Two Logics

This moment ceases as it arises. Does it arise, or does it cease?

Read the koan slowly. Before any answer comes, the question has handed us an "it": a moment that must do one thing or the other. The words give us a something that comes and goes.

This step names two ways of reasoning and reads the koan through both. Everything else on these pages uses them, because the difference between them is the difference my own practice turned on.

Two starting points

Listen to a car going by. The answer comes before any thought: the sound is fading. Something is there, and something is happening to it. That answer follows a pattern. I call it the logic of substance. It starts with things and then asks what happens to them. The thing comes first. Its arising and ending are events that befall it. Read this way, the koan starts with "this moment" as a thing and asks what happens to it. And it must have an answer, because a thing that is there has to be doing one or the other.

The logic of dependency starts one step earlier. Before asking what happens to a thing, it asks how anything is picked out as a thing at all. And it finds that a thing is only ever picked out in dependence: on its parts, its causes, what it is contrasted with, and the name under which it is identified. No thing stands there first, waiting to be named. Read this way, the koan asks: how is "this moment" picked out? Only by its arising and its ceasing, and each of those only against the other. Moment, arising and ceasing are designated together.

The koan, seen both ways

Seen with the logic of substance. A moment is there, small and real, sitting in the present. Arising happens to it, then ceasing happens to it. The question feels urgent because the moment feels solid.

Seen with the logic of dependency. There is the sounding, vivid and exact, and no moment found standing inside it. "Arising" is said looking from before, "ceasing" looking from after. As I put it: the moment does not arise nor cease, but is merely designated as such upon conditions. The question has nothing to hold on to, and the sound is still heard.

It is just like the stairs: are they up or down? A staircase is not up or down in itself. It is "up" for someone climbing and "down" for someone coming down, designated by the walker's direction and position. In the same way, the moment is not arising or ceasing in itself. It is designated as arising or ceasing depending on what is picked out, and from which side. That does not make it nothing, or only in the mind: stairs are really climbed and really descended.

A habit, not a belief

Ask people whether moments are things, and most will say no. But watch what they do rather than what they say. Every sentence about change has a subject held still so that the verb can happen to it: the moment passes, the flame flickers, I have changed. The koan is built this way too: its grammar sets up the "it" before we have looked. So the logic of substance is not mainly a belief. It is a habit, and it switches on at particular places: when we explain, when we name, when we feel threatened, when we lose. Agreeing with the logic of dependency in theory changes very little. Seeing through the habit where it actually works changes a great deal.

The test

The logic of dependency comes down to one simple test, which I use again and again on these pages:

Look for the thing apart from what it depends on.

Try it on the koan. Listen to a sound until it ends. It is already passing as it sounds. Look for the moment apart from its arising and its ceasing, and none is found. A whirlpool is the same: not found apart from the water passing through, yet leaves thrown into it still spin.

Both halves matter. Nothing is found when the moment is looked for on its own. That is emptiness. The moment still works: the sound is heard, and we can say when the car came and when it had gone. That is conventional truth. The logic of dependency keeps both. Dependence and unfindability are one fact, seen from two sides.

When the "it" is not found, the question falls away. The koan page takes this through all four possible answers and Nāgārjuna's five core logics.

What the logic of dependency is not

Three misreadings each keep the koan's "it" and move it somewhere else.

• It is not "nothing exists". The sound is still heard. What is denied is a thing existing from its own side (svabhāva), not the sounding or the burning. Step 2 shows exactly what is negated, and what is not.
• It is not a better substance. It is tempting to replace "things" with something subtler: process, flow, a timeless Now, or pure awareness in which moments come and go. Each of these becomes a new thing that everything else is supposed to happen to. The logic of dependency applies to them too.
• It is not beyond logic. It relies on ordinary reasoning throughout, especially the rule that a thing cannot be both one way and its opposite. Its force comes from holding the logic of substance to its own rules. A view that claims to transcend logic can say anything, and so says nothing.

