Nanavira Thera: EARLY LETTERS

[EL. 168] 11.i.1960

2008-11-19T14:12:00.003Z

I am now in Durdans¹ undergoing various tests and taking various treatments. I have 1. Possibly filariasis, though first blood test negative; 2. The sound of white ants in my ears; 3. A great deal of wind in my belly. Though, on account of 1. and 3., I am swollen and am in the maternity ward, I am not expected to bring forth. I have been X-rayed and punctured (both to put in and to withdraw fluid), and have had to swallow pills, and have been listened to, and have had to listen to, and have had vast accumulations of wax taken from the ears, and have much more of this (as well as some inhalations) yet to come before I leave here. As soon as I can I shall return to Bundala, but when that will be I can't say.

Now, Mr. P. is anxious to invite you to stay in the empty kuṭi while I am away, and I myself shall be only too glad if you like to do it (I say this, not just because you would perform the useful service of keeping the elephants at bay, but also because you might like the change). If, however, I am to return in a week or ten days you may, perhaps, not think it worthwhile. If, on the other hand, I am to be awayfor three weeks or a month, the idea might appeal to you. (Of course, if you really want to stay there for a longer period to take advantage of the silence and solitude, I press you to do so with all the pressure I am capable of. This is not just polite—I mean it.)

Unfortunately, as you may have gathered, the present situation is untidy and uncertain, and may continue to be so for some days longer, and I can't say how long the kuṭi will be empty for. But if you like to go off immediately to Bundala (without waiting for Mr. P.'s invitation—which is not necessary, first because the kuṭi belongs to the Saṅgha and not to him and secondly because he is itching to have you anyway) you will get a week there at least, and possibly more....

Vajirārāma is fearfully depressing—the same old things (some older, if possible) go on in the same old way, and I am really happier in this rather pleasant room in the hospital. It is an end room, and opens on to an old grass tennis court where I walk about at night. It is an unhappy sign of the present state of affairs that although everybody in Vajirārāma knows quite well that all I do (indeed, all that there is to do) at Bundala is bhāvanā only one person (the ageing Ven. C.) asked me how it was proceeding (and even he dropped the subject immediately). Nobody has any interest in the matter of bhāvanā at all. Sad.

The wretched D. appeared while I was there and questioned me on the subject of amoebiasis, which he apparently has got. I told him directly not to hope to get cured in this lifetime, but that if he takes care of his diet he may expect some improvement in a few years' time. He was apparently thinking (as I used to) in terms of a cure in a month or six weeks. I think he was duly depressed by what I told him, but if he will accept it he will avoid much mental distress and futile seekings for remedies in the time ahead. I also told him that it is not an insuperable obstacle in the way of progress in the Dhamma (which it is not), but he is probably not inclined to believe that at present....
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[EL. 167] 6.i.1960

2008-11-19T14:11:00.002Z

Thank you for your letter and enclosures (just arrived). I am on my way to Colombo to be treated for what seems to be filariasis—I have been swelling up in various places. Shall perhaps call in on the Hermitage. I am not anxious to make this journey, but there seems to be no alternative.
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[EL. 166] 21.x.1959

2008-11-19T14:10:00.003Z

...Your disease, which I have not (yet) encountered, sounds unpleasant, and alarming with its irregular pounding heartbeats. If I get it I shall now know that it is not (necessarily) fatal.

You are probably right in anticipating a lot of foolishness if attempts are made to reform the Sangha. One should, I think, in the first place keep one's head down to avoid being hit by whatever is being thrown about, and in the second refuse to be browbeaten or stampeded into consenting to what is contrary to Dhammavinaya. Ceylon, however, like other Oriental countries (until they become Communist) is enormously inefficient, and the threatened widespread storm may turn out to be no more than a few scattered showers. Anyway, I hope so.

Thank you for your description of the Sīmā bandhana—this is a function in which I have never taken part. Mr. P. wanted to make a Sīmā here, but was discouraged.

The Eddington does not interest me, thank you all the same—I have already read it, and besides there is a copy at Vajirārāma. I have never read Wittgenstein, so can give no opinion. He is, I think, approved of by Russell, which is rather a doubtful recommendation, though also by A. Huxley (in Those Barren Leaves) so he may be elegant.
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[EL. 165] 5.x.1959

2008-11-19T14:10:00.001Z

...I imagine that the irrational outburst of popular anger against the Sangha is symptomatic of a fairly widespread unpopularity of the bhikkhus in Ceylon on account of their unseemly and worldly behaviour (which cannot be denied). But if the laity continue to use the Sangha as a rubbish bin for their unwanted offspring can they expect it not to smell a little? (There is in this village one particular small boy who is extraordinarily badly behaved and quite beyond his parents' control, and I suspect that an attempt is being made to get rid of him by having me ordain him. Needless to say, this will not be successful; but it is typical of the current attitude.) Mr. P. tells me that some local bhikkhus are going without dāna, but I have in no way been affected, and I am glad to hear that you have not. But no bhikkhu who still has the use of his legs has any ground for complaint that dāna is not brought to his monastery. I suspect that hardly any bhikkhu would be short of food if he took the trouble to go piṇḍapāta for it. As for bhikkhus being shouted at in the street, that is a very salutary experience for them, and I almost say that it should be encouraged. But the whole affair will be forgotten in a week.

My Vas (thank you for asking) has been intestinally disturbed by the local colitis that is common in the dry weather. It answers quickly enough to Entero-Vioform, but since it resembles an aggravation of my usual intestinal state I was slow to recognize it and delayed treatment. And once the guts get disturbed they take long to settle down again, and I am still not quite back to my normal state of ill-health.

...If you have the leisure, I should be glad of a précis translation of M. 47 (Vīmamsaka Sutta), which is beyond the range of both the Ven. Buddhadatta's Dictionary and my Pali.
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[EL. 164] 23.vii.1959

2008-11-19T14:09:00.001Z

Many thanks for the books, which have arrived safely. Also for your p.c. Boswell is of no interest at all, thank you all the same. Nothing needed at the moment. Weather has been exceptionally cloudy, which no doubt corresponds to your continuous rain since Wesak. Not unpleasant. Mrs. G. has sent me a new drug (Pathilon) which much reduces my stomach acid and improves my digestion, and there is a corresponding and most welcome improvement in my bodily comfort. Having worked up a certain momentum I am anxious to let it take me as far as it will and am avoiding distractions, so I shall continue not to write at length. Visited by occasional elephants (one walked past the kuṭi at 6:15 p.m.—I thought it was monkeys until I saw the top of its back just below the kuṭi), and also at 2 a.m. by a large scaly anteater (at least I suppose it was that).
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[EL. 163] 2.vii.1959

2008-11-19T14:08:00.001Z

Thank you for your letter. If there is the Aṇguttara to follow there is no need to send me the other P.T.S. volumes immediately. I am slowly reading the Majjhima at present and this will last for a bit. I should, nevertheless, be grateful for these other volumes as well as the Aṇguttara if it is no great inconvenience to you to do without them, but all can come at once at your leisure.

I have now entered one of my non-letter-writing moods, and so I shall not reply in detail at present to your rather meaty letter.
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[EL. 162a] undated

2008-11-19T14:07:00.001Z

A single undated unsigned page in Ven. Ñāṇamoli's writing.

The trouble about discussing mind, I find (I here refer to discussions on this subject fra me e me) is that (a) they always ramify fantastically and (b) one always finds that one has not been talking about mind (either mano or viññāṇa) but only about nāmarūpa. The Committe called (?) Buddhaghosa Thera make (Fowler allows a pl. vb. with a collective n.) a parallel most grave error in their Vis. Mag. 14th Chapter when they set out to describe the viññāṇakkhandha second, and next to the rūpakkhandha and before vedanā, saññā and saṅkhārā—that is why the last two are so thin there, because it is these two that B. describes under viññāṇa. This is quite contrary to the Suttas, which never change the order for the very reason that it is only after you have exhausted everything positive by the first four that viññāṇa remains (M. 140) (simply, perhaps, because one finds that when everything has been exhausted something seems still to remain and nothing can be found) and that is indescribable except on the basis of that due to which it arises (M. 38) or on the basis of nāmarūpa (M. 109) which it is not and, unlike the other four, it is the only infiniteness (ānañca—se the four āruppas) among them and so phenomenologically it is the pure negative (the four āruppas are four Absolute Negations). From this you may safely infer that I quite agree with your earlier "glass-shelves" theory with the reservation that an infinitely extensive (or an infinite series or hierarchy of infinitely extensive) glass shelve(s) is (are) indistinguishable from nothing except dialectically. This latter I regard as important. If the pañcakkhandhā are assumed (upādiṇṇā) then the assumption must, by its nature, be a dialectic assumption, but since fundamentally, dialectic (d. = indecision = fear = pain) is unpleasant, one side is compulsively closed by tanhā and avijjā, and the other side left open becomes the object of faith. Here a thought occurs to me: you know my view of the necessary organic relation of faith-ignorance (saddhā-avijjā) in the puthujjana, where faith supplements the deficiency of knowledge truncated by ignorance and makes action (kamma) not only possible but inescapable: well, my point here is this, that, given faith's intimacy with ignorance (take this in the worst sense if you like), it only functions well (as bonne foi) when ignored (what the psychologists would in their mythological jargon perhaps call "in the subconscious", which, translated, means "in behaviour patterns normally overlooked in the other" but subjectivelly it means "in pure unreflective action", I think). But in proportion as faith is brought up by reflexion into full ignorance-governed cognizance (knowledge of the limited kind that always must accompany the broken-up faith-ignorance ménage) it either dies and turns into honest doubt or lives on as mauvaise foi. I say "it dies and becomes doubt" because it is an easily verifiable fact that if one knows one is acting on faith alone one becomes inhibited and the action collapses (e.g. miracles, or Ogden and Richards' centipede). This, I take it, is because action is only an aspect—or a function—of faith and ignorance (when analyzed, it appears as paṭiccasamuppāda and nirodha and then vanish in themselves). The first three paths are necessarily paradoxical, and represent the opening of fundamental dialectics (of which the basic ones are consciousness/non-consciousness and being/non-being). It is these that indicate nirodha, I take it. The sotāpanna's aveccapasāda as "confidence due to undergoing" is properly faith which is no more than faith (M. 47 [97?]) and, owing to loss of a measure of ignorance, his knowledge (ñāna) is no more knowledge as the simple opposite of ignorance. Confidence and paññā are now both one and two until the arahat's resolution terminates the absurdity (see also M. 95).
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27. vi. 1959*

2008-11-19T14:03:00.002Z

Ekam samayam Ñánavíro bhikkhu Búndalagáme viharati araññakutikáyam...[open here]
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[EL. 162] 19.vi.1959

2008-11-19T13:59:00.001Z

Thank you for yours of yesterday. Thank you also for sending the extracts from Sartre. Though you actually copied out more than I really intended, it is none the less most welcome—the whole passage is of capital importance and so admirably lucid, and I have been glad to re-read it. My treatise on mind is not. As usual the ramifications grew and grew until I was intimidated by the vastness of the project, and I have been content merely to imagine it. One thing becomes more and more clear, however, and that is that in the Suttas the same word—mano, for example, or rūpa—has different meanings, sometimes within a single sentence; and these meanings correspond to different levels of understanding. This is the secondary reason why a method of interpretation—which, as a rationalization, depends upon logical argumentation, and thus upon each word's having one meaning and one only—cannot be applied to the Suttas. The only way to find out what a Teaching in the Suttas means is to refer to one's own experince. (The primary reason why method will not work is, of course, that all method depends upon the paṭiccasamuppāda—it is phassapaccayā—and cannot therefore be applied to the p.s., just as chemistry cannot deal with nuclear physics, upon which it depends.)

Koestler, as far as literature goes, is obviously right; and he demonstrates his own thesis by being himself thoroughly engaged—the article reeks of engagement. (It is incredibly parochial. Nobody in the West can think of anything worse—or anything else—than the Hydrogen Bomb. Why? Because it might destroy their precious civilization.) It provokes the reflexion that if all literature is engaged, then the Suttas are not literature, except superficially. Nibbāna, after all, is cessation of engagement, is it not? (I rather suspect he mistakes the Middle Way for the Way of Moderation—in other words, Sweet Reasonableness, or, as I read the other day, Reasonable Sweetness.) As regards the P.T.S. Aṇguttara—I have none of the five volumes here (except no. two in translation, which I can hardly bear to read), and should welcome any or all of them, the more the better. My reading is now more or less confined to the Suttas and I am glad of any addition to my library....

P. S. Koestler assumes that both the Buddha's Teaching and the Existentialist Philosophy are works of art, and that implicit in them are various assumptions about the nature of existence. Koestler is himself an artist, and cannot imagine anything beyond—indeed, it is probably true to say that the assumption that there is nothing beyond art is precisely the assumption about the nature of existence that is inherent in Koestler's own writing. Koestler is engaged according to his own definition—but he is engaged because he assumes the idea of engagement itself. And this dates him. He is a man of the XXth Century, obsessed with the idea of objectivity; for artistic objectivity—the refusal to preach your engagement, and merely to describe it as one amongst an infinity of possible engagements—is the brother of scientific objectivity—which is the refusal to admit your point of view, and merely to dismiss it as one amongst an infinity of possible points of view --, and it comes of a fear of being (in Kierkegaard's words) infinitely interested. When you are infinitely interested either you keep quiet (as the Buddha was inclined to do immediately after Enlightenment) or you preach (as the Buddha did after persuasion or invitation by Brahmā Sahampati). Of course the Existentialists are (or were?) enragés and not simply engagés, they never pretended to be anything else. Koestler may not be hostile to the Buddha's Teaching or to Existentialism, but this is because he has understood neither. Had he understood he would either be a Buddhist (or Existentialist) or else positively hostile. As it is he has neutralized both—or so he hopes—in the modern artistic no-point-of-view, which is "engagement" as he understands it. Do you agree?
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[EL. 161] 6.vi.1959

2008-11-19T13:58:00.001Z

Thank you for your letter. Your analysis of Dhammānusārī and Saddhānusārī is most useful and, I think, quite correct. I withdraw my statement about the commentaries' definition, which seems to be in order. I find I was confused about what exactly the commentarial definition is,^a and also I was making the unjustified assumption that all eight ariyapuggalā are avinipātadhammā ("matters of not [being in danger of] hell"—this sounds a little odd, but it should be taken in the same way as "a new broom is a matter of sweeping clean"—i.e. "to be a new broom is to sweep clean", "to be a sotāpanna is not to be in danger of hell"). Certainly the Dh. and S. are Ariyapuggalā, not puthujjana, though it now seems that the moment of transition from puthujjana to ariya is less clearly defined than I had thought it was—the word matters is indefinite.

I also agree with you on the matter of Thera, and my enquiries were more or less intended to find out the local opinion and to avoid treading on anybody's toes. (I don't mind treading on people's toes if the matter seems to be of importance, but this one does not.) I imagine that such things are taken more seriously at Vajirārāma, where custom is often elevated almost to the status of Vinaya, at least sometimes. I shall leave it to my pen to decide whether or not, and when, to alter my present mode of addressing you on letters.

Mr. Perera has lent me a copy of the Vesak "Buddhist". An article by Gotama Wijesiri (have you seen it?) attempts to equate Husserl's "phenomenological reduction" with jhāna. This, of course, is hopeless (are we to suppose that Sartre, who certainly practised the reduction to write his books, is a jhānalābhī?), but he gets a good mark for seeing that Husserl is relevant. Wijesiri, I see, approves your translating citta as "cognizance", which emphasizes the noetic aspect as against the noematic (was this your reason for choosing "cognizance"?), but since he also approves of The Heart of Buddhist Meditation it does not seem to be much of a recommendation. "Feelings are pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral, just as in the modern physiological science..." is not a very happy statement. The rest of the "Buddhist" is mostly the usual nonsense (E. of Tangalle tells us that Cromwell beheaded King John of England), but I noted the following rather curious instruction: "When a person gets up in the morning let him contemplate on the position in which he is lying. Let him be aware that he is lying down." This is certainly an exercise in double-think; but how is it to be done? Another article, oddly enough, gives the answer: "On awakening in the morning he must sit up in a grave posture and repeat a verse...".

Nature Notes. Did you know: 1. that (some) snakes eat spiders? 2. that geckos eat scorpions? 3. that crabs have long thin tongues with which they can lick their eyes?

I rather fancy that Kant's a priori is a temporal expression only by analogy. In the refutation of Hume the a priori principle concerned is what we commonly call "memory"—we cannot say that A is the cause of B unless we remember A when B is occuring. This, of course, in no way interferes with Hume's contention that when we say that A is the cause of B we are saying no more than that A invariably precedes B in time. Memory is a priori in the sense that it is fundamental, that there is no experience without memory. But I don't think Kant intended to suggest that memory temporally precedes an experience. And even if Kant regarded time as purely subjective, the metaphorical sense of the expression does not seem to be altered—everyone's experience of time is the same, whatever views he may hold about it, and the metaphor derives from the experience and not the view. Generally speaking, the simple precedes or is a priori to the complex merely in the sense that to understand the complex we must first understand the simple. And a principle so simple that it cannot be understood without begging the question is absolutely a priori. So, at least, I understand the term, which seems useful and harmless. I rather get the impression from Stebbing (quoting J.M. Keynes) that it is regarded as the first duty of a philosopher these scientific days to find an answer to Hume, to show that induction is certain, in other words, and thus to vindicate the scientists' belief that all is for the best in the best of all possible (scientific) worlds. Philosophy, having failed to come up to expectations, has fallen into disrepute.

A friend of Mr. W. brougt a Young Catholic yesterday who wanted to ask questions about the First Cause. I found my reading of Kierkegaard most useful, and I managed to make it clear that what the Christian believes is an absurdity. This has the advantage of being double-edged. The Christian may reply, "Yes, and I believe it because it is an absurdity"; but this so easily becomes, "Oh, so then what I believe is an absurdity. How absurd!" Of course, one must insist that it is only a philosophical absurdity, and that the Christian is bound to believe it: but this, too, is double-edged, since he is only bound to believe the absurdity because he cannot know it, whereas the Christian may well react by saying (or thinking), "I do not admit that I am bound to believe it—I believe it because I choose to"—and once he realizes that it is a matter of choice whether he believes or not what is absurd, he is already undermined. I also remembered Strachey's "Cardinal Manning"¹, where it is said that it is a Catholic Article of Faith that a true knowledge of God is possible without Faith. This is a particularly absurd absurdity, and it seemed to register a direct hit. But he had been told that Buddhism was the doctrine of cause and effect, which is a particularly misleading statement—it is really not much advantage to give up Catholicism in order to embrace Rationalism. I find these distractions unwelcome and exhausting, however adequately the questions seem to have been answered (it is doubly exhausting to discover, a month or two later, that in fact the questions were answered wrongly—a kind of esprit d'escalier²). Fortunately, the remoteness of this place discourages too many visitors. There was another, very enigmatic, person present during the discussion. Dressed in white, with the head completely shaven and wearing an Indian style forage cap (like Nehru), he looked typically Indian with a round face and sleepy eyes. But he behaved exactly like a Sinhalese Buddhist, and also spoke Sinhalese (he told the village children who had come to make less noise). The odd thing was, however, that he was rather noticeably not introduced—perhaps deliberately—and said not a word in the entire discussion, though it was evident that he understood what was being said. Most odd.

I have now lived in this kuṭi for more than two years (since it was built) without missing a single night.

__________
[a] Because the Comy. only allows one "moment" for the Sotāpatti Path the effect, in practice, is that every sekha you can meet with and talk to must be at least a Sotāpanna. With this I do not agree.

[1] Cardinal Manning: From Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians.

[2] esprit d'escalier: From Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians.
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[EL. 160] 31.v.1959

2008-11-19T13:56:00.001Z

I forgot to ask you in my last letter: would you mind, if you have the time and energy, copying out and sending me the longish paragraph (I think it is only one) from L'Être et le Néant, in the chapter on 'Le Corps', where Sartre attacks the current psychological invention of "sensation"? The passage can be identified by the last(?) sentence in it: La sensation est dans la boite. Sensation—"I perceive a sensation of blue"—comes into being as a bogus entity when one conceives the eye as an organ of vision in an already visible world. If the world is already visible there is no need of an organ of vision in addition, and if one insists upon having one then one is bound to invent a "sensation of the world" as the end-result of "seeing" the already visible world with the organ of vision. For this reason it is a complete mistake to regard cakkhu as an organ of vision since rūpā are already visible. (Vis. Mag.'s pasāda rūpa is nonsense.) Could you also send the short passage on p. 601, where S. denies the existence of concepts that are not images?
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[EL. 159] 28.v.1959

2008-11-19T13:55:00.002Z

Many thanks for your letter of the 25th. The weather here for the past month has been rather unpleasant, though nothing to what you seem to have been having.

...You understood my postcard perfectly—just what I wanted, many thanks. I had originally asked for something else (as you gathered) but then remembered the answer; so I was left with a useless half-written post card. The brevity of the message that I did send was hardly style or wit, but perhaps reflected my desire to get rid of the postcard as soon as I found some excuse for doing so. I really wanted to know whether "haunt" would do for paṭisaraṇa, which occurs in the Suttas in three passages (to my knowledge). The first (which I can't trace) is where a certain tree is described as the paṭisaraṇa of some birds; the second is bhagavaṃ-mūlakā/paṭisaraṇā/nettikā no dhammā; and the third is where mano is described as the paṭisaraṇa of the five indriyas (Mahā Vedalla Sutta). As I have told you, I now think that mano in this context (i.e. indriyas or āyatanas), is no more than the other five in association, and is not related to them as intellect (or thought) is related to the senses (as in nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit prius in sensu¹—note the "prius"). As a textual support for this you may refer to the description of the eighteen manopavicārā in the Salāyatanavibhanga Sutta (of the Majjhima), where mano is used in two senses, one as āyatana, and the other as approximately "intellect", "what one thinks with" (manopavicāra). You will see that manopavicāra occurs based upon each of the six, not five, bāhirāyatanāni, and dhammā is on the same level, relative to manopavicāra, as the other five. Now, how to translate paṭisaraṇa? The usual translation "refuge" won't do. In the first place, is a tree the refuge of birds? From a storm, perhaps, but not from a huntsman, where they take to their wings for refuge. In the second place "refuge" makes poor sense in the second passage (bhagavaṃpaṭisaraṇo) and no sense at all in the third. "Haunt" will do well for the first (a tree is certainly the haunt of birds), but not—so the cod informs me—for the other two. A word that might fit all three is "seat", though it is a little odd to think of a tree as the (country) seat of some birds. I eventually decided to ignore the first passage and to concentrate on getting an adequate rendering for the last two. The word "authority" seems to fit quite snugly: it reflects the etymological meaning of paṭisaraṇa—a flowing back, a referring to a source --; and in its sense of a collection of departments—an Urban District Council consists of a Water Department, an Electricity Department, a Health Department, and so on—it well represents mano as a collection or association of sense-indriyas. Kant replied to Hume as follows:

Il se peut que sur le terrain de l'expérience on ne puisse découvrir d'autre lien entre la cause et l'effet que la consécution empirique. Mais pour qu'une expérience soit possible il faut que des principes a priori la constituent.²

—which, as Sartre remarks, is correct. Now if you will substitute "entre un sens et un autre que l'association emprique"³ in this passage you will see what I mean by mano—it is the "principe a priori" without which an experience of the senses combined (my pen is both visible and tangible) would be impossible; it is the faculty or capacity that the senses have of combining. (Strictly, mano is not so much the faculty that the senses have of combining or associating as the senses themselves in combination or association or superposition.) In this way my visible-and-tangible(-and-audible, it has a squeaky nib) pen is a dhamma, a "matter" and not an "idea" ("ideas" are on the level of manopavicāra). Incidentally, your objection to "matter" for dhamma, that it is haunted in the definite singular by the scientists' and materialists' "matter" is not, I think, valid, since the definite singular is not "matter" (which is certainly open to this objection) but "the matter". Thus we have "matters" in the plural, and "a matter" or "the matter" in the singular; and I do not go to "Matter" for refuge but to "the Matter" (the Enlightened One, the Matter or the True Matter, the Community; and dhammānussati is "Recollection of the [True] Matter"). I am glad that, in general, it does not entirely meet with your disapproval.

It was not, in fact, my intention to suggest that you describe, Visuddhimagga fashion (the worst chapter in the Vis. Mag.), the six pairs of āyatanas in terms of nāmarūpa. What I did intend (however badly I expressed it) was to disagree with your note in the Netti translation where you make the first five pairs of phassāyatanāni responsible for paṭighasamphassa and the sixth pair for adhivacanasamphassa (I forget exactly how you worded it). This division of labour seems to imply that the five bāhirāyatanāni are rūpa and the sixth (dhammā) is nāma. Perhaps it does not imply this; but even so I do not agree with this division—cakkhusamphassa, I find, is both paṭigha and adhivacana, and so too is manosamphassa. Do you, in fact, still endorse the view you state in that note?

My earlier suspicion, namely that sekha is not restricted to sotāpanna and above (excluding arahattaphala) receives confirmation. It is clear from M.i,477-79 that sekhā are kāyasakkhī, diṭṭhippatto, saddhāvimutto, dhammānusārī and saddhānusārī, and it is clear from this same Sutta, and also from M.i,141-2 (and also from other Suttas) that the last two are not yet attained to sotāpatti. These passages are quite unmistakable, and the Commentarial definition, in consequence, is unmistakably wrong.

About style etc. You are quite right in castigating rhythm as blank-verse-written-as-prose with your admirable example (a catch in the voice is needed to declaim it effectively), and prose that is soporific by that very fact fails to be rhytmical (though it might be metrical). Perhaps the Ultimate Criterion is this: rhytmical prose is prose that entirely conceals itself. If it fails to conceal itself, as an orchestra playing badly fails to conceal itself behind the music, then it is unrhytmical. You point out that my prose tends to harden into formalism and sometimes uses stiff grammatical formulae. This is true. It is the near enemy of my style of writing as rāga is the near enemy of mettā. To write good (rhytmical) prose one must cast one's sentences whole (even though one may alter them later), and this means that one must, before writing, re-think what one wants to say in rhytmical sentences. This is all very well when one has a clear idea of what is to be said, but when the thoughts are meagre or incomplete the result tends to be an artificial bony framework. Part of Gibbon's secret is that he always makes sure that he has got enough to say in each sentence—nowhere does one find a sentence written for the sake of the style. But it would be a mistake to use Gibbon's style unless one were writing Gibbon's History. The style must be appropriate to the subject-matter, and this really is a matter of trial and error (Gibbon tells us that he wrote the opening chapter three times before he was satisfied that he had found the proper style).

Here is a matter in which I should like Ven. Ñāṇaloka's ruling. Next July you will be entering your tenth Vas (so shall I, of course). At what point should I start addressing you (on letters) as Thera? The Ven. Thera has, at different times, made different rulings, as is his way, and I really don't know which to follow. The possibilities seem to be these. You become a Thera (i) at the beginning of your tenth Vas residence; (ii) at the end (pāvaraṇā) of your tenth Vas residence; (iii) when you have been upasampanna for ten calendar years (July 22, 1960); (iv) for ten lunar years (I don't know how that works out); (v) when you are formally declared a Thera by the Saṅgha in a Sīmā. Would you please ask Ven. Ñāṇaloka about this?

...If N.Q. Dias has discovered noia⁴ that is the beginning of the end for him; though it may take some time before he gathers momentum on the downward slope. The Brahmacariya is the only cure for this disease. He should cultivate his boredom diligently (and take good care to be bored with America).

Now that the wind has changed we say farewell to: —

Elephants (none about for several weeks)

Curd (still a week or two of this perhaps)

Rain

Baths (except for a month or two with the buffaloes)

Mosquitos

Visitors from England (who come in the winter)

Grass and green undergrowth (begins now to dry up)

Fishermen

Awicchas⁵

And we welcome:—

Frogs (two or three have arrived, whose two or three hashes will probably be settled by two or three māpilas)

Cicadas (in inverse ratio to the frogs; many, I think, this year)

Venison (always more plentiful in the off-season, when deer are easier to kill)

Saltern atmosphere (only a suspicion so far)

Tarantulas (no. 54 the other morning)

Colitis (common here in the sry season)

Wood-apples

Pilgrims returning from Kataragama.

I learn from Mr. P. that the days round the full and new moons are regarded as "heavy" days, on which rain may be expected (which we had already discovered) and on which pregnant women are liable to give birth (which we had not). And also people avoid having operations on these days (I don't quite see why). Mothers, it seems, avoid taking baths on Fridays, since it is bad for the children.

P.S. The advantage of "nescience" for avijjā is that it enables vijjā to be "science".

__________
[1] nihil...: 'There is nothing in the intellect that was not previously in sensation.'

[2] Il se peut...: 'It may be that in the field of experience one cannot discover any other link between cause and effect than empirical consecutiveness. But for an experience to be possible it is necessary that a priori principles constitute it.'

[3] entre...: '...between one sense and another other than empirical association.'

[4] noia: Italian for 'boredom' (cp. ennui).

[5] Awicchas: This seems to be a species of robin.
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[EL. 158, a postcard] 5.v.1959

2008-11-19T13:52:00.005Z

Haunt cod please. Ñāṇavīra
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[EL. 157] 21.iv.1959

2008-11-19T13:52:00.004Z

Many thanks for your letter and for the C.O.D. extracts. As I thought, the words are so imprecisely used in English that one can make them mean very much what one pleases without violating usage; and I suspect that the situation was much the same, mutatis mutandis, in the Buddha's day. At the same time, there seem to be certain parallels between English usage and the Sutta usage: for example, CONSCIOUSNESS, according to the C.O.D., can mean "the totality of a person's thoughts and feelings", and it can also mean "perception (of, that)". The second meaning, with due allowance for looseness in the meaning of the English word "perception", approximates to what I understand by viññāṇa, and the first meaning is quite close to citta (which I translate as "intent"). The Sutta connexion between these two is nāmarūpapaccayā viññāṇa and nāmarūpasamudayā cittassa samudayo. "Mind" is delightfully Protean—as "seat of consciousness" it is manāyatana, as "soul, opp. to body" it is mano in manokamma.

The comic element in the Netti has now, I think, given us all the laughs it was capable of; and we can now say, in a phrase of my schooldays, "Joke over". Perhaps needless to say, the charge of being comic is no more directed at you than is the charge (if I were to make such a charge in a general way: "Those who...") of being a champion, even quasi-crypto, of the Commentaries. I am quite well aware that you are quite well aware of the deficiencies (not to put the matter too strongly) both of the Netti and of the Commenatries, and that you are not deceived by them. (Upon occasion I give more credit to the Commentary than you do—notably in the Cittavisuddhi section of the Vis. Mag., and also, perhaps, in its analysis of the four mahābhūtāni. Apart from its usefulness as a dictionary, it also contains, however muddleheadedly, certain earlier interpretations that are of value.) What, then, is the origin of the suspicion, suspected by you, that I, and perhaps the Ven. Kheminda Thera too (though whether he would be so anti-commentarial were the Ven. Nyanaponika Thera not so pro-commentarial I don't know) may or may not entertain, of the propriety of your relations with the Commentary? Perhaps a remark of the Ven. Soma Thera's, that you once told me of, throws some light on the matter. It seems that, upon reading a disparaging passage in an early draft of your Vis. Mag. Introduction ("an opinion expressed", apparently, "only as dispraise"), he exclaimed "But if that is your opinion of the Visuddhi Magga I can't think why you bother to translate it". It is true that this does not take into account the fact that you translated it in order to find out what it was about, and not at all in order to propagate it as the Eternal Truth (which you might have done had you been an admirer of the work); but even when this is taken into account there seems to remain a vague unaccounted-for residue, perhaps expressible as "But is it necessary, in order to find out what it is about, to translate it quite so thorougly?" That, to other people, there is an air, a faint aura, of ambiguity about your relations with the Commentary, you will probably admit, since you seem to be aware of it yourself; but I, for one, should not attribute it to a secret admiration (though to what, exactly, it might be attributed is not altogether easy to say). Perhaps it is really, after all, nothing more mysterious than a slight self-indulgence in the pleasure of (18th century) scholarship. (I should certainly not suspect you, except to be perverse, of the seriousness of Scholarship in its present-day meaning—indeed, of the three of us, the Ven. Nyanaponika Thera, yourself, and myself, you are the least serious, though not, therefore, the most comic.)

It seems very probable that the existence of the Commentaries have preserved the Text of the Vinaya and Suttas, which would long since have fallen into neglect and oblivion after the decision that practice was less important than preservation. But the question arises, for whose benefit have they been preserved?

The new cistern is directly in front of the room, so placed that water from the guttering can be caught in it. It is sunken, two feet below ground and one foot above (though it would be wrong to think of it as a tripod), and is thus inconspicuous and does not exclude the gaze from the ultimate horizon. The earlier one is under the trees to your right as you stand at the entrance to the caṅkamana facing outwards. Since neither is empty, there are no voices singing out of them, but by the end of September there will be, no doubt.

This letter is partly to uncross the situation, since my last letter to you crossed yours to me.

P.S. An alternative translation of yathābhataṃ nikkhitto evaṃ niraye is "he is as if set-down like a burden in hell" (i.e. "he is in hell as if set down [there] like a burden"). This takes evaṃ as referring to the whole of yathābhataṃ nikkhitto, instead of as just the complement of yathā (yathābhataṃ nikkhitto evaṃ [nikkhitto] niraye), which gives (as I suggested) "as if carried, so he is placed in hell", placed being here a pun in the two senses of "to be placed (put down) like a burden" and "to be placed (located) in hell". Of these two renderings I prefer the second ("as if carried...") being a verbal ambiguity, whereas the first is a rhytmical ambiguity.
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[EL. 156] 24.iv.1959

2008-11-19T13:50:00.002Z

It occurs to me that my remarks about your translation of the Netti, coming as they did mixed up with my onslaught on the Netti, may have appeared as rather unsympathetic. This, however, was not at all my intention: I had thought, rather, that a more or less outspoken comment on how your translation reads (quite apart from what it is a translation of) would be of value to you, and possibly something that you would not obtain elsewhere. You will have noted that I say explicitly that though I criticize certain things I cannot offer anything better in many cases. I am fully in agreement with you in your insistance upon not losing ontologically (and otherwise) significant words or roots, such as bhava and dhamma, and inevitably certain phrases are going to look a little odd in English. All that one can do in such cases is to suggest (if we can think of one) a more satisfactory and less cumbersome way of putting the translation, and also (though rather rarely) to suggest that an altogether different basic word would be more suitable. It so happens that I do now suggest a change of basic word, but I shall discuss this later. There comes, however, a point where one meets a phrase that is purely idiomatic, or seems to be, and it is then perhaps better to abandon any attempt at literal translation (which may be totally incomprehensible) and to use a short simple corresponding English "idiotismo". Do you, for example, translate diṭṭhe va dhamme aññā as "comprehension inseparable from the idea of being seen" or as "comprehension immediately/here and now"? If your rule (of preserving the word dhamma) obliges you to use the former translation, then I suggest that this is a point where the rule must be abandoned. I say this rather reluctantly; but if one is going to translate for anyone's benefit beyond one's own, then some allowance has to be made for the reader (and it may be necessary to abandon the rule at an earlier point than this—but it is a matter of opinion).

