Class
Thursday, September 15th, 1977
Verbatim, unedited transcriptClick the series name to view more
CLASS at Wisdom's Goldenrod, Hector, NY
with Anthony Damiani (AD)
September 15, 1977
BUDDHISM; SUBSTANCE VS. FUNCTION
TOPIC: Buddhism
SUBJECT: Substance vs. Function
SUBSUBJECTS: Samkhya, Madhyamika, Vedanta, Point-Instants, Epistemology
CONTENTS:
Two fundamental approaches to mind: 1) Samkhyan (substance-based); 2) Buddhist (function-based)
Plato tries to combine the substance and function points of view in Sophista
Reading/discussing Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, "The Two Traditions in Indian Philosophy," on Madhyamika, dependent arising
Religious vs. philosophical approach; reason not one of the pramanas in Vedanta
Madhyamika tries to solve the problem of substance and function by canceling out both positions; this is not a solution
Concept of "thing" built up through cultural mores, not available to an infant; animal lives in two-dimensional world
Reading/discussing Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World"
Two sources of knowledge: senses (direct, immediate) and understanding (indirect, mediating); these are always together in experience; example of television
Reality as kinetic: seed/sprout example; example of row of flashing bulbs creating illusion of movement; world as cinema
Two theories of universal flux: 1) continuous motion (Samkhya view); 2) discontinuous motion (Buddhist view)
Hindu emphasis on identity; Buddhist emphasis on continuity; differ in their concepts of illusion; systems are complementary rather than contrary
All time, space, and motion constructed from point-instants by our imagination; example of whirled torch, television
Point-instants both simultaneous and sequential; mathematical analogy of points on a line; movie analogy; can't help but speak in an incorrect mode
Sensation is momentary and confined to the present, corresponds to a momentary external object; duration and continuity constructed by imagination; example of being poked while sleeping
Don't underestimate any of the great thinkers; if you forget you're a student, you're in trouble; in ancient India, you lived a doctrine, didn't merely believe it
Senses are direct, can never be mistaken; manas is indirect, can be mistaken
Recognition does not prove duration, as memory cannot grasp the present nor sensation the past; recognition as memory construction
Many great traditions; your temperament and need determine which one is right for you
Discussion of Santiraksita's formula, "the momentary thing represents its own annihilation"; if a thing is, it can't become
Motion as a series of immobilities
Need for both static and dynamic pictures to truly convey calculus
Importance of images for thinking; for objectifying unconscious psychic processes
Mind as dimensionless point; energizing of mind immediately translated into experienced world/alogical whole; moment of energization as sensation
Padma Karpo: in pure sensation there is no duality, but constructive mental activity quickly imposes duality
Animals live in state of peace, no interference from lower manas
Memory as chief culprit, whole ego structure built on memory
BOOKS READ FROM OR REFERENCED:
Plato, Sophist
T.R.V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Madhyamika System
Surendranath Dasgupta, Indian Idealism
F. Th. Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic, Vol. 1
Satkari Mookerjee, The Buddhist Philosophy of Universal Flux
F. Th. Stcherbatsky, The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana
F. Th. Stcherbatsky, The Central Conception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the Word "Dharma"
Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning
Herbert V. Guenther, Tibetan Buddhism in Western Perspective, "The Concept of Mind in Buddhist Tantrism"
Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol, two volumes
Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, three volumes
Herbert V. Guenther, The Royal Song of Saraha: A Study in the History of Buddhist Thought
Thomas Taylor, The Theoretic Arithmetic of the Pythagoreans
Thomas Taylor (tr.), The Metaphysics of Aristotle, to which is added, A Dissertation on Nullities and Diverging Series
Paul Brunton, The Wisdom of the Overself
DIAGRAMS referred to (not with this transcript version) [Transcriber note: [diagram] means the speaker is referencing a diagram as he or she is speaking. If someone is drawing or writing, with audible sounds of chalk on a blackboard, I indicate this by [drawing] or [writing].]
TRANSCRIBED Verbatim by IT 2021. Archival verbatim transcript – V11a.
AUDIO FILES: 1977 0915a, 1977 0915b. [Note: "Tape" and "Side" refer to original audio cassette tapes that were later digitized into .MP3 Audio Files.]
1977 09/15 at Wisdom's Goldenrod
Buddhism; Substance vs. Function
[Audio File 1977 0915a Begins]
AD: You experience your karma, (first) you build your karma. Karma conditioned being is overcome because you understand [couple/three words inaudible] that go into conditioning you. So you have this feeling or this reaction. Or I should say slight reaction to your previous conditioning but in a very strange way, you express it and you [few words inaudible] [tape break]
(--avoid) it for yourself from what they speak of as the nidana chain. Now, that-- that approach requires-- requires a certain substratum or a certain underlying kind of philosophy, whether at the deepest level or at a more superficial like. But it does require a certain pecu-- peculiar type of philosophy. And perhaps we can break into it right away immediately by-- by stating it this way. Most of-- most of you here reviewed with me and with the class the Samkhya theories. And in the Samkhya, if you remember, [short pause] the point of view that is taken is that of substance. Alright? Now, we have to make this very clear to ourselves. And so, we go-- we take their term, terminology, or we take even PB's terminology, he speaks about the [writing] finite mind, individual mind. [short pause while writing] Ok? And, in Samkhya they speak about it too but this is a very strange way. Look, if I ask you, what do you know of the mind or what could you tell me about the mind, what are its attributes, constituents? So, we could say power of judgment, right? [short pause] What else?
MW: Power to remember.
AD: Memory. Is that what you said?
MW: Yeah.
AD: Memory. What else?
S: Imagination.
S (very faint): Uh-hm, yeah.
AD: Imagination.
S: Reflection?
AD: Selection, selectivity, yeah.
S: I said reflection.
AD: Oh, reflection, close enough. [short pause] How about something really fundamental?
S: Perception.
S: Perceiving.
S: Perception.
AD: Senses.
S (very faint): Yeah.
AD: I mean we can make a whole list and we say [drawing] the mind is, so to speak, all these things, alright? The mind has the power of judgment. Like you see a tree and you say "That's a tree," ok? Memory, the mind could remember things that happened. Of course it uses imagination in all its activity. But this here, senses, that's a fun one, you know? Some of the powers of the mind are the senses: hearing, smelling, taste, ok? [writing] And if you want you could put down a few others, cognition, ok? Etc, etc, ok? But now look, all these here are like functions, ok? All of these are functions, or powers. I don't care what the word is used. Powers. This is the power that the mind has, power has the m-- the mind has the power of making a judgment about something. It has the power to recall something, alright. It has the power to sense objects. Like I could sense a smell of, let's say, musk, you know, behind me, ok. These are all powers the mind has, ok? They're all functions of the mind. Alright. Now still, this would not be the definition-- You know, like you can put as many other tattvas as you want down here. You know, you could put down like for instance-- this would be the buddha-indriyas, this would be the karma indriyas, you know, locomotion, evacuation, all those powers [diagram], ok? Alright, you could put all these powers down. But, I left out-- I left out the most important one from the point of view of the Buddhist, I mean from the point of view of Samkhya. [one/two words inaudible] (packing up)?
RC (faint): He did [S simultaneously: Yeah.] [few words inaudible]
AD: Do you notice which one I left out?
S: [one word inaudible]
S (very faint): [few words inaudible]
S (very faint): He also [few words inaudible]
AD: In other words-- uh-- The Vedantic word is more known. [writing] This all belongs to me. These are all my powers. Ok? So that, no matter which action or which power, which act-- function you're operating with, they're always referred, so to speak, to the substance point of view. This is my citta, alright? In other words I'm exercising certain functions of my mind, ok, and they all refer to some sort of substance. So let's say, for instance, a person remembers something that happened ten years ago and he recalls it. And the-- the Samkhya would say something like this, well, when-- when the activity was done and over with, there remained a residue, and this residue we call a samskara, so to speak, sinks into the subconscious. In other words, the-- the thought that you had becomes a motion of your citta, it sinks into the unconscious and remains there forever as a motion or an activity of your citta, ok. So that, they're bringing in over here, the Samkhyans are bringing in the notion of substance, individual citta, substance. That's your substance. And all these activities [drawing] are activities of your substance, of your citta. I'm-- I'm not sure if I'm coming across.
S: Tony?
AD: Would you like to question that?
S: If I always-- In the discussion like when we do it like this is about substance is like a power of continuity?
AD: A what?
S: Are-- I mean the way it sounded as if it's like a power of continuity?
AD: No. [S simultaneously: Well I mean--] It's identity.
S: Ok.
AD: Identity, not continuity. From the Samkhya point of view, identity. This is always your citta. In other words this individual mind, alright, [S: Yes.] that individual mind, the other individual mind. Now that's-- that's what I tend to identify with, and I keep referring to that as my mind.
S: So the continuity comes from the identity and not the other way?
AD (simultaneously): Yeah.
S: Ok.
AD: Alright so, there's some sort of identity of substance here. You say it's your mind, there's an identity of substance. Ok? Yeah.
AH: Substantial point of view, is it so that it allows-- it allows the notion that there is an individual mind?
S (faint): Yeah.
AD: Yeah, but what's more important is that there's a substance to the individual, substance. Like if I take a table, ok, and I tell you, "Paint it white" and you paint the table white, ok, and then I say "Paint it blue," and you paint it blue. Now what's the "it" I'm referring to here?
AH: The table.
AD: Ok. What's the "it" I'm referring to that has all these activities, all these powers? The mind, ok? And, it's like, when I tell you, "Paint me a table green, paint it yellow, paint it--" there's always like a table which is the underlying substratum of all the different colors you're going to paint it. Or if I say, "Cut the table an inch," alright, it's still-- In other words, the mind here is like the underlying, alright, the substratum, alright, and the adverbs and adjectives are words of action of that noun.
AH: Is it a mind or the mind?
AD: Well you can call it a mind.
AH: But (wouldn't) we-- from this point of view it remains an individual--
AD: Yeah because, I can say that, for instance, "I see-- I see a flash of lightning." And you're not looking at it, you don't see it, so I got a right to say, "I saw the flash of lightning," it's my mind which, functioning through these powers, had the experience of that flash of lightning. Right? So I could say-- Well actually later on, we're going to expa-- one could expand this, and in Samkhya [writing] they expand this. It comes from the word 'cit', alright, which means consciousness as power. Alright so, that's the universal application of that word. But this word 'citta' they apply to the individual. So, the substance of your mind, ok? Any more? See if you can understand this. That's why I use Samkhya a great deal because, as far-- if we go all the way back into Indian philosophy in history, the two big schools that were arguing pro and con when Buddhism first was developing was between Samkhya and Buddhism. And Buddha-- Samkhya is very prim-- primordial, I mean it's lost, I mean, you know, you trace it back into antiquity and then it disappears. But there's traces of it to be found constantly everywhere. So it's a very primordial tradition, alright. To me it's so fundamental that I equate it with the-- you know, in the astrology, with that fourth quadrant, that body monad [diagram]. It's a very fundamental conception.
But anyway, the Buddhists play themselves off against the Samkhya and you have this dialectical notion here, this substance here [diagram], ok, the notion of substance versus the notion of [drawing] function or modes [diagram]. You can call this modes. You can call it powers. In the old days they used to call this faculty psychology. But the basic point here is to see that this here [diagram] and these here [diagram] are placed in opposition. In Spinoza you have a very same notion too. In Spinoza he says substance is that which is conceived in, by, and for itself. Ok? That's God. [AD hits board] And then the problem came up, well, how about us, where did we come from? And he had to bring in by stealth the notion of modes of substance [AD indicates on board]. That looks (familiar). But you see even in the West, you know, thousand years later, the same idea comes up, it's so primordial. Go ahead.
AH: Substance and function are a whole?
AD: Not necessarily, not necessarily. What's important to here-- here is to see that this is like a thing [diagram], [drawing] ok, and this is like a doing [diagram]. We're using the most elementary words we could find, you know? Now it's very hard for us to imagine doing without something doing. When you say like for instance, "I'm walking," you imagine the "I" here as the substratum and walking as the doing, alright. It's very hard for us to say "Well, activity without something being active." It's very difficult. Just think of it for a moment and you'll see that underlying verb is usually a noun. Underlying activity is usually something that is active. Suppose I speak about motion. You say, "Well, something is moving." But the Buddhists are going to speak about motion with nothing moving. No-thing in motion.
SP: Well, is their notion of substance static?
AD: Over here [diagram]? For who, uh--
SP: Um--
AD: Samkhya? No, it wouldn't--
SP (simultaneously): Well, yeah, Samkhya's always thought of as--
AD: No, it wouldn't be static, it wouldn't be static. But it did become static with the later logicians like, oh, the Nyaya logicians, the Vaisesika, the materialists who believed in an eternal matter which is undying and forever.
SP: Ok, and if-- if it moved and functioned, it would seem to be a function. You could always make it into the function.
AD: Go on, yeah.
S (very faint): Right.
SP: You can always do it, maybe. You were talking about movement as characterization.
[short pause]
AD: I don't follow you [SP simultaneously: Well--] yet, you have to-- you have to [SP simultaneously: Well--] forgive me because I'm not very bright right now.
SP: You were saying that like movement is activity or something-- something doing something.
AD: Yeah.
SP: If substance itself moves it would be the doing as well as the thing and yet you're trying to separate, you know, into two opposing notions.
AD: Yeah. I'm trying to oppose them because that's exactly what the Buddhists are going to do. They're going to speak about, "Alright, well we have all this here [diagram], but we don't have this here [diagram]." [writing/drawing] They'll leave all these powers, all these functions, judgment, you know, recollection, memory. They'll leave all these things, ok, they'll leave them alone, and they-- and they'll speak about these as the sort of-- a process which is always going on. But if you ask them what is it that, you know, underlies the process, they don't know what you're talking about. There's no thing [drawing] that underlies this. So that if you speak of motion to them, to them it's a series or-- a series of discontinuities.
SP: So would substance be exempt from motion?
AD: They-- they don't have the term 'substance'. They'll deride that term up to the hilt.
SP: Oh I know the Buddhists would but I mean the idea of a substance separate from functioning. Would that make motion-- or would that make substance exempt from motion?
AD: Would that make substance exempt from motion?
SP: Yeah.
AD: I don't follow your question, keep-- keep going at it.
SP: Um--
AH: Well, by definition if we think of that.
SP: Well, you know, all these things on the right are activities [diagram].
AD: Yeah.
SP: And motion is activity.
S (very faint): Right.
SP: Ok. So if you're going to talk about substance as something different from activity, then substance wouldn't have anything to do with-- it wouldn't itself have a quality of motion. Because if you characterize substance with motion, it would be an activity. I mean in order to talk about a pure substance-- So I'm wondering about the arguments-- not the Buddhist point of view, I mean I-- I realize that the Buddhists have everything as activity. But, I'm trying to understand the other point of view, the point of view that a substance that's not activity.
AD (simultaneously): Well that's much harder, that's much harder to understand. Now I know most people think that the Buddhist point of view is harder to understand but my opinion is it's the-- vice versa. I [few words inaudible]
SP (simultaneously): Yeah I mean [few words inaudible] but if you put substance opposed to all these things, I can't fit them together. I can't [one/two words inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): Well, take the analogy of a dream. Your mind has a dream, alright. A dream takes place. Now the mind here is the substance, and the dream, let's say, is the functioning of that substance. But you can't relate them. You can't see the mech-- the mechanism that the mind employs and says, "Ok, now take out the projector and the screen and everything, I'm going to start making a picture." You don't see that operate. And you see all this activity taking place in the dream. But you don't see the substance which underlies it. So the Buddhists say, "Then why believe in it? Why bother believing in what you can't even prove to yourself? Cross it out." Why do you they [one inaudible SP word simultaneous with AD] explain everything in terms-- in terms of action, in terms of change, in terms of motion? And that's exactly what the-- what they went ahead and did.
