Podcast 18.8 · Jun 11, 11:21 AM by Kukkurovaca
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Introduction

Welcome to what I am, as always, quite pleased to call MūlamadhyamakakārikāCast

I’ve got to tell you, I was about 90% of the way to not recording at all this weekend, because for this and the next two weeks I’m actually working Saturdays for peak enrollment. (I’m taking off at noon on Friday’s, so it all balances out, but you’re insane if you think I’m going to use a perfectly good Friday afternoon prepping the script for MūlamadhyamakakārikāCast.)

Fortunately, this week’s episode was never going to be very extensive anyway, and—here’s the clincher—I need to kill a couple hours while I wait for my laundry. I would spend that time knitting, but that’s how I spent the morning before I remembered to do laundry, and my hands are tired.
Text

sarvaṃ tathyaṃ na vā tathyaṃ tathyaṃ cātathyameva ca|

naivātathyaṃ naiva tathyametadbuddhānuśāsanaṃ||8
Translation

All is true, or not true, true and not true,

or neither true nor not true; this is the instruction of the Buddha
Commentary

This verse restates a principle called, if my notes serve me here, the catuṣkoṭi, which is familiar in the context of Buddhist logic. It is similar to the principle of the excluded middle in Western logic, except that it’s not the middle of two that is excluded. In addition to true and not true, we have both true and not true and neither true nor not true. Of course, the question here is, just what the heck are you excluding if you permit things to be simultaneously true and not true? It’s an Indian thing. It’s like saying, “It’s Chinatown,” except in this case, it’s, “It’s India.”

This is not a verse on which I have much to say, partly because I am not a logician, but mostly because I’m not as sure about how to relate it to the overall context as I am with much of the other material here. Near as I can tell he’s usinig this and the next verse to lay out the standards by which he wants his arguments to be assessed; if that’s the case, there’s really nothing to it.

Now, Kalupahana has some interesting things to say here. For example, he points out that Nāgārjuna didn’t get too much use out of the four-point logic, and while I’m pretty sure it pops up now and again, especially early in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikāḥ, it’s true that Nāgārjuna doesn’t use that form so often. It’s not clear, however, how much arguments have to be framed specifically in those terms in order to represent an implementation of the logic or draw on it for authority.

Kalupahana also says that

    Nāgārjuna is here expanding the discussion to include one of the most persistent problems of metaphysics, namely, “everything.” It is the problem that led the Sarvastivadins to uphold the view that “everything exists” in the form of substance. Nāgārjuna is simply allowing that metaphysical question to be settled by the use of the fourfold propositions that negate each other.

This is interesting, but, as with many of Kalupahana’s statements, be careful how far you take it.
Textual notes

sarva(n1s) tathya(n1s) na(ind) vā(ind) tathya(n1s) tathya(n1s) ca(ind) atathya(n1s) eva(ind) ca(ind)|

na(ind) eva(ind) atathya(n1s) na(ind) eva(ind) tathya(n1s) etad(n1s) buddhānuśāsana(n1s)