Quite apart, however, from cumbersomeness forced upon you by this rule, I complained, as you will remember, of surplusage in a more general way. You do not, I implied, run enough on your muscles. I find a tendency in your translations to be more explicit than the original text. There must, I admit, be enough in the finished translation to make grammatical sense; but you sometimes go some way beyond this, and close certain dialectics that, in particular, the Suttas leave open. For example, in the Netti translation you point out (very usefully) that the proper meaning of the phrase yathābhataṃ nikkhito evaṃ niraye is to be found in the 20th Sutta of the Itivuttaka, but your actual translation of the passage is most uneconomical and says more than the original. Literally this passage is "burdenwise placed, thus, in hell", which requires in translation no more than "as if carried so he is placed in hell". (The evaṃ, I take it, is either the counterpart of yathā or else refers to what precedes; and this translation will do in either case.) This particular instance is, no doubt, trivial; but what puzzled me rather is why you did not think of a shorter translation yourself. It now occurs to me that it may be a matter of temperament. Let me explain. I have noticed that masters of prose writing in English are very often very indifferent poets—Joyce is an outstanding example; his few poems, except for the title (Pomes Pennyeach) are very ordinary—and vice versa that good poets frequently write a most undistinguished prose (Eliot is rather like this, and Edith Sitwell is another). I am speaking here principally of rhythm (which involves, notably, the question of verbal economy); and in this matter I follow and agree with Fowler, that the test of rhythm is to read the passage aloud or aloud-to-oneself. If the passage can be read at sight, not only correctly, but easily and with pleasure, then it has rhythm; but if it is sticky and lifeless then it has none, though the grammar may be impeccable. Two words from chemistry seem to convey the distinction: rhytmic prose is crystalline, non-rhytmic prose is amorphous ("an amorphous grey powder"). I have actually read-aloud-to-myself three or more chapters of Gibbon and never stumbled once or felt at all fatigued, and I found the same thing, though to a lesser extent, in C.E. Montagne's "Disenchanment". (Ross Ashby has rhythm, Grey Walter has not; John Donne is at home in prose and verse—rather an exception, I think.) It seems to me that perhaps people generally, and not merely professional writers, fall into two classes, those who would express themselves in verse (if they were to write) and those who would express themselves in prose; and that when they are called upon to use the other medium they are not properly at home in it and find it a labour. For my part, though I flatter myself that when I take the trouble to polish it, which, however, is only if it is intended for publication, I can write a prose that is not altogether dead (I can reread some of my past prose with a certain degree of pleasure, even though I may now disagree with what is said), yet I cannot put together two lines of the meanest doggerel and am lost in admiration of those who can (let alone of those who can write poetry). Now I find that in reading what you write, if it is verse I can "express my opinion only as praise" (where do you get the inspiration from to call the Netti a "comic hermeneutic grammar"?), whereas if it is prose I sometimes get a certain feeling of flatness, hard to analyze, but rather as if it had been written from a sense of duty, not with pleasure, and purely to convey information, not for its own sake (this doesn't at all apply to your letters, only to your formal prose). In the Vis. Mag., for example, almost every bit of verse (and there is a lot of it) rings the bell as a masterpiece of economy and style, but the prose—even allowing for the fact that the original is commentarial Pali—occasionally seems unnecessarily wordy. That this difference between us (if I have not simply imagined it) is temperamental and not a matter of difference in education—the mathematician tends to neglect his grammar—is to be seen in the fact that it was you who had to polish my translation of Evola¹ to make it presentable: yet as a result of a very small deliberate effort to write rhytmical English (since Ordination) I find I can (so I think) write rhytmical English quite naturally if I exert myself and with a certain degree of pleasure—and I also find that I am totally incapable of writing (rhytmical) verse. On the whole, you come out of this better than I do; for whereas I should be quite satisfied if my prose were as good as your verse, you have no reason to alarm and despond yourself with the thought that your prose is no better than my verse. What the moral of all this is, I don't quite know, except perhaps that I am wrong to criticize you for using too many words in your prose when it may be that for you, in some way I do not altogether understand, they are not too many. "It is the nature of prose to have so many words; but verse, ah! that is different." Is this nonsense? What do you think?

You asked me in a recent letter what I understood by the word dhammā—whether, for example, I equated it with "phenomena". I gave you a rather indeterminate reply; but since then the matter has been receiving attention, particularly as a result of reading the Netti translation (whatever I may think of the Netti, to read your translation was by no means a waste of time), and I now have rather more to say about it—more, in fact, than I can say in this letter, though I can say something. But before doing so, let me, to avoid confusion and misunderstandings (I hope) say what I gather (from the Netti translation) are your views on this matter (please correct me if I am wrong). Taking the phrase manañca paṭicca dhamme ca as the basis, I think that you consider dhammā to be "ideas" in the sense of concepts (your translation of vayadhammo as "inseparable of the idea of dissolution" seems to indicate this) or images as opposed to the other five external āyatanas which are what Sartre would call "perceptions" (note here that in L'Imaginaire Sartre allows concepts without words or images, but he corrects this—rightly—in L'Être et le Néant [p. 601]). It may be (I don't know) that you even take dhammā, in this passage, as more or less equivalent to "thoughts". In any case, it seems that you make the following distinction: the first five external āyatanas are rūpa, and the sixth, dhammā, is nāma. I presume (it is a guess) that your argument runs like this: "In the āruppas there is no rūpa, only nāma; also (see Mahā Vedalla Sutta) the five indriyas (cakkhu...kāyo) have been abandoned, and there is only mano, and externally a neyyaṃ dhammaṃ; thus dhammā are necessarily nāma", and that you consider in addition to this that the function of naming things (this is A, that is B) is essentially a mental function, that first we perceive sensible objects with our five senses and then we set about identifying them (by naming them) with our mind (this may be the reason for your note in the Netti trs. that attā, which you say—not unjustly—is identification—though I should not agree that it is all identification—, only arises in connexion with nāma—I forget your exact wording). If this is your view (or approximately your view) and you are confident enough about it not to consider changing it, then what I have to say may not be of interest to you.

In the first place, I can by no means allow the distinction between the objects of the first five senses as rūpa and that of mind as nāma, because it is in contradiction with a number of Suttas (e.g. Mahā Hatthipadopama) where all five khandhas arise with each of the six kinds of contact (cakkhusamphassa etc.), and thus nāma is not confined to the sixth āyatana nor rūpa to the first five. In addition the āruppa argument (which I have fathered on you above), though logically valid, is a misapplication of logic; and I cannot accept nāma, which is clearly defined in the Suttas as vedanā...manasikāra, as at all on the same level as naming in the sense of deciding what things are (What is this? It is a bhikkhu. Is it really a bhikkhu? No, it is really a cow, but it looks like a bhikkhu. Are you certain? Not really.). In the second place I do not allow that dhammā is equivalent to thoughts, for the good reason that thoughts do not continue beyond first jhāna, whereas dhammā do. In the third place I do not even allow that dhammā is equivalent to concepts or images, though the reasons for this cannot be set out briefly.^a (Wherefore my projected treatise on mind.) [A neyyaṃ dhammaṃ, though possibly translatable as an "inferred dhamma" is probably better as an "abstract dhamma", since "inference" is too close to logic, which implies thought.] Certainly, thoughts, concepts, and images, are all dhammas, but none of them gives the meaning of dhamma.

Up to recently I advocated the use of the word "idea" as a translation of dhamma, and this for the two reasons, first that the obkect of the mind is clearly an idea (= concept or image), and second that dhamma is the essence or nature or whatness of a thing as opposed to saṅkhāra which is its determinateness (and adequately translated as "determination"), and the Platonic Idea was precisely the essence of a thing (though conceived as possessing a separate kind of existence in another world). So long as these two reasons reinforced each other, the word "idea" seemed to be the ideal translation of dhamma; but now that I find that to translate manañca dhamme ca as "mind and ideas" is a mistake, if by "idea" we understand "concept" (which of course we do), this translation has to go, provided anything better can be found. What is needed is a word that conveys essence (though "essence" won't do, being far too esoteric), does not convey concept to the exclusion of anything else (as "idea" does), and is sufficiently general and versatile to be used in widely different contexts. I think there is such a word, though it is rather unexpected: MATTER. Provided that all "matter" in the sense of substance or what Dr. Johnson picked is "form" (rūpa) the word can be used exclusively in its other sense of "what is the matter?", "the mater in hand", "it is a matter of six-pence", "material (= relevant or essential) evidence". Let us try a few examples. Manasikārasamudayā dhammānam samudayo "with the origination of attention matters originate" (cf. "I shall give the matter my attention" which brings the matter into being); manañca paṭicca dhamme ca "dependent upon mind and upon matters..."; yaṃ kiñci samudayadhammaṃ sabbaṃ taṃ nirodhadhammanti "all/everything whatsoever that is an originating matter is a ceasing matter" or, not so good, "everything/all whatsoever that is a matter of origination is a matter of cessation"; Buddha dhamma saṅgha "the Enlightened One, the Matter (the True Matter), the Community"; dhammānupassanā "contemplation of matters"; catunnaṃ bhikkhave dhammānaṃ natthi koci pāṭibhogo "in four matters, monks, there is no surety"; diṭṭhe va dhamme aññā "comprehension as an immediate matter"; diṭṭhasutamutaviññātabbesu dhammesu "in matters to be seen, heard, sensed and/or cognized..."; and so on—all of them passable, and some of them good (note in particular "an originating matter" as opposed to "inseparable from the idea of origination"). "Matter" has the advantage, amongst others, over "things" that "thing" will really do for either saṅkhāra or dhamma ("all things are impermanent; all things are not-self") and will therefore not do for either, whereas "matter" lays much more stress upon content than upon structure ("all determinations are impermanent; all matters are not-self"). Another point is this. In manañca dhamme ca, dhammā are, precisely, "phenomena" of any kind at all. But a phenomenon is made up of three parts, viññāṇa (its presence), nāma (its quality or description^b—blue, pleasant, etc.) and rūpa (its resistance or independence), and these cannot properly be called phenomena, since they are pre-phenomenal (they are negatives within phenomena). They are, however, called dhammā (cf. Mahā Vedalla Sutta), and it is clear that dhamma has an even wider meaning than that in manañca dhamme ca, namely anything at all that is different from (though not necessarily separable from) anything else (viññāṇa is not separable from vedanā and saññā, though it is different from them). The word "matter" can cope: consciousness (cognition) can perfectly intelligibly be called a matter even though it is not a complete object or phenomenon. I offer you the word both as an improvement in sense over "idea" (though you may not agree)—"matter" closes fewer dialectics than "idea", which is only a disadvantage if you are certain that "idea" is exactly right; it does not deny that dhamma may mean "idea", but only that it must do so—and as a handier word in translation (which I think can hardly be denied).

A party visited the other day with a woman who asked if it was true that my mother died of sorrow. This, I suppose, is the Ven. Narada Thera's doing. It is either false—I was told she died of a heart attack --, or else a ridiculous understatement—I am prepared to believe she died of despair, perhaps not unmixed with fury. But to say that she died of sorrow is to throw the whole affair into an absurdly artificial and romantic light. The Ven. Thera has his own ideas about women, which he would not have altered even if he had met my mother, which he did not.

The new cistern has stopped leaking, I am glad to say. No doubt it has sealed itself with the impurities suspended in the escaping water. The weather is bright but rather damp (no decent rain however). The SW wind started punctually on the 19th (my notes on the Ceylon weather says it starts about the 20th) and has been blowing ever since.

As I was removing one of my two large māpilas—"large" in the sense of "fat", not "long", since they are no longer than the thin ones—the brown one—I met the Vedamahatthaya², who said it was a nāga-māpila and very poisonous indeed. This incident is remarkable only for the fact that it is the first time I have heard any Sinhala admit that a māpila does anything else than drink your blood. The Vedamahatthaya, however, is a bit of an impressionist, he likes a broad canvas with bold general effects, and the details don't matter very much. There is a cock junglefowl who will now come up and eat in my presence, about three or four yards away. I think it is a bird who has known me since its chickhood as a source of food. It looks just like a farmyard rooster, though perhaps a little less smug. First year about a dozen frogs in the roof; last year fifty; this year so far none at all, but perhaps they will come later.

About identification. Perhaps I should make it clear that I regard attā as identification in the sense that I cannot entertain the idea of my self without at the same time identifying it in some way with some object (or matter in the sense of dhamma). But I do not at all regard the question of an object's identity (or self-identity if you prefer) as involving attā in the Sutta sense. If I say "that bhikkhu is really a cow" I am simply making an inference to the future: "When we get closer we shall see that what now appears to be a bhikkhu will appear to be a cow". This sort of identification need have nothing to do with taṇhā at all, and can perfectly well be made by an arahat, and indeed must be, in all his practical teleological dealings (such as obtaining food). Any interpretation of a sign as indicating something else is an identification, and can be expressed in terms of the word "self"—a thing's self being what it really is, i.e. what it is a sign of, what it indicates—though there is no need to do so. And such an interpretation or identification can well be mistaken, even if made by an arahat. The attā of attavāda is something quite different. The "self" of an object is the identity of what is not given in the first place—first we must conceive "I am" and only then can we decide what I am, and the result is eso me attāti. The root of the trouble is not in the identification but in the conception. For the puthujjana there is "this is" and there is "I am"; for the arahat there is only "this is": the puthujjana identifies both "this" and "I"; the arahat identifies only "this". Do I make myself clear? And do you agree or not?

__________
[a] One reason, though not the principal, is that there is no Sutta passage where dhamma requires this interpretation.

[b] Which precedes any question of identification (i.e. what it really is), just as conception (maññanā—"mine") precedes self-identification ("it is my self", "it belongs to my self").

[1] Evola: The Doctrine of Awakening.

[2] Vedamahatthaya: Ayurvedic doctor.
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[EL. 155] 18.iv.1959

2008-11-19T13:47:00.002Z

Thank you for your (undated—postmark 15th?) letter. You got the Netti translation back, I suppose?

It is quite true that Hegel is so immensely comic because of the ridiculous presumption of what he sets out to do, and that Duroiselle¹ is hardly comic at all as a professed grammarian—indeed I should say that since Duroiselle precisely achieves his aim he is not at all comic. It may be said that insofar as the author of the Netti desired to formulate a grammar for methodical treatment of a body of obscure texts he was quite within his rights and not at all comic. But as soon as one understands what precisely that body of obscure texts was—namely, the necessary instructions for putting an end to the entire universe (what Hegel fondly imagined he was describing in his System)—the Netti becomes prodigiously comic (or, perhaps, in view of the huge rigid commentarial edifice of half-truths, so terribly misleading, to which it has given rise, prodigiously tragic—the only tragedy is to miss—or misunderstand—the Dhamma.) The author of the Netti no doubt did not understand what the texts were that he was dealing with, and he has not, therefore, Hegel's presumption. But the comedy of the Netti is in the disproportion between the author's modest pretentions—a mere commentator's grammar—and the size of the task he set himself. (Like a man wanting to steal a yard of wire for some trivial purpose, who climbs a pylon, wire-cutters in hand, and proposes to remove three feet of high-tension cable). If the Netti is a failure it is not comic, but if the author thought he had succeeded, then it is very comic indeed (though, as I say, the author was unfortunate in happening to choose the tipiṭaka, whereas Hegel was just presumptuous). And any reader of the Netti who regards it as successful at once becomes a comic reader. (There are, no doubt, those who regard it—or rather, "who will regard it", since hardly anyone seems to have read it yet—as neither a failure nor a success, but rather as an interesting early experiment in textual criticism; but such people can hardly be said to exist at all—perhaps they are the true comedians.) Unlike Duroiselle, who deals only with the language of the texts, the Netti tries to formulate a rule for dealing with the interpretation, which is quite another kettle of fish.

You say rather quaintly that you have a rule that in the early stages of introduction-writing "all opinion must must be expressed only as praise". I do not say that it is impossible (since some people are remarkably adroit in this matter), but surely there must be great difficulties in the way of expressing adverse opinion ("This is a real horror") only as praise (perhaps "This admirable object-lesson in distorted thinking and muddle-headedness..." would do?)? But perhaps this is not quite what you meant? The rule itself sounds quite sound, since it is so much harder to praise than to condemn, and in the exhilaration of condemnation—bashing and hammering—(particularly of something to which one has devoted hours of patient labour) the praise may be forgotten.

I am not at all grateful to you for sending me the "theme and variations" from Huxley's "Centuries" (N.B. What is this? A new book? A novel? An anthology? Or what? Tell me more.), since it will probably echo around my empty head for days just as another bit of nonsense does (which I think you introduced me to):—A. Hairily Toteson, A Mayorally Toteson (A. MaryLee Toteson), A Kiddlry Tripotes,² (what a fine pseudonym one of these would make!).

I offer you a translation of bhāvanā that is both shorter and even more literal than "maintaining in being". We are inclined to translate causatives into English by "make" ("making become") or "cause to...", both of which are awkward. But we forget there is a simpler way with the word "have" ("have him go to the post-office"), which gives "having be" for bhāvanā. In the Suttas I think the word is never used absolutely (i.e. without the object stated), so it will always be of the form "to have [it] be". In the Comy. you do seem to get it absolutely, "to have be", but this is really no odder than "to maintain in being", and elegance counts far less in Comy. translations. And "having be" has the advantage, which should commend it to you, of throwing the emphasis on the word "be", whereas the emphasis in "maintaining in being" is indeterminate.

I project (as an occupation perhaps "for a rainy day"—of which we seem to be getting about half-a-dozen a year) a short treatise on Viññāṇa-Citta-Mano-Nāma (Consciousness/Cognition-Intent-Mind-Name), for which the accepted (dictionary) definitions would be useful. Would you, then, send me what the C.O.D. has to say on each of these words? (Plus "purpose", "thinking", and ïmagination"?)

Mr. P. has built (has had built) another cistern. This is of stone, with capacity about eighty gallons, and leaks as the other used to. Quite heavy rains came, as before, one day too soon to catch it in the cistern. If you want it to rain at Hambantota, build a cistern, but keep something else handy to catch the rain in.

There seems to be a tendency for "educated" (University Degree) Sinhalese Buddhists to interpret the Dhamma in terms of Forces. Dr. O. (who is clearly a better physician than physicist) asked me "but surely kamma is a force?", and today some civil servant from Hambantota came and told me that attā is a force and thoughts are forces. Furthermore, by meditation one brings the attā to such a pitch that it explodes and that is the end of being. "But what" I asked "do you mean by a force?" "Something like electricity" he replied. This sort of thing is far more stultifying than all Mr. P.'s forgetfulness and simplicity. How pernicious a little scientific learning can be!

I also met (while bathing in the field) two Englishmen who have been in Ceylon doing underwater photography and writing books about it. (Seeing me, they stopped their car and got out.) One of them is interested in space-travel, but since he is now getting too old for travelling in space (but I thought it made you younger) he has turned to underwater photography (what is the connexion?). Apart from the Ven. C. Thera, he is the first such enthusiast I have met, but is doubtless typical of millions of others in the world today.

I was asked what the Buddha had to say about space-travel, and I managed to remember Rohitassa Devaputta (in A.IV and elsewhere) who space-travelled for a hundred years without coming to the end of the world. The Buddha told him that it is not by going that one comes to the end of the world, as doubtless you will remember. This rather fascinated them; but I fear that the Buddha's "end of the world" remained a mystery. The would-be-space-traveller is also, it seems, a bit of a philosopher—he has even written a book of philosophical essays, now in the press. What is his philosophy? Answer: we only have to wait another hundred thousand years before we shall have met (through space-travel) beings far, far more intelligent than any we know of, who will tell us all the answers. What faith in Science! What hopes for the future! What confidence that by going the end of the world will be reached! After the encounter I felt rather as if I had read all the scientific articles in fifty London Observers.³

Weather is dampish and Aprilish. Not very unpleasant, but unpleasant. We could do with a little more honest rain. How are your mangoes this year? we have no palu fruit at all, which means no noisy palu-fruit-gathering parties (either of village boys or monkeys), which is a relief.
__________
[1] Duroiselle: Chas. Duroiselle wrote, in the 1890's, what was probably the first English-language Pali grammar.

[2] pseudonym: i.e. "A hare will eats oats and a mare will eat oats and a kid will eat ripe oats."

[3] London Observers: These Englishmen are probably Mike Wilson and Arthur C. Clarke.
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[EL. 154] 7.iv.1959

2008-11-19T13:46:00.002Z

Here are two more criticisms of the Introduction to The Guide. The first is about style, and is a minor point. I note that you use the word "then" quite frequently as a conjunction to introduce fresh subject matter (e.g. p. i—"Then the work has a commentary..."): used in this way the word has a rather colloquial flavour—it is rather as if what follows is really an afterthought, having no particular connexion with what has gone before, and when you have series of them (pp. xx-xxi there are three in four sentences) the result reads rather like an auctioneer's catalogue and gives the general impression that what you have written has just been thrown together haphazard and not carefully thought out. This may be all very well in a serious talk on the Home Service, where it is necessary to conceal the fact (discreditable to the average Home Service Englishman) that you have been thinking; but on the Third Programme you are expected to think, and your translation is Third Programme or nothing. The second point concerns pages xxiv and xxv. You say (on p. xxv) that the fact that the mistakes in the Petakopadesa appear in all editions "clamours for comment". You then offer the simple explanation that all the present editions no doubt have a common ancestor containing all the mistakes. This is far too dramatic. If you build up keen expectation of a really astounding solution ("I think I am the first...etc. etc.") with the word "clamours for comment" (which, anyway, are unpleasantly reminiscent of Muddled Man's "Everyone is crying out of the Dhamma"), then you have no business at all to disappoint your audience with a solution that will already have occured to the least of them (everyone who reads the translation will be perfectly familiar with the phenomenon of reduplication of errors in ancient scriptures that have been handed down by copying—Europeans, because they will be only scholars who will read it, and Orientals because they are acquainted with ola leaves). I suggest you cut out the words "a fact that clamours for comment", and continue, "The explanation is no doubt simple. It may be assumed that...", and omit "This is indeed not at all improbable" (since it is obvious). On the other hand, you much too modestly pass over (on p. xxiv) a fact that really does "clamour for comment" (though I prefer some other expression), namely the intrusion of the section of Sumangalavilāsinī without anyone's noticing it hitherto. I suggest that perhaps a sub-acid comment would be entirely in place, rather on these lines. That such an intrusion should have passed unnoticed is an extraordinary piece of professional incompetence on the part of the European scholar who edited the work (who did?), and a miserable failure of the much vaunted "critical approach" of European scholarship. It is perhaps understandable, however, inasmuch as the European Scholar is not "infinitely interested" in the contents of the work (he is not a Buddhist) but is merely concerned to produce as accurate a transcription of the text as possible. The Burmese editors, insofar as they are scholars, come in for the same criticism, but it might also have been expected that they (presumably being Buddhists) should have been familiar with the text of the Sumangalavilāsinī, or at least able to recognize a slice of commentary when they saw it (the European scholar has more excuses). But the really dumbfounding and numbing thing is that a Commentator should have succeeded in expounding the meaning of the work in detail without noticing that the text contained a well-defined lump of extraneous matter. (Perhaps he simply applied the Netti method without bothering to think—a purely automatic application of a rule-of-thumb. The Ven. Nārada Thera had, I believe, a reputation for some degree of attainment, if I am thinking of the same person; but if the Pe. commentary is as inadequate as you suggest—I suppose you did check that he failed to spot the intruder—he can hardly be allowed an equal reputation as an expounder of texts.) Scholastic ability is not an indispensable requirement in a Venerable Thera, but a capacity to discern what is nonsense in a Buddhist text most certainly is, particularly if he sets out to be a Commentator (I suppose that the intruding passage from the S'vilāsinī does not happen, by some freak of chance, to make good sense when read together with the surrounding Pe. text?)

Many thanks for yours of the 3rd, just received, with stamps. Actually you did not miscommunicate. I asked for the Netti because I was curious to know what was in it, and not at all because you had given me to understand (which you had not) that it was a marvelous new short-cut to wisdom. My curiosity is now satisfied, and I enjoyed both reading your translation and bludgeoning it—even if you had inadvertently omitted your invitation to comment on it, I should hardly have denied myself the pleasure. But I did not set out to review the translation (you didn't ask me to), or even to say what I approved in it: I bludgeoned because it is a pleasure to do so, and also in case you wanted to make use of any of my bludgeoning to alter anything before it is printed (if it is printed). It is I who have been guilty of miscommunication, if anything—you are not the bystander who offers to help me in my chess problem (by sending me your translation); the Netti is the bystander and the Suttas are the chess problem (I have never at any time really suspected anything else, and I asked for the Netti—amongst other reasons—just to make sure). Your apology "sorry you've been troubled", is quite out of place: if you have taken my bludgeoning as an expression of displeasure and disappointment, then it is for me to apologize—I experienced neither displeasure nor disappointment, on the contrary I had the profound satisfaction of proving myself right and the pleasure of being a little didactic about it in my comments. Thank you for sending it—I shall not say no to a complimentary copy if ever it sees the light of day in print (not so much to be instructed by it as to be reminded of what I am now beginning to suspect, namely, that the Buddha deliberately taught the Dhamma in such a way that it is impossible to apply any method to it, thereby turning it into a System—a System can be accepted or rejected at will, but not the Dhamma).

The Mahābodhi extracts are most pleasing. If you were to raise the rear wheel clear of the ground would not a bicycle almost answer Mahinda's purpose?

I have to admit that a more lengthy acquaintance (by exchange of letters) with Mr. M. forces me to admit I was wrong. Mr. M. is not intelligent—he is an emotional nuisance. He has now left for England and does not expect ever to return. We must be grateful for small mercies. You must, however, make allowances for me: the only person I usually get to talk to here is Mr. P., and anyone who succeeds in completing his sentences in conversation with me necessarily appears, by comparison, to be above the average in intelligence.

Scientists insist upon objectivity, and they identify this with no-point-of-view. To have a point of view is, for a scientist, to be subjective, to take himself as the reference point. This, I now see, is a mistake. When you have entirely got rid of asmimāna you have not got rid of a point of view. The arahat "has" (or "is") a point of view since there still remain the five indriyas (eye, etc.). I have for long been confusing attā with "point of view". Attā, certainly, is the point of view from which the world (loka) is seen; but removal of this duality does not entail removal of things, at least not all at once.
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[EL. 153] 3.iv.1959

2008-11-19T13:42:00.002Z

Many thanks for your letter and for the Netti introduction. I enclose a few comments on same.

In my comments to the main body of the Netti, which you should have by now received, I have been rather disparaging about it, which might seem to contrast with your description of it as an "admirable work". But I am concerned only to comment on it as a help to the understanding of the Suttas, and I have to confess that I find it an anti-help. If you ignore this aspect, which is the only serious aspect, and regard the Netti in itself as a method applicable to scriptures in general (with the exception of the Suttas, which is the only set of scriptures it claims to deal with) then the work may indeed be described as admirable (draughts is an admirable game, but not if you are trying to play chess). It is neat, precise, methodical, uncontradictory, readable, etc. etc. etc. But—it is essentially, in Kierkegaard's terms, comic. (Remember the praise K. gives Hegel as a comic writer; and the reproach, the main reproach, that Hegel being a comic writer, claims to be a serious writer.) The Netti is also, of course, of immense value to the Pali scholar, showing the source of much of the Commentarial machinery. When I expressed doubts whether the Netti deserved the efforts you have expended on it, I was thinking rather in terms of comedy and seriousness—as a work of vast interest in its own particular, comic, field, it is, indeed, a work of first importance. Upon receipt of the necessary stamps (which I think you vaguely promised) I shall return the Netti and Introduction. It came for 75 cents.

You object to my definition of "self" as a kind of ajjhattika nāmarūpa on the grounds that nāmarūpa is "findable" whereas "self" is not, and (presumably) that one cannot define what is not findable in terms of what is. You go on to say that for you "self" can be workably defined as "contradiction". Now without saying that I understand this in quite the same way as you do, I do not disagree with this definition. But the point is this. Is a contradiction "findable" or not? In other words, are there such things as contradictions? Quite obviously the answer is yes (otherwise one should never talk about them at all). But if there are contradictions then they are necessarily nāmarūpa (saha viññāṇena), since all that is is nāmarūpa (and its presence or existence, "is-ness", is viññāṇa). And this being so, the contradiction (whether all contradiction or one particular contradiction) that is attā is also nāmarūpa. But how can a contradiction be nāmarūpa—or rather, how can nāmarūpa be a contradiction? Answer: by not being findable. And that, precisely, is what ajjhattika nāmarūpa is. All nāmarūpa without exception is bahiddhā, but being so is not contradictory (the arahat is not contradictory). It becomes contradictory by appearing as mine, and thus pointing to something else (which must also be nāmarūpa, since there is nothing else for it to be) that does not appear, namely, I or attā, which is thus non-findable or ajjhattika nāmarūpa. Self-identification consists in identifying this with some objective phenomenon (nāmarūpa) or its existence (viññāṇa). I say all this, not because you will necessarily agree with it, but rather to show that what I said was at least consistent. I presume you admit that nāmarūpa void of I or mine—i.e. the arahat—is not contradictory: which is perhaps why it is wrong to say, in one sense, that an arahat exists. Unfindable nāmarūpa is clearly the ārammaṇa of unfindable self-consciousness. Note that I do not define attā as the ārammaṇa of viññāṇa (i.e. as = nāmarūpa), but of "ajjhattika viññāṇa" (which = "ajjhattika nāmarūpa").

(Incidentally, you object—by italicizing—to my statement that I identify attā with "I". But this was said simply to answer to your question in your previous letter, "Do you state that 'I' [and 'me'] and 'self' are identical or different?". I was only answering your question in your terms, and not by any means denying the profound contradictions in the process of identification. Not do I define "attā" as "I", which you seem to be assuming. Nor do I say that attā is identical with "I" rather than "me". Perhaps you forgot you asked this question in the first place?)....

COMMENTS ON INTRODUCTION

P. ii—M. 99 is a Subha Sutta, though not perhaps the one intended.

Note 5—Both Paṭisambhidā and Niddesa are attributed to the Ven. Sāriputta Thera, I believe. If so, insert "both" in your note.

P. iv—The second sentence of the second para. is a little ambiguous with the word "different (differences)" used twice. Next sentence: "The purpose for which the modes are intended"—does one intend a thing for a purpose? And what is this purpose?—The sentence seems to need a little revision.

Next para.—"and all that goes with them"—what is this? The commentaries? If so, the Netti does not itself claim to be applicable to the Commentaries.

P. vii—For "viz. 'hardness of earth'" read "e.g. 'hardness of earth'".

P. xii, para. 2—You seem to use the word "tipiṭaka" a synonymous with Sutta (and Vinaya), but if you do not, then the Abhidhamma Piṭaka needs special comment. N.B. Is there any reference to the Abhidhamma Piṭaka in the Netti? (P. xviii—I see there is.)

P. xii—Is there no alternative to "songs", which suggest singing (forbidden by the Vinaya), and even hymn-singing?

P. xix—The word "rewrite" is rather unpleasant. Won't "paraphrase", or some other word do?

P. xxi—"the indiscriminate use of the word khandha—(the five or the three)": I don't understand. There is Sutta usage of khandha for sīla, samādhi, paññā (M.i, 301).

Note 36—Are you sure that the Ven. Kaccāyanagotta was not the same as the Ven. Kaccāyana (Kaccāna, Mahākaccāna)? The Buddha calls Vacchagotta "Vaccha", and he calls the Ven. Kaccāyanagotta "Kaccāyana" (S. II,ii,5).

P. xxxiii—End of second para.—You have a fused participle here.

P. xxxiv—Also from the Sutta it is clear he lived in Avanti (Udāna v,6). "As expounder of the Buddha's utterances, he presumably had a method for doing so..." This seems to imply that he applied a rule of thumb to the Suttas in order to expand them, that the process of expansion was to some degree mechanical. But it is by no means necessary to have a formal method in order to expand a statement: if one has a full and profound knowledge of a subject (as the Ven. Thera had of the Dhamma), then one can expand a brief statement without any application of a method; it is simply a matter of recognizing what is being talked about and then of describing the same thing in greater detail and perhaps different words. A formal method is used, like mathematics or scientific formulae, when one does not wish to think. While, however, very much averse to the suggestion that the Ven. Thera had a method that might have been discussed at the First Council, I find it most probable that as soon as a Method was invented it should have been fathered on him. The introduction of a method reduces the Dhamma to the status of a natural science: it is not a natural science (which is a collection of facts gradually accumulated by successive research workers and stored in books), but ñāṇadassana, or knowledge, by seeing for oneself, of the nature of facts.

The word "maybe" has an odd flavour—American? I should have preferred "perhaps" in this context.

Might not the "quotation" in the Pe. from the Sumangalavilāsinī be taken as evidence that it was composed after the Ven. Buddhaghosa Thera's time? There is no knowing to what lengths rival authorities will go in order to disprove one another.

P. xxxvi—I didn't know you had a porpose—do you keep it in the lake? And feed it with Surveys, which apparently satisfy it?
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[EL. 152a] 3.iv.1959

2008-11-19T13:41:00.002Z

The draft of a letter by Ven. Ñāṇamoli.

Your (approx.) 2x6-1/2 pages of bludgeoning "joyfully" received (incidentally, the choice of the penultimate word was, by its exaggerated banality, intended, when used earlier, to convey "you can comment if you feel obliged"). The points you make are noted. But I now suspect there has been an outstanding failure to communicate in my writing recently words to the effect that the Netti was "better than I had previously thought" and so on. They were intended to apply within the limitations of a conception of the Netti as no more than what it is, namely a mere "commentator's grammar". It did not at all enter my mind (lack of foresight) that they might be taken to express a hailing of the Netti as the infallible newly discovered dispenser of short-cut solutions to all philosophical problems (yours or mine). And this, as I now gather, is how I have been taken and you taken in. Correct? No wonder you are disappointed, no wonder the bludgeonings; and so I fully apologize for whatever should be apologized for in this inadvertent and lamented miscommunication. Though when you say "It is like being absorbed in a slow and difficult chess problem and having a bystander come up and offer to show how one can get along much faster and more easily", the charmingly naive didactic reason for my sending it to you there implied was actually quite absent from my mind: it was sent simply because you asked for it to be sent (though I did wonder a bit why you should do so, but supposed you knew what you were about and why you wanted to read a translation of a commentator's grammar. But when you quote Mark Twain about "work" it is nice to think that you enjoyed at least that, though you thereby attribute to me far more esprit de sérieux than I can honestly lay claim to. Here are some stamps. Send it back if you like, or, if you like, bury both in the sand and I shall not be disturbed. Sorry you've been troubled.

Here are two extracts from the current "Maha Bodhi" for you: (1) "Once a sotāpanna, his way is certain: he will never more become Micchadiṭṭhi (a holder of wrong views) until he attains Nibbāna" (Ven. Shanti Bhadra, now in Berlin), and (2) "Walk up and down very slowly. Keep the remainder of the body still. The only movement is in the legs and feet" (Anoma Mahinda—now wearing Mahāyāna robes in Penang with the R. Stuart Clifton who waves razors over his pupils' heads). The best way to practise the latter way to the former goal might be to dress the body in a strait-jacket and hang it by the neck from a rafter by a rope—this would effectively keep it still while allowing the legs freedom to walk slowly up and down—ever more slowly—up and—down.

