Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute teaching on the Middle Way, Kyabje Rinpoche systematically refutes the four extremes of production — the view that things arise from themselves, from other things, from both, or from no cause at all. Using the seed-sprout analogy throughout, he shows why production from self is logically incoherent: the cause must cease before the effect arises, and accepting self-production would make the producer, action, and product identical — an absurdity even worldly farmers recognize. He briefly addresses causeless production, explaining why the hedonist school rejected karma to deny consequences of desire. He then turns to production from other — the most subtle refutation, involving how different Buddhist philosophical schools understand the emptiness of natural existence. For advanced practitioners studying Madhyamaka philosophy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1991-06-27 – 15A – KR.mp3
UUID: 9bb2289c-1a37-404d-bc91-5613e84b3b3f
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Entering the Middle Way
Date: 1991-06-27
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,441
In order to lead myself and all sentient beings from the freedom of their suffering and to bring them complete happiness? I must attain the state of having eliminated all my various faults and have brought to consummation all my excellent qualities. Having attained that state, then I can lead all sentient beings into a state of complete happiness. In order to achieve that end, I am going to listen again and again to the essence of the great vehicle Dharma, that is the meaning of emptiness. Listening to emptiness again and again, reflecting upon its meaning, its significance, and then cultivating that in my meditation in order to gain realization.
And by these means of these realizations, eliminating all my various faults and bringing to consummation all my excellent qualities, and thereby being empowered to bring all sentient beings benefit and happiness, and cultivate the awakening heart as your motivation for the next three minutes. So, we are discussing the from the refutation and the production from the four extremes: the production from self, from other, from both self and other, and causeless production. And we have been refuting the, the, the doctrine of production from self, and we’re going to talk just a little bit more about it today. So between between the two, cause and effect. The cause is the producer and the effect is the product, that which is being produced.
So the cause is the agent of production, and that which is brought about through production is the effect, the product. The cause is said to be the producer because it has the capacity or the potency to bring about the effect. But the effect only arises upon the cessation of the cause. Until the cause has ceased ceased to exist, the product cannot be brought into existence. For example, a sprout.
A sprout cannot come into existence until it’s caused, a seed has ceased to exist. Therefore, the producer that is the cause, or in this example the seed, it cannot exist at the same time as its effect, that is the product or the sprout. Upon the coming to existence of the effect, the cause is destroyed or has brought been brought to cessation. So this, Candrakīrti is addressing himself to the samkhyas, or the enumerators, and he is saying it is only because you have been affected through the training in your particular tenet that you hold that the cause and the effect are of the same nature. That in fact, the cause, that the effect cannot come into existence until the cause has ceased to exist, until the cause is destroyed.
Even the worldly people, even those in the world such as farmers, they know this, that the sprout does not arise until the seed has ceased to exist. It is only because of your training in your particular tenet that you hold the position that the cause and the effect are of the same nature. So your assertion that the sprout is produced from itself is even refuted by the worldly, by those of the world. Not only are you refuted by the assertions, by the the what is accepted in the world, But there is also a great fault if you hold to your position of production from self, another great fault. Because you assert production from self, then you must assert that the seed and the sprout are of the same nature, or that is to say they have inseparable natures.
We cannot distinguish the nature of the sprout from the seed. If the nature of the seed and the sprout are identical, then the seed and the sprout are inseparable. They would be identical. If these were inseparable of of the same nature, what is known to the world as agent, action, and object of action would become identical. They would become one.
In fact, the seed is the agent of production, that is to say it’s the cause. The sprout is the object of production, that is to say, the product. And the production itself is the action. And each of these is distinct. Each of these is different.
But according to your assertion, you would accrue the great fault that these would all be identical, would become one. According to your assertion of self production, then the producer and the product, that is to say the seed and the sprout, would become one. Are they one? And also the agent of the action and the product would be one. For example, wood is the cause.
The agent of the action is the fire and the action is the burning of the fire. And this produces a product, ash. According to you, the ash and the fire, the action of the burning of the wood, and product, the ashes, would have to be But no one in the world accepts that the action of burning the wood and the ash are one. And additionally, the goer, that which has gone over, and the action of going would become one. Asserting production from self would accrue many such faults, and therefore, self production cannot be maintained.
So There is an according to a verse from Entering into the Middle Way in which it said that the agent and the action would necessarily become one. That this is, in Nāgārjuna’s fundamental wisdom text is explained in great detail. So if you assert production from self, then as Nāgārjuna sets forth in his various refutations, as Nāgārjuna sets forth in his fundamental wisdom, that of the agent, the action, and the object of the action would necessarily become one would all accrue to you, that you would accrue all these various faults. Undergo a process of production such as sprouts arising from seeds, but none of these are produced from the self. There is no production from self.
So, in refuting the assertion of production from self, the fault arises within the context of the reasoning that the agent, the action, and the object of the action necessarily would become one. So this is the way in which the assertions of the enumerators or the Samkhyas, the assertion of self production is refuted. The sampkis are a non-Buddhist tenet school. Amongst the Buddhist tenets or schools such as the Great Exposition, Sūtra, Mind Only, and Middle Way, none of them assert production from self. Amongst the four extremes of production, that are production from self, other, both self and other, and causeless production, we have refuted the extreme of production from self, and I hope you understand it.
