The Catuskoti and the Limits of Language and Logic

 

Copyright 1991 by John R. Mabry

 

No one can accuse the Buddha for taking the mystery out of life. Buddhism lives to boggle, it seems, and it also seems to derive quite a bit of satisfaction from that. In the Catuskoti or Tetralemma, the Buddha keeps the mystery going by declining to answer several questions (which we even today would appreciate some elucidation on) or negating them all in spite of the apparent illogical contradiction such negating suggests.

 

When asked if an enlightened one exists after death the Buddha, in Horner's translation answers, "I am not of this view." He answers likewise to the question of whether the enlightened one does not survive after death, and he answers the same to the propositions that the enlightened one both does and doesn't survive, and neither does nor doesn't survive. The same four questions were posited in reference to whether the world is eternal, and whether the soul is the same as the body. Most of the debate concerning these questions arises about the vagueness of the Buddha's answer. Is it a "no" to all of the above questions, or is it just declining to assent?

 

The position I have decided is most correct lies somewhere in between. If I were the Buddha in the modern day and someone put the question to me concerning whether the elightened one existed after death, I would look pained, cock my head to the side and say "Well....not exactly." This is, I think, the Lord Buddha's true position. In Tich Nhat Hahn's de-mythologized biography of the Buddha, the Venerable Anuruddha "knew that none of these four responses was compatible with the true teaching.... At last, the Venerable said, '...none of these four responses can accurately express the truth concerning Monk Gautama.'"1

 

None of the answers were adequate assessments of the truth. In reference to the question of the finite/infinite world, Jayatilleke feels similarly, that "the world is both finite is some respect and infinite in another respect."2 Thus, none of the positions is entirely correct, not even position number three, which on the face of it--is the world both finite and infinite--seems to fit this position. But, in the Kaccayana Sutra, the Buddha explains that he

 

....who with right insight sees the uprising of the world as it really is, does not hold with the non-existence of the world. But he, who with right insight sees the passing away of the world as it really is, does not hold with the existence of the world. But he, who with right insight sees the passing away of the world as it really is, does not hold with the existence of the world.3

 

Thus none of the positions can be entirely affirmed or denied. The Lord Buddha in the same sutra explained: "Everything exists:--this is one extreme. Nothing exists:--this is the other extreme. Not approaching either extreme the [enlightened one] teaches you a doctrine by the middle [way]."4 The Buddha tells Vacca that the enlightened one is "deep, immeasurable, unfathomable as is the great ocean."5 Also in the Vacchagotta Sutra, the Buddha affirms the above stated position by telling Vaccha that the answers he supplies "do not apply." Richard Olsen thinks that the Madhyamika philosopher would concur, believing that the Buddha "rejected all the four clauses...as invalid or inappropriate [answers]."6 Hahn writes that the "four categories...are spiderwebs among spiderwebs which can never take hold of the enormous bird of reality."7

 

The main problems with the answers posited are common ones: they seek to establish black and white categories as descriptive of a multi-colored world. Of course the Buddha could not allow this, regardless of its baffling affects on his followers: life is baffling. The Buddha's way is to seek to see reality as it is. As Austin states:

 

It is essential to realize that 'true' or 'false', like 'free' and 'unfree' do not stand for anything simple at all; but only for a general dimension of being a right or proper thing to say as opposed to a wrong thing, in these circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes and with these intentions.8

 

As Austin implies, not only are the answers posited difficult in isolation, but their complexity increases when brought to bear on the existential practice of the early Bhikkus. Not only would it not be entirely correct to describe the answers to the questions as posited, but choosing one of those positions would hinder the monks from progress on the Great Way of Awakening. Buddha answers in White Clouds, Old Path, "If I told him there was a self, that would contradict my teaching. But if I told him there was no self and he clings to that as a doctrine, it would not benefit him."9 "Such questions cannot be usefully answered," agrees Ruegg, "and are to be set aside since from the soteriological point of view their solution can contribute nothing to progress on the path to Awakening."10 Again, we see that what the Buddha hoped to avoid was easy dualistic answers to complicated questions. As the Lord has said, "the wise man...does not take refuge in ultimate dogmas."11

 

All this is not to say that there was no teaching, but in the Madhyamika school, it was understood that there were levels of understanding the teachings. For instance, for the new monk or the layman, Dharmas would be taught that are simple, and fairly clean-cut.

