The Two Truths and the West 二諦與西方哲學

🔊Two Buddhist doctrines go by the name of the two truths, and each has its own nearest neighbor. The early version, in which wholes are conventional and their final constituents ultimate, is closest to Sellars and to scientific reduction generally. Any modern reader who says that a table is “really” atoms holds a two-truths view of that kind. The Madhyamaka version is closest to Kant, for whom the world is real for experience and not real in itself. Plato, who is usually the first comparison to come to mind, is the furthest of the three.

有兩個佛教的學說都叫作「二諦」；而每一個各有它最近的鄰居。早期的版本，也就是「整體是世俗的，它們最終的成分是勝義的」，最接近塞拉斯，也最接近一般所說的科學化約。任何一位說「桌子『其實』是原子」的現代讀者，持有的就是那一種二諦觀。中觀的版本最接近康德：對他來說，世界對經驗而言是真實的，本身則不是真實的。柏拉圖通常是人們最先想到的比較對象；而他是三者當中最遠的。

🔊The likeness to Kant ends at three points. He has an unknowable something behind appearances, and Nāgārjuna has no such thing. He thinks the human mind is fixed in its forms and cannot see otherwise, and the Buddhist path is a training by which the ultimate comes to be seen. His two standpoints are a result in the theory of knowledge, and the two truths are a teaching device with a use. The Buddha spoke of persons to people who needed to hear about conduct and consequence, and of aggregates and emptiness to those ready to look into what a person is. The purpose of keeping both is that neither nihilism nor attachment to things follows. Kant wanted to show what we can know. Nāgārjuna wanted a way of speaking truthfully to everyone without confirming anyone’s clinging.

跟康德的相似，在三個地方為止。他在現象的背後有一個不可知的某物；龍樹沒有這樣的東西。他認為人心的形式是固定的，無法以別的方式來看；而佛教的道，是一種訓練，經由它，勝義得以被看見。他的兩個立足點，是知識論上的一個結果；二諦則是一件有用途的教學工具。佛陀對那些需要聽「行為與後果」的人談「人」；對那些準備好去探究「人是什麼」的人談蘊與空。同時保留兩者的目的，是使虛無主義與對事物的執著，兩者都推不出來。康德想要顯示我們能知道什麼。龍樹想要的，是一種能對每個人說真話、而又不去印證任何人的執取的說話方式。

🔊The first further step is the rule of order. Western two-level views generally treat the lower level as something to get beyond: out of the cave, behind the appearances, down to the particles. Nāgārjuna says that the ultimate is reached only by relying on the conventional, and the reason is practical. The path is made of conventional things: words, teachers, precepts, kindness to particular people. A student who announces that conduct is merely conventional and so does not matter has misunderstood both truths at once. The teaching anticipates him. Because actions and results hold conventionally, and conventional holding is the only kind there is, they hold in the fullest sense available. The lessons on emptiness and on the four corners reached the same point by other routes.

多走的第一步，就是那條關於次序的規則。西方的兩層看法，一般把較低的那一層當作要超越的東西：走出洞穴、到現象的背後、往下到粒子。龍樹說：只有依靠世俗，才到得了勝義；而理由是實際的。道，是由世俗的東西構成的：言語、老師、戒條、對特定的人的善意。一位宣稱「行為只是世俗的，所以不要緊」的學生，是把兩個諦一次都誤解了。這個教法早就料到了他。因為行為與結果是依世俗而成立的；而「依世俗而成立」是唯一有的那一種成立；所以它們是在現有的最充分的意義上成立的。講空與講四句的那兩課，從別的路到達了同一點。

🔊The second step is that the two truths collapse the distance between the goal and the starting point. If the ultimate is the emptiness of this world and no other realm, then awakening is a change in how this world is seen. Nāgārjuna states the consequence in a verse that startled his readers: “Between nirvana and the world there is not the slightest difference. Between the world and nirvana there is not the slightest difference.” The commentary explains that both are empty and unarisen, so that no line can be drawn between them. He does not mean that ordinary confusion is already awakening. The Chinese and Japanese schools built much on this verse, and it gave the Mahāyāna its characteristic confidence that practice is done in the middle of ordinary life. It also explains why the bodhisattva does not leave. On Plato’s picture the one who gets out has a reason not to come back. On this one there is nowhere else to be.

第二步是：二諦把目標與起點之間的距離收攏了。如果勝義就是這個世界的空，而不是另一個境域；那麼，覺悟就是「怎麼看這個世界」的一個改變。龍樹用一首使他的讀者吃驚的偈，陳述了這個推論：「涅槃與世間，無有少分別；世間與涅槃，亦無少分別。」長行解釋說：兩者都是空的、不生的；所以在它們之間劃不出一條線。他的意思並不是：尋常的迷惑已經就是覺悟。漢傳與日本的各個宗派，在這首偈上建立了很多東西；而它給了大乘那種特有的信心：修行，就是在日常生活的當中進行的。它也解釋了菩薩為什麼不離開。照柏拉圖的圖像，走出去的那個人有理由不回來。照這個圖像，並沒有別的地方可去。