The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way
N g rjuna's M lamadhyamakak rik · Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way · dBu-ma rtsa-ba shes-rab · Madhyamakak rik · Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (restitución propuesta de los diacríticos que el troceo pierde; ver Notas de carga)
El volumen es doble y lo declara desde la portada: bajo el título va la línea que adjudica el texto raíz a N g rjuna y debajo la que declara la traducción y el comentario de Jay L. Garfield «Garfield — The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Nāgārjuna, 1995) · p. 3». La obra raíz es un tratado en verso que la plana de derechos fecha en el siglo II y adscribe a N g rjuna, y el libro que se ficha es la traducción inglesa que Garfield hace de él, más su comentario verso por verso «Garfield — The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Nāgārjuna, 1995) · p. 4».
Garfield declara que no traduce del sánscrito sino del tibetano, y da sus razones: ninguna de las cuatro versiones inglesas anteriores —Streng, Inada, Sprung, Kalupahana— refleja la lectura Pr sa gika-M dhyamika indotibetana, que es la suya y la dominante en el Tíbet; y el texto tibetano es el que generaciones de filósofos tibetanos leyeron y comentaron, de modo que merece traducción por sí mismo «Garfield — The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Nāgārjuna, 1995) · p. 7». Declara también lo que el libro NO es: ni edición crítica, ni trabajo filológico, ni discusión de la literatura comentarial «Garfield — The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Nāgārjuna, 1995) · p. 8».
El texto raíz se divide en veintisiete capítulos y su tema central es la vacuidad, que Garfield glosa como el término técnico budista para la falta de existencia independiente, de existencia inherente o de esencia en las cosas; la tesis doble es que los fenómenos carecen de existencia inherente y a la vez son convencionalmente reales, y descansa sobre la doctrina de las dos verdades «Garfield — The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Nāgārjuna, 1995) · p. 87». La vacuidad misma es vacía: no es un vacío autoexistente detrás del velo de la realidad convencional, sino una característica de ella «Garfield — The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Nāgārjuna, 1995) · p. 89».
El volumen imprime el texto dos veces. PART ONE da los versos corridos, sin aparato «Garfield — The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Nāgārjuna, 1995) · p. 17»; PART TWO repite los veintisiete capítulos intercalando el comentario de Garfield después de cada verso o grupo de versos «Garfield — The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Nāgārjuna, 1995) · p. 86». Cierran el volumen las References, el índice onomástico y las ciento cuarenta notas «Garfield — The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Nāgārjuna, 1995) · p. 297».
584 afirmaciones · 1 fuente · 1 atribución
Atribución
se consigna, jamás se afirma«Garfield — The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Nāgārjuna, 1995) · p. 3»
Cadena de la obra
el testimonio procesado, en esmeraldaAfirmaciones
584 entradas — la voz de la obra, con su pasaje«I prostrate to the Perfect Buddha, The best of teachers, who taught that Whatever is dependently arisen is Unceasing, unborn, Unannihilated, not permanent, Not coming, not going, Without distinction, without identity, And free from conceptual construction.» — los versos dedicatorios con que abre el tratado: N g rjuna postra ante el Buda por haber enseñado el originarse dependiente bajo ocho negaciones, sin cesación ni nacimiento, sin aniquilación ni permanencia, sin ir ni venir, sin distinción ni identidad. El volumen los imprime dos veces y se anclan en la primera
«Neither from itself nor from another, Nor from both, Nor without a cause, Does anything whatever, anywhere arise.» — I.1, el verso que abre el tratado: N g rjuna niega las cuatro posibilidades del surgimiento (de sí, de otro, de ambos, sin causa) para cualquier cosa y en cualquier lugar. Los versos están impresos dos veces en el volumen y se anclan en la primera
«There are four conditions: efficient condition; Percept-object condition; immediate condition; Dominant condition, just so. There is no fifth condition.» — I.2: N g rjuna enumera las cuatro condiciones que sí admite y cierra la lista
«The essence of entities Is not present in the conditions, etc …. If there is no essence, There can be no otherness-essence.» — I.3: N g rjuna niega que la esencia de los entes esté en las condiciones, y de ahí que tampoco quepa una esencia de otro
«Power to act does not have conditions. There is no power to act without conditions. There are no conditions without power to act. Nor do any have the power to act.» — I.4: N g rjuna desarma en cuatro pasos la relación entre la capacidad de obrar y las condiciones
«For neither an existent nor a non-existent thing Is a condition appropriate. If a thing is non-existent, how could it have a condition? If a thing is already existent, what would a condition do?» — I.6: N g rjuna objeta la condición por ambos lados, lo inexistente y lo ya existente
«If things did not exist Without essence, The phrase, “When this exists so this will be,” Would not be acceptable.» — I.10: N g rjuna ata la fórmula canónica del originarse dependiente a la falta de esencia
«If the effect’s essence is the conditions, But the conditions don’t have their own essence, How could an effect whose essence is the conditions Come from something that is essenceless?» — I.13: N g rjuna hace notar que las condiciones no tienen esencia propia, de modo que un efecto cuya esencia fueran las condiciones vendría de lo que carece de esencia
«Therefore, neither with conditions as their essence, Nor with non-conditions as their essence are there any effects. If there are no such effects, How could conditions or non-conditions be evident?» — I.14, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna niega los efectos por los dos lados y con ellos la evidencia misma de condiciones y no condiciones
«What has been moved is not moving. What has not been moved is not moving. Apart from what has been moved and what has not been moved, Movement cannot be conceived.» — II.1, apertura del examen del movimiento: N g rjuna descompone el moverse en lo ya movido, lo no movido y lo que se mueve, y niega que fuera de los dos primeros quepa concebirlo
«Where there is change, there is motion. Since there is change in the moving, And not in the moved or not-moved, Motion is in that which is moving.» — II.2: N g rjuna localiza el movimiento en lo que se está moviendo, por ser ahí donde hay cambio
«If motion is in the mover. There would have to be a twofold motion: One in virtue of which it is a mover, And one in virtue of which it moves.» — II.5: N g rjuna saca la consecuencia del doble movimiento si el movimiento estuviera en el móvil
«Motion does not begin in what has moved, Nor does it begin in what has not moved. Nor does it begin in what is moving. In what, then, does motion begin?» — II.12: N g rjuna niega el comienzo del movimiento en los tres tiempos y deja la pregunta abierta
«That motion just is the mover itself Is not correct. Nor is it correct that They are completely different.» — II.18: N g rjuna rechaza a la vez la identidad y la diferencia total entre el movimiento y el que se mueve
«When neither in identity Nor in difference Can they be established, How can these two be established at all?» — II.21: N g rjuna cierra el dilema de identidad y diferencia preguntando cómo podrían quedar en pie entonces ninguno de los dos
«Neither an entity nor a non-entity Moves in any of the three ways. So motion, mover and And route are non-existent.» — II.25, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna declara inexistentes el movimiento, el móvil y la ruta
«Seeing, hearing, smelling, Tasting, touching, and mind Are the six sense faculties. Their spheres are the visible objects, etc» — III.1: N g rjuna enumera las seis facultades sensoriales, con la mente entre ellas, y sus esferas
«That very seeing does not see Itself at all. How can something that cannot see itself See another?» — III.2: N g rjuna objeta que la visión pueda verse a sí misma, y de ahí que pueda ver otra cosa
«Without detachment from vision there is no seer. Nor is there a seer detached from it. If there is no seer How can there be seeing or the seen?» — III.6: N g rjuna niega que haya vidente separable de la visión ni visión sin vidente
«Just as the birth of a son is said to occur In dependence on the mother and father, So consciousness is said to arise In dependence on the eye and material form.» — III.7: N g rjuna da el símil del hijo que nace en dependencia de madre y padre para el surgir dependiente de la consciencia
«Apart from the cause of form, Form cannot be conceived. Apart from form, The cause of form is not seen.» — IV.1, apertura del examen de los agregados: N g rjuna niega que la forma se conciba aparte de su causa ni la causa aparte de la forma
«Form itself without a cause Is not possible or tenable. Therefore, think about form, but Do not construct theories about form.» — IV.5: N g rjuna manda pensar la forma y no construir teorías sobre ella
«Feelings, discriminations, and dispositions And consciousness and all such things Should be thought of In the same way as material form.» — IV.7: N g rjuna extiende el análisis de la forma a los otros cuatro agregados
«When an explanation is made through emptiness, Whoever would find fault with it Will find no fault, since the criticism will presuppose Exactly what is to be proven.» — IV.9, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna sostiene que quien objete una explicación hecha por la vacuidad no hallará falla, porque la crítica presupone lo que había que probar
«Prior to a characteristic of space There is not the slightest space. If it arose prior to the characteristic Then it would, absurdly, arise without a characteristic.» — V.1, apertura del examen de los elementos: N g rjuna niega que haya espacio antes de su característica
«Neither in the uncharacterized nor in the characterized Does a characteristic arise. Nor does it arise In something different from these two.» — V.3: N g rjuna niega el surgir de la característica por las tres vías
«Therefore, space is not an entity. It is not a nonentity. Not characterized, not without character. The same is true of the other five elements.» — V.7: N g rjuna niega del espacio la entidad y la no entidad, lo caracterizado y lo no caracterizado, y extiende el resultado a los otros cinco elementos
«Fools and reificationists who perceive The existence and nonexistence Of objects» — V.8, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna llama necios y reificadores a quienes perciben la existencia y la inexistencia de los objetos. El verso salta de plana y termina en la siguiente con *Do not see the pacification of objectification*
«If prior to desire And without desire there were a desirous one, Desire would depend on him. Desire would exist when there is a desirous one.» — VI.1, apertura del examen del deseo y el deseoso: N g rjuna toma la hipótesis de que el deseoso preceda al deseo
«In identity there is no simultaneity. A thing is not simultaneous with itself. But if there is difference, Then how would there be simultaneity?» — VI.4: N g rjuna niega la simultaneidad por los dos lados, el de la identidad y el de la diferencia
«Thus desire and the desirous one Cannot be established as simultaneous or not simultaneous. So, like desire, nothing whatever Can be established either as simultaneous or as nonsimultaneous.» — VI.10, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna generaliza de la pareja deseo y deseoso a cualquier cosa. El troceo imprime aquí una palabra por renglón y el tramo conserva esa disposición
«If arising were produced, Then it would also have the three characteristics. If arising is not produced, How could the characteristics of the produced exist?» — VII.1, apertura del examen de lo condicionado: N g rjuna atrapa al surgir entre tener las tres características y no tenerlas
«If arising, abiding, and ceasing Have characteristics other than those of the produced, There would be an infinite regress. If they don’t, they would not be produced.» — VII.3: N g rjuna plantea el regreso al infinito de las características del surgir, el permanecer y el cesar
«Just as a butterlamp Illuminates itself as well as others, So arising gives rise to itself» — VII.8: N g rjuna recoge el símil de la lámpara de mantequilla que su oponente usa para el surgir que se produce a sí mismo. El verso salta de plana y termina en la siguiente con *And to other arisen things*
«In the butterlamp and its place, There is no darkness. What then does the butterlamp illuminate? For illumination is the clearing of darkness.» — VII.9: N g rjuna objeta el símil de la lámpara: donde está la lámpara no hay oscuridad, y la iluminación es el disipar la oscuridad
«If, when it is illuminated, The butterlamp illuminates itself and others, Darkness should, without a doubt, Conceal itself and others.» — VII.12: N g rjuna devuelve el símil al oponente, y de la lámpara que se ilumina a sí misma saca la oscuridad que se oculta a sí misma
«Inasmuch as the nature of all things Is aging and death, Without aging and death, What existents can endure?» — VII.24: N g rjuna pone el envejecer y el morir como naturaleza de todas las cosas y de ahí niega la permanencia
«Moreover, for a nonentity, Cessation would be untenable. Just as a second beheading Cannot be performed.» — VII.31: N g rjuna niega la cesación de una no entidad con el símil de la segunda decapitación
«Like a dream, like an illusion, Like a city of Gandharvas, So have arising, abiding, And ceasing been explained.» — VII.34, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna resume el surgir, el permanecer y el cesar bajo tres símiles, el sueño, la ilusión y la ciudad de los Gandharvas
«Such a thing is essentially peaceful. Therefore that which is arising and arising itself Are themselves peaceful.» — VII.16: N g rjuna declara esencialmente apacible lo que surge dependientemente, y con ello el surgir mismo. El verso abre con *Whatever is dependently arisen*, fórmula que el volumen usa también en los versos dedicatorios
«This existent agent Does not perform an existent action. Nor does some nonexistent agent Perform some nonexistent action.» — VIII.1, apertura del examen del agente y la acción: N g rjuna niega el par por los dos extremos, el existente y el inexistente
«If there are no effects, liberation and Paths to higher realms will not exist. So all of activity Would be without purpose.» — VIII.6: N g rjuna consigna la objeción soteriológica que se sigue de negar los efectos, que sin ellos ni la liberación ni los caminos a los reinos altos existirían
«Action depends upon the agent. The agent itself depends on action. One cannot see any way To establish them differently.» — VIII.12: N g rjuna hace mutuamente dependientes la acción y el agente y niega que haya otro modo de fijarlos
«From this elimination of agent and action, One should elucidate appropriation in the same way. Through action and agent All remaining things should be understood.» — VIII.13, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna extiende el resultado a la apropiación y a todo lo demás
«Since sight and hearing, etc., and Feeling, etc., exist, He who has and uses them Must exist prior to those, some say.» — IX.1, apertura del examen de la entidad previa: N g rjuna pone en boca de otros la tesis de que quien usa los sentidos debe preceder a los sentidos
«Someone is disclosed by something. Something is disclosed by someone. Without something how can someone exist? Without someone how can something exist?» — IX.5: N g rjuna hace mutua la revelación entre el alguien y el algo
«If the seer itself is distinct, The hearer is distinct and the feeler is distinct, Then when there is a seer there would also be a hearer, And there would have to be many selves.» — IX.9: N g rjuna saca del vidente distinto del oidor y del sintiente la consecuencia de muchos yoes
«If fuel were fire Then agent and action would be one. If fire were different from fuel, Then it could arise without fuel.» — X.1, apertura del examen del fuego y el combustible: N g rjuna atrapa el par entre la identidad, que haría uno al agente y la acción, y la diferencia, que haría arder sin combustible
«Just as a man and a woman Connect to one another as man and woman, So if fire were different from fuel, Fire and fuel would have to be fit for connection.» — X.6: N g rjuna toma el símil del hombre y la mujer que su oponente usa para la conexión entre fuego y combustible
«Through discussion of fire and fuel, The self and the aggregates, the pot and cloth All together, Without remainder have been explained.» — X.15: N g rjuna extiende el análisis del fuego y el combustible al yo y los agregados, y a la olla y la tela
«I do not think that Those who teach that the self Is the same as or different from the entities Understand the meaning of the doctrine.» — X.16, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna niega que entiendan la doctrina quienes enseñan el yo como idéntico a los entes o distinto de ellos
«When asked about the beginning, The Great Sage said that nothing is known of it. Cyclic existence is without end and beginning. So there is no beginning or end.» — XI.1, apertura del examen de los límites inicial y final: N g rjuna consigna que el Gran Sabio respondió que del comienzo nada se sabe, y declara la existencia cíclica sin principio ni fin
«If birth came first, And then old age and death, Then birth would be ageless and deathless, And a deathless one would be born.» — XI.3: N g rjuna objeta el orden en que el nacimiento precede a la vejez y la muerte
«Not only is cyclic existence itself without beginning, No existent has a beginning: Neither cause and effect; Nor character and characterized» — XI.7: N g rjuna extiende la falta de comienzo de la existencia cíclica a todo existente. El verso continúa en las planas siguientes con *Nor feeling and the feeler* y termina en la plana 43 con *Are without beginning*
«Some say suffering is self-produced, Or produced from another or from both. Or that it arises without a cause. It is not the kind of thing to be produced.» — XII.1, apertura del examen del sufrimiento: N g rjuna enumera las cuatro tesis ajenas sobre su producción y niega que el sufrimiento sea cosa producible
«If suffering came from itself, Then it would not arise dependently. For those aggregates Arise in dependence on these aggregates.» — XII.2: N g rjuna objeta el sufrimiento autoproducido porque entonces no surgiría dependientemente
«Not only does suffering not exist In any of the fourfold ways: No external entity exists In any of the fourfold ways.» — XII.10, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna extiende el resultado del sufrimiento a toda entidad externa
«The Victorious Conqueror has said that whatever Is deceptive is false. Compounded phenomena are all deceptive. Therefore they are all false.» — XIII.1, apertura del examen de los fenómenos compuestos: N g rjuna cita al Conquistador Victorioso para declarar falso lo engañoso y engañosos todos los fenómenos compuestos
«If whatever is deceptive is false, What deceives? The Victorious Conqueror has said about this That emptiness is completely true.» — XIII.2: N g rjuna se plantea la objeción a su propio paso y la responde con la palabra del Conquistador Victorioso sobre la verdad de la vacuidad
«If a thing itself changed, Milk itself would be curd. Or curd would have come to be An entity different from milk.» — XIII.6: N g rjuna objeta el cambio de la cosa misma con el ejemplo de la leche y la cuajada
«If there were even a trifle nonempty, Emptiness itself would be but a trifle. But not even a trifle is nonempty. How could emptiness be an entity?» — XIII.7: N g rjuna ata la vacuidad a que nada sea no vacío, y de ahí niega que la vacuidad sea una entidad
«The victorious ones have said That emptiness is the relinquishing of all views. For whomever emptiness is a view» — XIII.8: N g rjuna declara la vacuidad como el abandono de todas las vistas, y advierte contra tomarla como una vista más. El verso salta de plana y termina en la siguiente con *That one will accomplish nothing*
«The seen, seeing, and the seer: These three—pairwise or All together— Do not connect to one another.» — XIV.1, apertura del examen de la conexión: N g rjuna niega que lo visto, el ver y el vidente se conecten entre sí
«Difference is not in a different thing. Nor is it in a nondifferent thing. If difference does not exist, Neither different nor identical things exist.» — XIV.7: N g rjuna niega la diferencia por los dos lados y con ella lo diferente y lo idéntico
«That does not connect to itself. Nor do different things connect to one another. Neither connection nor Connected nor connector exist.» — XIV.8, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna niega la conexión, lo conectado y el conector
«Essence arising from Causes and conditions makes no sense. If essence came from causes and conditions, Then it would be fabricated.» — XV.1, apertura del examen de la esencia: N g rjuna niega que una esencia pueda surgir de causas y condiciones sin volverse fabricada
«Those who see essence and essential difference And entities and nonentities, They do not see The truth taught by the Buddha.» — XV.6: N g rjuna niega que vean la verdad enseñada por el Buda quienes ven esencia, diferencia esencial, entidades y no entidades
«The Victorious One, through knowledge Of reality and unreality, In the Discourse to Katy y na, Refuted both» — XV.7: N g rjuna apoya su negación de los dos extremos en el Discurso a Katy y na del Victorioso. El verso termina con las dos fórmulas entrecomilladas *it is* y *it is not*, que no entran aquí para no doblar las comillas
«For fabricated essence to come to be? Essence itself is not artificial And does not depend on another.» — XV.2: N g rjuna define la esencia por lo que no es artificial y no depende de otro. El verso abre con *How could it be appropriate*
«To say “it is” is to grasp for permanence. To say “it is not” is to adopt the view of nihilism. Therefore a wise person Does not say “exists” or “does not exist.”» — XV.10: N g rjuna adjudica el es al eternalismo y el no es al nihilismo, y le quita al sabio las dos fórmulas
«Whatever exists through its essence Cannot be nonexistent” is eternalism. “It existed before but doesn’t now” Entails the error of nihilism.» — XV.11, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna nombra los dos errores, el eternalismo y el nihilismo, por las fórmulas que los enuncian
«If compounded phenomena transmigrate, They do not transmigrate as permanent. If they are impermanent they do not transmigrate. The same approach applies to sentient beings.» — XVI.1, apertura del examen de la atadura: N g rjuna niega la transmigración por los dos lados, lo permanente y lo impermanente, y la extiende a los seres sintientes
«All compounded phenomena, as arising and ceasing things, Are not bound and not released. For this reason a sentient being Is not bound, not released.» — XVI.5: N g rjuna niega a la vez la atadura y la liberación de los fenómenos compuestos y del ser sintiente
«Whoever grasps like this Has a great grasping.» — XVI.9: N g rjuna llama gran aferramiento al propósito mismo de alcanzar el nirv a sin aferrarse; el verso pone esa frase en boca de quien lo dice
«Self-restraint and benefiting others With a compassionate mind is the Dharma. This is the seed for Fruits in this and future lives.» — XVII.1, apertura del examen de las acciones y sus frutos: N g rjuna define el Dharma por el dominio de sí y el beneficio de otros con mente compasiva, y lo llama semilla de frutos en esta vida y en las futuras
«The Unsurpassed Sage has said That actions are either intention or intentional. The varieties of these actions Have been announced in many ways.» — XVII.2: N g rjuna consigna la división de las acciones del Sabio Insuperable entre intención e intencional
«If until the time of ripening Action had to remain in place, it would have to be permanent. If it has ceased, then having ceased, How will a fruit arise?» — XVII.6: N g rjuna plantea el dilema del fruto: si la acción permanece hasta madurar sería permanente, y si cesó no puede dar fruto
«As for a continuum, such as the sprout, It comes from a seed. From that arises the fruit. Without a seed, It would not come into being.» — XVII.7: N g rjuna expone la salida del continuo con el ejemplo de la semilla y el brote
«Action is like an uncancelled promissory note And like a debt. Of the realms it is fourfold. Moreover, its nature is neutral.» — XVII.14: N g rjuna recoge la figura del pagaré no cancelado y de la deuda para la acción, y declara neutra su naturaleza
«Emptiness and nonannihilation; Cyclic existence and nonpermanence: That action is nonexpiring Is taught by the Buddha.» — XVII.20: N g rjuna adjudica al Buda la enseñanza de que la acción no expira, junto con la vacuidad sin aniquilación
«If action had an essence, It would, without doubt, be eternal. Action would be uncreated. Because there can be no creation of what is eternal.» — XVII.22: N g rjuna saca de la esencia de la acción su eternidad y de ahí que fuera increada
«All conventions would then Be contradicted, without doubt. It would be impossible to draw a distinction Between virtue and evil.» — XVII.24: N g rjuna carga sobre la tesis de la esencia la contradicción de todas las convenciones y la imposibilidad de distinguir virtud de mal
«Just as the teacher, by magic, Makes a magical illusion, and By that illusion Another illusion is created,» — XVII.31: N g rjuna introduce el símil del maestro que por magia crea una ilusión y por ella otra
«Afflictions, actions, bodies, Agents and fruits are Like a city of Gandharvas and Like a mirage or a dream.» — XVII.33, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna pone aflicciones, acciones, cuerpos, agentes y frutos bajo los símiles de la ciudad de los Gandharvas, el espejismo y el sueño
«Whoever is not bound does not get released. If a bound one were being released, Bondage and release would occur simultaneously.» — XVI.8: N g rjuna cierra la pinza sobre el atado y el liberado; si el atado se estuviera liberando, atadura y liberación ocurrirían a la vez. El verso arranca en la plana anterior con *Whoever is bound is not released*
«If the self were the aggregates, It would have arising and ceasing (as properties). If it were different from the aggregates, It would not have the characteristics of the aggregates.» — XVIII.1, apertura del examen del yo y los entes: N g rjuna atrapa el yo entre ser los agregados y ser distinto de ellos
«Action and misery having ceased, there is nirv a. Action and misery come from conceptual thought. This comes from mental fabrication. Fabrication ceases through emptiness.» — XVIII.5: N g rjuna encadena acción y miseria al pensamiento conceptual y a la fabricación mental, y declara que la fabricación cesa por la vacuidad
«That there is a self has been taught, And the doctrine of no-self, By the buddhas, as well as the Doctrine of neither self nor nonself.» — XVIII.6: N g rjuna consigna las tres enseñanzas de los budas sobre el yo sin armonizarlas, la del yo, la del no yo y la de ni uno ni otro
«Everything is real and is not real, Both real and not real, Neither real nor not real.» — XVIII.8: N g rjuna enuncia el tetralema sobre lo real. El verso salta de plana y termina en la siguiente con *This is Lord Buddha's teaching*
«Not dependent on another, peaceful and Not fabricated by mental fabrication, Not thought, without distinctions, That is the character of reality» — XVIII.9: N g rjuna caracteriza lo real por lo no dependiente, apacible, no fabricado por la fabricación mental y sin distinciones
«By the buddhas, patrons of the world, This immortal truth is taught: Without identity, without distinction; Not nonexistent in time, not permanent.» — XVIII.11: N g rjuna adjudica a los budas la enseñanza de esa verdad inmortal, sin identidad y sin distinción
«When the fully enlightened ones do not appear, And when the disciples have disappeared, The wisdom of the self-enlightened ones Will arise completely without a teacher.» — XVIII.12, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna consigna la sabiduría de los autoiluminados, que surge sin maestro cuando ya no aparecen los plenamente iluminados
«If the present and the future Depend on the past, Then the present and the future Would have existed in the past.» — XIX.1, apertura del examen del tiempo: N g rjuna saca del presente y el futuro dependientes del pasado que ya habrían existido en él
«A nonstatic time is not grasped. Nothing one could grasp as Stationary time exists. If time is not grasped, how is it known?» — XIX.5: N g rjuna niega que el tiempo se aprehenda, ni móvil ni quieto, y pregunta entonces cómo se lo conoce
«If time depends on an entity, Then without an entity how could time exist? There is no existent entity. So how can time exist?» — XIX.6, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna ata el tiempo a la entidad y, negada la entidad, niega el tiempo
«If, arising from the combination of Causes and conditions, The effect is in the combination, How could it arise from the combination?» — XX.1, apertura del examen de la combinación: N g rjuna toma el primer cuerno, que el efecto esté ya en la combinación de causas y condiciones
«Therefore, not made by combination, And not without a combination can the effect arise. If there is no effect, Where can there be a combination of conditions?» — XX.24, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna niega el efecto por la combinación y sin ella, y con el efecto se le va la combinación misma
«Destruction does not occur without becoming. It does not occur together with it.» — XXI.1, apertura del examen del devenir y la destrucción: N g rjuna niega el par tanto separado como junto
«How could there be destruction Without becoming? How could there be death without birth? There is no destruction without becoming.» — XXI.2: N g rjuna traduce el par al nacimiento y la muerte
«If you think you see both Destruction and becoming, Then you see destruction and becoming Through impaired vision.» — XXI.11: N g rjuna adjudica a visión dañada el ver a la vez destrucción y devenir
«Since the series of cyclic existence is not evident In the three times, If it is not in the three times, How could there be a series of cyclic existence?» — XXI.21, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna niega la serie de la existencia cíclica en los tres tiempos
«Neither the aggregates, nor different from the aggregates, The aggregates are not in him, nor is he in the aggregates. The Tath gata does not possess the aggregates. What is the Tath gata?» — XXII.1, apertura del examen del Tath gata: N g rjuna lo busca de las cinco maneras entre los agregados y no lo halla en ninguna
«There is no appropriation. There is no appropriator. Without appropriation How can there be a Tath gata?» — XXII.7: N g rjuna quita la apropiación y el apropiador, y con ellos el Tath gata
«For cause and effect to be identical Is not tenable. For cause and effect to be different Is not tenable.» — XX.19: N g rjuna niega a la vez la identidad y la diferencia entre causa y efecto
«An entity does not arise from an entity. An entity does not arise from a nonentity. A nonentity does not arise from a nonentity. A nonentity does not arise from an entity.» — XXI.12: N g rjuna cierra el tetralema del surgir entre entidad y no entidad
«If the cause is empty of an effect, How can it produce an effect? If the cause is not empty of an effect, How can it produce an effect?» — XX.16: N g rjuna pone la producción en aprieto por los dos lados, la causa vacía del efecto y la no vacía
«Thus grasping and grasper Together are empty in every respect. How can an empty Tath gata Be known through the empty?» — XXII.10: N g rjuna declara vacíos el aferrar y el aferrador y de ahí pregunta cómo conocer un Tath gata vacío por lo vacío
«Neither both nor neither should be asserted. They are only used nominally.» — XXII.11: N g rjuna retira las cuatro aserciones sobre lo vacío y lo no vacío y las deja como uso nominal. El verso abre con las fórmulas *Empty* y *Nonempty*, que no entran aquí para no doblar las comillas
«Since he is by nature empty, The thought that the Buddha Exists or does not exist After nirv a is not appropriate.» — XXII.14: N g rjuna niega que quepa pensar que el Buda exista o no exista después del nirv a, por ser vacío por naturaleza
«Whatever is the essence of the Tath gata, That is the essence of the world. The Tath gata has no essence. The world is without essence.» — XXII.16, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna iguala la esencia del Tath gata a la del mundo y niega las dos
«Desire, hatred and confusion all Arise from thought, it is said. They all depend on The pleasant, the unpleasant, and errors.» — XXIII.1, apertura del examen de los errores: N g rjuna hace nacer del pensamiento el deseo, el odio y la confusión, dependientes de lo agradable, lo desagradable y los errores
«The defilements are somebody’s. But that one has not been established. Without that possessor, The defilements are nobody» — XXIII.4: N g rjuna quita al poseedor de las impurezas y con él las deja sin dueño
«We say that the unpleasant Is dependent upon the pleasant, Since without depending on the pleasant there is none. It follows that the pleasant is not tenable.» — XXIII.10: N g rjuna hace depender lo desagradable de lo agradable y con ello lo declara insostenible
«That by means of which there is grasping, and the grasping, And the grasper, and all that is grasped: All are being relieved, It follows that there is no grasping.» — XXIII.15: N g rjuna retira el medio del aferrar, el aferrar, el aferrador y lo aferrado
«Thus, through the cessation of error Ignorance ceases. When ignorance ceases The compounded phenomena, etc., cease.» — XXIII.23: N g rjuna encadena el cese del error al cese de la ignorancia y al de los fenómenos compuestos
«If all of this is empty, Neither arising nor ceasing, Then for you, it follows that The Four Noble Truths do not exist.» — XXIV.1, apertura del examen de las Cuatro Nobles Verdades: N g rjuna pone en boca del oponente la objeción de que la vacuidad borraría las Cuatro Nobles Verdades
«If there is no doctrine and spiritual community, How can there be a Buddha? If emptiness is conceived in this way, The three jewels are contradicted.» — XXIV.5: el oponente cierra su objeción con las Tres Joyas contradichas por la vacuidad así entendida
«We say that this understanding of yours Of emptiness and the purpose of emptiness And of the significance of emptiness is incorrect. As a consequence you are harmed by it.» — XXIV.7: N g rjuna responde adjudicando el error al oponente, que entiende mal la vacuidad, su propósito y su significado
«Without a foundation in the conventional truth, The significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, Liberation is not achieved.» — XXIV.10: N g rjuna hace de la verdad convencional el fundamento sin el cual no se enseña lo último ni se alcanza la liberación
«By a misperception of emptiness A person of little intelligence is destroyed. Like a snake incorrectly seized Or like a spell incorrectly cast.» — XXIV.11: N g rjuna advierte del peligro de la vacuidad mal percibida con los símiles de la serpiente mal agarrada y el conjuro mal lanzado
«For him to whom emptiness is clear, Everything becomes clear. For him to whom emptiness is not clear, Nothing becomes clear.» — XXIV.14: N g rjuna ata la claridad de todo a la claridad de la vacuidad
«When you foist on us All of your errors You are like a man who has mounted his horse And has forgotten that very horse.» — XXIV.15: N g rjuna devuelve la objeción con el símil del jinete que olvidó el caballo que monta
«Whatever is dependently co-arisen That is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation, Is itself the middle way.» — XXIV.18, el verso que da nombre al camino medio: N g rjuna iguala lo coproducido dependientemente con la vacuidad, la declara designación dependiente y la identifica con el camino medio
«Something that is not dependently arisen, Such a thing does not exist. Therefore a nonempty thing Does not exist.» — XXIV.19: N g rjuna cierra el paso a lo no vacío negando que exista nada que no sea dependientemente surgido
«If the path had an essence, Cultivation would not be appropriate. If this path is indeed cultivated, It cannot have an essence.» — XXIV.24: N g rjuna saca de la esencia del camino que cultivarlo no tendría sentido
«If there is essence, the whole world Will be unarising, unceasing, And static. The entire phenomenal world Would be immutable.» — XXIV.38: N g rjuna saca de la esencia un mundo inmóvil, sin surgir ni cesar