 

The Madhyamika does not deny for a moment that these concepts are believed to be real by laymen and that these concepts have, at least, some pragmatic value in the phenomenal world. But as soon as some pretentious philosopher takes them to be ultimately real, he makes a gross mistake.12

 

The exoteric teachings in themselves are not the whole of the story--they are the means, not the end. As the Buddha has also said, the Dharmas themselves arise and fall. Once the level of maturity made possible by the exoteric teachings is reached, then the esoteric teachings would be disseminated.

 

Why is this necessary? I think that it is perhaps that it is because the neophyte reaps his information from the teachings of others, through their words and deeds. As the neophyte progresses he learns to look within, where the void teaches him truths beyond what words and actions can communicate,

 

...a kind of knowledge which we may call revelation, intuition, even direct confrontation with reality....Other types of knowledge, i.e., knowledge through the senses, reason, and analyses, only move on the surface...which conceals the ultimate, and hence this second kind of knowledge is subordinate to the first kind.13

 

Thus, the easy answers, which are expressible in words, which were given to the beginner and the layperson, are not adequate for the advanced believer, who can only find the answers to those sorts of question in the refuge of his inner silence, and not in words or ideas. As Martin Buber so lucidly explains,

 

It seems right to me to say without words and to understand without knowledge that which is above words and knowledge: by this I mean nothing other than the secret silence and the mystic peace that annihilates consciousness and dissolves forms. Then seek, in the silence and in the mystery, that complete and original union with the essential and primal good.14

 

This is not an easy truth to accept either. "The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience which in its very nature transcends linguistics."15 Lao Tzu, in the Taoist scripture The Tao Te Ching, expresses this in the very first line of his poem, saying "The Tao that can be described in words is not the true Tao."16 Then, of course, Lao Tzu proceeds to attempt to do it anyway--and does a commendable job. Most mystics who have attempted to share their experiences have not always been so successful, and as Maier points out, "the better ones use poetry. But because words fail to capture it, attempts often appear as a continuous run-on sentence."17

 

Part of our frustration with this in our own time is that we are heirs to the enlightenment and its traditional precepts and suppositions. Amoury de Riencourt believes that "the great error of Western thought is to believe that it knows something about ultimate reality by giving it a name."18 Indeed, Galileo reasoned that "only that which could be quantified was considered scientific and real. It followed that anything subjective, or qualitative, did not belong within the realm of science as it had no reality. Hence, poetry, art, morality, religion, music, all became peripheral to what was real, quantifiable and controllable."19 Our quarrel then, with mysticism in general and alleged Buddhist irrationalism in particular, is that we cannot squash it on a piece of cardboard and stick it with pins. Rudolph Otto, in the seminal work The Idea of the Holy, explains what must be done in this dilemma:

 

We have to predicate them of a subject which they qualify, but which in deeper essence is not, nor indeed can be, comprehended in them; which rather requires comprehension of a quite different kind. Yet, though it eludes the conceptual way of understanding, it must be in some way or other within our grasp, else absolutely nothing could be asserted of it. And even mysticism, in speaking of it as...the ineffable, does not really mean to imply that absolutely nothing can be asserted of the object of the religious consciousness; otherwise, mysticism could exist only in unbroken silence, whereas what has generally been a characteristic of the mystics in their copious eloquence.20

 

The answer, then, is to remain mindful of the fact that words are not the things they signify. "So while observing convention it is necessary not to be led astray by it. 'The emancipated person' is said 'to make use of current forms of speech without being led astray by them.'"21 This point is also made by the Buddha himself in the popular explanation of the Moon and the finger, saying, "The teaching is merely a vehicle to describe the truth. Don't mistake it for the truth itself. A finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. The finger is needed to know where to look for the moon, but if you mistake the finger for the moon itself, you will never know the real moon."22 Asvaghosa concurs, saying that there are two aspects of reality, "one of which is beyond speaking or writing, because it does not fall into the categories of communicability." We need only to remember the Flower Sutra to remember the Buddha's important non-words on this issue.

 

If we did not appeal to language there is no way to make others acquainted with the absolute; therefore language is resorted to in order to serve as a wedge in getting out the one already in use; it is like a poisonous medicine to counteract another, It is a most dangerous weapon and its user has to be cautioned in every way not to hurt himself.23

 

This strongly-stated position drives home for us the frustration involved for mystics, who are compelled from within to describe their experience, and scientists, who must work hard at even trying to understand. It is with some satisfaction, then, that we mystics read in Staal that "The view that there are realms of reality where ordinary language is not applicable is not, of course, paradoxical, inconsistent, or contradictory. Such a situation is quite common not only in philosophy but also elsewhere, e.g., in mathematics or engineering, where for that reason artificial languages are constructed."24 It is also worth noting that it is the most mystically-inclined scientists, those who have active fantasy lives, who experience a flow of non-rational creativity, who make, literally, quantum leaps in their fields. As physicist Max Planck wrote in his autobiography: "When the pioneer in science sends forth the groping fingers of his thoughts, he must have a vivid, intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by an artistically creative imagination."25

