I read an extended essay (maybe it was even a dissertation) from a student of Murti’s that traced the philosophical disputes between sarvastivada and sautrantika that were taken up by Nagarjuna (madhyamika). It was fascinating. I created a new folder just on its basis, but … somehow … it up and disappeared. If someone comes across it, or something like it, boy I would appreciate having it in my hands. Its loss stymied completion of one of my projects. I can’t remember anything except that Murti himself commented on it, saying that he appreciated both the work and that the author accepted his line of argument.
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Hi.
It seems that the conversation in this thread is getting tainted somewhat.
Please keep the conversation civil and be respectful.
If you feel like you’re going off the rails, then by all means walk away from the conversation and come back once your defilements have cooled down.
Better yet, spend some time on the meditation cushion rather ranting.
This thread will be on slow mode for now.
Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
Kind regards,
Adrian (on behalf of the moderators)
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Logic cannot reveal the truth or prove anything. Logical operations are applied to propositions to produce inferences. A proposition is a statement about something. In practice, logical operations are always applied in the context of a worldview. One’s worldview consists of propositions that are considered axiomatically true. An axiomatic truth is one that is not amenable to logical analysis and cannot therefore be tested by the application of logic. Axioms are beliefs about the world that exist prior to the application of logic and are used to validate inferences. And, nota bene, a belief is a feeling about an idea.
In any logical analysis, the validation of an inference consists of comparing it to one’s beliefs. We judge something to be “true” if it is consistent with our existing beliefs, and untrue if it is inconsistent.
“Truth” in this sense is relative to a body of beliefs that are tautologically defined as true and at the same time treated as the definition of truth. P is true because P is considered to be true. Any conclusion that appears to be consistent with one’s worldview is judged to be valid and any conclusion that conflicts with one’s worldview is considered invalid. The weak point of any logical inference is always in the axioms that make it seem plausible/implausible.
Truth cannot be arrived at by logic. Nāgārjuna did not demonstrate that “The agent cannot be the same nor different from the consumer of the action”. What he did was assert that this deductive inference was consistent with what he already considered to be true.
Nāgārjuna himself never analyses his own beliefs. He never talks about his a priori views. And those who study him keep up this tradition. No one enquires into the details Nāgārjuna’s worldview or is able to state what he considered axiomatic. And no one seems to notice that no matter what the topic, his conclusions are always the same: X doesn’t exist; X & Y are not different.
One might want to ask, for example, under what conditions–i.e., given which axioms–does nirvāṇa seem to be identical to saṃsāra? Or, to be more explicit: in what worldview is not being reborn exactly the same as being reborn? Apart from the fact that this violates the logical principle of noncontradiction (and thus amounts to trivialism), this is not a proposition that any early Buddhist would have accepted as valid, since it very obviously destroys the foundations of Buddhist soteriology.
To make this more topical, this means that Nāgārjuna’s solution to the problem of action at a temporal distance is the least helpful of the bunch. Asked “how do we connection actions to consequences without violating dependent arising,” Nāgārjuna responds “Actions don’t exist and consequences don’t exist” (see the end of Chapter 17 of MMK).
As far as I can see Nāgārjuna makes sense if and only if he accepted particular axioms, notably: “there is a state in which sensory experience is absent; and that state is reality.” In the background he also redefined svabhāva and used it as a straw man: where Buddhists defined it phenomenologically as sui generis (being identifiable), Nāgārjuna redefined it metaphysically as autopoiesis (being self-creating).
If you start with these axioms and some basic Buddhist doctrine, it’s relatively easy reproduce Nāgārjuna’s conclusions via deduction. This doesn’t “demonstrate” anything except the age old weaknesses of logic.
Your complaints about my account of the problem of action at a temporal distance don’t address the substance of the idea. For example, I don’t say that it happened overnight. I agree that the various responses to this problem took time to emerge. But the idea that no one was responding to this problem is flatly wrong. We can be sure about this because both the Buddhists who proposed the pudgalavāda and sarvāstivāda responses tell us that they were responding to exactly this problem.
