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Part Ii the Three Doors of Liberation

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Part Ii the Three Doors of Liberation PART II THE THREE DOORS OF LIBERATION We have just completed the discussion on the teaching of the Three Universal Characteristics of Existence. Through the study and analysis of the teaching of the Three Universal Characteristics of Existence we realize that this teaching is the fundamental for one who wishes to practise the Buddhist teachings. However, what follows we will discuss, are more special and propound, from the perspective of Mahāyāna ideas, – the Three Doors of Liberation. The realm of the Three Doors of Liberation is very different from that of the Three Universal Characteristics of Existence. If the teaching of the Three Universal Characteristics of Existence is represented on the basis of the arising and ceasing of all phenomena – the realm of birth-and-death, then the teaching of the Three Doors of Liberation escapes all; it will give us an opportunity to understand a realm wherein there is no birth and no death – that is the realm of liberation. The teaching of the Three Universal Characteristics of Existence, for the researcher, is the fundamental teaching, and is also the key to enter the Three Doors of Liberation. If we don‘t understand the teaching of the Three Universal Characteristics of Existence we will not understand the teaching of the Three Doors of Liberation, and the way to liberation will never be fulfilled. The Three Doors of Liberation (Trivimokṣa-mukha), which comprehend Emptiness (śūnyatā), Signlessness (animitta), and Wishlessness (apraṇihita) as its members, are accepted 124 by all schools of Buddhism; however the Theravāda school does not emphasize this wonderful teaching, but it is there.257 These Three Doors which are sometimes called the Three Concentrations (Trisamādhi), are widely recommended as subjects of practice. Among these three, Emptiness may be regarded as the most fundamental, embodying the other two. The Buddha in the Aṣṭa. Pra. Pā. Sūtra says that ―All dharmas are void, signless, and wishless. You must shun signs, existence, and the false view that there are beings.‖258 When we apply this teaching into the religious life, and when we truly enter these doors, we dwell in concentration and are liberated from fear, confusion, and sadness. 257 Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of the Buddha‟s Teachings - Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy and Liberation, New York: Rider, 1999, p. 146. 258 The Aṣṭa. Pra. Pā. Sūtra, 482. CHAPTER 1 EMPTINESS Emptiness (śūnyatā) is much the best known. The sentence ―All things are empty‖ was very popular in Mahāyāna Buddhism. It means that everything is non-existent, that all experienced phenomena are empty (śūnya) and vain, and thus that all objects and qualities are negated in both ontological and ethical sense. But this negation is not mere nothingness. It rather indicates an affirmative absolute being, freed from objectifications and qualifications. The notion of emptiness is, although, significant in most versions of Buddhism, it is crucial to Mahāyāna Buddhism. The term ―śūnya‖ appears quite early, in the period of Theravāda Buddhism, but Mahāyāna Buddhism, which arose later, at about the time of Christ, made this notion of emptiness its fundamental standpoint. According to Edward Conze, the term is used sparsely in the scriptures of the Sthaviras, and on occasion it may represent an old tradition but indicates Mahāyāna influence.259 The notion of emptiness has various particular nuances in the different Mahāyāna schools. According to the Mādhyamaka, it is equivalent to dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda); meanwhile, for the Yogācāra, it is a direct realization of the non-existence of a perceiving subject and perceived object, said to be the natural state of the mind. In the philosophical doctrine of Śūnyavāda (the Way of Emptiness), it is not to be equated 259 Edward Conze, Buddhist Thought in India - Three Phases of Buddhist Philosophy, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2002, p. 59. 126 with nihilism since the term is equivalent in meaning to suchness (tathatā) and ultimately reality or ultimate truth (dharma-dhātu). 1. THE MEANING OF EMPTINESS Emptiness is the English word, translated from the Sanskrit term, ‗śūnyatā‘. Its objective is ‗śūnya‘. The term ‗śūnya‘ seems to derive from the root ‗śvi‘ ‗to swell‘; the connection apparently being that something which looks swollen from the outside is hollow inside.260 Indian mathematicians called the zero, which they had invented, ‗śūnya‘,261 and the term ‗śūnya‘ then was understood as ‗nothing‘. This meaning is not suitable to the Buddhist emptiness. Although the term ‗śūnyatā‘ can be understood as emptiness, void, vacuum, blank, sky, space, atmosphere, non-existence, non-entity or absolute non-existence, utterly devoid or deprived of, etc.,262 but in Buddhism, it should not be understood as ‗nothingness‘. According to Buddhism, emptiness always means empty of something, it does not mean ‗nothingness‘. The Cūḷasuññata-sutta tells us that the palace of Migāra‘s mother is although empty of elements of elephants, cows, horses and mares, empty of gold and silver, empty of assemblages of men and women, but not empty of the order of monks. Likewise, a monk, when practices meditation on emptiness, even when he reaches the highest stage of trance in the formless world, his mind is free from all canker of ‗outflowing impurities‘ (āsava) and obtains Arhatship; and yet there remains the disturbance of the six sensory fields that, conditioned by 260 Edward Conze, Buddhism, New York: Philosophical Library. n.d., p. 130. 