SuttaCentral
But that wasn’t the issue, which is that you left out “by chance”. I’m just wondering who is doing “reformatting of english in the service of a sectarian interpretation” here, no offense meant.
Let’s get back to the translation issue. Again, if you have any comments on that, any suggested improvements, I’m happy to hear.
What kind of interpretation of Indian logic are you using here? FYI, the last two parts of the tetralemma do not make sense within classical logic, so it’s a bit unclear what formal argument you’re saying is being made 
E.g. what does it mean for two people to ‘be in contradiction’?
Edit:
So in any intro to logic course at university, you would be taught that
¬(A ∧¬A ) = ¬A ∧ ¬¬A = ¬A ∧ A = A ∧ ¬A
Edit3: this is wrong btw, I’ll leave it here to keep myself humble. ¬(A ∧¬A ) = (¬A ∨A ) which is always true (tautological) in classical logic. It’s been close to a decade since I took intro to logic so be gentleThe fourth part of the tetralemma still doesn’t make sense from the “classical” logic standpoint though
So, going by classical logic, the fourth statement of the tetralemma reduces to the third. Of course, the third part of the tetralemma – A ∧ ¬A (A and not A) – is just a contradiction. Not having contradictions is an actual axiom in classical logic. I.e. you’re not allowed to have contradictions in classical logic, it breaks the system.
This is why I struggle to understand the argument that ‘something left over after death’ is externalism but ‘the total cessation of a self-less mind-stream’ is annihilationism.
Like, let
A = ‘something persists after death’
then
¬A = ‘nothing persists after death’
If you want to go by classical logic, then by the law of the excluded middle, one of these has to be true. Again, by the standards of classical logic, it’s invalid to say that there’s a third option outside A or* not A.
*xor
On the other hand, several systems of logic that circumvent the laws of contradiction and excluded middle have been developed by different scholars. But these are not standard, so those who are going by a non-standard logic system should probably clarify and explain their choices! 
Edit2:
To my mind, the Buddha’s rejection of various tetralemmas (e.g. the fate of the Tatagatha after death) is solved by the question-askers’ wrong assumptions about the existence of a self. There is no point in engaging in a logical argument if you think the assumptions are wrong (aka “garbage in, garbage out” 
)
I could be wrong but I don’t think ancient Indians recognised the principle of non-contradiction back then.
For sure they had a different system of logic, which is interesting in its own right. There are some good suggestions on Google Scholar of what they might have used, for those who are interested 
Given their view of a changing eternal soul that makes sense.
Problems with translations are that those who do translate haven’t seen / known the 4NT …… it becomes the result of thinking one knows …… rather than knowing that one knows. This is simply the blind leading the blind.
If there are no experience outside the ALL then Nibbana and Parinibbana would not be possible. That would be a major problem isn’t it?
The teachings are transcendent, means one can transcend the dualities of samsara, which is birth and death itself. Existence itself is suffering and the teachings are there so one can escape from it. Get to the other shore …… yes?
Words up here has limitations and some can’t be used for obvious reasons, although not obvious for many.
The illusion of not-self is to be known and seen so the conceit l-am is resolved so one can be released from it. …… hence the middle-way.
The difference between the conditioned and the unconditioned.
Hi,
The point of disagreement in this (and several related topics on D&D), tends to be around the word “experience.”
Some people believe or incline to a view of parinibbāna as an ineffable blissful “something” – and therefore a kind of transcendent “experience”.
Others deny this and understand the teachings in the suttas, and through meditative insights, as parinibbāna being the cessation of all experience, without positing an alternative sort of consciousness, or “place”, or beingness, etc.
In this way, final nibbāna is, as you wrote, “outside” the All, because there utterly is no All in final cessation.
Nibbāna while still alive as an arahant, while the khandhas are still present, is not bound by the All in terms of there being no defilements, no identification, or self-view; but since the All, the senses and khandhas, is still present and operating, this is not yet the final and utter cessation or transcendence of all dukkha or experience:
SN 12.125 Whatever arises and ceases is only dukkha arising and ceasing. This is how right view is defined.
Parinibbāna, after the khandhas have utterly ceased is, as you wrote, “outside the All” but is not “experienced”-- exactly because the All has permanently ceased.
So in both cases, nibbāna and parinibbāna are understood to transcend the “All”. But one side posits final nibbāna as a kind of nibbaninc-reality beyond the All while the other denies this and sees no clear support for this in the suttas or by insight and inference.
Incidentally I just looked into it further and it looks like the 4th position might have been the view of the Brahmins
Nasadiya Sukta (Hymn of non-Eternity, origin of universe):
[color=#8000FF]There was neither non-existence nor existence then;[/color]
Neither the realm of space, nor the sky which is beyond;
What stirred? Where? In whose protection?There was neither death nor immortality then;
No distinguishing sign of night nor of day;
That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse;
Other than that there was nothing beyond.Darkness there was at first, by darkness hidden;
Without distinctive marks, this all was water;
That which, becoming, by the void was covered;
That One by force of heat came into being;Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it?
