In trying to define the difference between conventional and ultimate truth, the Mādhyamika Buddhist author Jñānagarbha ends up in paradoxical formulations. Putnam's discussion of Nietzsche's remark that “as the circle of science grows larger it touches paradox at more places” is presented as an illustration for Jñānagarbha's case. No comparison of Putnam and Jñānagarbha is intended as regards the contents of their presentations, the focus being only on the logical form of their argumentation. The paradoxical nature of Jñānagarbha's doctrinal system (...) is explained to derive from the logical incompleteness of formal systems. The paradox is also explained to work as a direction arrow pointing to what can only be realised in a mystical experience. (shrink)

Jñanagarbha's Commentary on the Distinction between the Two Truths: An Eighth Century Handbook of Madhyamaka Philosophy. Malcolm David Eckel., State University of New York Press, Albany 1989. 220 pp. Hbk $34.50, pbk $10.95.

Although Candrakīrti has been a focus in the recent scholarly attention on conventional reality in Buddhist philosophy, the complexity of his discussions of the status of phenomenal world on the surface or conventional level has not been adequately explored. In cataloging the wide-ranging interpretations that Candrakīrti has offered, this paper identifies several clusters of connected ideas that are delineated here as dimensions of Candrakīrti’s conventional reality. It will be shown that his thoughts on the subject have divergent orientations, ranging from (...) commonsensical to technical. Thus, on the one hand, conventional reality represents the beliefs and consensus that ordinary people share about their world, while, on the other, traditional Madhyamaka, grammar, and Abhidharma discourses are used to provide linguistic and Buddhist doctrinal outlines of that same reality. The mobilization of available resources affords Candrakīrti several layers of articulation, as it does again for the eighth-century writers Jñānagarbha and Śāntarakṣita, who bring Dharmakīrti’s thought and Yogācāra philosophy to bear on the Madhyamaka theory of conventional reality. (shrink)