Madhyamaka is the Buddhist worldview that goes straight to the ultimate nature of the world. It teaches that the essence of the world is emptiness (śūnyatā), and that the world is not created by matter nor by any objectively existent spirit. No matter how thoroughly one examines, no intrinsic essence can be found at all. Yet although no essence is found, the world is not a nihilistic nothingness.
So what does “having no essence” actually mean? Take this cup as an example. If you keep breaking it down, you will never be able to locate any ultimate, smallest building block that truly counts as its essence. You can’t find it—but appearances still arise. Phenomena appear, yet they have no intrinsic nature. This is what is meant by “dependent origination and emptiness of nature” (pratītyasamutpāda-śūnyatā).
This, however, is only one-sided emptiness at the level of material phenomena —and that kind of is still not the ultimate emptiness. If there is no essence, then why do phenomena appear at all? If matter is, empty and emptiness is everywhere, then where do all these phenomena actually come from? Although they are empty, their nature cannot simply be “nothing,” because after all, there is appearance. So where does this root truly lie? Buddhism teaches that these phenomena arise from the luminosity of the mind, which, through distortion, dualization, and fragmentation, manifests as the world we experience.
Yet the nature of the mind itself is also empty. That is to say—no inherently existent entity identifiable as “luminosity” can be found, even though it clearly functions. Once these functions are distorted by our grasping and fixation, they turn into all kinds of phenomena. They can appear as heavens, pure lands, hells—anything at all. Yet no intrinsic essence can ever be found.
This is precisely why realizing one’s true nature becomes so tricky. It cannot be found—yet it must be realized! This sounds like a paradox. But for genuine practitioners, through meticulous listening, reflection, and cultivation, it is something that can indeed be recognized, and ultimately, directly realized.
The Buddhist worldview must be articulated in terms of the Two Truths—the conventional truth and the ultimate truth. Together, these two form a complete and coherent theoretical system. What we call the most fundamental essence is the “ultimate truth,” and Madhyamaka is precisely the system that discerns and determines this ultimate truth.
Since there is ultimate truth, there must also be conventional truth. Some people claim that “The Prāsaṅgika school has no conventional truth.” That is not really accurate. Prāsaṅgika does not primarily set out to define or establish the conventional truth. Instead, it goes straight to emptiness, directly probing what the essence of things actually is, and in doing so, it appears to bypass the conventional level. But Buddhism certainly does recognize conventional truth. From the Prāsaṅgika standpoint, after arising from samadhi of suchness, when addressing sentient beings still bound by grasping, the conventional truth is likewise taught.
Within Buddhism, conventional truth itself is interpreted in many different ways by different schools. Among them, the most ultimate form of conventional truth is Yogācāra, or “Mind-Only.” It teaches that the phenomena of the world are not created by matter, nor by any objectively existing spiritual entity, but arise from the luminosity of our own mind, which—through distortion and dualistic fragmentation—manifests in a grasping mode. In this sense, the world is nothing other than appearances of consciousness (vijñaptimātra).
This grasping mode is what we call “consciousness” (vijñāna). “Vijñāna” means discrimination and cognizing—it is a function, or a capacity of the mind. At the most fundamental level—the level of emptiness—this very capacity of the mind is called “luminosity.” But once it passes through discrimination and distortion, it can no longer be called luminosity; it is then referred to as consciousness.
Today, let us first talk about Buddhism’s conventional worldview, and only later turn to Madhyamaka, the ultimate worldview. The ultimate worldview mainly serves to clarify the state of realization and liberation. Whereas the worldview prior to realization, which is called “conventional truth”, must also be discerned and determined. It tells us that all phenomena are not material in nature, including the various sensations, emotions, suffering, and happiness that make up our lives; none of these are material.
Our love is not merely the product of hormonal dynamics, and our hatred is not simply a matter of endocrine activity. Of course, these mental states do bring about physiological changes—for example, when anger arises, excessive adrenaline may be secreted, causing the face to flush and the veins to bulge immediately. But these material changes are not the root. So what is the source? It is the discrimination of the mind, which is called consciousness (vijñāna).
So what exactly is consciousness? The mind has an overall capacity that can store all kinds of discriminative appearances —this is the ālayavijñāna (ālaya consciousness). The mind also has another capacity called the manas consciousness. Within all phenomena (and from the Yogācāra perspective, you, I, and others are all phenomena), it identifies a certain phenomenon as “me,” or takes the force that seems to control a phenomenon as “me,” while all other phenomena become “others.” Manas consciousness is also called “grasping at a personal self,” the fixation that takes the mind’s capacity to generate all things—what Yogācāra terms “the perceiving aspect of the ālayavijñāna”—to be the self.
Our mind also has the capacity for thinking—consciousness—and this is something every one of us can directly experience. Ālayavijñāna and manas, however, are much harder to perceive, because their appearances are extremely subtle. Yet through meditation, little by little, one will certainly be able to experience the ālayavijñāna. Then, through studying the manas consciousness, you will also come to realize: “Ah, so manas is nothing more than a mistaken form of grasping by the mind.” Manas is precisely the consciousness that clings to “I.” Only when you experientially recognize the error of this kind of consciousness can you let it go; otherwise, you would not even know how to let it go.
