The Buddhist would say here that this is just what constitutes the suffering arising from dependency -- the addictive patterns (sa^mskaara in its more negative usage) that constitute a stereotyped apprehension of one's own personality (satkaayad.r.s.ti), which in turn elicits stereotyped affective states (kle`sa), which then perpetuate the type of human action that makes up the person's sa.msaaric existence. [82] For the Buddhist, of course, this situation is not merely an occasional relapse into the automaticity of reflex action (as Whitehead speaks of it) but is rather a fundamental condition -- that is, the underlying addiction or dependency itself -- which obstructs [83] enlightened knowing and affects all experience with suffering.

　　 There is a difference as I see it between Praasa^ngika Maadhyamika and the Perfection of Insight on this point. Candrakiirti apparently finds the problem of suffering to be inextricably related to the basic mechanism of symbolic reference, namely, conceptual apprehension (upalambha). Hence, full enlightenment or complete nirvaa.na [84] necessarily requires the elimination of conceptuality. The Perfection of Insight, emphasizing the essential identity of unattached knowing or enlightenment with all things and conditions, allows for the two modes to coexist, in a sense. [85]

　　 If even discrimination and delusion are ultimately enlightenment, I see no reason why constructive metaphysics need be eliminated from the unattached consciousness of a bodhisattva. I think this is all the more true of a metaphysic such as Whitehead's which, as I have suggested, can be seen to rest on the nondualistic premise that concrete reality is simply a process of knowing (concrescing prehension) -- attached to itself as its own objective causal past, and unattached, as a process of ever-novel self-creation. In other words, I think that Process Philosophy provides a coherent possible ontological explanation for the modes of knowing and the two-truths doctrine of Praj~naa Buddhism. At the same time I would agree with Praj~naa Buddhism that there is no way to consciously experience reality in the unattached mode by means of conceptual understanding and interpretation; for the objective nature of conceptual thought (as apart from the process of thinking itself), that is, the nature of that-which-is-understood, is attached knowing.

p. 462

NOTES
1. Usually rendered "Perfection of Wisdom." but an important nuance of penetration is brought out by the word "insight."

2. This is a debatable entity, but I feel it is useful. It is meant particularly to exclude the Yogaacaara school and the school of Dignaaga.

3. The use of verbal paradox as a means of demoralizing conceptual dependency on the part of the listener. The Naagaarjunian dialectic method accomplishes the same thing through the use of logical argumentation.

4. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: MacMillan, 1927), p. 4, hereafter cited as PR.

5. PR. p. 6.

6. PR. p. 67.

7. PR. p. 7.

8. PR, p. 8.

9. A.s.tasaahasrikaa Praj~naapaaramitaa, ed. P. L. Vaidya (Darbhanga: Mithila Institute, 1960): hereafter cited as AP. Trans. Edward Conze as The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines (Bolinas, Ca.: Four Seasons Foundation, 1973). Translations hereafter are my own, based upon Conze's. Citations are given for the pagination of the Sanskrit text as given by Conze in brackets and in the margin in Vaidya's edition.

10. Madhyamakakaarikaas (hereafter cited as MK) 24.8-10. Sanskrit text edited by Louis de La Vallee Poussin, Muulamadhyamakakaarikaas (Maadhyamikasuutras) de Naagaarjuna, avec la Prasannapadaa, commentaire de Candrakiirti (St. Petersburg, 1913).

11. MK 24.20 ff.

12. MK 4.14.

13. MK 18.4f.

14. MK13.8.

15. MK 22.11. Thus Naagaarjuna can refer even to valid expressions (yaa yojyate) of Buddhist doctrine as "fabrication" (kalpanaa) endorsed by Buddhas, Pratyekabuddhas, and `Sraavaka (arhats) alike. MK 17.13ff.

16. In his Vigrahavyaavartanii, Naagaarjuna subjects the notion of pramaa.na to the dialectic refutation without explicit discussion of its role in transactional truth, although in verse 6 the four pramaa.nas of perception, inference, scripture, and analogy are mentioned. See Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1967), pp. 222ff.

17. Ratnaavali 2.35. Naavisa^mvaadavat satya^m [sattvaad] udgatam arthata.h/ paraikaantahita^m satyam ahitatvaan m.r.setarat// reading sems dpas bsgyur ba don du min with the Peking edition of the Tibetan for the second quarter-stanza (vol. 129, p. 176 ^ne 135a). Sanskrit text in P. L. Vaidya. ed., Madhyamaka`saastra of Naagaarjuna (Darbhanga: Mithila Institute, 1960), p. 303.

18. The sources drawn upon here for Candrakiirti's thought are his commentary on the Madhyamakakaarikaas, the Prasannapadaa (see footnote 10), and his Madhyamakaavataara (hereafter cited as MA), available in Tibetan as edited by Louis de la Vallee Poussin, Bibliotheca Buddhica, vol. 9 (St. Petersburg, 1912). A partial translation by de la Vallee Poussin is to be found in Le Museon, vols. 8 (1907), 11 (1910), and 12 (1911).