261 Gadjin M. Nagao, Mādhyamika and Yogācāra, Delhi: Sri Satguru, 1992, p. 209. 262 Thomas E. Wood, Nagarjunian Disputations: A Philosophical Journey Through an Indian Looking-Glass, Delhi: Sri Satguru, 1995, p. 126. 127 life, are grounded in this body itself. Thus his corporeal being, which even the Arhat can never nullify, is his ultimate disturbance. He regards that which is not there as empty of it. But in regard to what remains he comprehends: ‗That being, this is‘. Thus, Ānanda, this comes to be for him a true, not mistaken, utterly purified and incomparably highest realization of (the concept of) emptiness.263 It is obvious that emptiness in Buddhism is not nothingness. According to Gadjin M. Nagao, the Sutta states that emptiness is non- being on the one hand but that there is, on the other hand, something remaining therein which, being reality, cannot be negated. Emptiness includes both being and non-being, both negation and affirmation. He concludes this is the true definition of emptiness.264 However, the researcher does not agree with this idea, because if we understand the meaning of emptiness in the Sutta in this way, we will fail to explain the statement of the Buddha in the Sūtra of the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines where he goes further to describe emptiness as the immeasurable: ―And what is emptiness, that is also immeasurableness.‖265 For the researcher, emptiness means purity. When the mind is impure, one will see things to be impure. With the impure mind, he will make a distinction between things: this thing is good, this thing is bad, this thing is neither good nor bad, and so forth. The notion of two extremes like good and evil, subject and object, existence and non- existence, dharma and adharma, etc. also arise therefrom. The notion 263 M. N., III, N0: 121. 264 Gadjin M. Nagao, Mādhyamika and Yogācāra, Delhi: Sri Satguru, 1992, p. 53. 265 The Aṣṭa. Pra. Pā. Sūtra, 347. 128 of the self is not the exceptive. His mind then will become limited within the notion of a thing to which he tends. This notion, according to Buddhism, especially to the Yogācāra School, is merely the imagination of the mind. When the mind is purified, the limit of all notions: good – evil, subject – object, like – dislike, existence – non-existence, dharma – adharma, etc. will be escaped; the notion of the self will also be nullified; the things then will naturally become pure. It is true that things are impure owing to the mind is impure. When the mind becomes pure, one realizes that things never be impure. As the saying goes ‗The scene never be beautiful when one is in the state of unhappiness‘. When the mind escapes the limit of all notions and becomes pure, it will become immeasurable, and the things then will also become immeasurable. This is the meaning of emptiness, and is also the reason why ‗Enlightenment‘ or ‗Nirvāṇa‘ to be described as ‗emptiness‘ or ‗immeasurableness‘, and the nature of all dharmas is equal to the Buddha‘s nature. Understanding emptiness in this way we can easily understand why some scholars explain emptiness as the absence of something,266 or emptiness is understood as ‗conditioned existence‘.267 (The former explains emptiness on the basis of non-self, meanwhile the latter stresses much on the conditioned co-production). The absence can be understood here, is the absence of the notion of the ‗self‘ or ‗intrinsic being‘, the notion of the two extremes, distinguishing mind; briefly, it is the absence of all imagination minds. The Theravādins explain 266 See: Edward Conze, Buddhist Thought in India - Three Phases of Buddhist Philosophy, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2002, pp. 59-60; Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Heart of the Buddha‟s Teaching- Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy and Liberation, New York: Rider, 1999, p. 146. 267 Har Dayal, The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2004, p. 244. 129 emptiness as the absence of the self, because the Buddha in The Godatta Sermon says that ―void is this of self or of what pertains to self.‖268 With this explanation, emptiness is synonymous with the third characteristic of existence – Non-self.269 The Mahāyānists, especially the Prāsaṅgikas explain things do not possess the intrinsic reality that one naively thought they did.
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