Prof. Dorji Wangchuk: “The Buddhist Ontology of Mereism”
22 June 2012
Photo: Orna Almogi
In this paper, which is a modified version of a talk I gave in earlier occasion (the 11th Annual Conference of Asian Studies in Israel 2012, May 22–23, Tel Aviv University), an attempt will be made to present the various theories of Buddhist philosophy, that is, specifically Buddhist ontology—employed here in the sense of the doctrine or theory of being and existence, or of phenomenon-in-itself and reality-in-itself—that can be gleaned from various Indian and Tibetan sources associated with different schools or systems of thought.
The various positions on Buddhist ontology attributed to the schools or sub-schools of the Vaibhāṣika, Sautrāntika, Yogācāra, and Mādhyamika have often been described in secondary sources as realism, substantialism, idealism, nominalism, illusionism, and so on. One of the difficulties of employing these terms—albeit some of them being quite precise and pregnant—is the kind of misleading and hence undesirable connotations and associations that these terms often bring along. In addition, various positions of Buddhist ontology expressed in these terms seem to give us an impression of mutual exclusion and irreconcilability even when these may not necessarily be the case.
In the light of such difficulties, I seek to examine and determine the various concepts of Buddhist ontology from a completely different and new perspective, which I believe, will help us present and represent more accurately the various types of Buddhist ontology. I intend to show that although the name of only one Buddhist philosophical school contains the component “mere” or “only” (mātra: tsam), that is, Cittamātravāda (or Vijñānamātravāda/ Vijñaptimātra(tā)vāda), all concepts of Buddhist ontology seem to have been expressed by key terms or compounds whose final member invariably being “mere” or “only.” For the want of a suitable and satisfactory generic term to refer to the various concepts of Buddhist ontology, all of which invariably seem to express the idea of “x-only,” “mere x,” or “there is nothing other than x,” where the value of “x” is usually an entity (or phenomenon) or reality of some kind, I will propose the neo-Sanskritism “Mātravāda,” which may be rendered into English as “Mereism” or “Onlyism,” and is to be defined or redefined in this Buddhist context as a philosophical thought according to which there is no metaphysical cause of any kind behind the facade of the manifold world of appearances in which we live in. It will also be pointed out that each term and concept of “x-only” according to any given system seems to enable it to adhere to the position of the Middle Way (madhyamā pratipat: dbu ma’i lam) by claiming that positing anything more than ‘x’ would lead to the extreme of eternalism and positing anything less than ‘x’ would lead to the extreme of nihilism or anihilationism, and hence the “x-only” ontology being the only feasible Golden Mean.
June 22nd, 2012 - 16.15h
Universität Hamburg, Hauptgebäude,
Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Raum 118
Free Entrance.