CHAPTER 1 PYRRHONIAN SKEPTICISM
1.3 The Text of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism
1.3. The Text of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism
The Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Pyrrhōneioi Hypotypōseis, thus commonly abbreviated PH) is Sextus’ most well-known work, though it is still debated whether it is Sextus’
first or final work.80 The Outlines of Pyrrhonism, which consists of three books, deals with the nature of Skepticism and also stockpiles a litany of arguments against the claims of the ancient logicians, physicists, ethicists, and sophists as well. The Outlines is a lengthy text and out of Sextus’s voluminous works, due its tighter structure and clear presentation of ideas as well as the lack of negative dogmatism, I consider it to best the representative text of Sextus’ thought. To cite one example one example of Sextus’s own seeming transition from negative skepticism, Bett demonstrates how Sextus’ use of anairein “to do away with” goes from being an expression which describes what the Skeptic does to the Dogmatists’ arguments in Against the Logicians to precisely the type of thing the Skeptic customarily does not do in the Outlines.81 Thus, instead of asserting that the Dogmatist’s assertions are false, Sextus simply shows that it is impossible under the present circumstances to either affirm or deny the claims of the Dogmatists. And when Sextus does refute the Dogmatist’s argument, he typically does so ad hominem, such that he overturns their arguments by
80 Sextus’ other two extant works, which are both traditionally grouped the title Against the Mathematicians (Adversus Mathematicos, commonly abbreviated M), is composed of 11 books. Books I-VI are titled as follows: Against the Grammarians (Book I), Against the Rhetoricians (Book II), Against the Geometricians (Book III), Against the Arithmeticians (Book IV), Against the Astrologers (Book V), and Against the Musicians (Book VI). The other subset of books, referred to collectively as Against the Dogmatists, make up books VII-XI. This arrangement is somewhat misleading in that Against the Dogmatists was also thought to be part of another larger work entitled Skeptical Treatises (Skeptika Hupomnēmata), of which up to five books are thought to be missing. In any case, books VII-XI are as named as follows: Against the Logicians and Against the Physicists (two books each), and Against Ethicists (one book). It should be noted, however, that except for the Outlines of Pyrhhonism and Against the Mathematicians, the names of the eleven books listed above are not found in the manuscripts tradition. Sextus also refers in passing to two works no longer extant, Notes on Medicine and On the Soul.
81 Bett Richard, Sextus Empiricus: Against the Logicians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), xxiv.
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making use only of the assumptions of his opponents.
As stated above, the text of the Outlines is divided into three books. The 34 sections of the first book provides a overview of Skepticism which includes an explication of the skeptical “modes” of argument, including the Ten Modes, the Five Modes, the Two Modes, the modes for causal arguments, a detailed explanation of the Skeptical slogans, and an explanation of how Skepticism differs from the other competing philosophies and skepticisms. The 22 sections of Book II deal mainly with the criteria of truth, proofs, and signs, the syllogism, inductive reference, definitions, mereology, other logical problems. Finally, Book III contains 32 sections which expound on theories of the natural sciences including causality, time, motion, change, apprehension, God, as well as several concluding sections on ethics. This thesis will draw mainly from Books I and III as these contain the most relevant material on the attainment of ataraxia and the ethical part of Skeptical philosophy. Lastly I might add that Sextus points out that the contents of his book should be taken absolutely binding, for he says in the introduction that:
as regards none of the things that we are about to say do we firmly maintain that matters are absolutely as stated, but in each instance we are simply reporting, like a chronicler, what now appears to us to be the case.82
Sextus even admits in the very last section of the Outlines that many of the arguments contained therein may be weak in persuasiveness, but he recommends them nonetheless for their perceived efficacy in healing dogmatic rashness.83
82 PH I, 4.
83 PH III, 279-281.
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CHAPTER 2: ZEN BUDDISM
2.1. Huineng and His Zen Inheritance
Huineng (638-713 AD) came to be regarded nearly a century after his death as the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzu 六祖) of Zen Buddhism The biographical data concerning his life in the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzu tanjing 六祖壇經) is mostly regarded as fiction by contemporary scholars, though the earliest version which has Huineng doing a very un-Confucian thing in suddenly leaving behind his poor, widowed mother to study under the Fifth Patriarch Hongren (弘忍).84 The fact that the other versions attempt to tidy this story might suggest that it actually occurred. In any case, Huineng is listed as one of Fifth Patriarch Hongren ten disciples in a historical work entitled Record of the Laṅkāvatāra Masters (Lengqiejing ziji ) 楞伽 師資記. Huineng appears seventh on the list, along with the location at which he taught (which seems to indicate that he was a teacher of only regional significance during his own lifetime). The Platform Sūtra states that Huineng was born in Fanyang (范陽) and spent his childhood in Xinzhou (新州, modern-day Xinxing, Guangdong Province).85
According to the Platform Sūtra, Huineng (age unspecified) went to pay obeisance to the Fifth Patriarch Hongren after hearing a verse from the Diamond Sūtra recited, and stayed there for just over eight months.86 Near the end of his stint at the monastery,
84 PS 2. Other versions of the story have the customer providing money for the care of Huineng’s mother. In Vol. II of the Patriarch’s Hall Anthology (Zutang ji 祖堂集), the customer, who also has a name, gives Huineng’s mother 100 taels of silver. In other versions of the Platform Sūtra, the nameless customer only gives 10 taels.