Continuing the seven phases

Anatta first dawned for me around 1997, during the Asian financial crisis. A few years later, in 2003, Soh Wei Yu, then only about 13 or 14 years old, invited me to a Singapore forum, Wisdom Bliss, to talk about my experiences and insights. In late 2004 a new Singapore forum, sgforums, started, and my first posts there were to Soh. In September 2006 I first wrote the insights down, as six stages of experience, for Din Robinson. In 2009, with new insights, I amended them to seven, in articles on the Awakening to Reality blog that Soh went on to build, where they still are. They map what I saw along the way: from the certainty of I AM, through non-dual presence, to anatta, the emptiness of presence and spontaneous perfection. They describe the seeing. These pages carry on from there: what turned out to matter after anatta, and how the logic behind the seeing works.

Before 1997 my view was substantialist. My first insight into luminous clarity came in 1982, in Secondary 3, when I was 15: I authenticated it as the I AM, the Witness, and in those years I researched the teachings of Advaita Vedanta extensively. The realisation of I AM was real and unmistakable, yet it made my view more dualistic, not less: a pure, unchanging Witness on one side and a passing world on the other. Even when the experience became non-dual, the view behind it stayed the same. Presence was still something on its own side, now taken as the one reality behind everything. I did not see this as a view at the time. It simply seemed to be how things were.

So the short answer, given at the end of this step, is that the phases are not a ladder of new experiences. Presence was vivid from the start. What changed was the logic through which I read it.

The two logics and the seven phases

Looking back, I can read the seven phases in the light of the two logics.

Phases 1 to 4. The certainty of being, its expansion into everything, the dropping into nothingness, and the clear mirror reflecting all things were real insights into presence. I would not deny any of them. But I held every one of them through the logic of substance. Presence was something on its own side: a Witness behind experience, a Source everything came from, a Mirror that reflected without being touched. Of phase 4 I wrote that "the Eternal Witness is experienced as a formless crystal clear mirror reflecting all phenomenon existence". Subtle traces of a self remained in that mirror.

Phase 5. In 1997 the logic of dependency was turned on the subject. Looked for apart from what appears, the mirror was not found; it was one more arising thought. In seeing, only the seen. There is thinking, no thinker. This is anatta, the first fold of emptiness. Presence was not lost. It was simply no longer behind anything. And with it went a freedom I had not expected: grasping turned out to be the inherent view itself, felt directly.

Phase 6. The same test then had to be turned on everything that appears. The scenery, the sound, the moment itself: looked for apart from what each depends on, none is found either. This is the second fold of emptiness, the emptiness of phenomena. It did not follow from anatta by itself. For years after 1997 my experience and insight were non-substantialist while my view was not: the desynchronisation I describe in The Transition from Anatta to Emptiness. By 2009 I had become very serious about the view. Experiences and insights alone cannot fully open up body and mind. Inherent habits run far deeper than surface insights can penetrate and unbind; right view is needed. This is where most of these pages do their work.

The koan belongs here. Anatta removes the one who watches the moment. It does not by itself remove the moment as a thing that arises or ceases.

Phase 7. There is nothing left to turn the logic on. Awareness was never a witness standing apart, and appearances were never things that had to be dissolved. As I put it: "Anatta is a seal, not a stage." It was always so.

I also wrote that phases 5 to 7 refine the insight of the same experience as phase 4. That is why the logic matters to practice. The difference between the mirror and no mirror is not an extra experience. It is the difference between two logics. And the logic of substance does not give way to a single argument. I found it had to be seen through in each place where it works: in the self, then in space, time, cause, death and the world itself. The steps and questions that follow take it there, one place at a time.

How fast are you going?

Sit still and ask how fast you are moving. Zero, it seems, and that stillness feels like yours. But you are still only against the room. With the earth's turning you are moving at well over a thousand kilometres an hour, and with the earth around the sun at about 107,000. Which is your real speed? The logic of substance wants one, sitting in you. The logic of dependency notices that a speed is only ever picked out against something: the room, the ground, the sun. Galileo saw it in the calm cabin of a ship, where nothing tells you the ship is moving.

Yet speed is not arbitrary. A car doing 120 against the road still gets a fine, and a satellite falls if its speed is wrong. Picked out with its frame, speed is exact and it works. Looked for in you alone, it is not found.

The same logic, beyond the moment

The koan is only the sharpest case. The same two logics are at work wherever anything is picked out: a self, an object, a cause, a whole life.

