The Logic of the Buddhist Tetralemma

[Hoko]

Hi Jundo,

See, now I had no idea about any of this! I just bought the darn thing because Brad plugged it. After the whole "the word/concept is not the thing itself" part was established it started to get repetitive. My gut reaction was to retreat into "I don't understand and that's OK" so maybe some good came of it. I don't know. Anyway, interesting stuff. (Sets book down and walks away slowly...)

Gassho,
Hōkō
#SatToday

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

[Tanjin]

Thank you Jundo for the example of the optical illusion - it helped me really understand how all of the seeming contradictions could be true at once.

Gassho,
Tanjin
Sattoday

[Jundo]

Thank you Jundo for the example of the optical illusion - it helped me really understand how all of the seeming contradictions could be true at once.

Gassho,
Tanjin
Sattoday

Just recall that the Tetralemma does not mean that all propositions are necessarily true no matter how contradictory or illogical, although Buddhist logic expands our usual ways of looking at things and contains some logical propositions we are not usually accustomed to.

Here are a couple of examples. Imagine an apple:

It is an apple (yes)
It is a fruit (yes)
It is both an apple and a fruit (yes)
It is neither an apple nor a fruit (yes, from the perspective of emptiness which washes away all individual self identity)

All the above can be true. As well:

It is an apple (yes)
It is also a pear (yes, in the Indra's Net/Golden Lion sense of all phenomena of the universe holding and fully expressing all other phenomena)
It is both an apple and a pear (yes, in the above Indra's Net/Golden Lion way)
It is neither an apple nor a pear (yes, from the perspective of emptiness which washes away all individual self identity)

For those not familiar with "Indra's Net"

A frequently cited expression of this vision of reality is the simile of Indra’s Net from the Avatamsaka Sutra, which was further elaborated by the Huayan teachers. The whole universe is seen as a multidimensional net. At every point where the strands of the net meet, jewels are set. Each jewel reflects the light reflected in the jewels around it, and each of those jewels in turn reflects the light from all the jewels around them, and so on, forever. In this way, each jewel, or each particular entity or event, including each person, ultimately reflects and expresses the radiance of the entire universe. All of totality can be seen in each of its parts.

Fazang illustrated the Huayan teachings for Empress Wu by constructing a hall of mirrors, placing mirrors on the ceiling, floor, four walls, and four corners of a room. In the center he placed a Buddha image with a lamp next to it. Standing in this room, the empress could see that the reflection in any one mirror clearly reflected the reflections from all of the other mirrors, including the specific reflection of the Buddha image in each one. This fully demonstrated the unobstructed interpenetration of the particular and the totality, with each one contained in all, and with all contained in each one. Moreover, it showed the nonobstructed interpenetration of each particular mirror with each of the others.

A variation that looks like the "tetralemma" is also sometimes encountered when the Buddha in the "Perfection of Wisdom" Sutras, for example, is seeking to transcend all human opinions and point to emptiness ...

Some philosophers call it an apple, but it is not that (from the perspective of Emptiness, where all self-identity washes away)
Some philosophers might call it a fruit or a pear, but it is not that (from the perspective of Emptiness ... )
Some philosophers might say it is both an apple and a pear and a fruit, but it is not that (from the perspective of emptiness ... )

... and here is the real kicker, which is meant to show how far beyond mental philosophical arguments reality is:

Some philosophers might say it is neither an apple nor a pear nor a fruit, but it is not that either (because "emptiness is so empty" that we do not even stick a label or idea "emptiness" on it, for to do so does "it" an injustice. Even though the proposition seems technically right from the perspective of emptiness, just to say it in words is wrong! True "emptiness" is so empty that it is not just another perspective or idea.)

A lot of Zen Koans are like that:

Does a Dog have Buddha Nature ... MU! (a statement so affirming of Buddha Nature and Emptiness that we express it beyond and right through philosophical debate on the question and simple words "yes" vs. "no").

That being said, the Buddha would not literally call an apple a "pear" in ordinary, day to day terms. That would be contradictory and illogical. One does not make apple pie with pears.

Side Note: I posted in a different thread about Dogen and his way of bending language and logic in order to bring out new facets of Buddhist Truth, much like a jazzman such as Coltrane bends notes and musical time in order to bring out new facets of standard tunes. Dogen might actually make statements such as the following, filled with poetic imagery and seeming non sequiturs (the following is just me channeling his writing style a bit) ...

Apples are Apples, Apples contain all the tree and every blade of grass.
Do you think only that apple trees grow merely from apple seeds?
Trees grow from apples as apples grow mountains and rivers and Buddhas.
Apples are pears and in each pore of endless pairs of Buddhist Divas.
An Apple is not an apple, not original sin nor Newton's Head.
Yet it is the garden that holds all snakes and ladders.
It is the pie in the sky which is all Kannon's 1000 Eyes.
Where can you bite this Apple?