We often say, “Oh, this is self-grasping, that is self-grasping!” But in truth, we have never really known what self-grasping actually is. What we do recognize is only the objects to which the self clings. For example, when being offended by someone, and anger arises, that anger is actually an object of my grasping—it comes about because of self-grasping. But what exactly is this self-grasping itself? In fact, it is very difficult for us to observe it clearly. Only through long-term practice and sustained careful introspection do we have a chance to abandon self-grasping, and only then can liberation be attained.
Through practice, one can come to experience both the manas consciousness and the ālayavijñāna—but this is precisely what makes practice so difficult. Only after truly experiencing them can one understand what it really means to “let go.” Through profound meditative absorption in the ālayavijñāna, certain extraordinary capacities begin to manifest, and only then does one fully realize: so it is true—every single appearance is indeed manifested by the mind!
Suppose one has cultivated renunciation very well, and one’s bodhicitta is also very strong. On that basis, one then practices the development stage and completion stages, spending a long time contemplating and visualizing a single thangka. Gradually, at first, as soon as the eyes are closed, the yidam appears; then it begins to appear in dreams; and finally, it truly manifests—visible to the eyes, tangible to the touch, and even able to converse with you. This really can happen, and in fact, it is a perfectly reasonable and natural outcome of practice. When you genuinely visualize the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas into appearance, at that moment you will have absolute and unshakable conviction that all appearances are manifested by the mind. This is due to the continuous cultivation of this practice with the mind, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have actually emerged.
There is another “similar” situation—the state of someone called insane. In psychiatric hospitals, some patients keep reaching out and grasping at the air. We think they are grasping at nothing, but in their own experiential world, they are actually grasping something. There was once a film called A Beautiful Mind, which tells the story of the mathematician John Nash. He later won the Nobel Prize, yet he could see things that ordinary people could not. Everyone concluded that he was insane, but in fact, he might not truly have been. However, from the Buddha’s perspective, he is insane—and so are we. Because we too have habituated many false things into what we take as valid realities, such as cups, tables, and the like.
What does it mean to “habituate something into a valid cognition”? It means making something that has no intrinsic existence take on form, become manifest, and appear automatically without any deliberate thought. Take this cup, for example. Even without looking at it or thinking about it, as soon as I reach out my hand, it is present. I can verify its existence through touch, or through visual consciousness, and some animals even recognize things through smell.
We also have the first five sensory consciousnesses—the five functions of mind corresponding to the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body. Yogācāra teaches that whatever we see is produced by eye-consciousness. The objects produced by eye-consciousness can be divided into color-qualities and shape-qualities. Color-qualities include all kinds of colors—red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, and so on; shape-qualities include round, square, streamlined, and various other forms. Our ears can hear all kinds of sounds: the piercing blare of a horn, the sound of an engine, the friction of tires against the road, as well as the sounds of a clarinet, a guqin, a guitar, and many others. And then there are smells perceived by the nose… In the Yogācāra Buddhist worldview, all these phenomena are not material in nature; they are merely functions of consciousness. This is very difficult to understand.
Materialism holds that sound is a kind of physical vibration. For example, when the strings of an instrument vibrate, waves arise. If you ask what a wave is, materialists will answer that it has both particle-like and wave-like properties—the so-called wave–particle duality. From a Buddhist perspective, this explanation can be overturned quite easily. What we will discuss tomorrow is precisely how to use logical reasoning to prove that this world is absolutely not material. If this world really were material, then Buddhism would be wrong and could not be truly practiced—everything we learn would be nonsense, nothing but empty bluffing.
According to Buddhism’s conventional truth, this world is nothing more than the discriminating activity of the mind. We can rely on many lines of reasoning to prove that all phenomena have no intrinsic essence, and that they are not created by God or Allah. Their only source is the mind’s discrimination. When we bring the discriminating mind to rest, we return to ultimate truth, back to the source of everything—what is called “emptiness,” or alternatively “the dharmadhātu,” “tathāgatagarbha,” or “luminosity,” and so forth.
In other words, the Buddhist worldview tells us that, in reality, all phenomena in this world arise from the discriminating activity of the mind. If that is the case, then our suffering and our happiness are also products of mental discrimination. And this gives us hope. We do not have to become as grim and despairing as materialism makes things out to be—we have hope while we are still alive.
Why? Since everything is merely the discriminative activity of the mind, can we not cultivate it properly, so that it no longer produces the mistaken one? Wrong discrimination gives rise to suffering, while wholesome discrimination brings about pleasant experiences. In this way, our lives become full of hope. For example, through long-term practice, we no longer live a life driven by material success or one that brings suffering upon ourselves. After some time, we can become extraordinarily joyful! This has already been realized by many practitioners.
—Excerpted and compiled from The Buddhist Worldview
This article is a preliminary translation draft and has not yet been reviewed or proofread by the speaker.
