..续本文上一页r negation as having arisen or having disappeared, holy or unholy, etc. Here, it would be wise to remind ourselves of Nagarjuna”s caution once again that as a concept sunyata too is empty. Any affirmation or negation of sunyata would be conceptual, and hence a deluded view.

　　===="Therefore, in emptiness no form, no feelings, perceptions, impulses, conscious-ness. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind, no realm of eyes and so forth until no realm of mind-consciousness."====

　　This passage is a further triangulation of the earlier assertions by the Abhidharmists with regard to skandhas and dharmas. Not wishing the hearer to somehow form the misimpression that "emptiness is form," or any such category of analysis, the sutra now employs the classical Indian philosophical methodology of negation to rid the hearer of any such possibility. This methodology is two-pronged; on the one hand it denies any identification of emptiness with the skandhas (form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness) or the six sense-objects (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind) or the phenomena perceived by the six sense-organs (shape, sound, smell, taste, touch or thought) or the six consciounesses produced as a result of contact between the sense-organs and the external phenomena (eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, touch consciousness and mind consciounsess); in this sense, this negation is a rejection of the Hinayana predilection for numerous categories of analysis. On the other hand, the sutra asserts that sunyata is ineffable and inexpressible and is not to be confounded with eye, ear, nose, tongue, and so on, until any and all categories are denied as identifiable with sunyata.

　　Therefore, in sunyata there is nothing to hold on to. Sunyata is complete absence of all identifiable phenomena, yet it is not nihilistically void. What has ceased to operate in sunyata are all categories of analysis. When the rationality of the Hinayana thinking is transcended, and one enters into the realm of intuitive truth, only then does one experience the qualityless, valueless, ineffable sunyata of the Mahayana tradition.

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　　"No ignorance and also no extinction of it and so forth until no old age and death and also no extinction of them."

　　This passage is a restatement of the insight contained in Buddha”s enlightenment experience as well as a further negation of Hinayana rationality. The legend of Buddha”s enlightenment tells us that in the first watch of the night of his great experience under the rose-apple tree, he experienced all his past lives, one by one, as he had lived them. In the second watch of the night, he witnessed the death and rebirth of all cosmos and all being in them, across the aeons. Still, to his credit, he was not satisfied that he had discovered the root cause of human suffering as he had set out to do when he took his great vow not to move from his seat under the tree. Finally, at dawn, he saw the Morning Star and, in a flash, understood what he had been seeking. This insight has been articulated in later tradition as the Chain of Dependent Origination (or the Chain of Causation) and presented as a schema:

　　1) there is ignorance (as to the true nature of

　　reality);

　　2) ignorance leads to mental formations or impulses

　　(the skandha called samskara);

　　3) impulses or mental formations give rise to

　　consciousness (the skandha called vijnana), the

　　totality of thoughts, speech and actions;

　　4) consciousness determines the resulting mental and

　　physical phenomena (the skandha called nama-rupa or

　　the realm of name and form);

　　5) mental and physical phenomena condition the six

　　sense realms: the five physic…

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