85 PS 2.
86 PS 3.
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Huineng unexpectedly won a verse-writing contest against the monastery’s Head Abbot Shenxiu (神秀), who was also coincidentally claimed at one time to be the Sixth Patriarch by a rival tradition known somewhat anachronistically as the
“Northern School.” And as a result of winning the verse contest, Huineng was secretly passed the robe of the Patriarchate. This became the official story, and through the vigorous efforts of one his most famous disciples, Shenhui (神會), by the end of the eighth century Huineng was recognized as the undisputed Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Zen. At present it is impossible to say how much of the Platform Sūtra originates from Huineng himself. Fortunately, however, for our purposes, the historicity of the text is of little concern as we will concentrate on the thought of the text, using Huineng’s name a symbol for the teachings found in the Platform Sūtra. In the section that follows I give a fuller account of the specific teachings of Huineng, but here it will be helpful I think to highlight a few of main features of the Zen teachings that Huineng inherited from his predecessors in order to better inform out later discussion.
As is well-known, Buddhism originated in India with the teachings of a prince named Gautama. Gautama renounced his comfortable lifestyle in order to find the way to escape the cycle of birth, old age, sickness, and death. Therefore, early Buddhism might be said to have adopted a pessimistic view of human existence which it saw as nothing but suffering, and looked for a means of escape from the dusty world. The Buddha’s followers withdrew from their homes and society to devote themselves to teaching of the Buddha (“Awakened One”) and practiced meditation in the hope of attaining freedom from suffering. The formula for salvation developed by the Buddha was the Four Noble Truths. These are (1) suffering, which essentially includes all
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human feeling and sensation, (2) the origin of suffering as craving, (3) the cessation of suffering, and (4) the path to ending suffering, which is called the Eight-fold Path.
And although the Buddha made counter-arguments against the dominant view at the time of the existence of atman, or eternal Self, he was also careful not to fully endorse the view of no-Self either (anatman) either. He referred to his teaching like a “raft,”
that was to be used for “crossing over and not for taking hold of.”87
Through the course of its development, Buddhism would, as it happened, make a metaphysical turn leading to the creation of the self-titled Mahāyāna (“Higher Vehicle”) system of thought. Two Mahāyāna sūtras in particular, the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (Niepanjing 涅槃經) or Nirvana Sūtra for short, and the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (Lengqiejing 楞伽經) teach, respectively, the existence of a
“Buddha-nature” (fo xing 佛性) and “self-nature” (zi xing 自性) inherent in all humans. Thus, according to one recent Zen anthology of Zen literature,
In substance Zen Buddhism advocates that the nature of the self is the nature of the Buddha, and that the heart of the self is the heart of the Buddha, that Buddha nature is there in everyone, and everyone can attain Buddhahood.88
Thus, it turns out that the eternal atman, the very concept which much of early Buddhism so vehemently rejected, made a comeback in Mahāyāna Buddhism in the form of an unchanging Buddha-nature. Moreover, the fifth-century monk Daosheng
87 Rahula, Walpola. What the Buddha Taught. (New York: Grove Press, 1974), 11.
88 Jiang Lansheng., ed., 100 Excerpts from Zen Buddhist Texts.(Taipei: Taiwan, 2001), vii.
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(道生) was the first to synthesize the teachings of the Buddha nature and sudden enlightenment, and is a figure to whom Huineng’s thought appears much indebted.
Huineng makes such extensive use of the doctrine of the Buddha-nature in the Platform Sūtra that it becomes one the central pillars of his teaching. In addition, the First Patriarch of Chinese Zen, the Bodhidharma (Puti Damo 菩提達摩), according to tradition, used the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra as his primary text.89 The text, developed by the Consciousness-Only School (Weishi zong 唯識i宗), teaches that there exists a substratum of consciousness, a “storehouse consciousness” (Skrt: alaya-vijnana, Ch:
a lai ye shi 阿賴耶識) along with seven types of self-natures.90 Huineng also combines the Buddha/self-nature teaching, alternately known as the tathāgatagarbha, with the prajñāpāramitā (“Perfection of Wisdom”) teaching of “emptiness” (Skrt:
śūnyatā, Ch: kong 空) to produce a very unique system of thought and practice.91 One other important development of note within Mahāyāna Buddhism was its non-separation of religious practice and everyday life. This line of thought is developed most fully in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra (Weimojiejing 維摩維詰經, a text which Huineng also mines heavily throughout the Platform Sūtra.92 In the
89 There is little reliable historical information on the first three patriarchs of Chinese Zen, the Bodhidharma, Huike (慧可), and Sengcan (僧璨) respectively. The link between the Fourth Patriarch Daoxin (道信) and the Fifth Patriarch (弘忍), however, is well-attested for in the literature.
