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Pyrrhonism and Mādhyamaka Pyrrhonism and Mādhyamika Author(s): Thomas McEvilley Reviewed work(s): Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Jan., 1982), pp. 3-35 Published by: University of Hawai'i Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1398749 . Accessed: 24/04/2012 05:35 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Hawai'i Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy East and West. http://www.jstor.org Thomas McEvilley Pyrrhonism and Madhyamika 1. PRIMITIVEPYRRHONISM Pyrrhon is said by Diogenes Laertius to have studied first under some Megarian (hence skeptical antiphilosopher),' then under Anaxarchus the Democritean. When he was thirty-five or forty years old, Pyrrhon followed his master Anaxarchus and accompanied Alexander of Macedon to India. After an unknown length of time in India, Pyrrhon, perhaps forty-five or fifty years old, returned to Greece where he taught for perhaps forty years more and founded the school known as Pyrrhonism or Skepticism.2 Like Socrates he wrote nothing, teaching more by personal example; as Diogenes says: He had no positive tenet, but a Pyrrhonist is one who in manner and life resembles Pyrrhon (DL 9.70).3 We have only two sayings attributed directly to him: 1. Nothing really exists [= has a definite nature], but human life is governed by mere convention. 2. No single thing is in itself more this than that (DL 9.61.). Timon of Phlius, a first-generation student of Pyrrhon, seems to have written the earliest account of Pyrrhonism.4 Pyrrhon, according to Timon, asked three questions: what is the nature of things? what is our position in relation to them? what, under the circumstances, should we do? The answers appear as a for- mulaic series of negations. Questions one and two are answered with three negative adjectives: things are adiaphora, 'nondifferent' or 'without distin- guishing marks' (compare Skt. laksana-sunya); astathmeta, 'nonstable' or 'without fixed essence' (compare Skt. anitya); and anepikrita, 'nonjudgable' or 'unable to be grasped by concepts' (compare Skt. avyakrta, 'indeterminable'; anabhilipya, 'inexpressible'). As a result, says Timon: Neither our perceptions nor our opinions are either true or false. Question three is answered again with three negative adjectives: we should be adoxastoi, 'without opinions' (compare Skt. aprapancita, 'undiscriminated'); aklineis, 'without preferences' (compare Skt. upeksi, 'indifference'); and akradantoi, 'without agitation' or 'firmly balanced' (compare Skt. santa, 'tranquil, steady'). Finally Timon rejects all possible verbal assertions in a summation of Pyrrhon's teaching that is virtually identical to the Buddhist catuskoti: We should say of each thing that it no more is than is not, than both is and is not, than neither is nor is not. Thomas McEvilley is Professor at the Institutefor the Arts, Rice University, Houston, Texas. AUTHOR'SNOTE: My thanks to Frederick Streng for reading and helpfully commenting on an earlier version of this article. Philosophy East and West 32, no. 1 (January, 1982). ( by The University Press of Hawaii. All rights reserved. 4 McEvilley The purpose of this line of thought is spelled out: Those who take this attitude, says Timon, will gain first detachment from language (aphasia), then imperturbality (ataraxia). This brief summary could as easily describe the Prajfiaparamita as the Pyrrhonist point of view. In the generations after Pyrrhon and Timon this central teaching was provided with a powerful dialectical support which is in turn remarkably similar to the Madhyamika dialectic which arose in support of the Prajiiaparamita point of view. This article will discuss selected topics which illustrate the parallelism between these two dialectical systems, will compare their purposes, and will consider the possibilities of historical con- nections between them. For the Greek side of the parallelism we will rely heavily on Sextus Empiricus, the Pyrrhonist encyclopedist of the second century A.D., and for the Indian on the Mddhyamikakarikds and Vigraha- vyavartanTof Nagarjuna.5 2. STANCE TOWARD LIFE Skeptics, like Madhyamikas, taught no positive doctrines but devoted them- selves to undermining the doctrines of other schools without exception. Sextus Empiricus states clearly the purpose of this destruction of opinions: through foresaking all opinions about the nature of reality, the Skeptic prac- titioner brings his mind into a state of suspension (epoche; compare Skt. vairdgya)wherein the various mind-states are experienced as nondifferent