Madhyamaka and Prajnaparamita Sutras

Question 1

What is Prajnaparamita?

Answer 1

Prajnaparamita, (Sanskrit: “Perfection of Wisdom”) body of sutras and their commentaries that represents the oldest of the major forms of Mahayana Buddhism.

Question 2

What is “perfect wisdom”?

Answer 2

The full and complete insight of what things are really are. The emphasis on ‘perfect’ suggests a wisdom beyond the everyday assumption of most people and beyond the earlier Abhidharma analyses of non-mahayana Buddhists. It is the wisdom of the Buddhas.

Question 3

What is the central insight of the perfect wisdom?

Answer 3

Shunyata (emptiness). The term means ‘empty of inherent existence’ meaning nothing exists by itself, but only in relation to other things. Nothing possesses what Buddhists call svabhava (own-being) that is separate, eternal, existence.

Question 4

What is the heart sutra?

Answer 4

One of the most widely influential texts of Mahayana Buddhism, since it captures the heart or essence of the perfection of wisdom.

Question 5

When was the heart sutra written?

Answer 5

300-700 CE

Question 6

What are the key themes of the heart sutra?

Answer 6

1) Perfection of wisdom
2) Emptiness
3) Bodhisattva ideal

Question 7

Who is speaking in the Heart Sutra?

Answer 7

A dialogue between Shakyamuni Buddha, the Bodhisattva Avolokiteshvara and Sariputra.

Question 8

Who is Sariputra?

Answer 8

Is a Theravadin monk seeking to understand the broader reach offered by the mahayana thought - he was severly monastic and questing to find for individual enlightenment.

Question 9

What was Sariputra asking in the Heart Sutra?

Answer 9

In what manner should he practice transcendental wisdom.

Question 10

Who is Avolokiteshvara?

Answer 10

Male bodhisattva of compassion is a symbol of the activity of compassion and is dedicated to help save all sentient beings.

Question 11

How is Avolokiteshvara talking in the Heart Sutra?

Answer 11

Talking as he one who has established in emptiness - the active, close observation of the mind i.e. meditative enquiry- vipassana. He is coursing through the depths of wisdom without fear or attachment.

Question 12

On hearing Sariputra question what is aroused?

Answer 12

Compassion is aroused and he answers not from thought but from his immediate experiential state. He seems to destroy everything the Buddha taught and what Sariputra has learnt i.e. conceptualisations (his Buddhist cage’).

Question 13

What does Sariputra learn from Avolokiteshvara?

Answer 13

Teaches him to let go and to discover the deeper freedom beyond name and forms and to experience the ‘ineffability of silence’. It is a radical broadening of the idea of emptiness to all phenomenon.

Question 14

Why do these texts focus on prajna (wisdom)?

Answer 14

In Mahayana, the Perfection of wisdom is the 6th Perfection that a bodhisattva cultivates on the path to Buddhahood.

Question 15

What are the 6 perfections?

Answer 15

1) Generosity
2) Morality
3) Patience
4) Effort
5) Meditation
6) Wisdom

Question 16

What do the 6 perfections cultivate?

Answer 16

Six Perfections describe the true nature of an enlightened being, which, in Mahayana practice, is to say they are our own true buddha-nature.

Question 17

Why is sunyata important for Mahayana Buddhists?

Answer 17

1. Wisdom also known as emptiness is on of the 6 perfections to be mastered y the Bodhisattva - underpins compassion
2. Wisdom needed to overcome attachment to a self and therefore helps overcome habits or conditioned states which cause suffering and keep you trapped in samsara
3. Wisdom enables Bodhisattva to practice skilful means
4. Helps to differentiate between conventional and ultimate truths

Question 18

How is the Heart sutra used?

Answer 18

1. Chanted or recited
2. Meditation
3. Zen Retreats

Question 19

Why is the heart sutra important?

Answer 19

1. Being in short it is easily memorised
2. It deals with issues that are key understanding Mahayana Buddhism:
   - all phenomena lack inherent existence, own being (svabhava) the idea that things have independent existence is the wrong perception of reality.
   - conventional and ultimate truths- words are required to explain concepts but the ultimate truth behind that is that they do not refer to anything.
   - everything is both form and emptiness- emptiness is not a thing but it is the way all things are in their dependent arising

Question 20

How does understanding the wisdom of emptiness underpins compassion?

Answer 20

Self cherishing because you are not attached to yourself. Compassion spontaneously arises.

Question 21

Why is teaching on wisdom key to Bodhisattvas?

Answer 21

Master 6 perfections because the last 6 perfection is Wisdom and they need compassion to help remove suffering of others.

Question 22

The key difference about nibbana between the Theravada understanding and the Mahayana understanding?

Answer 22

Theravada seen as a final goal, separate from samsara attained in life (nibbana with remainder) whilst the Mahayana is that nibbana and samsara is both empty only conventional terms.