Whence was it produced? Whence is this creation?
Gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
Who then knows whence it has arisen?Whether God’s will created it, or whether He was mute;
Perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not;
The Supreme Brahman of the world, all pervasive and all knowing
He indeed knows, if not, no one knows.
—Rigveda 10.129
To rephrase it then
“It exists” - Possibly Śramaṇa Eternalists
“It ceases to exist” - Annihilationists
“It both exists and does not exist” - Jains
“Neither exists nor does not exist” - Brahmins
I would not gonby such logic.
“Clasical” logic is an early 20th century/late 19th cemtury expansion amd revision of aristotealian logic, evennat the time it was invented there where many who rejected it in favour of constructivist and intuitionist alternatives.
There is no law of excluded middle in intuitionist logic.
The logical structure of the tetralemma is fraught of we get caught in Aristotelian concepts of logic.
arguments of the form
A is B
A is C
A is both B and C
A is niether B or C
Isnt in itself logically problematic, nor is
A has property B
A has property C
A has property B and property C
A has niether property B or properrty C
The issue is if we take B and C to be contradictory
So
A is physical
A is non-physical
A is both physical and non-physical
A is niether physical nor non-physical
(One of the standard examples in the ebts)
Is not problematic even in Aristotelian logic, unless we assume that something cant be both physical and non physical at the same time, but of course this is precisely what substance dualists do believe, and no one accuses them of a simple logical error.
So in the above example, A is jiva or “life” or “ones life” and again, the argument that ones life is not the same, nor different, nor both nor niether as the physical body is NOT said to be because there was no jiva to behin with.
It is almost always instead argued that if jiva = body then we are annihilated, if jiva = mind then we are eternal (and therefore eternally suffering)
If both, then we eternally suffer.mentally the annihilation of infinite physical bodies, and if the life or jiva is soelmething independent of body and mind then we are victims of its pernicious effects on our bodies and or minds.
Instead the buddha says, to give just one possible example out of many alternatives:
The jiva depends on fuel
Fuel can be abandoned
With the complete cessation of fuel there is a complete cessation of jiva
There is a way to abandon fuel
The upshot is that independent of metaphysical questions like the reality or existence of terms or things there is a relationship within experience that can be knowledgeably exploited to elimimate phenomena considered to be ultimately unsatisfactory.
The stratagy of avoiding the complexity and subtlety of the undeclared by recourse to making the initial subject a fiction fails in almost every case, and makes a major part of the ebts into an excersize in willful obscurantism amd incoherence with the only plausible motivation of making anatta somehow more fundamental than the undeclared points, which is clearly not something in evidence in the ebts, as i say, apart from some quite deviant parts of SN, that show clear divergence from thier counterparts in SA.
Um, yeah. Please start another conversation if you want to do this.
Would you kindly specify the type of logic you do go by then?
I can’t really reply to the other points you made in this post without knowing what system of logic you’re framing those points in.
Edit:
Just FYI, according to the Wikipedia article on logic, classical logic is the most used system today, which includes the law of noncontradiction and excluded middle.
This is the logic I go by because it’s what I learnt as an undergrad many years ago, and it’s the type of logic most people will be familiar with.
Views against views …… isn’t the truth meant to be the same?
Experience: there is direct experience isn’t there?
Understand: what about understood and fully comprehended?
This statement doesn’t make sense relative to the ALL!?
Perhaps some food for thoughts:
What is the All? Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas. This, monks, is termed the All.
Just as if he were to place upright what was overturned, to reveal what was hidden , ……
.
The holy life, my friend, is lived under the Blessed one for the purpose of knowing, seeing, attaining, realising and breaking through to what has been unknown, unseen, unattained, unrealised and not broken through to .
…… Deathless last forever.
.
“Just as a red, blue, or white lotus born in the water and growing in the water, rises up above the water and stands with no water adhering to it, in the same way the Tathagata — freed, dissociated, & released from these ten things — dwells with unrestricted awareness.”
.
Remember me as awakened .
Thanks.
My earlier response was mainly directed to your statement:
The info offered was in support of nibbāna and parinibbāna being not only possible, but necessarily “outside the All”, as you put it. But perhaps I misunderstood your point – though the sentence seems pretty clear.
When discussing subtle aspects of the Teachings as they apply to nibbāna, there will, of course, be different views offered by practitioners who are not arahants.
imo, what differentiates subjective opinions from other views are whether the latter are based on citations and teachings in the suttas. Otherwise, we can all just make up whatever we want – and I’m not saying you’re doing this. Just trying to separate statements based on clinging to views from those like “here’s what the Buddha teaches in the suttas, as best as I can tell.”
I mean, we all have views, to one degree or another. That’s why there are discussions on this forum. 
Arahants may or may not have views – but what seems clear is that they have no clinging to them, or to anything else.
And while practicing the Path, it’s the clinging to views and taking a dogmatic stand that’s an obstacle.
I’m not sure exactly how the last two quote boxes in your post apply – I humbly agree with the teachings that are quoted! But my points are not in opposition to any of the quotes.