P.S. Mr. M. (who seems determined to "stamp" himself on one's memory—he sent me some more stamps the other day, with a two-page letter all about them) may be "not unintelligent" as you said earlier, but I wonder. One need go no further than the English dailies in order to pick up the now fashionable themes "the West has lost its faith" and "it is a fearful thing to be born in such conditions" (the lattter a rather flat combination of Hamlet and St. Paul)—no need to go prowling after Dostoievski. What might have shown a little intelligence, perhaps, would have been something to the effect that it is a fearful thing to be born at all in any condition (stated, however, I believe by Mme. du Leopardi and U Nu), but.... Mr. M., in the emotional tenseness of his tone, rather recalled Dennis (BBC), a reminder I can well dispense with. Mercifully he decided to spend the rest of his holiday in Kandy and not here, as he proposed doing. The mosquitos frightened him away. I am greatly indebted to the mosquitos. I must never forget how much I owe to mosquitos.
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[EL. 152] 31.iii.1959

2008-11-19T13:39:00.002Z

About citta. I suggested "heart" (which I think you sometimes use) or "mentality" (which I have been using) as a better, though not entirely satisfactory, alternative to the entirely unsatisfactory "cognizance". But now I think I have found the answer. Citta and cetanā (though not on the same level) are related, and cetanā (for me) is "intention"—i.e. the act or process or phenomenon of intending, which I understand as the having of a purpose (the essence of teleology). Thus we have yañca ceteti yañca pakappeti, "what one intends, what one plans...", where ceteti and pakappeti are almost synonymous (they are not, however, simply teleological—as in the arahat—, since the meaning is intending or planning as mine, pour-mien). Citta is not so much the process of intending ("intention"), as what is intended (cf. "it is my mind to do so-and-so"), and this can be expressed by the word "intent", which henceforward shall be my translation of citta. But for you, so long as you have "choice" for cetanā and "intention" for saṇkappa, this solution won't do. (N.B. "Choice" is ambiguous—it can be the act of choosing, what is chosen, or what there is to choose between [or amongst]: none of these is my cetanā, though the last is closest.) I suggest, then, the word "purpose" (sarāgañ cittaṃ, "lustful purpose"; cittavisuddhi, "purification of purpose"; cetosamatha, "quieting of purpose"; cittasaṅkhārā, "purpose-determinations"; etc.). [I might use "purpose" for saṇkappa.]
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[EL. 151] undated

2008-11-19T13:37:00.002Z

Unsigned, in Ven. Ñāṇavīra's handwriting.

...No letter, having nothing to say (except that Mr. M. has written to say that he is now practising meditation under the Ven. Nyanaponika Thera who, in his opinion, is "very sound"—your diagnosis is confirmed).

COMMENTS ON NETTI TRANSLATION

Para. 10, note 2—"...the term adhivacana-samphassa ('designation-contact') is employed to refer to the application of the name to the named in the field of ideas, and is distinguished from the corresponding paṭigha-samphassa ('resistance-contact') of the five sense-faculties with their respective objects..."

This statement seems to allot nāma to manañca dhamme ca and rūpa to cakkhuñca rūpe ca and the other four. But it is quite clear from M. 28 that all five upādānakkhandhas arise with contact in the case of each of the six āyatanas, and there are no grounds for supposing that only rūpa (and viññāṇa) arises from cakkhu-sota-ghāna-jivhā-kāya-samphassa, and that vedanā saññā and saṅkhārā (and viññāṇa) arise from manosamphassa. This is perhaps even more specifically stated in M. 9: Chayime āvuso vedanākāyā, cakkhusamphassajā vedanā...manosamphassajā vedanā¹ (see also D. 15). The source of the confusion is perhaps the fact that mano is used in the Suttas with rather different meanings: sometimes it is opposed to kāya (and vacī), and sometimes apparently even equated to viññāṇa (yadidaṃ vuccati cittaṃ itipi mano itipi viññāṇam itipi²—Nidāna/Abhisamaya Saṃy. vii(?xii),1) [but see later comment on Para. 293].

But, as an āyatana, mano is neither the same as viññāṇa, since manañca paṭicca dhamme ca uppajjati manoviññāṇam, nor opposed to kāya as something non-material opposed to something material (this distinction is the famous and misleading mind-body paradox which all the scientists in the world have failed to solve), since not only are cakkhu, sota, ghāna, jivhā, and kāya "that in the world by which there is a perceiver and conceiver of the world" but also mano is "that in the world by which..." (this is a latish Saḷāyatana Saṃy. Sutta, whose exact reference I have not), and anything in the world must be of the world, i.e. it must be material (whatever else it is besides). It is tempting, but I think quite mistaken, to identify dhammā with what Sartre calls "images", and the other five bāhirāyatanas with what Sartre calls "perceptions". Dhammā are simply the other five in combination. (In fact, all āyatanas are nāmarūpa, since the world is nāmarūpa.)

How, then, is D. 15 (Nidāna Suttanta) to be understood? Clearly it is saying that rūpa cannot arise independent of nāma, or nāma of rūpa. By this I understand that in any experience, involving no matter which sense (note that I am not denying that whenever there is cakkhuviññāṇa [say] there is also manoviññāṇa, but simply asserting that this fact is irrelevant in the present context), what appers is (i) describable: it is saññā (which is nāma), or distinguishable as colour(-and-shape), sound, smell, taste, touch, or idea—and note that of saññā the Buddha says (I quote from memory): Saññatvā, evaṃ saññī ahosinti hoti³ (A. VI,vi,8), which shows why saññā, being the basis of description, is nāma or adhivacana—; and it is (ii) possessed of a certain resistance that is independent of the particular quality or percept that manifests it (though it cannot be manifest except in the form of some percept or other—rather as different instruments can be devised to detect or "perceive" electromagnetic waves), and this resistance (paṭigha) is rūpa (and just as the programme that is received by the wireless set can only be heard when the set is on, yet is independent of the set in that the set is not responsible for the programme, which thus possesses its own inertia or resistance vis-à-vis the set, so the "programme" of rūpa that we perceive when this or that sense is on is dependent upon perception in order to appear, but is independent of, or resistant to, perception in that we do not perceive whatever we wish to perceive but what is arbitrarily forced upon us—which, of course, is distorted by our maññanā, rather [though not exactly] as a defective wireless set distorts the programme [but with "defective" perception, i.e. maññanā, it is useless trying to discover the "undistorted programme" that was "actually broadcast by the BBC" before our "defective" perception distorted it]). The division of phassa into paṭigha and adhivacana samphassa does not, as I understand it, correspond to a distinction between the five senses and the mind, but rather to the twofold necessity of all experience, in that it consists of a certain independent, arbitrary, resistant, datum (RŪPA) which, however, is obliged, in order to appear, to be descriptible as seen or heard or smelt and so on (as well as pleasant, unpleasant, etc.), i.e. to appear as a particular percept (NĀMA). This D. 15 passage describes phassa from the inside—i.e. reflexively and without reference to the twelve āyatanas (which are seen from the outside as in M. 28). [Beyond this, I think it is possible to specify the basic structure of rūpa or paṭigha, in terms of paṭhavī, āpo, tejo, and vāyo, not so much, however, as solid, liquid, ripening/fiery, and motile/windy (which are derived notions, themselves requiring analysis), but rather as isolation, cohesion, combination, distension, or some such terms (which can be given exact definition with the aid of Kummer, since they simply describe the relation of the present object with its immediate negative, the surrounding absent objects). Distension (vāyo) is the measure of a thing's inertia—it cannot vanish until distension (or "potential" if you prefer) has dropped to zero. The arbitrary "pattern" of rūpa—its given teleological significance—to some extent justifies its translation as "form"; but this must not be identified with the shape of an object as opposed to its other qualities (such as colour, texture, sound, and so on)—all the qualities of an object, not excluding the particular quality of shape, manifest form (indeed, strictly, each quality is itself an object [in the field of the particular sense concerned, and the qualities combine in virtue of mind which combines the individual fields of the sensual senses], and each object has an arbitrary, resistant, foundation). On the more everyday level, however, there is no harm in (con)fusing "form" with "shape". Since we most easily apprehend matter in the shape of objects, their most obviously resistant feature; and it is thus possible partly to justify "form" for rūpa also on this level. Thus the four mahābhūtas both (as solid, liquid, fiery, and windy) are "form" (everyday level) and (as isolation, cohesion, combination, distension) are that upon which "form" depends (fundamental level)—cattāri ca mahābhūtāni catunnañca mahābhūtānaṃ upādāya rūpaṃ: ayam vuccat'āvuso rūpaṃ.⁴ But all this in the square bracket is beyond the scope of your note.]

Para. 79, note 3—Is there an authority for extending 'misapprehension of virtue and duty' beyond beyond what you say in this note (which is obviously correct [as far as it goes]), to cover also the mistaken view that enlightenment or extinction is to be obtained through the practice of sīla alone (i.e. without samādhi and paññā)? It seems to me to be unduly restricted to limit it to 'ox-virtue' etc. There is a school of opinion in Ceylon that Vinaya by itself is enough.

Para. 138—I dislike "zeal" for chanda. "Desire" seems to suit all contexts much better. "Zeal" is quaint.

Para. 144—In M. 62 (i,424) there is upekkhaṃ hi te Rāhula bhāvanaṃ bhāvayato yo paṭigho so pahīyissati.⁵

Para. 161—There seem to be no good grounds for the Netti's saying that the sixth āyatana is not material—see my remarks to para. 10, note 2. nevertheless, since it is not distinguishable as a material sense separate from the first five (being the combination of them) it is not necessary to say that it is the footing for "lust for form" in addition to the first five. Why the Netti here speaks of the five faculties and then switches to the sixth facticity-base, I don't know—there is Sutta authority (Indriya Saṃyutta, I think) for calling the mind a faculty as well as the five (N.B. In para. 255 all six are "faculties"). Were the sixth indriya or āyatana not material it would have no existence whatsoever (since reflexively it does not appear).

Para. 164, note 5—"Eye-as-vision" is an odd translation of the pair of facticity-bases,^a cakkhuñca rūpe ca. Perhaps you have a reason? From Sal. Saṃy. X,2 it is clear that "vision (seeing)" = "eye-consciousness". What, then, is "eye-as-eye-consciousness"? Also, the word corresponding to mind is viññāṇa (or ñāṇa in the verses), which is "cognition^b (knowing)" and not "mentation" (what is the Pali for this?). Cf. also diṭṭha-suta-muta-viññāta.⁶

—do—note 9—Though holding no brief for "clinging", I do not much favour your "assuming". I translate "holding".

Para. 165, note 1—How charmingly innocent is this use of bhavanga! I am all in favour. The Abhidhammikas have put their foot in it.

Para. 173—Where are the notes? The second note is given under para. 172, and the first note is missing altogether. Perhaps you will find this quotation in the Rādha Saṃyutta.

Para. 174—Perhaps you will find this quotation (which is untraced presumably because of the initial Tasmātiha) in the Satipaṭṭhāna Saṃyutta.

Para. 46, note 2—(Turn back, I'm afraid.) The translation of yoniso manasikāra as "reasoned mind-work", though certainly correct from the etymological point of view, seems to overshoot the mark. In the first place, it is terribly stiff and un-English (like the horrible "making-become" for bhāvanā [I see (para 46, note 1) you translate bhāvanā as "maintaining in being": why not simply "keeping in being", which is shorter? But both of these seem to miss the idea of development which I think is essentially what is meant—to cause to be what already is = to develop, to increase in being—what about "growth in being", if you insist on preserving the ontological aspect? To grow is also causative in English.]) In the second place, "mind-work" inevitably suggests thinking—and indeed you say that it is the mental activity inseparable from all cognition—; but in the higher jhānas (see M. 111—vol. 3, p. 28) there is still manasikāra, and the emphasis there is certainly not on mental activity (after all, vitakkavicāra have been left behind after the first jhāna). I cannot help feeling that "attention" is not only more natural English, but also more accurately and less misleadingly conveys what is intended by manasikāra. Manasikāra, in itself, is purely direction—it is not "work in the mind" but "making to the mind"—, and the part played by manasikāra in a train of thought is simply the direction of the mind to each idea; but the succession of ideas is not manasikāra—it is the manner of its employment (yoniso or ayoniso). As regards "reasoned" there is less to say. "Reasoned attention" is perhaps unobjectionable, though still a little starchy. For my part, even in face of your arguments, I would translate "proper attention" and "improper attention", where "proper" can be taken in the sense of "straight" or "upright", and "improper" as "crooked". "Reasoned" also has a faintly logical air about it—Rationalism, one feels, is somewhere in the background ("A feast of Pure Ration", as one might say). "Wise" and "unwise" are not very satisfactory.

Para. 152, note 1—Even admitting that natthi kiñcīti is a play on the two words kiñci (pron.) and kiñcana, I find that "nothingness" is to be preferred as a translation. Obviously, if there is nothing, then there is no obstruction or owning; but the translation "no owning" seems liable to confusion with n'etaṃ mama, which, after all, is quite a different department of the Dhamma. Alternatively, you might compromise between "no owning" and "nothing" with "no property" (i.e. "nothing owned"); but even this does not quite avoid confusion with n'etaṃ mama (though it is perhaps better). The point seems to be this. Except in an arahat (and the arūpa jhānas do not specifically concern arahats) everything is maññita, everything is "mine", everything is owned. In consequence, there is only no owning or property when there is nothing at all. But if you say "no owning" there might, logically, still be things that are not owned, and if you say "no property" there might still be things that are not property, whereas if you say "nothing" this mistake cannot arise (though you lose the significant point that the only way a non-arahat can delude himself that he is free from owning is by abolishing everything—I say "delude himself", because the Mūlapariyāya tells us that will still conceive akiñcaññāyatanam-me ti: "'no owning', 'no property', 'nothing' is mine", which is a pleasing example of the treachery of the Theory of Types). Or you might translate ākiñcaññāyatana as "the base (or as I should say, "occasion") of dispossession" and in the same sentence translate natthi kiñcīti as "'there is nothing at all'"; this would give you the benefit (in those contexts where both expressions occur) of both senses, and all you would lose is the similarity of the words in the Pali (kiñci-kiñcana).

Paras. 194-7—I note that you translate ajjhattika as "in oneself" and bāhira as "external". That would be perfectly unobjectionable, except that in combination with these you use the word "object", which inevitably points to a "subject". Does the pain "in oneself/external" correspond to "subject/object" or not? If it does, why do you distinguish? The difficulty is, of course, that the body, which is ajjhattika relative to the bāhirāyatanas, is itself a bāhirāyatana when we come to consider how we perceive our own body. I suggest this complication can be avoided if you use the word "thing" instead of "object". If you stick to "in oneself/external" for ajjhattika/bāhira, you will then have no occasion at all to use the words "subject/object" (except, of course, in other senses: "What is the object of your journey?" "What is the subject of your lecture?" etc.). [Hitherto I have been following Sartre in speaking of the "object" of consciousness, but this won't do unless consciousness is the "subject", which I have now decided it is not—I shall use "subject(-ive)/object(-ive)" for ajjhattika-bāhira. Since āyatana is "occasion", the word "base" is available for ārammana, and it will be convenient and correct to speak of nāmarūpa ass the "base (of consciousness)". A "thing" will then be a "base (of consciousness)" if it is considered in relation to its existence or presence, and it will be an "object" (where I speak of objects you will speak of externals) if it is regarded in relation to my self ("subject"), and "objective" if it is regarded in relation to a (bodily) sense ("subjective"). My body can be a base (of consciousness), an object, objective, or subjective, depending on how it is regarded. It can never be the subject (self).]

Para. 202—You here use the words "subjective" and "objective". How are these related to "in oneself" and "external"? See previous note.

Para. 212—The word "singularity" is rather singular.

Para. 239—There might be something to say about this if I knew what the Pali was. Is "concomitant of cognizance" cittasaṅkhāra or not? If so, I disagree with the translation. Cittasaṅkhāra is mental determination or intention (= mental action), not a (or the) concomitant of citta/mentality. I must also register an objection to translation of citta as "cognizance", for the reason that the word 'cognizance" is more or less equivalent to "consciousness" or viññāṇa, whereas citta is something on a different level. Confusion of citta and viññāṇa leads to difficulties. "Heart" for citta is much better, though perhaps not ideal. Provisionally I use "mentality", which also is not ideal. Perhaps, however, "concomitant of cognizance" is cetasika? If so, I object only (as above) to the word "cognizance", but fail to understand this para. of the Netti. Citta is a less determinate or technical word than mano (as āyatana) on the one hand, and viññāṇa on the other hand, and corresponds to "mind" in such expressions as "I've got a good mind to...", "bloody-minded", "he's got a dirty mind", "make up your mind", and so on. Cittasaṅkhāra and manosaṅkhāra (I think both terms occur and are used synonymously) are both "mental determinations", and though this is not on the same level as manokamma (which is much coarser), nevertheless mano is used and in the same sense—i.e. non-āyatana and as opposed to vacī and kāya—in both; but as far as I know, though mano is sometimes, as here, the same as citta, citta is never used as an equivalent to the manāyatana or manindriya. And I know of no passage where citta and viññāṇa are at all interchangeable. Citta (mano) is no more nor less than the everyday notion of "mind", and as such defies any precise definition—"what is mind?" It is tempting to identify it with nāma, as such translations of nāmarūpa as "mentality-materiality" go to show; but actually nāma is on quite a different level, being a precise technical term on the same level as viññāṇa and manāyatana (from which it is clearly distinct). There is a similar difference of level between the kāya of kāyakamma and kāyasaṅkhāra on the one hand and the kāyāyatana and kāyindriya on the other hand. In my view it is a fundamental mistake to seek connexions between different levels—citta, for example, can by no means be defined in terms of pañcakkhandhā or saḷāyatana. Even the apparently exact correspondence between kāya-, vacī-, citta-saṅkhāra and kāya-, vacī-, mano-kamma is deceptive: an unspoken covetous or deluded thought (vitakka) is vacīsaṅkhāra but manokamma, and verbal expression, particularly by gestures, seems to be kāyasaṅkhāra but vacīkamma.

Para. 260, note 1—You now have no excuse for translating ārammaṇa as "object".

Para. 293-4—! (N.B. Could you send me the whole of the relevant passage (not the whole Sutta) in S. ii,94-5 [which I imagine is the same as the Nidāna/Abhisamaya Saṃyutta vii (?xii),1], so that I can decide whether it is necessary to understand it as asserting that citta, mano, and viññāṇa are synonymous? If you asked the average Englishman whether mind and consciousness are the same or different, what would he say? I imagine he would say that they are the same, opposing both to matter. I think this Sutta probably means no more than that. I cannot help feeling that the Netti is wrongly attributed to the Venerable Mahā-Kaccāna Thera—it is much more likely to have been composed by Procrustes.)

Para. 428, note 1—This note is missing.

Para. 424, note 1—How do you distinguish between a "component" and a "category"? What, exactly, do you mean by a component of existence? This is not quite clear. I do not consider the five categories and the twelve facticity-bases quite as "alternative", i.e. mutually exclusive, or equivalent. They are, rather, "complementary" or related, as can be seen from their occurrence in the p.s. viññāṇa--nāmarūpa--saḷāyatana. This note has rather an air of oversimplification.

Para. 424, note 1—"the only authentic Piṭaka reference", though correct, suggests Buddhavacana, yet you say at the end "to repeat, the word never seems to have been used at all by the Buddha". Why "to repeat..."? This takes too much for granted from your reader, who may have his own opinions about the Ps., or may consider that all, or alternatively none, of the Pitaka is Buddhavacana.

Para. 453, note 2—If you put milk into a pot and leave it, does it become curd? doesn't it just go sour? Or is that the same thing? And is the transition gradual or abrupt? The translation "milk, when put into a pot, is curd" rather suggests that it becomes curd merely in virtue of its being transferred to a pot ("curd is potted milk"), which is hardly what is intended: would not "milk, being left in a pot, is curd" be better, if you want to avoid the word "becomes"? The arbitrariness of the decision at what moment the milk becomes curd is largely a rational affair: if the transition is gradual we are perplexed only because we presuppose that it must be either milk or curd (if we do not presuppose "is this milk?" "is this curd?" doubt does not arise—it is what it is) and if the transition is abrupt we have no reason for perplexity. The less rational our attitude, the more evident becomes the moment when a thing ceases to be what it was.

Para. 470—Is the second "concentration" right?

Para. 472—Is the second "heart-deliverance" right?

Para. 508—See comment on para. 260, note 1.

Para. 510—Note number 1 missing in text.

Para. 521, note 1—"Unmaterialistic" sounds a little odd combined with "noble"—Anticommunism?

Para. 524—"Universal-wholeness" is rather a teutonic compound—is there nothing simpler?

Para. 535, note 1—This note is missing.

Para. 541, note 1—Ditto.

Para. 553, notes 1 and 2—Perhaps arūpa beings are intended—not having a kāya they will not have a sak-kāya? But see āneñjasakkāya.

Para. 559—Why D. 2 for the sixty-two ditthis? Surely D. 1 (Brahmajāla)?

Paras. 561-2—Are you right in expanding "the way that leads anywhere" into "the way that leads [from] anywhere [to extinction]"? Does it not simply refer to those who are not committed either to hellish or to heavenly rebirth—i.e. those who might go [to] anywhere? That, at least, is how I understand para. 567.

Para. 577, note 1—For "blunt" read "light".

Para. 580, note 2—Should not "attainment percipient of nonentity" be "attainment of nonentity of perception" (= asaññāsattāyatanam)?

For Para. 645, note 1—read para. 644, note 1.

Para. 662—See comment to para. 559 above.

Para. 674, sub-para. 3—I think that you go against the Netti's intention by giving the four "assumptions" as you do—it is clear from para. 678 that the Netti's four (in this context) are sensual-desire, being, views, self-doctrine. Better check with the Pali that you have got para. 257 correctly. How inconvenient and tiresome must the Suttas be to the exegetists! Both the Netti and Bhante prefer bhavupādāna though perhaps for different reasons. (The Ven. Bu. Thera at least does not alter the texts or suggest they are mistaken.) From para. 675 sub-para. 4 I see that the Bond of Views corresponds to the Tie of Misapprehension of Virtue and Duty. This would tend to make diṭṭhupādāna and sīlabbatupādāna coalesce, no doubt making room for bhavupādāna. All this part of the Netti is pure Procrustes.

Para. 689, note 1—Why do you say that any soul-concept must fall into the name-body? What about rūpaṃ attato samanupassati and so on, and viññāṇam attato samanupassati and so on?

Para. 757, note 2—Note number missing in text.

Para. 760, note 3—Note number missing from text.

Para. 794 et. seq.—You would probably find all these untraced quotations in the Vimāna Vatthu.

Para. 827—The whole of this quotation is from the Bāhiya Sutta in the Udāna (i,10), and not as you have divided it.

Para. 850—Read D. 1 for D. 2. The note here is given in the notes as belonging to para. 851.

Para. 823, note 2—Full marks for the "teleological suspension of the ethical"—that will fox everybody.

Para. 904-5—This passage seems to suggest that the first beginning is not evident to sāvakas but is evident to the Buddhas. This is a strange confusion.

Para. 931—Would not "How has my passing of the nights and days been?" be better?

***

GENERAL REMARKS

1. The foregoing comments do not pretend to be exhaustive. I have rather skimmed through the translation, and these were the most striking points. I have also made no attempt at all to correct the numerous misprints.

2. As regards the Netti itself, it is indeed a cosy little desert as you describe it. While it is neat, methodical, and systematic, it is also entirely superfluous where it is not positively misleading. It is a combination of glimpses of the obvious (particularly the last part) and Procrustean drill-serjeant methods. I found it wholly useless. It is like being absorbed in a slow snd difficult chess problem and having a well-meaning bystander come up and offer to show how one can get along much faster and more easily. And show one he does—by treating all the pieces as draughtsmen. A game of draughts played with chessmen, that's what it is. (Long ago I heard the Ven. Soma Thera speak of the Netti Method, which I rather gathered was the art of transferring any one set of things in the Dhamma (the four jhānas, say) into any other set (the seven bojjhaṇgas, say). While it is not exactly that (though, also, it is not exactly not that), it may have set a fashion that the other commentators have been only too eager to follow and develop (draughts is easier than chess).

3. As regards your translation, something may be said about (i) choice of words, and (ii) quantity of words.

(i) Choice of words. Naturally I do not always agree with you in this matter, and for different reasons. But since it is always, ultimately, a matter of difference of personal views there is no point in insisting. In addition to what I have noted above, I would register disapproval of "relishing" for nandi, which, though perfectly correct, is rather quaint (like the word "zeal", which, however, I do not regard as correct for chanda). Only a canibal chief "expects his dear relatives with relish", and though, no doubt, we do devour each other, the word seems a little gross in most contexts. Also "choice" for cetanā and "intention" for saṇkappa: but my objection to these is on philosophical grounds, which it is impossible to discuss at all briefly.

(ii) Quantity of words. Far too many. This seems to be due to two things. The first is your attempt to be accurate and consistent. This in itself is admirable, and without consistency at least this translation could not have been done (though whether it deserves your efforts is another matter). But your insistence upon maintaining being in being, and upon sticking to "idea" for dhamma through thick and thin sometimes produces some verbal monstrosities. (Your original intention, now mercifully abandoned, to translate yathābhūta as "according as it actually comes to be" and "inseparable from the idea of [vanishing]" for [vaya]dhamma are examples.) Note that "ideas" for dhamme in manañca dhamme ca may lead (by taking "ideas" as equivalent to "images" rather than to "essences" or "natures") to identification of manāyatana with citta, which is a confusion of levels with serious consequences. Dhamme, here, is "things(-as-essence)"—but note that I do not say you should so translate it, I only point out the danger of translating it as "ideas". Since the Netti itself makes this mistake, perhaps in these circumstances you would be wrong not to translate as "ideas"? You would be guilty of betraying the trust reposed in you by the author of the Netti—Procrustes—when he appointed you his translator. The gain in accuracy and significance that you make in this way is sometimes entirely negatived by loss of intelligibility. It cost me quite an effort to decipher "for one who is virtuous there is no choice to make thus 'How shall non-remorse be born in me?' since it is essential to the idea of the virtuous man that non-remorse is born in him" as "one who is virtuous does not have to think 'How shall I become non-remorseful?' since a virtuous man naturally becomes non-remorseful". Mark you, I do not say you ought to have translated it in this way. I only point out that by being accurate and consistent you may become unreadable (I offer no solution). Also, in aiming at accuracy you sometimes produce some little monsters by adhering to etymology—"in-shutting hindrance" for nīvaraṇa, for example [I suggest "constraint", which carries the idea both of restriction and coercion (hedges constrain traffic to keep you to the road]—, and over-reliance on etymology sometimes makes you, in my opinion, overshoot the mark (I have already discussed "mind-making" for manasikāra, but think of the strange result of a strict etymological paraphrase of "mind the step!", which contains an almost exact rendering of manasikaroti!). "Universal-wholeness" is another example. The second source of excess words is your way of interpolating words in square brackets in order to complete the sense of elliptical statements. This device is certainly unavoidable in many places, but it is sometimes overdone. For example (para. 511): "For in the fourth meditation cognizance possessed of eight factors is maintained in being: [it is then] quite purified, quite bright, unblemished...". Why not simply "...cognizance of eight factors is maintained in being, quite purified, quite bright, unblemished..."? A desire to be explicit sometimes results in an oversimplification of the sense and even in mistakes. Particularly in Suttas it is important not to put there what is not in the Pali unless it is impossible even to make sense in English without. A good example is found in your Vis. Mag. translation—(p. 603) "Now this body [with its six internal bases] and externally [the six bases due to] mentality-materiality make a duality". The Pali gives simply "Now this body and externally mentality-materiality make (are) a duality", and this is perfectly good grammatical English giving an exact rendering of the Pali. By adding the brackets you both add words and run the risk of misinterpreting the text. In this case I think your interpretation is on the right lines, except that it oversimplifies the situation by apparently smoothing out the difficulties in an otherwise obscure text. But in fact the obscurities remain, though now concealed in your artful gloss—what exactly are we to understand by "this body with its six internal bases" and "the six bases due to materiality-mentality"? And besides, the Pali tells us that mentality-materiality is external, whereas you tell us that the six bases are external, which is not quite the same thing. If the text is obscure it is purposely obscure, and should be left so in translation. It is a little ironical that in translating a work by the Ven. Buddhaghosa Thera you should gratuitously have given an interpretation to this Sutta passage quoted by him that is quite different from his own interpretation (see the Saṃy. Commentary, where "externally mentality-materiality" is glossed as "other people"): had you refrained from interpolating you would have saved words, remained faithful to the text, and not laid yourself open to adverse comment either by me or by the Ven. Buddhaghosa Thera supposing he were still alive. This example, however, I admit is past history; nevertheless I still sense the same tendency in the present translation. Verse translation presents additional difficulties, of course, metri causa.

It is obvious that if I am to comment on your translation I shall mention principally what I disagree with, or find is wrong, and not what I agree with and approve. If, then, the foregoing reads like a dozen pages of carping criticism, purely destructive bourgeois negative thinking, you have really only yourself to thank, since you said that any comments would be joyfully received, and, taking you at your word, I have produced twelve pages of them in the confident expectation that they will seem like purest nectar. Needless to say, what I have left unsaid in the way of praise and admiration for your really rather remarkable achievement would fill an entire [...one word indecipherable]⁷. As for your learned notes, I find I have some relish for them—perhaps rather in the sense of Mark Twain's remark "I love work; I can watch it for hours".
__________
[a] Without disagreeing with this translation of āyatana, recent thoughts on the matter lead me to prefer "occasion" (which, incidentally, also fits other uses of āyatana, e.g. Sati sati āyatane—"whenever there is occasion").

[b] N.B. I may change from "consciousness" to "cognition" for viññāṇa, since "to cognize" is shorter than "to conscious of" for vijānāti; but the point is not important.

[1] Chayime...: 'There are, friends, these six bodies of feeling, feeling born of eye-contact, ...feeling born of mind-contact.'

[2] yadidaṃ...: 'That is to say, that which is called "heart", "mind", "consciousness"....'

[3] Saññatvā...: 'Having perceived it occurs (to him): "Thus I was perceiving".'

[4] cattāri...: See EL. 137.

[5] upekkhaṃ...: 'When you develop equanimity, Rāhula, that which is resistant, that is abandoned.'

[6] diṭṭha...: This paragraph is triple noted and marginally noted: “Strong disapproval here.”

[7] one word indecipherable: Ven. Ñāṇavīra's entry.
_________________________________________________

[EL. 150] 24.iii.1959

2008-11-19T13:32:00.002Z

Many thanks for your letter and for the Netti. ...I have only just glanced at the Netti, but it seems quite promising. The translation of sutta by "thread" is to be encouraged—no doubt you are aware of the passage in the First Pārājika of the Sutta Vibhanga about this.

...The elephants which are apparently terrorizing us are a herd of about fifty. In sheer bulk this is rather formidable—what does one elephant weigh? I have been suffering from this elephantiasis (surely the correct usage of the word—infestation by elephants?) on and off for the last month. Though they go away when they see a light or hear a cracker, they still come to within twenty or thirty yards of the kuṭi—the light, or a torch, is hidden by the trees beyong that distance, and the cracker has to be fairly close to them to be effective. The other morning (4 a.m.) they were in the jungle about fifty yards beyond the privy, where I had an appointment. So I went out duly armed with hurricane lamp, torch, and crackers. They seemed to be getting closer as I was squatting there, and I was obliged to interrupt proceedings to let off two crackers and shine the torch, before they would go away. If they had come any closer I think perhaps I should have had an even quicker and more complete motion than I did in fact have. On the subject of elephants:—I note that in your Vis. Mag. trsl. you describe the elephant created by the Ven. Thera (suffering from some vipassanā upakilesas) as putting its trunk into its mouth and trumpeting; but does an elephant put its trunk into its mouth to trumpet? I don't know; but it seems possible that what the text might actually mean is that the elephant used its trunk in place of its mouth, i.e. by uttering a sound with it. What do you think?

I realize that kamma- and uppatti-bhava are pre-commentarial—if I said they were commentarial, that was a slip. I should not now at all equate these two with pour-soi and en-soi. Your comment that, grammatically, the word "I" is the subject of a verb is pertinent. Actually, I was in doubt whether it would, in fact, be better to call attā (which is identical, as I see it, with "I"—attā, "self", is sometimes more of a rationalization than "I") the "subject" (and the ajjhattikāyatanāni "subjective") and loka the "object" (and the bāhirāyatanāni "objective"), rather than viññāṇa and nāmarūpa. I was going to ask you your opinion in this matter. But if attā is the subject, then viññāṇa is not. But how, then, to distinguish (in English) between consciousness and its ārammaṇa¹, name-and-matter/form? Internal and external, perhaps? But even this is not satisfactory, since consciousness is the thing's presence or existence, which can hardly be called internal (internal to what?). The confusion comes about from our normally translating "there is consciousness (of) my book" into "I am conscious (of the) book", and this tends to pull consciousness out of the picture towards "I". I have thought of a simple simile to illustrate my earlier mistake of (partly) identifying "I" with consciousness. If it is not pressed too far, I think the simile may be found useful. Here it is. Suppose that I take a photograph of someone who is talking to me. When the photograph is developed and printed I have a picture of only one person—the person who is talking. But (especially if the person happens also to be pointing with his finger to me while talking) the picture indicates another person, namely, the person who is being talked to (and pointed at), that is, myself. In other words, "I" am the significance of the picture, and "I" am its significance by my absence from it. In other words again, "I" appear in the picture negatively. Now Sartre has said that consciousness is the negative of the thing. And this, in a sense, is correct. But what I have been assuming is that (in the simile) the picture of the person talking to me is the positive and I-who-am-being-talked-to-by-the-person is the negative—and therefore "I" am consciousness. But any photographer will point out my mistake—the negative of the picture is not the photographer but the same picture, with light for dark and dark for light (and "I"—the photographer—am just as much absent from the photograph's negative as from the print or positive). You see how it goes? Nāmarūpa is the positive picture; but it has a negative in two senses—the photographic negative, which is viññāṇa, and the photographer (the perceiver and conceiver of the world), which is "I" or myself, attā. (If you point out, correctly, that nāmarūpa has a [teleological] significance for arahat as well as for puthujjana, then I must admit that the simile is inadequate—the particular "I" or "my" significance of the non-arahat's nāmarūpa is additional to its teleological significance. And this, incidentally, is where Sartre goes wrong—he confuses the teleological significance of things [POUR] with the additional paṭhaviṃ-me-ti significance [MOI/SOI].) In view of all this, I shall probably abandon all attempts to find a pair of words to replace subject-object as a description of viññāṇa and nāmarūpa—I now think the expression bahidhā nāmarūpaṃ refers to nāmarūpa as loka or as corresponding to the bāhirāyatanāni, and not as "object" of consciousness.

M. 28 is the Sutta I was thinking of—thank you.

In view of my reorientation I no longer equate taṇhā with Sartre's manque (see above on his confusion of the teleological and the personal), but perhaps would still translate it as "want"....

...P.S. If attā ("self" or "I") is as much absent from the positive (nāmarūpa) as from the negative (viññāṇa), is it not then proper to say that viññāṇa is as much bahiddhā as nāmarūpa (considered as loka)? Not quite; for the reason that just as nāmarūpa is the ārammana of viññāṇa, so attā or "self" is the ārammaṇa of self-consciousness [attā is a kind of ajjhattika nāmarūpa]. Thus the ārammana "nāmarūpa or loka" is bahiddhā to the ārammana "attā or self", whereas viññāṇa [i.e. the consciousness (of) nāmarūpa] is bahiddhā to self-consciousness. viññāṇa is not therefore directly bahiddhā to attā. Self-consciousness is, of course, no more to be found than self.

__________
[1] ārammaṇa: 'Basis, object.'
_________________________________________________

[EL. 149] 13.iii.1959

2008-11-19T13:30:00.002Z

Perhaps there will be more to be said about my latest change of orientation at some later date, but for the present I shall limit myself to this. In my recent letters I said that the subject and the object are divided into a gratuitous and (in the non-arahat) a necessary part, and that the necessary part of the subject is "I", whereas in the object it is "mine"; but this must be corrected—it is "my—" in both. In other words, the object is "my book (or whatever it is )", and the subject is "consciousness (or presence) of my book". This means that "I" is to be found neither in subject nor in object. With this (further) correction I now see my change of orientation as an abandonment of one of the four diṭṭhis: viññāṇaṃ attato samanupassati,¹ and so on. If this is so, then it is a more important change than it seemed at first sight (and therefore the more welcome). I think I had largely inherited this diṭṭhi (I am not sure which of the four) from Sartre, in whom the soi (or moi) is always in some way associated with consciousness, rather than with the object. For Sartre, I think, "Je suis" expresses the conscience (de) soi, the conscience non thétique (d')elle-même²; and he says (in L'Imaginaire) that a conscience is itself an object in reflexion, and, from L'Être et le Néant I gather that this object is the soi. But I am not concerned to analyze Sartre's diṭṭhis in this letter.

