What the Logic Is Looking At

Listen to a sound nearby: a car, a bird, the hum of a fridge. It is vivid and clear, and it needs no help to be known. Every step that follows looks at something: a self, an object, a cause, matter, a person. It is easy to read them as many topics, each analysed from outside, one after another. They are not many topics. Each time, the logic is looking at a phenomenon: what Buddhism calls a dharma.

So this page begins by saying what a phenomenon is. Then it shows why the logic and the direct taste meet in it. Read it before Step 1, and come back to it after Step 8. It goes with the article Vivid and Nowhere: What a Phenomenon Is and the question page What Is a Phenomenon?

What the logic looks at: a dharma

In Buddhism, whatever can be experienced or known is a dharma, a phenomenon. A sound, a colour, a hardness, a feeling, a thought, an intention, a moment of knowing: each is a dharma. So is what is only thought of, such as a number or a plan. Nothing is left out. Everything is dharma.

The tradition sorts them in two. Conditioned dharmas (saṃskṛta) arise from conditions and pass: every sight, sound, feeling and thought. Unconditioned dharmas (asaṃskṛta) are those not made by conditions: in the old lists, space, and the ceasing of suffering, nirvāṇa. Conditioned or unconditioned, they are all dharmas.

The word comes from a root meaning "to hold". The Abhidharma teachers defined a dharma as what holds its own mark: hardness for earth, heat for fire, knowing for consciousness (Vasubandhu, Abhidharmakośabhāṣya 1.2). They had seen through the self, the person, the chariot. But they kept the dharmas themselves as the real pieces the world is built of, each holding its own nature. That is anatta of the person, without emptiness of the dharmas.

Nāgārjuna's whole work turns the search on the dharmas themselves. Not even a dharma holds its own mark. Searched for, it is not found; it arises only in dependence. And the unconditioned gets no exemption: "Since the conditioned is not established at all, how can the unconditioned be established?" (MMK 7.33). Space, nirvāṇa and emptiness itself are dharmas too, and empty too. This is what "after anatta" means: the same seeing that found no self is turned on every phenomenon.

Everything is dharma, conditioned or unconditioned. Every dharma is vivid, and not found: empty of holding its own mark.

Not many things

What we call "self" is dharmas, the sights, sounds, sensations and thoughts of this moment, mistaken for someone standing behind them. What we call "an object" is dharmas again, mistaken for a thing standing out there on its own. "Cause", "matter" and "person" are dharmas too, taken as things with natures of their own.

So the steps do not move from one subject to another. They look at the same thing, this vivid appearing of dharmas, from different sides, until the habit of making it into things is seen through.

No bare appearance underneath

It is easy to picture two layers: first a bare appearance, then a name put on it. Then the logic seems to be about names, and the appearance seems to sit underneath, simply given. That picture is still dual. It keeps a raw "given" under the designation, and that given becomes one more floor.

There is no bare appearance underneath, waiting to be named. Designation is not a label put on the appearing. The appearing itself is the designation.

Designation needs no words

Designation does not need words or labels. It needs only singling out: this sound, this colour, this ache, picked out as "this". A baby does it, a bird does it, and so do we, long before any word. The Buddha's own word for it is recognising: picking out a mark (nimitta) as "this". Whatever appears is already singled out. Nothing appears that is not already a "this". So nothing appears undesignated.

Singling out is already dependence

A "this" stands out only against what it is not, only with this seeing, this light, this attention, these conditions. Take away the background and nothing stands out. Take away the conditions and nothing is singled out. So singling out is not something done to an appearance that was there first. It is already dependence. And dependence is already emptiness: searched for, the "this" is not found, in its parts or apart from them.

Picture a world where there is only blue: one hue, everywhere, and nothing else at all. In that world no one would see blue. There would be nothing for it to stand out against, so it would never be singled out as "blue". We would be blind to blueness. Blue is seen only with what is not blue.

Now let one other colour appear in that world: a spot of red. At once both appear, blue and red, each bright and unmistakable.