«Whoever sees dependent arising Also sees suffering And its arising And its cessation as well as the path.» — XXIV.40, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna hace ver en el originarse dependiente las cuatro verdades, el sufrimiento, su surgir, su cese y el camino
«If someone’s defilements Existed through his essence, How could they be relinquished? Who could relinquish the existent? 25. If someone’s defilements Did not exist through his essence, How could they be relinquished? Who could relinquish the nonexistent?» — XXIII.24 y 25, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna atrapa el abandono de las impurezas por los dos lados, si existen por esencia y si no existen por ella
«The Buddha’s teaching of the Dharma Is based on two truths:» — XXIV.8: N g rjuna funda la enseñanza del Dharma en dos verdades. La enumeración salta de plana y sigue en la siguiente con *A truth of worldly convention And an ultimate truth*
«Emptiness itself is rejected. This would contradict All of the worldly conventions.» — XXIV.36: N g rjuna devuelve la carga al oponente, porque negar el originarse dependiente es rechazar la vacuidad y contradecir todas las convenciones mundanas. El verso arranca en la plana anterior con *If dependent arising is denied*
«Those who do not understand The distinction drawn between these two truths Do not understand The Buddha’s profound truth.» — XXIV.9: N g rjuna niega que entienda la verdad profunda del Buda quien no entiende la distinción entre las dos verdades
«Unrelinquished, unattained, Unannihilated, not permanent, Unarisen, unceased: This is how nirv a is described.» — XXV.3: N g rjuna describe el nirv a por seis negaciones, sin abandono ni logro, sin aniquilación ni permanencia, sin surgir ni cesar. El troceo parte la palabra nirv a en dos renglones al perder el diacrítico
«It would then have the characteristics of age and death. There is no existent entity Without age and death.» — XXV.4: N g rjuna niega que el nirv a sea existente, porque tendría entonces vejez y muerte
«The teacher has spoken of relinquishing Becoming and dissolution. Therefore, it makes sense that Nirv a is neither existent nor nonexistent.» — XXV.10: N g rjuna apoya en el maestro la doble negación sobre el nirv a, ni existente ni inexistente
«These two cannot be in the same place. Like light and darkness.» — XXV.14: N g rjuna objeta el tercer cuerno con el símil de la luz y la oscuridad, que no caben en el mismo sitio
«There is not the slightest difference Between cyclic existence and nirv a. There is not the slightest difference Between nirv» — XXV.19, uno de los versos más citados del tratado: N g rjuna niega toda diferencia entre la existencia cíclica y el nirv a. El verso sigue en la línea siguiente con *a and cyclic existence*
«Whatever is the limit of nirv a, That is the limit of cyclic existence. There is not even the slightest difference between them, Or even the subtlest thing.» — XXV.20: N g rjuna iguala el límite del nirv a al de la existencia cíclica, sin ni la más sutil diferencia
«The pacification of all objectification And the pacification of illusion: No Dharma was taught by the Buddha At any time, in any place, to any person.» — XXV.24, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna declara que ningún Dharma fue enseñado por el Buda en ningún tiempo, lugar ni a persona alguna
«Wrapped in the darkness of ignorance, One performs the three kinds of actions Which as dispositions impel one To continue to future existences.» — XXVI.1, apertura del examen de los doce eslabones: N g rjuna arranca la cadena en la ignorancia y las disposiciones que empujan a existencias futuras
«Having dispositions as its conditions, Consciousness enters transmigration. Once consciousness has entered transmigration, Name and form come to be.» — XXVI.2: N g rjuna encadena consciencia, transmigración y nombre y forma
«The root of cyclic existence is action. Therefore, the wise one does not act. Therefore, the unwise is the agent. The wise one is not because of his insight.» — XXVI.10: N g rjuna pone la acción en la raíz de la existencia cíclica y de ahí saca que el sabio no actúa
«Through the cessation of this and that This and that will not be manifest. The entire mass of suffering Indeed thereby completely ceases.» — XXVI.12, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna da la fórmula del cese encadenado por el que la masa entera del sufrimiento cesa
«Since the continuum of the aggregates Is like the flame of a butterlamp, It follows that neither its finitude Nor its infinitude makes sense.» — XXVII.22: N g rjuna niega finitud e infinitud del continuo de los agregados con el símil de la llama de la lámpara de mantequilla
«So, because all entities are empty, Which views of permanence, etc., would occur, And to whom, when, why, and about what Would they occur at all?» — XXVII.29: N g rjuna barre las vistas de permanencia por la vacuidad de todas las entidades
«I prostrate to Gautama Who through compassion Taught the true doctrine, Which leads to the relinquishing of all views.» — XXVII.30, el verso final del tratado: N g rjuna postra ante Gautama por haber enseñado la doctrina verdadera que lleva al abandono de todas las vistas
«To say “I was in the past” Is not tenable. What existed in the past Is not identical to this one.» — XXVII.3: N g rjuna niega que quepa decir que uno fue en el pasado, porque lo que existió entonces no es idéntico a este
«So it is neither different from the appropriating Nor identical to the appropriating.» — XXVII.8: N g rjuna niega el yo por los dos lados respecto del apropiar. El verso salta de plana y sigue en la siguiente con *There is no self without appropriation. But it is not true that it does not exist*
«If a human were a god, On such a view there would be permanence. The god would be unborn. For any permanent thing is unborn.» — XXVII.15: N g rjuna saca del hombre que fuera dios la permanencia y con ella un dios no nacido
«Dedicatory verses are often treated as mere performatives. But these are special and announce in a subtle but powerful way the program of the M lamadhyamakak rik .» — glosa de Garfield a los versos dedicatorios: niega que sean mero performativo y los lee como anuncio del programa del tratado
«In fact, Candrakïrti, in Prasannapad , argues that the dedication determines the Pr sangika reading of N g rjuna» — Garfield adjudica a Candrak rti, en la Prasannapad , la tesis de que la dedicatoria determina la lectura Pr sangika del texto. El troceo imprime aquí el nombre con diéresis, Candrakïrti, y en otras planas con macrón
«In the four pairwise denials, N g rjuna is announcing that the M dhyamika philosopher will make no positive assertions about the fundamental nature of things.» — Garfield lee las cuatro negaciones pareadas como el anuncio de que el filósofo M dhyamika no hará aserción positiva alguna sobre la naturaleza fundamental de las cosas
«That is, N g rjuna will be refusing to say anything about the essence of anything exactly because he will deny the coherence and utility of the concept of an essence.» — Garfield acota la negación: N g rjuna se niega a decir nada de la esencia justamente porque niega la coherencia y la utilidad del concepto de esencia
«N g rjuna will deny that it is possible to assert anything from the ultimate standpoint. He will urge that all truth is relative and conventional.» — Garfield formula el corolario de su lectura: nada se puede afirmar desde el punto de vista último, y toda verdad es relativa y convencional
«Phenomena come into existence when the conditions upon which they depend obtain, and they cease to exist when the conditions for their continued existence no longer obtain.» — Garfield glosa la impermanencia del par sin aniquilación y no permanente por la dependencia de condiciones
«But this impermanence and lack of intrinsic identity, while it amounts to the impossibility of ultimate existence, is not equivalent to annihilation. The empirical reality of things, on N g rjuna’s analysis, is not denied by asserting their emptiness.» — Garfield pone el límite: la impermanencia no equivale a aniquilación, y afirmar la vacuidad no niega la realidad empírica de las cosas
«The final remark—that the phenomenal world is free from conceptual imputation—raises a tension that is central to M dhyamika philosophy and that animates the whole of the text: The tension between the desire to characterize the ultimate nature of things and the recognition that all characterization is conventional.» — Garfield nombra la tensión central de la filosofía M dhyamika: querer caracterizar la naturaleza última y reconocer que toda caracterización es convencional
«It is not an incoherent mysticism, but it is a logical tightrope act at the very limits of language and metaphysics.» — Garfield declara qué no es esa tensión y con qué la compara: no misticismo incoherente sino acto de equilibrio lógico en el límite del lenguaje
«While, as we shall see, N g rjuna defends the conventional existence of phenomena, he will urge that none of them ultimately exist—that none of them exist independently» — Garfield acota que N g rjuna defiende la existencia convencional de los fenómenos aunque sostenga que ninguno existe últimamente. La frase sigue en la plana siguiente con *of convention with identities and natures that they possess in themselves*
«Central to this first chapter is the distinction between causes and conditions (Skt: hetu and pratyaya, Tib: rgyu and rkyen). This distinction is variously drawn and is controversial,14 and it is arguably differently understood in Sanskrit and Tibetan.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo I: pone en su centro la distinción entre causa y condición, da los términos sánscritos y tibetanos y advierte que se traza de maneras distintas
«When N g rjuna uses the word “cause” (hetu, rgyu), he has in mind an event or state that has in it a power (kriy , bya-ba)15 to bring about its effect and has that power as part of its essence or nature» — la definición que Garfield propone para causa en N g rjuna: un suceso o estado con poder de producir su efecto y con ese poder como parte de su esencia
«When he uses the term “condition” on the other hand (pratyaya, rkyen), he has in mind an event, state, or process that can be appealed to in explaining another event, state, or process without any metaphysical commitment to any occult connection between explanandum and explanans.» — y la definición correlativa de condición: aquello a lo que se apela para explicar, sin compromiso metafísico con conexión oculta alguna
«In Chapter I, N g rjuna, we shall see, argues against the existence of causes and for the existence of a variety of kinds of conditions.» — Garfield resume el capítulo I como argumento contra la existencia de causas y a favor de la de condiciones
«N g rjuna will evade these particular debates, however, by emphasizing that the conditions he has in mind must be thought of as empty of inherent existence and connected to the phenomena they condition neither through absolute difference nor through identity.» — Garfield declara que N g rjuna esquiva el debate entre escuelas sobre la existencia de las condiciones exigiendo que sean vacías de existencia inherente
«The fourfold classification of positions with regard to the relation between an active cause and its effect is meant to be exhaustive.» — glosa de Garfield a I.1: la clasificación cuádruple de posiciones sobre causa y efecto pretende ser exhaustiva
«But it is important to keep in mind that N g rjuna was aware of philosophical schools espousing each of these four positions.» — Garfield advierte que N g rjuna conocía escuelas que sostenían cada una de las cuatro posiciones, y que cada una tiene algo que alegar
«The typical kind of example appealed to in order to defend this model of causation is the seed and sprout relation. The sprout, although only actual after germination, is potential in the seed.» — Garfield expone el ejemplo con que se defiende la autocausación, la semilla y el brote
«The general classification of conditions N g rjuna employs is pretty standard in Indian and especially in Buddhist accounts of explanation.» — glosa de Garfield a I.2: la clasificación de condiciones es corriente en las explicaciones indias y sobre todo budistas
«since he is writing with specifically soteriological goals in mind, which require the practicioner to develop a deep insight into the nature of his/her own mind, there is a specifically psychological emphasis in the presentation. We must be aware both of this emphasis and of the natural generalization away from that particular domain that the account supports.» — Garfield señala el énfasis psicológico de la exposición y lo explica por los fines soteriológicos del texto
«Second, it will be of paramount importance to N g rjuna that the analysis of the relation of conditions to the conditioned involves ascribing neither inherent existence nor causal power to the conditions.» — Garfield subraya lo que para N g rjuna está en juego: que el análisis no atribuya a las condiciones ni existencia inherente ni poder causal
«Efficient conditions are those salient events that explain the occurrence of subsequent events: Striking a match is the efficient condition for its lighting.» — Garfield define la condición eficiente con el ejemplo del fósforo que se frota
«The percept-object condition is in its primary sense the object in the environment that is the condition for a mind’s perception of it.» — Garfield define la condición de objeto percibido
«The dominant condition is the purpose or end for which an action is undertaken.» — Garfield define la condición dominante como el propósito o fin por el que se emprende una acción
«To borrow a Kantian turn of phrase, phenomena are not analytically contained in their conditions; rather, a synthesis is required out of which a phenomenon not antecedently existent comes to be.» — Garfield glosa I.3 con un giro kantiano: los fenómenos no están contenidos analíticamente en sus condiciones, hace falta una síntesis
«For essences are by definition eternal and fixed. They are independent. And for a phenomenon to have an essence is for it to have some permanent independent core. So neither essences nor phenomena with essences can emerge from conditions.» — Garfield define la esencia por lo eterno, fijo e independiente, y de ahí que ni las esencias ni los fenómenos con esencia puedan salir de condiciones
«But the whole point of otherness-essence is that things in virtue of having it are essentially dependent. So the view is in fact internally contradictory.» — Garfield declara internamente contradictoria la noción de esencia de otro, porque exige a la vez dependencia esencial y diferencia absoluta
«What we are typically confronted with in nature is a vast network of interdependent and continuous processes, and carving out particular phenomena for explanation or for use in explanations depends more on our explanatory interests and language than on joints nature presents to us.» — la lectura que Garfield propone del capítulo I: lo que hay es una red de procesos interdependientes y continuos, y recortar fenómenos depende de nuestros intereses explicativos y de nuestro lenguaje
«This is the beginning of N g rjuna’s attack on the causal power/ cement-of-the-universe view of causation and his contrastive development of his regularity view of conditioned dependent arising.» — Garfield nombra las dos vistas que enfrenta el capítulo: la del poder causal como cemento del universo y la de la regularidad, que adjudica a N g rjuna
«Causal powers, according to those who posit them, are meant to explain the causal nexus—they are meant to explain how it is that causes bring about their effects, which is itself supposed to be otherwise inexplicable.» — Garfield expone qué se supone que hacen los poderes causales para quien los postula
«If, on the other hand, one suggests that the powers have no condition, one is stuck positing uncaused and inexplicable occult entities as the explanans of causation. If what is to be explained is how it is that all phenomena are brought about by causal processes, it is a bit embarrassing to do so by reference to unobserved entities that are explicitly exempted from this otherwise universal condition.» — glosa de Garfield a I.4: el segundo cuerno, poderes sin condición, deja entidades ocultas exentas de la condición universal que se quería explicar
«Just as we can act for someone else’s sake, despite there being no sakes, we can appeal to the potency of conditions despite their being no such potency.» — Garfield da la analogía con la que salva el uso convencional del poder de las condiciones sin reificarlo
«The trick is to make correct use of conventional locutions without reifying denotata for all of the terms.» — Garfield formula la regla de lectura que atraviesa su comentario: usar bien las locuciones convencionales sin reificar un denotado para cada término
«For example, we might ask a farmer, “Do these seeds have the power to sprout?” as a way of asking whether they are fertile. It would be then perfectly appropriate for him to answer in the affirmative. But if we then asked him to show us where in the seed the power is located, he would be quite justified in regarding us as mad.» — Garfield ilustra esa regla con el ejemplo del labrador y el poder germinativo de la semilla
«N g rjuna hence suggests here that it is the regularities that count. Flickings give rise to illuminations. So they are conditions of them. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be. Period. Explanation relies on regularities. Regularities are explained by reference to further regularities. Adding active forces or potentials adds nothing of explanatory utility to the picture.» — glosa de Garfield a I.5: lo que cuenta son las regularidades, y añadir fuerzas o potenciales activos no aporta utilidad explicativa
«For a thing to exist inherently is for it to exist in virtue of possessing an essence—for it to exist independently of other entities and independently of convention. For a thing to be inherently nonexistent is for it to not exist in any sense at all—not even conventionally or dependently.» — Garfield fija los dos sentidos en juego, el existir inherente y el no existir inherente, para leer los versos que siguen
«He notes here that if entities are conceived as inherently existent, they exist independently and, hence, need no conditions for their production. Indeed, they could not be produced if they exist in this way.» — glosa de Garfield a I.6: lo inherentemente existente no necesita condiciones ni podría ser producido
«What is important about this strand of the argument? N g rjuna is drawing attention to the connection between a causal power view of causation and an essentialist view of phenomena on the one hand, and between a condition view of dependent arising and a conventional view of phenomena on the other.» — Garfield nombra la conexión que a su juicio traza el capítulo: poder causal con esencialismo de un lado, condición con vista convencional del otro
«If, on the other hand, one regards things as dependent merely on conditions, one regards them as without essence and without power. And to regard something as without essence and without power is to regard it as merely conventionally existent. And this is to regard it as existing dependently.» — Garfield encadena la alternativa: sin esencia y sin poder es existir convencionalmente, y existir convencionalmente es existir dependientemente
«He turns the tables on the realist, arguing that it is precisely because there is no such reality to things— and hence no entities to serve as the bearers of the causal powers the realist wants to posit—that the Buddhist formula expressing the truth of dependent arising32 can be asserted.» — glosa de Garfield a I.10: la fórmula budista del originarse dependiente solo puede afirmarse porque las cosas no tienen esa realidad
«It can only be interpreted, it would follow, as a formula expressing the regularity of nature.» — Garfield concluye que la fórmula solo cabe leerla como expresión de la regularidad de la naturaleza
«This charge has a double edge: If the argument is successful it not only shows that N g rjuna’s own position is vacuous, but that it contradicts one of the most fundamental tenets of Buddhist philosophy—that all phenomena are dependently arisen.» — glosa de Garfield a I.11: la objeción del realista tiene doble filo, porque de prosperar contradiría uno de los principios budistas fundamentales
«The very emptiness of the effect, an effect presupposed by the opponent to be nonempty, in fact follows from the emptiness of the conditions and of the relationship between conditions and effect.» — Garfield da la respuesta que lee en I.14: la vacuidad del efecto se sigue de la de las condiciones y de la de la relación entre unas y otro
«N g rjuna will, hence, reply to the opponent’s attempted refutation by embracing the conclusion of his reductio together with the premises it supposedly refutes.» — Garfield describe la maniobra: aceptar la conclusión del reductio junto con las premisas que se suponía refutadas
«Effects lacking inherent existence depend precisely upon conditions that themselves lack inherent existence.» — glosa de Garfield a I.13: los efectos sin existencia inherente dependen de condiciones que tampoco la tienen
«while the reificationist critic charges the M dhyamika with failing to come up with a causal link sufficiently robust to link ultimately real phenomena, for the M dhyamika philosopher the core reason for the absence of such a causal link is the very absence of such phenomena in the first place.» — Garfield resume el resultado del capítulo I: la razón de que falte el nexo causal robusto es la ausencia misma de los fenómenos últimamente reales que habría que enlazar
«That midpoint is achieved by taking conventions as the foundation of ontology, hence rejecting the very enterprise of a philosophical search for the ontological foundations of convention» — Garfield formula el punto medio de la vacuidad de la causación: tomar las convenciones como fundamento de la ontología y rechazar la búsqueda de fundamentos ontológicos de la convención
«To say that causation is nonempty, or inherently existent, is to succumb to the temptation to ground our explanatory practice and discourse in genuine causal powers linking causes to effects. That is the reificationist extreme that N g rjuna clearly rejects.» — Garfield nombra el extremo reificacionista: fundar la práctica explicativa en poderes causales genuinos
«To respond to the arguments against the inherent existence of causation by suggesting that there is then no possibility of appealing to conditions to explain phenomena—that there is no dependent origination at all— is the extreme of nihilism, also clearly rejected by N g rjuna.» — y el extremo opuesto, el nihilismo, que niega toda apelación a condiciones
«To assert the emptiness of causation is to accept the utility of our causal discourse and explanatory practice, but to resist the temptation to see these as grounded in reference to causal powers or as demanding such grounding.» — Garfield da la fórmula intermedia: aceptar la utilidad del discurso causal sin verlo fundado en poderes causales
«Dependent origination simply is the explicability and coherence of the universe. Its emptiness is the fact that there is no more to it than that.» — Garfield reduce el originarse dependiente a la explicabilidad y coherencia del universo, y su vacuidad a que no hay nada más que eso
«This theme—the replacement of apparent common sense that is deeply metaphysically committed with an apparently deeply metaphysical but actually commonsense understanding of the phenomenal world—will recur in each chapter of» — Garfield anuncia el tema que a su juicio recorre todos los capítulos: reemplazar un sentido común comprometido metafísicamente por una vista solo aparentemente metafísica. La frase termina en la plana siguiente con *the text*
«The target of N g rjuna’s arguments in this chapter is any view of motion according to which motion is an entity, or a property with an existence independent of that of moving things, or according to which motion is part of the nature of moving things.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo II: fija el blanco en toda vista que haga del movimiento una entidad o una propiedad independiente de las cosas que se mueven
«N g rjuna concludes that a reification of motion is incoherent. Motion is therefore empty.» — Garfield resume la conclusión del capítulo II
«For motion requires a change of position, and a change of position must occur over time. But the present has no duration. So if motion were to exist, it would have to exist either in the past or in the future.» — glosa de Garfield a II.1: el movimiento exige cambio de posición en el tiempo y el presente no tiene duración
«it is highly plausible that N g rjuna is calling attention to the fact that the attack on motion as an inherently existent phenomenon is a general attack on seeing change or impermanence as inherently existent.» — glosa de Garfield a II.2: lee el ataque al movimiento como ataque general a tener el cambio y la impermanencia por inherentemente existentes, y consigna que el punto es controvertido
«This suggests that even the properties that according to Buddhist philosophy characterize all things—being dependently arisen and being impermanent—are not themselves inherently existent.» — Garfield saca la consecuencia: ni siquiera las propiedades que la filosofía budista adjudica a todas las cosas existen inherentemente
«That is because inherent existence is existence with an essence, as an independent entity whose identity can be intrinsically specified.» — la definición que Garfield repite a lo largo del comentario: existir inherentemente es existir con esencia, como entidad independiente con identidad especificable intrínsecamente
«So this is, in fact, a “third man» — Garfield empareja el argumento del doble movimiento con el argumento del tercer hombre
«N g rjuna is here emphasizing the codependence of motion and the mover. If there are no movers, there is no motion. If there is no motion, there are no movers.» — glosa de Garfield a II.7: la codependencia entre el movimiento y el móvil
«But it also means that neither, therefore, can be thought to inherently exist since to exist inherently would be to exist independently.» — y la consecuencia que Garfield le saca: ninguno de los dos puede existir inherentemente, porque existir inherentemente sería existir independientemente
«The next few verses are reminiscent both of Zeno of Elea and Sextus Empiricus:» — Garfield empareja los versos sobre el comienzo del movimiento con Zenón de Elea y Sexto Empírico
«If there is motion, it must begin sometime. But that moment is inconceivable. For motion doesn’t begin in a stationary thing. And once a thing is in motion, it is too late. It can’t always have begun in the past or be yet to begin, and there simply isn’t time to go anywhere in the present.» — glosa de Garfield a II.12 y II.13: el momento en que el movimiento comienza es inconcebible por los tres lados
«Motion can only be understood in relation to movers —as a relation between their positions at different times. Movers can only be understood as movers in relation to motion so understood. But to understand motion and movers this way is not to reify them as entities—and so to escape the dilemma of their identity or difference.» — glosa de Garfield a II.20, donde asoma la cuenta positiva del capítulo: el movimiento como relación entre las posiciones de un cuerpo en tiempos distintos
«So far so good. But then is motion completely nonexistent? Is the entire universe static according to M dhyamika philosophy?» — Garfield se plantea él mismo la objeción nihilista que el capítulo invita
«The positive account we are after emerges when we read this second chapter in the context of the first chapter: All phenomena, including motion, are dependently arisen and, hence, empty of inherent existence. The conclusion that motion is empty is simply the conclusion that it is conventional and dependent, like the putatively moving entities themselves.» — la cuenta positiva que Garfield propone: la vacuidad del movimiento es solo que sea convencional y dependiente
«Their nonexistence is simply their lack of existence as substantial entities. Existence—of a sort—is hence recovered exactly in the context of an absence of inherent existence.» — Garfield acota la no existencia: es falta de existencia como entidad sustancial, y la existencia se recupera justo en la ausencia de existencia inherente
«Only to the extent that we make the decision to identify, as a single entity, things that differ from each other in position over time, but are in other respects quite similar and form causal chains of a particular sort, can we say that whatever is so identified moves. And this is a matter of choice.» — Garfield hace depender el movimiento de una convención de individuación, y la declara materia de elección
«He must, that is, steer a middle path between reification and nihilism using emptiness as his compass.» — Garfield describe la maniobra del capítulo III con la figura que da nombre a la escuela: el camino medio entre reificación y nihilismo, con la vacuidad por brújula
«This is a standard Buddhist catalog of the sense faculties. It differs from the standard Western catalog only in that the Buddhists regard introspection literally as an inner sense with the same epistemic structure as outer senses» — glosa de Garfield a III.1: el catálogo es el budista corriente y se aparta del occidental en tener la introspección por sentido interno
«There is also a plausible Pyrrhonian interpretation of this verse: The point of a sensory faculty is to make knowledge possible. But that is only possible if the data the faculty provides are themselves perceived. But the data that the visual faculty delivers are visual. If they themselves are to be perceived, one would require either another visual faculty, hence generating a vicious regress, or apperception by vision, which is absurd.» — Garfield ofrece una lectura pirrónica alternativa de III.2, con el regreso y la apercepción visual
«Vision is relational, and not an intrinsically identifiable phenomenon.» — Garfield cierra esa lectura declarando relacional la visión
«This example is a standard in early Buddhist debates about intrinsic versus relational identity, and N g rjuna devotes an entire chapter to its refutation as a dialectical device (Chapter X), arguing there that fire cannot be intrinsically identified.» — glosa de Garfield a III.3: el símil del fuego es corriente en los debates budistas tempranos y el capítulo X se le dedica entero
«The desire to do so is of a piece with the more general substantialist imperative to posit an independent substratum to support every capacity or property.» — glosa de Garfield a III.4: postular un sujeto de la visión responde al imperativo sustancialista de dar sustrato independiente a toda capacidad
«Again, the point of this chapter is emphatically not that there is no perception, or that there are no sense faculties, sense organs, or sense objects. Rather the point is that none of these can be analyzed successfully as autonomous entities.» — Garfield acota el resultado del capítulo III: no niega la percepción ni las facultades, niega que se analicen como entidades autónomas
«The five aggregates are the basic Buddhist categories of personal constituents. The first—that discussed as an example in this chapter— is in Sanskrit r pa, in Tibetan gzugs.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo IV: presenta los cinco agregados y da los términos del primero en sánscrito y tibetano
«this word has historically been translated as “form.” This practice is so ubiquitous that I am loathe to depart from it, despite the confusion it engenders. For what the word means is matter.» — Garfield objeta la traducción consagrada de r pa por form y declara que la palabra significa materia, y a la vez dice que no se aparta de la costumbre
«It is important to realize that this taxonomy is to be understood pragmatically: There is no deep doctrinal or philosophical point that hangs on dividing the properties or capacities of humans up in just this way. In fact, most often the only important point about analysis in terms of the aggregates is that humans are composite.» — Garfield declara pragmática la taxonomía de los agregados y reduce su punto importante a que los humanos son compuestos
«Form is taken as an example precisely because it is the most solid, apparently nonempty of the aggregates—the one that we are most likely to reify. So the program is to use arguments with application to any of the aggregates and to apply them to the hardest case.» — Garfield explica por qué el capítulo toma la forma por ejemplo: es el agregado que más se presta a reificar
«The moral of these arguments, N g rjuna concludes, is that we cannot think of form as such as an entity at all. Individual forms are entities—dependently arisen ones, hence, empty of inherent existence.» — glosa de Garfield a IV.5: las formas individuales son entidades dependientemente surgidas, pero la forma misma es abstracción
«But do not construct theories that purport to describe the essence of material form. For there is no such thing. It is simply a characteristic of individual material objects and, hence, something that depends upon their existence, with no essence of its own.» — Garfield lee el consejo del verso como prohibición de teorizar sobre la esencia de la forma material, porque no hay tal
«Rather he is arguing that inherent existence is simply an incoherent notion and that emptiness is the only possible analysis of existence.» — Garfield formula la tesis de fondo que adjudica a N g rjuna: la existencia inherente es noción incoherente y la vacuidad el único análisis posible de la existencia
«This chapter examines the ontological status of characteristics and the characterized, or in more familiar terms, properties and individuals. The question, as always, is this: Does it make sense to think of either as existing independently, substantially, or fundamentally? Or, on the other hand, are they mutually interdependent and therefore empty?» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo V: lo que se examina son las características y lo caracterizado, o en términos corrientes las propiedades y los individuos
«So, N g rjuna is addressing his opponent on the opponent’s home turf. If any entities or characteristics have essences, these do.» — Garfield señala la táctica del capítulo V: N g rjuna toma el ejemplo del espacio porque es donde el oponente sostiene que hay esencia
«Space cannot exist as a completely uncharacterized entity that then somehow acquires characteristics. Anything that exists has some properties and cannot be identified or characterized independently of them.» — glosa de Garfield a V.1: nada existe sin propiedades ni se identifica con independencia de ellas
«Existence and nonexistence are hence themselves dependent, relative characteristics.» — glosa de Garfield a V.6: la existencia y la inexistencia quedan como características dependientes y relativas
«Rather, he is arguing that nothing exists in virtue of instantiating an independently existent property of existence. Similarly, things do not fail to exist in virtue of instantiating the property nonexistence.» — Garfield acota el alcance: no se niega que nada exista en ningún sentido, se niega que algo exista por instanciar una propiedad de existencia independiente
«This is the soteriological import of this discussion of fundamental ontology: If one reifies phenomena—including such things as one’s own self, characteristics (prominently including one’s own), or external objects—and if one thinks that things either fail to exist or exist absolutely, one will be unable to attain any peace.» — glosa de Garfield a V.8: consigna el alcance soteriológico que el capítulo da a la ontología, que reificar impide alcanzar la paz
«Locating the discussion at this point is consonant with a tradition of Mah y na discussions of emptiness in which one first addresses external phenomena, which are both easier to analyze and less succeptible of reification than the self, and then generalizes the discussion to human psychological phenomena.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo VI: la colocación responde a una tradición Mah y na de tratar primero lo externo y luego lo psicológico
«N g rjuna is only attempting to show that attributing to them that kind of existence is incoherent—not that there is no desire and that there are no desirous people at all.» — Garfield acota el reductio del capítulo VI: solo muestra la incoherencia de atribuirles existencia inherente, no que no haya deseo ni deseosos
«But also fundamental is the conviction that there can be a release from craving. That is only possible, however, if craving is dependently originated since only then could the conditions that determine its arising be eliminated.» — Garfield ata el argumento a la soteriología budista: la liberación del ansia solo es posible si el ansia surge dependientemente