from one another (adiaphora; Skt. laksana-sinya). "Experience is a simple sequential flow of sense impressions, and all impressions are intrinsically of equal authority."6 This "suspension" solidifies into an inner balance (arrepsia) in which the mind neither affirms nor denies, neither grasps at some impressions (having judged them 'good') nor pushes others away (having judged them 'bad'). This balance between affirmation and negation expresses itself in a state of vocal and mental silence (aphasia, 'nonassertion' or 'nonspeech'; compare Aryadeva that nirvanais "the extinction of all words" 7), which ripens finally into freedom from phenomenal influence (apatheia, 'nonreactiveness, noninvolvement') and imperturbality (ataraxia), in which the mind experiences each present moment without either attachment or aversion. This practice seems to correspond philosophically to the Madhyamika rejection of linguistic categories as ontological reals and meditatively to the practice of vipasyana, in which the flow of moments is experienced directly and simply, without anything either passional or theoretical added to them. It relates clearly to the Sutta Nipata's description of the enlightened person: He has not formed even the slightest opinion or conceptualisation about what is here seen, heard or thought (Sn., 802.). From this opinion-freed stance, suspended between affirmation and negation, 5 arose the Skeptic and Madhyamika dialectic. Some parallel passages will highlight the extraordinary similarity in basic attitude. Skeptic: [Pyrrhon] denied that anything ... is in itself more this than that (DL 9.61.). Nothing is more this than that (OP 1.188.). Buddhist: In this final truth there is neither this nor that. (Tilopa, Vow of Mahdmudra.)8 Pure vision has neither limiting periphery nor fixed center. It cannot be shown as this or that ... It has nothing to do with philosophical systems (Long-chen- pa).9 Things are neither this nor that (Seng Chao).10 Skeptic: Let us neither grasp at one thing nor flee from another (Pyrrhon, ap. DL 9.108.). All things are by nature equally indeterminable, admitting of neither measure- ment nor discrimination. For this reason our sense experiences and beliefs are neither true nor false. Therefore we ought not to put our trust in them, but be without beliefs, disinclined to take a stand one way or the other (Timon ap. Aristocles.). 11 The term suspension [epoche]is derived from the fact of the mind being held up or suspended so that it neither affirms nor denies anything (OP 1.196.). I define nothing. [Or,] I determine nothing (OP. 1.197.). Everything is undetermined ... [meaning that] there is no preference among the things that are placed in opposition to one another (OP 1.198/9.). I grasp at nothing; I cling to nothing (OP 1.201.). "Suspense" [epoche] is a state of mental rest owing to which we neither deny nor affirm anything. "Quietude" [ataraxia] is an untroubled and tranquil con- dition of soul. And ... quietude enters the soul along with suspension of judgment (OP 1.10.). Buddhist: Let him not think something is better or worse or even the same as another (Sn. 795.). The intention of the Buddha is this: my disciples [should be] free from passion for doctrine, free from attachment to doctrine, free from partisanship .... They do not quarrel about the nature of things (Mahaprajhipiramita Sastra, 63c.). The Tathagata is one who has forsaken all reflections and discriminations (Astasahasrika Prajhnparamita, 137.). Develop a mind that clings to nothing (Vajracchedika Prajhaparamita, 10.). It is considered perverse to affirm or negate. It is said to be correct only when there is neither affirmation nor negation (Chi-tsang).12 [Right perception] means beholding all sorts of forms but without being stained by them as no thoughts of love or aversion rise in the mind (Hui Hai).13 This doctrine of indeterminacy (aoristia, 'lack of boundary or definition'; Skt. svabhava-sunyata, 'emptiness of self-nature or essence') is simultaneously a critique of ontological claims of absolute Being or Nonbeing, of epistemological claims for knowledge (here aoristia becomes akatalepsia, 'ungraspableness', 'inability to be circumscribed by concepts'; compare Skt. anirvacanlya, 'un- 6 McEvilley definable', and nirvikalpa, 'transcending conceptual description'), and of the view that there is a language-reality isomorphism. The desire to escape from the web of language and confront experience directly led, in both schools, to a radical rejection of concepts, focusing on the central
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