Examination of Views

Was I someone before this life? Will I be someone after it? Has the world always existed, and will it ever end? These are some of the oldest questions people ask, and some of the most anxious. In the Buddha's time teachers built whole systems on their answers, and the Buddha famously refused to answer them at all. This last chapter asks why the refusal was right.

It gathers up the whole work. The tool is one used again and again since Chapter 1: is the thing the same as what it depends on, or different from it? Applied to the self of past and future lives, both answers fail, as they failed for fire and fuel in Chapter 10 and for the self in Chapter 18. Then the views about the world fail in the same way. The text ends where it began: with a bow to the Buddha, who taught in order to let go of all views.

The verses

The translation is new, made from the Sanskrit for this site. The Sanskrit is given above each verse; it follows the GRETIL e-text (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Views that rest on a beginning and an end

The chapter opens with a list (27.1–2). One group of views looks back: 'I existed in the past', 'I did not exist', and with them 'the world is permanent', 'the world is not permanent', and so on. These rest on the earlier limit, a beginning. The other group looks forward: 'I will exist', 'I will not exist', 'I will be someone else', and 'the world has an end', 'it has no end'. These rest on the later limit. Each question has the familiar four corners: yes, no, both, neither.

Did I exist in the past?

Take the first view: 'I existed in the past' (27.3). Suppose there was a person in an earlier life, and you are that very person. But look at what makes a person: a body, feelings, perceptions, habits, awareness, the five aggregates, which the verses call 'what is taken up' (upādāna). The body of that earlier person is gone. The feelings and thoughts are gone. What is taken up now is different (27.4). So what is it that stayed the same? Something apart from all of that?

Here the argument of Chapter 18 returns, in four steps.

Not something apart (27.4–5). A self apart from the body and mind is never found. Try to locate it, as distinct from the sensations, thoughts and awareness going on now, and nothing is there to point to.

Not the aggregates themselves (27.6). Then is the self simply the body and mind? But they arise and pass away, moment by moment. A self that was the passing aggregates would pass away with them, and nothing would be 'the same' as the past person. Worse, what is taken up cannot be the one who takes it up, any more than the fuel is the fire.

Not other than them (27.7). If the self were something different from the aggregates, it would be seen on its own, without them. It never is.

But not nothing either (27.8). So the self is neither the aggregates nor other than them. That does not mean there is no self at all. The verse says so plainly: the self is not non-existent either, and this is its conclusion (niścaya). Like the chariot, the self is designated in dependence on its parts. It is neither the parts nor something else, and yet it is there as designated, acting and experiencing.

Or did I not exist?

Then perhaps the opposite: 'I did not exist in the past' (27.9). That is, the person in the earlier life was someone entirely other than you. This fails in the other direction. If you were wholly other than that earlier person, you could exist even if that person had never lived (27.10). That person could carry on as they were, or you could be born without their having died. The connection that makes it a series of lives would be gone.

And the consequences matter (27.11). If the earlier and later persons were wholly other, the stream would be cut off. What was done would be lost, with no result. Or one person would act and a stranger would reap the result. Nor could you simply come into being from nothing, with no past at all (27.12). Then the self would be something newly made, like a pot, which is not the self the view had in mind; or it would arise without a cause, which Chapter 1 ruled out (1.1).

So none of the four views about the past holds (27.13): not 'I existed', not 'I did not exist', not both, not neither. And the views about the future, 'Will I exist?' and 'I will not exist', fall in exactly the same way (27.14). This is the middle way between the two great fears: that something of me must last for ever, and that at death I am simply wiped out.

God and human: permanent or not?

Verses 27.15–20 test the views about permanence with a traditional example: a being reborn as a god and later as a human. If the god and the human were exactly the same, the being would be permanent (27.15). But then the god would never have been born, for what is permanent is not born. If the human were wholly other than the god, the being would be impermanent, and there would be no continuity between them at all (27.16). Half god and half human will not do either: that would be permanent and impermanent at once (27.17). And if 'both' cannot be established, neither can 'neither' (27.18), which only makes sense against the other two.

Verse 27.19 adds a quiet point. If there were someone who came from somewhere and went on somewhere else, saṃsāra would truly be without beginning: one traveller, walking for ever. But there is no such someone. And if nothing is found that is permanent, nothing is found to be impermanent either (27.20). Permanence and impermanence, like long and short, are named together.

Does the world have an end?

The last group of views looks to the future of the world (27.21–28). If the world had an end, how could there be a next world? If it were endless, how could there be a next one, either? Both pictures freeze the world: one cuts it off, the other makes it one unending thing.