What’s “beyond” the All, nibbāna with residue, is experienced while an arahant is alive but --and maybe this is where there is possible disagreement – there is no experience in the cessation of final nibbāna without residue, Iti44, after the death of an arahant.
The quotes you posted above are about when the Tathagata was alive.
Hi, interesting. So hey, the matter of “the all” has upanisadic precedent, for instance:
Chandogya : All is Brahman, as is declared in the Upanishads (sarvam brahmaupanishadam)
Taitiriya: Brahman, the One without a second, who is formless nameless and unknowable (nirguna Brahman). He was alone. So he wished, “Let me become many, let me be born (saguna Brahman).” He undertook a deliberation. Having deliberated, he created all this that exists.
Secondly, the Puṇṇamasutta (SN 22.82) has an interesting, slippery approach to this matter of “the all.”
And thirdly, I think we can borrow from the post-structuralists in thinking about different structures of logic and how they can be deconstructed. We have to keep in mind that philosophy keeps its eye on the highest reaches in knowledge. Maybe I’m biased, but the highest question is epistemology. How do we know what we know, and is there any certainty in it.
So, if you were to ask me, I would say that from an epistemological perspective, “the all” asserts that knowledge is grounded in the senses. That’s what Buddha means by the all. And this places him in the same territory as Immanuel Kant. Human knowledge is conditioned. It’s produced within and by conditions (to which we are limited).
Each of the senses has their own discrete consciousness and does not realize the others, except for mind, which undergoes all of the consciousness -es (wow, long word). And … it’s the grasping there in contact that ceases, is that not so?
I don’t think we “wake blank-brained as water in the dawn,” with cessation of the senses. It is cessation of what is there in the senses that causes suffering that is the matter of concern. And that is the “percept” bhava, is it not?
No-one, I’m afraid, is obliged to read what you say, to think about it, or to respond to it.
If you want to persuade people, you might start with not impugning their motives or describing their views in terms they do not use and which prejudice the argument, as you do with the term “fictionalist”.
Of course your right bhante, nevertheless, the idea that using the twrm fictionalism is prejudicial seems to me a bit far fetched, as far as I can make out, and i would be happy to be corrected, @Sunyo s position, (as well as Sideritis, and plenty of others) is that the overarching idea of there not being anything real that could count as a self (or subject or identity or actor) is precisely what explains the undeclared points.
This is what is called fictionalism, at least in the philosophical literature i am engaged with, other terms are “anti-realism” (with regards to selves, souls, subjects, identities, whatever) but I find that term oddly question begging amd prefer fictionalism because that is basicallynthe argument: selves are fictions, lile unicorns or anything else that doesnt “really” exist.
An for me, it doesnt even really matter if this is not @sunyo s view, it is the view i am critiqing, whether sunyo holds it or not.
Funally as for persuading people, again, not sure its my primary motivation, otherwise I would go hang out somewhere much less heavily influenced by theravada ideas and seek fame and fortune and likes on dharmawheel or something
I stay here because there are many erudite and sophisticated minds here, yourself and @sunyo included, who provide me with genuine opponents to hone my arguments on.
Of course I find it frustrating when my contributions are ignored, who doesnt? And I also sometimes fall into cranky ad-hominum temper tantrums (which i apologise for), but ultimately I still think this is the best buddhist forum on the web, and I remain hopefull that my arguments will in time be treated as seriously as they deserve, either way 
No worries, thanks for the apology and the explanation.
This is getting beside the point, but normally in philosophy, an -ism describes a way of seeing that characterizes a viewpoint. To say that some things are not real is not a “fictionalism”. A “fictionalism” would be that all things are not real. Even the most hardened realist believes that some things are not real.
Of course, i just mean “fictionalism with regard to…”
My own background here is philosophy of mathematics, where it is only the “mathematical objects” that are “anti-real”
So to frame maths from buddhisms perspective:
Mathematical entities are real
Are fictions or are anti-real
Have both real and unreal parts
Are none of the above (but perhaps something else)
None of these obtain.
Mathematical objects have types
Types depend on other types
Types may be eliminated
Types may be introduced by proof or construction
Something like that
So its not logic really, its more a dialectical strategy
Like:
Admit sexual acts depend on pre existing sexual desires!
Admit that where there is an absense of sexual desires there comes to be and absense of sexual acts!
(Admit that there are observed occasions of both the desire and its absense, etc)
Admit that independently of there being or not or both or niether an actor of these acts, it obtains that if there is an absense of the dependent condition then the it obtains that the ending of desire is a path the the ending of the act.
Or something
If you are suffering you are suffering a condition
I rhink anti realists should listen to
And reflect on its deeper meanimgs.
The six senses cease … cease to create expectation … cease to create suffering.
It cant be that simple though, otherwise i could just kill myself and with the cessation of my sense organs i would achieve the cessation of suffering.
If I am just my body, then “ceasing” my body ensures freedom
But since this is a wrong view, it wont.
