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Buddhist-Meditation-Systematic-and-Practical

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their contents just for argument but we have quite a<br />

different purpose; we shall use them as the bases of<br />

meditational practice.<br />

The eight negative conditions formulated by Nagarjuna<br />

are excellent as a means of investigating the truth, <strong>and</strong><br />

they are also good principles for refuting outsiders <strong>and</strong><br />

converting them to Saddharma. Besides this, they have a<br />

practical value which directly concerns us—they are<br />

good formulas for samapatti upon the truth when, after<br />

continual negation, one gains the position of<br />

consequence <strong>and</strong> positive truth appears naturally. So<br />

from this point, their value is very definitely positive,<br />

not negative, <strong>and</strong> it is quite wrong to regard them as<br />

only the latter. Despite this, ancient <strong>and</strong> modern<br />

scholars have all treated these statements as negativism,<br />

not giving any meditations upon them, only theories. So<br />

tonight we shall give some meditations not to be found<br />

in any book.<br />

Prajnaparamita itself should not be confused with the<br />

San Lun School which existed only to study this corpus<br />

of texts <strong>and</strong> to engage in dialectic battles, but not as a<br />

practical school with methods of meditation. Contrast<br />

this with Bhadanta Nagarjuna, who not only used his<br />

philosophy to debate with outsiders, but also applied it<br />

to meditate on truth, <strong>and</strong> he was fully accomplished in<br />

sunyata realization.<br />

As a complete contrast to Nagarjuna, we may cite the<br />

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