This simple example gives a clear illustration of how the key points we meet again and again in these pages come together, if it is clearly understood. It tells us that blue and red don't arise one after the other. They arise together, in one stroke. Here is what follows from that:

Neither comes first. Blue wasn't sitting there unseen, waiting for red to reveal it. Red didn't arrive and then get compared with a blue already there. The moment red appears, blue and red both appear, each by contrast with the other. This is “no seer without the seen” again, and “long and short”, and “here and there”: named together, neither prior.
This dependence isn't a handover. We usually picture dependence as one thing passing something to another: first the cause, then the effect. Blue and red are not cause and effect. Nothing waits and nothing is handed across; they are named together, in the appearing itself. Where a process does run in time, a seed before its sprout, the order stays, and still nothing is handed across. Book 2 calls this the Logic of the Single Stroke: the parts, their relations and their designation “do not arise in sequence; they are simultaneous aspects of one dependently arisen event”.
So each colour is empty, and vivid, at the same moment. Blue has no blueness of its own. Alone, it isn't even seen. Yet the instant red is there, blue is bright and unmistakable. Being empty and being vivid aren't two stages. They are one appearing.
Nothing produced it. Red didn't make blue appear, and blue didn't make red appear. Neither is the cause of the other. With the meeting, the whole scene is just there, already complete, not built up step by step. That is spontaneous presence in the plainest example: not uncaused, since without the contrast nothing appears, but not produced either.
And it isn't one thing either. Blue and red appearing together doesn't merge them into one big “field of colour” behind both. Each is distinct and clear. They are neither one nor two: not separate things that meet, and not one thing in two shades.

In short: appearing is relation from the start, with nothing first and nothing behind. That's why, by appearing, a thing is already empty, and why the same appearing is complete as it is, with nothing behind it to finish it.

So the singling out is the appearing, and the appearing is already empty. Nothing appears first and turns out empty later. By appearing, it is already empty.

Singling out is dependence. Dependence is emptiness. So by appearing, a thing is already empty.

This is what Nāgārjuna means when he says that dependent arising, emptiness and dependent designation are one (MMK 24.18). The logic does not make things empty. It shows what appearing already is. It is also why Candrakīrti refuses the "own mark" that the logicians placed in perception: a bare particular given before any designation. No such bare given is found.

Singling out is not the mistake

None of this makes the world thin. Singling out is not the problem. A mirror shows every reflection clearly and distinctly, and holds none of them. The mistake is one step further: taking what is singled out as standing on its own, from its own side. That is the habit the steps undo. The singling out goes on, vivid and exact. Only the extra "on its own" is not found.

Holding an apple

Someone passes you an apple, and you hold it in your hand. It seems plain that you are holding a solid apple that exists out there, by itself, and that the senses only report on it. Look again. The holding is dependent arising, and so is each thing the apple seems to be made of.

Touch. The hardness is not stored in the apple, waiting to be felt. It arises when skin meets fruit, the fingers press, the nerves respond and touch-consciousness is there. Press lightly and it is firm; press with the thumb and it gives; to a stone it is soft. The coolness depends on the warmth of your hand, the smoothness on how lightly the fingertips move. The weight in your palm is a pull with the earth, met by the muscles of your arm (Step 2, "Your own weight").

Sight. The red depends on light falling on the skin, on the skin returning some of that light, and on the eye and seeing-consciousness. Under candlelight it turns orange; at dusk it goes grey; a colour-blind friend sees another colour, and a bee sees patterns you cannot. No red is found sitting on the apple apart from all this. Yet it appears vividly, without fail, whenever its conditions come together.

Smell, sound and taste. The sweet scent arises when traces of the fruit travel on the air and meet the breath and the nose; with a blocked nose there is none. Bite, and there is a crunch: teeth, crisp flesh, air, ear and hearing-consciousness. It was not waiting inside the apple. The sweetness and the tartness arise only when the flesh meets tongue and saliva. Right after brushing your teeth it is another apple; after something very sweet, it tastes sour.

Mind. Even "apple" arises in dependence. Memory recognises the shape, language gives the word, and past experience brings the crunch and the sweetness before you have bitten. The thought "this is an apple" is one more appearing, with its own conditions.

The knot. Each sense gives only its own appearing: this hardness, this red, this scent, this crunch, this sweetness. None of them gives an apple standing out there on its own. Mental formation, from the habitual tendencies of the inherent framework, does the rest. It ties the separate appearings into one solid thing, as if hardness, red and sweetness all belonged to a hidden core underneath. And it puts that thing "out there", on its own, with a "me" in here holding it. That is the impression of holding an external apple.

Search for the apple apart from its conditions, and it is not found. Search for the holder apart from the holding, and that is not found either. There is just this hardness, this red, this coolness, this sweetness, vivid, appearing as their conditions come together. Nothing is lost. You can still eat the apple, share it and plant its seeds. It functions because it is dependently arisen: an apple that stood on its own, unchanging and unrelated, could never ripen, be bitten or feed anyone.