Those who propose some variety of kṣanavāda are less open about why they abandoned Buddhavacana for this innovative doctrine, but it fits the pattern of the other innovations that occurred around the same time.
Nor do I argue that this was the only driver of change. I have only ever said that this was a driver of change. Your alternative explanation “they were trying to make sense of the Buddha teachings” really has no explanatory power at all because it is too vague. And it doesn’t exclude them trying to make sense of those teachings in exactly the way that pudgalavādins and sarvāstivādins tell us that they were trying to make sense of them.
Which is to say, you’re not arguing against me, since I was just reporting what ancient Buddhists said about what they thought they were doing (all I did was extrapolate from that to include kṣanavāda). Rather you are arguing against the descriptions of the process left to us by actual Buddhists who were engaged in the process at the time.
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Nagarjuna did not demonstrate it, he quoted it;
“Master Gotama, does the person who does the deed experience the result?”
“Kiṁ nu kho, bho gotama, so karoti so paṭisaṁvedayatī”ti?“‘The person who does the deed experiences the result’: this is one extreme, brahmin.”
“‘So karoti so paṭisaṁvedayatī’ti kho, brāhmaṇa, ayameko anto”.“Then does one person do the deed and another experience the result?”
“Kiṁ pana, bho gotama, añño karoti, añño paṭisaṁvedayatī”ti?“‘One person does the deed and another experiences the result’: this is the second extreme.
“‘Añño karoti, añño paṭisaṁvedayatī’ti kho, brāhmaṇa, ayaṁ dutiyo anto.Avoiding these two extremes, the Realized One teaches by the middle way:
Ete te, brāhmaṇa, ubho ante anupagamma majjhena tathāgato dhammaṁ deseti:
‘Ignorance is a condition for choices. … etc…
‘avijjāpaccayā saṅkhārā; … pe …
SN12.46
(although he is more likely qouting form SN12.17 SA302 T499 SF169 )
I think this is very, very true, and I think that one of the prior beliefs, in fact IMO, the entire inspiration for the MMK is exactly the “undeclared” points, surveyed in the thread:
I think that most of the scholarship about Nagarjuna, emanating from a Mahayana-centric part of western scholarship, completely fails to read him in terms of the sutta material on the topic he addresses.
I am hoping to put something together on this at some point, in the hope that it might clarify somewhat exactly what Nagarjuna was in fact talking about, which to me borders on the incomprehensible without recourse to the sutta material.
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According to Chandrakirti this is because Nagarjuna had no fixed and rigid beliefs. No ontological commitments if you will. When he used logic it was to show that the premises of his opponent inevitably led to contradiction. The conclusions he arrived at were non-affirming negations not ontological truths.
For instance, with regard to saṃsāra and nibbana Nagarjuna is taking the fixed and rigid beliefs of his opponent and showing how they inevitably lead to contradiction. The conclusion he arrived at was a non-affirming negation and not a truth value. Chandrakirti’s supposition is that Nagarjuna did this to show his opponent - in the language of the Pali canon - that holding such fixed and rigid beliefs is not conducive or beneficial to leading the spiritual life.
FWIW, I think both Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti would wholeheartedly agree with this. Nagarjuna’s verses were poetic and figurative so it is hard to deduce the above, but this is what Chandrakirti says about Nagarjuna to my mind. 
Ironically, if Nāgārjuna thinks that logic can invalidate a view by exposing a contradiction, then this is exactly the kind of fixed view that Chandrakīrti says he doesn’t have. Right? 
OK. Let’s make a game of it. I’ll outline a simple challenge in which you play the role of Nāgārjuna and demonstrate how his method works in practice.
Let’s say that my view is that nirvāṇa and saṃsāra are not the same. Rather, in my view, one is either reborn or one is not reborn. Being reborn is saṃsāra and not being reborn is nirvāṇa. The two are very much not the same.
The game is that you try to demonstrate that this view, which is not itself contradictory, leads to a logical contradiction. However, we have to place some reasonable limits on how you can proceed.
