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and so forth; these could be distinguished well enough; none of them is a "private" object which "only I could know." What was the main objection to dharma analysis? According to Sangharakshita, the Abhidharma may be viewed as "reducing the Scriptures to a gigantic card-index file system, and substituting for penetrating Insight a retentive memory," [36] with the contemporary result that there is "almost a total neglect of the practice of Meditation which is so striking a feature of modern Theravada Buddhism." [37] He adds that "theoretical knowledge... has been in some instances mistaken for Wisdom." [38] Conze tells us that the Mahaayaana in reaction to the Abhidharma regards

the separateness of these dharmas as merely a provisional construction, urges us on to see everywhere just one emptiness and condemns all forms of multiplicity as arch enemies of the higher spiritual vision and insight.... Once we jump out of our intellectual habits, emptiness is revealed as the concrete fullness...; no longer a dead nothingness beyond, but the lifegiving womb of the Tathaagata within us. [39]

　　 Gudmunsen thinks that "the private object, for both Wittgenstein and the Mahaayaana, drops out of consideration as irrelevant, leaving a name which doesn't refer to anything." [40] But the principal Mahaayaana contention was that dharmas were "empty" or of merely a provisional character, not that the terms of dharma analysis do not refer to anything. On this point Gudmunsen's comparison of Wittgenstein and Naagaarjuna is mistaken.

III
Ives Waldo has compared Naagaarjuna and Wittgenstein in two articles. [41] In the first he says that Naagaarjuna's criticism of the idea of svabhaava (own-being) in the Muulamaadhyamikakaarikaas ("MK") "directly parallels Wittgenstein's argument that a private language (an empiricist language) is impossible. Having no logical links (criteria) to anything outside their defining situation, its words must be empty of significance or use." [42] Waldo goes on to explain:

The necessary existence of such relational conditions (pratyaya) refutes both the theory of svabhaava and the possibility that significant events might arise with no relational conditions at all. Significance lies not in the substantial, experientially given, and certain; but in that which is relational, metaperceptual, and hypothetical. A man born blind who later gains his sight finds no significance in his visual field. [43]

But this gives rise to a dilemma. If "significance and existence must be understood in terms of pratyaya, which entails the arising of being and significance from another (parabhaava)," then "how can there be other-being without there being eventually some other which has own-being?" [44] If, like the Praasa^nghikas, "we take this dilemma at face value, we will be forced to conclude that language is radically arbitrary and incoherent." [45] The Svaatantrikas, on the other hand, wanted to stress the validity of the lower truth. Yet

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Bhaavaviveka describes the lower truth as involving the incoherent svabhaava concept and the higher as indescribable. On this basis he cannot coherently differentiate the sense in which he means these terms from the usage of the Praasanghikas....

　　 The answer to the dilemma is that what constitutes an element of a relational system is itself a part of that system, not something existing prior to it. The system provides criteria whereby its elements are to be identified. [46]

Waldo footnotes the next to the last remark with a reference to Wittgenstein's Investigations.

　　 In his second article Waldo says that he had not previously gotten to the heart of the matter in his discussion of co-conditionality.

Pratiityasamutpaada involves self-reference. But what relationship is it exactly, and what are its implications? Insofar as ordinary language can tell us, the job has already been done by the followers of Hwa Yen and Tantric schools. The logical obscurity of the results, the Hall of Mirrors simile and the like, are legendary. Ordinary language is out of its depths here.... This leaves us no choice but to employ formalism. [47]

Waldo's choice of formalism is G. Spencer Brown's. After an explanation of Brown's symbolism he goes on to say that Naagaarjuna can be understood as saying that

the status of an individuality or of predication is relative, first, to our linguistic system and second, to our practical objectives in a given case of using that system.....An artist may find it more convenient to speak at length of what looks "apple-y" than about apples. Philosophers often turn common predicates into substantives, like "redness." [48]

Waldo compares his results with Wittgenstein:

For Wittgenstein, a word or a perception of something has significance when logically connected into the criterial network of the language game. The private language argument explores the possibility that there might be elements identified independently of and prior to this network, like Naagaarjuna's svabhaavas. But this possibility is rejected. The rejection of atomic elements in the language system means that the elements must support each other mutually. This is exactly the sort of conceptual connection that Naagaarjuna calls interdependent arising. The various elements of our criterial network support each other relatively, but every justification of knowledge consists only of another element within our own epistemic system. There is no external or independent justification because the speaker and the external environment are both constructs within the system. [49]