right mindfulness has four objects body (kaya), sensation (vedana), thought (citta) and dharma, a fifth mindfulness oddly is included as an action under right effort along with faith and non-abandonment.
Research questions highlighted in this project, include: is there a fifth mindfulness, towards what is it directed, and if there is, is it realisable in practice; what are various Buddhist theories of the person, and is this useful; what are the implications for heuristics concerning a person, emptiness, and dependent origination; do Buddhist methods of inquiry and philosophical proof constitute a form of mindfulness in contemplative practice, including as a search for truth to overcome doubt.

In this paper, Nāgārjuna’s philosophical interpretation of the terms kāraṇa and kārya is analysed after having methodologically confined the specific field of interest to the MMK. From the study of all the occurrences of kāraṇa and kārya in the MMK (listed in paragraph 2), it emerges that Nāgārjuna makes use of these two terms to refer to skandhas as causes (kāraṇa) of further skandhas as effects (kārya), hence conveying with this words the idea of, so to speak, subjectivity and (re)birth. From the principal commentaries on the MMK (particularly Bhāviveka and Candrakīrti), we know also that, even when the reference of kāraṇa and kārya to skandhas is not explicitly pointed out by Nāgārjuna, it nonetheless can be inferred from the peculiar context in which these terms are employed.
This conclusion seems to be confirmed also by the crosscheck analysis of the philosophical usage of the parallel terms hetu and phala, which refer either to, so to speak, objective (i.e., concerning general bhāvas) causes and effects, or – in the case of phala as consequence of karman/kriyā – to moral results (these two meanings are confirmed also by some passages from the Vigrahavyāvartanī), but in no cases Nāgārjuna makes recurse to hetu and phala to refer to what could be called a subjective (i.e., concerning skandhas) level of causality.
To the paper an addendum is added, in which the commentaries on MMK 8.4 are taken into consideration. From this excursus it appears that at least Buddhapālita, Bhāviveka and Candrakīrti, by ‘overinterpreting’ the meaning of hetu in the kārika, are consequently forced to readapt the philosophical significance of kāraṇa and kārya in a way that does not fit so much with Nāgārjuna’s original message.