Richard (Rick) Wilson

The presentation will begin be revisiting briefly the great first-century(?) Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna’s famous concept of shunyata (emptiness / non-substantiality / devoidness). Does it mean that all phenomena (including consciousness) are really “nothing” at their core (whatever that in turn might mean), or something more subtle and dynamic than that? I will argue for the latter: that, as Daisaku Ikeda, President of Soka Gakkai International (and my mentor), has written, shunyata might be understood as “a kind of infinite potentiality, [from which] anything and everything may be born or produced, depending on what causes happen to affect it,” and as “a program for action.” I will then move on to consider two constructs of the Tiantai school in China, which traces its lineage to Nagarjuna. The first is its refinement of shunyata into the three unified, mutually-inclusive perspectives of non-substantiality, provisional existence, and the Middle Way. The second is the concept, not unique to Tiantai, of the nine consciousnesses. The first five consciousnesses correspond to the five senses; the sixth and seventh deal with the workings of the conscious, reflective mind, of self-awareness, and of a reified ego; the eighth is for “karma storage.” The ninth, a “fundamentally pure” consciousness, underlies, transcends, and permeates the unceasing, dynamic, interpenetrating activities of the other eight. The idea of a stratum of mind, of life, unaffected by karma, accessible to us all at any moment, supports the radical perspective that Buddhahood is something we inherently possess, something to reveal in the present, rather than to attain in the future. And finally, I will briefly consider what Nichiren, the great 13^th-century Japanese Buddhist leader and teacher, did with these ideas in his own teachings.

rick.wilson.ab71@post.harvard.edu