One result of my change of orientation is that I have had to revise (yet once again—are you surprised?) my interpretation of the Mūlapariyāya tetrad. I had based my interpretation (or attempted to) on the Kummer structure, but now that I find that Kummer is valid for the arahat no less than for the non-arahat, this won't do. (I mean that though Kummer shows that maññanā is possible—since maññanā is a form of choice—he [or it] does not show that it is necessary. Kummer does not show why there is maññanā.) I am by no means dissatisfied with my new interpretation (which does, in fact, have certain features in common with its predecessors). But prepare yourself for a shock—the tetrad is not a tetrad at all, it is a triad. The first three (paṭhaviṃ maññati, paṭhaviyā maññati, and paṭhavito maññati) tell us what we conceive, and the last (paṭhaviṃ me ti maññati) tells us how we conceive it. The first three refer, as I now think, to rūpa, nāma, and viññāṇa respectively, which are the three layers in all experience. In the objective layer (paṭhaviṃ maññati) we conceive the material object itself as mine (my book); then in the intermediate layer (paṭhaviyā maññati) we have the description (nāma, adhivacana) of my book; and finally in the subjective layer (paṭhavito maññati) we have presence/consciousness/existence of my book. Nowhere at all do we find "I"; yet all this "my" keeps on pointing to an "I", but in vain—there is no "I" to be found.

Now this interpretation of the Mūlapariyāya fits in nicely with several other Suttas, as I hope to show you. The Mūlapariyāya starts with paṭhaviṃ paṭhavito sañjānāti...paṭhaviṃ maññati. What other Sutta speaks of saññā and maññanā together? There is this one, which I must quote from memory: yena loke lokasaññī lokamānī, ayaṃ vuccati ariyavinaye loko... cakkhunā loke lokasaññī lokamānī, sotena...³ etc. This brings out the point (correctly made, as far as it goes—by Sartre) that the senses (or body) are to be found either dans le monde—i.e. (negatively) as what is implicated by the orientation of the world,—or, au milieu du monde—i.e. as material things in the world, perceived by other senses: in no case can a sense appear to itself. Thus, in this Sutta, cakkhunā loke is the eye as a material thing in the world, and cakkhunā...lokamānī is the material eye as the reason for there being a conceiver of the world; lokasaññī is the material eye as the reason for there being a perceiver of the world. From this I am led to think that cakkhuñca paṭicca rūpe ca uppajjati cakkhuviññāṇaṃ⁴ must be regarded as a description of the contact of what I can, with another eye, another sense, see as an eye (in the world) with what I can see as a coloured thing (in the world). By this I mean that since this is the only way in which a sense (an eye) can directly appear as an object, this description must be regarded as a scene witnessed (or imagined) by another similar sense. (There is a Majjhima ? Sutta⁵ which I can't locate, that seems to confirm this. Hitherto this Sutta has been rather a stumbling block to me, but not now.) And there is also another reason for this. The eye, reflexively described, is what is pointed to or indicated by perception, i.e. as presupposed by perception; but the bahiddhā āyatanas are all given as already perceived (colours, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, ideas) before the contact has taken place—"the eye meets colours", as it were. But if the eye is presupposed by perception, the description should be "the eye meets matter, as a result of which contact there are colours". So I think the eye and its object, in this description, are seen (or imagined) as if from an outside point of view. Now rūpe/colours is a bāhirāyatana, whereas the eye is ajjhattika. But I have tried to point out that the eye subjectively does not appear at all (which is why the description of phassa must be made as if from an outside point of view). In consequence of this, the opposition ajjhattika-bāhira is not the same as the opposition subject-object that we have between viññāṇa and nāmarūpa. Here, viññāṇa is the presence or existence of the descriptable (nāma) material object (rūpa). [viññāṇa can be the object of reflexion (though it is not soi), whereas the eye or the body cannot.] Ajjhattika/bāhira (of the āyatanas) is self/world, whereas viññāṇa/nāmarūpa is Subject/Object, but Self and Subject, as I now see, are quite different, as also are world and object. [The ajjhatta/bahiddhā of the Satipatthāna Sutta simply is, I think, mine/others.] For this reason the relationship between the body and viññāṇa is given in the Suttas by the simile of a jewel on a thread—i.e. purely as juxtaposed (the point being that viññāṇa, to be described, must be seen reflexively, whereas the body, to be described, must be seen non-reflexively as a material object, and the two cannot be brought together at the same level). This brings me to the Sutta (again quoted from memory): Iti kāyo, bahiddhā ca nāmarūpam: itthetaṃ dvayaṃ.⁶ You will notice that kāyo is not called ajjhattiko in relation to nāmarūpa's bahiddhā—for the reason that kāyo is itself a material object in the world with the peculiarity that it coincides with what is indicated by the conception, orientation, or organization of that nāmarūpa; and neither of these is subjective (i.e. viññāṇa). Similarly in this passage from M. 109: Evaṃ kho, bhikkhu, jānato evaṃ passato imasmiñ ca saviññāṇake kāye bahiddhā ca sabbanimittesu ahaṃkāramamaṃkāramānānusayā na hontī ti.⁷ Here the body is saviññāṇaka (as before it was coupled with nāmarūpa)—i.e. is accompanied by but is not itself, viññāṇa or subjectivity, and the word ajjhattike is again notably absent.

But there is a further point. The body (or senses) in its mode as a material object perceived (or imagined) by other senses, is in the world. This is important; for it is the correlative to the description of the material body (or senses) as the reason, or instrument, whereby there is a perceiver and a conceiver of the world. (Reflexively described the eye is, in fact, the perceiver and conceiver of the world—the attā—: but neither reflexive eye nor attā is to be found.) As soon as conception of the world (lokamaññanā) ceases, so, of course, does the world—and at one blow the body (or senses) ceases both as what is indicated by the conception of the world (i.e. the phantom perceiver and conceiver) and as a thing in the world. (Remember that attā and loka are correlatives—attā is what is indicated by loka.)

Now we come to Bāhiya. I have never been able to make good sense of this Sutta (Udāna I,10); but it all seems now to fall into place beautifully. Yato te Bāhiya diṭṭhe diṭṭhamattam bhavissati...viññāto viññātamattaṃ bhavissati,—from your ceasing to conceive when you perceive (i.e. what is seen is merely seen, and not seen as mine)—tato tvaṃ Bāhiya na tena—there will no longer be a reason or instrument (whereby there is a perceiver and a conceiver of the world)—yato tvaṃ Bāhiya na tena, tato tvaṃ Bāhiya na tattha—from the ceasing of the instrument there will no longer be a body there (in the world)—yato tvaṃ Bāhiya na tattha, tato tvaṃ Bāhiya nev'idha na huraṃ na ubhayamantarena, es'ev'anto dukkhassāti⁸—from the ceasing of the body there (in the world) there will no longer be the ajjhattikāyatanāni upon which depends phassa, upon which depends nāma (cf. M. 109), upon which depends nāmarūpa saha viññāṇena (note that the triad:—here [idha] / beyond [huraṃ] / in between [ubhayamantarena], corresponds in different order to the Mūlapariyāya triad:—accusative [here] / locative [in between] / ablative [beyond]), and cessation of (conception of) viññāṇa, nāma, and rūpa, is the end of suffering. It is an incidental matter of satisfaction that these two Suttas (Mūlapariyāya and Bāhiya), both of which employ grammatical cases (accusative, locative, and ablative in the first, and instrumentive in the second) to convey their meaning, should have come clear together. Perhaps next week they will become unclear again together (but I hope not). Note that in a Mālunkyaputta Sutta in the Saḷāyatana Saṃyutta, the wording of Bāhiya is repeated, and in the expansion it is made clear that the six senses are what is referred to.

Some revisions of what I said in my last letter about the p.s. I now think the non-arahat has the whole thing, whereas the arahat has from avijjā to vedanā with the maññanā removed (which of course turns avijjā into vijjā), and none of the terms beyond (alternatively, he has none). This means (i) that bhava must be understood as ceasing with the attainment of saupādisesanibbānadhātu, and (ii) jāti and the remainder must be understood as what the non-arahat is liable for at any moment. In a sense this gives me a two-fold interpretation of the p.s.—avijjā to bhava, and jāti to the end....

14th. Thank you for your letter from Vajirārāma. No doubt the ola leaf Peṭakopadesa contains the same confusion as the printed texts—I imagine it is a rather venerable muddle, and even if you sort it out and restore sense to the text (and render to the Dīgha Commentary what is the Dīgha Commentary's), nobody will accept it, and you will be regarded as a tamperer with the Tradition.

Ven. Ñāṇaloka seems to be spreading his wings a bit; he is collecting quite a crowd of pupils; is the twelve-year-old sāmanera going to live at the Hermitage?

I am glad to hear the belly battle is in full-swing—it sounds rather Falstaffian to me.

So Mr. M. has discovered The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, has he? He made no mention of it to me, but I rather imagine it is just his cup of tea. You are quite right: Alaṃ (as our Venerable Teacher called him) and the Heart are infallible signs. I preferred my mute Rosicrucian.... I don't know what it is about Vajirārāma, but it is extraordinarily difficult to think there at all—one's head feels stuffed with cotton wool.

__________
[1] viññāṇaṃ...: 'He regards consciousness as self.'

[2] conscience...: 'The non-thetic [i.e. non-asserting] consciousness (of) itself.'

[3] yena...: 'That by which, in the world, one is a perceiver of the world and a conceiver of the world, that is called 'world' in the noble discipline... by the eye, in the world, by the ear... etc.'

[4] cakkhuñca...: 'With eye and forms as conditions there arises eye-consciousness.'

[5] Majjhima ? Sutta: In pencil is written: M. i,190.

[6] Iti kāyo...: 'Thus (there is) the body and externally name-and-matter: thus this is a duality.'

[7] Evaṃ kho...: 'Monk, for one who knows thus and sees thus there are no inclinations to the conceit of 'I-making' and 'mine-making' in this body with consciousness and externally in all signs.'

[8] yato tvaṃ...: For these passages see L. 121 (2.vi.1965).
_________________________________________________

[EL. 148] 1.iii.1959

2008-11-19T13:19:00.002Z

...I have to confess that I realized when I wrote that I was being irrelevant about your "ought" problem. The fact was that I had no ideas at all on what you were getting at, but the ambiguity of "duty", and the fact that duty is quite as certain as Scientific Truths—that is to say, not certain at all—did cross my mind. So that is what I wrote about. Now that you expand the matter with examples and illustrations it seems to me that this use of ought = must = is is the essence of the scientific inductive mauvaise foi. It is equivalent whether I say "he ought to be there by now" or "he will be there by now", and this appearance of the future tense gives the show away. The scientist works from present certainties to future probabilities: "If this litmus paper is dipped in this acid it (probably) will turn red". The scientist does not doubt that this is litmus paper and that this is acid (it says so on the bottle; it comes from a respectable firm; we have just shown it by experiment; etc. etc.), but in theory at least, he doubts the future, that this will turn red. But the scientist's mauvaise foi is that he doesn't doubt the future in practice, and his way of slipping from doubt about the future ("this ought to turn red if the past is anything to go by") to certainty about the future is to assume tactictly that ought to = must ("this must turn red unless we are to throw doubts on the whole of Science, which of course is unthinkable") = will certainly ("this will certainly turn red—how could it do otherwise?"). All that is then needed is to assume that an absent or future event ("he will be there by now" = "if we ring up we shall find that he is there now"; or "this acid will turn this litmus red") is a present event ("he is there now"; "[this] acid turns [this] litmus red") and the trick is done. So long as we are thinking of induction this ambiguity is inherent; but if we agree with Husserl and Sartre that there exists

un type d'expérience privilégiée qui nous mette immédiatement en contact avec la loi,¹

which is not "une science inductive", then it may be mauvaise foi to deny that "ought to be" = "is". Sartre again:—

Mais il importe peu que le fait individuel qui sert de support à l'essence soit réel ou imaginaire. La donnée "exemplaire" serait-elle une pure fiction? Du fait même qu'elle a pu être imaginée, il a bien fallu qu'elle réalise en elle l'essence cherchée car l'essence est la condition même de sa possibilité.²

For this reason I cannot share your mistrust of logical principles. For my part I cannot see that you can escape from induction (as you suggested could be done by yoniso manasikāra) unless you allow that Sartre and Husserl are right in this matter. (The great mistake is to suppose that "All swans are white" and "All determinations are impermanent" are similar statements. The first is purely inductive, and can be thought even though not all swans are white; whereas the second is reflexive and cannot be thought unless all determinations are impermanent, for the good reason that were not all determinations impermanent there could be no such thing as thinking, and a fortiori no possibility of thinking either "all determinations are impermanent" or "not all determinations are permanent".) Perhaps I go too far in suggesting that you don't allow Sartre and Husserl are right; but I get the impression that though you (quite correctly) deny absolute validity to inductive argument you have a lurking suspicion that every pefectly respectable eidetic or structural statement has a disreputable dash of inductive blood in its ancestry. I do not quite know whether you would openly proclaim this, admit it only to your best friend, admit it only to yourself when alone, refuse to admit it at all, or hotly deny it and denounce it publicly as a piece of propaganda emanating from the Vatican or Kremlin.

On the matter of induction, whether there is any way of getting universally valid propositions, the discussion in the note of pp. 213-4 of your Visuddhimagga translation is of interest as overlooking a statement by the Buddha (M. 90):—

Natthi so samano vā brāhmano vā yo sikideva sabbaññassati sabbam dakkhīti, n'etam thānam vijjatīti.³

In the note the Pur. says:—

So, although it [i.e. the Blessed One's knowledge] occurs with all dhammas as its object, it nevertheless does so making these dhammas quite clearly defined, as though it had a single dhamma as its object.

This gives me the impression that it is trying to say that reflexive knowledge has as its object a single essence or law (if you will excuse the word—I notice Sartre has used it in a quotation above), which nevertheless is applicable to all dhammas. The note, I note, says that the meaning of inferential (anumānika) knowledge is that it is doubtful: if this can be taken as saying that one can legitimately doubt inductive knowledge (the case in question is clearly inductive)—i.e. that it is only probable—then Husserl has been anticipated by several centuries. Had you noticed this? Does anumānika include deduction? Or is no distinction between inductive and deductive inference made? Or is it made in a different way?

Your thoughts on parallel lines are, I fear, just faintly specious. "A straight line" you say "repeated, in its simplest mode, makes two parallel lines". Why? In Line Geometry, which puts things as simply as possible, a point repeated defines a line ; and a line repeated defines a point i.e. a repeated line intersects the original line. It is an additional complexity to require that the point of intersection should be at infinity. (We can go further and say that two lines intersecting in a point define a plane, and two planes define a line – their line of intersection – and so on.) And thus it seems to me (reading, perhaps, between the lines) that you have assumed that Riemann maintains that Parallel lines meet at infinity (have you not?); but the point is that Euclid maintains that parallel lines meet at infinity – Riemann maintains that they meet in infinity (and Lobatschewsky maintains that they diverge in finity). If parallel lines are defined (as I think Euclid does define them) as "straight lines meeting at infinity", then Riemann is clearly guilty of doublethink in saying that "straight lines meeting at infinity (I.e. not meeting in finity) meet in finity". Euclid got there first, and made his definition. He might have said "parallel lines are straight lines that meet in finity", and in so saying he would have decreed that these lines are to be called "parallel". It would then have been necessary to find a name for these lines , which clearly meet at infinity (i.e. do not meet in finity. What Riemann maintains is that the second pair of lines do meet in finity. I am not aware that either Riemann or Lobatschewsky has said what parallel lines do at infinity. They probably do not use the notion of infinity. But if Euclid had not existed R. and L. would have had to invent him, since their raison d'être is simply to deny Euclid's axiom. (And I suspect that L. has simply denied R.'s axiom.) Euclid said "A" ("straight lines that do not meet in finity shall be called parallel"); R. said "A is not-A" ("straight lines that do not meet in finity do meet in finity"); and L. said "A is neighter not-A nor A" ("straight lines that do not meet in finity neither meet in finity nor meet in not-finity"). L. seems to have managed to treble-think, since he denies (what R. does not) that two straight lines meet anywhere.

...I have been visited in quick succession by two elderly red-faced and rather gloomy Englishmen. The first came with the Matara Bank manager and said nothing. The Bank manager (who came about the usual affair) is interested in meditation, and both in Rosicrucianism (about which I know nothing). The conversation turned to the belly bhāvanā, whereupon I employed my well-tried expedient of saying that, never having practised it (which already damns it a little) I can say nothing about it, but that it seems to be suspect on account of the claims of quick results that are put out by its advocates. This line is far more effective than the volumes of words and quotations and counter-quotations that are normally hurled to and fro. The second Englishman, who recently came in contact with Buddhism through F. Allen, says he (my visitor, not F. Allen) is a failure in life because he has tried Christianly to love his fellow men, and the only reaction he gets is resentment. A kind of Albert Schweitzer gone wrong. I told him to ignore his fellow men, and he seemed much relieved at my advice. Earnest and rather gushing. I fear I am unable to maintain such conversations at the emotional level that seems to be expected. Not uninteligent (he remarked that the West has lost its faith in its religion and that it is a fearful thing to be born in such conditions—rather Dostoievskian) but why do people take life so seriously?

I should be interested eventually to read your Netti and Petakopadesa translations—perhaps you might send your written MS (if legible) when you have typed them (or even a carbon copy, if you are making one). The authorship of the Petakopadesa is no doubt a matter of dispute amongst scholars: may I suggest that you write a learned note to the effect that to judge from the form of the present editions Laurence Sterne seems to have had a hand it in?

Still infested with elephants by night, large, medium, and small.

P.S. I find there is an orchard growing on the palm tree behind the kuṭi. How did that get there?

__________

[1] un type...: 'a type of privileged experience that puts us immediately in contact with the Law.'

[2] Mais il...: 'It does not matter much whether the individual fact that serves as support for the essence is real or imaginary. Is the "exemplary" given a pure fiction? From the very fact that it could be imagined, it must indeed have realized in itself the sought-for essence, for the essence is the very condition of its possibility.'

[3] Natthi so...: 'There is no monk or divine who knows all, sees all, at once: that is not possible.' (M. ii,127)
_________________________________________________

[EL. 147] 28.ii.1959

2008-11-19T13:11:00.004Z

A few revisions and developments of my last letter. I said that, except at death, self is the invariant of every transformation (as I had formerly thought), and I also said that the subject is the invariant. This needs some qualification. I find that there are, in every situation, three independent dualities, namely, (i) Subject-Object (viññāṇa-nāmarūpa or saṅkhārā), (ii) Necessity-Gratuity (which, I now note, seem to correspond to the commentarial notion of kammabhava and uppattibhava—but more of this anon), and (iii) Generality-Particularity (invariance-transformation, ṭhitattā-aññathattā). [To visualize how these are related, you may imagine a cube divided in three ways, so:— .]

My earlier (mistaken) assumption was that (i) and (ii) were the same. I corrected this last time by saying that (i) is the same as (iii) (and not (ii)). But this also is wrong.The Subject is not the invariant and the Object what is transformed, for Subject and Object are exact counterparts. As indicated above, (i), (ii), and (iii), are independent of one another. The Subject, of course (be it Necessity or Gratuity) is an Invariant of a Transformation, but what transforms is not the object but a more particular subject. And similarly with the object. And in the same way, Necessity or Self (whether subject—"I"—or object—"mine") is the Invariant of the Transformation of a more particular Necessity or Self. And gratuity (whether subject—"present" [or now]—or object—"this"—[note that as "mine" belongs to "I", so "this" belongs to "present"]) is the Invariant of the Transformaton of a more particular gratuity. The Kummer hierarchy is a hierarchy of Generality-Particularity (iii), and it requires Subject-Object (i) in the Gratuitous mode as its internal structure. It allows, but does not require, Subject-Object in the Necessary mode. The division (ii) Necessity-Gratuity should really be Necessity-cum-Gratuity and Gratuity alone; for whereas there is no Necessity without Gratuity, there can be (i.e. as arahat) gratuity without necessity. With these various qualifications my statement in the Sketch that my 'self' is what is invariant in every transformation is valid. It is not all that is invariant, since it involves invariance of gratuity also; and it is not true of the arahat, since in him gratuity alone is the invariant. And if it is invariant, then what transforms is a more particular 'self'. Furthermore, it may be either subject or object. (Necessity or self, as I conceive it, is not a "different kind" of gratuity, but simply a certain organization of gratuity—which is why gratuity is required by necessity [you can't have organization if you have nothing to organize], and why gratuity does not require necessity [this particular orgainization is, in a sense, imposed upon gratuity—this—, thus making it mine—or in the case of the subject turning present into I]). None of these revisions (which are more or less a tidying-up of what I said before) affects the main issue, which is that, given the incomprehensible āyu, the arahat becomes comprehensible (and from the Mahā Vedalla Sutta āyu is, and must remain, incomprehensible [or gratuitous]).

Two lines of thought have developed from these changes, the first being the nature of death, and the second the interpretation of the p.s. I said that the Sketch no longer proves rebirth. This is true. But the argument there certainly proves something. It proves that this life has neither beginning nor end. It does not prove rebirth, for the good reason that it does not show that we can die or be born. The point is that since āyusaṅkhārā are not vedaniyā dhammā this life is gratuitous, and its ending (death) is gratuitous. Given this life, the Sketch shows that it is without beginning or end. Death is the end of this life, that is to say, of what is given—it is the end of gratuity. But Necessity must have gratuity (to organize), and "seizes" a fresh gratuity (or life), and this is birth. This, however, is in the realm of gratuity, and cannot be proved. It is possible, with the use of Kummer, to give an exact structural description of this life, and it is also possible to give an exact description of the ending of this life—but this very description shows that the ending of this life is not implied by this life. If we turn our attention to our entry into this life (i.e. birth), we fare a little better. From the argument in the Sketch it is clear that, if we have not always been living this life, then we come into it when it had already been going on beginninglessly in the past. But then what were we doing all this time? The suggestion is (but it is no more than a suggestion) that we were living another life (or lives) of which this life was a possible alternative—that this life was always going on, in the absent mode, parallel to the life we were actually living. This is on the analogy of the structure of negatives and absent possibilities in this life; but since āyusaṅkhārā are totally out of reach of reflexion we can get no further than this. We can say that the argument of the Sketch shows that the idea of rebirth is—on the analogy of the structure of this life—conceivable or thinkable, that is to say, that it does not involve contradiction. This, in itself, is not negligible, since Scientific Opinion would deny it. But it does not seem possible to show that the structure of this life necessarily prohibits either annihilation (where the ending of gratuity at death would take necessity with it into a common destruction) or eternal continuation (where, even in the absence of necessity, the ending of gratuity at death would be automatically followed by the appearance of another gratuity). All that can be said is that, since this life is beginningless, either we have always been living it, or, if we have been living other lives parallel to it, then those lives did not end in annihilation. (This, it is true, is perhaps not all that can be said about annihilation and continuation, but it is all that the Sketch has to say.) When one "meets", as one does here, "the existence of a non-phenomenal structure"—āyusaṅkhārā—, one has to confess that there are certain limits to what one can obtain by reflexion. At this point one simply has to trust (saddhā) that the Buddha has informed us correctly. In no case, however—except as a temporary measure ("perhaps this will become clear later")—is faith in what is self-contradictory needed. We have to distinguish carefully between what is incomprehensible and what is impossible (or inconceivable).

About the p.s. As noted above, the distinction between Necessity and Gratuity seems to correspond to that of the Commentary between Kamma and Uppatti. This, together with the differences in kind between death/birth and any other change, seems to bring me back closer to the traditional p.s. interpretation. This is to be welcomed, since I do not disagree with the Commentary simply for the sake of disagreeing with it but because it seems to be mistaken. But this apparent return to the fold is deceptive—now, no more than before, do I allow that the three-life interpretaion is valid, but it is now easier to see how it has arisen. The point is this. In the non-arahat there is both necessity and gratuity, or, as the commentary says, both kammabhava and uppattibhava. Now certain terms in the p.s. do not have different names according as they "contain" necessity (i.e. are associated with kamma) or not. It has, accordingly, no doubt as a welcome, though quite unjustified, simplification, been decided that they are uppatti or gratuitous, and are simply the result of kamma in the past. The first one is viññāṇa: the viññāṇa of the three-life scheme is uppatti, and is therefore quite the same whether found in the puthujjana or arahat. But this is not so. In the puthujjana consciousness grows (as the Suttas tell us), whereas in the arahat it stands—tad apatiṭṭhitam viññāṇaṃ avirūḷham anabhisaṅkhacca vimuttaṃ; vimuttatā ṭhitaṃ...¹ (Khanda Samy. vi,2). Another is vedanā, and the discrepancy is even more evident here—the feeling accompanying rāga (for example) can by no means be described as simply the result of past kamma. It was, in fact, owing to the contradictions that I encountered in trying to reconcile the three-life interpretation with the Suttas that I abandoned it. What this interpretation fails to see is that necessity (attā, taṇhā, avijjā, etc.) alters these things. (It is just like Sartre's mistake, that though we perceive more and other than we see, yet this "more" and "other" consists wholly of néants which don't really affect the object at all—and at the end of 700 pages of L'Être et le Néant, tucked away in his metaphysical postscript, he suddenly informs us that the question of action, i.e. how we actually do change the world by our intentions, remains intact. Of course it does if you deny the possibility of its solution to begin with. N.B. I am not identifying intentional change of the world with avijjā, since the arahat also can change the world. I am only concerned here to point out that Sartre's mistake is similar to [but not the same as] the Commentator's.) The opposite one-sided interpretation we find in saṅkhārā, which is labelled kamma. The Sutta definition of saṅkhārā as it appears in the p.s. is kāya-, vacī-, and citta-saṅkhāro, which, from the Cūla Vedalla Sutta (and elsewhere) we know to be assāsapassāsā, vitakkavicārā, and saññā and vedanā, respectively (presumably the minimum actions). It is evident that it will depend entirely upon the individual concerned (puthujjana or arahat) whether these things are kamma or uppatti. (The arahat still breathes, though he no longer acts.) In the puthujjana you have puññābhisaṅkhārā, apuññābhisaṅkhārā, and aneñjābhisaṅkhārā; whereas in the arahat you have (clearly uppatti or gratuitous):—

Na me hoti Ahosin ti. Bhavissan ti na hoti me;
saṅkhārā vibhavissanti: tattha kā paridevanā.
Suddhaṃ dhammasamuppādaṃ suddhaṃ saṅkhārasantatim
Passantassa yathābhūtaṃ na bhayaṃ hoti gāmaṇi.
(Adhimutta Theragāthā 715-6)²

But in spite of this, saṅkhārā, in the three-life scheme, are kamma and not uppatti in order that they will go with avijjā into the first life.

It now seems clear that the p.s., since it refers to the non-arahat (it has no need to refer to the arahat) is kamma from end to end. But—as I mentioned before—you can't get kamma (necessity) without uppatti (gratuity), since the former is a certain organizing of the latter. Thus it is also upppatti from end ot end. If you want to find out how the p.s. does apply to the arahat you must remove the kamma or necessity from each term, something like this:—

avijjā → (vijjā)

saṅkhārā → saṅkhārā [mine^a → this]

viññāṇa → viññāṇa [I → Present]

nāmarūpa → nāmarūpa [mine → this]

saḷāyatana → saḷāyatana [Change of Orientation]

phassa → phassa [Avijjāsamphassa → Vijjāsamphassa]

vedanā → vedanā [sa-rāga-dosa-moha → vīta-rāga-dosa-moha]

taṇhā →—[Comy. has somewhere the expression vipāka cetanā, which may serve us here.]

upādāna → (upādāna) [One Sutta in A. VIII or IX tells the arahat to do vipassanā on the pañcupādānakkhandhā, for sukhavihāra. Upādāna in the sense of holding or stability, purely gratuitous, of an object (but not kāma, diṭṭhi, etc.)]

bhava:

kamma → bhava

uppatti → uppatti

jāti → (jāti)

jarāmaraṇa → (jarāmaraṇa)

N.B. These last two I take as the two ends of the present life. In a puthujjana they will be the two ends of a kamma-associated life; whereas in the arahat they will be the two ends of a purely gratuitous life. In changing from puthujjana to arahat one does not retain the puthujjana beginning and get the arahat ending, one exchanges lines. But I am less insistent upon this particular interpretation, which I may modify. If jāti is taken as the birth one is bound to have if one dies with avijjā, then of course the arahat has no jāti. From the difficulty of being intelligible in this exercise one may gather that it is not an exercise that one is required to perform.

Two or three days ago, on my way to take a bath in the field, I very nearly trod on a medium sized (about three foot) tic polonga. It was lying on, or at edge of, the path, and I didn't see it until it moved, when I was then about one yard away. It moved, in a rather tired way, about four feet away, and coiled up at the foot of a small bush. I was still there when I returned.

The sandy space opposite the kuṭi has a rather peculiar property of magifying everything that goes on it when seen from the kuṭi. Squirrels look like mongooses, mongooses like foxes, dogs and jackals like wolves or calves, the small local cows like prize English bulls, and buffaloes one would almost mistake for elephants. Probably this is due to its being seen through the trees, which makes it seem further away than it really is—it is actually twenty yards away. Perhaps you might wonder—as I used to—what an elephant would look like on it. I can tell you: it looks like a huge gray battleship sailing out of the jungle. It appeared at 5 p.m. the day before yesterday (the day after the polonga); I had some warning of its approach with the noise in the jungle of breaking branches, and, no doubt, I ought to have scared it away before it appeared, but there was some curiosity mixed with my apprehension, and I delayed. As soon as I let off a cracker it turned around (it had started coming up the path towards the kuṭi, which it had not yet seen) and sailed back into the jungle. No doubt one gets blasé about such things in the course of time, but not the first time. I had seen elephants at Yangalla, but at a greater distance, and from on top of the rock. Then, though large, they did not look so positively vast as the one that appeared on the magnifying sand patch. When they come at night, as they sometimes do, one has a double advantage—one can't see them, and one can reach them with a torch, which they dislike. I am much braver by night. For the last week there have been elephants all around and much trumpeting by night.

Also a few days ago a young man from the village came and read (or chanted) some Sinhalese verses which he said were about me and had recently appeared in the Silumina. So I suppose that one of my visitors has been a kavi¹ (I have had two or three rather ceremonious visitors recently, so it's probably one of them). I could not follow what the verses said about me, but I was assured that they contained only good things. I hope this doesn't bring flocks of people here.

P.S. Thank you for the Ven. Nyanaponika on Belly Bhāvanā. This controversy has an extraordinary vitality.

__________

[a] My breathing/my thinking/my feeling and perceiving. Note that to intend or to act (cetanāham kammaṃ vadāmi) is to keep an object in being; thus a given intention and a given object are the same; in this case the intention and the object are "breathing", "thinking", and "feeling-and-perceiving". (Russell says a table is an inference: Husserl says a table is an intention.)

[1] tad apatiṭṭhitam...: 'Unestablished and undeveloped consciousness, not having determined, is released; from being released, (there is) endurance....'

[2] Na me hoti...: 'I was' is not for me, not for me is 'I shall be':
Determinations will un-be: therein what place for sighs?
Pure arising of things, pure series of determinants—
For one who sees this as it is, chieftain, there is no fear.
(See SN SAKKĀYA.)

[3] kavi: 'Poet.'

_________________________________________________

[EL. 146] 26.ii.1959

2008-11-19T07:57:00.002Z

Many thanks for your letter. Your joke about the government's ceiling on its land and the consequent lack of rain for my leaky cistern is in the worst of bad taste. Yesterday morning the cement (at last) arrived, and, it being cool, I decided to do the lining of the cistern at once. Of course, in the afternoon we had buckets of rain (or should I say buckets of pentagons?), which stopped, and threatened to ruin, my work (I had to finish it by lamplight at eleven o'clock when the rain stopped). This was doubly unfortunate; for not only did it interfere with my work on the cistern but it also came a day or so too soon—the cistern wasn't ready. However, I now have a tar barrel, and I managed to catch about forty gallons in that, which is better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick. And it has given me a change of bath water in the field.

...As regards the word "Law" in "Law of Thought", I quite agree with you—but I didn't invent the term, and do not insist that "A is A", for example, is a Law (whatever else it may be).

Is and ought and must. The equivocation(s) involved here (I feel there are several) have all somehow got packed into the simple word "duty", which means "what other people want one to do", but which clothes this rather too naked idea in the robes of Authority (the Law, the universal—cf. Judge William—; God; the People; etc. etc.). "Duty", I feel, "is".

The pentagons are fascinating—I think that henceforth I shall always prefer liquid to either solids or gases. Liquids consist entirely of misfits. Is there something ontological in this?

I now discover that I have been doing some double-think—thinking two different things in contradiction. It fails, however, to be mauvaise foi, since they were in two separate departments of my thinking, and the contradiction became clear when these departments were brought together (mauvaise foi requires both terms of the contradiction to be intentionally thought at once—one must think a contradiction). The discovery of this has already changed my point of view quite considerably, and may do so even more when all the repercussions have become manifest. In the Sketch I said "What I call my 'self' is precisely the something that on every occasion of change remains unchanged". This was the first time I said it. The last time I said it was in my last letter to you, where I wrote that "I am always the invariant of whatever transformation is taking place". But I have also been trying to work out things from first principles via Kummer, and in doing so I decided (independently) that the structure of the "self" is something quite different. Now it is quite true to say that the subject (or consciousness) is the invariant of each transformation, but—as I had unwittingly assumed—the subject is not the self (or "I"). There is, in fact, one transformation in which the "self", and not the subject, is the invariant, and that is death (indeed it was in thinking about death that I was led to the discovery of my contradiction): in death the gratuitous element of experience (the five indriyas) changes, whereas the necessary element ("I" or self) is invariant, but since the difference between gratuity and necessity is absolute or ultimate this transformation is the exception and not the rule. (The Sketch no longer proves rebirth, though it is still on the right lines.) In any other change there are both a gratuitous and a necessary element in both what changes and what is invariant—in other words the subject-object distinction is at right angles to the gratuity-necessity distinction. This is to say that it is wrong to understand the subject-object distinction as equivalent to I-this, where "I" is necessity, and "this" is gratuity: the proper distinction (in the non-arahat) is I-Mine, where the necessary is represented on both sides. (I should, perhaps, make it clear that by 'necessity' I mean 'what must be', but seen in the immediacy of one's experience as being that which is opposed to the gratuitous or absurd—the self is important, it is what matters, there simply could not not be my self, I cannot possibly conceive my own non-existence [whereas the characteristic of the gratutitous is precisely that it might just as well not be as be—I can well conceive that this lamp, apart from its being "mine", might not exist. And also I might quite well be (doing) something else.])

