Western scholars date the Perfect Wisdom philosophy to around 100 BCE. However, Mahayana Buddhism attributes the Perfect Wisdom to the historical Shakyamuni Buddha who died around 483 BCE. See Lex Hixon, Mother of the Buddhas - Meditation on the Prajnaparamita Sutra. Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books. 1993, pp. x-xi. Also Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism, London: Routledge, 1989, p. 352.

The Madhyamaka philosophy originated with the famous second century Indian philosopher Nagarjuna. He brought analytical sophistication and precision to the Perfect Wisdom world-view by casting it in a vigorous philosophical dialectic. See Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness - A Study in Religious Meaning. Nashville, N.Y.: Abingdon Press, 1967, Appendix One, for a translation of the Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way (Mulamadhyamakakarika). Practitioners of the Madhyamaka are categorized as Deconstructionists (Prasangika) and Constructionists (Svatantrika). The Deconstructionists dismantle all positions or fixations using reductio ad absurdum arguments (prasanga). The Constructionists offer an alternative position at the close of their independent arguments (svatantra). See Jeffrey Hopkins, Meditation on Emptiness, Cumbria: Wisdom Publications, 1983; Robert A. F. Thurman, Tsong Khapa's Speech of Gold in the Essence of True Eloquence: Reason and Enlightenment in the Central Philosophy of Tibet, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, and José I. Cabezon, A Dose of Emptiness - An Annotated Translation of the sTong thun chen mo of mKhas grub dGe legs dpal bzang, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

The term Zen is a Japanese word derived from the Chinese word Ch'an. Ch'an in turn is a translation of a Sanskrit word dhyana. Dhyana refers to a contemplative state which cannot strictly be characterized. That is to say, there is nothing that needs to be present or absent for the state to occur. The origins of Zen date to non-verbal, mind-to-mind exchange between the Buddha and a disciple Kasyapa in which Kasyapa directly received the teaching that stands outside of the written or spoken word. The Patriarchs of Zen include Nagarjuna, the originator of the Middle Way school.

Here we are following the Complete Fulfillment (Dzogchen) use of the term contemplation (Tib. ting nge 'dzin, Skt. samadhi) which is contrasted with meditation (Tib. sgoms pa, Skt. bhavana). To contemplate (Namkhai Norbu, The Cycle of Day and Night - An Essential Tibetan Text on the Practice of Contemplation (translated and edited by John Reynolds), Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill Press, 1987, p. 16) is to enter into a state of intrinsic awareness (rig pa) which "is beyond and outside of conditioned existence and temporal process ... whereas meditation involves the working of the mind." Contemplation is sometimes defined (Manjushrimitra, Primordial Experience - An Introduction to rDzogs-chen Meditation (trans. by Namkhai Norbu and Kennard Lipman), Boston & London: Shambhala, 1986, pp. 33 and 36) as a state of integrated relaxation (gnas pa'i rnal 'byor) that goes beyond the need for sitting in formal meditation. kLong chen pa (Peter Fenner, The Natural Freedom of Being - a translation of kLong chen pa's Chos nyid rang grol, unpublished manuscript, 1994, p. 46, f. 62-63) refers to orthodox meditations as contrived procedures or artificial techniques (bcos bsgyur) which continue to trap people in conceptual fragmentation (spros pa).

In the theory and practice of deconstructive contemplation, the distinction between "doing" i.e., meditating/practicing, and "not doing" is systematically deconstructed, whereas in the Complete Fulfillment the distinction between meditation and non-meditation is dissolved through the activation of a state of bare awareness (rig pa) which is unaltered by the presence of active ('phro) or passive (gnas) mental states and which transcends (kLong chen pa, Peter Fenner, The Natural Freedom of Being, p. 48) the duality of mundane existence (srid) and spiritual tranquility (zhi).

The Complete Seal (Mahamudra) similarly acknowledges the spiritual limitations of technical meditation. In this tradition the final stage of practice is called non-meditation. It is shorthand for a way of being in which meditation and non-meditation are dissolved into one flavor. The famous exponent (siddha) Saraha writes: "O, do not claim to meditate on that which is empty of any self-nature, for by conceiving the duality of meditation and meditator and by clinging to it you will abandon enlightenment." Takpo Tashi Namgyal, Mahamudra - The Quintessence of Mind and Meditation (translated and annotated by Lobsang P. Lhalungpa), Boston: Shambhala, 1986, p. 394. The Kalacakra and Guhyasamaja Tantras say that: "The act of [real] meditation is not meditation; because it is neither substance nor nothingness, meditation cannot be a conceivable reality (Takpo Tashi Namgyal, op. cit., p. 393)."

See particularly the works of Mark Epstein for aberrant uses of meditation, such as "Meditative Transformations of Narcissism", The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 18.2 (1986), pp. 143-158; "Forms of Emptiness: Psychodynamic, Meditative and Clinical Perspectives", The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 21.1 (1989), pp. 61-71; "Psychodynamics Of Meditation: Pitfalls on the Spiritual Path", The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 22.1 (1990), pp. 17-34.