SP: Yeah, I mean it makes sense, it has substance, I mean, this type of substance. And this is an activity of that. It becomes-- I mean it makes sense, but then when you go to find the substance, it's hard to find, you can't find it and then when you separate [AD simultaneously: Well, isn't that the same--] it logically, it tend to--
AD (simultaneously): Isn't that the same thing, for instance, like if you [SP simultaneously: (Think it would be--)] will depri-- Let's say you got a-- [drawing] See I'll draw it for you. Here's a-- a lump of salt. Ok? Salt is white. Let's call it sugar, sweet, you know, has a certain weight, ok, has a certain dimensions, alright, (to/you) go on. Now, suppose you abstract all these qualities from the lump of sugar. What will you have left?
SP: Right, you don't have anything left. I mean, can't do it.
AD (simultaneously): So then the sugar is [drawing] the summation of these qualities? Alright, that's what the Buddhists would say, then why-- why bother believing in what isn't there? You can't prove it. You can't show me any substance that underlies all these qualities.
S: Tony, [S simultaneously: Right.] just the confusing terms here. Is substance I-consciousness that's [one word inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): I'm sorry?
S: Is substance I-consciousness?
AD: Well, that's-- That would be something like the other side would claim, substance-- The manas would be like the "I". [S: Ok.] And the Buddhists [S simultaneously: The Buddhists say right now (one word inaudible)] want to make sure that they're going to destroy that notion, that there is no such thing as an "I".
S: I just wanted to clear that-- those terms up.
AD: Alright, now most of us have a feeling of some sort of identity, and this identity, you know, is based on the notion that we are some thing, alright. In other words, you're ten years old, you're small and weak, and you're fifty years old and you've gone through forty years, a lot of changes and experience, and you refer to an "I" there, and you say there's an "I" which underlies all this experience that you went through. The Buddhists would say, "No sir. There's no"I" that underlies that experience." They're going to deprive you of it. And you'll see-- I mean, if you do a real thorough job of Buddhism, you'll see it'll deprive you of any crutch to stand on. [couple inaudible student words simultaneous with AD] All the psychology just gets thrown out the window. You begin to see there's one huge hoax that you've played on yourself all your life, to believe in this phantasm.
S: Yeah, go ahead.
AD: Yeah. I'm going to try to take their side, even if I'm not a good Buddhist, I'm going to try to take their side.
S: Well that's what Samkhya-- well see that's where the-- when you're talking about substance but is it-- is-- is substance there's like a receptacle for like-- receptacle for the residue of the activity but it--
AD: It's not only the organ for that activity but it's also the receiver of that activity.
S: So they say the substance is both the organ for it and receiver?
AD: Yeah, just like for instance, you could think of the mind as an organ to perceive the vasanas and at the same time that it perceives the vasanas it receives them and experiences them, and the result of that experience it accrues to itself.
S: But-- so the individual-- individuality lies not in the activity but in the mind, like if you're just going to substance but, do they then go further?
AD: They would deny that, the Buddhists would deny that.
S (simultaneously): No, I know that the Buddhists would deny it, but the one-- the scheme you put up before when you had a substance on one side and then the powers of the mind on the other. Or the citta and then the [AD simultaneously: Uh-hm.] powers of the mind. If-- if the individuality lies in the citta or like the identity lies there, then can-- how then do they take it to the next step which makes it into like a universal cit?
AD: Oh, I don't want to get into that one.
S: Oh.
AD: No that's-- that's a metaphysical question. I don't want to discuss Samkhya and Advaita 'cause that's what Advaita has to do. You-- we want to stick to Buddhism, that's all. The Buddhist point of view would just say, "It's all nonsense, there's no-- there's no con-- identical substance here which underlies and runs through all these experiences."
S: Ok.
AD: Go ahead. Try to stick to questions with the Buddhists because that's what I want to work on. I got enough of a problem trying to stick to it myself. (AD laughs, bit of laughter)
LDS: You said that, in some ways, from your point of view, the-- the Buddhist tradition is-- is more available in some sense to us. But, is that because-- especially in the twentieth century with modern science kind of undermining a substantial point of view.
AD: Yes, exactly.
LDS: But at the same time, we come from the tradition, let's say the Christian tradition, that is very substantial. And even though modern science with its experiments and breakthroughs is delivering to us, let's say, an energetic point of view, it still is hard to assimilate all the implications of what's being done in modern science. Even the scientists themselves kind of live a contradictory life in terms of their work and in terms of what-- the way they live.
S: Yeah.
S (faint): Yeah.
AD: Uh-hm. They provide us with darkness. (bit of laughter)
LDS: You know what I'm saying, that--
AD: Oh sure.
LDS: They're not really living what they're discovering.
S (faint): Yes.
AD: Oh sure, definitely. After all, it's more like a huge garbage can with all kinds of undigested information. Mountains and mountains of facts piled up. Oh it takes a tremendous wor-- amount of work before one can integrate these various points of view into some sort of coherence. And I've been working on that project [one/two words inaudible] for two years now. I know it can be done, I have no more any doubt. It's just the overcoming of the semantic and the linguistic difficulties. And for my-- for me, you know. But, the point of view of modern science is such that, in its examination of the world, it has reduced it to a-- a-- you know, a-- a certain energy situation, you know, everything has been reduced to energy. So that the entire conglomeration of the (universally), its millions and billions of stars and all-- all these things have been reduced to point-instants. And this is exactly the standpoint, for instance, of the Dignaga school. And that's where we'll have to try to touch-- touch on that a little bit.
The only man-- Now, I'm speaking out of turn, but the only one that I know of who really tried to grapple with the question in the most fundamental way I know is Plato. Yeah. And, I might be prejudiced but-- It's only in Plato where he comes out and points out that, in the books that you just purchased, where was it, in the Sophist, he points out, he says, "We cannot-- we cannot allow those who say that there's only the One to overwhelm us. And we cannot allow those who say there's only flux to overwhelm us." In other words, either static being or constant motion of being, either being or becoming, he says we can't allow either point of view to overcome us because if we do then all knowledge is closed. We can't-- we can't move ahead. And so he set himself up that problem. And he-- there's a very beautiful discussion in-- I think like the Sophista is one of the greatest dialectical works ever written, where he actually undertakes to combine or bring around, you know, a resemblance of knowledge from these two contradictory points of view. And I've been working on the chart with it in that way. In other words, first house Aries, Self-Existent Brahman, that's a substantial point of view, alright. But that stays dead unless the four planets pull out the meaning of what that is. So that's the functional point of view. And the two of them together have to be handled together simultaneously, otherwise you fall into one side or the other. And either side to me is a catastrophe.
Anyway, suppose-- We-- we have this Central Philosophy of Buddhism. Some of you have read "The Two Traditions in Indian Philosophy". And I'm going to ask you for first chapter. And that's somewhere in the development of the two traditions, I think it was-- Those of you who've read anything, is there any questions, but very specific, about what you've read? Ed, would you get this book, um-- It's with Indian book and we're going to need it and it's going to fall apart if I open it once more. (laughter) I've never seen books like this. (bit more laughter)
EMK: She laughed because I opened up the (PB) book. (laughter)
AD: Alright, could you read a little bit on the Indian-- "The Two Traditions in Indian Philosophy"?
S (faint): Ok.
AD: Try to relax. Don't get upset. (laughter)
S (amidst laughter): That's against the law?
S: That's the law.
S: Ok.
AD: Yeah.
TM: I don't know, I just-- maybe it's more a comment than a question but it seems that he doesn't really talk of Madhyamika overall, you don't get-- when he talks of it explicitly as a-- as a denial of-- of the Self or Atman. He speaks of it-- he speaks of the point of view of a denial of the Self or an At-- of Atman as a necessary expedient that the Buddha had to introduce so they could arrive at what they call the Middle Way, because as long as there is this one belief in substance, then until that opposite point of view could be, you know, unfoliated, then there-- then-- then there couldn't be what-- what he terms the Middle Way. I guess that's sort of somehow what you've been talking about tonight except you've been talking about Plato was saying not to fall into one camp or the other. But, from what little I've read it, just I-- I just don't see-- I mean he says this about Madhyamika 'cause they don't accept this or that but I just-- I just don't understand like what their approach is, like whether they're trying to resolve [couple words inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): Well, from the very-- from the very position-- I mean I don't know what you're referring to in the book but, you know, listening to you talk, you're saying exactly what I just said, that they fall on one side or the other and the Madhyamikas fell over to the other side completely.
TM: See, 'cause I don't think you could fall-- I mean--
AD: Well--
SP: He tries to say that the Madhyamika rejects the Buddhist attitude of flux as much as they reject the substance point of view. [S: Yeah.] I mean they say that either point of view exclusively can-- can't adequately explain [one/two word inaudible]
LDS: That's why it's called the Middle Way he said.
AD: Well, I--
SP (simultaneously): And so they take and they attack each view in itself, showing that each view in itself can't explain anything.
AD: Ok.
SP: And, I mean in his view [AD simultaneously: Alright, what--] (what you) got here is that--
AD: Where are you at?
SP: Well, let's see, I can--
[short pause]
AD: You see, sentences like for instance on page 6 where he says--
[Transcriber note: I am using The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Madhyamika System by T.R.V. Murti, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1955.]
T.R.V. Murti [The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, "The Two Traditions in Indian Philosophy," p. 6, AD reading]: "The rise of the Madhyamika system is at once the rise of Buddhism as a religion. For the Mahayana, Buddha is not an [AD reads: a] historical person. He is the essence of all Being [(dharmakaya)]; he has a glorious divine form [(sambhogakaya)] and assumes at will…"
AD: Alright, try to leave out those religious passages because I won't attempt to explain anything like that. I won't attempt to explain how the infinite became Jesus the Christ, I-- that's beyond me. I have enough trouble understanding what is rational, what I have to work out with my reason. And, religious things I don't want to work with. You know, you remember PB told a story about this man who (said/says) "If my guru said that this object was black and God said it was white, I would believe my guru"? That's an-- that's a religious point of view. Now, this is not a religious class and, you know, this is a cla-- this is going to be a class in philosophy.
[short pause]
S: Tends to make a distinction between reason and dialectic, you know. Is-- is that like difference between-- is he using reason as-- as synonymous with logic in that sense or is that-- [short pause] I would think using--
AD: What was the question?
S: Well he seem-- he-- he speaks-- he speaks of-- he says the Vedanta uses-- uses reason and-- you know, he [couple words inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): That-- Reason is not one of the pramana in the Vedanta, so that's wrong. [short pause] I mean don't let this man scare you because he's got a PhD. In the Vedanta, reason is not one of the [one word inaudible] or one of the pramanas of knowledge, very definitely and very clearly. So you disregard that statement. Go on.
TM: I wish I could-- I could find a passage where [AD simultaneously: Go ahead.] [couple words inaudible] explain. Ok. [S, faint: So--] See, actually I could start-- "The middle path is…" This is in page 7, the middle.
T.R.V. Murti [The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, "The Two Traditions in Indian Philosophy," p. 7, TM reading]: "The middle path is the steering clear of Eternalism (substance or soul) and Nihilism (uccheda-vada, denial of continuity). The Madhyamika contends that this is not a correct interpretation of the doctrine. Pratitya-samutpada is not the principle of temporal sequence, but of the essential dependence of things on each other, i.e., the unreality of separate elements…"
AD: Alright, would you get to your point now. Again.
TM: Well--
[12 second pause]
AH: He equates nihilism with a lack of continuity. I don't think that's accurate either, is it?
S (very faint): (Yeah/No).
S: Yeah that's correct.
AD: If something isn't continuous--
AH: It's not necessary it's nihilistic. I think that's oversimplification of the Buddhist discussion of discontinuity. I mean-- I don't know.
PD: What he's trying to say there, the Madhyamika path claims that they do not adhere to either-- either point of view, becoming or being. And that they-- either position is false taken in itself.
AH: In itself.
PD: So (this/these) Madhyamika claim to adhere in no conceptual position.
S: Yeah that's true, yeah.
AH (simultaneously): But that's not nihilism.
PD: Adhering--
AH: To no conceptual position is not nihilism.
PD: No. But nihilism is one extreme. [one word inaudible] eternalism.
AD (simultaneously): Alright, then let's try to make this clear.
T.R.V. Murti [The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, "The Two Traditions in Indian Philosophy," p. 7, AD reading]: "The Madhyamika contends that this is not the correct interpretation of the doctrine. Pratitya-samutpada [AD reads: Combined dependent origination] is not the principle of temporal sequence, but of the essential dependence of things on each other, i.e., the unreality of separate elements… The entire Madhyamika system is a re-interpretation of the Pratityasamutpada [AD reads: causal or combined dependant origination]. It is now equated with Sunyata [AD reads: emptiness]…"
AD: Now you remember what the combined dependant origination is [drawing/writing] of the Buddhists, remember? Avidya, and the la-- the last up to twelve, the last one was death, ok. In between you had, you remember, avidya, samskara, vijnana, namarupa [diagram]. Ok? Remember the-- And now what is he saying? [short pause] Well just reread it then.
S: Ok.
S (faint): Here you go.
TM: Yeah--
T.R.V. Murti [The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, "The Two Traditions in Indian Philosophy," p. 7, TM reading]: "The entire Madhyamika system is a re-interpretation of…"
AD: Of this-- of this law, yeah.
TM: Oh.
T.R.V. Murti [The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, "The Two Traditions in Indian Philosophy," pp. 7-8, TM reading]: "It is now equated with Sunyata--the empirical validity of entities and their ultimate unreality. The middle path is the non-acceptance of the two extremes--the affirmative and [the] negative…of all [TM reads: of both] views."
SP: Boy that's-- He was saying that the modal point of view can't stand on its own. And the substance point of view can't stand on its own. So they have to-- in order to explain anything you have to relate substance and-- and function. You can't explain [one word inaudible] by one or the other.
AD: And how does he do it?
SP: And-- [TM simultaneously: He does it by (couple/three words inaudible)] and I guess what he does is, because the-- of the necessary relationship, he says it can't-- they can't-- you can find no thing to stand on its own. And because you can find nothing to stand on its own, he reduced it to the emptiness point of view.
AH: But to call-- but to call emptiness nihilism--
AD: No that's [PD simultaneously: That's not what they're calling it Andrew.] not nihilism, emptiness is not nihilism.
AH: He does-- it does it in the first part of that passage.
S: No, no.
PD: No, he's not calling [couple words inaudible]
TM (simultaneously): He's (not) calling them nihilists in one part that he--
SP (simultaneously): He says you always find things in opposites, in relationship of opposites.
PD/TM(?): Steers clear of nihilism, (Andrew).
SP (simultaneously): And--
S: Ok.
SP: Therefore you can't find a self-existing nature.
AD: Things as self-existing entity.
SP: Yeah.
PD: Why don't you put--
SP: The-- the Buddhist Logicians have the point of view of flux I think [one/two words inaudible] They attack the point of view of flux saying that there's no unity anymore [few words inaudible] you know, everything is [one word inaudible]
AD: Everything is in constant motion, yeah. Then of course you have a problem, you can't relate it, you [SP simultaneously: Right.] can't relate to it.
S: Right.
SP: So that's the point that the Madhyamika makes when they attack the Logicians. And then he attacks the--
AD: Including, including Dignaga.
S: Right.
AD: Because that's Dignaga's point, you know.
SP: Yeah. And he attacks him.
AD: Yeah.
SP: Then he turns around and he attacks the substance point of view and [couple words inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): It doesn't believe in Atma for instance.
SP: Because they have no functioning that's not real and these--
AD: And it doesn't-- if a thing is the Atma, by definition the Atma is not capable of any change, [SP simultaneously: Yeah, but that--] that would be a direct paradox, [SP simultaneously: It would change, right.], contradiction.
SP: So--
AD: So--
SP: He says that, in order to actually explain things, you have to take both of these points of view. But if you take both of these points of view, you have a mush mush, you have dependent origination.
GA: Is he really taking both points of view?
PD (simultaneously): Well no, [AD simultaneously: He's not taking both points of view, that's the point.] see I thought the Madhyamikas say you don't-- you can't take both points of view. There's only your point of view.
