[MD] The tetra lemma

[david buchanan]

Marsha said:
...While I wouldn't want you to leave the MOQ & American Pragmatists track, I  hope you'll keep Buddhism in mind for another decade.  The MOQ being a  synthesis of East and West, Buddhism has something very valuable to consider too.

dmb says:
No doubt. "Zen" is in the title and Northrop's East-West fusion is Pirsig's main inspiration. Scholars from the East find sanity in William James and I've been reading Western translators like Alan Watts since before I was born. Its not Buddhism that baffles in general but the tetralemma's math-like structure never worked for me. Seems like an overly complicated way to say a simple thing. Still don't see anything I'd recognize as logic in it.  

> 
> Marsha
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "david buchanan" 
> To: 
> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 10:09 PM
> Subject: Re: [MD] The tetra lemma
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks, Marsha.
> 
> I found this section especially helpful. It explains what an essence is and 
> confirms my hunch that such an idea is "obviously false" and "a profound 
> misconception of reality". Apparently, the metaphysics of substance is 
> something even worse than materialism. Its downright crazy. Independent and 
> immutable? Like what?!? Even a materialist will admit that stars are born 
> and die, that mountains wash away, that even the universe has a life span. 
> This nonsense has got to be the vestige of some forgotten religion.
> 
> Emptiness and Lack of Substance
> The doctrine of impermanence is intimately related to the doctrine that all 
> things lack inherent substantiality. The Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna 
> argued that things cannot have separate essences because this would result 
> in an unchanging world: “If there is essence, the whole world will be 
> unarising, unceasing, and static. The entire phenomenal world would be 
> immutable” (FWMW, p. 72). In other words, if something has its own separate 
> essence, then it is entirely separate and without dependence upon anything 
> else for its existence. As a result, it can never be affected or changed. 
> Thus, if things had essences, then the whole world would be immutable and 
> static, which is obviously false. The conclusion is that all things are 
> empty of any such essence. This doctrine of emptiness (sunyata) is 
> fundamental to Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. Similarly, Whitehead states 
> that “it is fundamental to the metaphysical doctrine of the philosophy of 
> organism, that the notion of an actual entity as the unchanging subject of 
> change is completely abandoned” (PR, p. 29). Process philosophy departs from 
> substance philosophy by denying any isolated, individual essence to things. 
> The idea that things have essences is at best a useful abstraction, and at 
> worst a profound misconception of reality: “The simple notion of an enduring 
> substance sustaining persistent qualities, either essentially or 
> accidentally, expresses a useful abstract for many purposes in life. But 
> whenever we try to use it as a fundamental statement of the nature of 
> things, it proves itself mistaken” (PR, p. 79). ...An important instance of 
> this mistake is the Cartesian assumption that the human subject is a 
> fundamental essence prior to human thought....
> 
> [The whole article is at 
> http://www.integralscience.org/whiteheadbuddhism.html ]
> 
> 
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