Now, on my (erroneous) assumption that subject = self, I had come to the conclusion that since the arahat has put an end to self he has put an end to subject; but, since subject and object are inseparable, to put an end to subject is to put an end to object, and where there is neither subject nor object there is, of course, no being; and this, I thought, is why (or how) an arahat puts an end to being. But, from the Suttas, it is clear that an arahat continues to walk and talk and think and so on, and how this is possible when there is no more subject or object I could not imagine. And it was for this reason that I had been holding that an arahat (or rather any Sutta describing one) is incomprehensible and contradictory. Such Suttas are only to be understood—so I was forced to conclude—by "one who is himself an arahat. But now all this is changed. The arahat has not put an end to subject, he has put an end to necessity (which is "I" in the subject and "mine" in the object): an arahat is pure gratuity—in a manner of speaking he is just the five indriyas (cf. the Itivuttaka Sutta on sa- and an-upādisesa parinibbāna)—, but gratuity is present in both subject and object. Now what is required in order to walk and talk and think and, in general, to be conscious, is the Kummer hierarchy (which is the structure of the negative), and Kummer depends on subject-and-object, and not on necessity-and-gratuity. If you have the Kummer hierarchy with necessity and gratuity you have the non-arahat; and if you have it with gratuity alone you have arahat. (I now see that Kummer allows self but doesn't require or imply it.) And, since the arahat has put an end to necessity, there is no invariant, when he dies, to require that a fresh gratuity (or five indriyas) come into being. So you see—if you have followed me—that all these Suttas describing arahats at once become intelligible. This, as you may well imagine, is a great step forward for me. (It might be said that there is no difficulty about such Suttas, and that they are perfectly intelligible. I shall not deny this; but this is not the point. My difficulty in the matter was that these Suttas were unintelligible on ontological or philosophical grounds, and not simply because I was unable "to imagine an arahat". I now seem to understand why these Suttas are intelligible, that is to say, I now seem to see why an arahat is possible, and not impossible—and I can give some structural reasons.) Immediately, of course, the question of the p.s. arises—to what extent does the p.s. apply to an arahat? The answer is rather odd—a purely gratuitous p.s., which needs some thinking about. The key to the situation is āyu (see the Mahā Vedalla Sutta): āyu is purely gratuitous, for the very good reason that na te va āyusaṅkhārā te vedaniyā dhammā.¹ One can, if one wishes, regard āyu as dependent upon avijjā—but an avijjā that is strictly non-phenomenal, and when this "non-phenomenal avijjā" ceases so does āyu, and if there is no phenomenal avijjā still in existence, that is the end. In other words the whole of the p.s. applies to the arahat with the proviso that some of the terms are non-phenomenal. In practice, of course, this simply means that not all the terms of the p.s. apply to the arahat; but I put it that way to show the structure of gratuity. (Some care is needed to decide which terms apply, and which do not, bacause some terms apply in one way but not in another). All this raises the question of the proper definition of being. Either all that is phenomenal—i.e. both pure gratuity and necessity-gratuity—exist (in which case the arahat clearly exists) or only what depends upon (phenomenal) avijjā—necessity(-gratuity) but not gratuity alone—exists (in which case the arahat clearly does not exist): both definitions are possible, but we must be clear, in some contexts, which meaning we intend. (The distinction être pour-soi and être en-soi is quite invalid.)

P.S. The fine nānakada you sent me last year did not survive the cementing of the cistern. With the consent of the residents, and supposing one is available, could you send me a surplus andana from the store to serve as a bathing cloth?

__________
[1] na te va...: 'Life-determinations are not things to be felt (to be experienced).'
_________________________________________________

[EL. 145] 11.ii.1959

2008-11-19T07:52:00.004Z

Here are some further observations prompted by your last letter, and which can perhaps be given at not too tedious length (I hope). The main point seems to be that we have, perhaps, different ideas on the nature and scope of reflexion. This is brought out by the distinction(s) you make between such statements as cogito ergo sum and the formal logical principles (such as "AM implies A", "A is A", and so on).

Now, one distinction that you make is that in "AB implies A" the natures of A and B are unimportant, provided only that they are different and suitably combinable, whereas in the cogito the concept's particular natures are of fundamental importance. It is clear, however, that whatever A and B may be, they are necessarily things—i.e. determined individuals—, and this particular nature of A and B is no less fundamentally important than with the cogito. In other words, this distinction between the cogito and "AB implies A" is simply that the cogito deals with the nature of the subject, whereas "AB implies A" deals with the nature of a thing, A (which, in the case of the reflecting Logician will be an object).

There is, however, another distinction that you make, namely, that "AB implies A" is quelconque, general, depersonalized, and without a personal view-point ("I" or 1^st-person-sing. Verb, as you say), whereas the cogito is not. And this leads you to state that cogito ergo sum  "if cogitatis is, then esse". I understand you to mean that "I cognize therefore I am" is not identical with "cognition implies the existence of a cognizer (or subject)"—correct me if I am wrong. This distinction, since it is a matter of a personal ("I") statement as against an impersonal statement, does not seem to be the same as the previous distinction, which is a matter of a statement about the subject as against a statement about the (or an) object.

Now I assume that by reflexion you understand Husserl's phenomenological reduction, or "putting the world in brackets". Sartre gives a précis of Husserl's statement of this, in L'Imagination. I quote the following passage.

Mais il ne faut pas confondre réflexion avec introspection. L'introspection est un mode special de réflexion qui cherche à saisir et à fixer les faits empiriques. Pour convertir ses résultats en lois scientifiques il faut ensuite un passage inductif au général. Cu al est un autre tyne de reflexion, celle dont use la phénoménologue: celle-là cherhe à saisir les essences. C'est-a-dire qu'elle débute en se placant d'emblée sur le tarrain de l'universel. Certes, elle opère bien sur des exemples.¹

And Sartre goes on to quote Husserl's saying that Phenomenology as well as the other eidetic sciences ("sciences d'essence"—i.e. mathematics) seek knowledge of eternal verities. I quote this passage because I fully agree with it, and because it seems possible that you may not agree with it. I shall assume, however, that you do agree with it; but if I am wrong in assuming this, please tell me so that we can avoid misunderstanding in the future.

You give a comparison between the method of deriving English Common Law by abstraction from cases and the process of deriving AB implies A (and other "Laws of Thought") by abstraction from (some description or descriptions not recorded), and say that, in contrast, the cogito is a "valid description free from errors". You do not, however, say what the cogito is a valid description of, but I assume you mean of direct reflexive experience. All consciousness, however, is consciousness of an object, and in order to obtain the cogito it is necessary to be conscious of something, and then to use this experience as the basis of reflexive experience. But of what must I be conscious in order to obtain, by reflexion, the cogito? The answer is, quite clearly, that it doesn't matter—any object will do. In other words, whenever I perform an act of reflexion on my direct experience I can obtain the cogito. The cogito, then is universal, in agreement with the passage quoted above—it applies to an infinity of different cases. I may be conscious of A, or of B, or of C, it makes no difference. That is to say that the cogito can be regarded as abstracted from (some case or cases not recorded). But now suppose that what I am conscious of is the statement "cogito ergo sum". If I perform an act of reflexion on this experience I can immediately obtain, as before, the cogito. This will be a description of the subject in this experience. But if I describe object in this experience, I get "AB implies A". There are no grounds for regarding one as similar to legal abstraction and not the other. Either both are, or neither is. Both cogito ergo sum and "AB implies A" are universal "truths", eternal verities. But, as you pointed out, the cogito is the first person, whereas "AB implies A" is not. Now, the statement "AB implies A" cannot be in the first person, since it describes the object, not the subject; the best we can do is to say '"this brown caw" implies "cow"', which obviously describes one particular experience, and is not applicable to other experiences. It is not, therefore, a phenomenological description of an essence. But what of the cogito? In English, we have "I cognize, therefore I am". I cognize what? If I say "I cognize A, therefore I am" I am making a bastard statement, since "A" means "any object (unspecified)", whereas "I am" means "I am, here, this very minute"—in other words there is an illegitimate mixture of the particular and the general. Either I must say "I cognize this brown cow, therefore I am", or I must say "cogntion of A implies the existence of a cognizer (or subject)". You are, in fact, quite correct in saying that the two statements are not identical. But, according to Husserl's description of reflexion, the first statement, being the description only of a particular instance, is not a phenomenological description of an essence—just as '"this brown cow" implies "cow"' is not. In other words, the cogito, in the first person, is not a reflexive description of an essence, which must be universal (unless you disagree with Husserl, Sartre, and myself.^a) This is all I have to say on the second distinction you made, i.e. between a personal and an impersonal statement.

On the matter of the first distinction, i.e., between a statement about the subject in a reflexive experience and a statement about the object in the same experience, the question is: does a statement about the object count as a reflexive experience? does not the "putting of the world into brackets" neutralize the object? The answer is that by reflexion all that one does is to neutralize the object in a particular quid or nature, as a cow or a lamp or a book, and to present it as a thing, "This", in relation to other things, "Not this". In other words the particular objects in reflexion are all relations or negatives, and these are universal, since they are valid no matter what the particular non-reflexive objects are—a cow is determined by things that are not-cows (of various kinds), a lamp by things that are not-lamps, and so on. And a universal reflexive description will be "A is determined by things that are not-A", or "Either A or not-A" (which is a Law of Thought). Husserl speaks of two kinds of phenomenological description; the first he calls description of the "noétic" or "experiencing" and it contains of description of the subject, and the second he calls description of the "noematic" or "experienced", and this is description of the object—all in transcendental consciousness. Both are valid, and both are reflexive. (This is given in the E.B. Article, which I still have.) Though I do not disagree with Husserl here, I find he is inadequate, since he assumes the subject is simple (as Sartre assumes the subject is simple but ambiguous—"la seule facon d'exister pour une conscience c'est d'avoir conscience qu'elle existe"²), whereas I find the subject is an infinite hierarchy—whence it follows that no deliberate act of reflexion can ever grasp the whole subject, there is always more subjectivity out of the picture, namely that doing the reflecting. A reflecting logician, naturally, is concerned only with describing the object—i.e. the relations or negatives between things. Nevertheless, in describing these relations he is certainly reflexive, and he can only fail if he is bad at description. Cf. Sartre:—

C'est bien en considérant le caractère, réflexif du raisonement classique que la logique formelle s'est définie comme l'étude des conditions "de l'accord de l'esprit avec lui-même".³

It is really the simplest form of reflexion to grasp the (present) object of consciousness as determined by, related to, or not, one or more other (absent) objects of consciousness. By careful elaboration of this one can arrive at Kummer. Once again you are right in making a distinction between the cogito and statements of the type "AB implies A", but this distinction does not (unless, of course, you disagree with H., S., and myself) disqualify the latter as reflexive descriptions—e.g. "AB implies A" describes "I am cognizing, therefore I am"—, but may, and normally do, directly describe the structure of reflexive experience—e.g. "AB implies A" describes the structure of the experience that is also describable as "this brown cow is brown")

As to certainty. You interpret "AB implies A", so I see, as "A remains unchanged and self-identical upon return to, or repetition of, A", and you go on to say that this can be doubted. Of course it can. But "this brown cow is brown" does not mean "this brown cow will still be brown when you next see it". It is not an assertion, but a statement of self-evidence. The Noble Duke of York, you will remember, marched some men to the top of a hill and marched them down again. "And when they were up they were up, and when they were down they were down." What is certain, what cannot be doubted, is this last statement; but the whole point of it is to emphasize the futility of the Noble Duke's evolutions by making a fine statement that asserts nothing whatever. You say you are not certain what it is that you cognize when you cognize. Nor am I. And what science is for is o find out and let us know. I am not certain that "this is a cow"; for it might be a bhikkhu—or the other way round, as happened at Ālāvi. But what I am certain is that "this cow is a cow"—not "this cow will continue to be cow"—or, if you prefer, "if this is a cow, then it is a cow". The Law of Thought, or Formal Logical Principle, "A is A" is certain in the sense I have tried to convey, and it is in this sense that it is a reflexive description. Note that if "this" is an ambiguous object (it might be a cow or it might be a bhikkhu), then I have "This ambiguous object is an ambiguous object". If you find you can doubt these statements than I do not see that there is anything useful I can add. "A is A" as a formal logical principle, a reflexive description, is not "cake yesterday, therefore cake today", which is simple induction. It so happens that the Kummer structure accounts for the persistance of the identity of objects under transformation, but it does not guarantee that a present object will continue to be present. In other words, a present object can "become" absent—indeed, it must "become" absent when it ceases to be present, there is no alternative. But the formal logical principles have nothing whatever to do with this—they do not in any way describe the dynamics of the negative.

(In parenthesis, Sartre defines the en-soi as "Il est ce qu'il est"⁴ as opposed to the pour-soi, which is "Je suis ce que je ne suis pas"⁵. The first is an example of "A is A", and the second appears to be an example of "A is not A"; but, as I have remarked before, Sartre's pour-soi is a telescoping of the entire hierarchy of consciousness, which gives the impression that the two A's (or "je"s) are the same and yet not the same. The fact is that they are not the same at all—of any two A's (or "je"s) here, one is related to the other as object to subject. It is odd that Sartre does not see that the subjective hierarchy—or as he describes it, the subjective ambiguity—has its exact couterpart in the object. If he insists on describing the subject as "Je suis ce que je ne suis pas"heought to describe the object as "Il est ce qu'il n'est pas"⁶. Sartre says Bergson never looked at his images; but it is clear that Sartre himself never looked at what he saw.)

For analogous reasons to those above, I cannot accept your description of viññāṇapaccayā nāmarūpa/nāmarūpapaccayā viññāṇa as an "infinite reflexive regression". Infinite regression of this structure are certainly to be found (in Kummer), and are of fundamental importance. But this, as the rest of the p.s., is non-assertive, both are given at once—thought, naturally, both cannot be thought at once. This beginning (or ending) to the p.s. is also found in the Mahā Nidāna Suttanta (though without the "turning back" phrase). The point seems to be this. One must start with a given duality (subject-object), on the basis of which one can discover (as implied) as infinite reflexive regression. But one cannot start by positing the given duality as itself the infinite reflexive regression, for the reason that it would then become apparent that one would have to assume a still more fundamental given duality on which to base this regression. In other words, an infinite regression is a structure composed of negatives—it is obtained by repeated denials of all that has gone before. But unless the negative "not" is given in the first place no regression at all is possible. But since the negative entails an infinite regression it is not possible to find the negative apart from that infinitive regression. To discover the given negative we must describe the infinite regression, which description will show that the irreducible element in the regression is the negative (which, however, will not itself be an infinite regression—at least, not relatively to the infinite regression in question, which presupposes the nagative). I consider that nāmarūpaṃ saha viññāṇena (to use the Mahā Nidāna Suttanta expression) in the description of any one level (or cross-section) of the infinite regression. It is the form in which the negative exists. It is not irreducible, provided we are prepared (conceptually) to "go behind the negative's existence". By this I mean that what is given in the fundamental duality, or negative, is simply "not" (which is also "existence"), but we are not also given the existence of "not" (or the existence of "existence"). The fundamental negative seems to combine the ultimate concepts of acceleration (i.e. the relation between one and infinity) and presence (i.e. the relation between object and subject). Acceleration and Presence may be the same. It has, of course, a hierarchical structure; it is an infinite regression; but it is an infinite regression within, i.e. presupposed by the infinite regression (of Kummer) that I have been referring to. The Kummer regression is absolute, and is the evident hierarchy of the world, whereas the fundamental negative is not an absolute (i.e. closed) structure. It cannot, therefore, be isolated. If we wish to contemplate the negative at our leisure it must continue unchanged, i.e. it must exist, and this is the simplest form in which it does so. (This, also, can be seen from Kummer, which can be described as the "structure of duality". In terms of Kummer, rūpa can be taken structurally as a point, nāma as a line, and viññāṇa as a plane, and we have "a point and a line imply a plane" or "a plane [viññāṇa] implies [paccayā] a line [nāma] and a point [rūpa]". This is an infinite regression of Kummer, but at any one level, this is the fundamental structure. Kummer at any one level is absolute—Ross Ashby refers—, and it does not point outside itself. Thus the point-line-plane plane-line-point relationship "turns back upon itself"—i.e. is non-assertive, or, if you prefer, is tautologous, like "A is A".)

To return to Husserl. He is not always very easy to follow in his Teutonic English of the E.B., but something can be gathered. He speaks of two disciplines, "Phenomenological Psychology" and "Transcendental Phenomenology". The first seems to be simply the retreat from immediacy to the apprehension of the relation holding between an object and other objects, but this relation appears in its particularity—i.e. as an object appears as part of a greater object or situation, and that situation is specified. Thus "this window" is no longer simply enjoyed or experienced for itself, but is grasped as being "part of this room", and the relation between any two such parts—the window and the door, for example—is "this room". The nature of the particular relation becomes evident. But in Transcendental Phenomenology, the "nature of the relation" also is put in brackets, and we arrive at the relation of relation—i.e. the nagative. Thus we are no longer concerned with the window and door as together defining "this room", but rather as defining "relationship". The window is not the door; the door is not the fireplace, and so on. It is evident that "window" and "door" can now be replaced by "A" and "B". Transcendental Phenomenology, according to Husserl, is "entirely unworlgly"—"the universe is carried to a further stage" than in the Phenomenological Psychology. It is clear that both the cogito (when restated not in the first person) and the formal logical principles (leading the first person) and the formal logical principles (leading to mathematics) belong to the Transcendental Phenomenology. (Husserl remarks the Descartes' "Doubting" first disclosed "transcendental subjectivity" and his "Ego cogito" was its first conceptual handling.) I note that Husserl makes the distinction between description of the Subject in these two disciplines as follows: 'What I saw under the psychological reflexion as "my" objectification I see under the transcendental reflexion as Self-objectifying [? self objectification]'. This suggests that the first person singular is in place in the first but not the second.

Two things might be added. The first is, as I remarked in my last letter, that a description of the object involves the subject, owing to the complex structure of reduction in the sense viññāṇa → nāma → rūpa and also in the sense of general to particular (as in the axiom of reducibility). Thus, the relation between two things A and not-A is the subject, but this subject is projected as a more general object upon the original object A, providing it with a background (which consists of not-As). The second is that an act of reflexion is really not a doing of what one has never done before (like learning to swim), since we are always and at all levels to some degree reflexive even in our most immediate moments. To perform an act of reflexion is simply to turn one's attention to certain parts of our normal experience that have always been there and to disregard the parts we normally pay attention to. Naturally, this needs practice to do it effentively, but it is a less formidable feat than the theoretical descriptions of Husserl and Sartre would have us believe.

I write all this (which is longer than I expected) to try and make clear to you my ideas about reflexion. It seemed to me that it may be because we have different ideas on this point that we disagree on others. If you do not agree with me about reflexion this may enable you to see where precisely you disagree.

I think I forgot to tell you that, last pavāraṇā, I went to the Ven. B.'s at Tangalle. He is the elderly, though solid, thera who came to Tangalla and also here the first time for the kaṭhina. His monastery at Tangalle is in the town on the main road. It occupies an area about the size of Vajirārāma forward of the library. Into this smallish apace have been packed: 1. Bath and privies; 2. A dānasāla; 3. A three-storeyed sīmā with corrugated iron roof; 4. An āvāsa; 5. A red cement lotus pond; 6. thupa (with light on top); 7. In front of the thupa a Sanchi-type gateway; 8. Below the thupa four viharas, one with model Bodhi tree with lights; 9. A Bodhi tree with place for flowers; 10. A large dhammasāla; 11. A bell tower; 12. Flower beds. There is also, if you are easy to satisfy in this respect, room to walk between these various items. How on earth anyone can live there I cannot make out. But from my experience this is more or less typical—no self-respecting bhikkhu could feel himself properly at home unless surrounded by these and other such essentiol supports of the bhikkhu-life.... And, of course, being on the main road in the town is a valuable asset. I tend to suffocate at Vajirārāma, but here, even for a couple of hours, I was almost unable to draw a breath. I say nothing against the Venerable Thera, who is very amiable—but his monastery does seem to raise one's eyebrows in some kind of interrogation....

__________

[a] In my opinion it is only necessary to describe in the first person when one is not describing reflexive experience. In describing reflexive experience one is necessarily describing from a point of view—when one is reflexive the Realist No-view fallacy cannot arise. (The assertive words "all" and "some" cannot be used, because—as Husserl notes—we are no longer dealing with "matters of fact".) But I cannot justify this opinion in a few words.

[1] Mais il...: 'But one must not confound reflexion with introspection. Introspection tries to grasp and fix the empirical facts. To convert these results into scientific laws an inductive passing over to the general is thereupon necessary. It is, however, another type of reflexion that the phenomenologist makes use of: one that tries to grasp the essences. That means that it starts by placing itself straghtaway on the ground of the universal. To be sure, it operates on examples.'

[2] la seule...: 'The only wasy of existence for a consciousness is to have consciousness of its existence.' L'Imagination, p. 126.

[3] C'est bien...: 'It is, indeed, with consideration to the reflexive character of classical reasoning that formal logic is defined as the study of the conditions “of the agreement of the mind with itself”.'

[4] Il est ce qu'il est: 'It is what it is.'

[5] Je suis...: 'I am what I am not.'

[6] Il est ce qu'il n'est pas: 'It is what it is not.'
_________________________________________________

[EL 144] 6. ii.1959

2008-11-18T21:42:00.003Z

...Thought:—If Oxford is the home of Lost Causes, then Cambridge is doubtless the home of Lost Effects—remember the poem beginning 'Remote and Ineffectual Don', which must certainly be referring to a Lost Effect, resident at Cambridge, of one of the Oxford Lost Causes.

I still occasionally find fresh things in Stebbing to disagree with, but she is now fast becoming of no further interest. I managed to disentangle the definitions she gives of 'all' and 'some' propositions, which was a bit of a business. I won't bore you with the result, which is really of not very much interest to anybody, except to say that the principal confusion is due to Russell's definition of existence, where 'dodos exist' is true if there are some dodos (unspecified). This is a complete fantasy. The only way that dodos, or anything else, can exist is by being specified, i.e. by having a determined place in the network of negatives that constitutes existence. If a thing, or things, are unspecified they are undetermined, or in other words, .they are not things. You can legitimately say either '75% of dodos are female', which is a purely statistical statement; equivalent to "of every 100 dodos that I have met 75 have been female" (which specifies certain female dodos as "having-been-met-by-me"), or 'there are some female dodos in the London Zoo' (which specifies certain female dodos as being in the London Zoo). But Stebbing's definition of "Some dodos are female" as some (unspecified) things are both dodos and female, falls hopelessly between the two, and means (if it means anything) that the concept of a female dodo is not self-contradictory, that you can think of female dodos, without mauvaise foi (but even here 'female dodos' is specified as 'thinkable-of-by-you-without-mauvaise foi'). The attempt to have unspecified existence of female dodos is (once again) the attempt to ignore the subject.

Another thing, of rather more interest, is in connexion with Russell's theory of types. This (as you know) can be pictured as, at the lowest level, an assortment of things; and then, at the next level, as an assortment of the classes of those things; and then, at a still higher level, as an assortment of the classes of those classes of things; and so on, with the pattern becoming more general at each higher level. You can imagine these patterns as drawn on shelves, with the particular things at the bottom of the cupboard, and the more general classes and classes of classes and so on as drawn on the various shelves in ascending order (note that Russell himself tends to regard things as themselves being classes [of appearance], and thus suggests that the cupboard might possibly extend downwards indefinitely [horrid thought!]—but I don't know if he would admit that an appearance is itself a class of appearances). Now it seems, according to Stebbing, that though the Theory of Types has been found necessary in deriving mathematics from formal logical principles, certain difficulties have arisen; and to deal with these difficulties Russell has postulated the Axiom of Reducibility. This Axiom is to the effect that to any property of a higher order there is an equivalent property of lower order. At first sight this does not convey very much, but on thinking about it a bit it suddenly occurred to me that what this axiom says is simply that all the shelves of the cupboard are made of glass (i.e. are transparent). In this way, on looking down from on top you will see all the various patterns at different levels superimposed upon the patterns at the lowest level. But what else do we have here but my simile of the glass show-case? (It is true, of course, that my glass show-case is a more elaborate affair than this, since it has to deal with different levels of viññāṇa and nāma as well as of rūpa, but if we confine ourselves to rūpa the parallel is almost exact. Russell sometimes has some bright ideas, but they are all vitiated by his hopeless fundamental outlook. It is noteworthy that his brother (and sister) logicians have rejected the Axiom of Reducibility as not self-evident, and have tried to do without it (they claim to have succeeded). But I arrived at my glass show-case by considering what is structurally necessary, i.e. what is self-evident, what must be so; and I conclude that Russell, here, is right (though doubtless for the wrong reasons) as against his fellow logicians. You will see, no doubt, that the Principle of Superposition of the quantum theory is dependent upon this axiom, though the quantum physicists have gone to the other extreme to the logicians in postulating that the whole affair is so transparent that there are no shelves—in other words, that there is only one level, namely, that of the electron (and its fellow particles).

In my last letter I may have given the impression that mathematics, generally, is self-evident—i.e. derived from (or implied by) formal logical principles beginning with the three Laws of Thought (which themselves give the structure of the Negative). This needs qualification. It is possible to introduce arbitrary, self-contradictory, assumptions as primitive concepts (of mauvaise foi) and then to proceed by normal mathematical methods. The result is quantum mechanics, or Riemann's geometry, or Lobatschewsky's geometry, and so on, all of which incorporate mauvaise foi in their equations of self-contradictory multiplication (Russell and Whitehead have shown—it took an entire volume it seems—that m x n = n x m follows from self-evident principles, whence m x n ≠ n x m is necessarily self-contradictory). Now I do not suggest that Riemann was convinced that parallel lines come together, nor that Lobatschewsky was convinced that they go further apart—I have no doubt that both mathematicians travelled by railway without any hesitation at all. But the diehard rationalist logicians (such as Stubbing) insist that Euclid's axiom that parallel lines stay the same distance apart is no more self-evident than that they come together or get further apart. The fact that Stebbing certainly travels by train shows that she does not believe her own statement, and that she can only maintain her position by an act of mauvaise foi. That Euclid's axiom is self-evident is clear from the fact that when one starts geometry at school there is not the slightest difficulty in understanding the axiom, whereas Riemann, for example, would be incomprehensible. Stebbing would seem to be maintaining that schoolboys would find Riemann's geometry as simple as Euclid's, which is clearly nonsense, (Why is Riemann advanced geometry?) On the question of self-evidence Stebbing contradicts herself, saying in one place "Self-evidence is a relative notion. What we are able to doubt depends on our previous knowledge and our mental capacity", and in another, that the fundamental logical principles "are all psychologically self-evident"; which suggests that from some other, non-psychological point of view they may not be self-evident. To what is psychology relative? The quantum mechanics' self-contradicting assumption, as you will remember, is that there are quantities that are not numbers. The point I am making is this. You are quite right in saying, as you said in your last letter, that even though an assumption is, existentially speaking, unquestionable, yet, ultimately, that too can be questioned—provided that by assumption is meant what one chooses to assume for the occasion as opposed to what one cannot help assuming on every occasion. By this I mean that we can choose, or chose not, to assume that parallel lines meet (i.e. that lines that I can see for myself remain equidistant are really not so, that A is really not-A); but we have choice but to assume that these parallel lines are parallel (i.e. that a thing is as it .appears, that A is A) before we choose to assume that parallel lines do, or do not, meet. The question is, do lines that remain equidistant meet? (The example is perhaps not the best since it is difficult—and for me not possible—to show that "parallel lines remain equidistant" is as self-consistent as "1 + 2 = 2 + 1", which would have been a better example. By this I mean that "1 + 2 = 2 + 1" can more easily be reduced to terms of Kummer Structure. But you will, no doubt, see what I mean without that's being necessary.) I must pre-assume that parallel lines remain (are) equidistant before I can question, 'do lines that are equidistant meet?' If I choose to assume that they do meet, then I am mauvaise foi, since I pre-assume "A [is A]" (this pre-assumption is not an assertion as the assumption is, .or rather it is assertion of A, but not that A is a) and assume "A is not-A". (Alternatively I can assume

assert , not in mauvaise foi, that "A is A". The result is Euclid.) I understand the saying 'man is a question' not as my asking "Is A really A? Is it not perhaps not-A?", but as my asking "Is there something beyond A? Is there also not-A?"

The drawings of Kummer I sent you are all accurate, except that the conics joining the points are freehand. I have now been trying to draw Kummer showing point 16, which hitherto has been at infinity (or at your eye, which, is the same). But it is a hopeless task, since the positions of the points must now be found by trial and error, and there are now 16 instead of 10 conics to deal with. (With point 16 at infinity six of the conics were seen as straight lines, and their intersection, given one conic, fixed all the points.) But though I have not succeeded it has been good practice trying to see how exactly the various conics are oriented as a solid figure. The approach to Kummer via Eddington is rather unfortunate, since he lays much stress on operators (points/conics) with square -1 and anticommuting operators. These, when Kummer is grasped existentially, are really quite unimportant. This can be understood when it is seen that the speed of light is a fiction introduced in order to keep space purely objective—Newtonian space was purely objective, and light had 'infinite velocity'. But since space is not purely objective Newton was only approximate. There were two ways of correcting him: (i) by leaving light with 'infinite velocity' and introducing a subject or point of view, which, however, is useless for science, and (ii) by leaving 'space' purely objective and giving light an absolute but not infinite velocity. Eddington's interpretation of Kummer is based on (ii), whereas mine, in so far as it applies to physicist's 'space' (if at all) is based on (i). Consequently the "four dimensions at right angles, three spatial and one temporal" do not appear at all; and instead we have the 16-fold Kummer pattern on each glass shelf, each higher one more general than the last. The anticommuting operators express certain relations between different parts of different shelves, but since the whole thing is transparent (by the Axiom of Reducibility) these relations are of little interest in themselves (since everything is projected onto the bottom shelf). What is of great interest is the relation of the sixteen elements on each shelf one with another (of which I sent you the outline a few weeks ago). Any two elements on a given shelf define one element on the shelf above, and since there are 256 relations between sixteen elements you have 256 elements on the shelf above—but this is simply sixteen elements repeated sixteen times, i.e. at each level there are sixteen ways of having a general past, and these sixteen are the sixteen elements of the shelf above (or rather, you have fifteen ways of having a general past, and one way of not having it: 15 + 1 = 16).

I have Just caught the 50th tarantula; they are, fortunately, much less frequent than at the beginning—the first twenty five took only about six months.

I now no longer live at the end of the road. The culverts were completed in November last, and the road is used by vans and lorries transporting the fishermen's catch. This is a slight disturbance, but since there are usually not more than six vehicles, and they pass mostly in the morning, which is my least disturbable period they are not much of a nuisance—less than the trains at Dodanduwa, which never worried me very much. The fishermen, fortunately, are nearly inaudible. The Salt Superintendent tells me that he is collecting live coral, apparently to see if it can be used for cementing the boulders of the breakwaters of the harbour they will be making. It has never been tried before, so it seems, but it sounds quite promising. If it works it has the advantage over cement that the structure gets stronger and stronger as time goes by and the coral grows....

A few evenings ago a bearded young man turned up and, without so much as 'by your leave', proceeded to strip off a layer of clothing, which he hung up on a tree. Then, comfortably clad in a sarong, he stuck some incense sticks in a pile of sand and lit them. Underneath he inscribed with his finger the letters uNû^* (?mano, manu). This done, he proceeded to inspect the place (from outside, since I was walking on the caṅkamana). Then my dāyaka arrived with gilampasa, and the young man told him what he wanted for breakfast. This, I thought, was the right moment to intervene (one must never be too hasty in these matters, or one may make a fool of oneself), so I asked him why he had come, leaving my dāyaka, to cope with the torrent of words (very high-pitched) that I got in reply. I then firmly told him that he could not spend the night here, and this was echoed by my dāyaka. So, surprised but quite tame, he asked for a drink of water and said he would go. And, having drunk, he went (after putting on his clothes again).... Crime? Religion? Lunacy? Or simply mendicancy?

I would bring to your attention (If it is not already there) the expression sometimes to be met with in the Suttas, viññāṇaṃ vuddhiṃ virūḷhiṃ vepullaṃ (āpajjeyya).¹ Growth of consciousness (i.e. of a negative) seems odd at first sight; but when it is understood that consciousness is defined by what it is the negative of, the matter becomes clearer. Growth of the object of consciousness naturally entails growth of whet it is not —for, after all, growth in an object (unless we understand that object simply gets bigger, like a balloon or a boy growing into a man, which, however, is more properly change) is increase of its intensity or presence, and consciousness is simply the presence of the object. And this growth of consciousness generally, i.e. when not simply applying to increase of consciousness of A at the expense of consciousness of B, is sharpening of bhava taṇhā. But since it applies to all things, pleasant, painful, or neither, it is not very easily apprehended item. (The difficulty of seeing it is rather analogous to that of seeing one's own character. For example: I am aware that I have a certain manner that is capable on some occasions—perhaps not very frequently—of provoking a very marked dislike, and even hatred, for me. This even took the form once, of a vindictive, though quite trivial. action to spite me.^a Now this is totally incomprehensible to me, and whenever I do find somebody who hates my guts, I am completely at a loss to know why.^b Perhaps you can tell me what it is; I can't see it for myself. And so it seems to be with bhava taṇhā—other people are in a better position to note an increase or decrease in this than one is oneself. Have I changed in the last ten years? The question to me is meaningless—I, as always, am the invariant of whatever transformation is taking place. The world has changed, certainly; and no doubt it is in this change of the world that I must look for any loss [or gain] of bhava taṇhā. Do you think?)....

8^th Feb. Many thanks for your letter of the 5^th, which has in some miraculous way managed not to cross this one, due for posting tonight.

You can assure Ven. Ñāṇaloka that I have now sealed off the snakes' way of entry (under the door), and nothing larger than an earthworm can get into the room at night, by door, window, or ceiling. Ven. Ñāṇaloka's excitements are quite inexplicable. He himself has a most cavalier attitude towards snakes.

...You say you by no means disagree with my statement that 'what phenomena are is other phenomena.' I am glad to hear it. Unfortunately, what I thought I said (and what I intended to say) was that what phenomena are not is other phenomena. Do you also by no means disagree with that? (Perhaps the two statements, in a certain way, are not contradictory.)

By 'to be capable of appearing'—perhaps, as you point out, an unfortunate phrase—I mean precisely, as you also point out, 'to be present as an absence'. I did not at all intend to suggest Carrington's 'cognizables'. I must point out, however, that there is a Sutta (S.XXXV,x,2) with the expression Ye te manoviññeyya dhammā aviññātā aviññātapubbā na ca vijānāsina ca te hoti, vijāneyyanti…² that—if you forget Carrington—legitimates the usage. Whether it is bogus or not depends on how you understand it. As I understand it—I think you agree—it is not bogus.

Kant's moral eye won't do, of course; but Sartre points out that things appear accompanied by commands—'do this with me'—-which is precisely their significance. Remember the bottle in Alice with the label 'drink me' on it. So, a cup of tea commands 'put sugar in me, stir, and drink'. But these are in no sense moral (unless you 'have a moral outlook', when, of course, everything, has a moral significance and asserts moral injunctions).'

About AB implies A. You suggest that I equate the statement AB implies A in its formal aspect with the form of cogito ergo sum. I only took AB implies A as an example of a formal logical principle, not by any means as a particularly important one, and I might have chosen some other one (such as "[A. or B] implies [B or A]" or. "Not not-A implies A"). But now that you mention the fact I note that cogito ergo sum, if understood as "I am thinking" implies "I am", has the form, if A = I am, B = thinking, AB = I am thinking, of "AB implies A". AB implies A is a description of, amongst other things, the structure of the reflexive datum described as cogito ergo sum. It is a true description of the structure of this datum. This, however, is not at all the same as saying that it is true that AB implies A. The truth of AB implies A no more arises than the truth of cogito ergo sum. Note, however, that the words "cogito ergo sum" are also a description, and the question whether they are a true description arises. It is apparently an assertion, and Russell makes a fool of himself by treating it as one. But, as I remarked, any communication (and therefore description) cannot help but appear as an assertion. There is no other way of describing. But there are two ways of taking it—(i) as an assertion: in which case we have "It is true (as a matter of fact) that "AB implies A", and "AB implies is a true description"—this is equivalent to "AB causes A"; (ii) not as an assertion: in which case we simply have "AB implies A" is a true description. To put it differently, in (i) the A that is implied in AB is a later or different A from that appearing in AB, and this is a probable statement (e.g. "a rain-cloud implies rain", which can be understood as "this is a rain-cloud, therefore it will [probably] rain"), whereas in (ii) the A implied by AB is the same A as that appearing in AB, and this is a certain statement (" 'I am thinking' implies 'I am' must be understood as "I cannot be thinking unless I exist", or "[My] thinking is a mode of [my] existence"). [The word valid, as you note, is redundant and should be omitted.]

