u/Cool-Double-767

Hello friends,

I have been having something on my mind for quite some time. Because this is a somewhat complicated answer, I wrote it in my native language and then translated it. Hence, its grammatical "perfection"

Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka holds that all phenomena are merely designated by conceptual consciousness, lacking svabhāva under ultimate analysis. For ordinary objects this is usually explained through a distinction between causal dependence and designative dependence: a phenomenon doesn't need a mind causally present at its arising, only that no intrinsic essence survives analysis.

My question is about truths that seem to hold with a different kind of necessity than ordinary conventional designation. Mathematical theorems and the formal structure of physical law appear true independent of any act of designation — a Pythagorean relation doesn't wait on convention to hold, unlike the boundary between "mountain" and "hill," which clearly does depend on conceptual imputation.

The same question seems to apply to karmic law. Not the individual karmic events themselves, but the lawlike regularity that specific causes ripen into specific effects — that regularity seems to hold from its own side, independent of being conceptually posited. This case feels sharper than physics, since karma is internal to the tradition rather than an external import.

So: how does Prāsaṅgika account for this category of lawlike necessity — mathematical, physical, and karmic — if at all?

The truth of a²+b²=c² is expressed through symbols and apprehended by a mind, but the relation itself does not appear to depend on being designated in order to hold. Mathematical and physical laws are not, in this sense, mentally designated — they are mentally known or apprehended (a different relation than 'dogs pa, conceptual imputation), but their holding does not appear to require a mind imputing them.

One might try to avoid this by positing some prior process — a "law-generating" mechanism, multiversal or otherwise — that produces these laws. But this only pushes the problem back a level: the laws governing that generating process would themselves need to either be mentally designated (regress) or hold independently of designation (conceding the point one level up).

There is also a fine-tuning problem regarding the laws that govern the universe. From the Prāsaṅgika point of view, even these laws should be produced through dependent origination, with conceptual mind as a necessary condition for their existence as determinate phenomena. But this raises a difficult question: if these laws are produced — or constituted — through the intervention of mind, whose mind is it?

It cannot be the mind of any individual sentient being. So is it a collective mind? But a collective mind is, presumably, nothing over and above the aggregate of individual minds — did they somehow collectively converge on positing exactly the right constants, down to the relevant decimal places, with zero margin for error? A small deviation in any of these constants and the universe could not support the conditions for stars, chemistry, or life to arise at all — including, presumably, the very minds supposedly doing the positing. Is it some kind of universal or cosmic mind, prior to and independent of individual continua? If so, this starts to look less like Prāsaṅgika's prajñaptimātra and more like some form of idealism with a transcendent or universal consciousness doing the constituting — a position quite far from anything Candrakīrti or Tsongkhapa would want to commit to.

And if no mind was needed for these laws to be fine-tuned and operative prior to any sentient being's existence, then it seems the laws held — and were already exquisitely precise — entirely independent of mental designation, which is the conclusion Prāsaṅgika denies in principle for any phenomenon whatsoever.

Hello.

I will try to be brief and still bring the point home. English is not my first language, so please be patient :) (No, I won't let AI correct my text!)

I was born Mormon in a mormon family. I left Mormonism in my early 20s. After a couple of years I discovered Buddhism thanks to the now gone Lama Ole, whom I thank very much. I did my ngondro, and moved a bit towards the Nyingma tradition: but because Nyingma teachers somehow don't like Europe or the country I am in very much, I mostly had to rely on the internet (praise be to Lama Lena!).

I would like to stress how important buddhism has been in my life:

* I wanted to turn to monasticism and dedicate my life to meditation

* I instead decided to marry and practice

* I practiced on average 1.5/2 hrs a day - for 15 years

* I currently participate in Madhyamika studies with Geshe Dorji Damdul, have completed Nalanda Diploma course, and am doing the Nalanda Masters course.

This is just to say that I am darn serious about the practice. But...

The fact that everything, absolutely anything, is dependently originated never really clicked with me. Interdependence moves under the power of certain rules, but what is the interdependence of those rules? Why is gravity the fraction of the squared distance? why not 2.3?

I understand that all phenomena are interdependent, but the way in which they are interdependent doesn't seem to be itself interdependent.

Now for the main part: meditation deities.

Lama Lena says that the symbolism of vajrayana works for everybody, because it is "intrinsic" to the nature of homo sapiens. Now, I really don't feel very closely connected to weirdly colored and creatively assembled meditational deities. Also bear in mind that, while some meditation deities are in fact mere avatars, others are not: Tara, is a personal being, just like me and you, she just is enlightened (while I clearly am not).

But I do not feel any connection to these deities. I have practiced millions of repetitions of Guru Rinpoche mantras, but he feels as real to me as a fairytale.

Then one day I decided to switch the image in my mind from that of Guru Rinpoche, during the Ngondro Guru Yoga practice, to that of Jesus. You have no idea what happened then: it's like the dam gave in, and all the water which had been holding for such a long time, came all crashing down. To put it mildly: I was overwhelmed to the point I started to weep.

Talk about archetypes and our ability or inability to play with them.

So, now I cannot be christian, and neither a buddhist. I relized all these weirdly colored "deities" have nothing to do with me, or my mind, or my psyche.

So, of course, I am lost.