PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Hopkins: Paradigm Change in Meditation 121superficial, philosophically constructed quality of the phenomenon, ratherthan one innately misconceived, is being refuted.Second Essential: Ascertaining Entailment of EmptinessWhereas in the first step the meditator allows an ordinary attitude tooperate and attempts to watch it without interfering with it, in the secondstep the meditator makes a non-ordinary, intellectual decision that must bebrought gradually to the level of feeling. Here, one considers the numberof possible relationships between a phenomenon designated and its basisof designation.Phenomena designated are things such as a table, a body, a person, anda house. Their respective bases of designation are four legs and a top, fivelimbs (two arms, two legs, and a head) 7 and a trunk, mind and body, anda number of rooms arranged in a certain shape. The meditator considerswhether within the framework of inherent existence these two—phenomenondesignated and basis of designation—must be either inherently thesame or inherently different, or whether there are other possibilities. Ifthere seem to be other possibilities, can these be collapsed into the originaltwo—being inherently the same or being inherently different?N›g›rjuna lists five possibilities:1. inherently the same2. inherently different3. the object designated (the I) inherently depends on the basis ofdesignation (mind and body)4. the basis of designation inherently depends on the objectdesignated (the I)5. the object designated (the I) possesses the basis of designationeither as a different entity in the way a person owns a cow oras one entity in the way a tree possesses its coreChandrakırti adds two more:6. the object designated (the I) is the special shape of the basis ofdesignation7. the object designated (the I) is the collection of the bases ofdesignation.The last five can be collapsed into the first two as refinements of them: thethird and fourth are forms of difference; the first aspect of the fifth is a formof difference; the second, a form of sameness of entity; the sixth and seventh