If its six sides are considered as separate,
The basic atom would be sixfold;
If the six sides are considered a unity,
The universe would be one single atom.For this reason the Mind-Only school posits the existence of appearances only as
mental. Perception of the subject/object dichotomy as empty is considered to be the
absolute truth of intrinsic presence and light itself. If all external phenomena,
established as emptiness, are insubstantial and not inherently existent, then the
consciousness of the subjective knower, and even intrinsic presence and its
radiance, remain groundless and unestablished, although real. If there is no color
blue in the objective field, there can be no eye-consciousness of blueness. If we
know that the empty consciousness of dualistic perception is actually intrinsic
presence and its radiance, then the imputations of the analytic mind are seen to be
without foundation.
The Middle Way school (Madhyamaka) holds that the objective aspect of
perceptual events—the object itself—is unreal. But unlike the Mind-Only school, it
does not accept that the intrinsic presence and radiance of an objectless perception
is real. It maintains that “the perception of the emptiness of subject and object as
intrinsic presence and light” is merely another label pasted by the discursive mind
upon a fictive experience. It maintains that, if one examines closely this supposed
reality of intrinsic presence and light with analytic logic, one discovers that there is
not the slightest truth in it. Chandrakirti in his Entry into the Middle Way says,
Do not think that form can exist without mind;
Do not think that mind can exist without form:
Accept neither both nor neither, said the Buddha,
And that is elaborated in the Abhidharma.All the phenomena of samsara and nirvana that arise as undeceiving appearances
of interdependent causes and conditions are thus relatively real. In absolute
reality, both subjective and objective aspects are inherently emptiness, which
cannot be established, and which cannot be confirmed or elaborated as existence,
nonexistence, both, or neither.
From the perspective of the resultant tantra, the Middle Way school makes an
invidious distinction between the two truths, relative and absolute, by
emphasizing what is seen. In this perspective, the Middle Way school accepts that
appearing material objects are, in absolute terms, absolutely empty and unreal
already, but it maintains that the relative truth—our ordinary delusory perception
of appearances as solid material objects—is to be investigated, purified, and
eventually abandoned. In the absolute view, all phenomena are emptiness free of
conceptual elaboration and free of any agent of purification, but from the relative
view, one needs to cultivate what is desirable and reject what is undesirable in
terms of karmic propensity. In the resultant tantra, on the contrary, there is no
basis for holding an uncompromising classification of what is valid and what is not