Illustrating Buddhist Challenges to Western Substance Metaphysics with I <3 Huckabees’s “The Blanket Thing”

David O. Russell’s I <3 Huckabees (2004), inspired in part by the scholar of Tibetan Buddhism Robert Thurman (father of Uma Thurman), explores a number of philosophical and political concepts. One clip is especially illustrative of pratityasamutpada (often translated as “dependent co-arising”), a fundamental principle of Buddhist ontology, popularly referred to as “The Blanket Thing.” The Thurman character, a so-called “existential detective,” clarifies for his client that while things might seem to be separate and independent, there is an underlying interconnection—illustrated with a blanket.

I use this clip in Buddhist philosophy courses as well as units on Buddhist thought in philosophy of religions courses, typically to support class discussions of Nagarjuna’s The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. However, most students in US institutions are unfamiliar with early Buddhism and broader philosophical contestations in ancient India. In more specialized Buddhist philosophy courses, I build up to engaging Nagarjuna step-by-step over the course of a few weeks by first introducing students to the general cultural and intellectual milieu of ancient India in which Gautama Buddha emerged as well as some specific doctrinal developments, such as the concept of anatman (“no soul”) and shunyata (“emptiness”). In philosophy of religions, I condense this contextualization into a day or two in preparation for engaging Nagarjuna. I provide this condensed version here.

First, the study of “Buddhism” requires some background in the colonial construction of the “World Religions” paradigm, rooted in the work of scholars like Tomoko Masuzawa in the book The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism and like Bernard Faure in the book Unmasking Buddhism. European philologists and anthropologists of the nineteenth century purported to discover “true” or “original” Buddhism in unearthed Sanskrit texts, a version of Buddhism more or less aligned with Theravadin traditions, and saw these as somehow having the most fidelity to the European reconstruction. These versions focus on Siddhartha Gautama, emphasizing he was “just a man,” with insightful teachings like the “Four Noble Truths.”

Second, in light of the above, it is important to recognize diverse Buddhist traditions, holding more of a Wittgensteinian “family resemblance” with one another rather than approximating some essence. I point out to students that if someone asks us, “what do Buddhists believe?” we should always respond first with, “which ‘Buddhists’?” (This applies just as much to other religious traditions or social groups, from Muslims and Hindus to atheists and feminists.) I have met scholars, for example, who disparage Pure Land Buddhism as just a Christianized distortion of Buddhism, when versions of Pure Land Buddhisms are among the most widely practiced across Asian cultures (far more than Zen or Tibetan Buddhism, disproportionately popular in Western contexts).

Third, two important critical concepts in Buddhist traditions are anatman and shunyata. These pose challenges to substance metaphysics, which proliferate in Western philosophy. Gautama Buddha calls into question the self, where people take this or that as who they truly are. When asked directly if the self does or does not exist, the Buddha reportedly remained silent. He taught that either option would be to associate with extremists—reificationists on the one hand, and annihilationsists on the other. What both options share is the assumption of a substance metaphysics: either the self is some-thing, or it is no-thing (see Edelglass and Garfield 2009, 265–266). Nagarjuna, founder of the Madhyamaka, or middle-way, school of Buddhist philosophy extends anatman to all things with shunyata (“emptiness”). This appeal to emptiness led nineteenth century European scholars to describe Buddhism as the cult of nothingness, and Nagarjuna as perhaps its ultimate priest (see Faure 2009, 23–27). We now understand that rather than claiming nothing exists, Nagarjuna’s point is that the way in which we ordinarily conceive of things clouds our ability to notice the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. As Nagarjuna (1995, 69) writes, “For him to whom emptiness is clear, everything becomes clear. For him to whom emptiness is not clear, nothing becomes clear.”

Fourth, and lastly (which is where the clip comes in), the positive inversion of shunyata is what we can call “dependent emergence,” a spin on the Sanskrit pratityasamutpada. Matsumoto Shirō, a leading representative of contemporary Critical Buddhism, asserts that dependent emergence is the distinctively Buddhist insight and the measure of all authentic Buddhist thought (Matsumoto 1997, 166). Without an understanding of dependent emergence and the accompanying emptiness of all seemingly substantive things, we end up grasping at and clinging to mirages and increasing suffering. Through the principle of dependent emergence, Nagarjuna suggests that one can be released not only from attachment to particular possessions, but also from exaggerated self-centeredness. As Nagarjuna (1995, 48) writes, “From the pacification of the self and what belongs to it, one abstains from grasping onto ‘I’ and ‘mine.’” Dependent emergence means that reality consists of interrelations; thus our actions, words, and our very selves are parts of greater systemic wholes.

Of course, the “blanket” itself is subject to Nagarjuna’s critique, being just as “empty” of substantiality as all other things. Nagarjuna’s proposal of “the emptiness of emptiness itself” (see Edelglass & Garfield 2009, 27) opens the way for a more refined conceptualization of, as Garfield explains in the accompanying commentary (see Nagarjuna 1995, 299-321), the “two truths” theory that “ultimate truth” is just “conventional truth,” but without the diminutive “just.” Dislodging thinking from the diminutive “just” is what makes Nagarjuna’s work so radical.

What I find especially helpful about this approach is conveying to students how Nagarjuna’s relational metaphysics grounds a broader Buddhist ethics of “selflessness.” To act selfishly or egocentrically is to sever part of the blanket from the rest; it is to live in an illusion rather than reality.

Suggested Reading

• Nagarjuna. 1995. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Translated by Jay L Garfield. Oxford University Press.

Sources and Other Resources

• Dickman, Nathan Eric. 2023. Interpretation: A Critical Primer. Equinox Press. (see pp. 55–56)
• Edelglass, William, and Jay Garfield, eds. 2009. Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings. Oxford University Press.
• Faure, Bernard. 2009. Unmasking Buddhism. Wiley-Blackwell.
• Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2005. The Invention of World Religions. University of Chicago Press.
• Matsumoto Shirō. 1997. “The Doctrine of Tathagata-Garbha Is Not Buddhist,” trans. Jamie Hubbard. In Pruning the Bodhi Tree: The Storm Over Critical Buddhism, ed. Jamie Hubbard. University of Hawaii Press.
• Westerhoff, Jan. 2009. Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction. Oxford University Press.
• Williams, Paul. 2009. Mahayana Buddhism: Doctrinal Foundations, 2nd ed. Routledge.

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