SA 72 has the Teacher declaring the undeclared?

Discussion
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Continuing the discussion from How Early Buddhism differs from Theravada: a checklist:

Let me know if this has already been discussed, but I saw this recently and wanted to see others reactions:

“Who is the one who knows? It is the arahant. The arahant neither exists in another world after death, nor does he not exist in another world after death, nor does he exist-and-not-exist in another world after death, nor does he neither-exist-nor-not-exist in another world after death. Stating this in detail is without limit, as for him all reckonings have forever ceased.
SA 72

Where:

“Ma’am, does a realized one still exist after death?”

“Great king, this has not been declared by the Buddha.”

“Well then, does a realized one no longer exist after death?”

“This too has not been declared by the Buddha.”
SN 44.1

We should be careful to declare these as necessarily contradictory, because to do so would require to spell out the rules of logic being used. I think there is more than one way to interpret, but wanted to see others reactions :joy: :pray:

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This is just the tetralemme being denied. We can just as easily highlight the latter part of the paragraph:

nor does he neither-exist-nor-not-exist in another world after death.

The translator has just chosen to use the ‘neither … nor’ construction for a list of four negated statements. Looking at the Chinese, this is purely stylistic in the English:

非有他世死、非無他世死、非有無他世死、非非有無他世死

So it would be like saying when the Buddha says “The Tathāgata does not exist after death” he is affirming the second point, when in context he is refuting the first, not affirming the second. The Chinese distinguishes this with the word ‘非’ for negating the statement and ‘無’ for non-existence.

So we could also translate it:

Who is the one who knows? It is the arahant. It is not the case that they exist in another world after death. It is not the case that they are non-existent in another world after death. It is not the case that …

Be well!

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If Nibbana as a state or experience is non-dual, it can’t be described in words.

Much like the unio mystica of the old mystics can’t.

This alone may be the reason for the Buddha’s paraphrases (with their logical structure being pretty much irrelevant).

So, no contradiction.

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We agree this is one way to read it! However, I wanted to distinguish it from the belief by some that in all cases the Teacher refused to answer or would say, “don’t ask that question!” It would seem this is the Teacher - in first person - answering directly in a so-called EBT sutta. This does seem like a straightforwardt case of the Teacher denying all four corners to the question of an arahant after death, right? :pray:

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I think in SN 44.1, it means that the Tathagata doesn’t declare the position in question, so it’s the same as denying it. Here, there’s a direct denial by negating each option. I’m not sure there’s much difference, logically.

I haven’t actually looked at SA 72 yet (I’ve avoided duplicating Analayo’s previous work) - and the Chinese is actually a little strange to me.

非有他世死 doesn’t actually contain any grammatical information that could be translated to “after” death or existing “in” another world. It literally says, “He does not have another world death.” 非無他世死 literally means “does not lack another world death.”

Each option looks like a compound in which 有他世 and 無他世 are modifiers of 死. So, maybe “death with another world” and “death without another world” would be the best way to translate it. As @vaddha says, 非 negates the entire expression.

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Hello :slight_smile:

I think the problem boils down to what Charles shared: how to interpret the Buddha’s ‘not declaring’ something. One way of taking it, for instance, is by saying that if the Buddha negated or denied the options directly, it would have often been confused for holding to the other options.

For example, if he says “No, the Tathāgata does not still exist after death.’ It could be taken as the second of the four options being affirmed.

Given that logical language and precision take time to develop, perhaps the discourse of the time did not have a standard way of communicating the difference. This also explains why interpreters have discussed how the negative should be read; the texts do not make the meaning plain.

But to say ‘He does not say…’ or ‘Do not put it like that’ could be taken as equivalents to ‘It is not the case that…’ without implying a positive affirmation of the contrapositive. Just as we might say “I do not say ‘the current King of France is bald.’”

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I just read the both as saying these concepts don’t apply.

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Thanks for this! I think it does go against the idea that the Buddha was silent on the issue for mere pragmatic reasons, for example, which is a common interpretation of the tetralemma on the arahant after death. And of course there is something to this, but it’s not all there is to it.

SA72 can’t really be read that way, it seems to me. It negates all statements because they are all false.

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Hello Venerables, I’m glad that you’ve found this OP fruitful!

Venerable Vaddha, I take your response as indicative that you’ve taken the time to study constructive logic a bit with the reference to the King of France. And having some experience with how studious and careful you can be I dare hazard a guess that you’ve gone quite beyond a bit :joy: Which pleases me to no end I might add.

Venerable Sunyo, yes, that is precisely what I was trying to point out. SA 72 would seem to be a straightforward case of the Teacher not being silent :slight_smile:

I’m keenly curious to know what the two of you think of my post trying to render the Tetralemma in constructive type-theoretic language. In particular, I want to know what you think of the point I made near the beginning of that post:

A crucial subtlety in constructive type theory is the difference between:

  1. Simply lacking a proof of P (or ¬P, etc.), which is a state of ignorance.
  2. Actually proving that P is uninhabited, i.e. constructing a term of type P→⊥.

The Teacher denying the four corners explicitly in SA 72 I think proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the Teacher was not assuming LEM in his reasoning. Assuming he was using some form of constructive logic instead of a paraconsistent logic, the subtlety pointed out above becomes paramount.

So what do you think? Did the Teacher intend to convey a state of ignorance for any of the four corners or did he intend to prove that the four corners were uninhabited by means of showing the contradictions they lead to?

@Dogen as someone else who has taken the time to learn about the formal logical ‘grammar’ we’re discussing here I’m also keenly curious to know your opinion!