The answer is the lamp (27.22). The continuum of the aggregates goes on like the flame of a lamp. The flame at midnight is not the flame at dusk; the oil and air that feed it have all been replaced. Yet it is not an unrelated flame; each moment of burning arises in dependence on the one before. Such a series is neither endless nor with an end, because there is no single thing there to last for ever or to stop.

The remaining verses close the exits (27.23–28). If the earlier aggregates perished and the later did not arise from them, the world would end. If the earlier did not perish, and the later did not need to arise from them, it would be endless. Could part of the world end and part go on? Then part of the person who takes up the aggregates would perish and part would not, or part of what is taken up would perish and part would not. Neither makes sense, because a person and the aggregates are not split into a lasting half and a perishing half. And 'neither ending nor endless', taken as one more position, depends on the first two.

All views let go

Then the chapter steps back (27.29). Or rather, says Nāgārjuna, since all things are empty, where would views like 'permanent' arise, for whom, which ones, and why? In the end the sixteen views do not need to be refuted one by one. They lose their footing all at once, because each needed a self or a world with a nature of its own to be about.

'Letting go of all views' does not mean having no opinions, or refusing to say anything. Nāgārjuna has argued all through the book, and the Buddha taught for decades. Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa read it this way: what is abandoned are views that grasp at things as existing from their own side. A view in that sense is a way of holding on. Right view, the seeing of emptiness, is not one more thing to cling to; it is what loosens the clinging. As Chapter 13 warns, one who makes emptiness itself into a view is beyond help.

And the text ends as it began, with a bow (27.30): to Gautama, who out of compassion taught the true Dharma so that all views could be let go. The first chapter opened with a bow to the Buddha who taught dependent arising as the quieting of elaborations. The last closes with a bow to the same teacher for the same gift. Even here the key word of the work returns: he taught 'taking up' (upādāya) compassion, the word used for designation in dependence (24.18). The teaching, too, arose in dependence: on compassion, for those who suffer.

What is left standing

None of this denies past lives, future lives, or the moral weight of what we do. Continuity is kept: one life conditions the next, as one flame lights another, and actions bear their results. Responsibility is kept: the mere I designated on body and mind keeps its promises and meets the results of what it has done. What is removed is the traveller, the self that would walk unchanged from life to life, and its shadow, the self that would be wiped out at death. The fear of both goes with them.

Try it with an old photograph of yourself as a child. Is that child you? Not simply: every cell, every thought has changed. Someone else? Not simply: your family, your memories and your name run straight from that afternoon to this one. Neither the same nor different, the child is you as designated. Nothing had to travel through the years for that to be true.

The whole text in one bow

Looking back over the twenty-seven chapters, one movement repeats. Each chapter takes something we are sure of, conditions, motion, the senses, the self, time, the Buddha, nirvāṇa, and asks whether it is found standing on its own. Each time it asks whether the thing is the same as what it depends on or other than it, and each time both answers fail. And each time, the thing is still there, working, as designated: the sprout grows, the walker walks, the fire burns, the path leads to freedom.

That is what the homage of Chapter 1 promised: dependent arising, without arising and without ceasing, without coming and without going, the quieting of elaborations, peace. The text does not end in a new theory. It ends in letting go, and in gratitude.

In the books

The two books take up this chapter's themes in several places.

• Chapter 9, The Reconceptualization of Continuity (The Logical Necessity of a Substrateless World): 'Continuity Without Persistence', where 'the same person' is designated on moments that are neither identical nor wholly different (MMK 27), with the candle burning through the night; also 'Freedom from Permanence and Annihilation' and 'Objection: If No One Persists, Who Is Responsible?'.
• Chapter 8, States of Awareness, Deep Sleep, and Death, the section 'Objection: Doesn't This Evade the Question of Rebirth?': Nāgasena's lamp, neither the same nor another.

Read also: Neither Carried Nor Cut, on continuity with nothing carried over and nothing cut off.

Talks on YouTube:

• Core Logic 2: The Identity vs. Difference Paradox (on MMK Chapter 10; the same logic used here).

Words to know

• View (dṛṣṭi): a position held as true about how things are in themselves; here, a way of holding on.
• Earlier limit (pūrvānta) and later limit (aparānta): a beginning and an end, on which the views rest.
• What is taken up (upādāna): the aggregates of body and mind on which a self is designated.
• The one who takes up (upādātṛ): the self, designated in dependence on what it takes up.
• Continuum (saṃtāna): a series of moments, like a flame, with nothing carried through it.
• Permanence and annihilation (śāśvata, uccheda): the two extremes about the self, lasting for ever or wiped out.