SP (simultaneously): Yeah, that's what I just-- Yet they say that the world is composed of all these opposites. I mean that's what they would reduce-- they say you can't take one point of view or the other point of view, you have to-- you have to have a world of opposites.
AD (simultaneously): Then it comes to this here, it comes to this here, doesn't it? That actually what they're s-- what they're saying, the Madhyamikas and especially Nagarjuna, is that, well, my way of putting it is, it's a copout. You can't combine them, you can't reconcile them, so he's going to annihilate them both (then).
SP: Yeah. It's almost like he takes the Middle Way squeezed out. (bit of laughter) And [AD simultaneously: Go ahead.] in the two sides.
DB: I just have one question about this change, you know, this constant flux that's going on. What-- I mean-- Doesn't-- it doesn't seem that there's anything there that really changes, because you-- you only have the disappearance-- you know, the occurrence and the immediate disappearance of discrete mental states. So there isn't anything changing. They're all is what they are when they're there. And when they're absent, you know-- [SP simultaneously: Yeah, there's in--] How do-- how do they change though?
SP (simultaneously): Yeah, there's instantaneous being but there's not things that change.
DB: Uh-hm. So, I mean, what does that-- what does that really mean? I mean there's an appearance of change. I mean obviously it appears, [SP simultaneously: Yeah but there was--] well that, everything is constantly changing.
SP (simultaneously): The Logicians would have that in the imagination.
S: [couple/three words inaudible]
SP: The appearance of change.
AD: Alright, I don't understand what Dave is trying to say.
DB: Well, alright, it's like-- like every-- all sensation and all-- you know, all perception, thought, and sensation, and the alteration of conscious states don't change, right, I mean, they in re-- they are exactly where they are, when they are.
AD: That's al-- that's already a conceptual judgment.
DB: Uh-hm. Well, I mean--
AD: Alright, why don't [DB simultaneously: Good.] we deal with them directly? Let's turn to Buddhist Logic. You got Buddhist Logic? Let's turn to the chapter on the sensible world and start getting a feeling of what they're speaking about. It's called "Part II, Sensible World, Chapter 1".
AH: Tony?
AD: Yeah.
AH: There's a passage from this Dasgupta that might be a helpful point.
AD: Go ahead, read it if you--
[Transcriber note: I am using Indian Idealism by Surendranath Dasgupta, University Press, Cambridge, 1933.]
Surendranath Dasgupta [Indian Idealism, p. 101, AH reading]: "Metaphysical discussions are possible because the notions of unity, plurality, cause, effect, correlation and the like are regarded in a sense more primary than the data to [AH reads: in] which they are applied; but if all relations and all phenomena are mere perceptual appearances, none of which has [a] superior value to [the] others, it is impossible that any metaphysical speculation can be made regarding the nature either of such relations or of the phenomena to which they are [to be] applied."
[12 second pause]
AD: I don't see your point yet.
AH: Well, they apply to the data the same.
AD: Go on.
AH: You can't really make metaphysical speculations to the-- as a consequence of any observe-- or experience certain appearances. They're all on a kind of equal plane from the point of view of--
AD: From the point of view of sensation they're all on a-- on the same plane. Because in sensation there is no distinguishing, alright. As soon as you distinguish, you bring-- you're intruding with conceptual-- conceptually. Let me see. Maybe I can think up of an example. When a child first looks at the world, you know, a baby, the notion of "thing" is not available to him. He doesn't have that notion. That notion of "thing" gradually unfolds or comes into manifestation-- uh-- [short pause] I haven't pieced this insight together. If I could reverse-- try it this way. When a child deals with an object, what we would call an object, alright, with certain fixed attributes, if the child should come across that object with the attribute slightly changed, it's not the same thing to him. "Thing" is something that evolves as he begins to put together all the pieces of the jigsaw. In other words, if you say-- Oh the experiment with a goose was even better, you know, where this goose always used to go into the living room, the master would open the door, the goose would come in, go into the living room and eat, you know. And the master always would have to open the door. But one day what the master did was to stay far away from the door, to open the door about twelve feet away from it, and when he opened the door, alright, the goose came in but the master wasn't by the door and the goose ran up the stairs. (bit of laughter) They live in like a two-dimensional world. The notion of thing is not precipitated out in their consciousness, in their understanding.
EMK: Piaget talks about that, that-- the idea that the thing persists. He says there's a certain point in a child's development where if you put-- so you put a block on a couch and then put it behind your back and then put it-- that there's a certain point that the child will look behind your back to see where it went. That up until that point it just-- it's just gone away, you know? Put it out again, it's a new block.
AD: Yeah. If you-- perhaps the notion of an animal's way of perceiving the world might help us, a two-dimensional plane. He's distinguishing himself out of that two-dimensional plane. When he succeeds in distinguishing himself out of that two-dimensional plane he'll have the experience of three dimensions but then he won't be an animal. Alright, it's-- I'll try to pile up some information on that, technical information, to show you that the notion of "thing" is really one that's built up through cultural mores and not one that you can take for granted.
AH: A while ago you s-- you said that something was a copout, that-- were you speaking of Madhyamika?
AD: Yeah I was speaking about Nagarjuna who tried to show the eternal and the functional point of view cancel each other out.
AH: Is that what he said?
AD: Yeah.
AH: I thought he said that either point of view was appropriate and they were both--
AD: They cancel each other out.
AH: But isn't his discussion from the point of view of an analysis of experience? Like, I like to get that clear because--
AD: Well the way we can get that clear is if we start understanding what they mean by instantaneous being. Alright this is a very-- it's antiquated but it's still a very good treatment of that whole notion. [flipping of pages] Assuming that you read it a little bit we can just pull out some, ok?
[Transcriber note: I am using Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, by F. Th. Stcherbatsky, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1962.]
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 79, AD reading]: "1. the problem [AD adds: is] stated. …there are two, and only two [AD reads: There's only two] sources of knowledge, the senses and the understanding, and to the fact that they are utterly heterogeneous, so as to be the one the negation of the other. We have thus [a] sensuous and non-sensuous, or a non-intelligible and an intelligible source of knowledge."
AD: How about that, you follow that? Two sources of knowledge?
[11 second pause]
RC: Well, my first reaction to that has always been why you--
AD: Start again.
RC: Why do you immediately say that-- that one is a negation of the other? And why is negation the way (it's viewed)? [someone drawing] Like I could see a different psychology would say they're complements of each other.
AD: Alright, that's his way of putting it, huh? You don't have to agree with it.
RC: Well I mean is that-- is there some kind of logic behind that or is it a-- a symbol--
AD (simultaneously): Well, let's--
(Side 1 of original cassette tape digitized as 1977 0915a Ends; Side 2 Begins)
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 79, AD reading]: "…general, or universal, is the object corresponding to the understanding or [the] reason."
AD: Ok? Let's go back to that, see if we've got that clear in our mind. [short pause] Look, while you're doing this you'll also be understanding Kant too. Ok?
S: Tony, on the previous page where he spoke of the intelligible and the unintelligible, is he calling it-- in-- in that context is he calling the intelligible the understanding and unintelligible the senses?
AD: Well I don't want you to ask me a question, I want you to tell me what he means by this and you would be answering your question.
AH: It's like the senses have experience, and the-- the other faculty of intelligence makes connections and generalization.
AD: Alright then. Alright. Go ahead.
AH: I think it would be two-- even though the first-- the first factor would be two-dimensional or experiences which provide it, and the third dimension is the other function where-- where the imagination and the various qualities of the mind that we had on the board tie it together. They provide a sense of an "I", provide sense of continuity.
AD: So in other words, as you're speaking to me, and there is this phonetics of the sound, alright, let's say roughly that would correspond to the sens-- sensory input, you know. And then, in understanding what you're saying, that would be like the conceptual side or the understanding side. But yet they're both involved in-- in this utterance on your part. Yeah.
LDS: Yeah really I think we've mentioned it. In speaking about it, we're abstracting from our experience. But the two are never separated, that is the sensible and the intelligible.
AD (simultaneously): Intelligible. But as far as in our experience [couple/three words inaudible]
LDS (simultaneously): Yeah. But he-- theoretically, or at least to accommodate the epistemology, and I think also-- even in the first paragraph there I thought before this book is mainly to deal with epistemology but right there in the first paragraph he's also bringing in the Buddhist ontology in the sense of saying that the-- the sensible is the ultimately real, that the instantaneous-- that or being or existence--
AD: Yeah but I'm not interested in that. That's true, but I'm not interested in that, I'm interested in this clarification of sensation and understanding, the senses and the understanding.
LDS: Well I was going to say that the-- the sensing is-- is the real and where the-- the intelligible would be the-- they're going to call it the unreal.
AD: Ok. The sensing is direct.
LDS: It's direct, it's immediate-- immediate--
AD (simultaneously): Immediate. Ok. The understanding is indirect, mediating.
S (very faint): Yeah.
LDS: Less-- less efficacious, less efficient.
AD: Ok.
LDS: Less vivid.
AD: Less vivid. Yeah because sensation is very vivid. I mean you may not be able to say "ouch" or "pain" when you put your hands on a stove, but you move fast enough. (laughter) Go ahead [one word inaudible]
S: I just don't understand how they would solve-- If-- if there's a different understanding that comes from-- of the-- the [one word inaudible] of two things or several instants, so that (their) understanding is built up. I--
AD: We're not discussing that. That may be so but what we're discussing now is to see if in our imagination [S: Yeah.] we could separate these two things. Not that we can actually separate them. Like Kant speaks about sensation as the thing-in-itself. Whatever the senses grasp, this thing-in-itself, we don't know what it is. We won't get involved in talking about this unknown 'x', ok. But we will say, there's sensation there.
S (simultaneously): Ok, so they're both-- both things are there and it doesn't matter why they're there in a sense.
AD: (No.) Right now what we want to make clear in our mind is this very dichotomy that he's going to work with. There's certain things that affect a sensation, [student assents, faint] alright. And they're immediate and vivid, efficient, they-- they're-- they preclude any conceptual judgment. [student assents, faint] They preclude that, ok? [S: Yeah.] And the second part of that is when you start saying certain things about, give it certain attributes, that's the reflexive or the understanding part. Now these two are always together for us. Just like when Sunday when we spoke about, for instance, if I write or if I play a piece of music, alright? Now, you don't hear the laws of composition but they're there. They're included in the very sensation of the sound. [student assents, faint] Alright, so the-- these two factors of our experience are always together and it's through this reflexive analogy or through this transcendental reflection that we're separating them in our mind and say, "Yes, the senses go out, they grasp something. And then the mind tells us what it is that is being grasped."
S: But it's simultaneous.
AD: Well, for us it's simultaneous, yes. For us it's simul-- You don't see the senses go out grab something and then the understanding coming later and saying, "Now, this is what that is."
S (simultaneously): No, no but you know-- you know how they talk about apperception or like understanding (being) [one word inaudible] the reflex.
AD (simultaneously): No, apperception would be more reflective.
S: They talk about understanding as being the reflex, which will make it appear as a [few words inaudible] in other words, you could ask what happened in a two step form.
AD: Well, as far as we are concerned, as far as we are concerned, it's not two steps. Although, I would say this much, that when you, let's say, have the sensation of an object, if sensation, if it was pure sensation, you would not have perception of a thing but an indeterminate perception. But insofar that you have perception, it must be determinate, it's about some thing. And that's the only way you're going to know it. If it's indeterminate, you're not going to know it. [student assents, faint] So these two steps, as far as we are concerned, are always together. [student assents, faint] It may not be so, but as far as we're concerned. Go ahead.
S: Would an example of like the distinction between two of them be say you're walking down the street and you see somebody that you recognize and you know. You don't know where, you don't know what his name is--
AD: No, no, that wouldn't be an example. The example would be immediate. You're walking down the street and you see someone. That's it. They're together. [AH simultaneously: I--] The sensation and the seeing of someone.
AH: Actually, it's not possible to provide an example.
AD: No, it isn't.
AH: Because you have to use the sense(--/.)
AD: I'm telling you, you can't take an example because you don't have something in-- in your attention and then say "Ah, I know what it is." If you had something in your attention at the same time you know what it is in the sense that you had attributes to ascribe to it-- So you say you see a man walking. That's already some thing. It's not pure sensation.
AH: You can't give an example [S simultaneously: Oh, sure, maybe what--] of pure sensation in terms of verbalization.
AD: No. Or an example might be from television, you know. When the electrical impulse, let's say the electricity hits the tube and explodes, alright, and you say well be-- ac-- when it explodes, you know, the electricity, before it explodes, that's like sensation, and then when it explodes the picture appears, alright, and the two of them are working so fast that you can't separate one from the other. You don't see electrical flashes of light, you see a picture. But if you really examine the television, you'll see that the picture you see is constituted of so many dots or flashes of light.
RC: Would you say that like the distinction of one sensation from another is all on the other side?
AD: Is all on the other side. [AD taps on board]
RC: It's not on the side of sensation.
AD: All on the other side. Did you ever try tasting a potato with your nose closed? You won't taste the potato. I can give you an onion instead and you won't know the difference. So that there has to be the [few inaudible student words simultaneous with AD] two concepts before one has an experience of an object.
RC: But it seems like that would be cutting off the senses.
AD: That would be cutting off the concepts (of) the senses deliver.
RC: The nose can deliver a concept?
AD: Alright (let--)
EMK: Or that example of driving a Rolls Royce up in front of an Eskimo. He couldn't really come out and see it if he had no concept for it. He would-- there would be some kind of interpretation when he even had the experience of seeing something there, even if it is mythological or imaginary or whatever.
AD: Alright, we have a picture now, a little bit, of sensation and understanding, ok?
EMK: Is that right or--
AD: Yeah, yeah. Going on he says reality is kinetic. The next page he says--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," pp. 81-82, AD reading]: "There is no exception to the rule that the capacity of being the object of a purposive [AD reads: purposeful] action is the essential feature establishing reality. It is a feature coterminous with existence. [But] a thing cannot be the object of [AD adds: an action] a purposive action and cannot be efficient otherwise than by its last moment. Its former moments cannot overlap the moment of efficiency…"We maintain, says the same author, that an object can produce something only when it has reached the last moment of its existence (which is also its unique real moment), its other moments are non efficient." [AD: And he gives the example.] When a seed is turned into a sprout, this is done by the last moment of the seed, not by those moments when it lay placidly in the granary. One might object that all the preceding moments of the seed are the indirect causes of the sprout. But this is impossible, because if the seed would not change every moment, its nature would be to endure and never to change. If it is said that the moment of the sprout is produced by a "totality" of causes and conditions, the same applies to every moment, since every moment has its own totality… "This our moment…is the moment when an action…is finished." By an action, in this sense, is never finished, every moment is necessarily followed by a next moment.""
AD: Alright, going down.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 82, AD reading]: "The identity of the foregoing moments in the existence of a thing consists simply in disregarding their difference. The break in this identity is not a break in their motion, it always is something imagined, it is an integration of moments whose difference we are not able to notice. [AD: And then--]"The essence of reality is motion", [says Santiraksita]. Reality indeed is kinetic, the world is a cinema. Causality, i.e., the interdependence of the moments following [AD reads: follow] one another, evokes [AD reads: they evoke] the illusion of stability or duration, but they are, so to speak, forces or energies flashing into existence without any real enduring substance in them, but also without intervals or with infinitesimally small intervals."
AD: If we want, we can take for instance, as an analogy. Let's line up a whole bunch of bulbs here. This is the one PB uses, you remember? You have a whole string of bulbs here, alright? I'm sorry, you can't see from there. You take a whole string of bulbs, [drawing] one after the other, ok, and (leave) them in place, alright. And we got-- we got them connected by a current, ok. Now this light goes on and off. This light goes on and off. This goes on, off, on, off, on, off, ok, going down. Now it would seem that the light is moving. The light is not moving. This goes on and it's off, alright. Then this one goes on and it's off, this one goes on. And it seems that there's motion. You get the picture?