«This is another application of the Humean (and Tractarian) argument N g rjuna has mobilized above: If phenomena are distinct—indeed, being simultaneous, they are not even argued to be causally related— they can be imagined to be separate. So they are then logically independent.» — Garfield empareja el argumento con el de Hume y el del Tractatus, ya usado antes en el texto
«There is no denial here of the possibility of simultaneity, of the existence of desire, or of the possibility of desirous persons. Rather, there is a denial that any of these things make sense in the context of inherent existence.» — Garfield cierra el capítulo VI acotando de nuevo el alcance de la negación
«The target position is the view that dependent arising itself, as well as dependently arisen things, are either inherently existent or completely nonexistent.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo VII: fija el blanco en tener el originarse dependiente mismo por inherentemente existente o por completamente inexistente
«On a standard Buddhist view, all phenomena come into being in dependence upon conditions, remain in existence dependent upon conditions, and cease to exist dependent upon conditions. This is the core of the two central doctrines of dependent arising and impermanence.» — Garfield expone la vista budista corriente de las tres características, y la declara núcleo de las doctrinas del originarse dependiente y de la impermanencia
«To have a characteristic inherently is to have it essentially. But then dependent arising, for the opponent, would have a contradictory set of essential properties.» — glosa de Garfield a VII.2: tener una característica inherentemente es tenerla esencialmente, y de ahí el conjunto contradictorio de propiedades esenciales
«The point that N g rjuna is after, of course, is that this principle itself—that there must be an explanatory basis, an independent entity that has characteristics, as an explanation of the occurrence of any characteristic—is what generates the regress and must be rejected.» — glosa de Garfield a VII.3: lo que genera el regreso es el principio mismo de exigir una base explicativa independiente, y ese principio es lo que se rechaza
«This is the opponent speaking. He suggests that dependent arising arises from a more basic arising. This basic arising comes to be, but not on the basis of anything else. The idea, defended by some earlier Buddhist schools, is this: There are two levels of dependent arising.» — glosa de Garfield a VII.4: adjudica el verso al oponente, no a N g rjuna, y lo atribuye a escuelas budistas anteriores que ponían dos niveles de originarse dependiente
«The account is either circular or regressive. If the basic arising is held to arise in dependence on other dependently originated phenomena, and dependent arising is explained as dependent upon the basic arising, then the basis is posited as dependent upon that which it explains, and we have a vicious circle. If on the other hand the phenomena on which the basis depends are other than those it explains, and the phenomena themselves depend upon yet another basis, we have a vicious regress.» — glosa de Garfield a VII.6: la cuenta del surgir básico sale circular o regresiva
«It was standard philosophical fare in the Buddhist tradition within which N g rjuna was working to see darkness as a positive phenomenon.» — Garfield da el contexto doctrinal que hace mordiente el ataque al símil de la lámpara: en esa tradición la oscuridad se tenía por fenómeno positivo
«For if light exists inherently, then wherever light is not present it is essentially not present. And the essential nonpresence of light is essential darkness.» — Garfield muestra que aun sin reificar la oscuridad, reificar la luz obliga a reificar la oscuridad
«To put it in contemporary terms, photons reach our eyes from the lamp or from its flame in the same way they do from the other physical objects in the neighborhood. And just as the visibility of the things in the neighborhood is dependent on a host of conditions, so is the visibility of the lamp.» — Garfield traslada el argumento de la lámpara a términos contemporáneos con los fotones
«Recall the analysis of motion: N g rjuna argued that no entity answering to “motion” could be found in an entity that was in motion in the past, nor in an entity yet to move, nor in a currently moving entity. Motion had to be understood relationally and not as an entity.» — glosa de Garfield a VII.14: recuerda el análisis del movimiento del capítulo II para leer el del surgir
«First, phenomena arise from other phenomena, not from arising. So, for instance, if I strike a match, the fire emerges from the friction, the sulphur, the oxygen, my desire for light, and so forth, but not from dependent arising itself.» — glosa de Garfield a VII.15: los fenómenos surgen de otros fenómenos, no del surgir, y lo ilustra con el fósforo que se frota
«N g rjuna is asserting that things are not, from the ultimate point of view, in the constant flux of arising, remaining, and decaying that characterizes them from the conventional point of view.» — glosa de Garfield a VII.16: fija el sentido de apacible, que desde el punto de vista último las cosas no están en el flujo de surgir, permanecer y decaer
«If we take the import of the threefold nature of phenomena seriously, we see that the phenomena are themselves literally momentary. And if they are momentary, then there is literally no time for them to arise, to endure, or to decay. So from an ultimate point of view, the point of view from which they have no existence as extended phenomena at all, they do not possess these three properties.» — Garfield deriva la momentaneidad de los fenómenos y de ahí que ni siquiera tengan esencialmente las tres propiedades
«All phenomena are arisen, but they arise as empty, and as dependent. Coming to be just is arising, and all arising is dependent arising.» — Garfield cierra el paso al otro extremo: todos los fenómenos son surgidos, pero surgen vacíos y dependientes
«The implicit argument is, then, that inherently existent phenomena cannot be said to arise since they would exist eternally and independently; nonexistent phenomena cannot be said to arise since if they did, they would exist. Arising can hence only be a property of noninherently, but conventionally, existent phenomena.» — glosa de Garfield a VII.20: el surgir solo puede ser propiedad de lo que existe convencionalmente y no inherentemente
«So, N g rjuna concludes, stasis fails to exist over time in any sense and so is no candidate for an inherently existent phenomenon.» — glosa de Garfield a VII.22: la estasis no dura en ningún sentido y por eso no es candidata a existir inherentemente
«Since to exist is to exist in time and things that are ceasing are by definition not in a state of continued existence, ceasing phenomena do not provide the kind of continuity with numerical identity that endurance demands.» — glosa de Garfield a VII.23: lo que está cesando no da la continuidad con identidad numérica que la duración exige
«So the conclusion to draw is not that there is no cessation or that there are no ceasing phenomena. That would be crazy. Rather, neither cessation nor any impermanent phenomenon can be identified independently as an entity itself. Their existence is purely relational.» — glosa de Garfield a VII.26: acota otra vez el resultado, que ni la cesación ni fenómeno impermanente alguno se identifican independientemente
«Cessation and stasis must be understood relatively and not absolutely.» — glosa de Garfield a VII.27: la cesación y la estasis se entienden relativamente
«The conclusion of this trio of arguments is that we cannot conceive of any of the three characteristics of dependent arising as self-grounded. All must be understood dependently and hence as empty.» — Garfield cierra el trío de argumentos sobre surgir, permanecer y cesar: ninguno se funda en sí mismo
«That is, arising, abiding, and ceasing are not entities at all—they are mere relations. Since these fundamental attributes of dependently arisen phenomena are empty of inherent existence, what could have inherent existence?» — glosa de Garfield a VII.33: los tres quedan como meras relaciones
«Rather, as far as one analyzes, one finds only dependence, relativity, and emptiness, and their dependence, relativity, and emptiness.» — la fórmula con que Garfield resume el resultado: por más que se analice solo se encuentra dependencia, relatividad y vacuidad, y la dependencia, relatividad y vacuidad de estas
«This chapter thus brings the first principal section of M lamadhyamakak rik to a close, drawing together the threads spun in the earlier chapters to produce a thorough demonstration of the emptiness of the conventional phenomenal world.» — Garfield cierra la primera sección del texto según su propia partición y declara qué queda demostrado en ella
«For the upshot of this critical analysis is that existence itself must be reconceived. What is said to be “like a dream, like an illusion” is their existence in the mode in which they are ordinarily perceived/conceived—as inherently existent.» — Garfield declara lo que a su juicio exige el análisis: reconcebir la existencia, porque lo que es como un sueño y como una ilusión es el modo en que los fenómenos se perciben de ordinario
«The only sense that “existence” can be given is a conventional, relative sense.» — y el único sentido que Garfield le deja a la palabra existencia: el convencional y relativo. La llamada de nota que el troceo pega a la frase anterior obligó a cortar aquí
«This idealist tactic, familiar in the West through Berkeley and Hume (and criticized by Kant in the refutation of idealism), was adopted by some (the Cittam tra school) in the history of Buddhist philosophy.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo VIII: nombra la táctica idealista que el capítulo enfrenta y la adjudica, en la historia budista, a la escuela Cittam tra
«N g rjuna here announces that, with respect to agency and action as well, he will steer a middle course between inherent existence and complete nonexistence. Neither action nor agent will come out to be an inherently existing entity. Nor will either end up being completely nonexistent.» — glosa de Garfield a VIII.1: el mismo camino medio entre existencia inherente y no existencia total, ahora para el agente y la acción
«If the agent were inherently existent, then it would be unchanging. Activity is always a kind of change. So if there were action in the context of an inherently existing agent, the action would be agentless, which would be absurd.» — glosa de Garfield a VIII.2: un agente inherentemente existente sería inmutable y la actividad es siempre un cambio
«And all of this has a moral and a soteriological dimension as well. For if there are no acts and no effects, then the practice of morality and of the Buddhist path will make no sense. There would be no point to life if human action is impossible.» — glosa de Garfield a VIII.6: sin actos ni efectos no tienen sentido la moral ni el camino budista
«Only in the context of emptiness—what might appear to be the greatest threat to meaningfulness—can a meaningful life be understood.» — y el reverso: solo en el contexto de la vacuidad se entiende una vida con sentido
«For in many ways the self that is constructed through appropriation presents itself as the subject of appropriation. But it is merely constructed, and its substantial reality is illusory.» — Garfield declara construido el yo que se presenta como sujeto de la apropiación
«That is, this analysis provides a perfect paradigm for understanding the nature of subjectivity.» — Garfield adjudica al par agente y acción el valor de paradigma para entender la subjetividad en los cinco capítulos siguientes
«Now one can surely imagine an opponent responding to the argument of the previous chapter by granting that agency and its corelative phenomena might be empty, yet still denying that awareness itself— the subjectivity that grounds perception—could be empty. For, one might argue, the emptiness of all phenomena still requires that there be a subject for whom they are phenomena.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo IX: formula la objeción que el capítulo enfrenta, la de que la vacuidad de todo fenómeno exige un sujeto para quien lo sean
«This argument has familiar instances in Descartes and Kant. But N g rjuna, siding with Hume on this issue, begins by asking how this entity» — Garfield empareja la objeción con Descartes y Kant y adjudica a N g rjuna la posición de Hume. La frase sigue con *could be an object of knowledge*
«The point is, rather, once again the Humean one that whatever is indeed logically independent is separable.» — glosa de Garfield a IX.4: el punto es humeano, que lo lógicamente independiente es separable, y no que toda relación sea simétrica
«Subjectivity only emerges when there is an object of awareness. Pure subjectivity is a contradiction in adjecto. Moreover, the idea of an object with no subject is contradictory. The very concept of being an object is that of being the object of a subject.» — glosa de Garfield a IX.5: la subjetividad pura es contradicción en el adjetivo y el objeto sin sujeto también
«The affinities to Kant and Schopenhauer here are quite strong, but should not be pushed too far. N g rjuna would clearly have no truck with the substantialist flavor of their analysis of the subject and object.» — Garfield empareja el pasaje con Kant y Schopenhauer y en la misma frase pone el límite del emparejamiento
«significance for ourselves than emptiness appears to allow that leads to a view of life as perfectly impossible and pointless. That is, though we are led to ascribe inherent, independent existence to ourselves and to the world of phenomena we cherish—in part, in order to assign them the greatest possible importance—this very importance would be completely undermined by such inherent existence and independence. For in that case, all activity and all consequences of activity would be impossible. The resultant life would be static, detached, and utterly meaningless.» — Garfield nombra la ironía que lee en el capítulo VIII: el afán de garantizarse más realidad y significación de las que la vacuidad parece permitir vuelve la vida estática y sin sentido. La frase arranca en la plana anterior con *It is ironic that it is the urge to guarantee more reality and*
«By “appropriation,” N g rjuna indicates any cognitive act by means of which one takes an attribute or entity as one’s own, or as part of one’s self.» — glosa de Garfield a VIII.13: fija el sentido de apropiación como todo acto cognitivo por el que se toma un atributo o una entidad como propia o como parte de uno mismo
«Moreover, since this proposal is for a distinct prior entity for each perceptual episode, we would need distinct subjects for, for example, hearing and seeing. But as we can do these things at the same time, it would follow that there are multiple simultaneous selves. The unity of experience that is the putative explanandum and motivation for positing this entity in the first place (emphasized in the first two lines) would dissolve.» — glosa de Garfield a IX.8 y IX.9: el yo puntual por episodio perceptual disuelve justamente la unidad de la experiencia que venía a explicar
«The apparent paradox involved in saying that things both exist and do not exist in one breath and saying that they neither exist nor do not exist in another—indeed of refusing in another sense to permit even these predications in another mood—arises, N g rjuna points out, from the conceptual imputation of inherently existent bases for these predications, which then have to be thought of as having contradictory properties.» — glosa de Garfield a IX.12: la paradoja aparente nace de imputar bases inherentemente existentes a las predicaciones
«Absent the bases, we can see these assertions merely as useful analytical tools in various dialectical contexts to help us to see the ultimately empty and conventionally real nature of phenomena.» — y lo que queda al quitar esas bases: las aserciones como herramientas analíticas útiles en contextos dialécticos
«Buddhist schools asserting substantial identity in the context of dependent coorigination, such as Vaibh śika and Sautr ntika schools, used the example of fire and fuel to demonstrate the compossibility of substantial independent identity and dependent origination, as well as the possibility of the one-way dependence relation that these schools assert that actions and perception bear to the self.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo X: adjudica el ejemplo del fuego y el combustible a las escuelas Vaibh śika y Sautr ntika y dice para qué lo usaban
«In this chapter, N g rjuna undertakes the task of demonstrating that the example does not demonstrate these possibilities.» — Garfield declara la tarea del capítulo X: mostrar que el contraejemplo no da lo que se le pide
«The second and third verses spell out the consequences of attributing inherent existence to fire: It would be independent of all conditions, including its fuel; it would burn causelessly, since there would be no condition under which it would not burn. So all fire would, in that case, be eternal.» — glosa de Garfield a X.2 y X.3: un fuego inherentemente existente sería eterno y ardería sin causa
«Here the opponent suggests that just as males and females are suited to connect in special ways in virtue of their particular anatomical structures, despite existing independently of one another, fire and fuel may be similarly suited to some special kind of connection. In that case, we would have the bizarre picture of fire being independent of fuel, yet peculiarly suited to coming together with it, and vice versa.» — glosa de Garfield a X.6: el símil del hombre y la mujer es del oponente, y Garfield lo describe como estampa extraña
«Note that this is only problematic for the opponent. That is, for one who accepts, as N g rjuna does, the mutual interdependence of phenomena, it is in fact true that fire depends upon fuel and that fuel depends upon fire.» — glosa de Garfield a X.9: la dependencia mutua entre fuego y combustible no es problema para N g rjuna, solo para el oponente
«What makes fuel fuel is that it is combustible.» — Garfield da la razón por la que el combustible no queda fijado sin el fuego
«So since entities can be established neither through independence nor through dependence, there is no way to establish anything as an entity in its own right.» — glosa de Garfield a X.11: la moraleja ontológica, que nada queda fijado como entidad por derecho propio, ni por independencia ni por dependencia
«The analysis and the conclusion are strictly analogous to that regarding motion and the mover.» — glosa de Garfield a X.13: la analogía estricta con el análisis del movimiento del capítulo II
«phenomena should vanish once one sees that not only do they have no ultimate ontic status, but that they need none. They, like all phenomena, emerge relationally and dependently.» — glosa de Garfield a IX.10: la necesidad de un fundamento sustancial se desvanece al ver que los fenómenos no tienen ni necesitan estatuto óntico último. La frase arranca en la plana anterior con *For the need to develop a substantial foundation for these*
«The general moral is that we cannot make sense of interactive processes such as combustion without attending to the mutual dependence of the interacting phenomena that constitute those processes» — glosa de Garfield a X.4 y X.5: la moraleja general del dilema de la combustión, que los procesos interactivos exigen atender a la dependencia mutua de lo que interactúa
«This colophon verse reminds us that when existence is understood in terms of emptiness and when entities are regarded as purely relational in character, identity and difference can only be understood conventionally.» — glosa de Garfield a X.16, al que llama verso colofón: la identidad y la diferencia solo se entienden convencionalmente
«The question about the existence and nature of the origin of the world is one of the questions that Sakyamuni Buddha declared to be unanswerable.» — glosa de Garfield a XI.1: sitúa la pregunta por el origen del mundo entre las que Sakyamuni Buddha declaró incontestables
«Given the striking similarity between the questions that the Buddha declared unanswerable and those that Kant argues to be unanswerable by reason in the Antinomies of Pure Reason, there is much to be said for this diagnosis.» — Garfield empareja las preguntas que el Buda declaró incontestables con las antinomias de la razón pura de Kant
«There is no fixed boundary between the existence of a seed, the tree to which it gives rise, a piece of wood from that tree, and a table fashioned therefrom or between the existence of an intact table, a broken table, wooden table parts, ashes, earth, the nutrients for a seed, that seed, the sapling to which it gives rise, and another tree.» — glosa de Garfield a XI.3: la serie de la semilla, el árbol, la madera, la mesa, la mesa rota, la ceniza y la tierra para mostrar que los límites de los objetos son convencionales
«Once we see the world from the standpoint of emptiness of inherent existence, the history of any conventionally designated entity is but an arbitrary stage carved out of a vast continuum of interdependent phenomena.» — la fórmula con que Garfield resume el capítulo XI: la historia de cualquier entidad designada convencionalmente es una etapa arbitraria recortada de un continuo
«Once we give up the intrinsic identity of entities, the constant cycle of death, birth, aging, and rebirth of entities is unavoidable.» — Garfield ata el ciclo de muerte, nacimiento, vejez y renacimiento al abandono de la identidad intrínseca
«So long as one in conceiving of phenomena thinks of them as temporally determinate and bounded, and thinks of the identity of things as intrinsic to them, one will have to identify their beginnings, middles, and ends.» — glosa de Garfield a XI.6: quien piensa los fenómenos como temporalmente determinados y con identidad intrínseca queda obligado a fijarles principio, medio y fin
«The first of the Four Noble Truths is that “all this is suffering.” So one can imagine an interlocutor granting all that has gone before, but in defense of Buddhist orthodoxy, insisting that suffering is inherently existent. After all, the Four Noble Truths are, from a Buddhist perspective, truths. N g rjuna, of course, is a Buddhist and accepts the Four Noble Truths. (In fact, the principal chapter of this work, Chapter XXIV, is devoted to an exposition of the Four Noble Truths from the standpoint of emptiness and to the argument that only on N g rjuna’s analysis can these truths be maintained at all.) So he must, without denying the reality of suffering, explain its emptiness.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XII: N g rjuna es budista y acepta las Cuatro Nobles Verdades, de modo que debe explicar la vacuidad del sufrimiento sin negar su realidad
«But for the proponent of a Buddhist analysis of suffering, that is little help since suffering on a Buddhist analysis is the consequence of delusion, attachment, craving, action, and so forth.» — glosa de Garfield a XII.2: el sufrimiento autoproducido no sirve al budista porque en su análisis el sufrimiento es consecuencia de la delusión, el apego y el ansia
«a Buddhist philosopher such as N g rjuna would share with any Buddhist interlocutor the assumption that in sams ra sentient beings not only suffer, but are literally constituted of suffering —that every aggregate of a sentient being’s existence is a cause, an effect, and a basis of misery.» — glosa de Garfield a XII.4: el supuesto que N g rjuna comparte con su interlocutor budista, que los seres sintientes están literalmente constituidos de sufrimiento
«If by suffering we mean something dependently arisen, impermanent, and conventional, existing only as imputed and only in relation to its empty subjects, there is plenty of suffering to go around.» — Garfield recupera la existencia convencional del sufrimiento tras negarle la inherente, y lo dice con esa vuelta de tuerca
«For if it exists independently, then there are no conditions in the absence of which it fails to exist.» — el argumento soteriológico que Garfield le saca al capítulo XII: un sufrimiento con existencia inherente sería inaliviable
«In this chapter, N g rjuna begins to develop the idea of emptiness more explicitly. Up to this point, he has been arguing that phenomena are empty, but has not been characterizing emptiness itself, or its relation to entitihood or to conventional reality» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XIII: es donde el texto empieza a caracterizar la vacuidad misma y no solo a aplicarla
«It is not an essence that things have instead of whatever essence naive common sense or sophisticated reification might have thought they had—rather, it is the total lack of essence or inherent existence.» — Garfield fija el carácter negativo de la vacuidad: no es una esencia de repuesto sino la falta total de esencia
«So it is important to see that the sense of “falsehood” in play when the conventional is characterized as false is “deceptive.” That is, insofar as conventional phenomena present themselves as more than conventional—as inherently existent—they deceive us.» — glosa de Garfield a XIII.1: el sentido de falsedad en juego es el de engaño, porque los fenómenos convencionales se presentan como más que convencionales
«But to the extent that we understand them as dependently arisen, empty, interdependent phenomena, they constitute a conventional truth.» — y el reverso: entendidos como dependientes y vacíos, los mismos fenómenos constituyen una verdad convencional
«It is emptiness that makes change possible. If things had essences, they would be incapable of real change. But since they are seen to change, N g rjuna argues, they must be empty of essence.» — glosa de Garfield a XIII.3: la vacuidad es lo que hace posible el cambio, y el cambio percibido es de donde arranca para negar la esencia
«In XIII: 7, N g rjuna is emphasizing that emptiness is not one of the many properties that a thing might or might not have. It is not that some things are empty and some are nonempty, or that all things happen to be empty although they might have been otherwise.» — glosa de Garfield a XIII.7: la vacuidad no es una propiedad más que una cosa pudiera tener o no
«Emptiness is important because it is the only way that things can exist. Moreover, emptiness is not an entity. It is not a distinct phenomenon to which other phenomena are related. It is exactly the emptiness of all phenomena.» — Garfield declara que la vacuidad no es entidad ni fenómeno distinto al que otros se relacionen, sino la vacuidad de todos ellos
«By a view, N g rjuna here means a theory on the same level of discourse at which reificationist-nihilist debates proceed.» — glosa de Garfield a XIII.8: fija el sentido de vista, con sus términos tibetano y sánscrito, como teoría al nivel en que discuten reificacionistas y nihilistas
«But the analysis in terms of emptiness is not a view at all in this sense. For the claim is not that things exist in virtue of having the property of emptiness as an essence. Rather it is the claim that they are empty because they have no essence.» — y de ahí que el análisis por la vacuidad no sea una vista en ese sentido
«The language must hence be understood, from the ultimate perspective, not as making assertions, but rather as ostending—indicating that which cannot be literally asserted without falling into nonsense—as Wittgenstein puts it in the Tractatus, showing that which cannot be said.» — Garfield lee el lenguaje M dhyamika, desde la perspectiva última, como ostensión y no aserción, y lo empareja con el mostrar del Tractatus de Wittgenstein
«N g rjuna makes this much more explicit in his discussion of positionlessness in Vigrahavy vartanī XXI-XXVIII, where he explicitly denies that the M dhyamika assert any propositions, in virtue of there being no entities or properties presupposed by their use of language existing independently and corresponding to the words used.» — Garfield remite a la Vigrahavy vartan de N g rjuna para la doctrina de la ausencia de posición, y consigna el mismo punto en el Catu ś taka de Āryadeva
«emptiness is to bring this knowledge into perceptual experience and, hence, to see things as they are.» — Garfield declara el fin de la meditación sobre la vacuidad: llevar ese conocimiento a la experiencia perceptual y ver las cosas como son. La frase arranca en la plana anterior con *The goal of meditation on*
«When we imagine change, we imagine one thing retaining its identity, but changing its properties. But if identity is understood strictly, it is only possible as an internal relation that a thing bears to itself. To the extent that a thing changes, it becomes, strictly speaking, a different thing.» — glosa de Garfield a XIII.5: si la identidad se toma estrictamente, lo que cambia pasa a ser otra cosa
«A young man does not grow old. When he is old he is no longer a young man. The relation between the young man and the old man is simply the difference of two things. But an old man doesn’t grow old either. He is already old. So if change and things that change are thought of nonrelationally, we can make no sense of change at all.» — y el desarrollo del ejemplo del verso: el joven no envejece porque ya no es joven, y el viejo tampoco porque ya es viejo
«To hold a view of emptiness—to reify it and then attribute it to phenomena—would then involve simultaneously reifying those phenomena as having a fixed nature and denying their existence at all, in virtue of disparaging their conventional reality as unreality by contrast with the reality of emptiness. It is this incoherence, so characteristic of essentialist philosophies, that leads N g rjuna to assert that one holding such a view is completely hopeless—incapable of accomplishing anything, philosophically or soteriologically.» — glosa de Garfield a XIII.8: reificar la vacuidad obliga a la vez a fijar naturaleza a los fenómenos y a negarles toda existencia
«in his comments on these verses compares one who treats emptiness as an essential property—as opposed to the lack of any essential property, thus treating M dhyamika language as assertoric in the sense of asserting the view that all things have the essential nature of emptiness—to one who, upon entering a shop and learning that there are no wares for sale, asks the shopkeeper to sell him the» — Garfield trae el símil que adjudica a Candrak rti: quien toma la vacuidad por propiedad esencial es como quien entra en una tienda, se entera de que no hay mercancías y pide que le vendan las no mercancías
«The word here translated as “connection” (phrad-pa) is the term denoting the relation between the components that are compounded in any compounded phenomenon. It can also describe the relation between two things coming together in space and time or colliding, or two things fitting together» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XIV: da el término tibetano de conexión y su campo de uso, la relación entre los componentes de un fenómeno compuesto
«In fact, the example that N g rjuna takes as central, and one that is used by some earlier Buddhist theorists as an example of a case of connection in this sense, is visual perception. In such a case, according to the proponent of the reality of meeting, or compounding, the subject, the sensory organs, the sensory faculty, and the object join together, or “connect,” not in a literal physical sense of spatiotemporal coincidence, but rather in the sense of forming an ensemble. Sense perception is, on this view, the entire compound ensemble.» — Garfield declara que el ejemplo central del capítulo es la percepción visual, y expone cómo la entiende el proponente de la realidad del encuentro
«Things that are separate from one another cannot be coherently thought of as inherently different entities either. For without any inherent identity, there is no basis for inherent difference.» — glosa de Garfield a XIV.4: sin identidad inherente no hay base para la diferencia inherente
«The conclusion is a powerful one and, especially when conjoined with the conclusion of the previous chapter, goes to the heart of any Buddhist (or non-Buddhist, for that matter) ontology that seeks to reify the entities that appear at any stage of ontological analysis.» — Garfield mide el alcance del capítulo XIV contra toda ontología, budista o no, que reifique las entidades de cualquier estrato del análisis
«But N g rjuna here pulls the rug out from any such analysis, pointing again to the emptiness of emptiness: Not only are compounded phenomena empty of inherent existence, but so is the relation among their constituents and determinants in virtue of which they are compounded.» — Garfield lee el capítulo XIV como un anticipo de la vacuidad de la vacuidad: también la relación que compone es vacía
«Essence by definition is eternal and independent. So it can’t arise dependently. Chapter XV: 1, 2 develop this point directly. But since all entities arise dependently, it follows that none of them have essence.» — glosa de Garfield a XV.1: la esencia es por definición eterna e independiente, y como todo surge dependientemente, nada tiene esencia
«In these first two verses, N g rjuna indicates the three cardinal characteristics of an essence: An essence (or an entity that exists in virtue of possessing an essence) is uncaused, independent of other phenomena, and not fabricated from other things.» — glosa de Garfield a XV.1 y XV.2: las tres características cardinales de una esencia, incausada, independiente y no fabricada
«For when N g rjuna argues that phenomena are all empty, it is of essence in this sense that they are empty.» — Garfield fija de qué están vacíos los fenómenos: de esencia en ese sentido preciso
«By a nonentity, N g rjuna means something inherently different from some existing entity. A nontable in this sense would be inherently different from a table.» — glosa de Garfield a XV.5: fija el sentido de no entidad y lo ilustra con la no mesa
«So even though it might appear that an analysis through emptiness would leave us only with nontables and nonexistent phenomena, it doesn’t even leave us with that (inherently), though it leaves us with plenty of tables, nontables, existents, and nonexistents» — Garfield acota el resultado: el análisis por la vacuidad no deja no mesas ni inexistentes inherentes, y deja en cambio mesas y no mesas convencionales
«In the Discourse to K ty yana, the Buddha argues that to assert that things exist inherently is to fall into the extreme of reification, to argue that things do not exist at all is to fall into the extreme of nihilism, and to follow the middle way is neither to assert in an unqualified way that things exist nor in an unqualified way that things do not exist.» — glosa de Garfield a XV.7: resume el Discurso a K ty yana, donde sitúa los dos extremos y el camino medio
«It represents one of the fundamental suttas of the Pali canon for Mah y na philosophy.» — Garfield declara ese sutta como uno de los fundamentales del canon Pali para la filosofía Mah y na
«For an essential property is a necessary property, and it is incoherent to say that a thing loses a necessary property.» — glosa de Garfield a XV.8: una propiedad esencial es necesaria y no cabe decir que una cosa la pierda
«The upshot of this chapter is that the very concept of an essence, and hence the very concept of an inherently existent entity at all, is incoherent. No coherent conception of the phenomenal world can be one in which things are posited other than conventionally.» — Garfield cierra el capítulo XV: el concepto mismo de esencia, y con él el de entidad inherentemente existente, queda declarado incoherente
«So there are no entities. But still, from a Buddhist perspective, we are bound: bound to our conceptions of entities and essence, bound to our selves, bound to objects, and principally, bound to cyclic existence itself.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XVI: formula la objeción budista de la que parte, que la atadura tendría que ser intrínsecamente real
«Transmigration—or for that matter continuation within one life, which from the M dhyamika perspective is exactly the same kind of process—involves moving from grasping one set of phenomena as one’s self to grasping another in the same way. That is one of the most fundamental delusions from a Buddhist standpoint.» — glosa de Garfield a XVI.3: la transmigración y la continuación dentro de una vida son el mismo proceso desde la perspectiva M dhyamika, y consisten en pasar de aferrar un conjunto de fenómenos como el yo a aferrar otro
«So an inherently existent grasper, posited in order to guarantee the reality of cyclic existence, in fact makes the reality of cyclic existence incoherent.» — Garfield devuelve el argumento: el aferrador inherentemente existente, postulado para garantizar la realidad de la existencia cíclica, la vuelve incoherente