90 Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra V: “Again, Mahamati, there are seven kinds of self-nature [自性]: collection (samudaya), being (bhava), characteristic marks (lakshana), elements (mahabhuta), causality (hetu), conditionality (pratyaya), and perfection (nishpatti)” (Suzuki’s translation). The ambiguity of the self-nature is highlighted by D.T. Suzuki in a footnote in reference to the above verse: “What is exactly meant by these concepts regarded as self-nature (svabhava) is difficult to define as far as the Laṅkāvatāra is concerned.” Thus, it seems that Huineng may simply have equated the Buddha-nature with the self-nature. He uses the terms interchangeably in his sermons and discussions.
See PS 3, 8, 12, 34, 38.
91See PS 24-25. In contrast, Sheng-yen says, “In point of fact, Platform suutra uses wisdom as the method and regards tathaagatagarbha as its goal. It employs the perfection of wisdom's view of emptiness to destroy the attachments caused by passions in order to achieve the goal of "realizing one's clear mind and seeing one's true nature" (ming-hsin chien-hsing).” Though this is a fairly common interpretation of Huineng’s thought, but Huineng rarely if ever uses the teaching of “emptiness” in this sense.
92 Whereas many hold Chinese Zen is a Sinofication of Indian Buddhism, I see it more as an application of the practical spiritual life as already envisioned by the Vimalakīrti Sūtra. One telling point I find is Huineng’s rejection of traditional Confucian mourning rituals (PS 53).
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Vimalakīrti Sūtra the lines between monastic and lay life are blurred and it is affirmed that even lay practitioners may achieve awakening.93 This represents perhaps one of the most important transitions from early Buddhism. We now turn to teachings attributed to Huineng in the Platform Sūtra.
93 Vimalakīrti himself was said to a highly attained lay disciple and revered as one of the greatest disciples of the Buddha (Vimalakīrti Sūtra Ch. 2).
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2.2. The Fundamentals of Huineng’s Southern School of Zen
In this chapter we will discuss the central ideas of Huineng’s Zen School. In contrast to some other Zen teachers, Huineng did not place any emphasis on sitting meditation,94 and also did not teach practitioners to empty their minds of thoughts.
He also made light of the idea that words were unimportant or empty (even though much is made of his supposed illiteracy). In a way, this all seems very un-Zenlike based on common preconceptions of Zen practice. So what exactly did Huineng teach?
In this chapter we thus examine the main aspect of Huineng’s teaching, which consists of the doctrines of prajñā (bo re 般若), samādhi (chan ding 禪定), no-thought (wu nian 無念) and non-dwelling (wu zhu 無住), and the self-nature (zi xing自性).
Wisdom and Samādhi
We begin with the all-important Zen teaching of prajñā. Huineng describes prajñā as follows:
Prajñā is wisdom. At each moment of experience, let your thoughts be free of foolishness and constantly practice wisdom—this is the practice of prajñā. At any moment a delusory thought arises, prajñā is nowhere to be
94 Sitting meditation however is mentioned in passing in PS 53: “如吾在日一種，一時端坐,” but in most other places it is deemphasized. See PS 14, 18, 19, and Huineng’s famous poem in the Zongbao edition (T48n2008_p0358b24-5): 生來坐不臥，死去臥不坐， 元是臭骨頭，何為立功過。 “While alive one sits but does not lie / In death one lies but does not sit / Either way there’s nothing but stinky bones / How can this called establishing a practice?”
