Psychology & Buddhism.pdf

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sense of reality we impute to them is exaggerated. We are challenged to look
more closely into the nature of the things we construe to be real, including the self
who does the construing. For this, Buddhism offers various formal reasonings
that expose to us our habit of imputing absolute existence, as it reveals the very
unfoundedness of this attribution (see Hopkins, 1987).
All such reasonings begin with an identification of a particular object or self
(see Hopkins, 1987; Napper, 1989). We find that we automatically attribute to this
object a sense of concrete, independent reality. It is so taken for granted in our
experience that we remain largely oblivious to our reification. Since this imputation
(of inherent existence) is determined to be in error, the object so construed is
identified as the “object of negation.” With this object of negation firmly in mind,
we then set about to “ascertain the entailment,” as follows:
If the object “really” exists (independently, in its own right), there are a limited
number of forms its actual existence may take. Here we try to identify all possible
forms, or logical possibilities that this absolute existence might take. One by
one, we rule out each possibility. We “ascertain” that the inapplicability of each
of these forms “entails” the conclusion that the object lacks inherent, or independent
existence.
If our reasoning is effective, the logical analyses that follow from these questions
awaken us to the startling realization that the object, as experienced, cannot
be found within the experience. This is not to say that it is altogether absent, but
that the kind of absolutized existence that we had taken for granted in the thing
does not bear careful scrutiny. In the end our whole sense of reality may be turned
inside out.
Consider the sevenfold reasoning provided by the Seventh Century Indian
logician Chandrakirti
A chariot is not asserted to be other than its parts,
Nor non-other. It also does not possess them.
It is not in the parts, nor are the parts in it.
It is not the mere collection [of its parts],
nor is it [their] shape.
[The self and the aggregates are] similar.
(as cited in Hopkins, 1987, p. 224)
Edward S. Ragsdale
While Chandrakirti uses the example of a chariot, we may prefer to think of
a car. Our naive realism insists that the car standing before us is real, really real,
a thing in its own right, existing “from its own side,” independent of other things.
The apparently inherently existing object – the chariot or car – is the “object of
negation” (Hopkins, 1987, p. 223). The seven negations correspond to the seven
hypothetical ways in which it might be said to possess absolute existence. We
determine that if the object were to exist inherently, it would be in one of those
forms. Next we deeply analyze each logical possibility to see if the object can be