S: [few words inaudible] more.
AD: You get the picture here? You get the picture?
S: Yeah.
DB: Is what you're saying then that there's an appearance of movement but what--
AD: There's no thing, so how could there be something in motion?
S (faint): Uh-hm.
DB: Well, that's-- I'm-- what I'm saying is that there is an appearance that the light moves but there's actually only the light in specific discrete [couple words inaudible] in the analogy. There's no movement, only--
AD: There's nothing moving. [drawing]
DB: Right.
AD: There's nothing moving. [drawing] But it does seem that this light is moving in that direction. Go ahead.
TM: Well [couple words inaudible] (especially in/stretching) that analogy, that a movement is only discernable by a comparison. And in order to facilitate a comparison then you have to consider something static or something-- something static in movement of the world. I'm just wondering how they would answer that question.
AD (simultaneously): I don't understand your question.
TM: Ok. You have there-- ok you see-- The reason you perceive a mo-- moment-- a movement is not-- if you just perceived one light bulb, then one light bulb, then one light bulb, you wouldn't really perceive movement, you-- you'd perceive a-- a compare-- you (can only/could always) compare, you-- you-- you perceive this, then that, then that, then that, then that, and it--
AD: No! You don't perceive this, that, that, and that. The point is that you perceive a stream of light move. You don't perceive bits of light.
TM: Ok, you did perceive a stream of light moving.
AD: Move.
TM: Ok.
AD: (Yeah.)
TM: I'll agree with that. Why do you perceive a stream of li-- of light moving, just in the analogy?
AD: Well if in-- in terms of the analogy you want to use that the background may be static and therefore it seems that there's motion, that background which is static is also in motion but a slower motion or slower-- slower movement. In other words like if you took a picture, if you imagine a picture being thrown on a screen, alright, and there's a man in the picture moving, alright, the background doesn't-- doesn't move, let's say the table is standing still in the picture. But at the same time, not only is the man moving in the picture but that table is moving because one s-- one image after another is being thrown out.
TM (simultaneously): Ok, ok, I see what you mean.
AH: It-- he derives this erroneous (motion/notion)-- I mean when they talk about something static in order to have motion, is-- that is the static is just as irrelevant [few words inaudible] in that analogy.
AD: I didn't follow.
AH: It's ok. Looks like it-- looks like something's moving but it really isn't, you know, of the analogy. And that Tom was saying that, well in order to have something move you also have to agree that there's something that's not moving, that that static background would be equally--
AD: In motion.
AH: In motion or in error.
AD: Because there's nothing that is static in the conception that they're working with.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 82, AD reading]: "Reality is kinetic, the world is a cinema. Causality, i.e., [AD reads: or] the interdependence of the moments following one another, evokes the illusion of stability or duration, but they are, so to speak, [forces or] energies flashing into existence without any real enduring substance in them, [but] also without intervals or with infinitesimally small intervals."
S: Anthony, just-- you know, just as-- in comparison with Plato, I mean, the motion that-- they just have motion, they didn't have that.
AD: Yeah, don't compare it yet because we will do that privately, not in the Buddhist class but (then/that) after.
S: Ok.
AD: (Scrap/Schlep) the whole thing.
DB: Is the-- the evocation of the movement in the analogy, the light moving, is that considered to be within the understanding or was it an-- or is it an error of the understanding or an error of--
AD: Alright, let's put that aside now. These questions they will answer as we go along, you'll see the way they answer it.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 82, AD reading]: "The idea that there is no stability in the external world and that existence is nothing but a flow of external becoming, is familiar to us from the history of Greek philosophy [AD reads: of the Greeks]…"
AD: Alright, going on to the next problem, the next paragraph.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 83, AD reading]: "[AD adds: So] We are faced in India by two quite different theories of [AD adds: a] Universal Flux. The motion representing the world-process is either a continuous motion or it is a discontinuous, although compact, [one]. [AD adds: Now] The latter consists of an infinity of discrete moments following one another almost without intervals. In the first case the phenomena are nothing but waves or fluctuations standing out upon a back-ground of an eternal, all-pervading, undifferentiated Matter with which they are identical. [AD adds: And here] The Universe represents a legato movement. In the second case there is no matter at all, flashes of energy follow one another and produce the illusion of stabilized phenomena. The Universe is then a staccato movement. The first view is maintained in the Sankhya [AD reads: Samkhya] system of philosophy, the second prevails in Buddhism. We have here a case, not quite unfamiliar to the general historian of philosophy, of two contrary philosophical systems both apparently flowing from the same first principle."
AD: I'll answer this in Friday's class, not here. What I want to discuss now is Buddhism. These and-- these and many other questions that he brings up are easily answered if you have a-- a-- a grasp of the system and if you're not a historian of philosophy. Alright, this is a big paragraph because this is going to outline [short pause] two different systems of universal flux. The first one--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 83, AD reading]: "The motion representing the world-process is either a continuous motion or it is a discontinuous, although compact, one."
AD: Now, come on.
AH: Does it make any difference, and it is very very general kind of statement, he talks about-- prevails in Buddhism, would it make any difference at this point to talk about whether we're talking metaphysically or epistemol--
AD: What I've offered to do is to follow me. (Work out/Look how) (I am the shot falls). You follow me, you do the work I tell you. When I'm working for you I got to do what you tell me, now you do what I tell you. Explain it.
AH: Well-- Explain this paragraph?
S: Explain-- explain the sentence.
AD: Explain the first sentence I just read!
AH: Read-- could you read it again Tony?
AD: Don't you ask me questions, I'm supposed to ask you questions.
AH: Which sentence are we doing [one/two words inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): I just read the question.
S: Well, he wants you to do-- you do this one, two different theories, he wants that sentence [one/two words inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): You have to understand, I do not allow or-- I'm not interested in the anima, you know that. Not in philosophy, psychology. In philosophy I can tell your anima where to go. And I do. You can't control me, so let's put the bid on her.
AH: Well, in the one-- in the one case, the movement is conceived of as change and substance. In the other case, the movement--
AD: Continuous or discontinuous? [drawing/writing] Alright, let's take that down. Continuous motion or discontinuous motion.
AH: Yeah, continuous motion is change of some primordial substance.
AD: This will be continuous motion [diagram]? This will be discontinuous [diagram]?
AH/S(?): Compact.
S: Compact.
AD: Yeah? What do you think?
S (simultaneously, faint): I don't know.
TM: See-- see I would just use-- just use an analogy.
AD: Yeah, analogy.
TM: Analogy is you have a lump of clay. The continuous motion is you make a horse, then-- then you make a fish, and, you know, and have this lump of clay and you're constantly shaping it into these different images. That can be the continuous motion. The discontinuous motion--
AH: You don't have any clay.
TM: Yeah, you don't have any clay. (laughter) The discontinuous motion is like a-- is like a-- will be like a play. You know, there's just the-- a picture of a horse made of clay, then a picture of a fish made of clay, or whatever, it'd just be [one/two words inaudible] I guess-- well the discontinuous motion is--
AH (simultaneously): Tom, where'd you get the clay?
TM: Well, the clay--
AH (simultaneously): I mean in terms of the analogy.
TM: In terms of the analogy then the clay will just be a property of the image.
AD: Well, he says here for instance that in the discontinuous motion you have an infinity of distinct moments following one another without intervals. Is that right?
TM: But then he says "or".
S (very faint): Yeah [couple words inaudible]
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 83, AD reading]: "In the first case the phenomena are nothing but waves or fluctuations standing out upon a back-ground of an [eternal], all-pervading, undifferentiated Matter…"
AD: In the first case, that is, the motion representing the world process is continuous? Do you have a copy?
S (faint): Can't answer that.
S (very faint): Yeah.
S (very faint): Right.
[short pause, faint background student talking]
PD (faint): I want to see what you got.
S: Anyhow--
AD (simultaneously): See if I got it right because I-- I can't even see so you're going to have to read it for me.
S: Yeah read it.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 83, AH reading]: "…waves or fluctuations standing…"
AD (simultaneously): I miss whole lines somehow.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 83, AH reading]: "…standing out upon a back-ground of an eternal, all-pervading, undifferentiated Matter with which they are identical."
AH: That's the first (tool). That's the legato movement.
S: What's legato?
S (faint): Yeah.
S (faint): [one/two words inaudible]
S (faint): Yeah.
AD: Well, staccato is like this, when you hit a piano like that, you know. [AD demonstrates]
S: Yeah.
AD: And legato is like you hit it like that, [AD demonstrates] you know. There's hardly any--
S (faint): Yeah.
AD: Staccato is sharp, [S: Yeah.] abrupt, discrete, alright. Bang, bang, bang or-- the other one is baaang, baaang, baaang, baaang. (laughter) Now we have to distinguish these two. PB speaks about this, doesn't he somewhere?
AS: He says staccato-like.
S (simultaneously, very faint): Yeah.
GA (faint): Staccato-like, yeah, she got it.
S (faint): Well--
S: (Yeah.)
S: It'll be [couple words inaudible] unlike but it (is it).
AD: Yeah, so in-- in terms-- this would be a staccato movement [diagram], [drawing] and this would be a legato movement [diagram]. So this will be like water running out of the tap. He says not like that but like bullets coming out of a machine gun.
RC: Like (those/they're) [one/two words inaudible] yeah.
AD: [drawing] Like that? Alright. Now which one is attached to prime matter or matter?
S: The legato.
S: Legato.
S (simultaneously, faint): Legato.
AD: Legato?
S: Legato.
AD: [drawing] So matter is attached to legato movement. This is not only in Samkhya of course 'cause you could see what else this is.
AH: In another case it's almost it flashes, it produces illusion of matter.
AD: In-- in the other one, there is no matter, there's just these flashes of energy.
AH: Right.
AD: Now what connects these two for instance in the Vedantic doctrine and in Samkhya-- [drawing]
S (faint): (He speaks.)
AD: What?
AH (very faint): That's (true).
AD: In other words, if we think of the human mind, alright, and there's wave after wave, or thought after thought, it's like a legato movement because there's no real break, alright. One thought follows another thought, but there's this underlying mind which holds them together. Ok? Whereas the other one requires you to imagine the mind coming in, flashing, and out, in, flashing, and out. It's really two different conceptions.
AH: But it's not so much that-- the distinction of movement that causes the-- the schools to diverge but the notion of function as opposed to substance.
AD: Well, over here you would have the notion of substance underlying the fluctuation of the vrittis.
AH: There's something under all of the movement, whether it's fast or slow.
AD: [drawing/writing] Something here [diagram] is functioning. Over here [diagram] there's not something functioning, there's just functioning. There's no something underneath it.
AH (faint): Right.
AD: Alright, let's read the para. Look, if you follow these boys, I'm telling you, after a few months it'll be just like you vomited the biggest-- Even though I don't agree with them, I found them from a methodological point of view really efficacious, it's worse than going to a psychoanalyst. You vomit out even the psychoanalyst.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 83, AD reading]: "The motion representing the world-process is [either] a continuous motion or [it] is a discontinuous, [although compact], one. The latter consists of an infinity of discrete moments following one another almost without intervals. In the first case the phenomena…"
AD: In the first case the motion as continuous.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 83, AD reading]: "In the first case the phenomena are nothing but waves or fluctuations standing out upon a back-ground of an eternal, all-pervading, undifferentiated Matter…"
AD: And here we could use the example of the mind, alright. Thoughts break from the mind, one after the other, and you have this legato kind of movement, alright. The next--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 83, AD reading]: "…with which they are identical."
AD: I'm sorry.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 83, AD reading]: "[AD adds: And here] The Universe represents a legato movement."
AD: Alright, next.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 83, AD reading]: "In the second [case] there is no matter at all, flashes of energy follow one another and produce the illusion of stabilized phenomena [AD reads: of mind]."
AD: With its thoughts, actually. It's a totally different conception. In one case you have a mind and there's flashes or thoughts in that mind, ok, and the thoughts like are functions of that mind, the mind is just sending out these thoughts, but they always are rooted in the mind. But in the next one, there's only flashes of mind with a thought, alright, one after the other, but there's no substratum underlying them.
SP: They both have an idea of illusion, only the idea of illusion is exactly opposite. And in the first-- in the first one, in the staccato, (unless) you got a legato, the idea of illusion is that we see the change as separate from the mind, that the thoughts would be separate from the mind would be the illusion. In the staccato, it's not really this illusion. It's like they're exactly opposite theories of illusion.
AD: The continuity-- in the staccato example, the continuity which arises--
SP (simultaneously): The illusion, the illusion produces the continuity. And in the first one, the illusion produces the discontinuity.
AD: And-- and you can see that this is exactly the difference between Buddhism and Hinduism. In Hinduism, the whole point is identity. [drawing/writing] That's the whole point, ok? [student assents, faint] Over here [diagram], no. [S: Is it-- is it--] The whole point here is continuity.
SP: They both introduce the theory of illusion but it's utterly opposite.
AD: And by the way, I don't agree that these are necessarily opposite each other. They're complementary. But, this is the way--
SP: Well from each other's point of view.
AD (simultaneously): Right. From each other's point of view, we can see the Vedantist is saying, "Look, nothing's moving, don't worry about it."
SP: It's not so much movement, it's like the fact that they have a substance which-- which fluctuates. And they would say that the illusion would be to see the fluctuation as distinct from the substance.
AD: Yeah. [S simultaneously, faint: Possibly (one/two words inaudible)] To see anything other than Atma is illusion.
SP: Yeah. Not that their substance doesn't function, but to see the function as in term--
AD (simultaneously): Even that function wants to lapse-- it lapses back into it.
SP: Well I mean like if you had had like a-- a thought, they would say to see the thought as separate from the mind would be illusion, alright, to see separation.
AD: Yes, but if you don't separate the seeing from the seen, then the-- the illusion is over.
SP (simultaneously): Right, yeah. But-- but the other theory would say that you'd see a continuity of objects and so forth, and that included imagination and-- The imagination says that this, you know-- different things, you know, different--
AD: Alright, I'm going to ignore the last sentence, "of two contrary philosophical systems", I don't think they're contrary. Again, continuing--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 84, AD reading]: "The theory of Universal Momentariness implies that every duration in time consists of point-instants following one another, every extension in space consists of point-instants arising in contiguity and simultaneously, every motion consists of these point-instants arising in contiguity and in succession. There is therefore no Time, no Space, [and] no Motion over and above the point-instants of which these imagined entities are constructed by our imagination."
AD: Read it again someone please? And ask Bert or-- Just look at what they said--no time, no space, no motion.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 84, AH reading]: "The theory of Universal Momentariness…"
AD: Loud, loud, come on.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 84, AH reading]: "The theory of Universal Momentariness implies that every duration in time consists of point-instants following [AH reads: followed by] one another, every extension in space consists of point-instants arising in contiguity and simultaneously, every motion consists of these point-instants arising in contiguity and in succession. There is therefore no Time, no Space, and no Motion over and above the point-instants of which these imagined entities are constructed by our imagination."
S (very faint): What page is that?
AD: Let's try and explain that.
[short pause]
AH: That the categories-- the categories that-- of experience are provided with the experience.
[short pause]
PD: Well like a figure eight, if you have a torch and you whirl a torch, [AD: Ok.] and you see just one figure eight. The mind has taken the point-instant and constructed one continuous object whereas in truth there's a contiguity of these flashes of light that create, to our perception, one object, but which in truth [couple words inaudible] is a-- flashes of light following upon each other. Alright.
AD: Alright, that's a good example, Paul, of time. Huh? Also space because you really can't separate them.
PD: Right.
AD: It seems that that's the space right there.
PD (simultaneously): That's space, yeah.
AD: Go ahead.
LDS: The contiguity seems to refer more to space, [PD: Right.] in the sense that implied in contiguity is order. These instances-- these instants occur in a certain order which I think is related to contiguity.
PD: Figure eightness is there.
LDS: Figure eight. So that would be in space.
[short pause]
AH: Yeah, also I think the implication is there is-- that they've found nothing as a ground for the experience of our (point of view).