«If compounded phenomena are permanent, grasping is permanent. And if grasping is permanent, sa s ra is permanent. And if sa s ra is permanent, then nirv a is impossible.» — glosa de Garfield a XVI.4: la cadena que va de la permanencia de los fenómenos compuestos a la imposibilidad del nirv a
«Delusion by which we are bound, from a Buddhist perspective, leads us to grasp at things; that grasping perpetuates delusion and bondage. To the extent that we grasp onto external phenomena or onto the self as inherently existent, we are bound to the delusions that constitute and ground sa s ra. To the extent that we are bound in delusion, we continue to grasp.» — glosa de Garfield a XVI.6: el círculo entre delusión y aferramiento, donde el aferrar es a la vez causa y efecto de la atadura
«The task is then to figure out the nature of bondage, which must be conceived as relational.» — Garfield fija la tarea del capítulo XVI: pensar la atadura como relacional
«There is a stylistic feature in this verse that deserves note: The pronoun “I” (bdag) is uncharacteristically fronted in the sentence and is emphasized with the focus particle» — glosa de Garfield a XVI.9: señala un rasgo de estilo del tibetano, el pronombre yo antepuesto y marcado con la partícula de foco
«It is also possible to grasp after nirv a—to reify it as a state and to crave it as a phenomenon inherently different from sa s ra and as highly desirable since it is indeed characterized as liberation from suffering. But this grasping onto the end of grasping is itself a grasping and so precludes the attainment of nirv» — Garfield nombra el segundo aferramiento del verso: aferrarse al nirv a mismo, reificándolo como estado distinto del sa s ra
«By refusing to reify liberation, in virtue of seeing it as the corelative of bondage, which itself is not inherently existent, it is possible to pursue the path to liberation without creating at the same time a huge obstacle on that path—the root delusion with regard to nirv a itself. Possible, that is, but perhaps not that easy.» — Garfield da la salida y en la misma frase le pone el límite con una nota de humor
«The answer is that they are conventionally real, dependently arisen phenomena that are empty of inherent existence. In virtue of that fact, it is possible to escape the former and to attain the latter. But that escape would be impossible were they inherently existent and is impossible for anyone who takes them to be so.» — glosa de Garfield a XVI.10: sa s ra y nirv a son convencionalmente reales y vacíos, y por eso mismo es posible escapar de uno y alcanzar el otro
«It is important to note that the first nineteen verses of this chapter represent the views of four distinct opponents in order of increasing similitude to the M dhyamika understanding.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XVII: adjudica los primeros diecinueve versos a cuatro oponentes distintos, en orden de cercanía creciente a la posición M dhyamika
«The classification to which N g rjuna refers is a partition of actions into mental and physical. Mental actions are mere intentions on this view; physical actions and speech (generally distinguished in Buddhist psychology and action theory) are properly intentional. That is, the latter two involve a mental and a nonmental component; the mental actions only involve a mental component.» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.2: la partición de las acciones en mentales y físicas, y la distinción budista entre habla y acción
«The problem is this: Given that the consequence of an action may be far in the future, something must persist to connect the action to the result. This is a kind of karmic analog of doubts about action at a distance. It is the same kind of move that lies behind trace theories of memory in recent philosophy of mind.» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.6: empareja el problema del vínculo kármico con las dudas sobre la acción a distancia y con las teorías de la huella en la filosofía de la mente reciente
«That is, just as every actual fruit requires an actual seed as its predecessor and a sprout to mediate between them, the opponent reasons, every consequence of action requires an actual action and an actual karmic link between the action and the consequence.» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.7: expone la analogía de la semilla y el brote con que el interlocutor defiende el vínculo kármico
«Using the metaphor of a promissory note, the defender of this view compares action and its consequences to a document attesting to a particular debt or other legal action: Though the act to which the document attests was in one sense momentary, its consequences, and the evidence of its reality, are unlimited in duration. So the consequences of any action—however local that action might appear to be—reverberate through all realms of existence.» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.14: expone la metáfora del pagaré con que el oponente explica la duración de las consecuencias
«Only through extensive meditation on the nature of phenomena and on the nature of emptiness can these habits be abandoned, and only through an understanding of the ultimate nature of things can the fruit of actions done through abandonment— that is, liberation from the suffering of cyclic existence» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.15: el abandono del apego no se logra por resolución sino por meditación prolongada sobre la vacuidad
«Just as when one sees a mirage, one can, knowing that it is a mirage, stop seeing it as water. That is possible for illusory things, but not so for empirically real ones. It takes effort to see an actual puddle as empty—not of conventional water, but of nonconventional inherent existence—and it takes effort to stop reifying habits.» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.16: distingue lo ilusorio de lo empíricamente real con el ejemplo del espejismo y el charco
«The mechanism by which karma operates in rebirth is not that each individual action in a continuum designated as an individual remains permanently in place or leaves a substantial trace that lies dormant until it produces its consequence. This is indeed how karma is often conceived by substantialist Buddhist schools.» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.17: niega el mecanismo de la huella latente que adjudica a las escuelas budistas sustancialistas
«Rather, each moment of such a continuum, including the moment of rebirth, is a consequence, through the mechanism of dependent arising, of all of the previous moments of that continuum (and, of course, of much else besides» — y la alternativa que propone: cada momento del continuo es consecuencia de todos los anteriores por el originarse dependiente
«This sober empiricist account of these matters forms the basis for Mah y na moral theory and its account of the nature of soteriological practice.» — Garfield declara esa cuenta empirista sobria como base de la teoría moral Mah y na
«All actions have ramifications into the indefinite future, due to dependent arising.» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.20, primera de las dos tesis que lee en la no expiración de la acción
«And this resolves the final apparent paradox: The tension between the assertion that nothing is permanent and that all action is nonexpiring. All phenomena are indeed impermanent, but that entails both that they do not inherently cease and that their effects are indefinite in scope.» — Garfield resuelve la tensión entre la impermanencia universal y la no expiración de la acción
«N g rjuna here and in XVII: 24 draws some of the moral consequences of the nihilistic view of action that seems to follow from the conditions set on its existence by the reificationist: Actions would not come into being through agency and so would have no regular relation to any agents. And so one might find oneself experiencing the consequences of some action one had not performed, or find that it was, in some sense, one’s own action. One would not take action seriously as one’s own responsibility and would not worry about moral infractions.» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.23 y XVII.24: las consecuencias morales de la vista nihilista de la acción
«Since morality depends on a distinction between morally positive and morally negative acts, if there were no actions, or if actions could not be thought of as initiated by their agents, there would be no morality.» — Garfield ata la moral a la distinción entre actos positivos y negativos y a que los agentes inicien sus acciones
«That delusion consists in confusing existence with inherent existence and issues inevitably in one of the two extreme views— reification or nihilism.» — Garfield define lo que los filósofos budistas llaman la delusión raíz: confundir la existencia con la existencia inherente, lo que desemboca sin falta en uno de los dos extremos
«There is no accounting kept, and no debit and credit system, either from the causal or the moral point of view in the continuum of human action and experience.» — Garfield niega la contabilidad kármica de debe y haber, tanto en lo causal como en lo moral
«That is, we can understand the entire sequence of agent, action, consequences of action, and arising of new agent, whether within a single lifetime or—in the context of Buddhist ontology and doctrine— across lifetimes, as an entirely empty sequence with entirely empty stages. But that does not prevent its being perceived, or its reality for those who participate therein.» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.31 y XVII.32: la secuencia entera, dentro de una vida o entre vidas, se entiende como vacía sin que deje de percibirse
«Again, it is important to emphasize that emptiness, rather than being a kind of non actuality contrasting with empirical reality, is in fact the very condition of empirical reality and hence the only kind of genuine actuality.» — Garfield vuelve sobre el punto que atraviesa el comentario: la vacuidad es la condición misma de la realidad empírica
«Mirages are not water and do not quench thirst, and dream-elephants carry no loads.» — Garfield acota el símil del espejismo y el sueño para que no se lea como irrealidad
«This analysis hence does not entail the nonexistence of agent and action, except from the ultimate point of view. Rather it explains how it is possible for them to exist at all.» — Garfield cierra el capítulo XVII declarando que el análisis explica cómo es posible que agente y acción existan
«In standard Buddhist analysis, they include the physical body, sensation, perception, dispositions, and consciousness or cognition.» — glosa de Garfield a XVIII.1: enumera los agregados del análisis budista corriente
«It reflects an essentially empirical psychological theory about the best explanatory framework to use in comprehending human behavior and the most useful way for a Buddhist practitioner to attend to his/her experience.» — Garfield declara empírica y no doctrinal la teoría psicológica de los agregados
«This argument, by the way, appears in virtually the same form in On Man by Sextus Empiricus.» — Garfield consigna que el mismo argumento aparece casi con la misma forma en el On Man de Sexto Empírico
«This is because the only objects ever given to us in introspection are the aggregates (a familiar Humean insight), and the self we presumably care about is one we know.» — glosa de Garfield a XVIII.1: el yo distinto de los agregados se vuelve incognoscible, y Garfield llama humeana a la observación
«So what N g rjuna is emphatically not doing is arguing that there are no aggregates in any sense or that there are no persons, agents, subjects, and so forth.» — Garfield acota el reductio del capítulo XVIII para que no se lea como negación de personas ni de sujetos
«Much of the motivation for positing a substantial self is the intuition that since its properties and components exist, they must exist somewhere—that there must be a substratum in which they inhere.» — glosa de Garfield a XVIII.2: nombra la intuición que empuja a postular un yo sustancial
«And when the drive to posit the substratum vanishes, we simply, N g rjuna urges, think of the aggregates and properties as associated aggregates and properties, not as my aggregates and properties.» — y lo que queda al desaparecer esa intuición: agregados y propiedades asociados, no míos
«Understanding emptiness leads one to grasp less, to become more detached. Relaxing one’s tendency to grasp leads to a realization of emptiness.» — glosa de Garfield a XVIII.2 y XVIII.3: la calle de doble sentido entre entender la vacuidad y soltar el aferramiento
«The root delusion—the fundamental cognitive error— is the confusion of merely conventional existence with inherent existence.» — glosa de Garfield a XVIII.5: nombra el error cognitivo de raíz, confundir la existencia meramente convencional con la inherente
«For those who are nihilistic about the self (such as contemporary eliminative materialists or classical Indian C rv kas), it is important to explain the conventional reality of the self. For those who tend to reify the self, the doctrine of no-self is taught, that is, the doctrine of the emptiness of the self.» — glosa de Garfield a XVIII.6: las enseñanzas sobre el yo se reparten según el extremo al que salen al paso
«The terms and the properties they designate are themselves empty, despite the fact that they are used to designate emptiness.» — Garfield lee la doctrina de ni yo ni no yo por la vacuidad de la vacuidad: los términos mismos son vacíos
«of inherent identity nor one in terms of inherent difference between agent and action will suffice. Both presupposes, incoherently, the inherent existence and hence the possession of an essence, of each term in the putative relation.» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.28: ni un análisis por identidad inherente ni uno por diferencia inherente entre agente y acción sirven, porque los dos presuponen esencia en cada término. La frase arranca en la plana anterior con *So N g rjuna emphasizes that neither an analysis in terms*
«But if nirv a is liberation from cyclic existence and hence from arising and ceasing, it follows that, from the ultimate standpoint, all things in sa s ra are actually just as they are in nirv» — glosa de Garfield a XVIII.7: desde el punto de vista último, todo lo que está en sa s ra es exactamente como está en nirv a, movida que Garfield llama de las más radicales y originales de N g rjuna
«This is the positive tetralemma regarding existence. Everything is conventionally real. Everything is ultimately unreal (that is, not unreal in just any sense, but unreal when seen from the ultimate standpoint). Everything has both characteristics—that is, everything is both conventionally real and ultimately unreal. Nothing is ultimately real or completely nonexistent.» — glosa de Garfield a XVIII.8: lee el verso como tetralema positivo sobre la existencia y traduce cada miembro a las dos verdades
«Interestingly, the tetralemma can also be asserted in a negative form with some of the same force: Nothing is real (ultimately). Nothing is not-real (everything has a kind of reality). Nothing is both real and not-real (in the same sense—that would be contradictory). Nothing is neither real nor not-real (the law of the excluded middle). Both forms of the tetralemma are found in this text.» — Garfield consigna que el mismo tetralema se enuncia también en forma negativa y remite al capítulo XXII
«That is, independent of conceptual imputation there are no objects, no identities, and so, no distinctions. But of course, as Kant would agree, there is no way that we can think such a reality.» — glosa de Garfield a XVIII.9: sin imputación conceptual no hay objetos ni identidades ni distinciones, y Garfield añade que Kant estaría de acuerdo en que tal realidad no se puede pensar
«That is, this doctrine itself is also empty. It is conventionally real, ultimately nonexistent, dependent, impermanent, and has a nature in itself that can never be characterized.» — glosa de Garfield a XVIII.11: la doctrina misma es vacía, convencionalmente real y últimamente inexistente
«That is why he emphasizes that with a correct view, even without a teacher or a buddha to instruct one, a patient meditator can attain his/her own awakening.» — glosa de Garfield a XVIII.12: con vista correcta, hasta sin maestro ni buda, un meditador paciente alcanza su propio despertar
«N g rjuna in this chapter argues that time cannot be conceived of as an entity existing independently of temporal phenomena, but must itself be regarded as a set of relations among them.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XIX: el tiempo no es entidad independiente de los fenómenos temporales sino un conjunto de relaciones entre ellos, y empareja los argumentos con Zenón, Sexto y McTaggart
«Time is by definition an ordering of events in which moments stand in determinate relations to one another, in virtue of which the location of any moment depends on the location of all of the others. The present is the present only because it is poised within the past and the future. If it were not, it would not be the present.» — glosa de Garfield a XIX.3: define el tiempo como ordenamiento de sucesos en relaciones determinadas, y el presente por su posición entre pasado y futuro
«This is a second destructive dilemma: Time, if it exists as an entity, is either stationary or changing. To say that it is changing is incoherent; we would need to posit a super-time in which that change occurs. But to say that it is static is incoherent as well. That suggests that past, present, and future coexist. So there is no coherent conception of time as an entity.» — glosa de Garfield a XIX.5: el segundo dilema destructivo, el tiempo estático o cambiante, y ninguna de las dos salidas se sostiene
«That is, the only mode of existence that time has is as a set of relations among empirical phenomena. Apart from those phenomena and those relations, there is no time.» — la cuenta positiva que Garfield lee en XIX.6: el único modo de existencia del tiempo es como conjunto de relaciones entre fenómenos empíricos
«Time is thus merely a dependent set of relations, not an entity in its own right, and certainly not the inherently existent vessel of existence it might appear to be.» — Garfield cierra el capítulo XIX: el tiempo queda como conjunto dependiente de relaciones y no como receptáculo inherentemente existente
«This chapter examines the possibility that, while no effect could be inherently dependent upon any single cause, it might be that the correct understanding of dependent arising and the thoroughgoing interdependence of phenomena that N g rjuna urges involves the inherent dependence of any phenomenon on the combination of all of its conditions. Thus, while every phenomenon would, as N g rjuna has been arguing, be completely dependent on all others, this dependence itself would be inherently existent.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XX: fija lo que se examina, que la dependencia misma en la combinación de condiciones fuera inherentemente existente
«Consider the set of conditions of a match lighting. There is the presence of sulphur, friction, oxygen, and so forth. But neither in virtue of conceiving of these things nor in virtue of seeing them do we see fire.» — glosa de Garfield a XX.3: el ejemplo del fósforo, donde ni concibiendo ni viendo las condiciones se ve el fuego
«A collection of conditions determines its effect simply because when those conditions are present, that effect arises.» — la respuesta que Garfield da en nombre del M dhyamika: no hay respuesta metafísica general, las condiciones determinan el efecto porque cuando están el efecto surge
«But there is no independent foundation for the network of regularities itself.» — y el límite de esa respuesta: la red de regularidades no tiene fundamento independiente
«N g rjuna then complains that on this view the word “cause” is being used equivocally: In one sense it is used to refer to things—the primary causes—that really don’t cause anything. In the other sense, it is used to refer to those that really have causal status—namely, the entire assemblage of conditions that are necessary and sufficient for the arising of the effect.» — glosa de Garfield a XX.5: el oponente usa la palabra causa de dos maneras, la causa primaria que no causa nada y el ensamblaje entero de condiciones
«This argument succeeds because the opponent denies the distinctness in entity between cause and effect by positing an identity in essence and by appealing to that essence to explain the causal potential of the cause.» — glosa de Garfield a XX.9: explica por qué el argumento muerde, aunque la tesis del oponente se parezca a la de N g rjuna
«In introducing the idea of a cause being “joined” with its effect (′brel-ba), N g rjuna is introducing a putative causal link into the discussion.» — glosa de Garfield a XX.10: el término tibetano de unir introduce un supuesto nexo causal en la discusión
«In the last two lines, N g rjuna makes use of the strange metaphor of a cause seeing its effect to denote this link (thongs-ba).100 This is clearly a metaphor for this link, suggesting that whether it is forged by contiguity or by some other means at a distance, it will be explanatorily impotent.» — glosa de Garfield a XX.11: la metáfora de la causa que ve su efecto, con su término tibetano, para nombrar ese nexo
«N g rjuna, echoing the argument of Chapter I, replies that only if cause and effect are empty can production be understood.» — glosa de Garfield a XX.16: solo si causa y efecto son vacíos se entiende la producción
«This is an eloquent statement of the interpenetration of the ultimate and the conventional truths: The very ground on the basis of which emptiness is asserted is denied reality through the understanding of emptiness itself.» — glosa de Garfield a XX.18: llama enunciado elocuente de la interpenetración de las dos verdades al doble filo de la ontología de la vacuidad
«For if anything were apparent from the ultimate standpoint, that phenomenon would be nonempty. It is the absence of any such phenomenon—not its presence—that confirms the analysis and that prevents it from lapsing into a view» — Garfield explica por qué ese doble filo no es autorrefutación sino autoconfirmación
«For the relation at issue in this chapter to be inherently existent, the collection of conditions would have either to be identical in nature or different in nature from the effect. If identical, we would have the absurd consequence that the effect was self-caused. But if the effect is totally different in essence, we have no explanation of how that collection of conditions produced that effect.» — glosa de Garfield a XX.20: el dilema de identidad o diferencia aplicado a la colección de condiciones y su efecto
«But collections depend upon their parts and upon the causes of those parts. So no such collection can be self-produced.» — glosa de Garfield a XX.23: una colección depende de sus partes y no puede autoproducirse
«N g rjuna will show that destruction and becoming are both mutually incompatible and that they are mutually entailing. It will then follow that if they are inherently existent, they have contradictory properties.» — glosa de Garfield a XXI.1: la estrategia del capítulo, mostrar que devenir y destrucción son a la vez incompatibles y mutuamente implicantes
«N g rjuna, by way of completing the discussion of the nature of conventional phenomena, demonstrates the emptiness of even arising and destruction themselves as a prelude to the final section of the text, that discussing the nature of the ultimate and its relation to conventional reality.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XXI: la vacuidad del surgir y de la destrucción mismos, como preludio a la sección final del texto sobre lo último y su relación con lo convencional
«The empty cannot come to be or be destroyed simply because there is no basis for the predication. With no entities, there is nothing to be brought into existence or to be destroyed. But if we posit nonempty phenomena, their independence and consequent permanence preclude their coming to be or destruction.» — glosa de Garfield a XXI.9: ni lo vacío ni lo no vacío pueden devenir ni destruirse, cada uno por su razón
«If one thinks that any existent entity must exist inherently, then one is forced simultaneously to embrace the extremes of nihilism and reification. One must reify because any existent must be treated as inherently existent and hence permanent. But upon observing the impermanence of phenomena, one will be driven to nihilism since their impermanence would entail their lack of inherent existence and hence their complete nonexistence.» — glosa de Garfield a XXI.14: quien iguala existir con existir inherentemente queda obligado a abrazar a la vez los dos extremos
«The very fact that constant becoming and destruction characterizes reality entails that at no point can anything be identified as an entity in the robust sense—a thing with a nature that persists over time.» — glosa de Garfield a XXI.16: el devenir y la destrucción constantes impiden identificar nada como entidad con naturaleza persistente
«If we thought that anything had inherent existence—whether entities, processes, or arising and its determinants—that could not possibly cease in nirv a. So this view would render Buddhist soteriology incoherent and is therefore, since it purports to be a view of the nature of cyclic existence by contrast with nirv a, untenable.» — glosa de Garfield a XXI.17: la consecuencia soteriológica, que lo inherentemente existente no podría cesar en el nirv a
«This is yet another application of the principle of the independence of separable phenomena.» — glosa de Garfield a XXI.19: nombra el principio que se aplica, el de la independencia de los fenómenos separables
«As this target ontology was among the subtlest of the pre-M dhyamika views of the nature of reality, dependent arising, and impermanence (and is indeed not by any means a relic within Theravada Buddhism) and as it represents a plausible interpretation of fundamental Buddhist tenets, this refutation is an appropriate close to the portion of the text concerned directly with the analysis of the fundamental structure of conventional reality.» — glosa de Garfield a XXI.21: mide la ontología que el capítulo enfrenta como la más sutil de las prem dhyamika y consigna que no es reliquia dentro del budismo Theravada
«With this in hand, N g rjuna turns in the final six chapters to topics concerned with the nature of ultimate reality: buddhahood, prominent incorrect views about the ultimate, the Four Noble Truths and emptiness, nirv a, and the twelve limbs of dependent origination.» — Garfield anuncia el temario de los seis capítulos finales según su propia partición
«There is a conventional world of dependently arisen objects with properties, of selves and their properties and relations. And in that world there is conventional truth: Snow is white. Grass is green. Individual humans are distinct from one another and from their material possessions.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XXII: describe el mundo convencional y da tres ejemplos de verdad convencional
«Just how these two truths are connected, and how we are to understand them simultaneously, is the central problem of M dhyamika epistemology and metaphysics» — Garfield declara cuál es el problema central de la epistemología y la metafísica M dhyamika: cómo se conectan las dos verdades
«For the ultimate truth is, in some sense, ineffable in that all words and their referents are by definition conventional. The dualities generated by the use of terms that denote individuals or classes as distinct from others or from their complements are unavoidable in discourse and nonexistent in the ultimate. So one must be very careful to kick away all ladders promptly.» — Garfield nombra el primer peligro del discurso sobre lo último, el sinsentido, y lo dice con la figura de la escalera que se aparta de una patada
«By distinguishing the conventional from the ultimate, it is tempting to disparage the former in contrast to the latter, developing a sort of theory of one truth and one falsehood.» — Garfield nombra el segundo peligro: despreciar lo convencional frente a lo último
«It is to combat this tendency to treat the conventional world as illusory through treating such apparently transcendent entities as inherently existent that N g rjuna develops these final chapters.» — Garfield declara para qué existen, a su juicio, los capítulos finales del tratado
«This form of analytic demonstration of the nonexistence of the self through an analysis of its possible relationship to the aggregates, often referred to as the “fivefold analysis,” is developed with great elegance by Candrakïrti in M dhyamak vat ra.» — glosa de Garfield a XXII.1: nombra el análisis quíntuple y lo adjudica, en su forma más elegante, a Candrak rti en el M dhyamak vat ra
«That self cannot be the aggregates for two reasons: First, the self posited is meant to be unitary, and the aggregates are plural. Second, the aggregates are constantly undergoing change, while the self that is posited is meant to endure as a single entity.» — glosa de Garfield a XXII.1: las dos razones por las que el yo no puede ser los agregados
«The appropriation here is the appropriation of aggregates as one’s own. Without it, there can be no sense of individual identity.» — glosa de Garfield a XXII.7: sin apropiación de los agregados como propios no hay sentido de identidad individual
«This negative tetralemma is a crucial verse for understanding the relation between discourse on the conventional level and the understanding of emptiness or the ultimate truth. N g rjuna has been urging all along that ultimately all things are empty. It would be easy to interpret him to mean that from the ultimate standpoint, we can say of phenomena that they are empty. But here he quite deliberately undermines that interpretation, claiming instead that nothing can be literally said of things from such a standpoint.» — glosa de Garfield a XXII.11: llama tetralema negativo al verso y le saca que nada puede decirse literalmente desde el punto de vista último
«The central claim in this verse is that all assertion, to the extent that it is true at all, is at best nominally true. Discourse about the ultimate character of things is not exempt from this generalization. Predication always requires an entity of which the predicate can be true; and the emptiness of phenomena guarantees that from the ultimate standpoint, there are no phenomena to be empty. The language is hence at best only ostensive.» — Garfield formula la tesis central que lee en XXII.11: toda aserción, en la medida en que sea verdadera, lo es a lo sumo nominalmente
«On the one hand, it forces one to see nirv a as complete annihilation, which doesn’t make it look quite so attractive. On the other hand, it forces the conclusion that the Buddha is either not in nirv a (since he exists), which is paradoxical in that buddhahood should guarantee nirv a, or that he both exists (as a genuine buddha) and does not exist (in virtue of being in nirv a), which is contradictory.» — glosa de Garfield a XXII.13: la doble paradoja de adjudicar existencia inherente al Buda, entre la aniquilación y la contradicción
«Empty things exist conventionally; but about their ultimate status, nothing can be literally said.» — glosa de Garfield a XXII.14: las cosas vacías existen convencionalmente y de su estatuto último no cabe decir nada literalmente
«The ultimate nature of things is perhaps shown by it, to use a Wittgensteinian metaphor, but cannot be said in this language.» — Garfield vuelve a la metáfora wittgensteiniana del mostrar frente al decir para el estatuto último
«To see buddhahood for what it is—to see things as a buddha sees them—one must see things independently of the categories that determine an ontology of entities and a dichotomy of existence and nonexistence.» — glosa de Garfield a XXII.15: ver la budeidad exige ver las cosas fuera de las categorías de una ontología de entidades
«This crucial final verse emphasizes again the lack of any fundamental nature of entities. Emptiness is the final nature of all things, from rocks to dogs to human beings to buddhas.» — glosa de Garfield a XXII.16: la vacuidad es la naturaleza final de todo, de las rocas a los budas
«But this is so, paradoxically, because ultimately there is no fundamental transformation, because there is nothing to transform.» — Garfield formula la paradoja que a su juicio hace posible la transformación: últimamente no hay transformación porque no hay nada que transformar
«The fundamental defilements are desire, hatred, and confusion: the desire for things that are not desirable, the aversion to things to which it is not reasonable to be averse, confusion about the actual nature of entities.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XXIII: enumera las impurezas fundamentales y las define una por una
«The four basic errors or erroneous philosophical theses are: (1) There is a permanent self among the five personal aggregates. (2) There is real happiness in sa s ra. (3) The body is pure—that is, that it is a real source of happiness. (4) There is a permanent self distinct from the aggregates.» — Garfield enumera los cuatro errores básicos que según la doctrina budista ortodoxa atan al sa s ra
«And if they are merely illusions, why isn’t the distinction between sa s ra and nirv na merely an illusion; why isn’t suffering merely an illusion? In short, why isn’t illusion merely an illusion? This chapter is devoted to answering these fundamental questions in Buddhist soteriological theory.» — Garfield formula la pregunta que a su juicio el capítulo XXIII viene a contestar, y la remata con un giro sobre la ilusión de la ilusión
«It is a tight and vicious circle of attribution and emotional reaction, all depending upon reification.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIII.1: el círculo entre atribuir lo agradable y lo desagradable a las cosas y reaccionar emocionalmente a ellas
«This verse recalls and applies the fivefold analysis of the self developed in the previous chapter to the analysis of the defilements and the defiled. They are not identical to the aggregates, completely different from the aggregates, present as a basis of the aggregates, contained in the aggregates as a core, or separate from or dependent upon the aggregates.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIII.5: aplica a las impurezas y a lo impuro el análisis quíntuple del capítulo anterior, y enumera las cinco relaciones
«The point here is simply that in calling this an error, one must be very careful not to commit a corresponding error—to suggest that calling the impermanent impermanent constitutes the assertion of an ultimate truth or of the presupposition of the ultimate reality of impermanent phenomena.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIII.13: al llamar error a la vista de la permanencia hay que cuidar de no cometer el error correlativo
«Since all of these errors are rooted in grasping and since any inherently existent grasping would depend on an inherently existent grasper, these errors cannot be inherently existent.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIII.15: los cuatro errores se enraízan en el aferrar, y sin aferrador inherente no hay error inherente
«So the only remaining possibility is that the error is the perception of an inherently real but at the same time deceptive object: a real but nonexistent object.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIII.21: la única salida que le queda al oponente es un objeto real y a la vez inexistente
«These observations apply not only to the putative objects of the errors, but also to those of Buddhist doctrine, at least when it is given a substantialist reading.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIII.22: llama sorprendente la conclusión, que el argumento alcanza también a la doctrina budista leída sustancialistamente
«That is, the objects of correct conventional understanding are no more inherently existent than those of incorrect understanding. The truth of even N g rjuna’s own philosophical theory is not grounded in its reference to independently existent, substantially real entities.» — y el remate: ni la propia teoría de N g rjuna se funda en referencia a entidades sustancialmente reales
«But this is not because we then apprehend things and their true nature. Rather we apprehend that there are no things, per se, and that those posited from our side have no nature to understand.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIII.23: al cesar el error no se aprehende la naturaleza verdadera de las cosas sino que no hay cosas con naturaleza que entender
