Ultimate Realization in Buddhism

　　Europeans have generally interpreted Nagarjuna's MU/amadhyamakakarika from the perspective of Aristotle's law of excluded middle. Indian religions tend to describe the world as full of suffering, and prescribe spiritual discipline as the way to escape from it; this is why Indian religious teachings heavily rely on negation. Examples in the Buddhist tradition include the eighth verse of the MU/amadhyamakakarika, which states, "Everything is real, not real, both real and not real, neither real nor not real; this is the teaching of the Buddha"; the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception(Bhavagra); and the passage in the Diamond Sutra which reads, ''No notion of self; no notion of person; no notion of sentient being; no notion of life span." Such negations are typical of Indian religious discourse, and indicate that negation of the world is its fundamental approach to spiritual cultivation; whether or not this is correct is another issue altogether.

　　I’m not a scholar with a penchant for splitting hairs; my main concern is with presenting a correct understanding of Buddhist doctrine, so that it can serve as a reliable guide to actual practice. For example, when Buddhism first came to China, the Daoist term wu~ was used to translate the Sanskrit term siinyatii, yet such borrowing has caused a lot of confusion that still needs to be corrected, lest one’s practice come to naught.

　　Thus the primary motivation for this translation is to serve as a guide to Buddhist practice.


 

作者簡介

Master Ban-Ji

　　Master Ban Ji took the tonsure to become a nun at age 19 in 1983. After participating Buddhist activities at Buddhist temples shortly, she devoted the rest of her time immersed in the study of Buddhism and Buddhist practice.

半寄 Ban Ji

　　半寄，1983年走上流浪之路，時年十九歲，專心研究佛學三十年…。
　　主要著作有：《修行的探討》、《悉達多的流浪故事》、《糾纏》、《佛法的最終實現》等。


 

The Buddha often used the twelvefold chain of depedent origination (Pratītyasamutpāda) to both describe the conundrum of hu,an existence and to explain the way out of it. This formula plays a central role in Buddhist doctrine, and, in the usual order, consists of the following twelve links: ignorance , conditioning , consciousness, name-and-form, the six sense bases, contact, feeling, craving, attachment, becoming, birth, and aging-and-death.

In the fomula of dependent origination, ignorance is the underlying factor which conditions one’s future existence, but what precedes ignorance?

Some argue that prior to ignorance the mind is pure and luminous, and that ignorance later arises due to the defilements； yet the buddha-nature itself remains inherently pure.  According to this perspective, by engaging in Buddhist practice we can clear away this ignorance and return to our original nature, the freedom and purity of our inherent buddha-nature. Others, however, hold that ignorance and its attendant darkness is beginningless, and therefore not easily transcended.