Something like that would be Dogen's attempt in Shobogenzo to express Buddhist logic just stepping beyond even something like the "tetralemma".

Gassho, Jundo

SatToday

PS - Now that I wrote the following, I am humming this silly song that is all the rage in Japan. I think overseas too judging from youtube. My daughter loves it ... as did I the first 100 times ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct6BUPvE2sM

[Mp]

Thank you for this explanation Jundo, loved it. =)

Gassho
Shingen

s@today

[Jishin]

I think Dogen is absolutely ruined when you try to analyze what he wrote. It just trashes his poetry. Very bad. Just read it and savor it. That's all. It's honey for the ears.

Much of the same goes for Zen or Buddhist logic. If you tell me what it is, I will tell you what its not. Just go with it.

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Jakuden]

[emoji23] My daughter will proclaim that "totally random" and enjoy it immensely, I'm sure.
Thank you Jundo. Your explanations make perfect sense, and for the rest, it is fine to be an ant on an airplane's wing.
Gassho
Jakuden
SatToday


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[Jundo]

I think Dogen is absolutely ruined when you try to analyze what he wrote. It just trashes his poetry. Very bad. Just read it and savor it. That's all. It's honey for the ears.

Much of the same goes for Zen or Buddhist logic. If you tell me what it is, I will tell you what its not. Just go with it.

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

Well, I agree with just reading and savoring for Dogen. At the same time, he was a learned man and a walking encyclopedia of traditional Buddhist stories, Koans, Sutra quotes and doctrines. He was not playing his music outside of traditional Buddhist and Mahayana teachings, any more than a jazz musician simply blows in the wrong end of his sax, throws away the notes and calls it music (I am sure somebody did once in awhile to show how radical their vision, but then they had to come back to this world of notes and time and which end of the horn is up). He was playing from the standard tunes trying to capture something hidden there.

Likewise, all the great Zen Masters of the past (even Hui-Neng, the supposedly illiterate one) were not just pulling teachings out of their ass, making it up as they went along, or saying weird stuff just to sound weird or trash all teachings and wisdom. They were pretty much all learned men (and women) working within established and widely shared Buddhist teachings and doctrines, simply trying to get to them past the philosophical obstacles surrounding them. You can take the Zen man out of the Mahayana, but you can't take the Mahayana out of the Zen man.

A koan such as "Does a Dog have Buddha Nature? ... MU!" makes no sense at all unless one has some awareness of the philosophical debate that tied people up on whether dogs were sentient beings, whether they had or did not have Buddha Nature, what is "Buddha Nature" after all, whether it is something we have or achieve or are or something else all together ...

All that mental debate is swept away in "MU!" which is Emptiness, which is "Buddha Nature." To truly pierce this "MU!" is to truly pierce Buddha Nature. Problem solved!

They were not talking about fishing or auto mechanics or sports or out of thin air or whatever goes chaos. It is a Mahayana Buddhist thingy.

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Jishin]

Zen is simple and obvious. I just don't think its necessary to talk about it so much. That said, it is necessary to talk about it so much until one realizes it is not necessary to talk about it so much.

The talking should be done by someone with a big mouth (Jundo) and not with someone with a big mouth (Jishin).

That's all.

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Seido]

Wonderful teaching Jundo, thank you. I'd comment on it further, something about emptiness and infinite buddhas, but my thoughts are better said as "just sit."

The pen pineapple apple pen thing has indeed made it to the states. A close friend was this guy for Halloween. I have no idea how he was able to find the outfit.

Gassho,
Seido
SatToday

[Jishin]

The Logic of the Buddhist Tetralemma

At the same time, he was a learned man and a walking encyclopedia of traditional Buddhist stories, Koans, Sutra quotes and doctrines...

...Likewise, all the great Zen Masters of the past (even Hui-Neng, the supposedly illiterate one) were not just pulling teachings out of their ass, making it up as they went along, or saying weird stuff just to sound weird or trash all teachings and wisdom. They were pretty much all learned men (and women) working within established and widely shared Buddhist teachings and doctrines, simply trying to get to them past the philosophical obstacles surrounding them.

This sounds like Jundo.

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Jishin]

The Logic of the Buddhist Tetralemma

Well, I agree with just reading and savoring for Dogen. At the same time, he was a learned man and a walking encyclopedia of traditional Buddhist stories, Koans, Sutra quotes and doctrines. He was not playing his music outside of traditional Buddhist and Mahayana teachings, any more than a jazz musician simply blows in the wrong end of his sax, throws away the notes and calls it music (I am sure somebody did once in awhile to show how radical their vision, but then they had to come back to this world of notes and time and which end of the horn is up). He was playing from the standard tunes trying to capture something hidden there.

