[VUzgOhgv]

I found this article at The Buddhist Channel and would be interested in reading you comments.


The Law of Contradiction, Otherness and Excluded Middle – A Buddhist Perspective

by Aik Theng Chong


Singapore -- In Buddhist logic, the origin of every judgment and concept from data of our senses starts with the act of running through the manifold of undetermined pure sensations first before we fasten upon one point of that series of pure sensations, a point with regard to which the rest will be divided in two.

On the one side we have a comparatively limited number of similar things, on the other the less limited number of dissimilar ones. Both parts mutually represent the absence of each other. Therefore, every of our conscious thought or cognition thus represents a division into two parts. Thus, our cognition begins with an act of dichotomy.

As soon as our intellectual eye begins to ‘see’, our thought is already beset with contradiction. Once our thought has stopped running and has fixed upon an external point, to produce a judgment said, ‘this is blue’, we have already separated the universe of discourse into two unequal halves, the part that is blue and the infinite part that is non-blue.

Both parts are relative to each other. There is actually nothing blue in itself. The Law of Contradiction is an expression of the fact that all cognition is dichotomizing and relative. We can only cognize or determine a thing by opposing it to what it is not.


continued:

http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index....,10185,0,0,1,0


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[lipitrRrxX]

Very interesting. I have absolutely no idea what this guy is saying.

[Blaxastij]

I have absolutely no idea what this guy is saying.

Me neither !

[zlZ95pjt]

It reminds me of Hegelian dialectics. I am more interested in why this person felt compelled to write this and submit it to that website, or wherever it first appeared. Did he lie awake at night? I mean, I understand things he is referring to. I don't really understand his point. Let me go back and read it another eleven or twelve times....

[qzgCVHex]

It's just an extension of the "no inherent reality" word salad. In short, a great mass of intellectalization and mental masturbation. Papanca. Monkey chatter.

[cargo_brad]

Hi Aloka-D & fojiao2,

I recognize the logic terms, but not this author's application of them.

I object to the "laws" language. I prefer to call Contradiction and the Excluded Middle principles.

Perhaps the author is committing the common error of confusing the principle of the Excluded Middle (and maybe the principle of Contradiction?) with the principle of bivalence (any significant statement is either true or false)?

May all beings find the causes of true happiness within.
bucky

[sDePrx59]

Irrespective of the terminology, in simple language, does this help us to overcome

dukkha -and if so, how?

[Erunsenef]

I might be able to help a little. What he's saying is basically a very compressed, verbally dense version of Ken Wilbur's book "No Boundary," which I read most of and really enjoyed. The book is not hard to understand at all! But when you try to compress it that much I think it gets kind of silly-sounding.

I'm not good with words but let me try. Basically when we feel "stress," a tense mind, it's not so different than a tense muscle in that a tense muscle is a muscle pulling in two directions at once - a tense mind does that too. Often when I try to solve a problem I just add another "pull" to the mental picture - more tension! When I meditate and "let go" of my attachments, judgments, etc I can actually feel the "natural intelligence" of my awareness begin to dissolve the inner knots...slowly loosening the "pull" that keeps them from unwinding. From my limited perspective it often seems that they unwind and are "alchemized" into something that isn't dual anymore, it's all one integrated experience. And that's what the article is talking about - albeit in a very overly-abstract way.

Let me give an example and then I'll try to say how this fits in to the article.

I'm unhappy with being a bit heavy and beating myself up for it. (the mind struggling with itself, mental tension, that's what I call the "pull.") I say "I'm 15 pounds heavier than I want to be, I must make myself exercise, I'm such a slob." I brutalize myself for not exercising, thinking that if I just "push" myself hard enough I will start exercising, lose 15 pounds, and make myself happy. Instead of seeing the root of the problem, I just added a third pull here! ("Push" and "pull" aren't so different here, even though their literal meanings are opposite.) And on it goes. The knot twists and intensifies.

When I meditate I can see the pain and suffering underlying all of this - the feelings of inadequacy and the lack of metta I hold for myself. And I just sit with it. And wow...when I work through that pain, exercising starts to be something I want to do - out of love for myself. And during the times that I do not exercise, I might start caring a lot less about what other people might think of my weight, because my body-image-clinging has become less. I think I can see that happening already.

So this is how I see it fitting into the article. We create all kinds of "boundaries" and "dichotomies" in this way - pulling, pushing, splitting ourselves, through our clinging and aversion. The more we include in our awareness, the more we stop clinging to "having THIS" and "avoiding THAT," the more these knots and false divisions melt away, and the better off we are. Buddhist meditation is great for this (as folks here know already.) All this splitting is basically the "law of the excluded middle" that the author talks about, I think. He just uses overly-intellectual language, and his example of "blue vs. non-blue" I didn't find particularly helpful in that it's hard to turn that into a useful tool for real-life situations. But when I read it, the parts that I could understand, it made a lot of sense. I just wonder why he didn't give more practical examples that could help people. It does seem an incredibly abstract, overly-intellectual way to present it; it doesn't engage people. Abstract examples are only helpful if you can relate them to something closer to you.

So yeah I agree with you Aloka!

[replicaypu]

It's just an extension of the "no inherent reality" word salad. In short, a great mass of intellectalization and mental masturbation. Papanca. Monkey chatter.

Indeed it is. Folks don't realise that this papanca is an aspect of dukkha. By generating more papanca they think they will discover the secret chalice/motherload. Just drop it.

[casinobonusnolimit]

The above posted article is based on the writing of the well known Buddhist logicians, the Master Dignaga and Dharmakirti, both Mahayanist of the Vijnanavadin School of the ‘Mind Only’ teaching.