«On the other hand, he reminds those who may have followed the argument this far, but who may be tempted either to nihilism about the defilements or to the subtler error of asserting that their dependence and emptiness is literally their ultimate nature, that the defilements must be conventionally real in order to be relinquished.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIII.25: las impurezas tienen que ser convencionalmente reales para poder abandonarse
«While Chapter XXIV ostensibly concerns the Four Buddhist Truths and the way they are to be understood from the vantage point of emptiness, it is really about the nature of emptiness itself and about the relation between emptiness and conventional reality. As such, it is the philosophical heart of M lamadhyamakak rik» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XXIV: lo declara corazón filosófico del tratado y dice de qué trata en realidad
«The first six verses of the chapter (XXIV: 1-6) present a reply to N g rjuna’s doctrine of emptiness by an opponent charging the doctrine with nihilism. The next eight verses (XXIV: 7-14) are primarily rhetorical, castigating the opponent for his misunderstanding of M dhyamika.» — Garfield reparte el capítulo XXIV por bloques de versos y adjudica cada uno a su función
«This tactic of arguing not only against each extreme but of arguing that the contradictory extremes are in fact mutually entailing is, as we have seen in earlier chapters, a dialectical trademark of N g rjuna» — Garfield nombra la marca dialéctica que adjudica a N g rjuna: mostrar que los dos extremos contradictorios se implican mutuamente
«The Four Noble Truths are: (1) All life in cyclic existence is suffering. (2) There is a cause of this suffering, namely, craving caused by ignorance. (3) There is a release from suffering. (4) The path to that release is the eightfold Buddhist path of right view, right concentration, right mindfulness, right speech, right effort, right action, right morality, right livelihood.» — Garfield enumera las Cuatro Nobles Verdades y desglosa el óctuple sendero
«Moreover, pleasant and unpleasant are mutually dependent. N g rjuna here claims that “pleasant” and “unpleasant” are not absolute but rather comparative terms and, hence, essentially interdefined. If this is so, then since their referents depend upon each other for their satisfaction of these descriptions, neither property can exist inherently.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIII.10 y XXIII.11: lo agradable y lo desagradable son comparativos y se definen uno por otro, de modo que ninguna de las dos propiedades existe inherentemente
«This is not because these assertions are articles of faith, in the sense of revealed doctrine, but because anyone arguing within this framework has accepted the arguments for them.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.1: la fuerza de la objeción no viene de la fe sino de que el interlocutor ya aceptó los argumentos
«Once we reject the Four Noble Truths, the essential ingredients of Buddhist practice become unintelligible. Knowledge of the ultimate nature of things becomes impossible since all of the knowledge gained in this tradition is knowledge of things that accords with the truths. Abandonment of error and craving, and eventually of cyclic existence, becomes unintelligible without the context of the analysis contained in the truths. Meditation loses its point. The eightfold path becomes a path to nowhere.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.2: lo que se desmorona al rechazar las Cuatro Nobles Verdades
«The whole point of the Dharma and the Sangha is to make it possible to attain buddhahood. The Dharma provides the philosophical insight and knowledge necessary for enlightenment; and the Sangha provides the teachers, the encouragement, the models, the opportunity for practice, and other support necessary for the strenuous and perseverant practice of the path.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.5: para qué sirven el Dharma y la Sangha según la objeción del oponente
«The implicit dilemma with which N g rjuna here confronts himself is elegant. For as we have seen, the distinction between the two truths or two vantage points—the ultimate and the conventional—is fundamental to his own method.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.6: llama elegante el dilema con que N g rjuna se enfrenta a sí mismo, porque la distinción de las dos verdades es de su propio método
«N g rjuna launches the reply by charging the opponent with foisting the opponent’s own understanding of emptiness on N g rjuna. Though this is not made as explicit in the text as one might like, it is important to note that the understanding N g rjuna has in mind is one that, in the terms of M dhyamika, reifies emptiness itself.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.7: la respuesta empieza adjudicando al oponente su propio entendimiento de la vacuidad, que la reifica
«This is the first explicit announcement of the two truths in the text. It is important to note that they are introduced as two truths, and that they are introduced as distinct. This will be important to bear in mind later. For it is tempting, since one of the truths is characterized as an ultimate truth, to think of the conventional as» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.8: primera enunciación explícita de las dos verdades, presentadas como dos y como distintas
«The term translated here as “truth of worldly convention” (Tib: kun-rdzob bden-pa, Skt: samvrti-satya) denotes a truth dependent upon tacit agreement, an everyday truth, a truth about things as they appear to accurate ordinary investigation, as judged by appropriate human standards.» — Garfield da los términos tibetano y sánscrito de la verdad de convención mundana y la define por el acuerdo tácito y los estándares humanos apropiados
«denotes the way things are independent of convention, or to put it another way, the way things turn out to be when we subject them to analysis with the intention of discovering the nature they have from their own side, as opposed to the characteristics we impute to them.» — y la definición correlativa de la verdad última, con sus términos tibetano y sánscrito
«First, as we shall see, understanding the ultimate nature of things just is understanding that their conventional nature is merely conventional.» — la fórmula más apretada de la lectura de Garfield: entender la naturaleza última de las cosas es entender que su naturaleza convencional es meramente convencional
«In this respect, M dhyamika philosophy has suffered from the same fate as much Western sceptical philosophy, including that of the Pyrrhonians and of Hume and Wittgenstein, all of whom were at considerable pains to warn readers against interpreting them as denying the existence of ordinary entities, but all of whom have been repeatedly read as doing so.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.11: empareja el destino del M dhyamika con el del escepticismo occidental, los pirrónicos, Hume y Wittgenstein, leídos todos como negadores de las entidades ordinarias
«Here is the idea behind this image, a standard trope in classical Indian rhetoric: A man with a herd of horses thinks that he is missing one and accuses you of having stolen it. As he rides around and counts his horses, he always comes up one short. But you point out to him that the one he is accusing you of stealing is in fact the very one he is riding but has forgotten to count.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.15: desarrolla el tropo indio clásico del hombre que cuenta sus caballos y no cuenta el que monta
«Likewise, N g rjuna is saying, the opponent who confuses the M dhyamika analysis in terms of emptiness with nihilism is charging N g rjuna with a nihilism that is in fact his own.» — y su aplicación: el nihilismo que el oponente le imputa es el suyo
«It is to see the conventional as illusory and emptiness as the reality standing behind it.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.16: reificar la vacuidad es ver lo convencional como ilusorio y la vacuidad como la realidad detrás
«It is important and central to the M dhyamika dialectic to see that these go together— that nihilism about one kind of entity is typically paired with reification of another.» — Garfield formula la regla que atraviesa la dialéctica: el nihilismo sobre un tipo de entidad va emparejado con la reificación de otro
«but is arguing that understanding the ultimate nature of things is completely dependent upon understanding conventional truth.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.10: N g rjuna no desprecia lo convencional frente a lo último, lo hace condición de entenderlo. La frase arranca en la plana anterior con *It is important to see here that N g rjuna is not disparaging the conventional by contrast to the ultimate*
«extreme of reification of the phenomenal world depends upon viewing emptiness nihilistically; the extreme of reification of emptiness requires us to be nihilistic about the phenomenal world.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.17: los dos estrechos entre los que hay que hallar el camino medio, cada extremo sostenido por el nihilismo sobre el otro término. La frase arranca en la plana anterior con *This defines the straits between which the middle path must be found*
«A middle path must reify neither and hence must regard emptiness, as well as all empty phenomena, as empty.» — y la salida: no reificar ninguno de los dos, de modo que también la vacuidad sea vacía
«Its referent, emptiness itself, is thereby asserted to be merely dependent and nominal—conventionally existent but ultimately empty. This is hence a middle path with regard to emptiness.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.18: la vacuidad misma queda como designación dependiente, convencionalmente existente y últimamente vacía
«To view convention in this way is to view it neither as ontologically insignificant—it determines the character of the phenomenal world—nor as ontologically efficacious— it is empty. And so we also have a middle way with regard to convention.» — Garfield saca del mismo verso un camino medio respecto de la convención
«For this amounts to the emptiness of the central ontological tenet of N g rjuna’s system and is what allows him to claim, despite all appearances, that he is positionless.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.18: la vacuidad de la relación misma entre lo dependientemente surgido y la vacuidad es lo que permite a N g rjuna declararse sin posición
«This objection would be a sound one against a view that in fact asserted its own inherent existence, or grounded its truth on an inherently existing ontological basis. But, N g rjuna suggests here, that is not the case for his account. Rather everything, including this very thesis, has only nominal truth, and nothing is either inherently existent or true in virtue of designating an inherently existent fact.» — Garfield formula la objeción de autorrefutación y la respuesta que lee en el texto: nada es inherentemente existente ni verdadero por designar un hecho inherentemente existente
«The tables are thus turned: It appeared that N g rjuna, in virtue of arguing for the emptiness of these phenomena, was arguing that in reality they do not exist precisely because for the reifier of emptiness, existence and emptiness are opposites. But, in fact, because of the identity of emptiness and conventional existence, it is the reifier who, in virtue of denying the emptiness of these phenomena, denies their existence.» — Garfield describe la vuelta de tuerca del capítulo XXIV: es el reificador de la vacuidad quien, al negarles vacuidad a los fenómenos, les niega la existencia
«But for N g rjuna, since existence amounts to emptiness, the assertion of the emptiness of suffering affirms, rather than denies, its existence.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.21: afirmar la vacuidad del sufrimiento afirma su existencia, no la niega
«Similarly, the third noble truth is the truth of cessation. But inherently existent things cannot cease. Empty ones can. N g rjuna’s analysis thus explains the third truth; the reifier contradicts it.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.23: lo inherentemente existente no puede cesar y lo vacío sí
«The path, after all, is a path from suffering and to awakening. If the former cannot cease and the latter does not depend on cultivation, the path is nonexistent.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.24 y XXIV.25: el camino solo tiene sentido si el sufrimiento es aliviable y la mente vacía y por tanto maleable
«So the essentialist has a dilemma if he wants to maintain the possibility of a community of practicioners (the Sangha) and of a path for them to practice: Either the ignorance in which they find themselves and that serves as the impetus to practice is inherently existent, in which case practice is bound to be inefficacious, or the understanding they hope to achieve is inherently existent, in which case there is no need to practice since it is already present and no use in practicing since its existence is independent of practice.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.28: el dilema del esencialista entre una ignorancia inherente y una comprensión inherente
«N g rjuna has hence demonstrated that any reification, whether of the conventional or of the ultimate, ends up, paradoxically, denying the existence of the very things it reifies.» — Garfield resume el resultado del capítulo XXIV: toda reificación acaba negando la existencia de lo que reifica
«A thoroughgoing analysis in terms of emptiness, on the other hand—one that includes the understanding of the emptiness of emptiness—renders the entire phenomenal world as well as emptiness itself comprehensible as nominally existent, empirically actual, and dependently arisen—real but essenceless.» — y el reverso: el análisis que incluye la vacuidad de la vacuidad deja el mundo y la vacuidad como nominalmente existentes, empíricamente actuales y sin esencia
«But practice and action require dependence, change, and a regular relation between one» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.33: la práctica y la acción exigen dependencia, cambio y relación regular entre lo que se hace y el estado futuro
«Common sense neither posits nor requires intrinsic reality in phenomena or a real causal nexus. Common sense holds the world to be a network of dependently arisen phenomena. So common sense only makes sense if the world is asserted to be empty.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.36: el sentido común no exige realidad intrínseca ni nexo causal real, de modo que solo tiene sentido si el mundo es vacío
«These morals are driven home in XXIV: 19, where N g rjuna emphasizes that everything—and this must include emptiness—is dependently arisen. So everything» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.19: todo, y eso incluye la vacuidad, es dependientemente surgido. La frase sigue en la plana siguiente con la enumeración de las tres propiedades coextensivas, vacuidad, originarse dependiente e identidad convencional
«When we say that a phenomenon is empty, we mean that when we try to specify its essence, we come up with nothing. When we look for the substance that underlies the properties, or the bearer of the parts, we find none. When we ask what it is that gives a thing its identity, we stumble not upon ontological facts but upon conventions.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.36: da el contenido operativo de llamar vacío a un fenómeno, que al buscarle esencia no se encuentra nada y al buscarle identidad se tropieza con convenciones
«For emptiness to be nonempty would be for it to be a substantial entity, an independent existent, a nonconventional phenomenon.» — Garfield describe qué sería una vacuidad no vacía, y le concede que la posición no carece de motivación
«But now let us analyze that emptiness—the emptiness of the table—to see what we find. What do we find? Nothing at all but the table’s lack of inherent existence. No conventional table, no emptiness of the table. The emptiness is dependent upon the table and is, therefore, itself empty of inherent existence, as is the emptiness of that emptiness, and so on, ad infinitum.» — el análisis con que Garfield muestra la vacuidad de la vacuidad tomando la mesa por ejemplo
«To see the table as empty, for N g rjuna, is not to somehow see “beyond” the illusion of the table to some other, more real entity. It is to see the table as conventional; as dependent.» — y su corolario: ver la mesa como vacía no es ver más allá de ella hacia una entidad más real
«Emptiness is hence not different from conventional reality—it is the fact that conventional reality is conventional.» — la fórmula más apretada de la tesis: la vacuidad no es distinta de la realidad convencional, es el hecho de que la realidad convencional sea convencional
«This is perhaps the most radical and deep step in the M dhyamika dialectic, but it is also, as we shall see, the step that saves it from falling into metaphysical extravagance and brings it back to sober pragmatic scepticism.» — Garfield mide el paso de la vacuidad de la vacuidad y dice qué salva: el escepticismo pragmático sobrio frente a la extravagancia metafísica
«We are driven to reify ourselves, the objects in the world around us, and—in more abstract philosophical moods—theoretical constructs, values, and so on because of an instinctual feeling that without an intrinsically real self, an intrinsically real world, and intrinsically real values, life has no real meaning and is utterly hopeless.» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.39: nombra el impulso fenomenológico que lleva a reificar, el miedo a que sin realidad intrínseca la vida no tenga sentido
«It is only in the context of ultimate nonexistence that actual existence makes any sense at all.» — el remate de Garfield al capítulo XXIV
«The appearance of paradox derives from seeing “conventional” as functioning logically like a negation operator —a subtle version of the nihilistic reading N g rjuna is at pains to avoid, with a metalinguistic twist.» — glosa de Garfield al regreso de lo convencional: la paradoja nace de leer convencional como operador de negación
«This is exactly where N g rjuna parts company with all forms of realism. For he gives the properties a nominalistic construal and asserts that they, including the properties of emptiness and conventionality, are, like all phenomena, merely nominal, merely empty, and merely conventional.» — Garfield sitúa el punto en que N g rjuna se separa de todo realismo, con el ejemplo del platónico que salvaría las propiedades
«it is a mistake to distinguish conventional from ultimate reality—the dependently arisen from emptiness—at an ontological level.» — Garfield declara error distinguir lo convencional de lo último en el plano ontológico
«The difference— such as it is—between the conventional and the ultimate is a difference in the way phenomena are conceived/perceived.» — y dónde sitúa la diferencia: en el modo en que los fenómenos se conciben y se perciben
«But the import of this chapter and the doctrine we have been explicating is that their ultimate nonexistence and their conventional existence are the same thing. Hence the deep identity of the two truths. And this is because emptiness is not other than dependent arising and, hence, because emptiness is empty.» — el cierre de la lectura de Garfield sobre las dos verdades: su inexistencia última y su existencia convencional son lo mismo
«Finally, at this stage we can see why Chapter I opens the text. The discussion of the emptiness of conditions and their relation to their effects is not only essential groundwork for this central argument, but in fact anticipates it and brings its conclusion to bear implicitly on the whole remainder of the text, allowing us, once we see that, to read the entire text as asserting not only the emptiness of phenomena, but that emptiness understood as empty.» — glosa de Garfield sobre la arquitectura del tratado: por qué el capítulo I abre el texto
«But if instead we treat ourselves, others, and our values as empty, there is hope and a» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.39: si en cambio se toman uno mismo, los otros y los valores como vacíos, hay esperanza. La frase termina en la plana siguiente con *purpose to life*
«To say of a phenomenon or of a fact that it is conventional is to characterize its mode of» — glosa de Garfield al regreso de lo convencional: en el enfoque de N g rjuna llamar convencional a un fenómeno caracteriza su modo de subsistencia. La frase termina en la plana siguiente con *subsistence*
«a would be precluded not by the emptiness of sa s ra, but rather by its inherent existence. For then it could not pass away. Nor could an inherently grasping grasper relinquish grasping, or an inherently existent delusion be alleviated. The achievement of nirv a requires dependence, impermanence, and the possibility of change, all of which are grounded in emptiness.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.2: lo que impediría el nirv a no es la vacuidad del sa s ra sino su existencia inherente
«It is important that these predicates are all negative in character, and that they are all expressed, both in Sanskrit and in the Tibetan translation, with explicitly negative particles» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.3: los seis predicados del nirv a son negativos y llevan partícula negativa explícita en sánscrito y en tibetano
«One forgets that once one transcends the bounds of convention, there is no possibility of assertion.» — Garfield nombra la tentación al hablar del nirv a y lo que se olvida: fuera de la convención no hay posibilidad de aserción
«In this discussion, N g rjuna is rejecting the notion that nirv a can be thought of as existent in any sense at all—even as a conventional entity.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.4: la negación alcanza a la existencia del nirv a en cualquier sentido, ni siquiera como entidad convencional
«That is because from the standpoint of Buddhist soteriological theory, the foundation of suffering—the basic condition of sa s ra—is craving and the foundation of craving is the root delusion of taking to be inherently existent—and so worthy of being craved—that which is merely conventionally, or nominally existent.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.5: la cadena que va del ansia a la delusión raíz de tomar por inherentemente existente lo que es convencional
«It is important to see that there is a sense in which nirv a is dependent and a sense in which it is independent, and these are not contradictory: nirv a is achieved in dependence upon the practice of the path and the accumulation of wisdom and merit. But once attained, inasmuch as from the standpoint of nirv a there are no entities at all, there is nothing on which nirv a can be said to depend. In this sense it is nondependent.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.6: distingue los dos sentidos en que el nirv a es dependiente e independiente, y declara que no se contradicen
«The temptation is to assert then that it is real, but has some kind of ghostly reality as a substratum of the property “nonexistent.” But that is simply incoherent—an attempt to have it both ways.» — Garfield nombra la tentación contraria: darle al nirv a una realidad fantasmal como sustrato de la propiedad de inexistente
«In fact, as XXV: 9 emphasizes with eloquence, the very same world is sa s ra or nirv a, dependent upon one’s perspective. When one perceives the constant arising and ceasing of phenomena, one perceives sa s ra. When all reification is abandoned, that world and one’s mode of living in it, becomes nirv» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.9 y XXV.10: el mismo mundo es sa s ra o nirv a según la perspectiva, y el giro está en abandonar toda reificación
«a, no characterization is possible since that involves the dualities and dichotomies introduced by language, including the positing of entities and characteristics, as well as their contraries and complements.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.4: desde el punto de vista del nirv a no cabe caracterización alguna, porque caracterizar introduce las dualidades y dicotomías del lenguaje
«indicates that the distinction between the conventional and ultimate is itself dualistic and hence merely conventional. To realize it is hence to enter into nondual awareness of emptiness. He then asks Vimalakīrti to comment on nonduality. Vimalakīrti remains silent.» — Garfield lee el pasaje como comentario del capítulo IX del Vimalak rti: Manju ri declara dualista y por tanto convencional la distinción entre lo convencional y lo último, y a la petición de comentar la no dualidad Vimalak rti responde con el silencio
«But in explaining the semantics of the latter, we can posit a concept of Santa Claus and interpret the sentence as asserting that that concept is not instantiated.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.7: distingue la negación del nirv a de la de Santa Claus por la semántica del concepto no instanciado
«But it makes no sense for nirv a to exist. And it makes no sense for it not to exist. So of each, the negation can’t be assigned any coherent meaning. And conjoining two pieces of nonsense only yields further nonsense.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.15: la conjunción de dos sinsentidos solo da más sinsentido
«This emphasizes that all discourse is only possible from the conventional point of view. When we try to say something coherent about the nature of things from an ultimate standpoint, we end up talking nonsense.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.17 y XXV.18: todo discurso es posible solo desde el punto de vista convencional
«At this point, N g rjuna makes a similar move with regard to nirv a and draws one of the most startling conclusions of the M lamadhyamakak rik : Just as there is no difference in entity between the conventional and the ultimate, there is no difference in entity between nirv a and sa s ra; nirv a is simply sa s ra seen without reification, without attachment, without delusion.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.19: llama una de las conclusiones más sorprendentes del tratado a la identidad de nirv a y sa s ra
«To distinguish between sa s ra and nirv a would be to suppose that each had a nature and that they were different natures. But each is empty, and so there can be no inherent difference.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.19 y XXV.20: distinguirlos supondría dos naturalezas distintas y los dos son vacíos
«To be in sa s ra is to see things as they appear to deluded consciousness and to interact with them accordingly. To be in nirv a, then, is to see those things as they are—as merely empty, dependent, impermanent, and nonsubstantial, but not to be somewhere else, seeing something else.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.20: estar en nirv a es ver las cosas como son, no estar en otro sitio viendo otra cosa
«But N g rjuna is emphasizing that nirv a is not someplace else. It is a way of being here.» — Garfield objeta la figura del nirv a como otro lugar, con el argumento de que entonces el Buda histórico habría desaparecido al iluminarse
«It is the person who enters nirv a, but as a state of being, not as a place to be.» — el remate de Garfield: el nirv a es un estado de ser, no un lugar donde estar
«But there is no vantage point from which the universe is one place among many. That is why talking about what lies beyond it is nonsense and why reifying or characterizing nirv a temporally is one example of that nonsense.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.21: no hay punto de vista desde el que el universo sea un lugar entre otros
«But it is to say that literal description applies only within the bounds of conception and that attempts to develop a metaphysics of the ultimate are doomed.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.22 y XXV.23: la descripción literal vale solo dentro de los límites de la concepción
«In fact, it is important to see that nirv a does not, on this account, amount to an entity; it is not achieved or described by entities. Rather it is a way of engagement with nonentities by nonentities.» — glosa de Garfield a XXV.24, cierre del capítulo: el nirv a no es entidad ni lo alcanzan ni lo describen entidades
«The twelve links of dependent origination are regarded by all Buddhist schools as providing an analysis of the nature of interdependence in the context of human existence.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XXVI: los doce eslabones como análisis de la interdependencia en la existencia humana, común a todas las escuelas budistas
«The tone of this chapter is decidedly positive, marking the turning of a dialectical corner in the preceding two chapters.» — Garfield consigna el cambio de tono del capítulo XXVI tras los dos anteriores
«There are three general kinds of actions distinguished in Buddhist action theory—physical, verbal, and mental.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVI.1: los tres tipos de acción de la teoría budista de la acción
«There are two ways to think of the twelve links, generating two parallel circles of explanation: One can approach them from the standpoint of transmigration, which provides a standard Buddhist explanation of the cycle of life. Or one can think of them as providing a phenomenological analysis of the nature of experience.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVI.2: los doce eslabones admiten dos lecturas, la de la transmigración y la del análisis fenomenológico de la experiencia
«The first two lines emphasize that contact—that is, the initial relation between the sense organ and its object—has three necessary and sufficient conditions: sense organ, the object, and the cognitive state to which the sense organ gives rise» — glosa de Garfield a XXVI.4: el contacto tiene tres condiciones necesarias y suficientes, con el término tibetano de la aprehensión
«It only derives its punch from the context: In light of the connection that has been developed between the dependence that is central to this model and emptiness, the entire Theravada model of the nature of the phenomenal world comes to look like an analysis in terms of emptiness.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVI.5: la exposición es tradicional y su fuerza viene del contexto, que vuelve el modelo Theravada un análisis por la vacuidad
«Pleasurable sensations lead to craving; painful ones lead to craving for their end. That craving leads to grasping—an attempt to appropriate and make one’s own the source of pleasure or the means for the alleviation of pain, and to excessive valuation of the grasped object.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVI.6: la cadena del placer y el dolor al ansia y de ahí al aferrar
«We are born with dispositions to reify, to crave, and to grasp, all of which, on this analysis, lead directly to suffering—to the pain of wanting what we cannot have, of not wanting what we do have, of grasping onto permanence in an impermanent world, of cherishing our own existence and interests in a world where they are minor affairs, and of grasping for independence and freedom in a conditioned universe.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVI.8 y XXVI.9: la lista de los modos en que la disposición a reificar produce sufrimiento
«These are most easily controlled through philosophical reflection, through meditation, and through assiduous practices of various virtues. By changing the way that we act physically, verbally, and mentally, we thereby change the way that we perceive, think, and act and thereby change what we see and the consequences of our actions.» — y cómo se trabaja sobre ellas, por la reflexión filosófica, la meditación y la práctica de las virtudes
«This view, N g rjuna asserts, must be internalized through meditation, so that it becomes not merely a philosophical theory that we can reason our way into, but the basic way in which we take up with the world.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVI.11: la vista de la vacuidad tiene que internalizarse por meditación hasta dejar de ser teoría
«The twelve links provide an anatomy and an etiology of suffering. But by understanding their impermanence and dependency, we also see the cure for that condition.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVI.12: los doce eslabones dan a la vez la anatomía del sufrimiento y su cura
«a not found in an escape from the world but in an enlightened and awakened engagement with it.» — el remate de Garfield al capítulo XXVI: un nirv a que no está en escapar del mundo sino en tratar con él despierto
«So why does N g rjuna return to them as a collection at the close of the text?» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XXVII: se plantea por qué el texto vuelve al final sobre errores ya refutados
«It is also important dialectically to see that N g rjuna is demonstrating that the root of all of these erroneous views is the view that the self or the external world exist inherently.» — Garfield declara la raíz común que el capítulo XXVII adjudica a todos esos errores: tener por inherentemente existente el yo o el mundo externo
«N g rjuna thus concludes by arguing not only that his position is capable of leading to nirv a, but that it is the only position capable of doing» — Garfield lee el cierre del tratado como la tesis de que solo esa posición lleva al nirv a
«It is a fundamental confusion to think that because I can say that I or someone or something else existed in the past that there is a real identity between what exists now and what existed then. Identity requires that we share all properties, and that is trivially impossible over time. But any assertion of the permanence of the self requires that we be able to identity it over time.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVII.3: la confusión de fondo entre poder hablar del pasado y una identidad real a través del tiempo
«This is a straightforwardly Humean argument.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVII.6: llama humeano al argumento contra el yo como secuencia de apropiaciones
«The place to pick up the tangle in order to unravel it, from the standpoint of practice, N g rjuna suggests, is with action and disposition, here comprised together under the single term» — glosa de Garfield a XXVI.10: por dónde se agarra la maraña para deshacerla desde la práctica, la acción y la disposición reunidas bajo un solo término tibetano
«Thus we cannot use the existence of appropriation as a basis on which to construct a permanent self. For that self cannot be both permanent and identified with such a constantly changing activity. But still, that is all there is to the self.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVII.8: la apropiación no sirve de base para un yo permanente, y con todo no hay más yo que eso
«We could make no sense of the actual empirical fact of conventional personal identity; action done at one moment would be done by one person, and that person would experience none of its consequences. To the extent that we could make sense of them at all, the phenomena of memory and experiencing the consequences of one’s previous actions would become interpersonal affairs, which seems at least a bit odd.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVII.11: si las etapas de una persona fueran independientes, la memoria y las consecuencias de los actos serían asuntos interpersonales
«Since neither a continually existent nor a discontinuous self makes sense, both can’t make sense since that would just be double nonsense. And the “neither” option is not open since there is no third alternative.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVII.13: cierra los cuernos de ambos y de ninguno del tetralema sobre el yo pasado
«Another possible avenue to a permanent self is the classical Indian view (not unlike certain Judeo-Christian views) that the human soul partakes of the divine, and that its divinity is what engenders its eternality» — glosa de Garfield a XXVII.15: nombra la vía india clásica al yo permanente, la participación del alma en lo divino, y la empareja con vistas judeocristianas
«But if the person is a mereological sum of these two parts, then since there is an impermanent part, the whole is constantly changing and the inherent identity of the person from moment to moment is still lost.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVII.17: la suma mereológica de parte divina y parte mortal pierde igual la identidad inherente
«Here N g rjuna is using the term “beginningless” as a synonym for» — glosa de Garfield a XXVII.19: consigna que el término sin comienzo se usa aquí como sinónimo de inherentemente existente