 

The Catuskoti challenges us to reach not only beyond the capabilities of language, but also beyond the limits of conceptual reality. It wasn't just that words were inadequate for the Buddha to answer his questioners truthfully in the terms that they sought, but it was also beyond the limits of the questioners mental faculties to comprehend the Buddha's ideas, even had he possessed the semantic skills to do so. Part of the danger in the Buddha's case, is that the Dharma of emptiness might itself be taken for an existent "thing." Ruegg explains it, saying that is "necessary not to confound ultimate reality which may be described as both inexpressible, and even as indeterminable, with an entity conceived of and defined as indescribable, undecidable or indeterminate...."26 Matilal calls our attempts at making doctrines as fabrications, myth-making and make-believe.27 He says that it is "neither proper nor is it strictly justifiable to regard any particular metaphysical system as absolutely valid."28 Again, it is our compulsive desire to pin things down that forces us to try to wrestle round concepts into square boxes, which results in frustration and broken concepts that at the end, are no longer circles. "The mind seeks what is dead, for what is living escapes it; it seeks to congeal the flowing stream in blocks of ice; it seeks to arrest it. In order to analyze a body, it is necessary to extenuate or destroy it."29 This is indeed a grave indictment, for what we must be aware of is that that which we are capable of conceiving can in no way be mistaken for the whole of reality. Jayatilleka reminds us of the Buddha's story of the five blind men and the elephant, each of them mistaking the partial reality of their own experience for the whole of the reality. We must admit our blindness. It is a humility of which the Buddha would approve. In the case of the Catuskoti, Jayattillike says that,

 

The meaninglessness of these questions is thus partly due to the inadequacy of the concepts contained in them.... The transempirical cannot be empirically described or understood but it can be realized and attained. The [enlightened one] freed from the conception of form, sensation, ideas, dispositions and consciousness is said to be 'deep, immeasurable and unfathomable'....30

 

It should come as no surprize to us, if we are humble that there are things which we cannot know or understand. This is self-evident, if, as the Buddha requires of us, we concentrate on and observe our six sense organs, and understand their limitations and their mischeivity. We must also be humble enough to admit that there exist such realities as we are unable to grasp, let alone describe. Even Nagarjuna asserts that "what words can express comes to a stop when the domain of the mind comes to a stop."31

 

So, "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."32 Silence is the only expression adequate or even possible, for only within it are the infinite possibilities contained, and only in it is the stillness of non-being comprehended. To bring the mind to a halt, to exhaust its strivings--which Huston Smith likens to "a drunk, crazed monkey with St. Vitus' dance who has just been stung by a wasp"33--might be an explanation for the popularity of the Catuskoti as exercise to bring one to enlightenment. Of course we are on Zen territory here, with its tradition of giving unsolvable questions to monks in order to facilitate complete mental breakdown, for only then, with all defenses exhausted, can enlightenment creep in. Staal thinks this is a likely assumption.34

 

It is amazing to me that the mystical experience of the ineffable that has been universally, pan-chronologically, trans-culturally and cross-traditionally attested to would be challenged concerning its very existence. One objection which has been brought against this case is Matilal's reading of Nagarjuna's question: "If everything (including statements) is empty then the statement that states that everything is empty is also empty and thus loses its assertive force or its claim to truth."35 The relevance to this is, if we assert that language and human conception are gravely limited, then nothing that can be spoken or known is entirely accurate and is therefore false; therefore all statements are false, which as a statement, is self-negating ("...it can be that no proposition is negative, though it cannot be that 'No proposition is negative' is true.")36 The end of this argument is that there is nothing that can be beyond language, understanding, and as we shall address, logic.

 

The equation looks like this:

 

language/conception -(=) truth therefore

language/conception = falsity

 

which = an illogical contradiction which negates my

original proposition, implying that anything illogical

does not exist.

