Is "Illusion" a Prajñāpāramitā Creation? The Birth and Death of a Buddhist Cognitive Metaphor (original) (raw)

Several scholars have cited the statement, “Even nirvāṇa is like an illusion, like a dream?” from the early Prajñāpāramitā as evidence of a “shocking” and “novel” Mahāyāna ontology (§1). This paper examines three phases of historical development of the Buddhist metaphor of “illusion” (māyā) through Kittay’s perspectival approach and semantic field theory (§1.1). An analysis of the metaphor in pre- and early Buddhism uncovers its birth in Vedic sources and its adoption by the Buddhists as the absence of a substantial Self in all phenomena without exception (§2). In mainstream Buddhism, the mature metaphor took on a more cognicentric role due to its application specifically to the mind, but excluded the unconditioned, including nirvāṇa (§3). By the early Prajñāpāramitā, the “illusion” metaphor was reestablished as both applying to the conditioned and unconditioned, but it also highlighted the cognitive error of perceiving a Self in what is Selfless, a position more epistemological than ontological (§4). We conclude that “Even nirvāṇa is like an illusion, like a dream?” was thus not a “shocking” or “novel” Prajñāpāramitā creation. We also reflect on the later literal doctrine of illusion, concluding that it was a transformation into common parlance of a now “dead metaphor” (§5). Keywords: illusion (māyā), metaphor, Buddhism, Prajñāpāramitā, semantic fields