PD: I mean if you look at the TV set, it's two-dimensional, but your mind has projected onto those flashes of light a three-dimensional picture, you-- you think you see depth and variation. Right? Flashes of energy and imagination constructed a picture, just like when you look at a (mirror) painting. You project space into the picture.
S: I-- I don't see how-- I don't understand why the time and the motion is being related to the conti-- continuity, it's just that-- what is he saying, like succeeding point-instances but I don't understand why the space is necessarily based on [S, faint: Yeah.] continuity, why it wouldn't be almost identical with time.
AD: The la-- the last sentence?
S: Why it wouldn't be almost identical with the point-instants.
S (faint): It's a whole other principle.
AD: Why space isn't identical with the point-instants, is that it?
S: No, almost. I mean I-- I can see quite clearly how they say that time, the notion of time, the conception of time like arises from succeeding point-instances, or the notion of space arises from them. But I don't necessarily see how they--
PD: Space is a projected relationship that the ima-- understanding adds to those point-instants.
RC: (He really) just said though, the way it's said, it presupposes a sort of space in which those point-instants arise.
LDS: It almost does by the very word 'contiguity'.
RC: It does. It's actually here.
AH: The point-instant contains the space and the time and all the other qualities that are needed for an experience.
LDS: But you see the way he states it there, Andrew, is that--
AH: One is (a) first and the other follows. Or is one more important than another from the way he states it? Maybe [S simultaneously: I'm--] I'm (hinting) that it's category of space in which these point-instants explode. That's not what he's saying.
LDS: He says here--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 84, LDS reading]: "…every extension in space consists of point-instants arising in contiguity…"
S (faint): Very good.
LDS: That means side by side.
S: But that's not like [one word inaudible]
LDS (simultaneously): That's-- that's implied space.
AH: I don't think so.
AD: In other words all that [couple/three inaudible student words simultaneous with AD] space is, virtually speaking, is a multiplication of points.
AH: Space is activity.
AD: Yeah.
S: Yeah.
AD: All these point-instants, alright-- when we speak about space, it's but these point-instants.
AH: If you say that, you have a primal space in which the rest of this process takes place.
AD: No, no.
S: No.
AD: No. That's not what they're saying. Our notion of space is derived from these point-instants, just as our notion of time and causality is derived from these point-instants.
EMK: But the "point" part would refer to space and the "instant" part requiring--
AD: Time.
S (faint): Ok.
S (very faint): Yeah.
AH: Read it.
S: Reread it? Does each point-instant--
AD (simultaneously): Would you say out loud for him?
EMK: Who me?
AD: Yeah. (bit of laughter) They-- they didn't hear you.
EMK: The term point-instant, the point would be the-- the infinitesimal space and the instant would refer to time or just the-- the undimensional aspects of space and time.
RC: And then there's the third part which refers to (stuff) you put together then.
EMK: What's the third part?
RC: Motion consists of these point-instants arising.
AD: Well, you're going to see they have a very strange idea of motion here.
S (very faint): Yeah.
RC: In order to see that the way it says here is that the motion is equal to space and time moments. Space and time is motion. Spacetime.
[short pause]
AD: You have to keep in mind what they say and-- Next paragraph they say--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 85, AD reading]: "The point-instant itself, the ultimate reality cut loose from all imagination [AD adds: has no qualities, that] is qualityless, timeless and indivisible."
AD: Alright? And you have to always keep that in mind when you're speaking about their point-instant. But if we go back to this paragraph here therefore what they're saying is that in the same way that those [drawing] points of light, you know, on the bulb, the same way that they created-- you see the light going here, here, here, alright, this motion going here, the same way that it creates your feeling of motion, it also creates the notion of space because space is built up from all those point-instants on which the imagination, so to speak, projects, or constructs upon that, that's a presupposition or prerequisite. Go ahead.
S: Why-- why--
AD: The television here again is the only kind-- is the only example we really have. Because a television, light, you know, when it explodes and creates a picture, alright, and in that picture you see space. There is no space outside of that.
S: I think you're really [one word inaudible]
LS (simultaneously): Yeah but even there you're only creating with your imagination one of the dimensions which is missing.
S: Yeah all--
LS (simultaneously): Because, the two dimensions are there on the television screen. It's only the third dimension the imagination is creating. It seems that what the picture he actually presented here, if I'm imaginati-- imagining it correctly, is the point-instants can't be imagined as having any sort of structure. All structure is imaginative structure.
AD: Yeah.
LS: There's like a potentiality of structure present in them, or so that the imagination can only work in certain ways and present an efficient experience. Perhaps, right [few words inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): Yeah, you remember, you remember in-- remember in the old days they would have "Connect these points." And they would give you ten points and when you connect them a face would appear. Remember in the old journals they-- Or connect these points and a vase would appear or something.
TM: But even using a television, in a television you're in a picture. It just that it's blinking these dots at you, real simple.
S: Well it is a dot.
LS: But still there's the two-dimensions present and [couple words inaudible] takes place and with respect in (the/a) picture [couple words inaudible]
S: Well, I mean, the lower (anyway).
LS (simultaneously): But the space that these guys are talking about doesn't have anymore.
S: Yeah but the television's only an analogy.
S (faint): Yeah I-- I can understand that.
TM: Because you are-- you're (not) really spreading the forms out with the-- with the particular dot then another.
S: I'm ha-- I'm having trouble with the analogy because it's like if you-- if he-- if you stop-- I'm getting the impression that he's speaking of the imagination as if something outside projected onto these point-instants but somehow these-- what they're calling the imagination has to be [one word inaudible] what arises as the imagination has to be contained, so to speak, within the point-instants also. So when we speak-- when we speak of a television analogy like that's-- like-- like we're already outside of that 'cause that's, you know, projecting something onto it. But the way they're speaking of it, and if I'm understanding it, is that the ima-- whatever elements constitute what they're calling imagination are-- are also within those-- within those point-instants.
AH: Isn't it (the) point-instants are seen as a continuity, there arises a sense of an "I" and a sense of imagination?
AD: They're seen as continuity and there arises (then/in) the sense of space.
[short pause]
AH: I've never talked about the imagination and never talk about--
AD: Well, let's leave out the imagination. What we're talking about here is the subtle-- the point-instants and subtle space and time. They are the basis on which space and time are constructed. Go ahead.
DB: How can these-- these point-instants are spoken of as one following upon another with the-- only the minutest interval. How is it possible to speak-- I mean how do you combine that notion and a question of the-- you get them simultaneously, they're being provided simultaneously as in the appearance of space. On the-- on the one hand it appears that the time-- one follows upon another and the idea "duration in time" is being-- is delivered. And, then on the other hand they all happen at the same-- you know, simultaneously at the same time, you have a notion of space. So it seems that they're operating, I mean from that paragraph, in two ways, simultaneously. Each way--
AD (simultaneously): Wait, wait, wait, wait. You have a point-instant, [DB assents, faint] alright, and then another point-instant, [DB assents, faint] and a third point-instant. The first point-instant contains many point-instants, I mean it isn't just one point-instant. It's all of-- of that manifested universe is constructed of point-instants, then another set of point-instants, another set of point-in-- It isn't one point-instant.
DB: So what-- so then what you're saying is that there's one point-instant within which there's a variety of prior point-instants.
AD (simultaneously): You know, if-- if we take that as the screen on which the picture is being projected, alright? [DB, faint: Yeah.] And we know that the frame, you know, as it goes in front of the light, alright, we know that this frame here, this thing, is going to get projected out there, is composed of many, many particles.
DB: Right.
AD: Alright? And they're going to get projected out there, [DB assents] alright. Then the next still, that too contains many particles or point-instants of matter which get projected out there. [DB: Right.] So, your question is based on a-- a misunderstanding of what they're saying, that one point-instant gets projected out there.
S (very faint): Uh-hm.
AH: So then I don't--
DB: Well, you see what I-- what I don't-- [short pause] well--
AD: Go ahead, try again.
DB: Yeah, I can-- I can grasp the notion of-- of a point-instant containing within itself--
AD: To yourself, alright? Suppose you try to grasp point-instant as representing time for me. You'd have trouble.
DB: Wait a minute, can-- (bit of laughter) I tried--
AD: You're basing yourself on a numerical understanding of point-instant. You think that the Buddhists are saying one point-instant explodes and becomes your manifested world. Point-instants. 'S' is at the end.
DB: Well, then how-- then how is it-- I mean how do you combine the notion of their following one upon another and their simultaneity? I mean I-- [S, very faint: Yeah.] I mean that's what I-- that's what I can't grasp, I can-- either they can operate one way or-- or another but, you know, what's the priority in terms of them operating in both fashions, you know?
LDS: Maybe it depends on what point of view you're coming from. From-- from our point of view they-- they appear simultaneous.
DB: Well, then, if that were the case why would-- why would there [couple words inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): Don't think of point-instants as numerical entities.
S (faint): Yeah.
LS: Tony, could I try a mathematical [AD simultaneously: Yeah.] analogy maybe. If you look at the line where modern mathematics starts, it's made up of a discrete set of points, alright. But between any two points on a line there's an infinite number of points.
DB: Right.
LS: There is no thing about a new point following next upon another point.
AD: That won't happen. It never will.
LS (simultaneously): No way you can find your [few words inaudible] (bit of laughter) There isn't any next point, ok? [DB: So then--] But on the other hand the points follow upon each other.
DB: No, I can't-- I tried. But, (laughter) there's an interval or there isn't, you know?
LS: That's not true though.
DB: Well-- Look, the only-- the only way I can [couple/three words inaudible]
LS (simultaneously): In other words, the numer-- the numerat-- the numeration that happens there is completely non-integral. It has nothing to do with integers. If you counted 1, 2, 3, 4 you have nothing to do with the continuity of the line. You've lost it completely. The continuity of the line as a-- as a numerical system is completely incommensurable with the way you're counting.
AD: If you can grasp that, that's the idea.
DB: Go on.
AD: Well, go over it in your mind!
S: (Yeah.)
DB: Well, I mean--
AD: I mean I never was a born Buddhist! [DB: You've got--] Even with the best luck you won't make it. (laughter)
DB: Let me just-- we've got this-- we've got this projector, right? Now, in this projector I'm-- you know, this is the-- what--
AD (simultaneously): Listen to what he just said because that's a perfect way of putting it.
DB: No, but I mean--
AD: No, write it down and go over it.
S (faint): Yeah.
S (very faint): Uh-hm.
AD: It's--
DB: No I'm-- look, in the first place I'm not a mathematician and I haven't studied, you know--
AD: It's got nothing to do with whether you can think or not whether you're a mathematician. The hell makes you think that only mathematicians could think?
DB: I never said that.
AD: Well, what are you implying then?
DB: I'm implying, the mathematical--
AD (simultaneously): You said you can't think.
DB: I do not, I said-- (laughter) [few words inaudible] I didn't say that, I said I'm not a mathematician.
AD: You're not a mathematician, "therefore I can't think this out".
DB: No, therefore is that--
AD: "I can't think this out."
DB: Therefore his analogy--
AD: "I can't think this out." (laughter)
[Audio File 1977 0915a Ends]
[Audio File 1977 0915b Begins]
LS: --two brackets up.
DB: Right.
LS: It also goes sixty-four straight seconds, [DB assents] (ad infinitum). That other point-instant. Between any two frames there's another.
DB: Yeah, ok, and what's the point-instant? (some laughter)
LS: You don't have to say in mathematics, the movie does it fine. If it's-- if it's slow motion or it's fast motion that you like 'cause that's the way experience comes.
DB: Ok, well you see now that-- you see, for me, when you've got this moving still-- these moving stills, that provides me with the notion of duration. Right? I mean, we're calling each one of these stills a point-instant in the analogy. Is that right?
LS (simultaneously): Yeah, then you've got all these movies going simultaneously, the 8 frame, the 16, 32, 64, 128.
DB: Right, and the whole movie being, you know, just blown out on the screen all at once. And then you've got space, you know. But uh--
AD: What we call space.
DB: Well, isn't--
AD (simultaneously): Corporeal space. In other [DB simultaneously: Well--] words, it's part of that image thrown out. Like I said, between me and that pole is not empty space but a kind of corporeal space.
DB: Right.
AD: Yeah.
DB: Well I mean but that would-- now that would be within each--
AD (simultaneously): That would be included within the point-instants that the im-- [DB assents] let's say, is going to be constructed.
DB: Right. But not within the idea of the whole film being projected simultaneously.
AD (simultaneously): No, no.
DB: See that's-- that's my confusion, you know, because I mean from what you're saying it seems that we don't need, I mean in the analogy, more than one point-instant to provide you with a notion of space, that within this particular picture you've got some variety of extension, relation of objects one to another and all the rest. Very well and good. But-- now he--
PD: In any particular picture, though, [DB: Yeah.] is an indefinite number of point-instants there.
DB: Ok. Now you've got this-- and-- but these point-instants, if you see, are behaving not in terms of movement, one upon another, but in terms of simultaneity. I mean because you've got the one image and you've got the whole picture there. You don't have the image on the screen and then-- or not the image on the screen but the left-hand corner filled in and then another and then-- and then finally you get-- get the-- the whole picture. That all happens at once. [student assents, faint] See what I'm saying is that, I mean, there seems to be two varieties of operation these point-instants have. And, you know, all I-- all I wanted to know is where (he starts/you start).
AH: Whether they're continuous or whether they're happening in sequence.
DB: Yeah, sequence.
AH: Now let's-- the notion of sequence or continuity--
AD: That too is going to be derived.
AH: That's derived.
DB: The notion of sequence.
AD: Yeah.
AH (faint): Yeah.
AD: In other words, we say point-instant, point-instant, you know, [DB: Uh-hm.] but we're already presupposing time.
DB: Oh yeah 'cause that whole thing happens.
AD (simultaneously): See, but we can't help ourselves right now. [DB assents] You can't speak in-- except in an incorrect mode.
RC: Ok, I'm going to [few words inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): Here, he says for instance here, uh-- [9 second pause] The end of the paragraph on duration and extension are not real, at the end-- the last paragraph he says--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 87, AD reading]: "Thus it is that ultimate reality for the Buddhist is timeless, spaceless and motionless."
AD: Because these are all things constructed after the point-instants. We have to imagine, and of course we can't because-- we have to arising-- imagine the point-instant arising and disappearing at the same time it arises. It really places us in a paradoxical situation. But we see that, for instance, on the television, alright, where the explosion of light, the a-- is the arisal of light and its disappearance at the same time. [student assents, faint] If you can imagine yourself as a cosmic being, alright, take that position, alright, and now you see the whole of the universe manifesting but like a film, you know, one image after the other, the whole thing gets played out, alright. And in this sense we can see that for the Buddhist there's nothing, absolutely nothing within the manifested universe that is not subject to this change, motion, constant. Never is there what seems, you know, a-- a moment of rest. There is no such thing anywhere in the universe. [student assents, faint] And this is their standpoint which is very scientific, I mean, if we wanted to take scientific point of view, you look at a stone, it's not lying inert. It's in ceaseless motion.
S (very faint): Uh-hm.
S (faint): Yeah.
S: Go.
AD: Go ahead, uh--
S: Well only that, I mean, from the sci-- from the scientific mo-- position or the Buddhist position, there isn't a stone which is in motion. There's only motion on which, you know-- on which we say "This stone moves." But in reality there isn't a stone move, there's just this movement, one--
AD: Yeah, it's like if you had the stone on-- in a picture, in the image, you know, in the film, alright, and it's lying inert. But you-- the next film, the next, I mean-- slit after slit, or what do they call it, slot after slot, alright, that stone seems to be lying still. But according to the Buddhist, if the whole world is a constant succession of these images one following after another, then that stone isn't lying still, although it appears relatively to an observer to be lying still. Go ahead, uh--
RC: Ok. In a sense what we were reading before about sensation being one source of knowledge and-- and the other source of knowledge that intelligible fact. Would the point-instant belong to the sensation side?