When I say that cogito ergo sum has the form AB implies A I do not at all mean that AB implies A means cogito ergo sum. AB implies A refers to all reflexive data having the same form, such as " 'this pen exits' implies 'existence' ", or " 'this pen exits' implies 'this pen' ", or " 'I am thinking' implies 'thinking' " or " 'nāmarūpa implies (paccayā)...vedanā' ". When you say that AB implies A is quite general and quelconque and requires only that the entities A and B are suitably combinable, it seems to me that you are missing the distinction between (i) and (ii) above. Only entities that satisfy (ii) are admissible and these entities are all such as appear in combination to reflexion only. Thus "A right angle implies an angle", which comes under (ii) (as opposed, for example, to "a rain cloud implies rain", which comes under (i)), is a reflexive description only, and, as such, is concerned with the structure of being. Upon examining reflexively the structure of the object 'right-angle', I find that its negatives, in one direction, are an 'acute-angle', an 'obtuse-angle', a 'reflex-angle' and so on. In other words 'angle' is the invariant of certain transformations, right-angle → reflex-angle → obtuse-angle → acute-angle,etc. 'Angle' is, as it were, the medium in which I travel to pass from 'right-angle' to 'acute-angle', and this is a structural feature. What perhaps misleads is this. The invariant of a transformation is always the subject, I., and consequently AB Implies A, where A is the invariant, necessarily involves the personal view-point (which you deny). But owing, to the fact that different layers of consciousness are involved, the subject I 'becomes' (as discussed before, viññāṇa → nāma → rūpa) the background (general) object A, against which B is the foreground (particular) object (or the centre of attention). (This involves also the Axiom of Reducibility.) This is why the question "What is not the object X?" has two answers) (i) "I am not the object X"; (ii) the object Y is not the object X", which is not the same statement as "the object X is not the object Y"—in one X is present and Y is absent, in the other, the other way round: there is always a point of view. But these two answers are structurally related, and a reflexive statement about X and Y is inevitably also indirectly a statement about the subject I. (This, of course, is not understood by the logicians.) If you do not see this point there is not much more that I can say at the moment. "AB Implies A" in sense (ii) for me, is subjectively acceptable.

My view of past, present, and future, as all in the Present does not contradict Sartre's view,^c but, also, is not on the same level. I claim that my concept describes the underlying structure of Sartre's concept, in the sense that, with the aid of Kummer, I can give an exact description of his reflexive experience of time in terms of his fundamental concepts—figé en en-soi³ and such like. He describes time as he sees it; I describe it as it must be from the nature of negation. I expand many of his expressions in terms of Kummer (so I like to think).

Paṭiccasamuppāda Comments

5. Sixfold Facticity—sounds promising. I must chew it a bit.

6. Presence—for me this conveys only the consciousness aspect of phassa. Phassa includes presence, but also two other items.

8. Need—I prefer 'want', but there is not much in it.

9. Consumption/Assumption—I still prefer holding (which, incidentally, gives 'holding views' for diṭṭhupādāna). This is not the same as clinging to (views, etc)

I think you will find that the paṭiccasamuppāda formula with viññāṇa paccayā nāma-rūpa and nāma-rūpa paccayā viññāṇa occurs in another sutta (a little later than the one you quote?) in a different context—a dialogue between the Ven. Sāriputta Thera and someone else.⁴ For quite other reasons, however, I do not agree with your idea (nor with your classification of the paṭiccasamuppāda under the three headings).

Dhamma = nature, essence, quiddity of a thing. The thingness of a thing is saṅkhāra. Phenomenon combines both these, with emphasis on the second. Idea is closer to dhamma. Dhamma, unlike phenomenon, tends to be a reflexive object only. But my views here are not rigid.

P.S. I note you take Berkeley's esse est percipi out of the infinitive "to be is to be perceived" into the indicative "I am, therefore I am perceived", and you add that this does not command unquestioning recognition as the cogito does. I remark (i) that the indicative of "to be is to be perceived" is primarily "this is, therefore this is perceived", which is the counterpart of "I perceive, therefore I am", which is another form of the cogito. The form "I am, therefore I am perceived" is a description of reflexion—i.e. obtained by double reflexion—whereas "I perceive (or I think) therefore I am" (which should be only "I perceive [I think], therefore I"—see next paragraph) is not e description of reflexion but of pre-reflexion—i.e. obtained by single reflexion; (ii) that thus analyzed, all these descriptions alike command unquestioning recognition. I get the impression sometimes, perhaps wrongly, that you confine being to the subject and refuse it to the object, i.e. that you do not allow "this is". It is true that the object's being is the subject, but (in spite of Sartre) this is not the subject's being. In order that the subject should be it must be the object of a further subject, whence "I am, therefore I am perceived".

The cogito, strictly (i.e. taking "I think" in Descarte's sense of the word, which is also how Sartre takes it, that is to say as "I cognize", vijānāmi) should be cogito ergo hoc est—"I cognize, therefore this is", or, in the Berkeleyan form, "This is, therefore this is cognized [by me]".This gives us the subject I or me, but it does not give my existence. (It could also read cogito ergo ego or hoc est ergo ego.) If we take "I think" (cogito) as "I reflect", "I am reflexive"), we can than say "I reflect, therefore I am", which can be put in the Berkeleyan form, "I am, therefore I am perceived [by me]". I cognize, therefore I am" is, of course, a correct description; but it describes a lot more than either Descartes or Sartre suppose,^d since it is equivalent to "I cognize, therefore I reflect" or "I am pre-reflexive/conscious therefore I am." The Berkeleyan form beginning with the object) is always simpler (because the subject is always defined by the object).

__________

[1] Consciousness (might come to) growth, increase and fullness.

[a] I do not mean because of any views I hold or even in my manner of expressing myself, which no doubt can be irritating enough sometimes (what makes it irritating, I think, is the fact that I am not concerned if it is—though I never set out to be irritating, which also is irritating); but purely in my appearance, or tone of voice, or gesture, or way of walking, or something of that nature.

[b] Perhaps it is—this is rather subtle—because they somehow sense that I am incapable—like Stavrogin—of hating them; which is probably—I don't know—a dreadful insult.

[2] Images cognizable by the mind that are uncognized and formerly uncognized, you do not cognize and it does not occur to you : "Let me cognize"….

[c] This is not quite true: Sartre has only one layer of consciousness of presen(t)-ce, whereas I have an infinite hierarchy. After a certain point this difference becomes crucial.

[3] Fixed in in-itself.

[4] It is with Ven. Mahā-Koṭṭhita, at S.XII, 67 (ii, 112-15)

[d] Sartre confuses the whole issue by supposing that 'I' and 'my being' are the same. This follows from Il est dans mon être question de mon être.⁵ He telescopes the hierarchy of 'I's (i.e. of consciousnesses) into one (ambiguous) 'I'.

[5] In my being there is question of my being.
_________________________________________________

[EL. 143a] 1. ii.1959

2008-11-17T12:52:00.003Z

From the Draft of a Letter by Ven. Ñāṇamoli.

Thanks for your letter of 16 Jan…. I related your experience of snake eating gecko in bed to Ven. Ñāṇaloka, who was greatly scandalized and disturbed. He said such things oughtn't to happen and he would write to you (I don't know what about). Did it enter through your door or window or ceiling? Obviously you must allow crowds of geckos so that all visiting snakes' mouths may at once be filled and kept constantly so.

Sputnikski seems to be failing to go into the orbit expected (though not by me). He Just lives on where he is (in the āgantuka kuṭi¹) with the gardening tools he bought himself and doesn't seem to use, and the learned books he bought and doesn't seem to learn. His inarticulate English is fearfully and wonderfully made, and Ven. Ñāṇad. has described him as Polish Volksdeutsch (how right Dostoievski is about Poles!). What is in his mind I cannot guess, though I suppose (by deduction) that he has one and (by further deduction) that there must be something in it. He once asked me a question beginning 'Vat ist anattā?', but I couldn't understand it,and my attempts to express a reply in the simplest elementary child's English failed apparently to communicate anything. He has no converse with either Ven. Ñāṇad. or Ven. Ñāṇam. and never comes to the dānasāḷā of evenings (mercifully). On another occasion (this is a sample of communication) he happened to be standing on the tennis ground —poking holes in the ground with a sharp stick as is his habit (alternating with buffooning with the dog; and I always know when he has been there by the line of little holes left by his proddings), and occasionally waving an arm or slapping a thigh or scratching an ear: all to himself (he suggests a mixture of shop-inspector and clown).—I said to him, pointing to the ironwood tree in new leaf and straining to be simple: 'Do they have trees like that in Venezuela?'— Sputnikski (dramatically): 'Ha? Naw!, But dey ist menna menna otchads in Venezuellah!' —I: 'What kind of orchards?'—S: 'What a kind? Ha? Dey grow onna da trees!'—I: 'So the orchards grow on trees in Venezuela?'—S: 'Sure!' I: 'What kind of fruits?'—S: 'Fruits? Ha? Ah dunno. Dey ist a vat you call a flowers, plantee valuable, in da joongle onna da trees dey grows, plantee valuable!'—I: 'Oh.' (By this time it had dawned on me that the 'otchads' were in fact not 'orchards' but 'orchids', and at this point the conversation, my last with him and some time ago now, died.) ...God, they say, made man in his own image, so man is then an inexhaustible storehouse of the attributes of God, about whom we must surely be able to learn much by studying man.

About phenomena and being: I by no means disagree with your statement that what phenomena are not is other phenomena. That description describes phenomena in terms of themselves, which is, of course, perfectly correct, since there is nothing else in terms of which to describe them. Phenomena are being, being is phenomenal: and here we have the mirage in one of its forms, namely that phenomena and being are identical: while the one is two, the two are one. But while phenomena are, thus, identical with being (or better, they are identical with themselves—they are what they are—they just are), at the same time we can't do away with the use of one of the words and use only the other, by which fact the duality of their identity re-emerges, which is most ambiguous.

I underlined the words in "to be is to be phenomenal— i.e. to appear or to be capable of appearing" (attributed by you to me as 'my view') because this raised the old difficulty of Whately Carrington's 'cognita and cognizables'. But that which is "capable of appearing" already appears as "capable of appearing" and so is not "capable of appearing" since it has already appeared—i.e. it is only its presence which is absent, not the phenomenon, which is present-as-absent, so "phenomena capable of appearing" is a bogus category in this sense, it seems. The phenomenon, qua phenomenon, always appears, whether appearing as "appearing" or as "capable-of-appearing". So the "capability" must reside either ontologically in a mode of l'Être du phénomène (i.e. phénomène de l'être being simply "essence"—see below), or epistemologically or phenomenologically is the manner of consciousness of it, which constitutes its mode (as present, past, future, elsewhere, etc.). It is these considerations that make me not entirely satisfied with this saving-clause I underlined. (The Realist/Idealist opposition misses and bypasses this point.)

How right you are about the bogusness (I should like to use the word 'fraudulent') of Prof. Moore's statement about unicorns! Alain on images is another who deceives himself as others with their "no black swans" and "no unicorns": these are mere claims to be able to control, and predict and prophecy about, fields to which the systems of knowledge employed cannot inherently decide owing to their terms of reference. To say "there are no unicorns in my field of vision" might pass, but that is no good for some logician who wants to crack the "All"-whip- But to say "unicorns do not exist" is to claim to be able to prove a negative, where a statement of this sort invites and requires verification. And there are no means of verifying a negative claim of this sort. So Prof. Moore is a fraud. Yet it is a statement flattering to the scope of one's system of knowledge and also likely to draw support from those who forget to examine it and their respect for one's power. ("He must be a great man: he knows that unicorns don't exist!") Religious statements about God's nature, etc., are analogously bogus because this type of statement is one that assumes the form of the "Scientific method", which is that of abstract theory cum experimental-test-in-the-empirical-world-of-existing-things: but this Religious Counterfeit of that method, while inviting "experimental test" has no "empirical world" where such a test could be made. This is the fraud here ("lend me some money on the gold ingot in my safe; it always vanishes when you open the safe door, but it is always there again when the door is shut; and I'll give you a mortgage deed on the ingot, such a magnificent one it is too!"). The scientists cheat in the same way in a different field: they say "Look what we have done, what we have found out about, and can do with, the objective world. Give us a little more time (and give us a lot more money and faith) to experiment with, and we shall soon be able to find out all about subjectivity" (but glossing over the fact that their technique, their terms of reference, preclude them from examining anything subjective or private). In this sense Religion (of this sort) and Science (of this sort) are equally fraudulent. Logicians again (who as a tribe serve equally either Religion or Science), while of the greatest value in their own field (the tidy ordering of assumptions, and drawing of conclusions from assumptions, by means of other assumptions), are also given to cheating, too, and in their own special way, which is this; "Given certain postulates, certain First Principles, Basic assumptions, our Laws of Thought will if the assumptions are correct, give you a certain and absolutely correct answer. Now here are our basic assumptions, they are this and this and this. We all agree, don't we, that they must be made? For otherwise we can't talk or get anywhere, can we? Agreed, then, these are the Unquestionables, all laid out on the table, no secrets, no mysticism. And so, since we are all agreed on this, and since the Laws of Thought being necessity itself, cannot err (if they are rightly stated), logic must always be right and can always give the certain answer; for if logic has no answer to your question, it is your question that merely needs restating and so there are no problems at all. And since nothing outside the field of logic matters, logic is all-valid. Hence logic is the first word, the Middle Word, and the LAST WORD." The cheating here consists in maintaining and cherishing forgetfulness of the possibility of questioning, on any level at all, the certainly basic assumptions, and in stressing the dangers (which are as wide as that of being) of disregarding logic in its own field. Irrationality is no alternative to logic, but only a (futile) defiance of it in its own field and it falls quite within logic's own domain. Neither logic nor irrationality-as-anti-logic are niyyānika.²

Change of Subject: A witticism (or, if you like, a wittischism) occurred to me yesterday about "necessity"): While the proverb speaks of "making a virtue of necessity", Kant speaks (with his Categorical Imperative) of "making a virtue of necessity". This raises a point about descriptions: Kant (and others since) claimed that human personality has a "moral eye" which "sees" intuitively, as the eye sees visually visible forms, what ought to (must) be done. This I hold to be a gross example of misuse of argument by analogy resulting in erroneous and fictitious description. I find no such faculty in myself; only a certain sense of expediency, which comes under judgement. This kind of description I regard as potentially dangerous.

Your interpretation of the four Tathāgata-positions is ingenious; but I must think it over further.

A proposito: "essence" now is a fearful pun (a mediaeval logician's concept initiated by Aristotle, I believe). "Essence" (from "esse", "to be") is used by logicians for the "characteristic" (particular individual phenomenon) held to be peculiar to a class or a thing, in virtue of which the class, or thing, is recognized to be itself. (The distinguishing "attribute" as opposed to other attributes, called "qualities".) The term is thus thoroughly ambivalent and utraquistic, so most useful for verbal presti(digitazion)e, (remove what is in brackets and see what remains). While the referent of "essence" is thus made to be a "thing's" distinguishing characteristic phenomenon, the word "essence" is a metaphorical use of "being". But this phenomenon called "essence", is that of something (whether of a Kantian "ding an sich"³ or of an Abhidhamma constellation of subjective—objective dhammas with no self-substance makes little difference,) it is that by which I recognize what this is and believe it to be what it is; but this "essence" is not the thing's "being" in the sense of its "existence", which somehow, in turn, becomes another excreted and concreted attribute, a category now predictable of a logical subject, namely the thing's quality-of-existing. The fraud is now complete, for the logical copula is we agreed on as one of the basic assumptions that logic cannot investigate or handle. But by playing on the ambivalence of the word "essence" in this metaphorical use (which play is possible in virtue of the existential ambivalent identity-relation between consciousness and being and phenomena) we have split being into two, and now pretend that the copula is is not really being at all (although it is still being on the verbal plane; and if it were not, words would not correspond at all to life) and so is exempt from need for examination when we are questioning and investigating being and its structure. And if we can now persuade ourselves as well that the copula is does not count and that being is really a quality, then with this subtle chosisme⁴ logic has usurped supremacy over being and we now believe that it can answer every existential problem (whereas logic is always by the assumptions subordinate to being). But then we find that a "thing", now recognizable by its "essence" (Sartre's phénomène de l'être), curiously both exists (is) and has existence (has being). It is this diversion of attention from Logic's Constants that logicians ancient and modern, European and Indian are desperate to maintain and to conceal from themselves and from others the uncertainty in this necessary assumption. But every attempt to insulate the copula is from being must fail, for if maintained then logic has no connexion with being (existence) whatever and so cannot be applied to existence except by delusion. At the same time logical statements may be called on, in spite of what logicians may say, and certainly without their consent, to exhibit as a witness in the witness-box (but not as judge or jury) their patterns as evidence of certain important structures of thought—or so I take it. What do you think?

As to the statement "AB implies A":—

(1). By "assertion" I mean a "positive statement" (e.g. "AB implies A") as opposed to the corresponding negative "denial" (e.g. "AB does not imply A"). C.O.D.⁵ says simply "to assert" is "to declare".

(2). Truth: There seems to be the following kinds (i) legal-truth, (ii) correspondence-truth, (iii) consistency-truth, (iv) beauty-truth, v) necessity-truth (and maybe there are others, too, but no matter),

(3). Is "AB implies A" taken to represent the cogito? From your handling of "AB implies A" and the word "description", I am rather led to suppose that you regard "AB implies A" as a formal statement (as a Principle) of the formula cogito ergo sum, in a depersonalized paraphrase form, namely something like this: "If I exist(s) (= a) cogitating (B), then I exist(s) (A)": Is this so? If so then I disagree for the following reasons:—

(4). Is "AB implies A" a description or not? While you say you agree with me that the truth of the statement "AB implies A" does not arise (at all) unless it is mistaken for a proposition, yet you say as follows:—

The Mathematician or logician, when determining the valid[a] principles of mathematics is performing an act of reflexion bringing into view the structure he is interested in. He sees a certain structural characteristic that he proceeds to describe as 'AB implies A'. Sartre (correctly) pointed out that apart from errors of description[b] no mistake can be made.[c]

Now. First, with this you make the statement "AB implies A", a description. Well and good. But then the question of its truth does arise: namely the correspondence-truth of description with described or conversely, if "AB implies A" raises no question of truth at all, then it cannot be claimed to describe anything whatever, not even itself: it is purely abstract.

(5). If a description is it free from errors? If the statement "AB implies A" is a mathematician's description of what he sees on reflexion (would he not more likely call this "introspection" with a grimace?) then either it, or the set of descriptions to which it belongs, must, if "errors of description" are to be avoided, describe in some way, direct or indirect, the personal viewpoint ("I" or 1^st person singular verb), otherwise it is deficient and falls into .the No-view Realist fallacy. Now "AB implies A", entirely quelconque:⁶ general, depersonalized and independent of the particular natures of the members, shows me nothing of the personal viewpoint directly or indirectly, and where in the set of logical Principles or Laws of Thought does the "I" viewpoint come in? It does not. (It is relegated to grammar.) And if intended to describe reflexion existentially as the cogito "AB implies A" exhibits a serious error of description. Cogito ergo sum & "if cogitatio is, then esse". While it may well work within the field of bhava and be indispensable there, it is not niyyānika in any way that I can see. It cannot replace the cogito since it only distorts that by depersonalization (see (3) above).

6). The form of the statement: I believe it is legitimate to say that "AB implies A" and "if AB, then A" are equivalent. If that is correct, then, in this second form "AB implies A" looks superficially similar in form to imasmiṃ sati idaṃ hoti expressed in the form of "If this, then that" or the cogito expressed in the form "If I think, then I am". There are, it seems to me, important differences: (i) in "AB implies A" (or "If AB, then A") the natures of A and B are completely unimportant so long as they are merely different and suitably combinable. In the cogito and imasmiṃ sati idaṃ hoti the natures of the concepts employed are of primary importance; for the cogito is nothing if not that it employs the unique first person ("I") and the two unsubstitutable concepts of consciousness and being; and likewise imasmiṃ sati idaṃ hoti is not expandable just anyhow as a logical universal, but only by the paṭiccasamuppāda formula, the choice of the concepts in which are of absolutely first importance, and includes the constituents necessary for asmimāna (= "I" first person, consciousness and being. So while "AB implies A" is, in its form, quite quelconque and quite impersonal and thus unexistential both the cogito and imasmiṃ sati idaṃ hoti legitimately expanded are personal and existential.

Infinity: While the recourse to infinity gives nescience freedom of movement in proportion to the number of factors of a situation realized to infinity and consequently made indefinite, yet this infinity, owing to its indefiniteness, renders what is infinitized existentially absolutely ineffectual. Grammar, though so greatly despised, is sometimes instructive: And here we find the verb has the infinite mood, in which it is depersonalized, relegated to a position not even admitting potentiality, and consequently quite neutralized as regards any effective (verbal) action. It is one of the weaknesses of Berkeley's formula "esse est percipi" that it is expressed in the grammatical infinitive, and so is depersonalized and quite abstracted from; existence| if he had, like Descartes, worked in the finite form of the Indicative, he would perhaps has seen its weakness ("I am, therefore I am perceived does not claim the unquestioned immediate recognition that "cogito ergo sum" does; this is simply the mood of être vu⁷; which invites completion, owing to its one-sided passivity, by inventing God by Whom I am perceived. Infinity enters at once with double reflexion, and I rather think that conscious reflexion is never reducible below double reflexion, but "esse est percipi" forgets the percipiens⁸ in my definite finity.) "AB implies A" if considered in this light can only belong to (side with) the infinite type of expression and never to the finite.

(7). Identification: the ontological act-of-self-identifying is quite differently treated in the cogito and the Statement. The cogito implies that "when I think then I am self-identifying (making be)" while the Statement implies (in this direction) that "when A and B are combined, A remains unchanged and self-identical with A on return to, or repetition of, A". The cogito shows that my self-identity of being is contingent upon consciousness but the Statement only declares that self-identity does not change on a return to self (A). I certainly agree with you that it is "dangerous rationalist mauvaise foi" to doubt what is certain (just as it is dangerous religious mauvaise foi to believe what is uncertain),.and I think we agree in regarding the cogito as a true description and as. unquestionably certain, and in the same way, the paṭiccasamuppāda formula. Buy I do not, for the reasons stated, accept "AB implies A" on this footing at all. That I, cognizing, identity, I do not doubt; but that an identification made cannot be doubted I do not admit.

(8). Certainty: I do not know how far we agree on this-natter. I am certain that I am, but not certain what it is that I am. Whether I am myself or not is open to doubt even in ordinary usage, since I can be "quite myself" on one day, "not quite myself on another, and "beside myself" on another. I am certain, when I see, that I see; but though I identify what I see (recognize it) I am not certain what it is that I see; hence the constant question (always possible to renew after suspended by a "satisfactory" answer). "What is this that I see?" I am certain that "I am doing", but my identification of what I am doing is uncertain. True, it (and the other cases too) is, or seems, in pure immediacy, certain what I am doing, but pure immediacy is only part of an infinite hierarchy and what I am doing now, namely writing-this-letter, is part of spending-a-day-at-Polgasduwa, which is part-of-living-at-the-Hermitage, and so on, but ad infinitum. But, N.B., the "infinite" here is "indefinite", so while I am unquestionably certain that I am doing, I am quite uncertain what it is that I am doing, since that always recedes into the indefinite.

(9). I have doubtless completely misapprehended your intended communication regarding the statement "AB implies A" and so the whole of clauses (1) to (8) will have been a "wrong identification" which shows great uncertainty and many other things besides.

To change the subject: does your present view of past's, present's, and future's, being included in the Present agree with Sartre's views on these three modes of temporality set forth in L'Être et le Néant? If you diverge, in what respect is that? The Bhaddekaratta Sutta is admirable in this respect.

I find I am now inclined to use, for myself only, the following English equivalents for the paṭiccasamuppāda formula.

avijjā = nescience (of the four saccāni)
saṅkhārā = determinations
viññāṇa = consciousness (pure subjectivity)
nāmarūpa = name-and-form) (recognition and pure objectivity)
saḷāyatana = the sixfold Individual Facticity (of self and world)
phassa = presence
vedanā = feeling (affective experience)
taṇhā = need (for feeling)
upādāna = consumption (on physical level) and assumption (on verbal and other levels)
bhava = being (existence)

—etc. Also:

uppāda = arising (appearance, phenomenality)

anurodha = construction (favouring)

paṭinirodha = obstruction (opposing) taṇhā's two modes in uppāda

nirodha = destruct(urat)ion

Any comments or criticisms, especially of nos. 5 and 6?

Further, the following vague idea about the paṭiccasamuppāda in general crossed my mind: the full form, starting with avijjā, describes the state of the puthujjana (and nirodha that of the arahat); but in the form used by the Buddha in the Saṃyutta to describe his "discovery of the ancient way" as the Bodhisatta on the point of gaining enlightenment, he proceeds backwards from jarāmaraṇa as far as viññāṇa and then "turns back" to nāmarūpa, the point of interest here might be the replacement (in the formula used for this purpose i.e. to describe the attaining of enlightenment) of avijjā and saṅkhārā by an infinite regression, namely the infinite alternation of viññāṇa-nāmarūpa. Avijjā is inappropriate to the description of the actual process of attaining enlightenment (and saṅkhārā as actions are not performed by an arahat, qua arahat.

One other point: I have been seeking three convenient terms for classifying the three distinguishable blocks in the paṭiccasamuppāda, which are on different levels namely (a) 1-2, (b) 3-9 or 10, and (c) 11-12. At present I tentatively use the following three: (c) the historical temporal (past-and-future, simultaneously mentally incompatible), (b) the personal (and simultaneously mentally indispensable), (a) the impersonal (and simultaneously compatible). I am not altogether satisfied with (a), or for that matter with any.

______________

—the cogito says "I am conscious whenever I am my self-identity" but the Statement says "Self-identity is valid", which is something very different indeed.

—"AB implies A" assumes that A remains unchanged in the repetition, the return to it by identification; but how can we be sure it has not changed meanwhile? And if it has, then "AB does not imply A" is appropriate.

__________

[1] āgantuka kuṭi: 'New-comer's hut.'

[2] niyyānika: 'Leading out, leading to salvation.'

[3] ding an sich: 'Thing-in-itself.'

[4] chosisme: 'Thing-ness (thing-ism).'

[5] C.O.D.: Concise Oxford Dictionary.

[6] quelconque: 'Whatever, ordinary.'

[7] être vu: 'to be seen.'

[8] percipiens: 'Perceiver.'

[a] My italics: and, I wonder, why the appeal to value here?

[b] My italics.

[c] Incidentally, as a description of reflexion I find this oversimplified: maybe there are minds such that reflexion is like opening a cupboard door, switching on a torch, and describing the shelves' structure seen there: but I find my mind much more like a roam whose walls, ceiling and floor are looking glasses facing each other, and that is very hard to describe. But this aside.
_________________________________________________

[EL 143] 16.i.1959

2008-11-17T12:34:00.005Z

Thank you for your letter of the 12th. I have read it with some attention, and it seems that you are probably expressing your views with clearness and precision, perhaps more so than hitherto. I say probably because in spite of this impression there remains a certain failure to communicate, in the sense that I am not left with a definite and coherent picture of your point of view. This, however, is due I think to the fact that our views are fairly close, and not to your views being in fact incoherent. If your views were radically different from mine it would, no doubt, be much easier to form, a clear picture of them (and, of course, to denounce them). As it is I suspect there is much on which we agree but which I fail to recognize in your wording. In consequence, I note what you say, but hesitate before expressing definite disagreement in case I should find I am disagreeing with my own views, which would be most embarrassing.

In particular, I note that you say that phenomena, in order to emerge at all, must be distinguishable from what they are not. I agree. But you go on to say that it is from being that they are distinguished. I am not sure whether I should disagree. Without doing so, I shall state that I find that what phenomena are not is other phenomena. My view of being is this: the present single directly perceived phenomenon (whatever it may be) appears against a background of other phenomena that it is not, and these other phenomena are peripherally perceived, not directly perceived. They are absent not present; possible, not certain. But this background itself appears as directly perceived relative to a further background, which further background is thus doubly peripheral, doubly absent; with regard to the original single phenomenon. And this further background has itself got another, still further, background against which it appears, and so on ad infinitum. This is the hierarchy (or one aspect of it). To illustrate this, the picture of squares within squares will serve, and you may now regard it, as you suggest, as an advancing pyramid with diminishing sections. Each section is standing out as a single phenomenon against the background of the next larger section, which represents, all the (limited) immediate possibilities of, or alternatives to, the smaller section within it. The relation is essentially part-to-whole, repeated indefinitely. Now, Berkeley's esse est percipi, takes account of the single immediately present phenomenon that you happen to have started with (i.e. by ignoring the fact that this given phenomenon is itself a background to a still more present phenomenon). That is to say, if I am actually looking at the tree in the quad, it exists (according to Berkeley); but it is assumed that when I stop looking at it, it ceases to be perceived and therefore to exist (if we forget God). This, I maintain, is a mistake. The tree, though no longer directly perceived, no longer present, is still a possibility; that is to say, it is one of the absent phenomena in one of the 'receding' backgrounds. It is never totally absent, for each order of absence is present against (or relative to) a still more absent background. This means that there is not just existence or non-existence of a given object, but an infinite hierarchy of possibilities of existence, ranging from immediate presence (or full existence), through immediate absence or possibility, to ever more remote possibilities. Berkeley, on the one hand, maintains that only the present object exists; the Realists, on the other hand, maintain that all things, present or absent, exist equally. These are the two extreme views, and the truth (I hold) lies in between (as I have described). I notice that you have queried the words underlined in my statement "to be is to be phenomenal—i.e. to appear or to be capable of appearing". Perhaps what I have just said will make this clear: if I had restricted myself to equating existence (or phenomenality) with direct appearance only (and had ignored the possibility of being present) I should have erred with Berkeley. (In the sense that absent phenomena—"images"—also are perceived, we can agree with esse est percipi; but that is not how it is usually understood—Berkeley would hardy allow that the tree can be perceived as absent or as possible or rather that, if not present, it always is so perceived.)

Now, in Stebbing, the question of the existence of the unicorn that I am now thinking of is raised. Prof, Moore's intentionally bogus statement is quoted, namely that 'in one sense of the words there certainly are no unicorns... yet there must be some other sense in which there are such things, since if not, we could not think of them'. This statement is intended to ridicule the view (i.e. that unicorns must exist if they can be thought of) it apparently puts forward. But the point is, how can it be said that there certainly are no unicorns? How can this be known? The most that can be said is that it is highly improbable that any unicorn can be found in any corner of the globe. But what has that to do with the question of existence? This is an excellent example of the wallowing in common sense that is such a marked, and indeed essential, feature of rationalistic and scientific thinking. The fact is that if I am thinking of a unicorn, then a unicorn exists as a possibility, and if I am thinking of a horse then a horse exists as a possibility. If I see a unicorn (or a horse) then that unicorn (or horse) exists as a certainty. (Naturally, if I think of a unicorn there will also be other, reflexive, determinations playing their part, and I shall regard the unicorn I am thinking of as less probable than the horse I am thinking of. But this is irrelevant.) Stebbing then says that it is meaningless to assert the existence of an individual ('this lion exists'), but not meaningless to assert the existence of a class ('lions exist'). But as I think, 'this lion exists' means 'this lion is certain' and 'lions exist' means 'this lion is possible'. Some confirmation of this second is given, unwittingly, by Russell's statement ' "lions exist" means "X is a lion" is sometimes true" '—the logical, point-of-viewless expression 'is sometimes true', becomes, existentially, 'is possible'. And if this is so, then the proposition 'lions exist' means 'I am thinking of a lion'. Unhappy logicians!

But to proceed. Let me restate the three Laws of Thought.

1. Either p or not-p, excluding the possibility of both. (p/p̄*)

2. Either p or not-p, not excluding the possibility of neither. (p v p̄*)

3. Not both p and not-p, not excluding the possibility of neither.

N.B. It must be remembered that p is a proposition in this formulation.

Now it will not have escaped your notice (or will it?) that the tetrad hoti tathāgato parammaraṇa, namely:

(i) The Tathāgata exists (after death)

(ii) The Tathāgata does not exist... = 1

(iii) The Tathāgata both exists and does not exist... =2

(iv) The Tathāgata neither exists nor does not exist.... =3

exemplifies these Laws of Thought. No doubt this tetrad was a logical font that was much squabbled about and not much understood. But let us see if we can make sense of it. In (i) the Tathāgata is asserted. Note that in saying 'A exists' I am asserting A, and I am not asserting A's existence: to assert A's existence I must say 'A's existence exists'. Or we can put it this way: 'A exists' is equivalent to 'there is A', and 'A's existence exists' is equivalent to 'there is A's existence'. But in asserting A I am saying, in effect, 'A is the invariant of a transformation known as existence'; that is to say in asserting g A I am defining existence. In (ii) the Tathāgata is denied. But this, coming after (i), is the second part of a transformation of which (i) was the first part. In other words, when (i) and (ii) are together asserted (iii) "both"—the relation between them, i.e. the transformation, is asserted. That is to say, (iii) asserts the Tathāgata's existence—"The Tathāgata's existence exists". Note, however, that existence is taken here in the Berkeleyan sense: (i) = "The Tathāgata is present (either—by himself "I am a Tathāgata" or to another—"this is a Tathāgata"); (ii) = "The Tathāgata is absent"; (iii) = "The Tathāgata's presence is present". And in (iv) "neither" the Tathāgata's existence is denied—"The Tathāgata's existence does not exist", or "The Tathāgata's presence is absent". But it is evident that we could go on to assert (iii) and (iv) together, which would be asserting the existence of the Tathāgata's existence "The existence of the Tathāgata's existence exists". And we could then deny (iii) and (iv), and then assert both assertion and denial of (iii) and (iv), and so on indefinitely. But in doing this we shall be generating the hierarchy in terms of existence, just as I described earlier with the squares within the squares. Whether we use the Laws of Thought or the ancient Indian logical tetrad, we find we can arrive at the structure of being.

Now Stebbing uses the Laws of Thought to define the negative, so: given p and q, if (a) either p or q is true, not excluding both, and (b) not both p and q are true, not excluding neither, then we have "either p or q, exclusive of both";in this case, q is not-p. As far as it goes, this is well done; but this is as far as it goes. In their mania for common-sense interpretations the modern logicians have destroyed whatever structural value the traditional formal logic possessed. Stebbing for example, wants to give the proposition p any everyday value—e.g. "the time is four o'clock" (to take a random example). But this makes nonsense of "either p or not-p, not excluding the possibility of both"; for we get either the time is four o'clock or the time is not four o'clock, and perhaps it is both four o'clock and not four o'clock". This being unsatisfactory, I was wondering what sort of proposition could be used for p that would avoid absurdity.[a]

Looking through Stebbing's book I eventually came across (p. 59) the following diagram (called the 'square of opposition'):—

What immediately struck me about this trapezium (as I hope it will already have struck you) was that it was remarkably like the little picture I have been sending you to illustrate the structure of ambiguity, namely;

And, if you remember, I said that it was this very figure that was defined by the three Laws of Thought. So it occurred to me that the four propositions placed (by the traditional logicians! at the four corners might be what I was looking for. They are:-

A. All x is y.

E. All x is not-y (i.e. no x is y).

I. Some x is y.

O. Some X is not-y.

And, in fact, if we take p as A ('All x is y') then the trapezium represents the structure of the first Law of Thought (p/p̄) as dependent upon the second and third. And these Laws are now intelligible. Thus the second becomes 'Either some x is y or some x is not y, and perhaps both some x is y and some x is not-y', where the 'both' clearly expresses a possibility; and the third becomes 'Not both all x is y and no x is y and perhaps neither all x is y nor no x is y', where the 'neither' is intelligible (since if some x is y and some x is not-y' then certainly neither all x is y nor no x is y).