:pray:

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Neither one. He thought that human logics too were conditioned and needed to be transcended in Nibbana as experienced in the 4th Jhana and above.

Okay, I wasn’t asked. :upside_down_face:

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Hi Malunkyaputta, I don’t think you’re wrong per se, but if you accept that SA 72 and the SN 22.95 are valid buddhavacana and the many many other instances of the Teacher using logical reasoning it would seem a valid method of inquiry to try and figure out what the Teacher intended with his various responses. Don’t you agree?

Human logics have been proven by human logicians to not be both consistent and complete. This is one of the zenith results of 20th century logicians. However, knowing why this is the case by actually trying to work through the proof is much different than just trusting someone else saying that it is so. It isn’t easy to go through the proof yourself and takes countless hours of work depending upon your skill with logic, but I would still say it is worth it.

If just trusting that the Teacher was right was all it took to liberate oneself I dare say many more beings would be liberated straight away. However, the Teacher tells us that we must do the work and know it ourselves and not just take it on faith.

:pray:

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Damn, I really am gonna start learning classical chinese at this rate. :grin:

So bear with me, and help me along good sir Charles.

非: Something like “not”.
有: Exist, but also have?
無: Not exist, but also lack?
他: Other/Another
世: World/Life
死: Death

So we have these four:
非有他世死
非無他世死
非有無他世死
非非有無他世死

From the last option, it looks like the entire third section negated i.e: 非(非有無他世死).

I would have to say, assuming the chinese translators were keeping law of non-contradiction, the only way 3 & 4 to be correct at the same time is to treat 非 as an operator that says something like “It isn’t the case that XYZ”, or “You can’t say XYZ”.

Still kinda weird but I’ll assume there’s a way to parse it consistently.

From the Google Translation next part does say something like what Ven Analayo has said: “Stating this in detail is without limit, as for him all reckonings have forever ceased.”, so the phrasing doesn’t seem to declare that Arahant does or doesn’t exist after death, just that Arahant is beyond reckoning in such terms.

Which I believe is consistent with lacking a proof. This is of course, assuming my parsing of ancient chinese (which is the second time after trying to decipher first chapter of Daodejing!) is correct.

For funsies, how I try to translate this:

非有他世死
“You can’t declare that an arahant has death in another life.”
非無他世死
“You can’t declare that an arahant doesn’t have death in another life.”
非有無他世死
“You can’t declare that an arahant both has and doesn’t have death in another life.”
非非有無他世死
“You can’t declare that an arahant neither has nor doesn’t have death in another life.” (???)

I’m wondering if saying “experiences / lacks death” or simply “dies / doesn’t die” could be correct to translate from Classical Chinese.

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Okay I kind of invaded this thread, sorry. I don’t feel like my contributions were worthwile. Please continue your original discussion. :pray:

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有 and 無 are not normally nouns, but they can be if nothing else fits the context. Usually, they are either verbs (“to have/there is” and the opposite), or they can be adjectives like sa- and a- in Pali. Then, they mean the noun they modify is possessed or present, or not.

Maybe! The Chinese translator hasn’t given us any grammatical information to parse the relationship between death and another world. It’s probably a literal word-for-word translation of the Indic, but the grammar of the declensions, etc is lost. So, we’re left to guess. My guess is that the death would either have an afterlife following it or not, which makes it awkward to phrase in English.

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It is not the case that the Dharma is paraconsistent, but Classical Chinese characters are! :rofl:

非 is probably used both for lacking proof (“It’s wrong to say”) and actual negation (“neither rebirth nor no rebirth”), which would account for Ven. Analayo’s peculiar translation. :pray:

Oh! So perhaps it’s like:

“You can’t declare that an arahant has rebirth after death.”

OR

“You can’t declare that [an arahant’s] death has rebirth.”

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Would it then be, “You can’t declare ‘an arahant does not have rebirth after death’?”

If so it will be interesting how various parties understand that alongside all the places where the Teacher declares that rebirth is ended. Perhaps “death” is doing some intense work in what is being denied :joy: :pray:

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If it is true that the Teacher is saying:

“You can’t declare 'an arahant does not have rebirth after death.”

And at the same time says:

"You can declare ‘an arahant does not have rebirth.’

Then one possible reconciliation is that it is death of an arahant that is being denied? Would this be problematic for those who maintain that paranibbana coincides with death?

Even more food for thought … is this a special declaration about arahants or does it go for all beings?

“You can’t declare, 'a being has rebirth after death.”
“You can’t declare 'a being does not have rebirth after death.”
both… neither…

Just asking questions :joy: :pray:

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Again, I think it’s a mistake to remove the Chinese peculiarity from the discussion. Having undergone several translations, it would be hard to pin-point the exact phrasing of the Teacher.

“An arahant is beyond reckoning in such terms” indicates to me that however the translator tried to capture it in chinese, what they probably worked with indic and thought they captured was that tetralemma was not applicable for an arahant regarding rebirth after death. :slight_smile:

Conventionally, suttas are full of instances where Teacher speaks about X person definitely having Y kind of rebirth.

I know the kind of point you’re trying to have, but I believe there’s a difference in presentation of death of ordinary beings and arahants.

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Without denying the existence of “the Chinese pecularity” I wonder if there might be perculiarities plural to all extent translations having been passed along over centuries and centuries that effectively add sand to the gears of the machinery of definitive declarations of what the Teacher said in any particular instance :joy:

It is almost as if the translators and people who passed along these verses might have made subtle translation decisions or word choices consciously or subconsciously determined by their fixed views of what Buddha dharma is and is not. Somehow I doubt that would be peculiar to the Chinese translations :wink:

:pray:

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