AD: Yeah, let's read that argument he goes here in-- into, "Argument From Direct Perception".
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 87, AD reading]: "The momentary character of everything existing is [further] established by arguments from perception and inference. The first of them is an argument from direct perception. That sensation is a momentary flash is proved by introspection. But [AD reads: By] a momentary sensation is but the reflex of a momentary thing. [AD: Let's read this through.] It cannot seize neither what precedes nor what follows. Just as when we perceive a patch of blue colour in a momentary sensation, we perceive just [AD adds: that] the thing which corresponds to that sensation, i.e., the blue and not the yellow, even so do we perceive in that sensation just the present moment, not the preceding one, and not the following one. When the existence of a patch of blue is perceived, its non-existence, or absence, is eo ipso excluded and hence its existence in the former and in the following moments are also excluded. The present moment alone is seized by sensation."
AD: Now try to grasp this here. You get this feeling of this vortex, you know, that underlies all perceptual arrangement of this data.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 87, AD reading]: "Since all external objects are reducible to sense-data, and [the] corresponding sensations are always confined to a single moment, it becomes clear that all objects, as far as they affect us, are momentary existences. The duration of the object beyond the moment of sensation cannot be warranted by sensation itself…"
AD: And this is an important point. Go ahead.
LS (simultaneously): Then what we get-- so you have neither-- you don't have the static stone sitting in front of you and you also don't have the motion. They're both cancelled.
AD: Yeah.
RC: I'd almost say that the mo-- the notion of a moment of sensation is constructed.
AD: Again, again, you're criticizing these people because they cannot find a correct mode of saying what they want to say.
RC: Yeah.
AD: Because the very notion of seizing this moment is already something after the fact. [RC, faint: Ok.] And you're blaming them but (they/that) can't be helped. Our language is a dualistic language. It's not a language built on a prioris.
RC: What I was trying to ask before was if-- if-- if all these things like extension in space, duration in time which gives rise to the idea of a moment, and motion and all that, if that's all on the side of what they're calling intelligible.
AD: Yeah, the constructed.
RC (simultaneously): And-- yeah, and point-instants will always remain--
AD: Inutterable.
RC: Both by fact and definition.
S (faint): Right.
RC: Unintelligible.
AD: So in continuing, he goes on exactly to that point.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 87, AD reading]: "…it becomes clear that all objects, as far as they affect us, are momentary existences. The duration of the object beyond the moment of sensation cannot be warranted by sensation itself, [AD: And here--] it is an extension of that sensation, a construction of our imagination. The latter constructs the image of the object, [AD: That is, our imagination constructs the image of the object.] when stimulated by sensation, but sensation alone, pure sensation, points to an instantaneous object."
AD: So if you ha-- like if you're sleeping, all of a sudden someone pokes you, ok. Now you-- you take that contact, you know, the touch contact, and you interpret it to someone strangling you. Alright, your imagination constructed a picture. But all that happened was a contact. Now you-- like you can see there two sides here. On the one side there's a stimulus, the body stimulating, you know, reaches the body, and then the imagination constructs an image out of it. Now you say where does one end and the other begin? You can't! In the sa-- in the way that you can't say that-- the point they're making here is that--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 87, AD reading]: "The duration of the object beyond the moment of sensation cannot be warranted by sensation itself…"
AD: Sensation ca-- doesn't say that this cup, alright, is the same as the cup the next moment. Sensation doesn't say that. Your imagination says that.
RC (very faint): Sensation doesn't say "the cup".
AD: Alright, now, the language is faulty, we can't-- we can't help it.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 87, AD reading]: "The latter constructs the image of the object…"
AD: The productive ima-- This is by the way the same thing Kant says. The productive imagination, alright, paints a portrait of this thing-in-itself and delivers it to you for your experience. [short pause] Um--
S: Are we gonna-- are they going to go into at all what-- what the nature of this imagination [couple words inaudible]
AD: They go into it in absolute detail. These boys-- these boys are so fantastic, you know, whether you like them or not, I mean-- On page 142, he makes a remark something like this.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "Causation," pp. 141-142, AD reading]: "[Nay], although the literal translation of the Sanscrit and Pali words [which] have been framed for its designation cannot be anything else than Dependent Origination, the majority of scholars imagined for it every meaning, possible and impossible, except the meaning of dependent origination. [AD: Why?] The reason for this lies in the circumstance that it seemed [highly] improbable, too improbable beside [AD reads: besides] sheer logical possibility, that the Indians should have [had] at so early a date in the history of human thought a doctrine of Causation so entirely modern, the same in principle as the one accepted in [AD reads: by] the most advanced modern sciences [AD reads: science]."
AD: Ok? Don't ever make the mistake of underestimating any of the thinkers, I keep telling this to everybody in the class, PhD's, MA's, tool workers, collectors. We're students. If you forget that, you're in trouble! Anybody in thi-- on the quest who forgets that, he's in trouble, real trouble!! Except if you're liberated. In that case, none of us have a problem. Let's read the next, number 6, "Recognition Does Not Prove Duration." Let's see if we can get a feeling for what--
Could you believe that these people here, you know-- I mean if they got into a dialectical discussion, now this was serious for them, don't think that they were joking around. [S, faint: Yeah, I know that.] When they got into a dialectical discussion, let's say I was a Mimamsa and I argued with a Buddhist and I lost. I had to give up my Mimamsa faith and become a Buddhist. You know what that would mean to some people? They would rather die. They wouldn't-- it wasn't a chivalry tournament. These people meant it with their blood. When you accepted a doctrine, that was it for you. Period. It isn't like you get up in front of a class-- I remember one professor, "Well, I don't really, you know, believe this but I do believe this." And you can see that he never lived by it. I couldn't be in with these people. I wouldn't know what the hell you're talking about. You believed it, you lived it, you ate it, you drank it, you slept with it. Otherwise you had no part in this business. So we-- we have to take them as being quite serious. Who was it, the follower of the Mimamsa school, Kumarila? Alright, somebody came over and wanted to argue with him about the truth of Vedanta, he (said/says), "Look, I'm too busy now, I'm going to burn myself, immolate myself, but I'll send you to one of my-- one of my disciples." (bit of laughter) He had just lost an argument. [short pause] And that's why-- that's why I really want to study the Sophista in this fall. I want you to see the way Plato really pursues, like a hunter on the track of a criminal, the meaning of what a sophist is. It's an experience that is unforgettable if it's read in the right way. You know what a sophist is? Comes up with six definitions. Let's try.
[short pause]
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 88, AD reading]: "…the Realist makes the following objection."
AD: And the realist here is usually a Nyaya logician.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 88, AD reading]: "It is true, says he, that sensation apprehends only a blue colored surface and that it does not apprehend at the same time something different from it."
AD: By the way, do you remember last year when you were studying in Buddhism? They pointed out that the sense-organs cannot be mistaken. What can be mistaken is the concept that you formulate. So manas is indirect, alright, but the indriyas are never anything but direct. Don't you remember that? You should.
S: Ok well I'm not-- I'm not-- I'm not sure yet I've under-- I mean, I'm not sure-- I won't say that I understand what they mean by these-- by these point-instants yet, alright. But it seems to me that if there's-- if there's-- if all there is is these momentary flashes, alright, then-- then what-- what we're calling the imagination is-- is somehow contained within those point flashes, alright.
AD: That may be true, that may be true. PB also makes the remark somewhere, you remember the point he makes about karma? The abiding, dissolution and-- [S: Yeah the rising--] the abiding, dissolution of karma is the twin-function to that of ideation but we won't jump to that conclusion right now. In other words, if there is this energy, there's also certain images that accompany this energy. Or, if you take the Platonist point of view they would simply call these Intelligible, the Intelligible World is being given to the manas, the individual mind, which it translates into your experience. Ah, I can't find it, you'll have to look for it yourself. Ah--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 88, AD reading]: "It is true, [says he], that sensation apprehends only a blue coloured surface and that it does not apprehend at that time something different from it. [But] we cannot go all the length of maintaining that sensation apprehends the precise time of its duration and that this duration is momentary. Sensation itself lasts for more than a moment, it can last for two or three moments. It is not at all proved that it lasts only a single moment, and it is not at all impossible that a thing endures and produces gradually a series of sensations the one after the other.
"The Buddhist answers. Let us…admit that the momentary character of all existence is not reflected directly in our cognition."
AD: He's saying here these point-instants are not reflected in our thinking, in our understanding, in our cognition, in our knowing.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 88, AD reading]: "…(…is duration reflected directly?). Yes it is! says the Realist. There is a consecrated fact, the fact of Recognition which proves the stability and duration of things, it is a cognition of the pattern"this is the same crystal gem (which I have seen before")."
AD: This is the same [AD demonstrates] cup I have seen before.
[short pause]
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 88, AD reading]: "This [AD reads: The] judgment, answers the Buddhist, does not at all prove the stability and duration of the crystal, it does not prove that its former condition is quite the same as its present condition [AD reads: one]."
AD: The fact that I say this is the same crystal as I saw before doesn't prove it. Because, like if you're a real, you know, magician, you could slip-- I put it down, you slip and put another-- it's the same cup. That doesn't prove anything.
[short pause]
AD: Um--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 88, AD reading]: "…it does not prove the stability and duration of the crystal, it does not prove that its former condition is quite the same as its present condition."
AD: And that of course is very obvious. This cup is not the same one from the one a moment ago because a moment went by. I could put it to you that simply.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 88, AD reading]: "And if this is not proved, nothing lies in the way of our assuming that there is an imperceptible [AD: And you have to follow this."…an imperceptible] uninterrupted process of change even in the crystal gem. [AD: The hardest substance known to man.] It will then be not an enduring substance, but a change of momentary existences following one another. Indeed, the judgment "this is that [AD reads: the] same crystal" is an illicit association of two utterly heterogeneous elements which have nothing in common. The element "this" refers to the present, to a sensation and to a real object. The element "that" refers to the past, to something surviving exclusively in the imagination and memory."
AD: So if we take-- if we go back to our image, you know, there's the film projected on the screen and in this-- in-- in this one slit I'm saying "This is the same cup", already twenty stills went by as I'm saying it. Or the same like Plato when he said, "We can't even call it its-- by its name and it's already gone." We no sooner say "this" and it's gone. Think of for instance-- Imagine a tree reflected in a river and the river is flowing. And you say "This tree." What tree are you talking about? That-- the substratum of that image is already changed a hundred times. Ok? This is what the Buddhists are saying. Like Eckhart--"Every hello is a goodbye." You can't say hello twice. (laughter) That's the way these people are tea-- talking to us. You think the world's going to stop to allow you to explain itself? (laughter) We're like a bunch of idiots. You remember that-- that one about the Zen student who was hanging off a cliff, one tiger above, the other one below? [S: Yeah.] Then, "Ooh, what a beautiful strawberry." (bit of laughter, AD laughs) Two tigers facing him and "What a nice strawberry." Yeah, that's humanity.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 88, AD reading]: "They are as different as heat and cold. Their unity cannot be created even by the almighty god Indra [AD reads: himself]!"
AD: Now you get the feeling what they're talking about? This cup has already changed twenty times. If this whole panorama of universal existence from instant to instant is changing and I say this cup is the same cup I just saw-- No sir. He says, "That unity can't be provided for."
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 88, AD reading]: "Memory whose function is limited to the past…"
AD: Follow this because they're using the logicians' logic on themselves.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 88, AD reading]: "Memory whose function is limited to the past cannot grasp the present moment, nor can sensation, whose function is limited to the present, apprehend the past."
AD: Go over that line, and notice-- I mean it's just like somebody hit you with a twelve pound-- twelve pound sledgehammer. Memory only applies to the past. You can't have memory of the future, right? Or even the present. Because memory applies to something in the past. The definition of memory is, "I remember that thing." That means that the thing that you see now is something from the past which you remembered. It isn't something you see now. Now, sensation is the reverse. Sensation can only see what's in the present. It can't grasp something in the past. I can't hear the note that sounded five minutes ago. Sensation lives in the-- in the present; memory, in the past. So he says by these two principles alone, I've already deprived you of your argument!
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," pp. 88-89, AD reading]: "When there is a discrepancy in the causes, the effect cannot be identical, or else the result would be produced not by the causes, but at haphazard. Memory and sensation have each their respective field of action and their own result, they cannot mix up so as to work the one in the field of the other [AD reads: of another]. Recognition is not to be distinguished from memory…"
S (faint): (That's unique then.)
AD: Yeah.
AH: Recognition--
AD: --is not to be distinguished from memory, they're one and the same thing.
AH: To know is to remember.
AD: Yeah. Of course Plato on that builds up this huge idea of reminiscence. But anyway.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 89, AD reading]: "Recognition is not to be distinguished from memory, and memory is produced by thought construction, it is not a direct reflex of reality."
AD: In other words, what he's saying here is the memory of a thing that I have is something which is what my imagination produced and then I memorized that. There's a memory, a reproduction of that, ok? And this is what my memory holds. It doesn't hold the sensation, it can't! You try yourself and you'll see that it can't be done. Sensation is always a present day factor, a present moment.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 89, AD reading]: "Therefore the contention of the Realist that recognition proves duration betrays only his desire that it should do so."
AD: I wish the Buddhists wouldn't be so damn psychological. (bit of laughter) Let's go to the next paragraph, ok, on-- in-- in the section 7. There's a paragraph, the last paragraph.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," pp. 90-91, AD reading]: "The deduction of momentariness from existence is called analytical deduction. [Indeed], the judgment"existence means efficiency" and "efficiency means change" are analytical, because the predicate is implied in the subject and [AD adds: it] is elicited by analysis. The same thing which is characterized as existent, can also be characterized as efficient and as changing. [AD: So they go on and they say] The terms existence, efficiency [and] change are connected by "existential identity", that is to say, they can be without contradiction applied to one and the same point of reality, to a real fact."
S: Ok.
AD: Yeah. Now up to here, before we run on. Remember, this is simply his way of-- In the second volume there's an original work of Dignaga and there's-- the work of Dignaga, which is really extremely difficult. I tried a few times and only after ten years I managed to get through it, it's very-- These men are logicians. Just like the Nyaya-- the Nyaya logicians, the Vedantist. I mean you feel like somebody's taking a rake and going through your brain like that and you-- But, when they get done with you, you'll never be the same. And I don't mean efficient. Let's discuss this as much as we want to now for a moment, a few moments, (alright)? By the way, I might say, some of the books I'm going to use, The Totality, this book, The Totality, is quite ridiculous, the guy belongs in a museum. (laughter) Let's-- I will-- I will use these books here. The Buddhist Philosophy of Universal Flux, there's some chapters that are extraordinarily good. The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana. The Central Conception of Buddhism. I don't know if we have this here, the Emptiness is very good, by Streng. I found that pretty good. This one here, I don't know if you people have it, "Concept of Mind in Buddhist Tantrism".
S (very faint): [couple words inaudible]
AD: Alright, then we'll get it--
S (very faint): [few words inaudible]
AD: [couple words inaudible]
S (simultaneously): Oh is that the one (right/read) before--
AD: Hm?
S: The one we read before meditation?
AD: Yeah. It's not long, I think it's maybe ten pages. You want it xeroxed? Yeah I'll get it for you.
LS (simultaneously): Is that Guenther?
AD: Huh?
LS: That Guenther?
AD: Yeah that's Guenther.
S (faint): Oh yeah.
AD: As again, I say, you know, Guenther's got his good points and his bad points, his bad points is he's very willful. He's a know-it-all.