(1) As Nāgārjuna, you have no view and thus you cannot introduce any new statements of fact or appeal to any axioms or presupposed facts. You may not reference any definitions or invoke any authorities because these constitute views and you, as Nāgārjuna, have no view. You must start with my statement and then use only logical operations to demonstrate that the view leads to a contradiction.
(2) I think it’s important that if you wish to attribute any additional views to me as part of your argument, then this has to be negotiated before you proceed: If you wish to attribute a view P to me, then before you attribute it to me, you have to ask about it and I have to agree that I do hold that view. This way we avoid the temptation to strawman arguments of the type, “What Jayarava really thinks is P” (by far the most common type of comment on my work in this forum).
(3) I will grant you the axiom that logic works. That is, I will stipulate that breaking the three laws of logic (identity, noncontradiction, and excluded middle) is invalid. Logical operators such as AND and OR are valid. Inferences using deduction, induction, and abduction are possible, but validating them is constrained by (1). I will also grant you the conventions of the English language. Though of course these are just views, right 
Can you, can anyone, show that the view, as stated–and with these reasonable limits–leads to a contradiction?
If you impose upon me the law of the excluded middle, then I think I will have a problem. That is, if you impose on me double negation elimination ( ¬¬p⊢p ) then I will be unable to construct a non-affirming negation. Am I allowed to use the rules of constructive logic (which you will grant the a priori axioms of) and not impose upon me double negation elimination?
FWIW, I think what you are suggesting is very close to the debates that are held at places like Sera Jey monastery every day by monks who study for up to 20 years. I’ll be hard pressed to do them justice, but maybe if you are interested you should take a trip. I think you’ll be very warmly received 
You are the one making the proof, so wouldn’t it be to your advantage to use the strongest system possible?
Are you speaking to me or Jayarava? What I’m proposing will not entail making a proof, but rather showing that Jayarava’s assumed truths - along with the laws of constructive logic - arrive at a contradiction or an unacceptable premise aka absurdity. In constructive logic, this would not be considered an affirmative proof of P. Rather it would only be reductio ad absurdum, but crucially not an indirect proof of some P. Those indirect proofs can only be arrived at via double negation elimination.
I was addressing you, and I am still confused. You want to show that Jay’s views lead to a contradiction. If this is your goal, wouldn’t you want the strongest system possible?
I try and explain what I’m on about in this thread but basically I don’t want to be forced to use LEM. Why? Because I want to show a refutation by contradiction not a proof. If I’m forced to use LEM, then someone could rightly say that when I refute some premise ‘P’ through showing how it leads to contradiction, then I’m forced to admit that “‘P’ doesn’t exist” through indirect proof aka an affirming negation. It is my hypothesis that neither the Teacher nor Nagarjuna believed “proof by contradiction” aka “indirect proof” is a valid way of knowing. Given my recent experience, I fear derailing this thread again so maybe it is best to start a new one or take it to a PM. Think I’ll shut up now.
I think this gets to the nub of it. As far as I can see, in the 4 prose collections, there is ample evidence that the buddha makes active use of “logic” and accepts it’s validity in discourse.
I think that viz the undeclared there is again, ample evidence that the buddha critiqued then current philosophical views of mistakenly going “beyond the scope” of logic.
I think that it is incoherent to think that the buddha, or nagarjuna, denied the validity of logic or the possibility of knowledge, there was already a skeptical school after all, and DN1 and DN2 single it out as the worst of the lot.
so the question is exactly how and why the line was drawn, both in the phenomenological, empirical world of experience, and in the logical, linguistic world of thoughts about said experience.
we have a repeated list of what the buddha said didn’t/couldn’t logically hold; that entities could be eternally existent, that entities could be destroyed, that the person could be identical to thier body, that the person could be different to their body that the person could have parts both identical and non identical to their body, that the person could be something neither identical to nor different from their body, that the universe could be finite, infinite, have both finite and infinite parts, etc etc…
we have a repeated list of things that the buddha thought could hold too, that consciousness must depend on an object, that fire must depend on a fuel, etc etc…
we also have the beginnings of a sort of interpretation along the lines of fictionalism with regard to persons in SN5.10 SN22.85 SN22.90 etc that appears to be a development at the very tail end of the pre-sectarian period, and then pursued with fervor in particular by the Theravada.
it looks like nagarjuna, in reinstating the primacy of the undeclared tetralemma form, is attempting to return to an “original” buddhism, and show how the buddhist insight was not in fact confined only to (not really existing anyway) individual persons.
