The Problem of Conceptual Play and Liberation in Buddhist Education

The present study deals with the problem of substantial metaphysic as conceptual play(prapañca) and the way of Liberation from the perspective of Buddhist Education. Our frame of reference is the Prajñā-Mādhyamika. Human illusion is said to be the product of dualistic discrimination. Buddhist understands the structure of dualistic thinking as a connection between substantial metaphysics and the cycle of birth and death. Discriminative mind is in close connection with conceptual play and the belief in language is considered as an outcome of the belief in self-love. The ontological use of language is symptomatic of samsaric existence. The Mādhyamika associates substantial ontology with illusive suffering, belief in words as signifier with the self-centering concerns of the ego which is called prapañca. The wheel of becoming is produced through the propensity for erroneous conceptualization. The afflictions, and actions arise from hypnotizing thought and this in turn results from conceptual constructions. Ego-centeredness and pride is the main cause of prapañca. The psychological-linguistic analysis of the essence of this substantial metaphysics shows that self-love produces sophistic fixed ideas. Out of anxiety over the reduction of one’s own existence to nothing, man becomes a substantialist and formulates a theory of the non-destructibility of the soul and of an eternal essence. Such a metaphysical disease can be cured by deconstruction of prapañca. The doctrine of emptiness(sünyatā) is a prescription for curing the disease of metapsychology.