If in refuting production from self and saying that production from self does not exist, then this would also hold for production from both self and others. That this would establish that there cannot be production from both self and others since there is no production from self. If in order that there exists production from both self and others, each of them would have to exist. There would have to be production from other and production from self. And since production from self does not exist in any way, there cannot be production from both self and other.
So, we have refuted production from self. And the second type of production, the extreme of production, was from other, and we’re going to set that aside temporarily because that is the most difficult. We refuted the production from both self and others, and now with respect to causeless production, there cannot be any product which does not arise independent of a cause. So in with respect to causeless production, that all of the various efforts that the farmer goes through cultivating the field, preparing the soil, planting seeds, watering, fertilizing. If in fact there was causeless production, then the sprout would grow from no cause and this farmer would have made great effort for no reason at all.
It would be a meaningless effort. Amongst the non-Buddhist schools, it is the Cārvākas who assert causeless production. So what is Charvaka? I think it’s hedonist. Hedonist.
That’s right. Hedonist. The hedonist. What is it in Sanskrit? Charvaka.
Charvaka. So they hold to they assert causeless production, and they, because they assert that such things as the sharpness of a thorn, the roundness of a pea, that these are causelessly produced. There’s no agent. There’s nothing which has gone to produce the sharpness of a thorn or the roundness of the pea, that these products occur causelessly. So the hedonists assert that such phenomena as the sharpness of a thorn, the roundness, the pea, they are products but they have no cause.
And this assertion probably came about because the founder of the hedonist school had great attachment toward a daughter. And he wanted to say that if he had sexual relationships with her that it would have no effect. That there was no such things as skillful and unskillful actions. And so he asserted causeless production, acts without any cause or effect. So the hedonist school did not accept the doctrine of karma or causes as the law of cause and effect.
And Gyangphenpa, that is to say they deprecated the doctrine of karma as actions and results. And they, the word Charvaka, they held that liberation was at a very long distance. It was a long way off, and this is what Charvaka means. Hedonist is rather different. It means a long way off.
So, we have very extremely roughly refuted these three of the four extremes of production, that is to say from self, from both self and others, and causeless production. But amongst these four extremes it is the second which is the most difficult to refute, that is to say production from other. This is there are many schools which assert production from others. And this is there’s it is the Entering the Middle Way goes into most detail with respect to refuting assertion from production from others. So production from so production from others is asserted by both Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools.
Amongst the various Buddhist tenet systems, the systems of the tenets of the Great Exposition, the Sūtra School, the Mind Only School, and amongst the tenet of the Middle Way, the Autonomy Middle Way School (Svatāntrika Madhyamaka), all assert production from others. It is only the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school which refutes or does not accept production from others. So the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school is alone in not asserting production from other. So, what do we mean by, when we say production from others? And this is spoken of in entering into the middle way.
It means production of an inherently existent result from an inherently existent cause. A production of an inherently existent result from an inherently production from a naturally existent result from a naturally existent cause. If you assert this mode of production, then you assert production from other. All the tenet systems except for, within Buddhism, for the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, accept a production which is of a result, a naturally existent result, that is to say a sprout, which is other, from a seed which is naturally existent, which is its naturally existent cause. If we were to question, question, well, in what way are they accepting this mode of production?
All of the tenet systems from the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school down, all those systems beneath the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, assert that all phenomena naturally exist. If a phenomena exists, it must naturally exist. That is to say, both products and non products naturally exist. If a phenomena does not naturally exist, it doesn’t exist at all. If the object is not naturally existent, it doesn’t exist.
So they go on to say that because a seed exists, it naturally exists. Because a sprout exists, it naturally exists. So all of these tenet systems accept a seed in its sprout are cause and effect. That is to say that in being cause and effect, they are other entities. They are not the same entities.
That the sprout and the seed are other entities because they are cause and effect. But because the seed is naturally existent and the sprout is naturally existent, then they are naturally existently other. But the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school assert that all phenomena do not naturally exist. Another translation for naturally existent is self-characterizing, that all phenomena whatsoever do not define themselves, do not exist by way of their own nature. A seed and a sprout exist, therefore they must be they are not naturally existent.
Because these according to the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, because the seed and the sprout are not naturally existent, then there cannot be a production of a naturally existent sprout from a naturally existent seed, therefore there is no production from other. If we were to question it, well, this difference between these systems arise? The Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school posits a most subtle type of emptiness. Although the other tenet systems beneath the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school do not have a presentation of such a subtle emptiness. The Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school asserts an emptiness, which is the emptiness of natural existence.
All of the other tenet systems below are not able to present an emptiness of natural existence. That of the two types of the two schools of the middle way school, this represents the degree and subtlety of the presentation of the view in their ability to, for the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, to assert an emptiness of natural existence, and the Autonomy Middle Way School is unable to present such an assertion. How does the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school go about refuting the production of others which is held by the lower tenet system, such as the Autonomy Middle Way School, the Mind Only School, the Sūtra School, and the Great Exposition School? In the presentation of their reasoning, in order to refute production from others, they mainly go on to refute the production from others as asserted by the mind only school. And as a consequence of refuting this assertion of the mind only school directly, they indirectly refute production from others in accordance with all the other schools.
So, how are we going to what reasoning are we going to use to refute production from others? And this is set forth in Entering the Middle way Entering the Middle Way in which there are made use of two main reasons used to refute. Fire. Fire. Fire.
Fire. So So if you assert that from a naturally existent cause, a naturally existent result which is