Likewise, all the great Zen Masters of the past (even Hui-Neng, the supposedly illiterate one) were not just pulling teachings out of their ass, making it up as they went along, or saying weird stuff just to sound weird or trash all teachings and wisdom. They were pretty much all learned men (and women) working within established and widely shared Buddhist teachings and doctrines, simply trying to get to them past the philosophical obstacles surrounding them. You can take the Zen man out of the Mahayana, but you can't take the Mahayana out of the Zen man.

A koan such as "Does a Dog have Buddha Nature? ... MU!" makes no sense at all unless one has some awareness of the philosophical debate that tied people up on whether dogs were sentient beings, whether they had or did not have Buddha Nature, what is "Buddha Nature" after all, whether it is something we have or achieve or are or something else all together ...

All that mental debate is swept away in "MU!" which is Emptiness, which is "Buddha Nature." To truly pierce this "MU!" is to truly pierce Buddha Nature. Problem solved!

They were not talking about fishing or auto mechanics or sports or out of thin air or whatever goes chaos. It is a Mahayana Buddhist thingy.

Gassho, J

SatToday

OK, here it goes:

For work I write approximately 80 pages per day and edit another 80 pages per day. Mostly cut and paste though but I am still responsible for all the text. I also have been forced and continue to be forced to read a lot of material not produced by me. Because of this, I have acquired a distaste for wordiness. Another problem is that I have a tendency to catch on quickly to things intellectually and get bored easy. Because I am compulsive, I have a tendency to read most of what is written here against your advice. So I feel tortured when I am forced to read things here that I don't like. It hurts. That's all. I do enjoy what's written at Treeleaf but at the same time it hurts to read it. Ouch!



Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Jundo]

OK, here it goes:

For work I write approximately 80 pages per day and edit another 80 pages per day. Mostly cut and paste though but I am still responsible for all the text. I also have been forced and continue to be forced to read a lot of material not produced by me. Because of this, I have acquired a distaste for wordiness. Another problem is that I have a tendency to catch on quickly to things intellectually and get bored easy. Because I am compulsive, I have a tendency to read most of what is written here against your advice. So I feel tortured when I am forced to read things here that I don't like. It hurts. That's all. I do enjoy what's written at Treeleaf but at the same time it hurts to read it. Ouch!



Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

Oh, that's easy. You've been around here long enough, Jishin, know basically all this baloney.

Don't worry about it, get un-compulsive, JUST SIT!

That's my prescription, Doc.

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Tanjin]

Jundo - your examples are really helping me out on this thread! I need something concrete to really see into the non-concreteness of it all. I do understand that it is a common pitfall to try and intellectualize Buddhism or seek an ultimate philosophical explanation for things. With that being said, I also understand that context is important and some of the ideas need to be comprehended as a component of the raft I use to cross to river -- understanding that ultimately the raft is to be disguarded. So I really appreciate the effort made to help me in this respect!

Indras Net is another one of those descriptions that I have encountered a number of times but which has left me scratching my head. While I can envision how the net would work in terms of everything reflecting everything else, I do need some help understanding how it is a metaphor for existence -- in other words, what characteristics (or lack thereof) of existence are reflective -- what does this represent? Are the terms interpenetration and interdependence used interchangeably here? Is the metaphor an expression of, for example, the idea that a piece of paper contains the sun, the rain, etc.?

Thanks!
Tanjin
SatToday

[Jishin]

Here is a lesson. 11 "I" counted on post 26. 11 opportunities for trouble.

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[Jundo]

Indras Net is another one of those descriptions that I have encountered a number of times but which has left me scratching my head. While I can envision how the net would work in terms of everything reflecting everything else, I do need some help understanding how it is a metaphor for existence -- in other words, what characteristics (or lack thereof) of existence are reflective -- what does this represent?

Access to a kind of mystical or transcendent experience we call "Kensho" (yes, in Soto Zen too) is necessary to really grock this ... not simply an intellectual understanding in a mind stuck in our usual "me/you, this/that" divided way of cutting up the world.

But I believe that it is an experience available to most people through Zazen, and I do not believe that it is so mysterious or "woo woo" once we understand something about the human brain. It is "this worldly", reproducible in a laboratory, not some "other worldly" magical fairy dust. Don't let the word "mystical" mislead on that.

The human brain creates a hard sense of self/other in the prefrontal cortex and parietal lobe in connection with many other regions of the brain such as the visual cortex (in my limited understanding). In other words, data pours in through the senses, and the brain creates its own inner model of reality in which your "me" ends about at the border of the skin. Roughly, what is beyond the border is not yourself, what is within the border is your "me". The human mind also likes to separate and categorize, e.g., that a "chair" is not a "table" or a "tablecloth" (although it can also redraw borders to see the whole thing as a single "whole" of "dining set" for example.)