Question 23

How does experiencing the suchness of things help combat for example prejudice?

Answer 23

Suchness (tathata) means to experience things such as they are without superimposing the ideas. This helps avoid discrimination.

Question 24

What is the difference between ultimate and conventional truth?

Answer 24

Conventional truth is ordinary language being used.

Ultimate truth is the world and self experienced as it really is, free of the constraints of language.

Question 25

Karin Valham

Answer 25

Wisdom of emptiness helps us to realise that when we investigate the mind, body etc that we cannot pinpoint a self or “I” e.g. greedy me because greed is merely a conditioned state. There is no “me” being greed since greed us a momentary state of mind. When one feels or experiences the wisdom of emptiness through practice of vipasanna (insight meditation) the arising of compassion is “immediate” and make us feel content.

Question 26

Janice Willis

Answer 26

Emptiness is merely a lack of an independent existence and shows how everything is connected or interdependent. When one directly meditates this experience of “emptiness” or “feels it” , our relation with others feel complete and compassion spontaneously arises.

Question 27

Richard Gere

Answer 27

We are not independent islands but are dependent on causes and conditions- beings in the process of change. Such a fixed and concrete view of life creates habits or conditioned states- a permanent I, the root of all our problems. Realisation of emptiness creates ‘space’ and ‘moments’ of non-attachment which have the power to free our minds.

Question 28

Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

Answer 28

The wisdom of emptiness destroys the root of our ignorance or attachment to a false “I” the king of delusion that binds us to samsaric existence. People do so many things to protect this “I” to make it happy. Emptiness can release the confused mind and help us to discover the real nature of phenomena.

Question 29

Robina Courtin

Answer 29

Everything is emptiness- conventional thought is the product of ignorance, attachment, illusion and lies e.g. “a pair of glasses” only exist in a conventional sense, ultimately there are no glasses (they dependently arise). But if one says that ‘nothing exists’ people throw the baby out of the bath water and create a nihilistic view. Attachment to sense of ‘I’ or ‘me ness’ is karma and this leads to feelings of anger- the exact opposite of truth. The realisation of emptiness destroys ignorance which is the creation of karma.

Question 30

Dalai Lama

Answer 30

Shunya is a sanskrit language meaning emptiness. Similarly, to understand emptiness you’ve got to experience emptiness. Emptiness doesn’t mean nothingness, it means things exist inter-dependently whilst paper exists conventionally.

Question 31

Geshe Lhakdor the Tibetan Buddhist on thoughts of emptiness

Answer 31

Emptiness is empty of independent existence.

It’s not nothingness.

Question 32

What is madhymaka philosophy?

Answer 32

Madhyamaka those of the Prajnaparamita literature, but expresses in more philosophical, analytical and logical form.

Question 33

Who founded Madyamaka?

Answer 33

Nagarjuna

Question 34

Who is Nagarjuna?

Answer 34

A monk who lived in the second century CE. Nagarjuna claimed that he didn’t offer any new philosophy but to emphasise the absolute centrality of shunyata.

Question 35

Where is Nagarjuna’s arguments found?

Answer 35

Mulamadhyamakarika (Verses of the Fundamentals of the Middle Way)

Question 36

What does Madyamaka mean?

Answer 36

Middle position between eternalism nor annihilationism.

Question 37

What are the key central teachings?

Answer 37

1. Things do not exist absolutely
2. Nor do they not exist at all
   Therefore they exist relatively

Question 38

Nagarjuna defines svabhava (own being)

Answer 38

Svabhava as existence which is dependent on nothing else. Nagarjuna sees himself as simply restating the original teachings of the Buddha that all states come into being through causes and conditions ‘it is dependent origination that we call emptiness’.

Question 39

Nagarjuna’s meaning of emptiness

Answer 39

Nothing is self evident, nothing has unchanging characteristics by which it is totally distinguished from all other characteristics. Emptiness implies the interdependence of all things.

Question 40

Two levels of truths

Answer 40

Conventional truth, things exist but at the level of ultimate truth (where things exist eternally and independently) they do not.

Question 41

Who are the Sarvastivardins?

Answer 41

An early Theravadin Buddhistmovement and thought that the dharmas (basic building blocks of reality) were real and permanent. The Sarvastivadins taught that these basic dharmas could be said to be real, whereas the things that make up like ‘me’ were just labels.

Question 42

Why did Nagarjuna object to the Sarvastivadin view of the ‘Dhammas’?

Answer 42

The Madhyamaka philosophy claimed that these made dharmas unconditioned and absolute and that the Sarvastivadins did not go far enough applying the Buddha teachings of impermanence and ‘no self’, even dharmas are dependent, ever changing and impossible to distinguish

Question 43

What did Nagarjuna say about samsara and nibbana?

Answer 43

There is no distinction between nibbana and samsara. On conventional truth they are very different.