«If sa s ra were inherently existent, it would have to be eternal and unchanging. Nirv na would be unattainable, and sa s ra would be utterly hopeless.» — y la consecuencia: un sa s ra inherentemente existente sería eterno, el nirv a inalcanzable y la situación desesperada
«But the world, N g rjuna suggests, is more like a flame. It is a series of distinct flickering events. While each event is momentary, the sequence continues. But there is no entity that persists and can be said to be eternal or momentary.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVII.22: el mundo como llama, serie de sucesos momentáneos sin entidad que persista
«The appropriator here is the self; the appropriation, the existence of the world.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVII.26 y XXVII.27: fija a quién nombra cada término del par en estos dos versos
«We want to say on the one hand that neither the world nor the self is permanent. Both are thoroughly characterized by impermanence. On the other hand, we want to say of both that they endure in time and of each that there is no fixed boundary to its identity. But it can’t be that either has both of these properties.» — Garfield formula la tensión que los dos versos recogen, sin resolverla a favor de ninguno de los dos lados
«The most common interpretation of this final verse has the phrase “all views” (Tib: lta-ba thams-cad, Skt: sarva-d i) referring to all false views, that is, all views according to which things have inherent existence.» — glosa de Garfield a XXVII.30: la lectura más corriente restringe todas las vistas a las falsas, con los términos tibetano y sánscrito
«On this reading, N g rjuna exempts his own view and therefore the M dhyamika understanding of the Buddhist doctrine, which N g rjuna here reminds us was taught compassionately explicitly to enable the rejection of these views. That doctrine, or standpoint, on this reading, is not to be relinquished.» — Garfield expone la primera lectura, que exime la propia vista de N g rjuna del abandono
«This interpretation is urged unanimously by all of the commentaries with which I am familiar and by many of the scholars with whom I have consulted.» — Garfield consigna que esa lectura es unánime en los comentarios y entre los eruditos que consultó
«one can see N g rjuna’s own view and the Buddhist Dharma itself included under “all views” and, hence, necessarily to be relinquished once it is understood and used.» — la segunda lectura de Garfield: la propia vista de N g rjuna y el Dharma budista quedan incluidos en todas las vistas y han de abandonarse una vez entendidos y usados
«For the practicioner who directly realizes emptiness, nothing is present to consciousness but emptiness itself. For such a consciousness, there literally is no object since there is in such a» — glosa de Garfield a XIII.8 releído: en la consciencia que realiza la vacuidad no hay objeto
«Emptiness is not the real object as opposed to the unreal objects of ordinary perception, not the object that appears when false appearance is shed. In fact, to the extent that it appears as an object at all, it does so as falsely as any table.» — Garfield niega que la vacuidad sea el objeto real que aparece al caer la apariencia falsa
«For a view is possible if, and only if, (1) there is something to view and (2) there is some way in which it is viewed.» — Garfield fija las dos condiciones de posibilidad de una vista, para mostrar que ninguna se cumple con la vacuidad
«To put this point another way, true predication is always predication from a perspective in which the subject of the predicate exists and within which the predicate can be instantiated.» — Garfield formula el punto en términos de predicación verdadera y de la perspectiva que la hace posible
«But for emptiness, neither the conventional nor the ultimate standpoint can do the job: In the conventional standpoint, there is no emptiness; in the ultimate standpoint there are no entities at all.» — y la consecuencia: ninguno de los dos puntos de vista sirve para la vacuidad
«This point is made pithily in a verse quoted by N g rjuna in his autocommentary to the Vigrahavy vartanï:”By their nature, the things are not a determinate entity. For they have only one nature, i.e. no nature» — Garfield cita el verso que N g rjuna trae en su autocomentario a la Vigrahavy vartan , tomado del Asta hasrik Prajñ p ramit s tra
«this interpretation would be consistent with the raft metaphor popular in Buddhist philosophy (one discards the raft after one has crossed the river; it would be foolish to continue to carry it overland; similarly, Buddhist teachings are soteriological in intent and are to be discarded after their goal has been attained» — Garfield apoya su segunda lectura en la metáfora de la balsa que se abandona tras cruzar el río
«or the laxative metaphor of the Ratnakuta-s tra mobilized by Candrakïrti in his comments on XIII: 8 and Sextus (one wants the medicine to be expelled along with the pathogenic bowel contents) used to discourage grasping even to the Dharma.» — y en la metáfora del laxante del Ratnakuta-s tra que adjudica a Candrak rti y a Sexto, contra el aferrarse al Dharma mismo
«One must realize the ultimate truth dependent upon the conventional, but abandon all of these necessarily conventional designations as characterizations of an ultimate nature that is ultimately uncharacterizable.» — el remate de la segunda lectura de Garfield sobre el verso final del tratado
«The anticipation of Wittgenstein’s close of the Tractatus is remarkable: 6.54 My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)» — Garfield empareja el cierre del tratado con el del Tractatus de Wittgenstein y cita el pasaje de la escalera
«N g rjuna may well have intended (and of course we have no way of knowing what he intended, nor would it make much difference to interpretation at this point) both readings—the standard reading at the conventional level, according to which the truth of his own standpoint contrasts with all other false views, and this latter reading at the ultimate level, at which his own view must itself be seen as a merely conventional ostention of an ineffable ultimate truth.» — Garfield deja las dos lecturas en pie y consigna a la vez que no hay modo de saber qué quiso N g rjuna
«May whatever merit has been achieved through this work and through its study be dedicated to the liberation of all sentient beings from cyclic existence.» — la dedicatoria de mérito con que Garfield cierra el volumen
«There is a startling grammatical and poetic parallel between this closing verse and the dramatic dedicatory verses.» — Garfield propone una segunda lectura del verso final, que suma a la primera y se apoya en un paralelo gramatical y poético con los versos dedicatorios. El tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota que el troceo pega a la palabra anterior
«In this verse N g rjuna begins his attack on the idea that motion is a property with an existence independent of movers. If, he asserts, one were to posit motion as such a property that simply happened to inhere in movers, it would follow from its independence that movers might not have it, but instead its contrary, namely, nonmotion. But that is not tenable. So it follows that motion can’t be thought of as an independent property.» — glosa de Garfield a II.4: el movimiento no puede pensarse como propiedad independiente de los móviles
«It can be formulated as an argument against a parallel analysis of change as an independent property and, in general, as an argument against properties as entities that inhere in subjects» — Garfield generaliza el argumento del capítulo II contra las propiedades como entidades que inhieren en sujetos
«N g rjuna points out that all that has been said about motion (and hence implicitly about change) applies, mutatis mutandis, to rest (and hence implicitly to stasis» — glosa de Garfield a II.14: lo dicho del movimiento vale mutatis mutandis para el reposo
«N g rjuna begins by making use of the results of the first chapter. Nothing arises causelessly, and no cause is ineffectual. So if any form exists, it exists with a cause.» — glosa de Garfield a IV.1: el capítulo IV arranca de los resultados del primero
«This question is important because it gets at the question of whether we can imagine ultimate ontological categories that exist independently.» — y por qué importa la pregunta por la causa de la forma misma: está en juego si hay categorías ontológicas últimas independientes
«But there are no uncharacterized objects, and if the object already is characterized, there is no need for the characteristic to become instantiated. So to think of individuals and properties as existing independently and then somehow coming together to constitute particulars makes no sense.» — glosa de Garfield a V.3: individuos y propiedades no pueden existir por separado y juntarse después
«In the first two lines of this verse, N g rjuna draws the conclusion that there are no inherently existent characteristics and no inherently existent characterized entities. Entities and their properties are mutually dependent and, hence, empty of inherent existence.» — glosa de Garfield a V.5: entidades y propiedades son mutuamente dependientes y por eso vacías
«In the first line of this verse, N g rjuna points out the relational character of simultaneity. If simultaneity is predicated, it must be predicated of two distinct things that arise at the same time. We don’t say that a thing arises simultaneously with itself.» — glosa de Garfield a VI.4: la simultaneidad es relacional y se predica de dos cosas distintas
«The term translated as “association” here (grogspa) can also mean friendship, or companionship—the idea is of something distinct but accompanying.» — glosa de Garfield a VI.5: da el término tibetano de asociación y sus otros sentidos, amistad y compañía
«He notes that one may explain that dependent arising arises through basic arising without circles or regresses, but only by positing the basis as itself nonarisen. This, of course, flies in the face of the demand that motivates positing it in the first place—namely, the demand that every phenomenon, including dependent arising, be explained by some ontologically more fundamental phenomenon» — glosa de Garfield a VII.7: la salida sin círculo ni regreso exige poner el surgir básico como no surgido, contra la exigencia que lo motivaba
«N g rjuna now launches a lengthy critique of the example, arguing that the relation between the butterlamp and what it illuminates is not one that supports a notion of an inherently existent basis on which things that are not inherently existent can depend:» — glosa de Garfield a VII.8: anuncia la crítica larga al símil de la lámpara de mantequilla
«Here N g rjuna develops a reductio on a position according to which motion is a property of the mover only at the time that the mover is in motion. This might seem to be a much more plausible view» — glosa de Garfield a II.5 y II.6: el reductio contra la vista de que el movimiento sea propiedad del móvil solo mientras se mueve
«For if the motion is a property of the mover at all, both the mover and the motion must be moving. And this amounts to two separate motions. One motion—that in virtue of which the mover is a mover in the first place—is the motion posited by the theory. But if that motion were stationary, the mover would either also not be moving or it would “outrun” its motion and leave it behind. So there must also be a motion of the motion. Each of these two motions requires a subject. They can’t be the same subject because then the mover and the motion would be identical, which would be absurd. So in explaining the motion of a single individual, the opponent is stuck with two movers.» — y el desarrollo del reductio: el oponente acaba con dos móviles al explicar el movimiento de uno solo
«whenever an agent were to perform another act, s/he would become a distinct agent. There would be no basis for identifying individuals over time.» — glosa de Garfield a II.19: de la identidad de agente y acción se sigue un agente distinto por cada acto y ninguna base para identificar individuos en el tiempo
«So the opponent agrees that all phenomena must be explicable. But the opponent wants to reify form, and that is to treat it as a phenomenon—albeit an inherently existent one. Therefore, it must, for the opponent, have an explanation of its existence, and since its existence is inherent existence, it must be an explanation in terms of inherently existent causation. So all that N g rjuna has to do is to remind the opponent of the incoherence of that notion in order to undermine the view that form as such is inherently existent.» — glosa de Garfield a IV.4: el oponente reifica la forma y con ello queda obligado a una causación inherentemente existente que ya se mostró incoherente
«For an essentialist, Since the fruits through their essence Are already unrealized, In what way could one attain them?» — XXIV.28: N g rjuna le pone al esencialista el fruto ya no realizado por esencia y pregunta cómo alcanzarlo
«For you, one who through his essence Was unenlightened, Even by practicing the path to enlightenment Could not achieve enlightenment.» — XXIV.32: N g rjuna saca de la esencia del no iluminado que ni practicando el camino podría iluminarse
«But the suffering of that other person must either be caused by someone else or be self-caused. The former alternative leads to a regress: The whole point from the standpoint of the opponent who is the target of this argument is to find the independent explanatory ground for suffering. The second alternative leads back to the problem scouted in the opening verses: Self-caused suffering is both inconceivable within a general Buddhist soteriological framework and runs afoul of the arguments against self-causation generally. Finally, it is rather embarrassingly ad hoc.» — glosa de Garfield a XII.7: las dos salidas del oponente, el regreso y la autocausación, y el juicio que le merecen
«Moreover, N g rjuna continues, afflicted action is, for the opponent, done essentially in affliction. But given that affliction has already been shown to be empty in the chapter on suffering (XII), how could it serve as an essence for action?» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.26: la aflicción ya se mostró vacía en el capítulo XII y por eso no puede ser esencia de la acción
«The opponent replies, however, that action and affliction are referred to in s tras as the causes of different kinds of rebirth and of different characteristics in rebirths. And since beings are indeed reborn and do indeed have characteristics, how, from the standpoint of a Buddhist view of rebirth, could empty actions and empty karmic consequences explain this?» — glosa de Garfield a XVII.27: la objeción del oponente desde los s tras sobre las causas del renacer
«Since all phenomena are impermanent, as has been forcefully argued in earlier chapters, anything that comes into existence passes out of existence.» — glosa de Garfield a XXI.4: de la impermanencia de todo fenómeno se sigue que lo que entra en existencia sale de ella
«This is the argument to this stage: Becoming and destruction are mutually contradictory. So they cannot be properties of the same thing at the same time.» — glosa de Garfield a XXI.6: resume el argumento hasta ahí, que devenir y destrucción son contradictorios
«The reifier in the last two lines of this verse and in the next asks how it is possible that a real Buddha could lack a self. What then would be the thing that practiced, that became enlightened and that preached the Dharma?» — glosa de Garfield a XXII.3: la pregunta del reificador, qué sería entonces lo que practicó, se iluminó y predicó el Dharma
«He then points out (XXIV: 34) that even were action possible, in virtue of the impossibility of change and dependence in an essentialist universe, there would be no consequences of those actions. For to be a consequence is to be dependent, hence to be empty, hence from the standpoint of the essentialist—whether reificationist or nihilist» — glosa de Garfield a XXIV.34: aun siendo posible la acción, en un universo esencialista no habría consecuencias, porque ser consecuencia es depender. Guarda apagada por el paréntesis del reenvío
«This chapter continues the study of the nature of what are often thought of as ultimate realities and that of their relation to the conventional world.» — glosa de Garfield al capítulo XXV: lo que se estudia son las llamadas realidades últimas y su relación con el mundo convencional
«For insight into emptiness is, from the standpoint of M dhyamika philosophy, an important precondition for entry into nirv a. And just as the ultimate truth is related to the conventional as an understanding of the way things really are as opposed to the way they appear to be, nirv a is related to sa s ra as a state of awareness of things as they are as opposed to a state of awareness of things as they appear to be.» — y el paralelo que Garfield traza: el nirv a es al sa s ra lo que la verdad última es a la convencional, un estado de consciencia de las cosas como son
«Like the seen, the heard, the smelled, The tasted, and the touched, The hearer, sound, etc., And consciousness should be understood.» — III.9, cierre del capítulo: N g rjuna extiende el análisis de la visión a los demás sentidos y a la consciencia
«Permanence and impermanence are mutually exclusive and exhaustive alternatives. They can neither be co-present nor» — glosa de Garfield a XXVII.18: permanencia e impermanencia son excluyentes y exhaustivas, de modo que los cuernos de ambos y de ninguno caen juntos. El tramo se corta antes del guion de fin de renglón, que la extracción por programa uniría en la palabra inexistente *coabsent*; el crudo imprime *co-absent*
Sobre la obra
248 entradas — lo que el aparato y la investigación dicen de ella«N g rjuna, 2nd cent. [Madhyamakak rik . English & Sanskrit] The fundamental wisdom of the middle way: N g rjuna’s M lamadhyamakak rik / Translation and commentary by Jay L. Garfield, p. cm. ISBN 0-19-509336-4 (pbk.); ISBN 0-19-510317-3 (cloth) 1. M dhyamika (Buddhism)—Early works to 1800. I. Garfield, Jay L., 1955—. BQ2792.E5G37 1995 294.3» — el registro de la Library of Congress que la plana de derechos reproduce: encabeza la entrada por N g rjuna, lo fecha en el siglo II, declara la lengua del texto raíz y clasifica la materia como M dhyamika (Buddhism)
«I dedicate this work, with profound gratitude and respect, to the Most Ven. Professor Samdhong Rinpoche: scholar, educator, statesman, public servant and shining exemplar of monastic life.» — la dedicatoria del volumen, a quien Garfield nombra después en los agradecimientos como su anfitrión en el Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies
«Every translation, this one included, of any text embodies an interpretation, and my interpretation differs in various respects from those of my predecessors in this endeavor.» — el prefacio de Garfield sienta que toda traducción encarna una interpretación, y coloca la suya como una más entre otras
«So I claim no special privileged position vis à vis Streng (1967), Inada (1970), Sprung (1979), or Kalupahana (1986)—only a different position, one that I hope will prove useful in bringing M lamadhyamakak rik into contemporary philosophical discourse.» — Garfield nombra a sus cuatro predecesores y declara que no reclama posición privilegiada sobre ellos, solo distinta; los años entre paréntesis son de la fuente
«I, like any translator/ interpreter must acknowledge that there is simply no fact of the matter about the correct rendering of any important and genuinely interesting text.» — el prefacio de Garfield niega que haya un hecho del asunto sobre la versión correcta de un texto importante
«So each of the available versions of the text embodies a reading. Inada reads N g rjuna from the standpoint of the Zen tradition, and his translation reflects that reading;» — Garfield adjudica a cada versión inglesa previa la tradición desde la que se lee: a Inada el Zen
«Kalupahana reads N g rjuna as a Theravada commentator on the Kacc y nagotta-s tra, and his translation reflects that reading, as well as his view about the affinities between James’s pragmatism and Theravada Buddhism.» — y sigue la adjudicación de Garfield: Kalupahana lee a N g rjuna como comentarista Theravada del Kacc y nagotta-s tra
«Sprung adopts Murti’s Kantian interpretation of M dhyamika, and his translation reflects that interpretation. Streng reads the text as primarily concerned with religious phenomenology.» — cierre de la serie: a Sprung le adjudica la interpretación kantiana de Murti y a Streng la fenomenología religiosa
«There is no translation of this text into English, and no commentary on it, that specifically reflects an Indo-Tibetan Pr sa gika-M dhyamika interpretation. Inasmuch as this is my own preferred way to read N g rjuna, and the reading dominant in Tibetan and highly influential in Japanese and Chinese discussions of M lamadhyamakak rik , I believe that it is important to fill this lacuna in the English bibliography.» — Garfield declara el hueco que su libro viene a llenar y, de paso, cuál es su propia lectura: la Pr sa gika-M dhyamika indotibetana
«This is a translation of the Tibetan text of M lamadhyamakak rik . It is perhaps an odd idea to translate a Tibetan translation of a Sanskrit text and to retranslate a text of which there are four extant English versions.» — Garfield abre el prefacio declarando de qué lengua traduce y reconociendo que ya hay cuatro versiones inglesas del texto
«hence, that there is always some distance between an original text and a translation, however good and canonical that translation may be, it follows that M lamadhyamakakàrik and dBu-ma rtsaba shes-rab differ, however close they may be and however canonically the latter is treated.» — Garfield saca la consecuencia de que toda traducción interpreta: el sánscrito y el tibetano son dos textos distintos por buena y canónica que sea la versión tibetana
«Since dBu-ma rtsa-ba shes-rab is the text read by and commented on by generations of Tibetan philosophers, I think that it is important that an English translation of this very text be available to the Western philosophical public. This text is hence worthy in its own right of translation inasmuch as it is the proper subject of the Tibetan philosophical literature I and others find so deep and fascinating.» — la razón que Garfield da para traducir el tibetano y no el sánscrito: es el texto que los filósofos tibetanos leyeron y comentaron
«This is not a critical scholarly edition of the text. It is not philological in intent; nor is it a discussion of the commentarial literature on N g rjuna’s text. There is indeed a need for such a book, but that need will have to be filled by someone else.» — Garfield declara lo que su libro no es y deja la edición filológica y el estudio de los comentarios para otro
«This is rather meant to be a presentation of a philosophical text to philosophers, and not an edition of the text for Buddhologists.» — Garfield declara para quién escribe: filósofos, no budólogos
«I am not sure that I have always made the right decisions or that I have found the middle path between the extremes of Buddhological orthodoxy and Western revisionism. But that is the aim.» — Garfield declara el punto medio que busca entre la ortodoxia budológica y el revisionismo occidental, y que no está seguro de haberlo alcanzado
«But there is the fault of allowing the translation to become so mixed with the commentary that one no longer has a grip on, for example, what is N g rjuna and what is Garfield.» — Garfield nombra el riesgo de su propio formato: que traducción y comentario se mezclen hasta perderse de vista qué es de N g rjuna y qué suyo
«this text should still come out in translation as a text which could be interpreted in the ways that others have read it. Because the original does indeed justify competing interpretations. That is one of the things that makes it such an important philosophical work.» — cierre del prefacio: Garfield sostiene que el original justifica interpretaciones en competencia y que eso es parte de lo que lo hace importante
«Thanks to the Ven. Geshe Lobzang Tsetan for starting me in Tibetan, for much useful philosophical interchange, for teaching me an immense amount about M dhyamika, and for his close criticism of this text;» — los agradecimientos nombran a quien le enseñó tibetano y M dhyamika y le criticó de cerca el texto
«I am deeply grateful to the Ven. Prof. Geshe Yeshes Thap-Khas for reading dBu-ma rtsa-ba shes-rab and related texts with me and for giving me his invaluable oral commentary on these texts during that year and on many subsequent occasions.» — Garfield declara la fuente oral de su lectura: el comentario del Ven. Prof. Geshe Yeshes Thap-Khas sobre el dBu-ma rtsa-ba shes-rab
«about M dhyamika philosophy, and it is hard to imagine a more patient, generous, and incisive scholar and teacher. Without his lucid teachings, and without Geshe-la’s enormous patience, I could never have approached this text with any degree of success.» — continuación de la deuda con Geshe Yeshes Thap-Khas, ya en la plana siguiente: Garfield declara que sin esas enseñanzas no habría podido abordar el texto
«While he would not agree with everything I say, my own reading of this text is enormously influenced by his.» — y el desacuerdo que Garfield deja consignado sin resolverlo dentro del mismo agradecimiento
«I thank His Holiness the Dalai Lama for his encouragement and for valuable discussion of some difficult interpretative issues.» — los agradecimientos nombran al Dalai Lama entre quienes discutieron con Garfield puntos de interpretación
«I discovered when I—a Western, analytically trained philosopher of mind—began to work on Buddhist philosophy that many in philosophy and cognitive science took this as evidence of some kind of insanity, or at least as an abandonment of philosophy, per se.» — Garfield consigna el estigma que encontró en su propia profesión al ponerse a trabajar en filosofía budista
«This is not the place to speculate on the origins or nature of the stigma attaching in some parts of our profession to Asian philosophy. But it is a sad fact to be noted and to be rectified.» — y lo declara hecho lamentable que hay que rectificar, sin entrar a explicarlo
«The Tibetan edition of the text is from dGe ’dun grub, dBu ma rtsa shes rtsa ’grel bzhugs (Commentary on M lamadhyamakak rik ), Ge Lugs Pa Students’ Welfare Publishing, Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, Sarnath, 1987.» — Garfield declara su base textual: la edición tibetana de dGe ’dun grub impresa en Sarnath, con lo que el texto de partida queda localizado
«Portions of the translations of and commentaries on Chapters I, II, XIII, and XXIV appeared in Philosophy East and West in Garfield (1990) and (1994). I thank the editors for permission to use that material here.» — Garfield declara qué partes del libro se publicaron antes y en qué revista; los años entre paréntesis son de la fuente
«I hope that I haven’t forgotten anybody.» — cierre de los agradecimientos
«Contents Part One The Text of M lamadhyamakak rik Dedicatory Verses» — el índice declara la arquitectura doble del volumen: la primera parte es el texto solo. El tramo se repite en el Table of Contents que el ebook imprime al final, y se ancla en la primera aparición
«Part Two The Text and Commentary Introduction to the Commentary Dedicatory Verses I Examination of Conditions» — y la segunda parte vuelve a dar el texto, ahora con comentario, empezando otra vez por los versos dedicatorios: los veintisiete capítulos se imprimen dos veces. El tramo se repite en el Table of Contents del final del ebook y se ancla en la primera aparición
«PART ONE The Text of M lamadhyamakak rik» — la portadilla de la primera parte, que es donde empieza la traducción corrida de los versos
«PART TWO The Text and Commentary» — la portadilla de la segunda parte, donde el volumen vuelve a imprimir los veintisiete capítulos, ahora con el comentario de Garfield intercalado
«N g rjuna, who lived in South India in approximately the second century C.E., is undoubtedly the most important, influential, and widely studied Mah y na Buddhist philosopher.» — Garfield sitúa a N g rjuna en el sur de la India hacia el siglo II y lo declara el filósofo budista Mah y na más importante e influyente
«He is the founder of the M dhyamika, or Middle Path schools of Mah y na Buddhism.» — Garfield adjudica a N g rjuna la fundación de la escuela M dhyamika, el Camino Medio, dentro del budismo Mah y na
«Most important of these is his largest and best known text, M lamadhyamakak rik (literally Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way). This text in turn inspires a huge commentarial literature in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.» — Garfield traduce el título del tratado como Versos Fundamentales del Camino Medio y consigna la literatura comentarial que generó en cuatro lenguas
«Divergences on interpretation of M lamadhyamakak rik often determine the splits between major philosophical schools. So, for instance, the distinction between two of the three major Mah y na philosophical schools, Sv tantrika-M dhyamika and Pr sa gika-M dhyamika reflect, inter alia, distinct readings of this text, itself taken as fundamental by scholars within each of these schools.» — Garfield declara que las divergencias de interpretación de este texto marcan la separación entre escuelas, y nombra dos de las tres mayores del Mah y na
«The central topic of the text is emptiness—the Buddhist technical term for the lack of independent existence, inherent existence, or essence in things.» — Garfield define la vacuidad como el término técnico budista para la falta de existencia independiente, de existencia inherente o de esencia
«This dual thesis of the conventional reality of phenomena together with their lack of inherent existence depends upon the complex doctrine of the two truths or two realities—a conventional or nominal truth and an ultimate truth—and upon a subtle and surprising doctrine regarding their relation.» — Garfield ata la tesis doble de la realidad convencional y la falta de existencia inherente a la doctrina de las dos verdades
«the method of reductio ad absurdum is the methodological core. N g rjuna, like Western sceptics, systematically eschews the defense of positive metaphysical doctrines regarding the nature of things, arguing rather that any such positive thesis is incoherent and that, in the end, our conventions and our conceptual framework can never be justified by demonstrating their correspondence to an independent reality. Rather, he suggests, what counts as real depends precisely on our conventions.» — Garfield declara el reductio ad absurdum como núcleo metodológico del tratado y empareja a N g rjuna con los escépticos occidentales
«It invites the question, Empty of what? And the answer is, Empty of inherent existence, or self-nature, or, in more Western terms, essence.» — Garfield contesta la pregunta que él mismo pone: vacío de existencia inherente, de naturaleza propia o, en términos occidentales, de esencia
«the M dhyamika philosopher will explain, is to say, as the Tibetans like to put it, that it does not exist “from its own side”—that its existence as the object that it is—as a table— depends not on it, nor on» — Garfield glosa la falta de esencia con la fórmula tibetana de no existir desde su propio lado, y con el ejemplo de la mesa cuya existencia depende también de nosotros
«But N g rjuna, as we shall see, argues that emptiness itself is empty. It is not a selfexistent void standing behind a veil of illusion comprising conventional reality, but merely a characteristic of conventional reality. And this, as we shall see, is what provides the key to understanding the deep unity between the two truths.» — Garfield declara el paso decisivo de su lectura: la vacuidad misma es vacía, no un vacío autoexistente tras un velo de ilusión, sino una característica de la realidad convencional
«While N g rjuna is a powerfully original thinker, he is clearly and self-consciously operating squarely within the framework of Buddhist philosophy. As such, N g rjuna accepts and takes it as incumbent upon him to provide an account of the Four Noble Truths, nirv a, buddhahood, and other fundamental Buddhist soteriological conceptions.» — Garfield sitúa a N g rjuna dentro del marco de la filosofía budista y le adjudica la obligación de dar cuenta de las Cuatro Nobles Verdades, del nirv a y de la budeidad
«M lamadhyamakak rik is divided into twenty-seven chapters, which fall roughly, though by no means officially, into four sections.» — Garfield declara su propia partición del texto en cuatro secciones y advierte que no es oficial
«The chapters that form the climax of the text are found in this section. But it is important to note that in fact the dialectical structure of the text requires a reading of these chapters in order to fully grasp the import of the earlier ones. This is because the doctrine of the emptiness of emptiness does not fully emerge until this point, and it is crucial to N g rjuna’s argument that all phenomena are empty and that their emptiness is also empty.» — Garfield declara por qué el clímax del texto está en la última sección y por qué hay que leerla para entender las anteriores
«The text hence forms a single sustained argument with only a few digressions or changes of subject, generally marked by the section divisions I have suggested above.» — Garfield lee el tratado como un solo argumento sostenido, con las divisiones de sección puestas por él
«It is generally, and in my view correctly, acknowledged that Chapter XXIV, the examination of the Four Noble Truths, is the central chapter of the text and the climax of the argument, with Chapter XXV on nirv a and sa s ra sharing that spotlight.» — Garfield adjudica el centro del texto al capítulo XXIV, el de las Cuatro Nobles Verdades, con el XXV compartiendo el foco
«One verse of Chapter XXIV, verse 18, has received so much attention that interpretations of it alone represent the foundations of major Buddhist schools in East Asia:» — Garfield declara que las interpretaciones de un solo verso, el XXIV.18, fundan escuelas budistas enteras del Asia oriental; el verso que cita a continuación está fichado por su plana de la primera parte
«Here N g rjuna asserts the fundamental identity of (1) emptiness, or the ultimate truth; (2) the dependently originated, that is, all phenomena; and (3) verbal convention. Moreover, he asserts that understanding this relation is itself the middle-way philosophical view he articulates in M lamadhyamakak rik» — la lectura que Garfield hace del XXIV.18: identidad de la vacuidad, lo dependientemente originado y la convención verbal, y esa relación como la vista misma del camino medio
«In what follows I will provide an interpretation of the text inspired by the centrality of this verse and of the chapters forming its context that harmonizes with Candrak» — Garfield declara que su interpretación se inspira en la centralidad de ese verso y se armoniza con la de Candrak rti
«the real central thrust of M dhyamika is the demystification of this apparently mystical conclusion. While it might appear that the M dhyamikas argue that nothing really exists except a formless void, in fact the actuality of the entire phenomenal world, persons and all, is recovered within that emptiness.» — Garfield declara el propósito de su lectura: desmitificar una conclusión que parece mística y recuperar dentro de la vacuidad la actualidad del mundo fenoménico entero
«For N g rjuna is not a Western philosopher. He is an Indian Buddhist philosopher whose work we approach through a vast Asian Buddhist commentarial literature. And while many of his concerns, problems, theses, and arguments are recognizable cousins of ours, many are not, and there are genuine differences in outlook.» — Garfield pone el límite a su propia traducción de los argumentos a términos occidentales, y consigna que hay diferencias reales de perspectiva
«In commenting on N g rjuna’s text, I am constantly aware of walking a philosophical and hermeneutical tightrope.» — Garfield declara la cuerda floja de su comentario, entre el comentario tradicional y la actualización
«For what makes this a great text is not simply that we can extrapolate its significance to our own context, but that in reading it, to borrow Gadamer’s metaphor, we are able to fuse its textual horizon with our own. It is the bringing to the present of N g rjuna’s own concerns, insights, and arguments that is revelatory, not speculation about a related counterfactual nonentity. And for this fusion of interpretive horizons to be possible, we must, as much as possible, respect the original horizon of the text.» — Garfield toma de Gadamer la metáfora de la fusión de horizontes y de ahí deriva el respeto al horizonte original del texto
