Thusness · John Tan

After Anatta · The Logic · Step 7

Function Without Substance

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

The koan ends with no moment found that arises and no moment found that ceases. That leaves a worry, and it is a fair one. If no moment arises or ceases, how does anything happen? How is a sound heard, how does a clock keep time, how does an action bear fruit?

Step 3 promised that none of these things would work if they had an own-nature, "as Step 7 will show". This is that step. The answer is not that emptiness does the work. It is that function never needed an "it".

The worry

Two opposite conclusions are drawn from the koan. One person reasons: sounds are heard, so there must be a real moment of sound that really arises and really ceases. Another, finding no such moment, reasons: then nothing happens, and the sound is a kind of illusion. In fact they share the one premise that matters, that happening needs an "it" for the happening to happen to. They only argue about whether the "it" is there.

Drop that premise and both conclusions go. A suitcase is heavy and the clock keeps time, with no "it" behind the working. Each works as designated, in dependence on what it is picked out with, and reliably, which is all that working ever was.

If "no moment arises" sounds like "nothing really happens", it lowers the weight of actions, promises and the path: the nihilism of Step 6, The Two Traps. Wanting a solid moment behind the happening is the eternalism.

Two ways of seeing the koan

Seen with the logic of substance. I lift a suitcase, and the heaviness of this moment feels like a thing in its own right. It comes as I lift, it does its work of pulling at my arm, and it goes when I set the case down. Its power to pull sits inside the case. So when the koan finds no moment that arises or ceases, it looks as if the working has gone too: no moment, so no weight.

Seen with the logic of dependency. I lift the same suitcase. As Step 1 put it, the moment is merely designated as arising or ceasing, upon conditions. Case, earth, arm and attention come together, and "it got heavy" is said; the case is set down, and "it stopped" is said. The pull on the arm is complete. Nothing in it was waiting for an "it" to carry it out.

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 where the walker stands and which way they go. Yet the stairs are really climbed and really descended. In the same way the moment is not arising or ceasing in itself. "Arising" and "ceasing" are designated in dependence on conditions: what is picked out, from which side, against what came before and what comes after. That is not the moment being nothing, or only in the mind. It is how the moment works.

Where the power is not

We habitually treat function as a power inside the thing, the knife's power to cut, sitting in it from its own side. We treat a moment the same way, as if it held the next one inside it and passed it on.

Look for the power, and it is not found there. A key opens this lock and no other; drop it into the wrong lock, or let it drift in deep space, and it opens nothing. A power that shows itself only with its partner is not an inner property. It is named with its partner, like fire and fuel.

Weight is the same. The heaviness of a suitcase is not stored in the suitcase. On the Moon the same case weighs a sixth as much, and in orbit it floats. Its heaviness is named with the earth that pulls it, as the key is named with its lock.

The moment is no different. No causal power is stored in it, waiting to produce the next. The sound came from no store and went into none.

A moment with its own nature

Now turn the koan round. Suppose this moment existed by itself, complete from its own side. Could it arise or cease? It could not. To arise is to come to be where it was not, and to cease is to stop being what it was. Both are a becoming other, and an own-nature is exactly what does not become other. Such a moment could not change. It could not combine, because it depends on nothing else. And it could not act, because to act is to make a difference to what is not itself. A moment like that would be sealed. Conditions could not reach it, and it could not reach anything.

Nāgārjuna says this of suffering: "Suffering is taught as impermanent, and impermanence is not found in what has its own nature" (MMK 24.21). So the koan's "ceases as it arises" is not a threat to the world working. Only a moment without its own nature could cease as it arises at all.

He works the same point out with a baker and the baking (MMK 8). If the baker really existed on his own, already complete as a baker, he would not need to bake to be one: a baker who never bakes. So he says how they do go together: the agent proceeds in dependence on the action, and the action in dependence on the agent, and no other basis is seen (MMK 8.12).

The same holds for karma. If an action existed by its own nature, it would be permanent, and so it could never have been done, because what is permanent is not made (MMK 17.22). Yet actions are done, and they bear fruit. "Emptiness, yet not annihilation; saṃsāra, yet not permanence" (MMK 17.20).

If it stood on its own As it actually works conditions cannot reach it own-nature cannot reach anything No change, no combining, no acting: fixed like an anvil (MMK 24.38) key lock hand turning the door opens No opening power is found apart from these. Named together, and the door opens.
A thing with its own nature would be sealed off: nothing could reach it and it could reach nothing. What actually works is never found on its own. Key, lock, hand and opening are designated together, and the door still opens.