 

The error is, again, in simplistic representation of complex reality. Language/conception -(=) truth is not equivalent to language/conception = falsity. Here is the breakdown of the objection. To only be partly true is also to only be partly false. The reality (concurrent with our everyday experience) is found in grays, not blacks or whites. But even if the logic did not fail under analysis, we would not have sufficient grounds to doubt the validity of millennia of testimony, for that which is testified of is not only beyond language and conception, but also beyond logic itself. The Buddha himself tells Vaccha "You ought to be at a loss, Vaccha, you ought to be bewildered. For, Vaccha, this Dharma is deep, difficult to see, difficult to understand, peaceful, excellent, beyond dialectic...."37 (emphasis mine). Nakamura attests that "the doctrine of voidness as such held by ancient Buddhists has something that can not be explained away by the method of symbolic logic alone."38 Amaury de Riencourt sums up this writer's feelings on the subject by saying "Everything vital is anti-rational, not merely irrational, and everything rational is anti-vital."39 Ruegg is in agreement, for in several places he makes references to the use of the Catuskoti as a tool for going beyond logic and says that the prajna level of thought is one that is "post-logical."40 It is Matilal's conclusion in the book Epistemology, Logic, and Grammar in Indian Philosophical Analysis that the Madhyamika's motivation is not to deny logic its place, but only to expose its limitations,41 although Murti feels that the Madhyamika denied outright the validity of logic, that is, of discursive conceptual thought, to establish truth.42

 

So it is that we have come to the conclusion that truth, or ultimate reality cannot be expressed in terms of yes or no, not even in poetry, not even in logical discourse. This Dharma is deep, unfathomable. The Catuskoti must remain unanswered because the answers, though knowable to the buddhis, are incommunicable and incomprehensible unless one makes contact directly with ultimate reality, as the Buddha has. There is no answer, not in human speech; there is no comprehension, not in the natural mind.

 

Notes

 

1. Tich Nhat Hanh, Old Path, White Clouds (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1991), p. 465.

 

2. K.N. Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge (London: Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1963), p. 341.

 

3. Kaccayana Sutra.

 

4. Ibid.

 

5. Vacchagotta Sutra.

 

6. Frits Staal, Exploring Mysticism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 39.

 

7. Hanh, p. 467.

 

8. J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), p. 144.

 

9. Hanh, p. 465.

 

10. D. Seyfort Ruegg, "The Uses of the Four Positions of the Catuskoti and the Problem of the Description of Reality in Mahayana Buddhism," Journal of Indian Philosophy, 1977, p. 2.

 

11. Mervyn Sprung, ed., Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way (Boulder: Prajna Press, 1979), p. 239.

 

12. Bimal Krishna Matilal, Epistemology, Logic, and Grammar in Indian Philosophical Analysis (Paris: Mouton, 1971), p. 154.

 

13. Ibid., 166.

 

14. Martin Buber, Ecstatic Confessions: the Heart of Mysticism (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), p. 6.

 

15. D.T. Suzuki, "The Basis of Buddhist Philosophy" in Understanding Mysticism, ed. by Richard Woods,O.P. (New York: Image Books, 1980), p. 135.

 

16. Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching, translated by John R. Mabry from Mystery Upon Mystery: A Christian Reading of the Tao Te Ching (unpublished), p. 36.

 

17. Gary J. Maier M.D., "A Transpersonal Interpretation of Christian Readings," (unpublished), p. 7.

 

18. Amaury de Riencort, The Eye of Shiva: Eastern Mysticism and Science (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1981, p. 90.

 

19. Delores Whalen on the enlightenment, talk 1990.

 

20. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy (London: Oxford University Press, 1923), p. 2.

 

21. Jayatilleke, p. 317.

 

22. Hanh, p. 384.

 

23. Suzuki, p. 136.

 

24. Staal, p. 46.

 

25. F.C. Happold, Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), p. 28.

 

26. Ruegg, p. 19.

 

27. B.M. Matilal, Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 67.

 

28. B.M. Matilal, "A Critiaue of the Madyamika Position," from The Problem of Two Truths in Buddhism and Vedanta, ed. by Mervyn Sprung (Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Co.), p. 55.

 

29. de Rein, p. 84.

 

30. Jayatilleke, p. 476.

 

31. Staal, p. 45.

 

32. Jayatilleke, p. 476.

 

33. Huston Smith, The Religions of Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), p. 58.

 

34. Staal, p. 44.

 

35. B.M. Matilal, The Logical Illumination of Indian Mysticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 8.

 

36. A.N. Prior, Papers in Logic and Ethics (Duckworth), p.144.

 

37. Vacchagotta Sutra.

 

38. Ruegg, p. 41.

 

39. de Rein, p. 84.

 

40. Ruegg, p. 53.

 

41. Matilal, Epistemology..., p. 162.

 

42. Robinson, 292.

 

43. Ruegg, p. 13.