«For who is to say that N g rjuna was/is the best possible interpreter of M lamadhyamakak rik ? After all, he did not have the benefit of the long commentarial tradition he spawned.» — Garfield objeta la recuperación de la intención autoral como criterio, y pregunta si N g rjuna sería el mejor intérprete de su propio texto
«So the N g rjuna whose views I am exploring is an evolving figure, rooted in the life and writing of a first or second century Indian monk, of whom we know but little, but whose literary life and identity extends through a complex, sophisticated, and contested textual and philosophical tradition in India and Tibet and in the West.» — Garfield declara que el N g rjuna cuyas vistas explora es una figura en evolución, enraizada en un monje indio del siglo I o II del que poco se sabe y extendida por una tradición textual india, tibetana y occidental
«The interpretation I offer is situated squarely within a Pr sangika-M dhyamika interpretation of N g rjuna (the philosophical school that reads M lamadhyamakak rik through the commentaries of Buddhap lita and Candrakīrti). But more specifically, my reading is heavily influenced by the Tibetan Geluk-pa tradition that takes as central the commentaries of dGe-’dun-grub, mKhas-grub-rje, and especially, Je Tsong Khapa.» — Garfield sitúa su interpretación en la escuela Pr sangika-M dhyamika, que lee el texto por los comentarios de Buddhap lita y Candrak rti, y declara su deuda mayor con la tradición tibetana Geluk-pa y con Je Tsong Khapa
«Moreover, my exposition will be deliberately sympathetic. My goal is not to assess N g rjuna’s philosophy, but to present and elucidate it and to do so in a way that, while making the text accessible to Western philosophers, does not disguise the fact that the text made accessible is an early Indian M dhyamika philosophical treatise, read by a Western philosopher through an extended Indo-Tibetan commentarial and academic tradition.» — Garfield declara desde dónde lee: exposición deliberadamente simpatética, no evaluación, de un tratado M dhyamika indio antiguo leído por un filósofo occidental a través de la tradición indotibetana
«cryptic verse form are indeed forbidding. Most bizarre of all, however, at first glance is the doctrine that all phenomena, including self and its objects, are empty.» — Garfield consigna cómo se le aparece el texto a un occidental que llega por primera vez: lo más raro de todo, a primera vista, es la doctrina de que todos los fenómenos son vacíos. La frase arranca en la plana anterior con *When a Westerner first encounters M lamadhyamakak rik or other M dhyamika texts*
«Having characterized this as a tradition of interpretation, I must emphasize that it is not, as it is often represented, and as it often represents itself, a homogeneous tradition. Though there is a hermeneutic convention in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist literature of presenting oneself as merely expounding faithfully the views of all of the earlier commentators, this is almost never the truth.» — Garfield niega que la suya sea una tradición homogénea y consigna la convención hermenéutica indotibetana de presentarse como mero expositor fiel de los comentaristas anteriores
«There are considerable divergences in interpretation and in philosophical position within Buddhist schools and within lineages. Indeed the Tibetan scholars I have regularly consulted, despite the fact that they shared many of the same teachers and an identical curriculum, differ» — Garfield consigna las divergencias dentro de las escuelas y los linajes budistas, y las mide en los propios eruditos tibetanos que consultó. La frase termina en la plana siguiente con *widely among themselves on many issues*
«I emphasize that even if one could identify such a homogeneous interpretation, I am not here presenting the interpretation or interpretations of any of these commentators or scholars, individually or collectively.» — Garfield declara que no presenta la interpretación de ninguno de esos comentaristas ni escuelas, ni por separado ni en conjunto
«sometimes (as in my reading of the final chapter) I depart from the most common Geluk-pa interpretation entirely in favor of a line more closely associated with the Nyingma-pa reading of the text.» — Garfield declara el punto en que se aparta de la interpretación Geluk-pa más común, el capítulo final, hacia una línea asociada a la lectura Nyingma-pa
«Nor is the purpose of this text to compare, criticize, and resolve differences between interpretations. Instead, I here present the text as I read it, having been influenced by all of these commentators and teachers, and as I present it to my Western colleagues. And my intention in doing so is to let the text stand alone as a work of philosophy valuable in its own right to anyone interested in fundamental metaphysical, epistemological, and soteriological questions, not as a text to be studied only as part of “the history of philosophy” or “comparative philosophy.» — Garfield declara que no viene a comparar ni a resolver diferencias entre interpretaciones, y que quiere dejar el texto en pie como obra de filosofía por derecho propio
«While not all of these texts are explicitly cited in my discussion, all have influenced my views and my treatment of the text in some ways. With some I am in almost complete agreement; with others I take issue in whole or in part. But all have been helpful to me in thinking about N g rjuna’s argument. This is not, however, by any means meant to be a complete bibliography of useful works on N g rjuna— only an indication of what influenced me.» — Garfield encabeza las References declarando qué son: no bibliografía completa sino indicación de lo que lo influyó, con acuerdos y desacuerdos
«Earlier Translations of M lamadhyamakak rik Inada, Kenneth K. (1970). N g rjuna: A Translation of his Mulam d hyamikak rik With an Introductory Essay. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press. Kalupahana, David J. (1986). N g rjuna: The Philosophy of the Middle Way. Albany: State University of New York Press. Streng, Frederick (1967). Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning. Nashville: Abdingdon Press.» — la primera sección de las References enumera las tres traducciones inglesas anteriores del tratado que Garfield toma en cuenta. Cita de bibliografía: los años entre paréntesis son de la fuente y la guarda anticosido va apagada
«Other Works by N g rjuna Ratn valï (Precious Garland of Advice for the King), trans. J. Hopkins. In Hopkins and H.H. the Dalai Lama (1975), The Buddhism of Tibet. London: Wisdom Publications. S nyat saptati (Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness), trans. C. Lindtner. In Lindtner (1986), Master of Wisdom. Oakland: Dharma Press. Vigrahavy variani (Replies to Objections), trans. K. Bhattacharya, E. H. Johnston, and A. Kunst in Bhattacarya, Johnston and Kunst (1985), The Dialectical Method of N g rjuna: Vigrahavy vartani. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.» — la sección siguiente lista otras obras adjudicadas a N g rjuna, con el título sánscrito y su traducción al inglés. Cita de bibliografía, con la guarda anticosido apagada
«Primary Canonical Texts Āryadeva, Catuhś taka (Four Hundred Stanzas), trans. K. Lang. In Lang (1986), Āryadeva’s Catuhś taka: On the Bodhisattva’s Cultivation of Merit and Knowledge. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.» — la sección de textos canónicos primarios abre por Āryadeva y su Catuh ś taka. Cita de bibliografía, con la guarda apagada
«Tsong Khapa, Tsa she tig chen rigs pa’i rgya mtsho (1973). Sarnath: Ge Lugs Pa Students’ Welfare Publishing, Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies. ——, The Speech of Gold in the Essence of True Eloquence (1984). Trans. R. Thurman. Princeton: Princeton University Press.» — entre los textos canónicos primarios está Tsong Khapa, el comentarista tibetano que Garfield declara central para su lectura. Cita de bibliografía, con la guarda apagada
«Gudmunsen, C. (1977). Wittgenstein and Buddhism. London: MacMillan.» — la bibliografía de estudios recientes incluye el libro de Gudmunsen sobre Wittgenstein y el budismo. Cita de bibliografía, con la guarda apagada
«Garfield, J. L. (1990). “Epoché and ś nyat : Scepticism East and West.” Philosophy East and West 40 (3): 285-308. ——(1994). “Dependent Co-origination and the Emptiness of Emptiness: Why did N g rjuna begin with Causation?” Philosophy East and West 44: 219-50. ——(unpublished MS). “Emptiness and Positionlessness: Do the M dhyamika Really Relinquish All Views?» — Garfield lista en sus References sus propios tres trabajos previos sobre el tema, entre ellos el inédito sobre la ausencia de posición. Cita de bibliografía, con la guarda apagada
«Ruegg, D. S. (1977). “The Uses of the Four Positions in the Catuskoti and the Problem of the Description of Reality in Mah y na Buddhism.» — la bibliografía consigna el trabajo de Ruegg sobre los usos de las cuatro posiciones del catuskoti. Cita de bibliografía, con la guarda anticosido apagada
«Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. B. F. McGuinness. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ——(1953). Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: MacMillan.» — la bibliografía incluye las dos obras de Wittgenstein que el comentario invoca, el Tractatus y las Investigaciones. Cita de bibliografía, con la guarda apagada
«Wood, T. (1994). N g rjunian Disputations: A Philosophical Journey Through an Indian Looking-Glass. Monographs of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, no. 11. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.» — cierra la bibliografía el volumen de Wood al que Garfield objeta en varias notas. Cita de bibliografía, con la guarda apagada
«Index Note: Tibetan terms are indexed alphabetically according to Wylie transcription, and not by root letter.» — la nota que encabeza el índice onomástico y declara el criterio de ordenación de los términos tibetanos, por transcripción Wylie
«It cannot be overemphasized that as far as N g rjuna—or any Mah y na Buddhist philosopher, for that matter—is concerned, the view that the things we perceive and of which we conceive, to the extent that they exist at all, do so inherently originates as an innate misapprehension and is not the product of sophisticated philosophical theory.» — nota 2 de Garfield: la vista de la existencia inherente se declara desaprensión innata y no producto de teoría filosófica sofisticada
«But it is important to see that an intellectual rejection of that sophisticated essentialist metaphysics would not, from the standpoint of Buddhism, suffice for liberation from suffering. For the innate misapprehension—the root delusion enshrined in common sense and in much of our language—would remain. N g rjuna’s text is aimed primarily against philosophy. But its soteriological goal is the extirpation of the very root of suffering.» — y su consecuencia en la misma nota: rechazar intelectualmente la metafísica esencialista no bastaría para la liberación, porque la desaprensión innata quedaría
«Retaining the original term is worse, as it conveys nothing to the reader not already conversant with Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Buddhist philosophy. And using one of the ugly neologisms frequently introduced conveys the misleading impression that the original introduces such an ugly neologism.» — Garfield da sus razones contra las dos alternativas, conservar el término original o acuñar un neologismo
«But I do remind the reader of this and of any translation: Caveat lector! A great deal of interpretation goes into any translation.» — el aviso al lector con que Garfield cierra la nota 4
«It should be noted that the division of the text even into chapters is due to Candrak» — y el dato que la misma nota consigna: hasta la división en capítulos se adjudica a Candrak rti
«The late Wilfrid Sellars was fond of saying that we understand Plato better than Plato could ever have understood himself: Plato, for instance, could never have dreamed of the consequences that would be drawn from his arguments.» — nota 12 de Garfield: trae el dicho de Wilfrid Sellars sobre entender a Platón mejor de lo que él pudo entenderse
«va) with the English philosophical term “essence,” as opposed to the more traditional “self-nature” or “own-being” used by many Buddhologists.» — nota 4 de Garfield: declara su decisión de traducir el tibetano rang bzhin y el sánscrito svabh va por el término filosófico occidental essence, en vez de las formas tradicionales self-nature y own-being
«But there are dangers here. ”Rang bzhin” and ”svabh va” have their semantic homes in Buddhist philosophical literature, and their ordinary meanings derive from their usage in that environment.» — y el peligro que la misma nota declara: esos términos tienen su casa semántica en la literatura filosófica budista
«Removing its properties leaves no core bearer behind. Searching for the tree that is independent of and which is the bearer of its parts, we come up empty.» — el remate de la nota 6
«I should note that this division of the text is not in any sense canonical. Tsong Khapa sees the structure slightly differently;» — nota 8 de Garfield: declara no canónica su propia partición del texto y nombra la de Tsong Khapa como distinta
«I see my own division, like these others, simply as a useful heuristic device for parsing the argument.» — y el estatuto que Garfield le da a su partición: recurso heurístico útil, no canon
«Note that nothing in this example hinges on the fact that the table is an artifact. The same points could be made about the tree from which its wood was hewn. The boundaries of the tree, both spatial and temporal (consider the junctures between root and soil, or leaf and air; between live and dead wood; between seed, shoot, and tree)» — nota 6 de Garfield: extiende el ejemplo de la mesa al árbol, con sus junturas entre raíz y suelo, hoja y aire, madera viva y muerta, para mostrar que el punto no depende de que se trate de un artefacto
«As Georges Dreyfus points out (personal communication), many Tibetan scholars read this line also as a comment on the selflessness of sentient beings—as indicating that there is no self that comes from previous lives and goes on to future lives.» — nota 13 de Garfield: adjudica a Georges Dreyfus, en comunicación personal, la lectura de muchos eruditos tibetanos sobre la ausencia de yo que transmigre. Guarda anticosido apagada por el paréntesis
«Some scholars with whom I have discussed this interpretation argue that there is no real difference between causes and conditions, some that a cause is one kind of condition, some that efficient causes are causes and all other causal factors contributing to an event are conditions. Some like my reading. I have found no unanimity on this interpretive question» — nota 14 de Garfield: consigna que no halló unanimidad sobre la distinción entre causa y condición, ni entre budólogos occidentales ni entre eruditos tibetanos
«I do not argue that the distinction I here attribute to N g rjuna, which I defend on hermeneutical grounds, is necessarily drawn in the same way throughout the Buddhist philosophical world or even throughout the Pr sa gika-M dhyamika literature. But it is the one N g rjuna draws.» — y cómo acota Garfield su propia adjudicación: no sostiene que la distinción se trace igual en toda la literatura, sino que es la que N g rjuna traza
«Some might quarrel with this translation, preferring to reserve “power” to translate “stob” (Skt: b la or shakti) and to translate “bya-ba” or “kriy ” as “activity” or “action.” But in this context “power,” interpreted as causal power, is just right.» — nota 15 de Garfield: consigna la objeción posible a su traducción de bya-ba y kriy por power, con los términos alternativos
«The Ven. Lobzang Norbu Shastri has pointed out to me that this verse may not in fact be original with N g rjuna, but is a quotation from s tra. It appears in the Kamajīka-prajñap ramit s tra as well as in the M dhyamika-Salistamhas tra. But the chronological relation of these s tras to N g rjuna’s text is not clear.» — nota 18 de Garfield: consigna una duda de atribución sobre un verso, que podría ser cita de s tra y no original de N g rjuna, y nombra los dos s tras donde aparece
«I will use the term “phenomena” throughout in the commentary as an ontologically neutral expression to cover events, states, processes, objects, properties, etc. Usually phenomena of several of these categories are at play at once. Sometimes not. Where more precision is called for, I will be more specific, unless the context makes it clear which category is relevant.» — nota 20 de Garfield: declara el uso ontológicamente neutro que da al término fenómenos en todo el comentario
«is here being used in the sense of Brentano and of recent Western philosophy of mind—to mean contentful or directed upon an object. I do not use the term to mean purposeful.» — nota 21 de Garfield: fija el sentido de intencional, el de Brentano y la filosofía de la mente reciente, y no el de propositivo
«Georges Dreyfus (personal communication) notes that the understanding of the nature of percept-object conditions and dominant conditions in M h yana Buddhist philosophy undergoes a significant transformation a few centuries later at the hands of Dignaga and Dharmakīrti and that N g rjuna is here making use of older Sarvastiv dan understandings of these terms to demonstrate the emptiness of conditions so understood.» — nota 22 de Garfield: adjudica a Dreyfus la observación de que los términos que N g rjuna usa son los sarvastiv danos antiguos, anteriores a Dignaga y Dharmak rti. Guarda apagada por el paréntesis
«But on my reading at I: 1, N g rjuna does not say that things do not arise period. He simply says that they do not arise by means of an inherently existent causal process. And he does both here and in subsequent chapters explain how things arise in a decidedly nonmiraculous way.» — nota 23 de Garfield: responde a la lectura nihilista de Wood sobre I.1 diciendo qué es lo que a su juicio el verso niega
«There is, as Tuck (1990) has noted, a current fashion of using Wittgenstein to explicate N g rjuna and other M dhyamika philosophers. Most (e.g. Huntington [1983a, 1983b, 1989], Gudmunson [1977], and Thurman [1984]) emphasize connections to the Philosophical Investigations, indeed with good reason. But (as Waldo [1975, 1978] and Anderson [1985] as well as Garfield [1990, 1994, unpublished] have noted) the Tractatus is also a useful fulcrum for exegesis, particularly of N g rjuna» — nota 26 de Garfield: consigna la moda de explicar a N g rjuna por Wittgenstein, reparte a los comentaristas entre las Investigaciones y el Tractatus y declara de qué lado está. Guarda apagada por los años entre paréntesis
«None of this, however, should be taken either as implying that N g rjuna would agree with everything in the Tractatus (assuredly he would not) or that the parallels drawn between M dhyamika philosophy and themes in the Philosophical Investigations are spurious. They are in fact often quite illuminating.» — y el límite que Garfield le pone a ese emparejamiento en la misma nota
«The Ven. Geshe Yeshes Thap-Khas, for instance, argues that the chapter should be interpreted as about change in general; the Ven. Gen Lobzang Gyatso, on the other hand, argues that though the arguments could indeed be applied to change in general, the chapter is specifically about motion through space. The Ven. Lobzang Norbu Shastri argues that it is in fact specifically only about walking, and that any further generalization is illicit» — nota 35 de Garfield: consigna tres lecturas distintas del capítulo II entre sus propios maestros tibetanos, de la más general a la más restringida
«I side with the Ven. Geshe Yeshes Thap-Khas on this point since N g rjuna offers perfectly general arguments against change in properties. And it would seem especially elegant for N g rjuna, who is attacking the tendency to reify, to begin with the two properties most subject to reification in Buddhist philosophy, in virtue of their universal applicability to phenomena and centrality to the Buddhist metaphysical framework—dependent arising and change.» — y de qué lado se pone Garfield, con su razón
«The commentaries I have consulted are silent on this issue, and there is no consensus among the Tibetan scholars with whom I have worked regarding this issue.» — nota 36 de Garfield: declara el silencio de los comentarios y la falta de consenso entre los eruditos tibetanos sobre una cuestión
«The principle here is the familiar Humean maxim of metaphysical analysis: Whatever is really distinct is in principle separable.» — nota 37 de Garfield: nombra la máxima humeana que atraviesa varios argumentos del texto
«Again, the affinities to Hume are intriguing: The Humean analysis of external physical objects and of personal identity appears at first to deny the reality of either. But what emerges from a more careful reading is that Hume shows that only the reified substantialist versions of objects and selves are nonexistent. The objects and selves with which we have actual perceptual and cognitive commerce, on his view, are perfectly existent, but only in virtue of being dependent upon conventions (“custom”) for their identity and existence.» — nota 39 de Garfield: desarrolla el paralelo con Hume sobre los objetos externos y la identidad personal
«I am indebted to the Ven. Gen Lobzang Gyatso for my reading of this verse. Kalupahana (1986) reads this quite differently—as an empiricist rejection of a Cartesian cogito argument. While I agree that N g rjuna has no sympathy with a Cartesian position, to see this verse as articulating an empiricist view with regard to self-knowledge seems unmotivated.» — nota 40 de Garfield: declara de quién toma su lectura de un verso y en qué discrepa de la de Kalupahana. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«The authenticity of this verse is a matter of dispute. It is not present in all editions of the text and may be a later interpolation.» — nota 41 de Garfield: consigna que la autenticidad de un verso está en disputa, que no aparece en todas las ediciones y que podría ser interpolación posterior
«The skandhas (literally “heaps” or “piles,” but most often translated as “aggregates”) are the basic constituents of the personality. Five are typically identified: form (really matter—the physical body), sensation, perception, disposition (behavioral and cognitive), and consciousness. But the term “skandha” indicates two features of this decomposition that must be born in mind to avoid confusion: The division is practical and empirical, and not philosophically principled, and the skandhas themselves are decomposible into further heaps, etc. These are not, hence, ontological fundamentals, but rather the first level of a psychology.» — nota 43 de Garfield: define los skandhas, da las dos traducciones corrientes del término, enumera los cinco y declara la división práctica y empírica, no ontológicamente fundamental
«This verse is very often translated and interpreted in a diametrically opposed way: “Since things exist without essence the assertion ‘When this exists, this will be is not acceptable.”» — nota 33 de Garfield: consigna que el verso se traduce a menudo en sentido diametralmente opuesto al suyo, y da esa versión contraria
«It is important throughout the discussion that follows to bear in mind that N g rjuna is not subjecting this view to criticism, but its substantialist cousin.» — nota 53 de Garfield: advierte que lo criticado en el capítulo VII no es la vista budista del originarse dependiente sino su primo sustancialista
«To translate the Tibetan “gnas-pa,” I have used “stasis (static)” as a noun form, “to endure” as a verb (and sometimes “to abide” to emphasize, where context makes it appropriate, the dynamic character of this process). One should bear in mind that these diverse English terms do not mark diverse Tibetan (or Sanskrit) terms in the original. I have tried to be consistent in preserving the connotations that are important in each context and to render the text in as smooth English as possible.» — nota 55 de Garfield: declara los tres términos ingleses con que rinde un solo término tibetano y por qué renuncia a la uniformidad léxica
«These are the groups of more basic phenomena into which complex phenomena such as persons are decomposed in analysis. The decomposition is in principle bottomless—bundles of bundles of bundles» — nota 56 de Garfield: define los agregados y declara que la descomposición es en principio sin fondo
«The respect in which dependently arisen things are like a dream is this: They exist in one way (as empty) and appear to exist in another (as inherently existent). Just as dreams and mirages exist in one way (as illusions) and appear to exist in another (as objects of perception, or as water). But dreams and mirages are real dreams and mirages. So this verse should not be interpreted as asserting the complete nonexistence of all phenomena.» — nota 57 de Garfield: fija en qué respecto se parecen a un sueño las cosas dependientemente surgidas, y acota que el verso no afirma su inexistencia completa
«The Sanskrit strongly suggests that the “someone” is to be understood as the appropriator (in the sense discussed in the previous chapter) and that the “something” is to be understood as the appropriated object.» — nota 58 de Garfield: consigna que el sánscrito sugiere leer el alguien como apropiador y el algo como objeto apropiado
«But not their identity. Though subject and object as well as internal and external objects are, for N g rjuna, all ultimately empty and, in important senses, interdependent, they are not identical. Physical objects are, as Kant would emphasize, empirically external to the mind in a way that pains are not; and the conventional perceiver is not one with the perceived. When I see an elephant, it is not, thereby, the case that I have a trunk!» — nota 59 de Garfield: acota la interdependencia de sujeto y objeto para que no se lea como identidad, con un ejemplo
«The intended sense of “fuel” here is material that is actually burning—not, for instance, firewood neatly stacked outside.» — nota 61 de Garfield: fija el sentido de combustible en el capítulo X, el material que arde de hecho
«In Buddhist philosophy, the entire phenomenal world is referred to as cyclic existence (′khor-ba, Skt: sams ra). This term indicates not only the endless cycle of birth and death posited by the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth, but also the universally cyclic character of phenomena: Perception and action form a cycle; motivation and action form a cycle; the seasons are cyclic; chains of interdependence of phenomena are cyclic; interpersonal relations are cyclic; craving and acquisition are cyclic.» — nota 63 de Garfield: da los términos tibetano y sánscrito de la existencia cíclica y enumera los sentidos en que el mundo fenoménico es cíclico
«It is this metaphor, suggesting that all of unenlightened existence amounts to going around in circles despite the illusion of progress, that most poignantly captures the sense in which all of human existence is suffering.» — y la lectura que Garfield hace de la metáfora: dar vueltas en círculo con ilusión de progreso
«This is, as the Ven. Sherab Gyatso pointed out in conversation, not the only possible reading of the import of this chapter. It could perfectly well be read simply as a discussion of the problem of the beginning of personal existence and as an argument to the effect that cyclic existence and the predicament of suffering is beginningless, or at least that it is pointless or impossible to discuss and ponder its beginning.» — nota 64 de Garfield: consigna una lectura alternativa del capítulo XI que le señaló el Ven. Sherab Gyatso
«The Buddha pronounced unanswerable questions regarding whether the world has an origin or an end in time or space, whether the individual continues to exist after entering nirv a, whether there is some entity that transmigrates, and whether there is temporal beginning or end to the continuum of consciousness. Kant pronounces unanswerable questions regarding the substantiality, simplicity, personal identity, and primacy of the self, as well as questions regarding the finiteness or infinitude of the world in space and time, the ultimate divisibility of the world, the freedom of the will, and the existence of God.» — nota 66 de Garfield: enumera las preguntas que el Buda declaró incontestables y las antinomias kantianas, una junto a otra
«While N g rjuna shares with Kant a critical approach to philosophy— each seeks to limn the bounds of thought—and while Kant posits an unconditioned realm that is the unknowable but necessary ground of the empirical world, N g rjuna eschews just such a ground.» — y el límite que Garfield le pone al paralelo con Kant, que a Murti le parece adjudicar de más
«His treatment of the unanswerable questions, then, differs from Kant’s, despite the many genuine parallels, in that while for Kant the antinomies represent the application of concepts beyond their range, for N g rjuna they represent sheer nonsense: These antinomies are not for him insoluble problems, but rather pairs of apparently coherent but in fact nonsensical verbal formulations.» — Garfield distingue el tratamiento de las antinomias en Kant y en N g rjuna: aplicación indebida de conceptos en uno, puro sinsentido en el otro
«One must not, however, take this to mean that for N g rjuna there is an inherently existent continuum out of which we carve the merely conventional. Rather just as any totality is dependent upon its parts, the totality of empirical reality depends upon its empty components and, so, is itself empty. Ontology presupposes conventional categories.» — nota 67 de Garfield: niega que bajo lo convencional haya un continuo inherentemente existente del que se recorte
«Nor is this to say that the conventions we adopt are from our perspective arbitrary. They reflect our needs, our biological, psychological, perceptual, and social characteristics, as well as our languages and customs. Given these constraints and conventions, there are indeed facts of the matter regarding empirical claims and regarding the meanings of words. But there is no transcendent standpoint, N g rjuna would insist, from which these conventions and constraints can be seen as justified.» — y la acotación siguiente: las convenciones no son arbitrarias, reflejan necesidades y características, y con todo no hay punto de vista trascendente que las justifique
«Dispositions are themselves compounded phenomena; but more importantly, they are what lead us to the conceptual compounding that gives phenomena their status as conventional entities.» — nota 69 de Garfield: ata las disposiciones a los fenómenos compuestos y explica por qué el término tibetano cubre los dos
«An epithet of the Buddha. (The translation reflects the sense of the Tibetan. The Sanskrit would read» — nota 71 de Garfield: declara que el título traducido es epíteto del Buda y que el sánscrito daría otra forma
«Rather, I take it, N g rjuna denies that there is any inherently existent change or any substantial entity that could be the subject of change, in virtue of the conventional reality of change and the changed.» — nota 72 de Garfield: declara en qué discrepa de la lectura de Inada sobre dos versos
«It remains a characteristic of all phenomena (including itself) and, hence, like them, is conventionally real.» — nota 73 de Garfield: coincide con Wood en que la vacuidad no es entidad y discrepa de que eso lleve al nihilismo sobre ella
«There are three popular readings of the Buddha’s refusal to answer the “unanswerable questions.” On one reading this was an example of his great skill in teaching; any answer he would have given would have been misconstrued and would have had adverse consequences for the student. On another reading, by refusing to answer, the Buddha was indicating that asking these questions does not conduce to successful practice of the Buddhist path and that one should focus one’s mind on more soteriologically efficacious issues.» — nota 65 de Garfield: enumera dos de las tres lecturas corrientes del silencio del Buda ante las preguntas incontestables
«On a third reading—the one adopted here—these questions are in fact metaphysically misguided. They all involve incoherent essentialist presuppositions that, when rejected, render the questions meaningless.» — y la tercera, que es la que Garfield adopta: las preguntas son metafísicamente descaminadas y sus presuposiciones esencialistas las vuelven sin sentido
«Criticism of theories is no theory. Criticism is but the awareness of what a theory is, how it is made up, it is not the proposing of a new theory. Negation of positions is not one more position» — nota 74 de Garfield: cita a Murti sobre la ausencia de posición, que criticar teorías no es una teoría más
«argues that we can make sense of dependent, changeable essences. Perhaps. But these are not the essences N g rjuna has in mind and are not those that lie behind the kind of pernicious reification or its counterpart, nihilism, that he is out to extirpate.» — nota 78 de Garfield: consigna la vista contraria de Bhattacharya sobre esencias dependientes y dice por qué no toca el argumento
«While this sutta is clearly important for N g rjuna, nothing in the text justifies this global interpretation. The range of topics N g rjuna considers far exceeds the scope of that sutta, and no other passage from that sutta is mentioned in the M» — nota 79 de Garfield: objeta la tesis de Kalupahana de que el tratado entero sea un comentario del Discurso a K ty yana, y da sus dos razones
«The Tibetan term translated as “transmigrate” (′khor, Skt: sa s r) is a cognate of the term “sa s ra,” or cyclic existence. It literally means go around and could also be translated with justice as “flow.” But the root idea here is that of cycling or circulating or participating in a phenomenal reality conceived as multicyclic.» — nota 82 de Garfield: da la etimología del término tibetano de transmigrar y su parentesco con sa s ra
«This term (nye-bar-len-pa) is used in a quite general sense: To grasp could be to cling to a possession, to regard attributes or experiences as part of oneself, or to grasp an object in consciousness.» — nota 83 de Garfield: fija el sentido amplio del término tibetano de aferrar
«He emphatically rejects the positing of nirv a as a distinct entity divorced from sa» — nota 84 de Garfield: consigna que en el Yuktisastik N g rjuna declara el nirv a en esta misma vida y rechaza ponerlo como entidad separada del sa s ra
«It is also important to note that this indicates a difference in kind between grasping for nirv a and an aspiration to attain buddhahood. For it is central to Mah y na Buddhist practice to develop the altruistic aspiration to attain buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings—to enhance one’s knowledge, skill, and compassion so as to maximally benefit others. But this aspiration can be cultivated without reification of self, of the goal, or of the objects of compassion or action and, hence, without grasping of the kind at issue.» — nota 85 de Garfield: distingue el aferrarse al nirv a de la aspiración altruista a la budeidad que la práctica Mah y na cultiva
«Karma from the Buddhist standpoint is a straightforwardly deterministic process and not a matter of accounts being kept by a cosmic accountant.» — nota 86 de Garfield: declara el karma proceso determinista y no contabilidad llevada por un contador cósmico
«The arithmetic here is none too clear. Tsong Khapa has it like this: (1) good and bad speech; (2) good and bad physical action; (3) abandoned and unabandoned actions; (4) meritorious actions; (5) nonmeritorious actions; (6) the intention to do good actions; (7) the intention to do bad actions. Just what the principle of partition is here is not obvious. Clearly the categories overlap» — nota 88 de Garfield: consigna que la aritmética de las siete clases de acción no es clara, da la lista de Tsong Khapa y declara que las categorías se solapan
«Refraining from killing, stealing, adultery, lying, deception, slander, gossip, avarice, hatred, and philosophical error.» — nota 89 de Garfield: enumera los diez caminos puros de acción por lo que se abstiene de hacer
«Kalupahana (1986) misreads XVII: 12-19 as N g rjuna’s own view. This is understandable, as N g rjuna is providing four rival accounts of the relation between action and its karmic consequences. Each on his view contains a kernel of truth; each is indeed accurate in a sense, though misleading in the sense in which it is intended. This final position is closest to N g rjuna’s position and can easily be confused with it, but to read it this way misses the significance of the transition at XVII: 20.» — nota 90 de Garfield: objeta que Kalupahana lea como propia de N g rjuna una de las cuatro cuentas rivales, y consigna que cada una tiene un núcleo de verdad. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«The four realms reflect traditional Buddhist cosmology: the desire realm, the form realm, the formless realm, the realm of freedom.» — nota 91 de Garfield: enumera los cuatro reinos de la cosmología budista tradicional