The whole article may sound like a mass of intellectualization, mental masturbation and a whole load of papanca. It is more than that; more in the sense that it is trying to put forward the message, (though certainly not clear enough as it is too compressed), that the external world that we perceived is relative and dualistic in nature. That what is ultimately real goes beyond our dualistic intellectual thought process. It is trying to say, “if you open your mouth you are already wrong, if you give rise to a single thought you are in error." It is the silence that follows after the sound of discussion has ceased and when the role of thought is over. In short, what is ultimately real can only be realized intuitively.

The role of logic in Mahayanist Buddhism, when understood sufficiently, should lead one to a better understand of the Doctrine of Emptiness and eventually lead one to realize full enlightenment.

[spravka.ua]

The role of logic in Mahayanist Buddhism, when understood sufficiently, should lead one to a better understand of the Doctrine of Emptiness and eventually lead one to realize full enlightenment.

Funny, though, how "logic" is used to prop up the most tremendous absurdities...

[Buildityrit]

It is trying to say, “if you open your mouth you are already wrong, if you give rise to a single thought you are in error."

There is such a thing as wholesome action of speech. There is such a thing as wholesome action of mind.

[Stappipsy]

Exoteric Teachings such as the “Teaching of the Elders’ is accessible to rational understanding and can be explained. But it looks like esoteric teaching certainly look rather absurd to some and surprisingly can be taken so out of context to its intended usage that it becomes totally irrelevant. It would be best to close the subject here instead of getting into an endless fruitless discussion that is going nowhere.

[Meowmeowz]

Exoteric Teachings such as the “Teaching of the Elders’ is accessible to rational understanding and can be explained. But it looks like esoteric teaching certainly look rather absurd to some and surprisingly can be taken so out of context to its intended usage that it becomes totally irrelevant. It would be best to close the subject here instead of getting into an endless fruitless discussion that is going nowhere.

Hi ATC, please could you explain in more detail (with reference links to sources) exactly what you are refering to as "esoteric teaching " ?

Thank you.

[Maypeevophy]

Exoteric Teachings such as the “Teaching of the Elders’ is accessible to rational understanding and can be explained.

The Buddha's teachings were indeed rational and explainable. Th Buddha taught using words, all the way up to Nibbana.

But it looks like esoteric teaching... You must mean later eisegeses.

...certainly look rather absurd to some.... ...because they are.

...and surprisingly can be taken so out of context to its intended usage that it becomes totally irrelevant. They were already irrelevant, of their own accord. Sounds like a wind-up to the Courtier's Reply.

It would be best to close the subject here instead of getting into an endless fruitless discussion that is going nowhere. Is this how the great Vajrayana Masters of Logic defend their assertions, by calling for an end to any discussion before it begins?

[GinaGomesz]

The Law of Contradiction, Otherness and Excluded Middle – A Buddhist Perspective

by Aik Theng Chong

Singapore -- In Buddhist logic, the origin of every judgment and concept from data of our senses starts with the act of running through the manifold of undetermined pure sensations first before we fasten upon one point of that series of pure sensations, a point with regard to which the rest will be divided in two.

On the one side we have a comparatively limited number of similar things, on the other the less limited number of dissimilar ones. Both parts mutually represent the absence of each other. Therefore, every of our conscious thought or cognition thus represents a division into two parts. Thus, our cognition begins with an act of dichotomy.

As soon as our intellectual eye begins to ‘see’, our thought is already beset with contradiction. Once our thought has stopped running and has fixed upon an external point, to produce a judgment said, ‘this is blue’, we have already separated the universe of discourse into two unequal halves, the part that is blue and the infinite part that is non-blue.

Both parts are relative to each other. There is actually nothing blue in itself. The Law of Contradiction is an expression of the fact that all cognition is dichotomizing and relative. We can only cognize or determine a thing by opposing it to what it is not. If this is "Buddhist logic", please show in the Nikayas where the Buddha taught this.

[Tactattcahhaw]

The Law of Contradiction is an expression of the fact that all cognition is dichotomizing and relative. We can only cognize or determine a thing by opposing it to what it is not.
This is an assertion, a speculative view, not a law. The Buddha spoke of such speculations as "a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. It is accompanied by suffering, distress, despair, & fever, and it does not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation; to calm, direct knowledge, Awakening, Nibbana."

[sportsbettinge]

Now, everything be it real or imagined, is subject to the Law of Otherness also. Otherness and opposition are realized as representing the negation of the similar. Differences and the contraries cannot be conceived so long as the non-existence of the similar is not realized. Otherness and opposition is the absence of the similar indirectly. Another speculative wilderness of views. Please show in the Nikayas where the Buddha spoke of a "Law of Otherness".

[Bletlemof]

Contradiction can be conceived in its logical or dynamic forms. View logically it is a complete mutual exclusion such as e.g., blue and non-blue. They can co-exist in close proximity with each other without interference with each others’ existence. This mutual exclusion can also be referred to as the Law of Excluded Middle. The Fallacy of the Excluded Middle, rather. This sort of irrelevant sophistry simply wallows in the dualism it attempts to deny. Although it has no relevance at all to the Buddha's teachings, "blue" is a range of colors and hues in a spectrum, and can range from extremely pale, almost white, to extremely dark, almost black, with variations from roughly teal to indigo. To assert, "there is blue, and there is not-blue", and to cite a mythical "Lew of the Excluded middle" to support such a claim, is an abject absurdity. And to attempt to impress such illogical assertions onto the Buddhadhamma and make comparisons and inferences about the Buddhadhamma in reference to these assertions is simply delusion.

[Grarypealumma]

In its dynamic form, both the opposing parts are mutually endeavoring to oust one another out of their mutual opposition.
....and this can be seen with, what, a scanning electron microscope? Little bits of Blue and Not-Blue fighting each other, trying to oust each other from the void of space?