[short pause while AD draws]
S: What--
AD: When a man, a quester, you, I, or anyone that's sincere in the quest, and he looks around and he sees a half a dozen tremendous great traditions, to point a finger at one and say, "You're stupid and we're smarter than you," I mean you got to be quite a jackass. They're all great. And it's us, you know, it's our temperament that makes us like this one better than that one, it's more meaningful to us. That doesn't make it great. I mean, the Universal Mind in its infinite mercy understands that we're different and it (knew that) we all have to go our own way. So it allows for a lot of these traditions to grow. In India, there's so many gurus you don't know where to start. But you've got to find your level and work your way up. It isn't that they're bad or good, it's a question of finding what's good for you, and use it. Well-- Alright, I'll try to have this next week, it's only a few pages, ok, and we could-- This would be an explanation of manas from the Buddhist point of view. Alright, now before we were speaking about the Samkhya notion of manas, citta, which comprises memory, sense-organs, [AD pointing out on diagram] etc, etc, ok? Now you see the way that they explain mind according to a Buddhist conception. [9½ second pause, flipping of pages] I want to ignore the next one, "The Argument on the Notion of Non-Existence" for now, huh? Let's go to paragraph 9 or section 9, "Santiraksita's Formula", formulation. [short pause] Would you read the first three, four lines? Go ahead, Paul, come on. Don't you [PD simultaneously: I don't have that book.] have the book? Anyone read it, it doesn't--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 95, AH reading]: "[The] formulation of the theory of Instantaneous Being as laid down…"
AD: Loud!
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 95, AH reading]: "The formulation of the theory of Instantaneous Being as laid down by…"
AD: A Buddhist.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 95, AH reading]: "…Santiraksita [AH reads: a Buddhist] (some laughter) in the dictum that"the momentary thing represents its own annihilation" is remarkable in the highest degree. It shows us clearly the kind of reality we have to deal with in Buddhist logic."
AD: Ok, reread.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 95, AD reading]: "…"the momentary thing represents its own annihilation"…"
AD: It's not only remarkable, it's absolutely paradoxical. Go on, "Nobody will deny…"
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 95, AH reading]: "Nobody will deny that when a jar has been broken to pieces by a stroke of a hammer it has ceased to exist. But beyond this obvious empirical change there is, as stated above, another, never beginning and never stopping, infinitely graduated, constant change, a running transcendental ultimate reality. The creation of the jar out of a lump of clay and its change into potsherds [AH reads: pot shreds] are but new qualities, [i.e.], outstanding moments in this uninterrupted change."
AD: Alright. "There is, therefore…", read from there. Slowly.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 95, AH reading]: "There is, therefore, as Santiraksita [AH reads: the Buddhist] says, in every next moment not the slightest bit left of what has been existent in the former moment."
AD: Reread that.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 95, AH reading]: "There is, therefore…in every [next] moment not the slightest bit left of what has been existent in the former moment. The moments are necessarily discrete, every moment, i.e., every momentary thing is annihilated as soon as it appears, because it does not survive its own annihilation [AH reads: survive in the next moment]. In this…"
AD (simultaneously): You don't believe that, do you? Go on.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 95, AH reading]: "In this sense everything represents its own annihilation. If something of the preceding moment would survive in the next moment…"
AD: Wait. What are you reading a comic book? Read it again.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 95, AH reading]: "In this sense…"
AD: Everything represents its own annihilation. Did I hear you say that?
AH: Yes.
AD/S(?): Not yet.
S (simultaneously, faint): Come on Andrew. (some laughter)
EMK: It wasn't you, Andrew. (EMK laughs, bit of laughter)
S: You better.
AD: You better reread it because I thought I was hearing things.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," pp. 95-96, AH reading]: "In this sense everything represents its own annihilation. If something of the preceding moment would survive in the next moment, this would mean eternity, because it would survive in the third and following moments just in the same way as it did survive in the second. Static means eternal; if matter exists, it necessarily is eternal, if it does not exist, being is necessarily instantaneous. As already mentioned above, the first view is advocated in [AH reads: by] the Sankhya system, the second in Buddhism. There can be nothing in the middle, there can be no eternal matter with changing qualities, as naive realism and the realistic systems assume. The transcendentalist, on the other hand, assumes that ultimate reality cannot be divided in substance and quality, it must be indivisible and instantaneous.
"This kind of annihilation, transcendental annihilation, is not produced by occurrent causes. Since existence itself is constant annihilation, it will go on existing, i.e., being annihilated and changing, without needing in every case any cause of annihilation. The elements of existence are automatically evanescent [AH mispronounces this word]…"
S (faint): Evanescent.
AH: Evanescent?
AD: Yeah.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 96, AH reading]: "…they do not want any additional circumstance in order to produce that change which is going on always and by itself.
"Just as the totality of causes and conditions of every event is necessary [AH reads: necessarily] followed by that event, because the totality is present, nothing else is needed, the totality is the event itself, just so everything is evanescent by its nature, no other cause of annihilation or change is needed. Reality has been characterized as efficiency, it can also be characterized as evanescence or annihilation."
AD: Alright, up to there. Now let's-- let's discuss that paragraph a little bit.
S: We started this (revolution) of evanescence, I don't know that word.
RC: Fleeting. [one/two words inaudible]
AD (simultaneously): You know like-- It's not as good as the first kiss.
S: Fleeting. (laughter, student words)
DB: Well, I haven't--
S: Thanks Randy.
AD: Go ahead.
DB: Um--
AD: It's [AD snaps fingers] very impermanent, disappears, it arises, disappears. Like champagne. If you take off the cork and then evanescence, you know, effervescence, (laughter) and then it's flat. [short pause] By the way, if we believed what they said we'd all be going to some-- some wake somewhere. (laughter) They're drastic, they're-- they're drastic. Go ahead.
DB: Well, with-- with the idea of evanescence, it seems that that is all-- the idea of these point-instants being evanescent is-- is predicated on memory.
AD: Now, let's start with the beginning of the paragraph, ok?
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 95, AD reading]: ""…the momentary thing represents its own annihilation…""
AD: How-- how could we say it to ourselves?
S: Vic.
RC: First thing I thought of is the way you said manifestation is the process dissolving. Tendency that is manifested in consciousness can't-- you don't leave consciousness.
AD: Go ahead. [one word inaudible] this--
AH (simultaneously): Also in Buddhism they talk about this process as combustion.
AD: Combustion, there, that's a nice word.
AH: Burning.
AD: Burning, yeah. Combustion is a nice word. You need the candle, you need the wick, you need the oil, you know, and the flame, and combustion is going on from moment-to-moment. And this flame is not exactly the flame from a moment before, it's quite different, yeah. Of course they apply that to life, life is like that. This life is not the one I had a moment before. This life has the duration of an instant. And then there's the next one. They apply that to life, that theory. The thing represents its own annihilation there.
EMK: I think like if you think of throwing a (BB) through a plane, that as soon as it tou-- as soon as it enters it it's on the other side of it because there's no dimension there for it to pass through.
S: Yeah.
AD: How about waves? Isn't that a nice example of the thing is its own annihilation?
EMK: Waves?
AD: Waves. You ever watch them? No? Anybody knows the theory about how waves are made? Yeah? Tell us.
S: Well, the water doesn't actually move.
AD: The water doesn't actually move.
S (faint): Yeah.
S (simultaneously): But it's the surface that appears to move and it rises and falls in a constant motion. So it appears as though a section of water is moving but actually the water just keeps rising and falling. And there's all kinds of technical flows and eddies underneath, but as far as the surface is concerned there is no motion of water.
AD: There really is no waves.
S: Yeah.
SS: Well, apparently there is. (laughter)
S (amidst laughter): I mean how could that-- how can it be--
[few background student words]
AD (simultaneously): What we think of waves as an entity, you know?
SS: Yeah. [few background student words] Except at the very end when it knocks you over.
S: Right. (laughter)
S: Yeah, that's easy to see out in the middle of the ocean but what about when you're standing on the shore?
SS: Yeah that's what I said, [S simultaneously: And I--] when it knocks you over.
S (very faint): Yeah.
AD: You remember before when we put a series of lights and we said, we imagine this light go on and as it goes on it goes off. You click it on and off, ok? Then the next light goes on. And if-- and, if we think of that as a continuous motion, in other words, light flickering, but it doesn't look like it's flickering, it looks like one continuous motion or like when you make a-- with a firebrand the sign of the eight. It seems like a whole eight there but actually it's a series of point-instants of that firebrand which makes an eight, alright. There we get the feeling of a thing is and isn't almost at the same time. It appears and disappears. Its very-- its very appearance is its disappearance.
S: [couple words inaudible]
DB: Well--
AD: He's just trying to get a discussion on you.
DB: Well I-- I just thought of a-- a musical analogy, if you take a-- take that piece like Mars, you know, The Planets, [Note: The Planets by Gustav Holst.] where there's just a constant repetition of the one-- the trumpets in there, you know, they-- they have a certain rhythm and it's very staccato playing, very quick, very fast, and you know, no sooner you hear one note and there's a space and the next note (it appears), you know, you don't have it-- it's like it's-- it's over with as soon as you hear it, it's no longer there. I mean you can do that with any music but Mars you can see that.
AD: Well, you (conceive of it) with any music, sure.
AH (faint): There's also something more involved than just the notion that-- Somehow the key to its own-- key to its own destruction are-- are manifestation-- The fact that there's this [one word inaudible] is an appearance is at once destruction. Like you can't talk about the object is and then it isn't. Something is and then it isn't. It does exist in the sense of [couple words inaudible] how we use that word.
[9¾ second pause]
AD: I d-- I don't know because that's really-- it's really such a profound problem, you know. It's again-- it's-- it's like the two extremes. On the one extreme there's those who say there's only the One Being and there isn't anything else and everything else is an appearance, a seen. And there's the others that say there's only this constant flux of sensation and there isn't, so to speak, nothing that stands firm. And this middle ground, you know, between those two extremes has always been such a-- a difficult problem, it's where we are. That's the area we live in. And if you take either extreme, you're going to see a tremendous amount of difficulty arising. And yet the middle position is the hardest one of all to keep because you gotta-- you gotta announce it in this paradoxical fashion that the thing appears and at the same time that it appears, that's its own warrant for death, it disappears. And it is this which we call existence. In the same way like, you know, if you take a-- a picture of s-- and you think of moving-- speeding up the camera and you see things going faster and faster, and I imagine if you go fast enough you wouldn't see at all anything. But the point I'm trying to get at here is that there is some-- there has to be the possibility of some knowledge in that middle domain. If there isn't, then we're all in trouble. Ok so, we're going to have to try to see this-- the paradoxical nature of this.
AH: So we-- so we have to postulate a third kind of model rather than sensory or imagined.
S (faint): Well--
AD: Yes, we'll probably end up with a more fixed and rigid type of knowledge. I have no doubt about that. When he says for instance--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 95, AD reading]: "…in every next moment not the slightest bit left of what has been existent in the former moment. The moments are necessarily discrete, every moment, [i.e.], every momentary thing is annihilated as soon as it appears, because it does not survive its own annihilation [AD reads: survive in the next moment]."
AD: If it survived in the next moment it would be a thing. If it's a thing then it would survive not only the next moment but forever. That would be eternalism. Buddha say that don't go, that don't work. So they go into this extreme of pointing out that no thing can be, because if a thing is, then it can't become. You can put it that very simple. If it is, then it can't become. So, we have this problem, you know, then-- [flipping of pages] Going on just a little bit more.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 96, AD reading]: "There can be nothing in the middle…"
AD: That is, in the middle of these two extreme positions.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 96, AD reading]: "…there can be no eternal matter with changing qualities, as naive realism and the realistic systems assume. The transcendentalist, on the other hand, assumes that ultimate reality cannot be divided in substance and quality [AD reads: qualities], it must be indivisible and instantaneous.
"This kind of annihilation, transcendental annihilation, is not produced by occurrent causes. Since existence itself is constant annihilation, [AD rereads:"…existence itself is constant annihilation…"] it will go on existing, (some laughter) [i.e.], being annihilated and changing, without needing in every case any cause of annihilation. The elements of existence are automatically evanescent, they do not want any additional circumstance in order to produce that change which is going on always and by itself.
"Just as the totality of causes and conditions of every event is necessary followed by that event, because the totality is present, nothing else is needed, the totality is the event itself, just so everything is evanescent by its nature, no other cause of annihilation or change is needed. Reality has been characterized as efficiency, it can also be characterized as evanescence or annihilation."
AD: Now you can see that they're very drastic in their whole approach to the philosophic problems that we're confronted with, the whole notion of sense, of change, of becoming.
[short pause]
AH: Tony?
AD: Yeah, go ahead.
AH: I realize it's my own peculiar predisposition but, based on their analysis of experience, it didn't appear to be drastic, it appears to be really quite logical. You know, if you-- if-- like these principles that we're talking about are based on an analysis of experience. I mean it's more fundamental a discussion than one would offer but, I remember we did it last time in class. And, you know, they're very rigorous about an analyzing of experience. Like, it just seems to me like a very logical consequence of the analysis of experience. I mean that's the only reason why I've been attracted to the-- to the Buddhist position, because it seems so-- [AD: Yeah.] so logical.
AD: Well yes, they certainly are working--
AH: I guess I'm asking what you mean by drastic in a way. It's like severe, (it/if)-- or uncompromising?
AD: Uncompromising would be a way of putting it, sure. Because it-- I mean it's one thing to conceptualize and--
(Side 1 of original cassette tape digitized as 1977 0915b Ends; Side 2 Begins)
AD: --or some thing. Then that's not possible. It can't reach up to that Higher Self. But this takes away any grounds for you believing in such a thing. How could you walk out of a dialectical discussion with these people and still believe that you are something? So, this is one of the advantages of the experience of dread, you know. Real dread is something where you taste how wretched the human condition really is. And then you could do something about it. But if you don't taste it first-- That's why I said, if you're going to go out and get drunk, be a good drunk. (bit of laughter) Until it makes you real sick and then you'll see what they're talking about. [10½ second pause] Now, let's just for the excitement, you know, turn over to section 11 and let me read a little bit there, alright?
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 98, AD reading]: "Just as existence is not something added to the existing thing, but it is this thing itself, and just as annihilation, evanescence or change are not something real in [AD adds: addition] superaddition to the thing changing or destroyed, but they are the thing itself…"
AD: So so far this thing-in-itself, alright, combi-- has the attributes of annihilation-- existence, annihilation, alright, and now he-- they're going to bring in motion.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 98, AD reading]: "…just so is motion nothing additional…"
AD: It's not something outside of this thing.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 98, AD reading]: "…but it is the thing itself."There is no motion, [says Vasabandhu], because of annihilation.""
AD: And with the brevity and precision of a-- a hawk--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 98, AD reading]: "Things do not move, they have no time to do it [AD adds: in], they disappear as soon as they appear. Momentary things, [says Kamalasila], cannot displace themselves"because they disappear at the very place at which they have appeared.""
[short pause]
AD: First, existence is not something which we add to the thing but it is this thing itself. Secondly, its evanescence, its impermanence, its change, are not something real in addition to this thing but is the thing itself. They are the thing itself. The sa-- in the same way, motion is not something that you add to the thing. You don't say, "Now I am walking, I'm moving." Alright, now--
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 98, AD reading]: "…it is the thing itself."There is no motion, [says Vasabandhu], because of annihilation.""
AD: If a thing appears and in the moment of its appearing it disappears, what time could it find to move? This is really the foundation of calculus, huh, infinitesimal calculus?
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," pp. 98-99, AD reading]: "Things do not move, they have no time to do it, they disappear as soon as they appear. Momentary things, [says Kamalasila], cannot displace themselves"[because] they disappear at the very place at which they have appeared."
"This statement, i.e. the statement that there is no motion, that motion is impossible, seems to stand in [glaring] contradiction with the former statement according to which reality is kinetic, everything is nothing but motion. Indeed when it is maintained that reality is kinetic, it is implied that everything moves and there is no real stability at all; and when it is maintained that there can be no real motion, it follows by implication that reality consists only of things stabilized and endurable. However these two apparently contradictory statements are only two different expressions of the same fact. The so called stability is the stability of one moment only, and the so called motion is nothing over and above the consecution of these moments arising without interruption in close contiguity the one after the other and thus producing the illusion of a movement. Movement is like a row of lamps sending flashes the one after the other and thus producing the illusion of a moving light. Motion consists…"
AD: And this really-- (AD laughing a bit) this is a blockbuster.