In Zazen, those hard borders between "self" and the outside "other" that is not myself may seem to soften, perhaps fully drop away, so that all becomes experienced as an interflowing whole. It can happen all at once, in a big booming Kensho or subtly and softly like borders becoming gently translucent or crystal clear. Likewise for all the separate things of the world, which now can be perceived as an interflowing whole.

Dr. Andrew Newberg is a radiologist at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital whose has made it his life's work to explore spirituality using neuroimaging tools ... His studies focus on two critical brain regions: The prefrontal cortex, which Newberg calls the "attention area" due to its role in focusing the brain on a specific task, and the posterior superior parietal lobe, a small region towards the back of the head which Newberg calls the "orientation association area," or OAA, responsible for orienting the individual in physical space. The OAA delineates boundaries between the body and its surroundings, giving us a sense of separate "selfness." Newberg theorizes that when activity in the OAA is depressed, people experience a diminished perception of individuality. During intense meditation or prayer, the brain combines decreased activity in the OAA with increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, leading to the feelings of unity, transcendence, and peace that form the essence of so many religious traditions.
http://www.andrewnewberg.com/research/

Something similar can sometimes also be experienced when "losing the self" in music or dance, in making love, in running, in knitting, in just sitting on the bus. Many times in life. Zazen just helps us get access to this more at will, and Buddhist philosophy aids us in interpreting and employing the experience.

What results is a perfectly valid, alternative experience of reality in which the separation is replaced by wholeness, interflowing. The separate "tables" and "chairs" of reality (one of which is a chair called "you" feeling separate and apart from all the other chairs) become the Grand Dining Set of the Cosmos! All things are somehow felt to "hold" all other things, the proverbial "whole world in a grain of sand" ala Blake ...

To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.

Since "chairs" are just the "Grand Dining Set", and since "tables" are just the "Grand Dining Set" ... chairs are just tables, for each is just the Grand Dining Set through and through!


Okay, Ven Thich Nhat Hanh has his famous model of the "piece of paper" to express Indra's Net although, frankly, I find it a little cold and materialistic. It can be taken to mean that the "paper" symbolically holds the "sun" or the "woodcutter" rather than the above, real tangible mystical experience of all being connected and interflowing.

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow: and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are.

"Interbeing" is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix "inter" with the verb "to be", we have a new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud, we cannot have paper, so we can say that the cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger's father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

For me, it is more than a mere "poetic" sense of connection and interdependency (what TNH calls "intra-being"). For me, it is a real, tangible experience of keenly felt and perceived unity, wholeness, interflowing. So, the model I came up with to convey this is a pregnant woman and her unborn child ...

During the early months of pregnancy, can we clearly say that this is "one person"? "two separate people"? "One person with two hearts"? We cannot. All is "not one, not two." One interflows into the other. Moreover, the blood and oxygen flow so endlessly through mother and baby and back again, head to toe, that we might say that the mother head to toe flows into and creates the baby, and the baby flows back throughout the mother head to toe. Literally, every cell of the mother's toes holds the DNA of the baby, and every cell of the baby's eyes holds some material of the chin of the mother. Really, it is not mother and separate baby at this stage, but one being flowing into and out of itself. All is a great interflowing whole, a single motherbaby, literally breathing life into life. Something like that.

Well, then the baby is born, the cord is cut, the prefrontal cortex and parietal lobe take over and suddenly the child comes to judge that there are "two separate people" in a world of separate people and things.

Meditation, including Zazen, can reverse the mental process although, this time, the whole universe becomes "mom" and we come to see ourselves as still in the cosmic womb of sorts, star dust come to life. Separate individuals, yet not. All the world flowing in and out of us, and us into all of that. We realize and experience that, in a very real sense, you are not just "you" but that "you" are the whole shebang which surrounds and holds you, feeds and gives you breath, you are the whole universe from head to toe flowing in and out of you, you are what the whole universe is doing as you (as Alan Watts put it):

What you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call 'here and now'. you are something that the whole universe is doing, in the same way that a wave is something the whole ocean is doing. the real you is not a puppet which life pushes around. the real deep down you is the whole universe.

Something like that.

I really don't mean it to be "woo woo". It is really not so mysterious. Nothing about modern physics or biology or neuro-science that I am aware of contradicts any of it. Even hard atheists like physicist Lawrence Krauss recognize that, in a very real sense, we are simply the universe come alive here and now for whatever reason, and our eyes are stardust looking at things which are stardust ... the universe looking at the universe.

Gassho, J

SatToday (and the universe SatToday)

PS - Note how the below scientists can't seem to get away from saying "we are part of the universe out there" or "we come from the stars out there," still dividing the world into pieces in their way of expressing. That is one very correct way to see things. But Mahayana Buddhists and like folks more easily put it as "we are the out there now right here" and "we are the stars come to life." Those are perfectly defensible ways of expressing this too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tFZR5T31tU