It is tempting to try and represent these four propositions by the following scheme:—

XY = A (all x is y)

XȲ* = E (all x is not-y)

YX = I (not: all x is y = some x is y)

Ȳ*X = O (not: all x is not-y = some x is not-y)

But there is a snag. To arrive at O from A in the scheme, you must go via E (XY → XY* → Y*X) and not via I (which gives XY → YX → YX*). Y*X is 'some x is y'; but YX* is 'not: some x is y', which must be turned round as 'all y is not-x'. And these two statements are by no means equivalent. This being so, the trapezium cannot be completed and remains thus:—

which expresses a contradiction (you cannot get to O via I and get to O via E), but not an ambiguity (which requires a 'both'). In order to arrive at a scheme that will faithfully represent the relation between A, E, I, and 0, we have to use four letters (V, W, X, Y say) and turn them upside down, (X̄) in pairs. If, instead of V W X Y we use A B C D you will see that we arrive at Eddington's EF—operators. Let us take a random conic from Kummer (No. 6, say) and mark in the appropriate EF operators:—This gives us the following trapezium:—whose sides are as follows:

By operating on all with D̄C̄BA, we get the following equivalent figure:—If we label these so:—

ABCD—A

AB*CD*—E

DCBA—I

D*CB*A—O

you will see that we have a scheme corresponding to that given on p. 291 (with XY = A etc.), but with the difference that you can get to O from A indifferently via E or I. And we get the following figure:—But since there is a duality between points and lines—two points define a line •————• and two lines define a point —it is indifferent whether the letters AEIO are represented by the sides or the angles of the trapezium (or square of opposition). Thus it turns out that the traditional logical AEIO propositions as treated by the traditional logicians have the same structure as Kummer or the EF-operators. In other words, they are capable of representing the structure of the existence of a thing. From my earlier discussion of different orders of existence—Presence, Absence, Double Absence, and so on—the reason for this can be seen quite easily in the following table of corresponding propositions:—

All x is y — A is (fully) Present

All x is not-y — A is Doubly Absent relative to Present

Some x is y — A is Singly Present relative to Doubly Absent

Some x is not-y — A is Singly Absent relative to Present.

There is, as far as I can see, no particular significance in this parallel structure, it simply happens that "some" can be interpreted as halfway between "all" and "none", so that some + some = all. It may be, however, that to understand "some" and "all" additively in terms of being is the only existentially valid Interpretation. (Thus we can validly say A exists more than B, when A is present and B is absent—indeed the principle of superposition is purely additive of being—, but to speak of more men, or all men, is not valid, being an enumeration or generalization without a point of view. To say that A is present and B is absent is, precisely, to say that A is my point of view.) That the laws of Thought (or the Indian tetrad) should represent 'the structure of being is, however, not accidental( for there is no existence without the negative, and they define the negative—the Laws of Thought are Laws of Existence precisely because Thought is Existence(cogito ergo sum). Any statement in terms of the Laws of Thought or of the Indian tetrad is a statement about existence and any statement about existence can be expressed in such terms. Since existence has no application to a Tathāgata, none of the four statements of the Indian tetrad is valid—they cannot be denied, since denial of one simply asserts another, and they cannot be asserted. They are ṭhapanīya. (Your analysis of the four questions is most ingenious, and may be correct—I must think about it.)

It is perhaps noteworthy that the modern logicians do not interpret "all" and "some" additionally (and much less additionally-in-terms-of-being). They maintain that "all" does not imply existence (in their sense), whereas "some" does. "All men are mortal" is held to be assertable whether there are men or not, whereas "some men are philosophers" is held to mean that at least one man is a philosopher. On this argument "some dodos are female", if asserted, asserts that dodos exist, whereas "all dodos are large-beaked", if asserted, does not assert that dodos exist. This seems to be rubbish. More common sense, I fear.

You might think, after this lengthy discussion in the realm of logic, that I am now going to discuss something else. You would be wrong. I have finished with the connexion between the Laws of Thought and the structure of Being (at least for the moment), but not with Stebbing and Logic. You say in your letter that you are too inexpert to say whether "AB implies A" is a deductive proposition or not, and that you are prepared to accept what the logicians tell you on this point, even if they change their minds. Unhappily Stebbing does change her mind on this point, to the extent of two flatly contradictory statements on opposite pages. You ask, most pertinently, whether the truth of the proposition "AB implies A" arises. The whole point is that it does not arise, and consequently it is not deductive. Stebbing, however, has an axe to grind, and falls between two stools (though why one should need two stools In order to grind an axe, I don't know). Let me expand and expound.

Owing, no doubt, to the rationalist faith that all things are rational, if they are not emotional, Stebblng wishes to maintain that mathematics is a science—a pure science, as opposed to empirical science (do you not already smell a rat?)—, and states that mathematics differs from the other sciences because the facts it deals with are not empirical facts. And since it deals with facts it is deductive, though since these facts are not empirical, it is not also inductive as the empirical sciences are. Mathematics is a purely deductive science. That is more or less how she puts the matter in one rather chatty chapter. My heart bleeds for Stebbing—what else can she say? If mathematics (and therefore Logic) is not a science, it might——oh horror!— be a religion. Now Stebbing says, later on, that a sharp distinction must be made between propositions with regard to matters of fact (which include all the propositions asserted by the natural sciences, and are reached by inductive reasoning) and propositions with regard to abstract concepts such as those of mathematics (I underline). In other words, we must distinguish between facts that are matters of fact, and facts that are the concepts of mathematics, the latter facts being, presumably, not matters of fact. (By now the rat has become so smelly that the cat is out of the bag—mathematics does not deal with facts. However, we anticipate.) Propositions concerning natters of fact may be denied without contradiction: the propositions of mathematics, not being matters of fact, cannot be denied without contradiction, because "they are true no matter what the constitution of the actual world may be". To assert the truth of such propositions is to assert that they follow from the initial concepts and axioms. To assert the truth of propositions regarding matters of fact "is to assert that they express facts with regard to what exists". So Stebbing now admits that there is a difference between asserting the truth of a mathematical proposition and asserting the truth of a proposition regarding matters of fact. Several pages later Stebbing goes further (I quote in full):—

There is a fundamental difference between inference by logical principles from asserted natters of fact, and inference by logical principles from purely logical propositions.[b] The latter cannot be asserted in the same sense as a proposition concerning a matter of fact can be asserted. Thus we may say that we do not assert the truth of mathematics; we assert the validity of the logical structure exhibited by the system of mathematical propositions.

And finally, there is a footnote to this passage:—

It is for this reason that mathematics cannot be regarded as a system of true propositions; it is a structure.

But when we turn back to her statement of the Principles of Deduction we find this:—

What is implied by a true proposition is true. This is called the principle of deduction since it is in virtue of this principle alone that we can deduce a conclusion.... It might equally well be called the principle of assertion....

What could be clearer? Mathematics has nothing to do with true propositions, and there is deduction only from true propositions. (And if mathematics is a structure how can it be a science?) So she is obliged, on p. 192, to say that

The formal principles stated above in terms of implication suffice for the construction of deductive systems, but they do not suffice for the drawing of conclusions;

and on page 193 to say that

The principle of deduction and principle of substitution[c] are involved in all demonstrative reasoning. Without these two principles it would be impossible to construct a deductive system[d]

And she adds:—

The development of the primitive propositions stated in Principia Mathematica takes place in virtue of the repeated use of these two principles.

Nonsense!

At this point I venture to disagree with you. You say that

for every positive statement or proposition a corresponding negative can be asserted, and a decision in favour of one against the other can only be made by appeal to what is outside logic.... Consequently it would seem that if a logical statement is to be admitted on its own merits alone and unsupported for incorporation into the building of a structure, it must be admitted along with its contradictory opposite, whose exclusion in these conditions cannot be justified.

Certainly, for every positive statement or proposition a corresponding negative can be asserted, provided it is clear that the positive statement or proposition has been asserted. If it has not been asserted, how can its negative be asserted? With Stebbing's argument, much of which is taken from Hume, I agree. It is only propositions regarding matters of fact that can be either asserted or denied, and it is also only propositions regarding matters of fact that can be used "for incorporation into the building of a structure"; and provided your statement concerns only propositions regarding matters of fact I entirely agree with you. But your statement is made in connexion with the proposition "AB implies A", which we both agree is not a proposition regarding matters of fact. What I am getting at is this. A logician such as Russell, may imagine that in writing his Principia Mathematica he is employing deductive reasoning. It flatters him to think that he has" abandoned the appeal to intuition" and "made all his assumptions explicit". That is why Stebbing insists that mathematics (and logic) is a "deductive science" while at the same time clearly showing that it is nothing of the sort. What, however, is really happening (apart from incidental short cuts in descriptions) is this. The mathematician or logician, when determining the valid principles of mathematics or logic, is performing an act of reflexion bringing into view the structure of existence, and describing whatever parts of that structure he is interested in. Thus he does not incorporate a proposition such as "AB implies A" into the building of structure; he sees a certain structural characteristic that he proceeds to describe as "AB implies A". Sartre has (correctly) pointed out that the data of reflexion are certain, and apart from errors of description no mistake can be made. If reflexion reveals ambiguities, then these ambiguities are certain and not ambiguous. If reflexion reveals a structure describable as "AB implies A", then there can be no doubt about the matter. Or rather there can be doubt about it, and this doubt about what is certain constitutes mauvaise foi. The most obvious example is the rationalist who, though he is certain that he exists (in virtue of the cogito), refuses to admit the certainty of his existence and takes refuge (as Kierkegaard points out) in (rational) thought, which is the subtlest way of not existing (this is the situation of A in Either/Or). What is deceptive is the insistence of the logicians that "AB implies A" is a deductive proposition, with the subsequent confusion of a formal logical principle, with a deductive logical conclusion. The former is certain and can only be doubted by mauvaise foi; the latter is probable, and can only not be doubted by mauvaise foi. Quantum Mechanics, as Dirac shows, rest upon assumptions contrary to logical principles; it thus incorporates mauvaise foi into its equations. Quantum phenomena threaten the scientific observer with existence, and the measures that he takes not to exist are known as the Principles of Quantum Mechanics. They stop the infection from spreading above the sub-atomic level. The expression "a logical statement" (with its partner "a logical argument") is most unfortunate, since it entirely fails to distinguish between logical principles and logical conclusions. The latter are either asserted or denied as true or false: the former can be neither asserted nor denied, they are neither true or nor false, but simply there if we look reflexively. Another source of confusion is the fact that in order to express these certain logical principles use has to be made of the verb "to be", with the result that these logical principles when expressed look grammatically like logical conclusions. The copula "is" looks the same in "every right angle is an angle" as it does in "every swan is white", but in the second proposition "is" represents an assertion, whereas in the first it does not (except by analogy—see later). So long as you consider that "AB implies A" is an assertion (and from your letter I gather that you do—you describe it, for example, as "a logical unilateral statement"), we shall not agree. Yet, as I noted above, you query whether the truth of "AB implies A" arises: but this is to doubt whether, in fact, "AB implies A" is an assertion. And how can a statement whose truth does not arise be unilateral? You will, perhaps, gather that I regard this question as being of fundamental importance, and I, for my part, gather that you regard it so, too. It may be that our differences here are the source of any others that we may have. Let me state my view clearly. It may be mauvaise foi not to doubt a statement that is only possible, that is a proposition regarding a matter of fact, that is a logical conclusion, that is, in brief, an assertion; but it is quite certainly mauvaise foi, the dangerous rationalist mauvaise foi, to doubt a statement that is certain, that is a reflexive description of structure, that is a logical principle, that is in brief, not an assertion. And it is because logicians do doubt such statements that all "logical statements" are logical conclusions; and since any verbal statement is a "logical statement", we conclude that no utterance can ever express certainty. An utterance can express certainty, but it is then not an assertion—and I do not mean in the sense of Kierkegaard's existential communication, unless that is understood to mean that we can only communicate certainties by means of analogy (perhaps it does mean that). A communication by analogy resembles an assertion in that the statement of the analogy is an assertion (e.g. 'viññāṇa "becomes" nāma'), but the assertion is not assertion of the certainty (thus, far from stressing "become" in that communication, I say regretfully that I am obliged to use the word in order to communicate, but would do without it if I could). Thus, in "AB implies A" we have communication of a certainty by means of an analogy——"AB implies A", on the surface is an assertion such as "fire is hot and will heat you if you go close", i.e. "AB causes A". "A is A" communicates by means of analogy—it is ostensibly the assertion that "A has the property of being A": heat, for example, has the property of being hot, as you can demonstrate by applying a thermometer to what feels hot. It can, of course, be taken at its face value, and this is done by regarding it as an assertion, and in this way there is no harm done. But rationalists have the attitude that it must be taken at its face value, that a statement cannot not be an assertion. The most usual form of communication by analogy (which is never argument by analogy) is the parable, but it is not generally understood that the parabola is also a form of such communication. (Thus the conics in Kummer communicate certain major aspects of the structure of being, in the form of analogy. Kummer asserts things about points and lines and conics, but communicates fundamental structure of being.) I realize that in this way of looking at things, any communication by analogy is, in a sense, a logical principle. But though there is no boundary between formal logic and mathematics, there does seem to be a boundary between mathematics and, for example, Joyce's Ulysses, which is also unmistakably a communication by analogy. The difference is that mathematics is a structure whose description begins at the most fundamental point (the Laws of Thought defining the negative), whereas literary works begin anywhere in experience and do not pretend to communicate the whole structure. Thus, though perhaps "logical principles" can be conveniently confined to a few of the simpler and more obvious levels of mathematical communication by analogy, there is no reason other than convenience for stopping short of the whole of mathematics. But, also, there is no good reason for extending the term beyond mathematics into literary or other similar forms of communication by analogy. We may note that the Suttas provide both forms, sometimes in the same sentence. Another way of distinguishing between an assertion (or denial) and a non-assertion is the fact that a non-assertion always begs the question—which is why it is a non-assertion. Now any statement can be regarded either as begging the question or not (a psycho-analyst regards all his patient's statements as begged questions), though normally it is clear which is intended. The proof[e] that any statement can be regarded either as an assertion (not begging the question) or as a non-assertion (begging the question) runs as follows (by statement we mean proposition):—From the earlier part of this letter it is clear that a proposition p in its simplest form is an assertion "A exists"; and we showed that this asserts A and, in doing so, defines existence. If we change our attitude, putting "A" in brackets, we shift the emphasis and get "[A] exists". This is simply " 'A exists' defines 'existence' " which is of the form "AB implies A", which begs the question (is a non-assertion). But you will see without this that "A exists" is not an assertion of a matter of fact. Thus "The Tathāgata exists" or "The Tathāgata's existence exists" clearly does not beg the question (the second of these is less clear than the first, since it could well be taken in the sense "The Tathāgata's [or anyone else's] existence exists"), whereas "Existence exists" clearly does. For this reason a communication by analogy appears to a rationalist as a fallacious argument.

The other night, at about half-past twelve, I was woken by a curious flapping noise over my head. I got up and investigated, and discovered on the bed under the mat under my pillow a smallish but extremely venomous-looking snake devouring a gecko. (Do I hear you wondering how a snake can look venomous? The answer is that any snake that you find on your bed at midnight looks incredibly venomous. This one was shiny brown with rather indeterminate yellow rings.) Fortunately, having its mouth full of no doubt delicious gecko it allowed itself to be caught and removed without giving any trouble. I can't help feeling that that wretched gecko must have had an appointment with the snake, if the snake took all the trouble to come in and look under my pillow. The next morning was spent in taking away the gaps I found under my kuṭi door and the caṅkamana gate.

We have just had some unexpected heavy rain. This is most welcome in providing me with bath water for the next three or four months. Unfortunately my cistern has not yet been treated to stop its leaking, and I did not bother to collect any rainwater. What is needed is half a bag of cement. This has been on its way since the middle of November, but still remains a project. I am not inclined, however, to curse at Ceylonese inefficiency, since it is undoubtedly one of the reasons why one can live here in peace and unmolested. Preserve me from a country where the people are united and efficient!

A few scraps of 'Daily Telegraph' describing the French crisis. Extraordinarily stuffy and panicky about the affair. The Algiers instigators were described as "idealists and adventurers". Surely Churchill (is he still alive?) is, or was, an idealist and adventurer? This is the same sort of panic as inspired the Suez débâcle. If England can't adapt herself better than this to changing conditions she won't last long. Why didn't she support Nasser against America? This is simply trying to keep the tide out with a mop instead of harnessing it to generate power. However, it is none of my business.

The 'Journal de Charlevoi', my usual provincial Belgian paper (my provincial English paper is the 'Liverpool Echo', most dreary), tells me, with an air of disapproval, that the Swedes are noted for their erotic films, usually shown only in low-class cinemas. This is a little unexpected somehow—perhaps the Swedes are now so bored that they are sinking into debauchery, or were they always debauched? Why does a Rotterdam paper give great apace to the account of an English Country Cricket Match (next to an article on Gide who, surely, did not play tile game)?...

__________

[*] The * after the letter indicate a line on the letter.

[a] It is clear that p must have a particular structure for the Laws of Thought to apply to it, namely, the structure of a Thought (whatever that may be). What, in other words, is the nature of a proposition? It turns out that p must be an assertion of a thing, A: 'A exists'. This, as we shall see, can be formally represented by the proposition “All x is y”.

[b] Stebbing has just defined mathematics as 'the science concerned with “deduction by logical principles from logical princples”.'

[c] Which are excluded from the formal orinciples of implication.

[d] I underline.

[e] This is a communication by analogy, so do not take “proof” at its face value.
_________________________________________________

[EL. 142a] 11.i.1959

2008-11-13T13:09:00.003Z

From the draft of a letter by Ven. Ñānamoli.

...Your exposé of the logical incompatibility, or incompatible logicity, of the Realist' and Idealists' system in most excellent in your letter of 1 Jan. Also your description of the Laws of Thought in your letter of 5 Jan. On these, as with your other admirable and helpful expositions of structure I have no comment. You handle this elaborate and important subject with greater facility and competence than I do. Comment being therefore redundant, I offer simply applause. (Your elegant squares within squares have a third possible [interpretation[1]]: they are not a receding corridor but an advancing pyramid. Now which of the two is this:— ?)

The tone of one's letters, or anyone's for the matter of that, is always rather imponderable, since a letter, by its nature, is a tonal vacuum, which, not being a total vacuum, demands imperatively to be filled. What sort of filling will this demand? I shall, maybe, tap it against stones (to test its stones), twang it with plectra (to elicit its tonal spectra), hang it for a spell in an aeolian zephyr (to hear what it harps upon forever), rub it with a fingertip (and so on, ad lib.); but I doubt the only result will be the same dry rustle of a whisper (of more than which I must depair). What does it mean? (You may tell, if you can.)

"Correct me if I am wrong." you say (in parenthesis) of your statement of My Approach as it seems to you and of Your Approach. I would not say you were wrong or right. Only perhaps: "that was your way of putting it...". What follows will make no difference, though, to the extent that no difference makes a difference.

That Esse est percipi I by no means deny, though I think it incomplete. What is lacking? Nothing. How? Because, given that statement on its merits it implies (in order that it may emerge at all) percipiens non est.[2] (Non-esse est percipere[3]—perceive is a recul from being.) (It is not of the same order as cogito ergo sum, which, in terms of it, would be cogito ergo percipimur,[4] which seems a quaint non-sequitur.) That too I do not deny. Do you? But this is only a starting-point; for the self-identity of the percipiens quis perceptum est non esse[5] now enters, and with it ramifications that extend thence ad infinitum (hence, no doubt, Bishop Berkeley's absurd solution of this ambiguity by introduction of God's consciousness to contain the perceived while it is not being perceived).

Now I suggest that thenomena must, qua phenomena, be distinguishable from what they are not, or they do not arise at all. If so, and it they can, as such, be distinguished, it is from being, and so if they can be said to have a distinctive phenomenal characteristic peculiar to them, it is that when a phenomenon appears it does so as hiding something else (the three saṅkhatalakkhaṇas are not absent from my mind); but that when a search is made, on this invitation, for what ought to be beyond it, only further phenomena ever appear when it disappears. On these terms consciousness could be said to appear, as the phenomenon that hides nothing when it appears. Again, if being, which phenomena are not, has, as such, an ontological characteristic peculiar to it, it is that it has nothing beyond it. A phenomenon, then, while thus certain in its phenomenality, is ambiguous in its being. But if, as is always possible, the ambiguity in the being of the phenomenon is dialectically resolved, it reappears again in what being is not, i.e. in phenomena as their non-phenomenality. All this, in its repetitive pattern and infinite ramifications, vistas and hierarchies, levels, planes and ranges (which you so admirably masterfully deal with) is what the structure of being consists in. I say, Here is the double ambiguity "whose naming (i.e. reasoning) kills and has it born elsewhere" (if I may misquote myself), or, on a baser level, the hippo with the tight skin (but see what I say below on ambiguities as ultimate entities).

Since Avijjāpaccayā... bhavo, I hold it not impossible that (the logical constant the copula "is" being bhava on the verbal plane) the three Laws of Thought may well be, not so much the structure of being (since you say the structure of being is what they are founded on) as the structure of saddhā (you know, I believe, my views on the intimate connexion between saddhā and avijjā in the puthujjana and so I need not repeat them). But this must by no means be taken as a denigration or depreciation of the Laws but rather the opposite; for I fancy it is more important (given the aim of understanding how [things] are in order to elicit fully the futility of existence and so eliminate taṇhā) to have access to the structure also of avijjā than to possess the structure of ñāṇa which last, in fact, could be defined as valuable in proportion to its having that access (Socrates and ignorance, for instance).

I am far too inexpert in logic to comment on whether the proposition "AB implies A" is or is not properly speaking a deductive proposition. I accept what the logicians tell me on this point. However this occurs to me: Although it may tell one nothing new (being a truism), still it may exhibit a structure. Good. But any structure it is as a proposition, capable of exhibiting directly or indirectly, is necessarily dependent on the self-identity of A; for without that it just doesn't convey. But the essence of self-identity is the ambiguity. But the essence of self-identity is the ambiguity of two-in-one: the self which is the same as its own self is no other than itself. (Incidentally, while cogito ergo sum is regardable rightly, I take it, as a description, how can the proposition "AB implies A" be taken in any sense as a description? Is it not a statement proper to one of Eddington's Super Mathematicians who never know what they are talking about? As such, it can scarcely be said to describe even nothing (though maybe that is precisely what it does), and is a description that does not describe describable as a description of nothing? I think perhaps it is. Perhaps this is what we want.

Self-identity: Kierkegaard, you may remember, says this:—

To abstract from existence is to remove the difficulty. To remain in existence is to understand one thing in one moment and another thing in another moment, is not to understand oneself. But to understand the greatest oppositions together, and to understand oneself existing in them, is very difficult. (C.U.O., p. 316)

Kierkegaard again—

The self is freedom. But freedom is the dialectical element in the terms of possibility and necessity. (Sickness Unto Death, p. 162)

and

Self is the conscious synthesis of infinitude and finitude which relates itself to itself, whose task is to become itself.... But to become oneself is to become concrete. But to become concrete means neither to become finite nor infinite. For that which is to become concrete is a synthesis. Accordingly development consists in moving away from oneself infinitely by the process of infinitizing oneself, and the returning to oneself finitely by the process of finitizing. If on the contrary, the self does not become itself, it is in despair, whether it knows it or not. However, a self, every moment it exists, is in process of becoming; for the self kata dynamin (potentially) does not actually exists; it is only that which is to become. In so far as the self does not become itself, it is not its own self; but not to become oneself is despair. (p. 162)

Also:—

Personality is a synthesis of possibility and necessity. The condition of survival is therefore analogous to breathing (respiration), which is an in- and an ex-spiration. The self of the determinist cannot breathe; for it is impossible to breathe necessity also, which taken pure and simple suffocated the human self. (p. 73)

So much for K. on Self. One must, of course, in this questioning (or doubting) of self-identity in being be constantly aware of the risk, greatest at this point, of mauvaise foi creeping surreptitiously in.

Si la mauvaise foi est possible, c'est qu'elle est la menace immediate et permanente de tout projet de l'être humain, e'est que la conscience recèle en son être un risque permanent de mauvaise foi. Et l'origine de ce risque, c'est que la conscience, a la fois et dans son être est ce qu'elle n'est pas[a] et n'est pas ce qu'elle est.[b] (L'Etre et le Néant, p. 111)[8]

This, however, need not stultify our efforts, and we need only keep on our guard.

If we return to the positive proposition "AB implies A", we can equally well assert the negative contrary "AB does not imply A". That the first is "true", and the second "false" cannot be established by reference to what the statement describes , since it describes nothing: if called false because "self-contradictory" that depends on the assumed non-ambiguity of the self-identity assumed of A (by the logical constant) which logic cannot question (assumption = upādāna, and upādānapaccayā bhavo). For every positive proposition a corresponding negative can be asserted, and decision in favour of one against the other can only be made by appeal to what is outside logic or by appeal to the assumed unquestionability of the logical constants assumed. Frequently, it would seem that if a logical statement is to be accepted unsupported for incorporation into the building of a structure, on its own merits alone, it must be brought in with its shadow, its contrary, whose exclusion cannot be justified. But Existentialism puts being into question, and the capula is, is being on the verbal level.

My point here is simply that when a built-up stands, as a structure dialectically suported unilaterally against its contrary annihilating structures, if it rests at any level on a logical statement alone for the closing of the dialectic, such as "AB implies B", then it rests upon an ambiguity. If that ambiguity is overlooked, trouble may arise. If recognized, it can be handled. That logic, within its limits and with awareness of its limitations, is a not only useful but necessary instrument for straightening one's thoughts and building a structure, I would never deny. The constants of logic are certain percisely because they are unilaterally closed dialectics that are what form this valuable instrument, but a dialectic in being (existence) can only be (unilaterally) closed (resolved) by belief (saddhā) in one side or by ignorance (avijjā) of one side. This is outside logic. You say (in your letter of 28 Dec.) (rightly) "What we assume (to be true) is, when we translate it from logical to existential language unquestionable". Agreed; for assuming we refrain from questioning (we close a dialectic unilaterally by the belief of ignorance, voluntarily or not, aware or not). But it is the essence of Existentialism to put Being into question and so how can I possibly make an exeption of the logical copula is or the question of self-identity? Whether "we cannot assume a proposition and doubt it at the same time" is doubtless correct on any one level; but what about on different levels? What about non-commutation?

I think that Science, within its own limits, is a perfectly valid technique, producing a certain type of experiential results from causes in the probable world of things, precisely on account (a) of the scientists' own blinkers which are their discipline, (b) owning to the nature of human existence-in-the-world allowing that interpretation to be placed on it. If science and its professed aims to bring about events in the world of things are considered valuable, then scientific technique would seem unquestionably the best available (for those who have no magical powers) to produce the scientific results desired. But Science's inherent incompleteness (its scientific strength) humiliates ambitious Scientists, and so they make distant claims. Hence the "futile and misleading inferential arguments of logicians and scientists". Personally I am not at all interested in "causes" beyond noting that the "caused" world of actions (kammapatha), persons (puggala) and things (bhūta) is an appearance—that is, a mode in which phenomena can be apprehended. But Hume has said pretty well all that need be said about that, hasn't he? That is ayoniso manasikāra in one of its forms. Also I am not at all interested in "Ultimate entities" whether "ambiguities" or not, and I do not regard the Mahāvhūta, for instance, or anything else, as "ultimate entities", as the "foundation-stones on which the universe is built", or any such curiosity. No phenomenon, surely, is any more "ultimate" than any other qua phenomenon, though some arrangements, if made object of faith, mislead. I do not remember ever saying that I regarded giddiness as an (or the) "absolute term" and certainly did not intend to convey that. Is angst an "ultimate entity"? I do not remember to have discussed giddiness in relation to motion, and the connexion remains unexplained as far as I am concerned, though that does not disturb me. I do not regard angst, or taṇhā even, as "absolute ultimate terms" because I do not much like the phrase at all, much less giddiness. No doubt a system could be built on it, but I am not at all fond of systems, and I have always thought Freud's weakest point was his system and its unilateralistic "absolute ultimate" sex. A point arises here perhaps. It is impossible to exist without assuming-and-consuming (upādānapaccayā bhavo), so the proposal to "exist on the right lines" is not to be taken in the sense of the opening, or the closing, of all dialectics ( resolving of all ambiguities). As I see it, because I exist, certain dialectics are closed and I cannot open them like that in this life. But certain dialectics it remains open to me to close or open. The Dhamma, it seems to me, recognizing this, recomends opening bhava to question (one should be a [...[9]] not only of the Tathāgata but of existence; for the first leads to the second), and the deliberate unilateral pattern of closing of certain dialectics is indicated by the Eightfold Path. Do you agree? This is done by Faith (which is why it is said somewhere that one undertakes sīla by means of the saddhindiya primarily). The chosen aim of that choice is the ending of taṇhā, and any building of a structure must have this aim in view. This aim and this discipline convert existence to point to nirodha.

I think your rendering of ṭhitassa aññathattaṃ by "invariant of a transformation" so good that it can scarcely be improved on, though it is not grammatically parallel to the Pali. The grammatical structure of the Pali is "transformation of an invariant". Both contain a dialectic (ambiguity). It is this: either the invariant is itself undergoing transformation, is being transformed, or it is the untransformed invariant in the transformation, against which the transformation emerges, and vice versa. This brings me to the four pañhā: I at present favour the following renderings (or expressions): pañho = dialectic; ekaṃsavyākaraṇīya = (dialectic) that can (should) be unilaterally closed, ambiguity that can be resolved with benefit (given one's aim): e.g. puñña, not apuñña, the eight sammattāni of the Path, not the eight micchāttāni, etc.; vibhajjavyākaraṇīya = (dialectic) that should be displayed on both sides (but not necessarily closed), ambiguity that should be brought to light (but not necessarily resolved). This is the didactic communication of the dialectic (ambiguity); paṭipucchavyākaraṇīya = the same as the last, but is the existential communication of the dialectic (ambiguity) by the other is prompted to disclose it to himself for himself. (If communicated directly this communication destroys both and is no communication—see K. in C.U.P.). Ṭhapanīya[10] is simply any projet de mauvaise foi, which must be left alone. How does this strike you?

About the glass shelves (which I do not take to be presented as an argument by analogy) I think this excellent: I ask myself: what is in common between (a) the glass shelves, and (b) the conscience (de) soi des glass shelves? The answer I give myself is ?nothing—they have a what in common, and that is nothing (rien). Right?

To return to the tone of this letter, what I am anxious to avoid is any note of depreciation of structure, which I claim to regard as every bit as important as you do. I merely put forward my views expressed above for that purpose and in order to explore the dialectic of logic, and its limits. What interests me in ambiguity, specially (as I suppose you in structure, specially) is the exploration and exploration of it as a means to exposing the futility of existence (the pleasantest of tastes, really) in order to dry up need (taṇhā) for bhava and vibhava. If it suits you rersonally to emphasize the structural mode, it suits me, perhaps, also to emphasize the ambiguity of self-identity. But I think we are talking about the same thing; for isn't ambiguity the mechanism (or mortar) of construction, of which phenomena are the bricks? And your "superposition" is, I fancy, a name for what my "ambiguity" refers to. If not, how not?...

__________

[1] interpretation: Word illegible.

[2] percipiens non est: 'The perceiver is not.'

[3] Non-esse est percipere: 'Not to be is to perceive.'

[4] cogito ergo percipimur: Logically incorect. Possibly cogito ergo percipiur ('I think, therefore I am perceived') is meant. (as the text stands, it means 'I think, therefore we are perceived'.)

[5] percipiens quis perceptum est non esse: This is bad Latin. Perhaps the intended meaning is 'the perceiver, who is perceived not to be", but grammar is ambiguous and incorrect.

[a] conscience d'autrui[6]

[b] maconscience[7]

[6] conscience d'autrui: 'consciousness of others.'

[7] ma conscience: 'my consciousness'

[8] Si la mauvaise...: 'If bad faith is possible, it is because it is an immediate, permanent threat to every project of the human being; it is because consciousness conceals in its being a permanent risk of bad faith. The origin of this risk is the fact that the nature of consciousness simultaneously is to be what it is not and not to be what it is.' (being and Nothingness, Methuen, p. 70).

[9] ...: Illegible.

[10] Ṭhapanīya: 'That (which) should be put aside.'
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[EL. 142] 5.i.1959

2008-11-11T09:49:00.004Z

Many thanks for your letter of New Year's Day and calendar with Poyas etc., which crossed with mine of New Year's Day asking for Poyas etc. From the tone of your letter I think you may suspect me of suspecting that you hold that life is a muddle, in a wooly or vague sort of way. This is not at all the case; you have often before now written and spoken to me of quite definite ambiguities that you meet with in experience. These quite definite ambiguities I also meet with in my experience. But when I said, in a previous letter, that I have less taste for them than you as ultimate entities, I was expressing a difference in attitude between us towards these quite definite ambiguities. I gather from your various letters that you attach a certain importance or significance to certain particular ambiguous experiences (giddiness, for example, as well as the others you mention) that I do not attach to them. This does not necessarily mean that I think you are mistaken, but rather that I prefer a different approach. It may be that we are boring the same tunnel from opposite ends.

Let me expand. Your approach, as it seems to me (you will no doubt correct me if I am wrong), might be expressed rather like this. "There are phenomena, and only phenomena; and any attempt to get beyond them is both futile and misleading, as the inferential arguments of logicians and scientists show only too clearly. Thus, I must investigate phenomena directly; and in so doing (since to be is to be phenomenal—i.e. to appear or to be capable of appearing) I shall be investigating being. Now, the most striking, and perhaps essential, characteristic of phenomena is ambiguity. But certain phenomena are more plainly ambiguous than others. These particular phenomena, then, are more important for the purpose of my investigation (since they are easier to investigate) than the remainder." My approach, on the other hand, might be expressed like this. "There are phenomena, and only phenomena; and any attempt to get beyond them is both futile and misleading, as the inferential arguments of logicians and scientists show only too clearly. Is there a reason for this? If there is, then it must be a structural reason and not a causal reason; for the notion of cause is inseparable from inductive inference, and therefore both futile and misleading. But if there is a structural reason, that structure must be, that is to say, it must be phenomenal; for otherwise it would be beyond phenomena and would be both futile and misleading. So I must seek a structure of phenomena that is itself phenomenal, i.e. that is its own structure. And this will lead to an infinite hierarchy."

Now, it is clear enough that my approach cannot succeed without continual reference to phenomena directly (and my interest in the phenomena of a star or small source of light shows that I do refer to phenomena directly; and since it seemed to show structure more plainly than other phenomena it was of particular interest—and I also have other pet phenomena). And you might be prepared to admit (if my exposé of your approach is correct) that at least some structural considerations are necessary; for otherwise the ambiguous nature of any given phenomenon is purely fortuitous, and the next phenomenon you turn your attention to might quite well not be ambiguous in the slightest degree. So far, so good.