F. Th. Stcherbatsky [Buddhist Logic, Volume 1, "The Sensible World," p. 99, AD reading]: "Motion consists of a series of immobilities. [short pause]"The light of the lamp, [says Vasubandhu], is a common metaphorical designation for an uninterrupted production of a series of flashing flames. When this production changes its place, we say that the light has moved, but in reality other flames have appeared in other contiguous places.""
AD: What do you think of that now? Come on. You want to really appreciate Haiku poetry? Understand this. [short pause] Frog jumps in into the pond. Pluck. (bit of laughter) Go ahead, discuss this for a moment, a few moments. Come on.
S: Leapfrog.
AD: Motion is a series of immobilities. What happened to our mathematician, aren't you going to help us with that calculus?
LS (simultaneously): Well when you-- when the calculus was discovered, it was discovered by two men working simultaneously. One of them was Leibniz who was a geometer and the other was Newton who was a physicist.
AD: And also the India-- Indian astronomer(s).
LS: Well, just the-- just the modern phenomenon, right? So Leibniz came up with a purely static definition and Newton came up with a purely dynamic definition. And the logical formulation (isn't/is) the same. But if you try and present the calculus, you're trying to teach it, you have to present it in both ways, you have to put in two pictures in one, you have to present the static picture and the dynamic picture or else there's no way to convey the meaning of the logical formulation at all. And, I don't know if some of you have experienced this in calculus, who try to experience the subject called calculus of several variables. They don't present it that way because they-- the dynamic picture requires a [one word inaudible] of thermodynamics and it's just too hard. So they only present the static picture. And so this calculus of several variables, which in reality is a much easier subject but they do it much more superficially, is now unintelligible by the students where (before as) they can graph the calculus of one variable with some physical pictures of [one word inaudible] So that the--
S: It's a revelation that started.
LS: That the-- the logical definition communicates nothing, except how to manipulate formulas.
AD: Right.
LR: And most students say, "Well what the hell good is this?" and they're right. What comm-- what communicates is the two pictures which have to be graphed simultaneously, the static and the dynamic. And in that it's-- in that graphing those two pictures simultaneously, the definition is contained, which is what (that/their) differential calculus can do.
AD: Do you think maybe next week you can come up with a little picture for us? I think I ought to close class, I didn't realize it was 10 o'clock. I know it's very difficult. I tried myself when I was a youngster and I couldn't do it. But it would be a nice picture if we can kind of show a thing in these two aspects. You know, it is so fundamental, like Friday night, tomorrow night I'm going to try to explain what I think is the most difficult of all concepts, you know, that thought is being or being is thought. 'Cause it's going to require that kind of a notion. But if you can read-- if some picture comes up, see if you can elaborate a little picture for us, you know? What I'll do during the week is I'll write-- write out a few books that I might find useful to help us along with this stuff, ok? Not books, I mean sections of a book, paragraph, page or something.
LS: Well I could talk about continuous (curve) [couple words inaudible]
S: That's on page 204.
AD (simultaneously): Yeah, something like that be nice.
S (faint): Indeed what you're asking.
AD: You know what's also very nice in Zuckerkandl, in his books on the symbol, where he tries to show the inherent dynamism in the-- in the scale itself which gives us that feeling of motion. But there is no motion there. That too would be another way. I'll try to write the exact pages down, maybe I'll even put the books down here so yous could read them, they're only a question of going over it again and again. And by the way Dave, I didn't mean to insult you but get that out of your head that you can't think. Mathematics is a very-- it's a very simplified logical form of working with symbols. And if you can't work with symbols you could still think something out. A lot of people who have this fear of mathematics, a lot of baloney.
DB: No, my only problem with mathematics has always been that it seem(ed)--
AD (simultaneously): You decided not to like it, so that was it!
DB: No, I like geometry but the rest of it-- and even from geometry, it started out in the middle somewhere, said "Well now this is that and this is that and this is that." But I could-- I mean-- but it always seemed like to me they were operating in a vacuum. You never find any correlation.
AD (simultaneously): Well it's true, a good mathema-- good math teacher's not a common commodity, they're rare to find because they've learned how to manipulate these symbols, you know, and they mistake that for thinking. But the real thinking is like trying to come up with the image, schematizing the image, portraying it so others can understand and you can communicate. If you can't do that then anyone could do the other thing, just sit down and pounce on a book until he memorizes all the actual baloney. But to make pictures is always a problem. And yet to me, that's the only way I understand. If I can't-- if I can't objectify it, I can't understand it. It's like "it's all within". Big deal, you know? (bit of laughter) All within me.
S (faint): Well most of them are embarrassed to present the pictures that they're actually using.
AD: Hm?
S (faint): Most of the mathematicians--
AD: Oh yeah, yeah.
S (simultaneously): --if they consciously-- if they're seeing pictures they're embarrassed to present them.
AD: Yeah and they try to tell me that they-- I had a math teacher who told me they didn't see no pictures, I said "What the hell are you talking about? What are you, an illuminate?" (laughter) There's always in the fringe of your consciousness images which are accompanying you and almost directing the whole process of reasoning that's going on. It's only when you transcend that that you live-- leave images behind. But until then they're always there, they're always in the background very quietly doing their work. Until a man like Jung, why for heaven's sakes, the image is the thing. Without that image you couldn't even breathe.
That's why we undertook to speak a little bit about Cassirer because in the Philosophy of Symbolism you see that very beautiful, yeah. In the symbol, like Jung, when he speaks about a symbol, when a symbol comes up, you know, you have an image of let's say a-- any kind of an image in your consciousness, symbolic image, included in that symbolic image is like the whole constellation of the unconscious processes that are going on. It corresponds to the psyche that you're living with. And you could see it all, so to speak, is all within that image. And you got to pull it out of the image, alright. If you don't pull it out, of course, then you won't understand that image and it'll just govern your life without you knowing why. But once you get into what the presuppositions, what's-- what's the raw stuff of that image, and you'll go-- get back to the psyche. And you'll free yourself from it. Now of course Jung wants you to go on living with symbols, "I don't want you to free yourself from it". But I don't want to live a symbolic life. I want a real-- live the real (deal). (bit of laughter) [short pause]
Well, we got a lot done tonight. I think, I think you got a feeling for it, haven't you? These people are really hammering away, they're merciless. And wait till you get to Nagarjuna. I mean he deprives you even the ground to stand on. My favorite one is about the Zen master who said, "Last year, I had some ground in which to put my (awl)." You know, my cane. He said, "But this year I don't even have that." (AD laughs, bit of laughter) You get that xeroxed for us?
EMK: Yes. Could I just have a show of hands of how many people would like one of them?
S (faint): Well who [one/two words inaudible]
AD: I see, yeah.
TM (simultaneously): Well wait, how about a show of hands (with/of) people who wouldn't like one?
AD: Wouldn't? [S simultaneously: Yeah, but we still haven't gotten all of these.] Ok so--
EMK: Yeah, [couple/three inaudible student words simultaneous with EMK] I'll get it and put those (notes) in.
S (faint): (For sure.)
S (faint): Hm?
S (very faint, possibly part of background): So it did get through to him.
AD: It would be the opposite way of speaking about mind than the way we've speaking about it in Samkhya. [S, faint: In Samkhya.] I mean, it just takes-- takes away the-- that whole feeling of substance, it just subtract it. And then you start feeling like you're walking in a vacuum all the time, you know. Your feet are not-- never touch the ground anymore. Another-- another book, if any of you have the-- what was that, The Royal Song Of Saraha?
S (faint): Yeah.
AD: That had some very good excerpts in it. I'll-- I'll get the exact pages and yous could look them over.
RC (faint): Did you look at this Universal Flux [one/two words inaudible]
AD: Yeah, but that's very hard, I want to leave that towards the end. This fellow is very very thorough. I mean he goes into it with extreme detail.
RC: He's got a really nice thing on--
AD: Hm?
RC: He's got one really nice thing there--
AD: He's got a lot.
S: [one word inaudible]
RC: If it is then it doesn't change and if it changes then it isn't, (I could do/provides you with) either.
AD: Then we have-- we have some criticism, we also could include that, ok?
LS: Some mathematics that Thomas Taylor does, you know in that Aristotle? In the Aristotle where you have the-- something-- the mathematical paragraph at the end of it? Mathematical paper. [Note: See Thomas Taylor (tr.), The Metaphysics of Aristotle, to which is added, A Dissertation on Nullities and Diverging Series.]
AD: The Theoretic Arithmetic?
LS: No. There's a book called his--
AD: On infinities, on infinities, yeah.
LS (simultaneously): Yeah, "On Infinitesimals".
AD: On-- yeah.
LS: That's his version of the point-instants.
AD: Alright, I'll take a look at it, I know it's in the back of my-- [S: (Fifth) house.] my Aristotle.
LS: Yeah, because those infinitesimals, they contain that sort of-- that potentiality for what can be imagined into the sensation, which al-- which is part of this, ok, which that doesn't seem to be-- at least we haven't heard it in this treatment. Because we can only imagine constructively in a certain way, alright. [AD simultaneously: Uh-hm.] We have to imagine correctly. And that seems to be part of the equation also. So the infinitesimals are-- they're not just point-instants, they're potential imaginative structures as well. And I think the mathematical treatment of infinitesimals approaches that.
AD (simultaneously): Alright, I'll bring the book down tomorrow and take a look at it. So, just-- just one-- one little analogy, the analogy I gave and we'll-- I'll break it right off. Sometime, I don't know, a week or two ago, when Vic pinned me down and wanted to get a grasp of this notion of "the mind goes out". So I says, alright, let's disregard everything and start from absolute zero. Think of the mind. But the mind has no dimensions, no qualities, alright, and nothing that you can attribute to it, alright. So now what are you left with? Nothing. A point, a point that's partless and is not even in existence. Ok.
Take this point and imagine that to be the mind. And every time that this point energizes, alright-- Energizes? What do we mean by energizes? [drawing] Well, if that's-- if that's the mind, alright, and it has all these functions--buddhi, ahamkara, manas--and then manas we said was constituted by the five buddha indriyas. Doesn't matter the language, ok? The five karma indriyas. These are important, don't underestimate these. Those are the motor activities, alright. The five tanmatras, ok. Now, if we take this to be a point, the mind, and it energizes, immediately that energy is your experienced world, the alogical whole. Now imagine this point pulsating, moment after moment, [AD hitting board with chalk] and you can see the contents are always changing. Do you get a feeling for that?
Alright, now the point, the point that the Buddhists are making at, [drawing] this point-instant is reality. And there are as many point-instants as you want to imagine. Kant, in a similar way, says the same thing. He says, what the thing is in itself we don't know. But we know that the senses, five buddha indriyas, ok, five karma indriyas, the senses grasp whatever this thing is, that's direct knowledge [diagram]. Then these here, the lower manas with the concepts [diagram], produce an image out of it. You-- you get that feeling of what I'm speaking about now? This point-instant, the Theosophists call it the subjective laya center. Everybody's got their own name for it, it doesn't matter. It's this point-instant, it's the soul which you cannot locate.
Sometimes, I do it this way. This is the point-instant right there [diagram]. Over here is Being, Life, Intellect [diagram], and out here, alright, is your manifested world [diagram]. This point-instant here is your mind. It grasps whatever the vasana is or whatever the intelligible object is or whatever-- Kant calls it the unknown, the thing-in-itself, alright, and produces that manifested world. Now you're inside that, alright, you're inside this manifested world which the sensation, alright, which-- By sensation they mean precisely that. The sensation coincides with the energizing of the mind. And then on top of that is produced all-- buddhi, judgment and all that is thrown in.
But the-- the point here is very simple. This point of the mind, which has no dimensions, no size, no space, no color, no-- no qualities of any kind, it gets energized. And in that moment that it gets energized these people are calling sensation. So you can see, it's unutterable. Because if it-- if it's before any conceptual understanding, then you can't say what it is. You can only say what something is once the concepts get to work on it.
[short pause]
RC: Do-- do the senses arise-- is like-- is it like there's a structured sense apparatus that gets stimulated and then structures the stimulus according to itself?
AD: According to itself.
RC: Ok.
AD: And that's why PB calls the senses structures of consciousness.
RC: Ok. That it's not as if the sense themselves arise out of the infinite.
AD: Out of the intellect? No.
RC: No, out of the infinite. It's like--
AD: No, that's another-- that's another problem, that's another problem. But this concept of manas is really a difficult one. It's very hard to really grasp it. That's why we're-- we're in it or we're functioning with it or it's telling us. We never get to it directly as it is because when-- if we could, it wouldn't be there. You can transcend it and we can be included in its working but we can't stand aside and look at it. I'm-- I'm almost willing to bet, although I don't know enough yet, this point-instant [AD indicates on diagram] is that conjunction of the universal and the individual mind.
RC: That intellect--
S (faint): (Well--)
PD (simultaneously): A little sentence in this essay in here.
AH (faint): Would you read it?
AD: No, go ahead.
[Transcriber note: I am using Tibetan Buddhism in Western Perspective by Herbert V. Guenther, Dharma Publishing, Emeryville, 1977.]
Herbert V. Guenther [Tibetan Buddhism in Western Perspective, "The Concept of Mind in Buddhist Tantrism," p. 44, PD reading, quoting Padma Dkar-po]: "Although as far as instantaneous experience is concerned there does not obtain any duality, by not recognizing it as such, there is no emergence of pure sensation. Due to this failure a first instant is born as [a] sense-field [(yul)], [and] a subsequent one as apprehension and feeling-expectation [('dzin-zhen)]. [The] perception of an external object is the rising of constructive mental activity [(rtog-pa)] or 'appearance' [(snang-ba)]."
AD: Read-- read that again once more. That's-- that's exactly the point.
Herbert V. Guenther [Tibetan Buddhism in Western Perspective, "The Concept of Mind in Buddhist Tantrism," p. 44, PD reading, quoting Padma Dkar-po]: "Although as far as instantaneous experience is concerned there does not obtain any duality, by not recognizing it as such, there is no emergence of pure sensation. Due to this failure a first instant is born as [a] sense-field [(yul)], [and] a subsequent one as apprehension and feeling-expectation [('dzin-zhen)]. The perception of an external object is the rising of constructive mental activity [(rtog-pa)] or 'appearance' [(snang-ba)]."
AD: See, at that moment that they coincide is a very blissful moment. That's the-- And it's interfered with because of the mind's habit, the mind's habit of constructing all the time. See what I'm saying? [student assents, very faint] But, in pure sensation, there's no recognition of anything but a state of non-duality. There isn't recognition because as soon as you bring in recognition, the whole productive imagination is operative.
PD: You bring in a whole personal memory.
AD: Everything comes in. Everything comes in. Your whole constructed world. So in that moment of sensation, it's-- Well, examples are better, if you could think of an example, you know, like when that man and that-- was walking through the Bush and tiger appeared. In that one instant he froze. That was non-duality in that instant. But then, everything rushes out, fear, the tiger, everything comes out. And we run, alright. But in that one instant, there's no duality. That's why, in a sense, an animal, that is, a mammal, alright, is always in the state of peace because they live in that kind of state. They don't have-- the lower manas isn't interfering with concepts. The lower manas is where all the trouble is. The senses themselves grasp the object directly, alright, so to speak, and there's no-- there isn't the division-- there isn't even the division yet of a subject and an object. So there's experience of oneness.
RC: So when the-- when the spatialization relative to the body takes place, is that an act of memory rather than an act of sensation?
AD: Yeah all-- fundamentally it's an operation of the memory. The whole ego structure is built on memory. Memory is the chief culprit. It brings up the whole bag of laundry, dirty linens and everything. (bit of laughter) Alright, I've kept yous long-- long enough. You could read the chapter there, the-- "The Two Traditions in Mogul"-- "Two Traditions in Indian Philosophy".
[Audio File 1977 0915b Ends]
1977 09/15 V11a: CLASS: Buddhism; Substance vs. Function. Copyright 2021 Wisdom's Goldenrod p. i