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found; and if at any moment a ray of wisdom shines, prajñā is generated.95
Therefore, prajñā is the practice of wisdom, which has neither “form nor appearance.”96 Prajñā is not objective knowledge, but rather it occurs when the mind comes into a state of concentration or attentiveness in which “delusory thoughts do not arise.” In other words, it is a way of viewing phenomenon in which vexing thoughts are prevented from entering the mind; one does not suppress any thoughts that are already there (since the thought to do that would itself be delusory!). But before we spell out what constitutes a “delusory thought,” we will first observe how Huineng equates prajñā-wisdom with being in a state of meditative absorption. This wisdom is said to be identical to samādhi-like concentration, meaning that one does not concentrate to find wisdom and neither does wisdom lead to concentration. The two occur simultaneously, and are neither separable nor identical:
Meditative concentration and wisdom in actual fact are not one, and not two. Meditative concentration is the substance of wisdom and, and wisdom is the function of meditative concentration.97
To help clarify the relationship between the two, Huineng uses the example of a lamp and its light. The lamp is the substance of the light while the light serves as the function of the lamp. Huineng concludes that “although they have two different names, in their essence there is no duality.”98
95 PS 26, 般若是智慧。一時中念念不愚，常行智慧，即名般若行。一念愚即般若絕，一念智即
般若生。
96 PS 26, 無形相
97 PS 13, 慧定體不一不二，即定是慧體，即慧是定用。
98 PS 15, 名即有二，體無兩般。
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Moreover, in an exposition of “sitting in meditation” or zuochan 坐禪 (Jp: zazen),”
Huineng says,
To give rise to no thoughts about external objects is what we call sitting; to see the original nature and remain unperturbed is what we call meditation.
What is meditative concentration? To remain transcendent of forms externally is called meditation; to remain unperturbed internally is called concentration.99
“Delusory thoughts” are here equated with “thoughts about external objects,” which for Huineng means thoughts stained by attachment.100 Also seeing the self-nature, or one’s original nature, is identified as “meditation.” “Sitting” is used metaphorically here to describe this state of mind, not the physical act. This metaphorization of traditional Zen concepts is a very characteristic feature of Huineng’s thought.101 Additionally, this state of concentrated awareness of thought is alternately referred to as direct mind (zhi xin 直心) and “one-act samādhi” (yixing sanmei 一行三昧).102 Direct mind can, according to the text, be practiced at anytime regardless of whether one is “walking, standing, sitting, or lying down”103 This last part is important since even in Huineng’s day, the idea of meditation normally brought to mind the stereotypical form or image of recluses sitting in temples or caves for extended periods of time. Even Bodhidharma, the first Zen Patriarch, is said to have meditated
99PS 19, 念不去為坐，見本性不亂為禪。何名為禪定？外離相曰禪，內不亂曰定。
100 PS 17.
101 For further examples, see Huineng’s interpretation of the Trikaya (20), the Three Refuges (23), and Discipline-Samadhi-Wisdom (PS 41)
102 PS 14.
103 Ibid.
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in a seated position for nine consecutive years!104 Huineng, however, disagreed with the interpretation of samādhi as a state of in which the mind is absent of all thoughts.
For Huineng, “sitting in a motionless posture and eliminating deluded thoughts without invoking a false mind” is, he wryly points out, “not different from being an inanimate object.” The person who practices samādhi does so by actively participating in the world. There is no separation from daily activities; in fact it may be said that it can only be fully realized within activity. Huineng quotes from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra to make just this point: “Externally he is skilled at distinguishing all the various forms of existence, while internally he remains unmoved in the First Principle.”105 This verse from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra is also an indicator as to why the distinction between lay and ordained life ceases to be of fundamental importance. The monk in earlier traditions had access to the proper environmental conditions necessary to cultivate both mental and physical stillness. But if such conditions were truly the prerequisite of enlightenment, the person in the work-a-day world would of course stand little chance of becoming enlightened. However, once internal stillness becomes the only requirement, anyone now who was willing to put in the practice could in fact become a Buddha. Moreover, “practice” for Huineng is contemplating and reflection on Zen principles in the context of one’s everyday experience. Thus, Huineng says, “If you wish to practice, it is possible even as a lay disciple; it has nothing to do with life in a monastery.”106 Finally, we should also observe that Huineng also never sees
For Huineng, “sitting in a motionless posture and eliminating deluded thoughts without invoking a false mind” is, he wryly points out, “not different from being an inanimate object.” The person who practices samādhi does so by actively participating in the world. There is no separation from daily activities; in fact it may be said that it can only be fully realized within activity. Huineng quotes from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra to make just this point: “Externally he is skilled at distinguishing all the various forms of existence, while internally he remains unmoved in the First Principle.”105 This verse from the Vimalakīrti Sūtra is also an indicator as to why the distinction between lay and ordained life ceases to be of fundamental importance. The monk in earlier traditions had access to the proper environmental conditions necessary to cultivate both mental and physical stillness. But if such conditions were truly the prerequisite of enlightenment, the person in the work-a-day world would of course stand little chance of becoming enlightened. However, once internal stillness becomes the only requirement, anyone now who was willing to put in the practice could in fact become a Buddha. Moreover, “practice” for Huineng is contemplating and reflection on Zen principles in the context of one’s everyday experience. Thus, Huineng says, “If you wish to practice, it is possible even as a lay disciple; it has nothing to do with life in a monastery.”106 Finally, we should also observe that Huineng also never sees