The senses give appearings. The habit ties them into an apple out there. Untied, nothing is missing: just this, vivid and light.

The same knot, told from the side of light. The five aggregates are all here: form (the hardness, the red), feeling (the sweetness is pleasant), perception (the shape recognised as "apple"), formations and consciousness (touch, seeing, tasting, each its own stream, unmixed). The knot is the aggregate of formations. Dzogchen tells the same movement from the side of light. Each aggregate, freed, is one of five lights; grasped as something standing over there, the lights harden into solid elements, a solid world and a solid body. So the habit that ties the appearings into an apple out there is the grasping that hardens the lights. Untied, the aggregates are seen as display: many vivid streams of appearing, with no core underneath and no one holding them. This is also what the rainbow body is, in essence: a realization, not the body disappearing. The lights are not a stuff beneath the aggregates. They name the aggregates' own clarity, as empty as they are.

The clarity, mistaken as self and Self

Every appearing is clear: seen, heard, known. This clear, vivid knowing is what the tradition calls the nature of mind, its luminous clarity. When it is mistaken, it becomes "me", the one who sees. When that is seen through, it is easily mistaken again, as "Self": a pure witness, a vast awareness behind everything, the background the world appears in.

But the clarity is the appearing's own. It is not a light shining from somewhere behind. It is singled out like everything else, with its conditions, and searched for, it is not found apart from what appears. The seeing is no different from the seen. Not a seer behind it, and not found apart from it. Clear, knowing and empty, with no one knowing it, and no ground beneath it.

So when the steps say "designation", read it this way: this vivid, clear appearing, singled out, dependent, and not found. Awareness is not a second thing beside it. It too is not found, and it too is never found apart from what appears and its conditions.

The taste and the logic meet here

Direct taste meets the appearing as vivid, clear and knowing, with no one knowing it: in seeing, just the seen. The logic meets the same appearing and finds nothing standing on its own: not found when searched, and arising only in dependence. The logic says it is empty. The taste says it is luminous. These are not two things, and neither is a ground beneath the other.

That is why, when you look at any phenomenon, any dharma, what it actually is, is just this: its being not found, and its arising in dependence. Not a property it has. What it is.

Reading the steps this way

Step 1 sets the two logics side by side. Each is a way of meeting this appearing.
Step 2 aims only at the "on its own" added to the appearing, never at the appearing.
Step 3 searches for what is designated, and finds only the appearing, singled out and dependent.
Step 4 shows that the two truths are this appearing, met two ways.
Steps 5 and 6 show why no "it" behind the appearing can be, not be, last or end.
Step 7 shows the appearing working fully, with nothing behind it.
Step 8 gives four questions to ask of anything that appears.

Each step ends by gathering its "beyond the moment" examples back into this one appearing.

Try it

Hear a sound. Notice it is already "this sound", picked out, before any word. Then notice what it stands out against, and what it comes with. Is there a sound left over, apart from those?
Pick up a piece of fruit. Go through the senses one by one: the hardness, the colour, the scent, the taste. Then look for the fruit apart from them, and for the one holding it.
Look at your hand. It is already "a hand", singled out, vivid. Look for a hand apart from its being singled out. Look for the one doing the singling out. Do not argue. Just look.
Notice the clarity: everything is already known, without effort. Look for where the knowing comes from. Is it behind the scene, or is it just the scene, bright and clear?

The chain, 2 of 7. Next: Decoding Anatta and MMK Chapter 3, why anatta and Nāgārjuna are one insight, and how it ends in spontaneous presence.

Seeing Comes First: the four key insights after anatta.
Vivid and Nowhere: What a Phenomenon Is.
The Illusion of the Given: why experience is not a raw given under the words.
Step 3: Designated, Not Found.
Decoding Anatta and MMK Chapter 3: in seeing, just the seen.
Luminosity: the clarity, as empty as everything else.

Words to know

Dharma (phenomenon): Whatever can be experienced or known, conditioned or unconditioned. Everything is dharma, and no dharma holds its own mark.
Conditioned and unconditioned (saṃskṛta, asaṃskṛta): Made by conditions, like every sight and thought, or not made by them, like space and nirvāṇa. Both are empty (MMK 7.33).
Singling out: Picking out a "this". It needs no words, and it is already dependent.
Designation (prajñapti): Not a label on a bare appearance. The appearing itself, singled out in dependence.
Mark (nimitta): What is recognised as "this". Taking marks as standing on their own is the grasping; seeing them as empty is the signless.
Luminous clarity: The clear knowing of every appearing. Not a light behind it, and as empty as everything else.