To follow on this, my point is that rather than the subjects being fictional like unicorns, we could take the whole proposition as the problem.
Categorizing a Tathāgata in terms of surviving, not surviving, both or neither.
Categorizing spacetime as limited or limitless.
Categorizing aspects of a being as identical or utterly distinct.
And instead, the Buddha declares the four noble truths, which are statements about conditionality that do not fall back on absurdist metaphysics or substantialist categories of our experience. Instead, he discusses these subjects in terms that are relational and experiential.
That’s one way of thinking about them. Here the problem is not the word ‘jīva,’ but rather substantial identity/plurality, as well as substantial space, first cause vs. no cause, and persistent existence (eternalism) vs. becoming non-existent (annihilationism).
Yeah, I’m doing a type-theoretic interpretation of SN 22.86 for @dogen that I think you might enjoy too. It is closely related I think to what you’re saying. I’ll give you a sneak peak… In SN 22.86 you can see Anurādha denying the four corners and the Buddha admonishing him for this. There are two senses in which Anurādha might deny the four corners in this case.
Simply saying that his fellow interlocutors have not demonstrated or proven any of the four corners with regard to the proposition: “After death, a realized one still exists.”
Saying that he has a proof - or rather a realized one has a proof - that none of the four corners apply. This is a much stronger statement. It is akin to saying that you have a term of type ~(four corners). The only way to handle such a thing is a fifth corner aka multi-valued logic.
I think the Teacher admonishes him for this. How? By denying one of the unstated premises of the whole tetralemma and thus saying #2 is inappropriate. Anurādha presumably heard the Teacher denying the four corners and didn’t get the point.
It is interesting that from what I can tell very few have picked up that the Teacher admonishes Anurādha for denying the four corners. Something the Teacher himself had done for many a subject. I think this is revealing. It effectively puts a stop to the idea that the Teacher had some multi-valued logic in mind. Some fifth corner that Anurādha presumed and was admonished for.
I’m a bit confused. I would say that Anurādha’s claim is that there is a fifth proposition which applies to the Tathāgata that is is beyond the four. He’s admonished for thinking there is some other option that must apply to Tathāgata.
“Reverends, when a realized one is describing a realized one—a supreme person, highest of people, who has reached the highest point—they describe them other than these four ways”
Yes exactly. A fifth option would be a multi-valued logic that Graham Priest advocates for. But the Teacher here is saying that a fifth option is not what he’s about.
The only other option is to reject the LEM with regard to the proposition. To say that the logic that includes LEM can’t handle the proposition under question: “After death, a realized one still exists.”
Ah okay, by “denying the four corners” I thought you meant he was being admonished for saying none of them hold. As in, if someone says: “It is not the case that ‘The King of France is bald, not bald, sometimes bald sometimes not, or neither’.”
Which I take you to mean that the Buddha’s stance was that it’s not that there’s a fifth option, but rather that the Buddha says “it’s not the case that…” to all four without proposing anything else. And he is also not agnostic, but rather he knows the limitations of the statements. Is that what you’re saying?
I.e. that option 1 you presented is equivalent in meaning to rejecting LEM, no? I’m not very familiar with formal logic
Correct. To deny the four corners is either a rejection of LEM or a constructive statement (which denies LEM) that your interlocutors have not proven any of the four corners, or a reference to a fifth option aka multi-valued logic.
I think he was rejecting mult-valued logic and also denying the four corners. He did so by attacking the unstated premise that there exists a realized one before death in the sense that he deemed the wanderer’s meant: ie, one that is more than a convention.
He narrows the focus of the whole thing to what is meant by the predicate exists.
PS: Which is ironic given the recent essays on the forum saying ‘exists’ isn’t the question but one of ‘survival vs non-survival’. Interpreted in that light, the Teacher would have admonished him and then focused on what ‘survival’ meant before death. Which I suppose you could do and arrive with the similar answer.
Maybe a better way of saying this is I’m willing to say that ‘the body’ is of type ‘convention’ and that the term ‘the body’ is an inhabitant of that type.
I’m also willing to say that ‘soul’ is of type ‘convention’ for purposes of discussion, but I think others might disagree? Anyway, if we went that route we’d probably need to come up with some type constructors and introduction rules for this ‘convention’ type
To quote Master Vimalākṣa’s commentary on Ven. Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā:
“All phenomena at all times of every variety conform to dependent origination. All in all, they are empty, and thus they have not their own natures (自性, svabhāva). Which body exists to be the same as the soul? Which body exists to be different than the soul? Thus proceeding are the sixty-two demonic views. Each and every one within emptiness is untenable.”
中論 (*Madhyamakaśāstra; emphasis mine)
Translation by Brian Christopher Bocking in their PhD Thesis, “An Annotated Translation of the Chung Lun” (1984).
So it seems that at least one early Madhyamaka commentator took it in a more general way of identifying or differentiating two entities.
It was just a case where the commentator seemed to not want to posit the term “body” in the undeclared questions about the lifeforce and body. I presume because it is taken as a solid entity or substance that would either be identified with or distinguished from the jīva.
