II
Chris Gudmunsen makes several comparisons between Wittgenstein and Naagaarjuna; I will focus on what he calls "the basic criticism" [20] According to Gudmunsen, while the Abhidharmists wanted to "get the dharmas in view, " the Praj~naapaaramitaa literature asserted that there was "no way of 'correctly' identifying and naming necessarily private dharmas." [21] The Mahaayaanists held that each dharma "is nothing in and by itself..., and so is ultimately nonexistent." [22] Previously Gudmunsen had quoted Wittgenstein's remark that "if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation', the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant." [23] He then says that the dharma "has 'dropped out' and, as with Wittgenstein, we are left with a name referring apparently to nothing." [24] Naagaarjuna expressed this idea by saying all dharmas are "empty." They are, in Wittgenstein's terms, "illustrated turns of speech." [25] But this does not mean that the word "hope" stands for nothing either in Wittgenstein or the Maadhyamika, for as Wittgenstein says:

And yet you again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a nothing -- Not at all. It is not a something, but not a nothing either! The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve as well as a something about which nothing could be said. We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here. [26]

　　 But it is a mistake to compare Wittgenstein's criticism of "private" sensations and objects to Naagaarjuna's and the Mahaayaana criticism of dharma theory. What are the dharmas? There are three classifications shared by all the Buddhist schools: the five skandhas, the twelve sense-fields, and the eighteen elements. [27]

p. 161

The skandhas, as an example, are form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, and consciousness. While there is a strong analytic element in dharma analysis, Conze warns us that

the rational approach is only provisional and preparatory, and must be followed by a spiritual intuition, the direct and unconceptual character of which is stressed by words as "to see," "to taste," "to touch with the body"!... Ready-made conceptions are of no avail here, and what lies beyond the perceptible world of appearances also transcends the realm of logical thought.[28]

The final home of dharma analysis is meditation and the purpose is soteriological: the removal of ignorance which "clouds the mirror of original wisdom." [29]

　　 Now Wittgenstein in the Investigations had no such concern. He was interested in our tendency to think, for example, that "only I can know whether I am really in pain; another person can only surmise it," [30] so that one might have a "private" language the words of which "are to refer to what can only be known to the person speaking." [31] Now our idea of a "word" is of something that can be used rightly or wrongly, but what would it be to remember a "private" word right? "In the present case I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about 'right'." [32] A "private" word is no word at all. Having a "private" object is like everyone's having a "beetle" in a box which only he can inspect. Everyone could have something different in his box or the thing might constantly be changing. "The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even, as a something: for the box might even he empty." [33]

　　 Wittgenstein, then, was concerned with the concepts of language and meaning and the philosophical problems connected with references to our psychic life. He particularly wanted to expunge the "privacy" view which can be so tempting when we begin to think philosophically about these things. But he had no intention of questioning everyday expressions and discussions about our feelings, thoughts, hopes, and so forth. The meditative context of the discussion about dharmas is especially something he was not concerned with. It is a characteristic of language that it can be learned. Now some things are harder to learn than others, and the meditative significance of terms is an instance of this. But being difficult to learn does not make something "private"; it only means that one will usually need the guidance of a teacher. But Wittgenstein's "private" terms could not be learned at all. There is no sense at all to a discussion of the "private" objects that such words would refer to.

　　 None of these objections to "private" objects has any bearing on dharmas. Gudmunsen does cite an ancient objection by Haribhadra that one "cannot distinguish the various objects to which the different words refer." [34] But the Abhidharmists had listed from between seventy-five to one-hundred dharmas, depending on the school, [35] and it is not surprising, therefore, that a student might indeed have difficulty distinguishing all of these dharmas. This difficulty, however, does not apply to the skandhas or the sense-fields such as eye, ear, nose,