But it is evident that however clearly we may formulate our method of approach, in practice we may not always adhere to it. It may be, then, that you will suspect that my conclusions are arrived at, sometimes, by (concealed) inferential arguments, at least in part. And I cannot deny it. But what I do say is this: that not only are inferential arguments not necessary in my method of approach, but they are positively harmful; and to the extent that I have inadvertently made use of them my conclusions are mistaken. (Sartre is very good on the dangers of rationalizing one's images when thinking.) And it also seems to me that there is a certain danger inherent in the approach that I have taken the liberty of fathering on you. It is this. There is a certain tendency, so it seems, when one thinks a particular experience is more important (even if merely because more convenient) than others, of assuming that it is therefore more significant than others; and this leads to the attempt to account for other, less significant, phenomena in terms of that particular, more significant, phenomenon. One obvious example of this is Freud. Having seen the outstanding importance of sex (important because of the attention paid to it) he concludes that it is more significant than other things, and proceeds to base his entire system of psychoanalysis on sex. And this leads, as Sartre notes, to interpretations that are "massive, pretentious, and absurd". But Dr. Klar's colours show that interpretation in terms of sex is, though no doubt possible, by no means essential. Dr. Klar, in his more megalomaniacal moments, may well think that colours are far more significant than sex or anything else and dream of a psychology where colour is the fundamental reality and all else secondary. It would be ridiculous to suggest that you are following Freud—he is an extreme case of this tendency chosen simply because of its convenience. But I have noticed, occasionally, a tendency in your letters to account for a given phenomenon in terms of certain special phenomenology and to regard this as final—the most obvious instance being your apparent unwillingness to understand the notion of swaying ("what the Ven. M does") except in terms of giddiness, and your description of standing upright as "controlled giddiness". You may be right, but it does not seem to me that this procedure is useful—having described standing in terms of giddiness (or swaying or anything else) I am still no wiser: standing is no less familiar to me than giddiness or swaying, and not more in need of explanation. [a] I get the impression that, for you, giddiness is a kind of absolute or ultimate term (like Eliot's candle), and that when you have reduced a given experience to terms of giddiness (or of a certain limited number of other similarly privileged ambiguities) you are satisfied, or at least consider that you can go no further. Why? Perhaps because you think that by going beyond such particular phenomena you would be going beyond all phenomena and into the realms of inference; but, as I think, you can go beyond particular phenomena to the phenomenon of the structure, and beyond this to the phenomenon of its structure, and so on, as far as you please, and this is ultimate because the phenomenon of structure is always the same however far you go.

Now you may say, with justice, that this interpretation of your supposed attitude is mere speculation, and quite mistaken to boot. Very likely; but all I am trying to do is to convey the impression that I get from your letters, and to show that my earlier remark about dislike of ambiguities as ultimate entities does not come from any supposition of mine that your view of existence is that it is vague-and-wooly—though it may well come from a mistaken supposition about what is, in fact, your view.

As you point out, the question of viññāṇa "becoming" nāmarūpa (or rather nāma) depends on what is meant by "becoming". The point is that viññāṇa does not "become" nāma in any sense at all, and the question of a self-identity does not arise (though if you like, viññāṇa is the presence of nāma and nāma is the presence of rūpa, and "presence" is the self-identity common to both). The situation of two (or more) viññāṇas, one of which is the object of (or "present to") the other, while itself is the subject (or "presence") of its object (which will include yet another viññāṇa) is quite fundamental and must be grasped directly if it is grasped at all. There is no parallel in our "normal" experience and no exact analogy is possible. And further, every attempt at description must deal first with viññāṇa as it is in itself and second with the object of the superior viññāṇa, whence we inevitably get the notion of "becoming", i.e. as a kind of succession in time parallel to the succession in time of the description. But since it is all, in fact, given at once, there is no "becoming" at all—all that is seen upon direct inspection is a kind of transparency with separate layers, rather like looking down into a showcase with a glass top and a number of glass shelves. Each of these shelves represents one additional layer of presence. rūpa is present, and the presence of rūpa is nāma; nāma is present, and the presence of nāma (or the double presence of rūpa) is viññāṇa. But the presence of nāma is also present (otherwise there would be no presence of nāma), and this means another viññāṇa, for which that nāma (being doubly present) "becomes" rūpa (rūpa can be defined as 'double presence'), and the presence of that nāma (being singly present)—i.e. the first viññāṇa—"becomes" nāma. But it is clearly ridiculous to say that one glass shelf "becomes" the one next layer down simply because it is looked at through an additional glass shelf at the top—yet how else can it be described? The ambiguity is in the description, not in the fact. This difficulty is more obviously seen with reflexive consciousness. (Can one be certain that reflexion sees the 'same' self as the self that is the subject of the contemporary immediate experience?" Answer—yes, because there can only be probability on the basis of a given [present] certainty; and this is that certainty, simply because there is nothing more fundamental to serve as a certain basis for it were it probability.)

I cannot agree that in oscillation the point (or rather area) that is not "seen" with the eye is "remembered" with the mind. Both are seen, or present to eye-consciousness, but the one that is past is present within the later one (it turns out that to be within the present one—as the centre of what is central—is to be over-determined and therefore past—either it is seen as the central detail of the present, or it is seen as being the same size as the present, but past; this may be incomprehensible to you, but that is how I find it); and furthermore, since the whole of the past is present in this way, the question of remembering or forgetting does not arise. But I am speaking of the most fundamental level—pure immediacy—and your description, so I take it, is on a certain reflexive level, where, of course, remembering and forgetting (and horizons) have their natural habitation. But unless the whole of the past is somehow basically given it cannot be "there" (as it were) "to be either forgotten or remembered", it cannot be available.

In my last letter I spoke enthusiastically about the three Laws of Thought—Either/Or (exclusively), Either/Or (alternatively—i.e. not excluding Both); and Either/Or (disjunctively—i.e. not Both, not excluding Neither)—together with a graphical description of the structure. Though the graphical description was, I fear, not at all clear, and would need thorough overhauling, the enthusiasm remains. The structure may be interpreted at different levels (starting from the most fundamental) as follows: —

1. A exists: A is the invariant of a transformation from being to not-being.

In other words, while A exists it is, as A, unchanged; but its existence is a certain running-down process.

2. A is present until supplanted by not-A.

This is less fundamental than the first, since it involves other things than A. But 1 is not found without 2.

3. A's existence is a transition from assertion of A to denial of A.

This is much more reflexive, since we are now taking a certain view of A and asserting or denying its existence.

4. A must be given as idea or essence in order that it should be either asserted or denied.

Both theist and atheist believe in God, either positively or negatively. This is the Existential "Essence precedes Existence".

5. If assertion of A is given (or true), the denial of A is not given (or false).

Here we have the subtle transformation of the logicians, who have so worded it that all question of the nature of A's existence is left out. Note that here "If assertion of A is given" means "If the proposition 'there are A's' is true"; in other words, A is to be taken as a class, not a thing. But Russell is eventually driven to asserting that a table (for example) is a class—the class of all its appearances. (Of course he maintains that the table is logically inferred from its appearances.) This, for a logician, is rather clever, and gets round many difficulties—thus "this table exists", which is anathema to the logicians, becomes "there are appearances of 'this table'", which is quite acceptable. This can be expanded to "the property of being an appearance of 'this table' belongs to something". But whether this could be extended to the expansion of "I am" into "the property of being an appearance of myself belongs to something" I really don't know—I wish I had a logician to try it on.

...In my last letter but one I discriminated unfairly against Kummer's actual surface, saying that it was only the generator that is relevant. This is wrong. The six points in each conic are to the fifteen lines they define (by joining them) as the six conics through each point are to the fifteen surfaces they define: or, the sixteen points are to the hundred and twenty lines they define as the sixteen conics are to the hundred and twenty surfaces they define. No wonder the surface looks puddingy!

I have just thought of an illustration of the remark I made earlier about the past being a detail of the present. Consider this set of squares: —This can be seen in either of two mutually exclusive ways: (i) as a set of progressively smaller squares each enclosed within a larger one, the whole being a flat figure; or (ii) as a receding 'corridor' of equal sized squares one behind the other, the whole being a solid figure. The relation of each smaller square to the larger one enclosing it is thus either 'smaller, but equally here' or 'equal, but further away'. If you read present for here and past for further away you will perhaps get some idea of what I am trying to say.[b] This illustration, of course, does not prove anything; nor is it the basis of an 'argument by analogy', since I had already worked out the present-past structure before thinking of this illustration.[c] The illustration also serves (not accidentally) to represent Whitehead's definition of a point by enclosure-volumes (or areas), or (or rather and) his definition of a moment by enclosure-durations. (I say and rather than or because the two are inseparable—the figure represents the structure of here-now.[d] [The exact representation is, of course, Kummer; but that cannot be drawn because the successive enclosures, starting with the smallest, are points (cones), planes (conics), four-dimensional 'volumes' (or 'conics'), eight-dimensional 'volumes' (or 'conics'), and so on.]) Unfortunately, what is apparently the easiest sort of object to 'see' the structure in, namely a visual object, is really, in some ways, the most difficult because of the superposition of many different structures (a previous letter refers).

__________

[a] If you prefer to say that standing is a function (in the mathematical sense) of giddiness rather than of swaying I shall not necessarily disagree. But the point is not what it is a function of (giddiness or swaying), but what is the nature of this function.

[b] "Smaller but equally present" is the reflexive view, whereas "Equal but past" is the immediate view. These two views are always superposed.

[c] Note, however, that an ambiguous illustration is needed to convey the structure of the ambiguous situation expressed in the words "the past is present". The ambiguity is due to superposition (cf. glass showcase).

[d] Each smaller area is more particularly here and more particularly now than the one that encloses it.
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[EL. 141] 1.i.1959

2008-11-11T09:13:00.009Z

I said in my last letter that the formal logical principles derive from the structure of being itself. This is true, but needs a qualification. The formal logical principles, as formulated by the mathematical logicians (e.g. Stebbing), are the result of describing the structure of being (i.e. Kummer) from no point of view. That is to say, existing things are all taken at once and seen to form an "irreducible multiple relation" (Stebbing's phrase), and this "irreducible multiple relation" is the structure defined by the formal logical principles. But since no point of view is allowed to appear (the mathematical logicians being strictly scientific and objective), this structure or system is purely static. (The Principle of Deduction is then added to the Formal Principles, and this introduces some movement but quite arbitrary, of the wrong kind, and far too late.)

This, then, is half the picture. The other half consists in having a point of view, but not allowing an "irreducible multiple relation" to appear. This second half, I suspect, is what the metaphysical/idealist logicians are talking about (and they are strictly subjective). Kummer, however, has both aspects: -- (i) the sixteen operators can be seen to constitute an "irreducible multiple relation", and (ii) this system is "invariant under infinite bi-rational transformations" (according to the E.B. article).

I raise this point; first because it seems to suggest that official Western thinking is perhaps not confined to inductive and deductive logic, and that we have been neglecting the idealist philosophers (who, though admittedly just as one-sided as the mathematical logicians, are at least the other side) in our recent correspondence; and secondly because a passage in Stebbing throws light upon a certain incident about two years ago. The passage is from her preface, and states that the metaphysical logicians (Bradley and Bosanquet) were dissatisfied with traditional Logic in that it was 'formal' (i.e. static -- see above) and severed from 'reality', that they were concerned with the relation between the knowing mind and what it knows, and that her (Stebbing's) book has nothing in common with such views. She adds that none of this school of Idealist Logicians has ever made clear exactly what is meant by the principle of identity-in-difference upon which their logic is based. (My underlining.) Surely the principle of identity-in-difference is nothing but the principle of invariance-under-transformation, is it not? And this latter is the dynamic aspect of Kummer. Naturally Stebbing has never been able to understand this -- she is strictly objective, and this is subjectivity, which she will have no part of. Now the incident in question was this. The last time I met the Ven. Soma Thera was at the Hermitage (as you will remember) and on that occasion we all had a discussion in the dānasāla about (roughly) 'being and logic' in which sharp differences of view became apparent. I made a remark to the effect that if change is to be perceived it must be perceived by a percipient (or against a background) who, during the change, does not himself change (i.e. invariance-under-transformation). Immediately, the Ven. One, in a tone of great finality, said "Oh, that's just Bradley!", after which there was nothing more to be said. Though I once read Bradley's Appearance and Reality I can remember nothing about it, and have (at least until reading this passage of Stebbing's) no idea what views Bradley held. Now, however, the situation is clear -- (i) the Ven. One would probably agree with practically everything Stebbing says, and (ii) I am just an idealist. It is noteworthy that Stebbing deliberately avoids discussion of quantum phenomena (she says as much, though without giving a reason), and that Dirac says that quantum theory reveals that the 'things' in the world are the invariants of transformations. Stebbing's view -- that of the mathematical logicians -- is that there is no point of view and that all things are on an equal footing; both what is present and what is absent alike exist -- sabbaṁ atthīti --; and 'to exist' becomes synonymous with 'to be real', which is why this view is sometimes called Realism. Bradley's view -- that of the metaphysical logicians -- is, presumably, that there is (what is at) the point of view and nothing else; what is present (i.e. perceived at, or by, the point of view) exists (esse est percipi[1]), what is absent does not, and when a thing ceases to be present it ceases to exist -- sabbaṁ natthīti; and here, since it is the subject -- the point of view -- that confers existence, the object is reduced to a mere 'idea' -- whence Idealism. This, no doubt, is obvious enough. But it now occurs to me that to affirm sabbaṁ atthīti -- the absolutely real objective existence of things independent of any observer -- is precisely to deny the existence of a subject or self, natthi attāti; and conversely, to deny objective existence to things, sabbaṁ natthīti, is, precisely, to affirm the existence of the subject or self, atthi attāti. There is, however, another point: an oriented world (which is the meaning of loka in the Suttas) is the correlative of a point of view (there is a Saṁyutta Sutta[2] that specifically identifies the world with the eye, ear, nose, and so on), and consequently to deny self is to deny the world, and to assert self is to assert the world (so loko so attā). Thus we have the following scheme: --

Sassatavāda
Asserts a point of view;
Asserts self -- atthi attāti;
Asserts the world;
Denies the objective existence of things -- sabbaṁ natthīti
Is an Idealist (Bradley, Berkeley)

Ucchedavāda
Denies a point of view;
Denies self -- natthi attāti;
Denies the world;
Asserts the objective existence of things -- sabbaṁ atthīti
Is a Realist (Stebbing, Russell)

If this analysis is correct it would explain why a scientist, though apparently asserting the permanence of the Universe, is, in fact, an ucchedavādin -- the Universe he asserts is without a point of view, and is the negation of the world (= loka). I have never been quite happy with your statement that the scientist is a concealed sassatavādin, though at the same time I have always had to admit (even if not to you) that there is something in what you say. It seems to me that this resolves the paradox: the scientist is, actually, ucchedavādin, since he denies his own existence, but he thereby asserts the absolutely objective existence of things, and since this is equivalent to asserting the absolute objective existence of his own non-existence (which he is -- the scientist is non-existent) he gives the impression of asserting his own permanence -- his ucchedavāda is sassata. (The natural assumption that sabbaṁ atthīti = atthi attāti forgets that self, the subject, is the negative of the object, and that to assert the subject as a positive entity is to deny positive existence to the object. To assert the subject is to assert orientation, and consequently to deny there is any content to be oriented; and conversely, to assert the object is to assert the content, and consequently to deny that it has any orientation. But existence is a relation between orientation and content; and neither can be unilaterally asserted. The Idealist says there is choice but no thing to choose, and the Realist says there are things but no choice of them.)

In L'Être et le Néant Sartre claims that he goes between Idealism and Realism, but it is clear that he is well on the side of Realism. His statement that I quoted to you the other day, to the effect that we always perceive more and other than we see, reveals his fundamentally Realist outlook; and it may be compared with the following from Stebbing: 'What is normally presented to us is always less than what we correctly say we see.' Allowing for a difference in usage, these statements are identical. It is true that Stebbing is making an excursion into "psychology" (as she calls it), but the fact that both she and Sartre are in full agreement on such a point is very significant. You said the other day that Sartre suffered from concealed deduction, but it seems to me that if this is so it is only because he allows himself to use a measure of induction.

I now think that the principle of identity has been totally misconceived by the Realists. In her discussion of it Stebbing is rather at a loss to know what to make of it, suggesting rather vaguely that it means "given p". It now seems to me that the principle of identity, normally expressed as "A is A", or "p implies p", means nothing else than "either p or not-p, excluding both", or in other words "p is defined by its negative". But this is equivalent to saying that you must have a point of view, which is strenuously denied by the Realists. In my last letter I said that the three Laws of Thought -- the Principles of Identity, Excluded Middle, and Contradiction -- define the negative; and I gave as illustration the following figure: -- p.___.not-p. This needs correction and elaboration. We can simply have the Principle of Identity "either p or not-p, excluding both": --

Or we can start with the Principle of Excluded Middle, which is formulated thus: "either p or not-p, not excluding both". This can be represented so: --

(either p or not-p)(both p and not-p)

and we then also have the Principle of Contradiction, which excludes "both p and not-p" (without excluding neither). So we are again left with this: --

which as you will recognize is the basic triangle in the tetrahedron, and therefore in Kummer. The second two Principles, as you will observe, define the first, which is the fundamental disjunction or negative -- Kierkegaard's Either/Or -- p/not-p. (Further discussion later in this letter.)

Just as the Idealists were ousted by the Realists, so, in their turn, the Realists have apparently been ousted by what we might describe as the Philosophers of English (or in the case of Ducasse, American) Usage. And in reaction to all this there is Colin Wilson who, even as a pimple, has achieved eminence. The surrounding countryside must be very flat indeed.

Before I change the subject or come to a stop, it occurs to me that the distinction between a Realist and an Idealist can be summed up thus: an Idealist has a point but no view ('a point of view without a view'), and a Realist has a view but no point ('a view without a point of view'). Viññāṇa, however, requires a point and a view.

This, for the moment, and also because I don't know more about Bradley, seems to exhaust what I have to say about Logic. "And high time too!" no doubt you are thinking. It is satisfactory, in a way, to be able to round it off and see that it is not of further interest, but I had long ago come to that conclusion, and I do not feel at all the sense of stimulation that I had upon reading Dirac and discovering (to my astonishment) that the Quantum Theory held no terrors for me (and also to a lesser extent with Sartre; but this was more gradual, since I was learning from him and being disillusioned about him at the same time). This rather final statement will not, of course, prevent me from finding something else to say about Logic in a few days’ time and writing it to you at great length. (Having been given some stamps of peculiarly repellent design I feel an urge to use them up as fast as possible.)

...I wonder if Bradley is available anywhere. Also McTaggart's Nature of Existence might be of interest, in view of Prof. Broad's statement that McTaggart held that he could demonstrate, from purely philosophical considerations, that conscious existence is beginningless and endless and requires a body. The fact that Stebbing refers to McTaggart only once, and then rather unfavourably, is in his favour. But I don't know whether he was an Idealist or not.

To return (I'm afraid) to discussion of the Laws of Thought. A further investigation of the relation between the three Laws (which may be stated clearly thus: -- (i) [EXCLUSION or IDENTITY] p/not-p, either p or not-p exclusively, i.e. excluding the possibility of both p and not-p [this Law, the Principle of Identity, I have restated -- Stebbing gives it as: "if p, then p"; the other two Laws are as Stebbing gives them]; (ii) [ALTERNATION or EXCLUDED MIDDLE] p v not-p, either p or not-p, non-exclusively, or not excluding the possibility of both, and (iii) [DISJUNCTION or CONTRADICTION], not both p and not-p, non-exclusively, or not excluding the possibility of neither) clearly shows that the fundamental difference between p and not-p can be expressed as the difference between both and neither. That is, p is related to not-p as both is related to neither. But both what? And neither what? Answer: -- both (both and neither); neither (both nor neither). You will see at once that this can be extended infinitely without ever requiring us to specify either both or neither except in terms of themselves. (BOTH = both and neither; NEITHER = neither and both.) This shows that difference or the negative is absolute. The exclusion either/or is simply (at each level) the mediation (shades of Hegel!) between both and neither: either/or is the invariant of the transformation consisting of the interchange of both and neither; and the reason for this is absurdly simple: -- the negative of the exclusive "either p or not-p" is "either not-p or p", which (to be Idealist for the moment) is an admirable example of identity-in-difference. But what, you might ask, is p? The answer is that p is a relation. What relation? The relation between both and neither. And what is not-p? It is the relation that is not p -- i.e. the relation between neither and both. But surely p is "both" and not-p is "neither"? Correct, except that there is a difference in order of generality to be taken into account. (The Logicians are correct in defining p as a proposition, except that it is not a proposition -- i.e. a relation but the proposition -- i.e. the relation of relation.) What, then, is a "thing"? Answer: -- a thing is "either-p-or-not-p", which must be carefully distinguished from "either p, or not-p" -- in other words, a thing is (= exists as) an exclusion between the positive and the negative, a thing is either/or (naturally we are speaking of a thing in so far as it is a thing, not in so far as it is this or that). A conjunction between a positive and a negative, which are themselves relations, is simply a relation between relations, or another, more general relation. If, now, I represent both and neither by vectors, so: --= BOTH. I can also represent the negative of this by vectors, so: --= NEITHER. I can now conjoin these, by adding NEITHER to BOTH, and changing the direction of NEITHER's arrows: --giving me BOTH and NEITHER (which =

B O T H

I can also conjoin them in the other order, by adding BOTH to NEITHER (which =

N E I T H E R

(but I must reverse BOTH's arrows) so: --If I conjoin these two (and changing N E I T H E R's arrows[a]) I get the following:(giving me B O T H). But if, instead, I exclude them (by not changing arrows) I get:and from my earlier post card you will remember that this is equivalent to [b], or, to complete the picture, to which is the invariant of the transformation or exclusion. It is simply

E I T H E R / O R.

In this way you will see (or will you?) that the three Laws of Thought in fact describe, when analysis of them is pushed far enough, the essential ambiguity of Kummer, and are thus very fundamental indeed and very unique. The Mathematical Logicians, however, have no suspicion that their famous Laws are actually a formulation of the Idealist identity-in-difference that they so much affect to fail to understand. (This analysis has been carried out during the course of writing this letter, and I am really quite satisfied with the result, which is rather unexpected.)

Correction to the above. Upon referring again to Stebbing I see that she says that the traditional interpretation of the Laws of Identity is metaphysical, that it expresses a theory (sic) with regard to the nature of persistent individuality; it is 'the persistence of something through change' (apparently it has, traditionally, to do with substance-and-attribute [as you asked a few weeks ago], though not as I have analyzed it). But she adds that this could not properly be regard ed as a fundamental principle of logical thinking, and so need not be further discussed. No wonder Bradley complained that formal logic is 'severed from reality'! No wonder Stebbing is unable to tell us what 'p implies p' does mean!

But now quite enough and to spare.

P.S. Stebbing, quoting somebody, says that Idealist Logic ends in shipwreck. This sounds rather a recommendation. Perhaps I should find that dolce m'e il naufragio in questo mar.[3]

__________

[1] What is is perceived.

[2] Cf. S. XXXV,82 (iv,52)

[a] By changing the arrows an order of priority is given, and one diagonal qualifies the other yielding a relation.

[b] By failing to change to arrows, neither diagonal has priority (neither qualifies the other) and they are thus excluded.

[3] Sweet for me is shipwreck in that sea.

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[EL. 140a] 1.i.1959

2008-11-07T17:47:00.004Z

Notes made by Ven Ñāṇamoli.

When I speak of ambiguity, I do not mean "living (existing) as a reflexive muddle", or vaguely and woolily (in the feminine style), or by mauvaise foi. What I want to refer to is the ambiguity that is perfectly clear doubleness (duplicity), which has to be unilaterally resolved by an act of choice (or belief) in order that existence may be. For instance: ---

Which line is in front? (Muddle or vagueness here lies in forgetting the ambiguity; which is in front is quite ambiguous [objectively], and is, of course, pert of an infinite hierrachy of ambiguities, an ambiguity of which hierarchy being whether it is infinite or has an horizon.) Again, ...is this a point ensoi or a line pour moi? And so on. And the ambiguity of the "straight" stick seeming "crooked" in the water, which belief is normally withdrawn if [...several words illeg...] and granted to touch in the order that the stick should be straight. Then the ambiguity or words qua words: are they mere sounds or symbols for a meaning? And (wors of all) the ambiguous ambiguity of identity: is self-identity one or two? Then is the Derivative of the Calculus a different entity or the same? Etc. etc. All this is not mauvaise foi, which would be refusal to investigate one's suspicions about ambiguity and pretence that there was none (determinism, either scientific or of any kind), and at worst it isa sort of lunatic alternation between smug felf-forgetting complacency and patches of hysterical shriek and confusion: this is sammoha[1], isn't it? (I think more people live and die like this than not, don't they?)

As to viññāṇa "becoming" nāmarūpa, it all depends on what one means by "becoming" (and to "mean" is to be ambiguous, isn't it?), and I don't necessarily disagree with you here. (If I see where you keep your ambiguity in this.) It all depends, too, on what one defines as the self-identity of viññāṇa and nāmarūpa, whithout which "constent under transformation" nothing can either become or be, very well, can it? Isn't viññāṇa the "self-identity" of bhava?

I am at present inclined to define phassa "strictly" as ??? recul[2] (the recul). The recul from which there is always a new recul (in "memory") is then "seen" (with ambiguity and by identification) both (alternatives) as a line _____ and/or as and oscillation between points . . , and so on. Hence the triadic relation here. The ramification is infinite, but beyond a limit these "memories" lapse. Hence the horizon of appearance. If your oscillation theory is right, then, in that analysis, only one point is "seen" with the eye, the other being "remembered" with the mind. But the ambiguity enters, and the "seeing and remembering" becomes a "line seen". This is the complementary theory, without which everything would ultimately be fixable by description into a kind of descriptive determinism, and all descriptions would then be definitions, and so non-existent: the essence of a description is that it is, or can be, one of a set of complementary (and I think necessarily partly incompatible) descriptions that can be multiplied ad infinitum. Existence fuses these and appearance clamps down an horizon.

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[1] Bewilderment, confusion.

[2] Backward-movement ('recoil').
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[EL. 140] 28.xii.1958

2008-11-07T17:40:00.003Z

In your last letter you said that you did not see 'how it can be shown that objectified viññāṇa "becomes" nāma, other perhaps than by deductive logic, which must be rejected.' (C'est moi qui souligne.[1]) I do not wish, at the moment, to discuss the question of the objectivation of viññāṇa, except perhaps to say that I do not mean that viññāṇa changes into nāma, and that the world "becomes" is therefore misleading -- viññāṇa remains viññāṇa, but when seen by superior viññāṇa (which is always is: there is no question of succession in time, one viññāṇa after another) "it appears to that superior viññāṇa as nāma". (instead of the plurality of viññāṇa/consciousness, which seems to be unacceptable to you, we can say that viññāṇa/consciousness has a hierarchical structure, parallel to that of the world.) I am more interested at present in the question of deductive logic and the part it plays (if any) in the investigation of the structure of being.

The answer I gave to this objection of yours suggestion that I had used deductive logic to arrive at my conclusion, which was therefore invalid, was that I had in fact used deductive logic, but with premisses that were certain and not obtain by inductive logic (and therefore only probable), and that deductive logic was acceptable provided that the premisses are not inductive. Now this will pass provided that there is such a thing as deduction from certain premisses. Stebbing, however, says that the propositions of a deductive system are established as true only by means of inductive verification. This means that deduction (through not necessarily syllogistic in form) is always from at least one general premiss – i.e. involving 'all' or 'every'. And it also means that this general premises is concerned with matters of fact. For example -- All swans are white: therefore A is white. This is a matter of fact, because one swan might be black. And the discovery of Australia has shown this matter of fact to be false. But suppose we take the proposition (Stebbing's own example in another chapter), "All right angles are angles,"from which we get "A is a right angle: therefore A is an angle." Is this deduction? The major premiss appears to be general, but is it only verifiable by induction? Do we have to go from one right angle to another checking whether they are all angles? Will perhaps the discovery of a new island in the Pacific reveal right angles that are not angles? It turns out that "All right angles are angles" is an example of the Principle of Simplification (AB implies A), which is one of the fundamental Principles of Logic, "assumed to be true" and therefore not eligible as a general premiss in a logical deduction. And so "A is a right angle: therefore A is an angle" is not deduction.

Suppose, however, that we do not assume the Principles of Logic to be true, and regard them as matters of fact verifiable only by induction, and thus as the propositions of a deductive system. What happens? We find that we have to assume that the truth of the the Principles of Logic in order to use these very same principles as only probably true premisses for deduction. But what we assume (to be true) is, when we translate from logical to existential language, unquestionable: we cannot assume a proposition and doubt it at the same time. So we have the state of affairs that if the Principles of Logic are probable (not, of course, in the sense of "likely") they are certain: i.e. they are not matters of fact. (It is noteworthy that Stebbing is uncomfortable at this point: she says that these Principles 'may be the expression of the thinking of rational beings', but immediately denies that this would establish them as necessary. In other words, she regards thought as kind of accidental and arbitrary characteristic of some beings, just as red hair is an accidental and arbitrary characteristic of some men: MAN + RED HAIR = RED HAIRED MAN -- BEING + THINKING = THINKING [or RATIONAL] BEING. The structural or necessary character of cogito ergo sum [THINKING = BEING] is ignored.) Sartre points out that 'la logique formelle s'est définie comme l'étude des conditions "de l'accord de l'esprit avec lui-méme"'[2]

Here then, we have a deductive system with certain and not simply probable prepositions, that is, the deductive system with the Principles of Logic as its prepositions. But there is a snag. Amongst the Principles of Logic are included two that are of a different kind from the others; they are the Principles of Deduction -- if p implies q is true, then q is true – and the Principles of Substitution -- any assertion true of all A is true of each (or any) A. The effect of these is, precisely, to confine deduction to matters of fact -- only a general proposition on a mater of fact can be said to be true or false (wheras a structure is either necessary to be true or false (whereas a structure is either necessary or not necessary), and the word all can only be used of matters of fact (it is meaningless to say all right angles are angles). Apart from these two Principles the Principles of Logic are formal principles, and are enough for the construction of deductive systems, but not enough for drawing conclusions -- i.e. for actual deduction. From this I must conclude that deduction, in the accepted sense of the word, is not possible from premisses that are certain: all that one does with a system having certain premisses is to describe it (or some part of it).

But now another part arises. Can be there more than one "deductive system with certain premisses"? Firstly, we must correct that description -- since deduction is not possible in a "deductive system with certain premisses" we can hardly call it deductive: I shall call it a (or the) "formal logical system". So, can there be more than one formal logical system? But this has already been answered above -- cogito ergo sum. Since thinking necessitates being, is structurally identical with being (if we omit the two heterogeneous Principles of Deduction and Substitution), there can only be one formal logical system. If this is so, is Kummer the formal logical system? And the answer, I think, is yes. In working out Kummer from the simple proposition 'to each positive a negative', or 'a thing implies its negative', all the formal Logical Principles seem to come into being (starting with the three well-known 'Laws of Thought' -- (I) if p then p, (ii) either [at least] p or not-p, (iii) not both p and not-p – [p.___.not-p] -- which together define the negative). This suggests that the three traditioral Laws of Thought are, in fact, the oly fundamental Principles -- Stebbing disagrees, saying it is absurd.

So, in stating that 'viññāṇa, as seen by another (layer of) viññāṇa, is nāma' I am using formal logical principles, and I am not using deduction. If my statement about viññāṇa is wrong, then it is my description that is at fault (I may be guilty of allowing the unwarranted intrusion of deductive logic in rationalizing the images involved in conceiving the formal logical system), and not my deductive reasoning, which took no part in its genesis. (Note that the use of Kummer as an image to think with prevents excessive rationalization of images.)

This discussion now makes it clear to me that Logic must be discriminated as follows: -- (i) Formal Logical Principles, in spite of the Logicians, are founded on the very structure of being itself, and are thus necessary and absolute; (ii) Logical Deduction consisting of (i) plus the two Principles of Deduction and Substitution is concerned with matters of fact and the drawing of conclusion from them; Given the matters of fact, the validity of the argument is certain -- but the matters of fact are never given except probably, being based upon (iii) Logical Induction, about which we are, I think, agreed.

(In parenthesis I must remark that your original statement, "I can't see how it can be shown to do so [except perhaps by deductive logic, which must be rejected]" amounts to "I can't see how it can be demonstrated, except perhaps by demonstration, which must be rejected", to which the correct reply is not [ as you might think] "None so blind as he who will not see" but "Exactly; it can't be shown; you must see for yourself".)

Poor Mill! He does, as you say, get it in the neck from Stebbing. Do you remember Charles Marks's comment (quoted somewhere by Shaw), 'the eminence of John Stuart Mill is due to the flatness of the surrounding countryside"?

Further to my postcard. (i) The reason why we need a double tetrahedron (i.e. with a common apex) and not just a single one is because a single tetrahedron is not ambiguous, wheras a double one is, and ambiguity is essential. (ii) The ambiguity of Kummer may also be seen in the superposition of different operators, so: --

And similarly for the other possibilities. But the way illustraded in the postcard is more fundamental, and this is merely the consequence. (I can by no means agree with you that ambiguity distinguishes beings from things: things exists by being ambiguous -- 'the invariant of a transformation' is a pure ambiguity.)

I see, from a scrap of newsletter, that somebody has accused somebody else of 'fanning the cold way'. Does this cause it to burst into flame or make it still colder?

I am threatened, I hear, by a visit from Francis Story who, so my source informs me, is well versed in the Dhamma. Not so very long ago he is reported to have said that 'a stone, being impermant, feels pain'. Deductive Logic, I fear, and sadly misapplied. I am not much excited at the prospect.

Lots of elephants last night. (Lots? Well, several.) I shined a torch at them and (to judge by the noise and the mess on the ground) they fled.

The ambiguity of the present, as you describe it, comes, of course, of treating it like a point (which has a corresponding ambiguity). Whitehead, so Stebbing informs me, has succeeded in defining a moment of time in the same way as he has a point, i.e. by extensive abstraction, thus turning both points and moments from simple ambiguities into complex non- ambiguities. This is on the right lines (as far as a logician can be on the right lines). Defining, however, is not enough – we must determine the structure of the present, which is nothing more nor less than Kummer.

P.S. I feel that every time I mention Kummer you may be bringing to mind an image of the rather depressing pudding you once described to me in the E.B. This would be a mistake. You should think, instead, of the gay tangles of lines and conics I sent you some time ago. We are not concerned with Kummer's actual surface, but with the structure of its generator.

__________
[1] It is I who underline.

[2] 'Formal logic is defined as the study of the conditions "of the agreement of the mind with itself"'.
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[EL. 139] 23.xii.1958

2008-11-06T21:38:00.002Z

About ambiguity.

When I said yesterday that I dislike ambiguities as ultimate entities do not think I am denying that ambiguity is the essence of existence. I am not. What I mean is that I want to discover the structure of existence and therefore of ambiguity. Ambiguity can be defined as a violation of the principle of identity, A is A. now in order to arrive at the Kummer group of sixteen ambiguity is involved (specifically in the reduction of

, where each side of the first figure is involved in both diagonals, to resolve which, superposition of the two different thingsis needed). Kummer structure is therefore a possible (and probably the) structure of ambiguity, and this existence. But, you may say, in my conceiving the Kummer Structure I am existing, and therefore ambiguity is involved in my conception. Certainly. But the poit is this. I can resolve this second ambiguity by again resorting to Kummer on a different level, and so on indefinitely (thus building up hierarchy). Science cannot justify itself. Kummer can, and is thus absolute, as existence is. I am not content with ambiguity, but must ambiguously, understand ambiguity. If I rationalize ambiguity (deductively) I admit it in my reasoning, unlike a rationalist, who insists that his reasoning is rational. Is that reasonable?

P.S. I am not by any means saying that all ambiguities have this structure, but simply that there is a fundamental ambiguity in existence (constituting the illusion of permanence) and that this appears to be its structure.

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