«That is, of course, everything that is conventionally real in the first place. Santa Claus is not among the objects of analysis here.» — nota 94 de Garfield: acota el alcance del tetralema positivo a lo convencionalmente real, con un ejemplo de lo que queda fuera
«that N g rjuna typically resorts to positive forms of the tetralemma when emphasizing claims about conventional phenomena and to negative forms when emphasizing the impossibility of the literal assertion of ultimate truths.» — nota 95 de Garfield: formula la regla que dice haber observado, tetralemas positivos para lo convencional y negativos para lo último
«Here I take issue with philosophers such as Sprung (1979), who argue that the tetralemma is insignificant for M dhyamika thought. Indeed, as I indicate in several places in this commentary, it is, both in its positive and negative moods, often an indispensable analytic tool.» — nota 96 de Garfield: objeta a Sprung que el tetralema sea insignificante para el pensamiento M dhyamika. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«whenever we examine physical, mental, or abstract entities, we find as a result of a reductive analysis nothing but their unfindability. So you can’t really speak coherently of identity or of entities. This is the fundamental teaching of M dhyamika.» — nota 97 de Garfield: cita unas palabras orales del Dalai Lama en Columbia University sobre el resultado del análisis reductivo
«But this interpretation can be carried too far, with the consequence that N g rjuna is seen as a thoroughgoing Kantian absolutist regarding the ultimate truth.» — y el límite que Garfield le pone: llevada demasiado lejos hace de N g rjuna un absolutista kantiano, y adjudica esa vista a Murti
«Kalupahana (1986) adopts another extreme reading, arguing that this verse in fact says nothing about the character of reality, but rather “the means by which a conception of truth is arrived at.” He argues that it merely admonishes one to be independent in one’s thinking, unbiased and calm in one’s philosophical inquiry. It is hard to see how this reading could be justified apart from a strong antecedent commitment to seeing N g rjuna as a pragmatist.» — nota 97 de Garfield: consigna la lectura opuesta de Kalupahana sobre el mismo verso y declara de dónde le parece que sale. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«This insight is foundational for Dōgen’s later analysis of Uji, or being-time.» — nota 99 de Garfield: consigna que esa intuición está en la base del análisis posterior de Uji en D gen
«is an epithet of the Buddha. It is an ambiguous compound, meaning, depending upon how it is parsed, “thus gone” or “thus come,” hence indicating either the one gone along the path to enlightenment, or the one come to teach the Buddhist doctrine.» — nota 102 de Garfield: da las dos lecturas posibles del compuesto Tath gata, ido así y venido así, sin arbitrar entre ellas
«Padhye correctly emphasizes that N g rjuna and his Pr sangika-M dhyamika followers reject any kind of Fregean or other realistic semantics that would require the independent existence of properties, including emptiness or nonemptiness, or of individuals, as the semantic values of predicates or subject terms, respectively, arguing for a more pragmatic view of linguistic meaning.» — nota 103 de Garfield: adjudica a los Pr sangika-M dhyamika el rechazo de una semántica realista o fregeana y una vista pragmática del significado
«For one thing, N g rjuna has argued that there is no inherently existent mind in which it could be located. For another, the idea of error, per se, though not error about anything, is patently incoherent.» — nota 106 de Garfield: las dos razones por las que el error no puede ser fenómeno mental inherentemente existente sin objeto
«Not only the historical Buddha, but also the possibility of buddhahood in general and one’s own future buddhahood in particular, a point emphasized by the Most Ven. Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche in oral comments.» — nota 107 de Garfield: amplía a qué se refiere la joya del Buda y adjudica la precisión a Samdhong Rinpoche
«Because these two Tibetan terms are, according to most Tibetan interpretations of M dhyamika, identical in extension, they are often treated as synonymous. This is a bit unfortunate for when we come to the parallel pair of terms for conventional existents, “kun-rdzob yod-pa” and “tha-snyed yod-pa,“ this coextension breaks down in an important case: emptiness is a nominal (tha snyed) existent, but not a concealing (kun-rdzob) existent.» — nota 109 de Garfield: distingue los dos términos tibetanos para lo convencional y señala el caso en que dejan de ser coextensivos
«This view of the ultimate truth as an absolute standing behind, or in opposition to, a relative truth of the conventional, as a Kantian noumenal world stands to a phenomenal world, is quite contrary to N g rjuna’s doctrine of the emptiness of emptiness.» — nota 110 de Garfield: objeta la lectura de lo último como absoluto detrás de lo relativo, al modo del noúmeno kantiano, y la adjudica a Murti
«Curiously, even Nagao seems to succumb to this temptation to absolutize emptiness when he turns to his analysis of the ultimate truth, despite his emphasis on the identity of the two truths when he is elucidating the conventional.» — y la incoherencia que Garfield consigna en Nagao, que identifica las dos verdades al exponer lo convencional y absolutiza la vacuidad al exponer lo último
«While Wood cannot find anything in this chapter to support such a reading, commentators including both Buddhap lita and Bh vaviveka, as well as Candrakīrti and Tsong Khapa, not to mention a host of modern Western and Tibetan scholars, have found quite a bit there.» — nota 112 de Garfield: enumera a los comentaristas antiguos y modernos que sí encuentran en el capítulo XXIV lo que Wood declara no hallar
«The opponent need not be represented as denying that phenomena are codependently originated. Rather the opponent is failing to see that that dependent co-origination is emptiness.» — Garfield fija dónde está el error que le adjudica a Wood: el oponente no niega el originarse dependiente, no ve que sea la vacuidad
«Hence the entire remainder of the chapter is devoted not to arguing for emptiness, nor to arguing for the reality of codependent origination, but rather to arguing for their identity. To miss this is to miss the entire point of the text.» — y la consecuencia: el resto del capítulo XXIV argumenta la identidad entre vacuidad y originarse dependiente, no una ni otro por separado
«For a thing to be like a mirage or a dream is for it to exist in one way (as, e.g., a mirage), but to not exist in the way that it appears (as water). To put the point another way: Mirages really are mirages, but are not really water, though they might appear to be.» — nota 114 de Garfield: desarma la lectura nihilista del símil del espejismo diciendo en qué consiste el parecido
«So, pace Wood, it is not N g rjuna, but his opponent who is the nihilist here.» — y el remate de esa nota, que devuelve el nihilismo al oponente
«rung-ba” which literally means suitable, or appropriate. But while that makes sense in Tibetan, it clearly doesn’t in English, and the context indicates “clear” as the word that best captures the meaning.» — nota 113 de Garfield: declara que traduce por clear un término tibetano que literalmente dice apropiado, porque en inglés la forma literal no funciona
«There are two things to say about this interpretation: First, as N g rjuna would be quick to point out, absolutism is not the only alternative to nihilism. M dhyamika is an attempt to forge a middle path between precisely those two extremes.» — nota 119 de Garfield: responde a la lectura absolutista de las dos verdades recordando que el absolutismo no es la única alternativa al nihilismo
«And second, to say that a rejection of absolutism is a rejection of the reality of the world tout court is to presuppose exactly the equation of existence with inherent existence that is the target of N g rjuna» — y la segunda respuesta: leer el rechazo del absolutismo como rechazo de la realidad supone ya la ecuación entre existir y existir inherentemente
«He is no Berkeley, suggesting that his own position is that of common sense and that only a philosopher would reify. In fact, it is fundamental to any Buddhist outlook, and certainly to N g rjuna’s view, that one of the root delusions that afflicts all non-buddhas is the innate tendency to reify.» — nota 122 de Garfield: niega que N g rjuna hable solo a filósofos, porque la tendencia a reificar se adjudica a todo no buda
«But that tendency is raised to high art by metaphysics. N g rjuna intends his attack to strike both at the prereflective delusion and at its more sophisticated philosophical counterpart.» — y la doble dirección del ataque que Garfield le adjudica, contra la delusión prerreflexiva y contra su versión filosófica
«To be sure, both in the Abidharma literature and in most M h yana metaphysical literature, space is regarded as permanent, despite being a conventional phenomenon.» — nota 123 de Garfield: consigna que la literatura Abidharma y la mayor parte de la Mah y na tienen el espacio por permanente, lo que parece contraejemplo
«But second, and for the purposes of understanding this text, more importantly, N g rjuna never asserts the permanence of space and repeatedly associates emptiness with impermanence. I would thus argue that other M h yana literature to the contrary notwithstanding, nothing in N g rjuna’s presentation of M dhyamika entails the permanence of space or indeed of any other entity.» — y cómo lo resuelve Garfield: N g rjuna nunca afirma la permanencia del espacio y asocia la vacuidad a la impermanencia
«This reading contrasts with that of Inada (1970), who asserts that nirv a, in fact, is transcendent, belonging to a wholly different ontological realm. I find his reading very difficult to reconcile with XXV: 19, 20 or indeed, with any of Chapters XXII, XXIV, or XXV.» — nota 130 de Garfield: consigna la lectura contraria de Inada, que declara trascendente el nirv a, y dice por qué no la acepta. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«Though it is standard doctrine that a buddha, in virtue of being omniscient (setting aside the vexed and controversial question of the nature of this omniscience—a matter of considerable debate within Buddhist philosophy), perceives all conventional phenomena and knows all conventional truths, as well as all ultimate truths.» — nota 132 de Garfield: consigna la doctrina corriente sobre la omnisciencia del buda y deja entre paréntesis lo controvertido de esa noción
«But a buddha does not know conventional truths and perceive conventional phenomena in the same way that a nonenlightened being does. A buddha knows them and perceives them as conventional and sees them at the same time as empty, through an immediate knowledge of the unity of the two truths.» — y la diferencia que la misma nota marca entre cómo conoce un buda y cómo conoce un no buda
«This term is often translated in this text as “disposition.” It can also mean “to compound” or“compounded phenomenon.” Here it must function as a verb. Both Streng» — nota 136 de Garfield: consigna los tres sentidos del término tibetano y que aquí tiene que funcionar como verbo
«But given N g rjuna’s theory of action, as we have seen, dispositions and actions are of a kind. And what generates the karma that creates and maintains cyclic existence is action. Hence, I read the term here as denoting action and disposition together» — y la decisión de Garfield frente a la de Streng e Inada, leer el término como acción y disposición a la vez
«This, for instance, is the view urged unanimously by Je-Tsong Khapa (pp. 477-84), mKhas-grub-rje (pp. 112-17), and dGe-’dun-grub (p. 237) and by most of the Geluk-pa scholars with whom I have consulted.» — nota 137 de Garfield: nombra a los tres comentaristas Geluk-pa que sostienen unánimes la primera lectura del verso final, con sus planas
«Whether Candrakīrti or Āryadeva read the text this way is unclear. On the other hand, many Nyingma scholars adopt the alternative reading I suggest here.» — y la divergencia que Garfield consigna sin cerrar: no está claro si Candrak rti y Āryadeva lo leyeron así, y muchos eruditos Nyingma adoptan la otra lectura
«In conversation, H.H. the Dalai Lama has suggested to me that the Geluk-pa interpretation may make the most sense from the standpoint of philosophy and for the purposes of characterizing an inferential understanding of emptiness, but that the Nyingma understanding may provide a better expression of the nature of the direct understanding of emptiness and may be more useful for guiding meditative practice.» — Garfield consigna la salida que le propuso el Dalai Lama, que cada lectura sirve a un propósito distinto
«The Ven. Prof. Geshe Yeshes Thap-Khas, on the other hand (oral commentary), suggests that the two interpretations are both intended—the first as the teaching regarding the conventional truth, and appropriate for those not yet advanced in meditative practice, and the second as a teaching regarding the nature of the direct realization of emptiness experienced by a buddha at enlightenment, and by advanced practitioners in meditative equipoise directly realizing emptiness.» — y la de Geshe Yeshes Thap-Khas, que tiene las dos por intencionadas y las reparte entre dos públicos
«Both the Most Ven. Khamtrul Rinpoche and the Most Ven. Samdhong Rinpoche emphatically support the second reading as the primary meaning of the verse and as the final expression of the emptiness of emptiness» — nota 138 de Garfield: consigna que dos maestros apoyan enfáticamente la segunda lectura como sentido primario del verso final
«In his commentary (p. 164), he endorses the “all views” reading. But in his translation (p. 171), he inserts “false” parenthetically before “views.” These are clearly not consistent moves.» — y la incoherencia que Garfield le señala a Inada, que sostiene una lectura en el comentario y otra en la traducción
«points out that emptiness as it appears in direct realization does not appear as an entity (ngospo). From the ultimate point of view there are no entities. Since a view is always a view of an entity, in direct realization of emptiness, there is a necessary relinquishing of all views, including all Buddhist and all M dhyamika views.» — nota 139 de Garfield: recoge el comentario oral de Geshe Yeshes Thap-Khas, que en la realización directa no hay entidades y por tanto no hay vistas
«But, he argues, it does not follow that one not directly realizing emptiness can relinquish all views or, in particular, that one should relinquish true ones.» — y el límite que ese mismo maestro le pone: quien no realiza directamente la vacuidad no puede ni debe abandonar las vistas verdaderas
«The Ven. Geshe Yeshe Topden (also in oral commentary) puts this a bit differently: Emptiness, he argues, when it is known inferentially, is known as a positive phenomenon and appears as an inherently existent entity, even though the subject of such a cognition knows that it is not so» — nota 139 de Garfield: recoge la formulación distinta de Geshe Yeshe Topden, que la vacuidad conocida inferencialmente aparece como entidad inherentemente existente
«A significant point that the M dhyamikas never fail to make out is that reason and concepts have a place in Vyavah ra. It is possible to select a pattern, hold a position without clinging to it, i.e., without being dogmatic. It teaches one to look at a view as something relative and shows that the error of clinging is not essential to reason.» — nota 139 de Garfield: cita a Mukherjee sobre el lugar de la razón y los conceptos en lo convencional, que se puede sostener una posición sin aferrarse a ella
«Nonetheless, it is surely the case that Wood is correct in claiming that N g rjuna wishes to treat emptiness in exactly the way that he treats other phenomena—as empty—and that any theory about it that presupposes it has an essence must be false.» — nota 140 de Garfield: concede a Wood el punto de que la vacuidad se trata como cualquier otro fenómeno, y separa ahí el acuerdo del desacuerdo
«A careful reading of Vigrahavy vartanī reveals, as Wood notes, that N g rjuna denies that he has a proposition (pratijñ ), but not that he utters words.» — y el dato filológico con que Garfield cierra la disputa: N g rjuna niega tener una proposición, no negar pronunciar palabras
«N g rjuna is working to show the merely conventional character of his utterance and that its utility does not entail the existence of any convention-independent reality as its semantic value. But that is a far cry from nihilism.» — el remate de la nota 140 y de las notas del volumen
«Table of Contents • Part One The Text of M lamadhyamakak rik ○ Dedicatory Verses ○ I ○ Examination of Conditions» — el Table of Contents que el ebook imprime al final repite la arquitectura del volumen con viñetas; es aparato de la edición digital, no del impreso
«The M dhyamika position implies that we should seek to explain regularities by reference to their embeddedness in other regularities, and so on. To ask why there are regularities at all, on such a view, would be to ask an incoherent question: The fact of explanatorily useful regularities in nature is what makes explanation and investigation possible in the first place and is not something itself that can be explained.» — nota 29 de Garfield: explicar regularidades por otras regularidades, y declarar incoherente la pregunta por qué hay regularidades
«This may connect deeply to the Buddha’s insistence that questions concerning the beginning of the world are unanswerable.» — y el enlace que la misma nota sugiere con la insistencia del Buda en que la pregunta por el comienzo del mundo es incontestable
«Since dependent co-origination is used as a premise to argue for the lack of inherent existence of things, it can’t be independent of it. Lack of inherent existence must always be understood as negative and as a feature of conventional reality… In M lamadhyamakak rik these two truths— dependent co-origination and emptiness—are taught as two perspectives on the same reality.» — nota 117 de Garfield: cita unas palabras orales del Dalai Lama en Columbia University sobre las dos verdades como dos perspectivas sobre la misma realidad
«Nagao himself opts for “a designation based upon (some material).” I find this both awkward and misleading; it commits N g rjuna univocally to “some material” as the designative basis for emptiness, submerging the metalinguistic reading. Both seem to me to be clearly intended by the text.» — nota 118 de Garfield: objeta la traducción que Nagao propone para el compuesto y declara que el texto admite las dos lecturas
«This represents as clear a statement as one would like of the position that the conventional/ultimate distinction is a version of an appearance/reality or phenomenon/noumenon distinction, a position I read N g rjuna as at pains to refute.» — nota 119 de Garfield: consigna la posición de Murti, que lee la distinción de las dos verdades como distinción entre apariencia y realidad, y declara que el texto está empeñado en objetarla
«We must understand “form” in this context to designate physical reality as a whole, including matter and energy. We can presume (bypassing hagiographie considerations) that N g rjuna was unaware of the relativistic understanding of the interchangeability of these two; but it is clear that, from the standpoint of “skandha theory,” the operative contrast is between the physical and the nonphysical. (And here, given the antisubstantial metaphysics in play, “nonphysical” does not mean made of spook stuff.) Form is just whatever is succeptible of physical description and explanation.» — nota 46 de Garfield: fija el sentido de forma como realidad física entera y advierte que lo no físico no significa hecho de materia espectral
«See also Kalupahana (1986), p. 80. But Kalupahana also says that these final lines “clearly show that N g rjuna was aware that the Buddha did not speak ’metaphysically’ but only ’empirically» — nota 139 de Garfield: consigna la lectura de Kalupahana sobre las líneas finales, que el Buda no hablaba metafísicamente sino empíricamente. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«To refuse to give a metaphysical theory of the nature of phenomena and to refuse to characterize what cannot be spoken of coherently does not by itself constitute an eschewal of metaphysics. Nor does it indicate that the arguments offered in this text are empirical. Manifestly, a great deal of metaphysics (albeit of a highly critical and negative kind) and very little empirical discussion occur in this text.» — y la objeción de Garfield a esa lectura, que declara el texto lleno de metafísica crítica y negativa y con poca discusión empírica
«is that of a distinguishing characteristic, or a characteristic mark or signature of a thing. I therefore use the singular here.» — nota 50 de Garfield: fija el sentido del término tibetano de característica como marca distintiva o signatura, y por eso lo usa en singular
«The others are earth, water, fire, air, and consciousness.» — nota 49 de Garfield: enumera los otros cinco elementos primordiales junto al espacio
«Kalupahana (1986), p. 145, sees a different question being begged.» — nota 48 de Garfield: consigna que Kalupahana ve una petición de principio distinta en el mismo verso. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«See, e.g., the Heart S tra, with its famous discussion of the emptiness of the aggregates that begins with form and then moves to the psychological aggregates.» — nota 51 de Garfield: remite al Heart S tra por su discusión de la vacuidad de los agregados
«This term is sometimes appropriately translated as “disposition,” “action,” or “compounded.” Context is crucial in determining which rendering is best. In Buddhist metaphysics these meanings are closely connected.» — nota 52 de Garfield: da los tres sentidos del término tibetano y declara que el contexto decide cuál rinde mejor
«Such remarks also make it hard to sustain the nihilistic reading of the text Wood (1994) offers. For here N g rjuna is clearly committed to the claim that there are dependently arisen phenomena.» — nota 54 de Garfield: usa un pasaje del propio texto contra la lectura nihilista de Wood. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«For one person to cause suffering for another, that first must already be suffering. For to cause suffering is a very serious wrong, which could only be done by someone who him/herself is suffering. So there is a possible regress.» — nota 68 de Garfield: consigna una segunda dificultad, que causar sufrimiento a otro exigiría estar ya sufriendo
«This form indicates that the nihilism is taken as the unacceptable consequence that would provide a reductio on the claim “it existed before but doesn» — nota 80 de Garfield: lee la forma verbal tibetana del verso como marca de que el nihilismo es la consecuencia inaceptable de un reductio
«There are two kinds of cases to be made for attributing this distinction to N g rjuna in this chapter: Most generally, there is the hermeneutical argument that this makes the best philosophical sense of the text. It gets N g rjuna drawing a distinction that is clearly suggested by his philosophical outlook and that lines up nicely with the technical terms he deploys.» — nota 16 de Garfield: declara los dos tipos de razones con que adjudica a N g rjuna la distinción entre causa y condición, empezando por la hermenéutica
«But we can get more textually fine grained as well; in the first verse, N g rjuna explicitly rejects the existence of efficacy and pointedly uses the word “cause.” He denies that there are such things.» — y la razón textual: en el primer verso se rechaza la eficacia y se usa la palabra causa
«Nowhere in Chapter I is there a parallel denial of the existence of conditions. On the contrary, in I: 2 he positively asserts that there are four kinds of them.» — el dato con que Garfield cierra el argumento de la nota 16: el capítulo I no niega las condiciones y afirma que hay cuatro
«The verb here is “grag” (Skt: kila), which indicates that the embedded content is not endorsed. That is, the first two lines of this verse are in the mouth of the opponent.» — nota 28 de Garfield: adjudica dos líneas de un verso al oponente por una marca verbal tibetana que señala contenido no respaldado
«This example was suggested to me in conversation by the Ven. Geshe Lobzang Gyatso.» — nota 27 de Garfield: declara de quién tomó un ejemplo del comentario
«The reason for this second possibility is the possible presence of an idealist in the dialectical neighborhood, who might argue that even though neither seeing nor the seen inherently exists, both exist as illusions of the putative seer, who must exist, even if only as the subject of delusion.» — nota 45 de Garfield: declara que la segunda posibilidad del verso responde a un idealista en la vecindad dialéctica
«The param rtha, however, can be understood and realized only negatively, only as we remove the sa v ti, the forms which thought has already, unconsciously and beginninglessly, ascribed to the real. The real is to be uncovered, discovered and realized as the reality of appearances.» — nota 108 de Garfield: cita a Murti sobre lo último como lo que solo se descubre al retirar lo convencional
«Causal power, 103, 105, 108, 109, 112-13, 114-15, 118-20, 262-63 Causation, 91, 103-23, 262-63 from another, 106 causal nexus, 104, 113-15, 262-63 emptiness of, 122 by self, 105-6, 112 by self and other, 106-7 Causelessness, 107 Cessation, 171» — el índice onomástico registra los conceptos técnicos del comentario con sus planas impresas, que no coinciden con las planas del EPUB
«butterlamp, 164-67 cloth, 195 fire and fuel, 138-39, 189-95 horse, 301 light switch, 109, 110, 115 magic, 243 match lighting, 168, 259 milk and curd, 211 mirage, 237, 243-44, 302n. 114 pot, 195 seed and sprout» — el índice recoge aparte una entrada de ejemplos, que reúne los símiles que el comentario usa: la lámpara de mantequilla, la tela, el fuego y el combustible, el caballo, el interruptor, la magia, el fósforo, la leche y la cuajada, el espejismo, la olla y la semilla
«Pyrrhonism, 137-38, 300, 307, 317 Rang bzhin, 89n. 4, 103, 111 Ratnak ta-S tra, 356 Rebirth, 199, 237-38, 241-42 Regularity, 116, 259-60 Reification» — el índice registra el pirronismo entre los referentes occidentales que el comentario invoca
«Tsong Khapa, 92n. 8, 97-98, 104n. 16, 105n. 17, 117n. 37, 184-85n. 58, 189n. 60, 207-8n. 69, 233n. 88, 340n. 136 Tuck, A., 114n. 26 Twelve links, 335-41 Two truths» — el índice mide la presencia de Tsong Khapa en el comentario, el comentarista tibetano del que Garfield declara mayor deuda
«Nagao, G. (1989). The Foundational Standpoint of M dhyamika Philosophy. Trans. J. Keenan. Albany: State University of New York Press.» — la bibliografía registra los dos volúmenes de Nagao que el comentario cita con más frecuencia. Cita de bibliografía, con la guarda anticosido apagada
«Form, 142-46 cause of, 143-45 explanation of, 145-46 Four Noble Truths» — el índice registra los agregados y las Cuatro Nobles Verdades entre las entradas de materia
«K ty yana, Discourse to, 222-24 Khamtrul Rinpoche» — el índice registra el Discurso a K ty yana, el sutta que Garfield declara importante para el tratado
«and emptiness, 293, 300-304, 314-15 and reification» — el índice registra bajo nihilismo las planas donde el comentario lo trata junto con la vacuidad
«Skandhas, 141n. 43 Sogyal Rinpoche» — el índice registra los skandhas remitiendo a la nota donde se los define
«See, for instance, Nagao (1989 and 1991), Lopez (1987), and Cabezon (1992) for more detailed discussion of Yog c ra and Sv tantrika readings.» — nota 1 de Garfield: remite a cuatro estudios para las lecturas Yog c ra y Sv tantrika. Guarda apagada por los años entre paréntesis
«The ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth» — nota 7 de Garfield: cita la fórmula de Siderits sobre la verdad última
«For useful discussions of the recovery of the conventional within emptiness and the relation between the two truths in M dhyamika philosophy, see Sprung (1973, 1979), esp. 1973, pp. 15-20; Newland (1992); Napper (1992); Streng (1967), esp. chap. 3.» — nota 11 de Garfield: remite a la bibliografía sobre la recuperación de lo convencional dentro de la vacuidad. Guarda apagada por los años entre paréntesis
«Especially given the analysis N g rjuna will develop of phenomena as empty. See especially chapters XV, XVIII, XXIV.» — nota 24 de Garfield: reenvía a los tres capítulos donde se desarrolla el análisis de los fenómenos como vacíos
«makes a similar point. See pp. 44» — nota 25 de Garfield: consigna que Streng hace un punto similar y da sus planas
«The Tibetan is literally “yod pa’i chos,” or existent entity. But as both Tsong Khapa (pp. 31–32) and dGe-′dun-grub (p. 12) argue, the entity in question can only be a mental episode.» — nota 31 de Garfield: da la forma literal del tibetano y adjudica a Tsong Khapa y dGe ’dun-grub la lectura que adopta
«For a translation of much of Candrakīrti’s commentary (Prasannapad ), see Sprung (1979).» — nota 10 de Garfield: remite a la traducción de Sprung para el comentario Prasannapad de Candrak rti. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«See also Kalupahana (1986), p. 131.» — nota 38 de Garfield: remite a una plana de Kalupahana. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«That is not, of course, to say that it is arbitrary.» — nota 44 de Garfield: acota que declarar práctica y empírica la taxonomía de los agregados no la vuelve arbitraria
«See also Kalupahana (1986), p. 38, for a similar analysis.» — nota 47 de Garfield: remite a Kalupahana por un análisis similar. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«See Tsong Khapa’s comments on this verse» — nota 60 de Garfield: remite al comentario de Tsong Khapa sobre un verso, con su plana
«See also Kalupahana (1986), p. 199.» — nota 62 de Garfield: remite a una plana de Kalupahana. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«See Hume (1975), pp. 235-39.» — nota 92 de Garfield: remite a Hume por el argumento paralelo. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«reads these final verses very differently, as having nothing to do with the ultimate truth, but rather as suggesting that freedom from suffering “does not necessarily mean the absence of a subject-object discrimination. It means the absence of any discrimination based upon one’s likes and dislikes, one’s obsessions” (p. 59). It is, however, very hard to square this reading of XVIII: 10, 11 with any defensible reading of XVIII: 8, 9.» — nota 98 de Garfield: consigna la lectura de Kalupahana sobre los versos finales del capítulo XVIII y declara por qué no la sostiene
«Inada, with some philosophical justification, translates this as “projected.” But I see little lexical merit in that choice.» — nota 100 de Garfield: consigna la traducción alternativa de Inada y su juicio sobre ella
«See the discussion of XXVII: 30 for more on this point.» — nota 101 de Garfield: reenvía al comentario del verso final del tratado
«even the claim that all is ś nyat is absurd, for non-assertion or non-maintenance of a position is the real meaning of» — nota 104 de Garfield: cita a Nagao, que declara absurda hasta la afirmación de que todo es vacuidad para quien parte de ella, porque la no aserción es su sentido real
«he is succumbing to the very view that N g rjuna criticizes here—the view that to exist is to exist inherently and that to not exist inherently is not to exist at all.» — nota 115 de Garfield: adjudica a Wood la vista misma que el texto critica, la de que existir es existir inherentemente
«When the birth-death cycle itself is empty, when there is nothing that exists permanently as its own essence; when, without self-identity all the functions of beings depend upon others, then dependent co-arising is emptiness and emptiness is dependent co-arising» — nota 120 de Garfield: cita a Nagao sobre la identidad entre originarse dependiente y vacuidad
«See Garfield (unpublished) and Streng (1973), chap., 4 for a similar interpretation of these verses and the correlative arguments.» — nota 121 de Garfield: remite a su propio trabajo inédito y a Streng por una interpretación similar. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«That is, scepticism in the Pyrrhonian, or Humean sense: See Garfield» — nota 124 de Garfield: precisa en qué sentido llama escepticismo a la posición, el pirrónico o humeano
«See Streng (1973), chap. 5.» — nota 125 de Garfield: remite a un capítulo de Streng. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«Being firmly entrenched in ś nyat and realizing that language has only a conventional use, an rya or a philosopher regards silence or noncommitment as the highest good or param rtha. And the attainment of param rtha in this sense, not in the sense of a transcendent reality, constitutes an essential feature of nirv» — nota 126 de Garfield: cita a Nayak, que pone el silencio o la ausencia de compromiso como el bien más alto y rasgo esencial del nirv a
«for another presentation of this view.» — nota 127 de Garfield: remite al Yukti a tika de N g rjuna por otra presentación de la misma vista
«for a concise discussion of N g rjuna’s treatment of the tetralemma of existence/nonexistence with respect to nirv» — nota 128 de Garfield: remite a Padhye por una discusión concisa del tetralema de existencia e inexistencia aplicado al nirv a
«He then takes the purport to be the denial of any entity such as a "seed of release" mediating between the states of sa» — nota 133 de Garfield: consigna la traducción distinta que Kalupahana da de un verso y qué sentido le saca
«points out (pp. 68-70) that N g rjuna should also be read here and in this chapter as a whole as emphasizing that, in virtue of the emptiness of all phenomena in sa s ra and of the self that experiences them, nirv a, which is defined simply as that self’s liberation from positing those phenomena, must be equally empty. For it, too, can only be understood as a characteristic of that empty self and of its relation to empty phenomena.» — nota 134 de Garfield: recoge de Padhye la lectura de que el nirv a tiene que ser igualmente vacío por serlo el yo que se libera
«hence refers both to action and to the consequences of action for the individual.» — nota 135 de Garfield: declara que el término tibetano cubre a la vez la acción y sus consecuencias para el individuo
«XXVII Examination of Views References Index» — el cierre del índice de contenidos, que enumera las tres piezas finales del volumen: References, Index y, tras ellas en el ebook, las notas
«9. Kalupahana (1986), p. 32.» — nota 9 de Garfield: una remisión de una línea a Kalupahana. Guarda apagada por el año entre paréntesis
«○ XX ○ Examination of Combination ○ XXI ○ Examination of Becoming» — el Table of Contents del final del ebook usa viñetas de dos niveles donde el índice del principio usa solo texto; es el mismo esquema impreso una segunda vez
«Dalai Lama, H. H., 252n. 97, 305n. 117, 325n. 126» — el índice registra también a los informantes orales del comentario, empezando por el Dalai Lama, y remite a las notas por su número
Conceptos tratados
Crítica de fuentes (criterios de inclusión y descarte) — Garfield declara su base textual y la somete a escrutinio: traduce el texto tibetano dBu-ma rtsa-ba shes-rab y no el sánscrito, nombra las cuatro versiones inglesas anteriores y la lectura desde la que cada una se hizo, declara que su libro no es edición crítica ni trabajo filológico, identifica la edición tibetana concreta de la que parte, consigna que un verso podría no ser original y ser cita de s tra, que la autenticidad de otro está en disputa por no estar en todas las ediciones, y que hasta la división del texto en capítulos se adjudica a Candrak rti.
Cadena de transmisión (quién tomó de quién) — El volumen declara su propia cadena en dos tramos. El textual: un original sánscrito, su traducción tibetana leída y comentada por generaciones de filósofos tibetanos, y de ahí esta versión inglesa. El interpretativo: la escuela Pr sangika-M dhyamika que lee el tratado por los comentarios de Buddhap lita y Candrak rti, la tradición tibetana Geluk-pa que toma por centrales los de dGe-’dun-grub, mKhas-grub-rje y Je Tsong Khapa, y el comentario oral recibido de maestros tibetanos vivos, nombrados uno por uno. Garfield niega a la vez que esa tradición sea homogénea y consigna la convención de presentarse como mero expositor fiel de los anteriores.