All that said I can still not really make much sense of nagarjuna, and am really still trying to martial the sutta material that could underwrite my reading of him.
tldr, the buddha critiqued logic only when it went too far, and did not defend complete skepticism but rather attacked it.
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I know that this is not a thought experiment for me and I am not playing nagarjuna but
this is explicitly rejected by the buddha, in dozens and dozens of suttas, across all the 4 principle prose collections, in the pali, in the chinese and in the sanskrit.
other than jhana and the gratification danger escape pericope theres practially nothing in early buddhism more certain than that the buddha rejected the idea that “they are either reborn or not reborn” applies to an enlightened person.
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So to play the game, lets look at the relevant part of MMK;
na saṃsārasya nirvāṇātkiṃcidasti viśeṣaṇam|
There is no specific characteristic distinguishing Samsara from Nirvana,
na nirvāṇasya saṃsārātkiṃcidasti viśeṣaṇam||19||
And there is no specific characteristic distinguishing Nirvana from Samsara.
…
sarvopalambhopaśamaḥ prapañcopaśamaḥ śivaḥ|
The pacification of all grasping and the pacification of all elaboration is auspicious,
na kvacitkasyacitkaściddharmo buddhena deśitaḥ||24||
But nowhere is any characteristic taught by the Buddha.
So Nagarjuna is careful NOT to assert that “Nirvana and Samsara are the same.” what he DOES assert is that it is not possible to say specifically what about them is different.
the (implicit) argument is that to give a specific difference or characteristic difference would be to define a condition that nirvana would have to meet in order for it to be nirvana, i.e give nirvana some feature that could identify it. But this would not be nirvana, as we have said that nirvana is UNconditioned, so there can’t be a condition that it has to meet to be nirvana.
(the question then becomes can we coherently indicate nirvana at all, that is is the concept itself self defeating, and i take it that the buddha and nagarjuna both say no, but it’s certainly a riddle as to exactly what their reasoning would be)
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The very fact that you want to embrace the law of non-contradiction and reject the law of the excluded middle shows that your method is predicated on fixed views.
You want to make a metaphysical argument about the nature of logic and inference at the outset.
And this was my point. Nāgārjuna relied on hidden assumptions that no one bothers to talk about.
Thanks for playing.
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And yet there are dozens of stories of arahants exclaiming things like: “Knowledge and vision arose in me: ‘My freedom is unshakable; this is my last rebirth; now there are no more future lives.” (‘akuppā me vimutti, ayamantimā jāti, natthi dāni punabbhavo’ti. MN 26)
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yes, this is very true, it’s a dilly of a pickle to be sure.
basically my reading is that
khīṇā jāti, vusitaṁ brahmacariyaṁ, kataṁ karaṇīyaṁ, nāparaṁ itthattāyā’ti pajānāti.
destroyed is birth, lived is the holy life, done is what had to be done, there is no further ‘this’ in ‘that’.
is the earlier saying, while
‘akuppā me vimutti, ayamantimā jāti, natthi dāni punabbhavo’ti
is somewhat later
to break it down:
nāparaṁ itthattāyā occurs
V 5
D 16
M 41
S 162
A 30
K 10
B 2
while (whoops, edit incoming not khīṇā jāti ) natthi dāni punabbhavo occurs
V 1
D 2
M 4
S 9
A 7
K 66
B 2
In DN it is confined to DN16.
So I guess my point is that by far the more common statement is by far the more ambiguous one, while the more definitive one re rebirth is entirely absent from the IMO early silakhandhavagga of DN, and is pretty rare everywhere else except for the Theri, Thera and Apadana.
fwiw.