Nāgārjuna's reply to his critics

The fullest statement of this comes as a reply, not as a doctrine. In Chapter 24 an opponent from Nāgārjuna's own tradition says he has gone too far. If everything is empty, nothing arises and nothing passes away. Then there are no four noble truths, no practice, no fruits and no Buddha (MMK 24.1–6).

Nāgārjuna answers that the picture is backwards. To see things as existing by their own nature is to see them as needing no causes or conditions, and that undermines cause and effect, agent, action and fruit (MMK 24.16–17). Then he repeats the opponent's first verse with one change: "empty" becomes "not empty". If all this were not empty, there would be no arising and no passing away, and no four noble truths (MMK 24.20). Link by link, it is own-nature, not emptiness, that breaks the chain. Suffering with an own-nature could never begin or end. A world of own-natures would be fixed like an anvil (MMK 24.38): not a solid world, a frozen one.

Between the objection and the reversal stands the line most often quoted: for whom emptiness fits, everything fits (MMK 24.14). The verb means "fits", "makes sense", and so "works". His reply comes to this: because things are empty, they can arise, change and work. It does not make emptiness a power that lets things happen, or an open space they happen in. Emptiness causes nothing and explains nothing. It is only what dependence comes to when it is examined.

Emptiness does not make things work. An own-nature would stop them working, and nothing else is needed.

The same caution applies to "potential". A store of possibilities behind appearances is a substance again, made of possibilities instead of stuff. Things are exactly as open as their conditions allow. A rope can be seen as a snake in dim light; a shadow cannot be walked across as a bridge.

Empty is not flimsy

Hear "no moment found" and the mind may picture something thin. It is not. A car with no essence can still hurt you. The mountain of The Formation of a Mountain is found nowhere as a thing apart, and its avalanche kills as surely as before.

The working is easiest to see where it is plainly designated. A disc of red light stops a forty-tonne truck without touching it. Take the designation away and it is a coloured lamp. Yet nothing is more effective, and the fire that boils the kettle works in the same way. When a critic said that Nāgārjuna's empty words could refute nothing, he replied that one magically made man can stop another (Vigrahavyāvartanī 23), and he says the same of agents, actions and fruits (MMK 17.31–33). Empty things act on empty things, and that is the only acting there is.

So reliable working was never evidence of an "it". The clearest case is the person. The mere I, found nowhere, is the one who keeps a promise for forty years and sits through the night with the dying. Grief is real. Healing is real. Nothing about it is anchored, and nothing about it is weak.

Change with no one changing

Now come back to the koan's own words. "This moment ceases as it arises" sounds like a moment to which arising and ceasing happen. But there is no lightning apart from the flashing; the flashing is the lightning. In the same way, the arising-ceasing is the moment. As with the walker and the walking (MMK 2), changer and change are named together. The clock still ticks. Only the passenger is let go.

So nothing is missing when the "it" is not found. One moment follows another in dependence on its conditions, the moment before among them, and nothing passes across. Change is vivid and exact, with no changer behind it.

This was where my own view lagged behind. After 1997 the doer had gone missing: walking simply walked, hearing simply heard. Yet for years I still imagined independent participants entering into those events, an ear here and a sound there, as if things existed first and then met. Seeing that the participants are not found before the participation is what let the working of the world make sense, with nothing left over to do it. In the seven phases this is phase 6. And nothing is lost: the flower in The Formation of a Flower, taken down to its last level, goes back on the table exactly as it was.

Reality without a ground

The insights in Seeing Comes First made me aware of something more. Mutual dependence has no hierarchy and no sequence. Nothing in it comes first, and nothing is more basic than the rest. There is no substrate underneath, and no causal power inside things doing the work. Things work, and reliably, but not because a power is stored in them.

Then dependent arising and conventional reality are no longer a secondary layer, an illusion laid over the real thing. There is no real thing underneath for them to be secondary to. They become the new "reality without a ground": vivid, working, and not found standing on their own. Nor does dependent arising become a new ground in its turn; it too is designated and empty. I bring this together in the bonus article Beyond Cause and Effect, as a "flat web": "conditions do not constitute a lower basement upon which appearance is erected, nor are appearances an emergent veneer". The Illusion of the Given ends on the same note: what is removed is only "the anxious demand for an absolute foundation".