The Buddhist term for fixation is graha (Tib. 'dzin pa). Graha means to seize, grasp or appropriate. See E. Conze, Materials for a Dictionary of the Prajnaparamita Literature. Tokyo: Suzuki Research Foundation, 1973, p. 168. Middle Way literature specifically refers to atmagraha (Tib. bdag 'dzin) or the way we hang onto a fixed self-identity as the root cause of suffering.

David Loy, "The non-duality of life and death: A Buddhist view of repression," Philosophy East and West, 40.2 (1990), speaks in a similar way about the root cause of suffering. In this article Loy shows how the "sense of self" always involves a "sense of lack."

See Peter and Penny Fenner, Essential Wisdom Teachings, op. cit., and The Ontology of the Middle Way, op. cit., 107-115.

The Middle Way uses many terms to refer to the fact that everything lacks an objective reality. Generally people (pudgala) and things in the world (dharma) are said to lack an intrinsic existence (svabhava) or intrinsic identity (svalakshana).

The Middle Way (Madhyamaka) system, upon which the pro-active features of deconstructive contemplation are loosely based, is being increasingly recognized and described as a "deconstructive" methodology. C.W. Huntington, The Emptiness of Emptiness - An Introduction to Early Indian Madhyamika, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989, p. xiii, for example, translates the term prasangavakya as "deconstructive activity." Robert Thurman (Lex Hixon, op. cit., 1993, p. xv) speaks about the Perfect Wisdom as deconstructing the entire spiritual enterprise that it puts forward. See also David Loy, "The Clôture of Deconstruction: A Mahayana Critique of Derrida", International Philosophical Quarterly, , 27.1 (1992), pp. 59-80 and "The Deconstruction of Buddhism" in H. Coward and T. Foshay (eds.), Derrida and Negative Theology, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987, pp. 227-54; C. Zongqi, "Derrida and Seng-Zhao: Linguistic and Philosophical Deconstructions", Philosophy East and West, 43.3 (1993), pp. 389-404; Alan Fox, "Self-reflection in the "Sunlun" Tradition: Madhyamika as the "Deconstructive Conscience" of Buddhism", Journal of Chinese Philosophy 19.1 (1992), pp. 1-24; Robert Magliola, Derrida on the Mend, West Lafeyette, Ind,: Purdue University Press, 1984; pp. and Ian Mabbett, "Nagarjuna and Deconstruction", unpublished paper. Buddhist meditation in general can be viewed as deconstructing the self. See Mark Epstein, "The Deconstruction of the Self: Ego and "Egolessness" in Buddhist Insight Meditation", The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 20.1 (1988), pp. 61-69.

In general terms this phase corresponds to a method called the "logic of relativity (pratatyasamutpadayukti)" (R. Thurman, Tsong Khapa's Speech of Gold in the Essence of True Eloquence, op. cit., p. 365). This is referred to as the chief method of deconstructive analysis because other deconstructive methods are said to rely on it (Ibid., pp. 364-365). Chandrakirti (see Peter Fenner, The Ontology of the Middle Way, Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Pub. Co., 1991, p. 254) explains that concepts are unable to withstand examination because things arise in dependence on their relations (with other things). "Therefore, the reasoning of relational origination cuts through the entire web of harmful opinions."

The method of relativity is traditionally employed as a simple syllogism (J. Hopkins, op. cit., pp. 161-162): Things lack intrinsic existence because they arise in dependence on (separate) causes and conditions. As a deconstructive tool a Middle Way meditator will reason, over and over again, that object X, which might be themselves, a book, a spiritual attainment, or the very method they are using, lacks an intrinsic existence because it arises in dependence on causes and conditions. The meditator might leave the reasoning at that, or elaborate the causes and conditions upon which the thing is dependent. For a contemporary account of this method see Peter Fenner, Reasoning into Reality - A System-Cybernetics Model and Therapeutic Interpretation of Buddhist Middle Path Analysis, Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995.

Chandrakirti explains (R. Thurman, Tsong Khapa's Speech of Gold in the Essence of True Eloquence, op. cit., p. 365) relativity as mere contingent conditionality (idampratyayamatra). In his Commentary to the Introduction to the Middle Way, Chandrakirti (P. Fenner, The Ontology of the Middle Way, op. cit., p. 107) gives his definition of pratityasamutpada as "this arises from dependence on this," giving the examples of permanence and impermanence, things and non-things. In other words, all seemingly real and solid things lack an intrinsic existence and intrinsic identity because their existence depends on what they are not. This brings this method closer to the more robust methods based on disclosing logical contradictions.

For a comprehensive description of these and earlier phases see Peter Fenner, with Penny Fenner, Essential Wisdom Teaching: the way to inner peace, York Beach, Maine: Nicholas-Hays, 2001.

See Richard De Martino, "The Human Situation and Zen Buddhism," in Eric Fromm, et. al., Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, New York: Harper and Row, 1970.