The self. Say "I have changed." The sentence holds an "I" still, so that the changing can happen to it. That is the logic of substance: first a self, then its moods, years and choices, as events that befall it. The logic of dependency asks how the "I" is picked out. Only through what is seen, heard, felt and remembered, and the name laid on them. Look for the one who changed, apart from the changing, and none is found. Yet the sentence still makes sense, and a promise I made is still mine to keep.

An object. Hold up a hand and close it. A fist appears. Open it, and the fist is gone. Where did it go? Nowhere, of course. There was never a fist apart from the hand closing. Yet the logic of substance makes it a thing: it was there, it was tight, it was opened. The logic of dependency sees a fist picked out in the closing, under a name. Nothing is lost when the hand opens, and a fist can still knock on a door.

A cause. A seed is planted and a sprout comes up. The logic of substance says the seed held the sprout inside it and passed it on, like a parcel handed over. Then the seed would be a cause on its own, before any sprout. The logic of dependency notices that "seed" and "sprout" are picked out together. A seed is a cause only of its sprout. Without the sprout, it is not that sprout's cause. Neither stands first. And the garden still grows: plant and water, and sprouts come.

The person. When someone dies, grief is felt as the loss of something that was really there. That is the logic of substance at its most tender: a person standing on their own side, now taken away. The logic of dependency does not take away the person, the love or the grief. Someone lived, was loved, and is missed. What it takes away is one extra thing: a someone found apart from the body, the life, the relationships and the name. Grief still comes. It need not harden around what was never found.

One appearing. Self, object, cause and person are not four things. Each is the vivid appearing of this moment, singled out. The logic of substance takes the singled-out as standing on its own. The logic of dependency sees that being singled out is already dependence, and so already empty. Both logics are ways of meeting this one appearing. (See What the Logic Is Looking At.)

Try it

For a few minutes, wherever you are:

• Say the koan once: "This moment ceases as it arises. Does it arise, or does it cease?" Notice the "it" the question hands you. Then look for that moment, apart from the arising and the ceasing, in the sound or sight in front of you.
• Notice a thought passing. The habit says something is changing. Look for the something, apart from the changing. Not in theory, but in what is in front of you.
• Say "I have changed." Look for the one who changed, apart from the changing: the moods, the years, the memories.
• Look at the scene in front of you, vivid and close, and ask the question I often give: "Where is this scenery?"
• Do not try to reach an answer. Notice that the looking finds more vividness, more detail and more change, and no thing standing behind it.

In the chain: this page goes with The Logic of Dependency (6 of 7); Seeing Comes First (1 of 7).

In the books

• Does It Arise or Cease?: the koan in full, with the four answers and Nāgārjuna's five core logics.
• The Logic of Dependency: my full argument, with change, the eight extremes, identity, convention and continuity.
• Two Logics: Book 4, Chapter 4.
• The Logical Impossibility of Intrinsic Nature: Book 1, Chapter 2, why anything picked out is picked out in dependence.
• Interlude: Same Words, Different Worlds: Book 1.
• Nāgārjuna, Chapter 2: walker and walking, designated together.
• Nāgārjuna, Chapter 21: coming-into-being and passing-away, neither apart nor together.
• Awakening to Reality: the seven phases of insight, as I first posted them.

Talks

• Thusness’s Phase 5–7 Insights: talk on YouTube, the last three of the seven phases.
• MMK Intro: The Path of Synchronization: Anatta and Madhyamaka: talk on YouTube, anatta, and why the view has to catch up.

Words to know

Logic of substance

Reasoning that starts with things and asks what happens to them.

Logic of dependency

Reasoning that asks how anything is picked out as a thing, and finds it picked out only in dependence.

Designated together

Picked out only in relation to each other, with neither coming first, as a moment, its arising and its ceasing are.

Own-nature (svabhāva)

Existence from a thing's own side, apart from what it depends on. What the logic of dependency negates.

Emptiness (śūnyatā)

The absence of own-nature. Not a thing, a void or a ground.

Conventional truth

How things work and are named. Fully valid; it is where the whirlpool, the candle and the person are affirmed.

Anatta

No-self: no subject, witness or mirror is found apart from what appears. The first fold of emptiness.

Twofold emptiness

The emptiness of the subject (anatta) and of all phenomena.