Dōgen says it best, in "Painting of a Rice-cake". The old Zen saying was that a painted rice cake does not satisfy hunger: concepts are only pictures, and the real food is somewhere else. Dōgen turns it over:

When you paint something long, it cannot be without painting something short. Thoroughly investigate the meaning of this. Because the entire world and all phenomena are a painting, human existence appears from a painting, and buddha ancestors are actualized from a painting. Since this is so, there is no remedy for satisfying hunger other than a painted rice-cake. Without painted hunger you never become a true person.

Dōgen, “Painting of a Rice-cake” (Gabyō), translated by Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi, in Moon in a Dewdrop

Long and short are painted together; neither comes first. There is no unpainted rice cake behind the painting, and no unpainted hunger either. And the painted cake feeds. Beyond Cause and Effect reads Dōgen this way, and I work it through in full in The Painted Rice Cake, in Book 2.

No ground underneath, no first, no higher. Dependent arising is not second to anything.

How solid is the table?

Knock on a table: nothing feels more solid. Yet at the scale of atoms it is almost all empty space, and your knuckle never touches it the way it seems to; charge pushes back against charge. A neutrino passes straight through the table, and through the whole earth, finding nothing solid at all. The solidity is not a stuff packed inside the wood. It is the table and the hand together.

And still the cup stands on it, and the knuckle hurts. Solidity works completely, with no solidness inside.

The same logic, beyond the moment

Function never needed an "it", and not only in the moment. The examples already on this page reach much further, and the same logic runs through each of them.

The self. The baker above is the self in small. A self decides, chooses and acts, and the deciding is real. Yet no self is found apart from the deciding and acting, standing behind them to do them. Agent and action proceed in dependence on each other (MMK 8.12). Look for the decider before the decision and none is there; look at the decision and someone has plainly decided. Nothing is missing from the choice.

An object. A chair holds you at the end of a long day, yet no "chair-power" is found in the wood. To a child it is a fort; to a cat, a perch in the sun. The holding comes with your weight, the floor and the legs that bear it, designated together like the key and the lock. Money shows it more plainly still. Printed paper, taken as money, buys a house; without that designation it is scrap. Each works completely.

A cause. A seed sprouts, and it feels as if the sprout was stored inside it, like the opening in the key. But keep the seed in a dry jar and nothing sprouts. Give it soil, water and warmth and it does. No power was waiting in the seed; conditions met, and "cause" and "sprout" are named together. That is not a weaker kind of causing. It is the only causing there is, and karma above works the same way: actions bear fruit with no store between them.

The person. The mere I who keeps a promise for forty years is found nowhere, and the promise is kept all the same. Promising, caring and taking responsibility do not need someone solid behind them. They need only the conditions they depend on, and those are there. The one who promised is designated with the promising, and is fully answerable for it. Care is given, debts are paid, harm is owned and mended. Nothing about the person is anchored, and everything a person does still counts.

One appearing. Deciding, holding, sprouting and promising are the vivid appearing at work. Function needs no "it" behind it, because the working is the appearing itself, singled out in dependence. The clarity that knows the choice is no different: not a decider behind it, and not found apart from it. (See What the Logic Is Looking At.)

Try it

  • The koan and one sound. Listen to a single sound until it ends. Ask the koan: does it arise, or does it cease? Then notice that, while no "it" is found, the sound was heard in full. Ask where the hearing needed a moment that stood still.
  • The key. Hold a key and look for the opening in it. Then use it. Notice that the opening happens, and that it was never found in the metal alone.
  • The stairs. Walk up a flight of stairs and back down. Notice that "up" and "down" belong to the walking, not to the stairs, and that both are really walked.
  • The new floor. If the thought comes that emptiness is what makes things possible, look for that "emptiness" apart from the things. Notice that nothing is found doing the work.

In the chain: this page goes with Vivid and Nowhere (4 of 7); What the Logic Is Looking At (2 of 7). The chain starts at Seeing Comes First.

In the books

Talks

Words to know

Function
Working: cutting, opening, healing, binding. Designated together with what it depends on, never stored in a thing.
Own-nature (svabhāva)
Existence from a thing's own side. If anything had it, that thing could not change, combine or act.
Agent and action (kāraka, karma)
The doer and the deed. Each proceeds in dependence on the other (MMK 8.12).
Fits, works (yujyate)
The verb of MMK 24.14. It says what makes sense, not what produces anything.
Fixed like an anvil (kūṭastha)
Nāgārjuna's picture of a world of own-natures: unborn, unceasing, unable to move (MMK 24.38).
Unobstructed (ma 'gags pa)
Nothing blocks things from appearing. Not a store of potential behind them.