Introduction
We’re speaking about affirmations and negations, which is a very important topic. This topic touches upon another very important topic, which is the topic of words and the meanings of words, and how, through words, do we actually mean something, feel something. This is crucial for meditation. It’s like, for instance, with the seven-part prayer that we do in the beginning. We could have the words correct and just recite them. We could know the meanings of all the words and recite them with the meanings, but still not have very much of an effect. We need to apply that meaning and actually feel it, generate what we are talking about, and in order to generate it, we have to know what our minds need to focus on and how they need to take that object. Otherwise, our recitation of the prayer doesn’t really have very much effect. It might have a little effect because we are saying sacred words, but it doesn’t have the same effect as when we know how to do it properly.
It’s the same thing with the praises to Manjushri (Skt. Mañjuśrī) that we also do. We can say the words; we can know what the words mean, but how to apply that? Well, there we are thinking of these qualities, Manjushri as a Buddha. These are the qualities. We think of how fantastic these are, what the causes are, how we want to achieve these same qualities, how we want to bring about the causes that will bring that about, and we’re inspired by the example of those who have done it. Then, saying the prayer with that conviction has an effect.
When meditating on voidness, which is a negation, it is very important not just to have the words be correct, and not just to know what the words mean. We have to also be convinced that the meaning is correct, that it actually corresponds to reality. Then, we have to know how to actually apply the mind in focusing on it. This topic of negations and affirmations is crucial for all of that.
There is one more point that I want to make as an introduction, which is to underline and show how important negations are in the lam-rim, the graded stages of the path. Precious human life, what are we focusing on? We’re focusing on our not having these worst states. It’s a negation. We have to know what those worst states are, where we would have no freedom to study the Dharma. Then, meditation on death; we’re not going to live forever. We don’t know when the time of our death will come. All these other things that we might do, like making a lot of money, that’s not going to help at the time of death. All of those are negations. Think of the worst rebirths. We don’t want to have that; we don’t want to experience that. It’s a negation. Refuge has to do with how we don’t want to experience these worst rebirths and also has an affirmation that going in this direction will help, so there are both.
Further, the discussion of karma, all these negative actions, they produce suffering. We don’t want to do them. We are going to restrain ourselves from acting in this way; it’s a negation. Renunciation, we don’t want rebirth, uncontrollable rebirth. We reject it. It’s a negation. The whole discussion of ethical discipline, rejecting harmful behavior. Concentration, rejecting mental wandering, dullness. We want a state that does not have that. It’s a negation. The whole Mahayana (Skt. Mahāyāna) discussion also has many negations. Equanimity, we don’t want to be attached to anybody, not angry with or repelled by anybody, not indifferent to anybody. It’s a negation. Also, to not think that we have no connection with anybody. Everybody’s been our mother; we want them to not have suffering. It is clear in the giving and taking (tonglen) meditation, first we take away so that they don’t have suffering, then we give them happiness. We want to not have self-cherishing, and don’t want to be unable to help others reach enlightenment. All of these things. We don’t want just an arhat’s peaceful nirvana (Skt. nirvāṇa). And voidness? The negation of true existence. We can see that all of these are negations, and it is very important to know how the mind focuses on them. That’s my introduction.
Review
Just to review since the material is difficult. We were speaking about various phenomena that we cognize. That’s the whole issue in Buddhism, because we are working with the mind in order to get rid of suffering. What are the various things that our minds can cognize? There are some that are existent and some that are not existent. Existent things are those things that we can validly know, validly cognize. Nonexistent things are things we might cognize, like a blur when we take our glasses off, but it is a nonexistent object; we can’t know it validly. We can validly know that it is a blur, that’s something else. To think that a blur is actually what’s out there, in reality, then that’s not a valid cognition. We need to know the difference between those two in our experience.
Within what we can validly know (existent phenomena), we saw that some were static, and some were not static. Nonstatic ones are affected by causes and conditions; they change from moment to moment, and they can affect other things. This is why I sometimes use the term “affecting variables” because they affect things, and “functional phenomena,” they perform a function, those are non-static. Static phenomena are the opposite of that. They are not affected by causes and conditions; they don’t change from moment to moment; they don’t affect anything; they don’t produce any effect, such as a category. We saw that it makes absolutely no difference how long any of these occur or exist, that’s not the distinction that is being made here. In either set of phenomena, they can have any of the four possibilities: they could exist for a limited time with both a beginning and an end; or they could exist with no beginning and no end; or they could have no beginning but an end, like samsara (Skt. saṃsāra), or ignorance, or unawareness; or they could have a beginning but no end, like a true stopping of our suffering.
Within existent validly knowable phenomena, in both these classes, static and nonstatic, some of them are affirmations, some of them are negations. Existent phenomena can be divided either into static or nonstatic, or into affirmations and negations. This is like a horizontal cut of a pie or the vertical cut of the pie. We are looking at the Gelugpa interpretation of this, and within Gelugpa, we’re looking at the Jetsunpa interpretation as the main one.
Now, we get to the definitions of an affirmation, and the definitions are given in terms of how these phenomena are conceptually known when we think them. Both types of phenomena can either be known conceptually or non-conceptually; we can either think them or see them. We can see that Simon is here today, and that is an affirmation, the presence of Simon. We can also see the absence of Brigitte; we can see that Brigitte is not here. Both of those are non-conceptual. We can also think, “Simon is here,” and we can also think, “Brigitte is not here.” That is conceptual. The definitions are given in terms of how we think them because we want to be clear in terms of the relation between words and meanings, and words are only involved with how we think. I mean, even when we just speak words, that involves a conceptual process to know these words.
Remember, we are talking about things that are validly knowable. Negations are not nonexistent. They can be validly known. The absence of Brigitte in the room can be validly known, that’s not a fiction, that’s not nonexistent.
The Definitions of Affirmation and Negation Phenomena
Now, affirmations. We’re talking about how they’re validly known conceptually, that’s how the definition is phrased. The definition is phrased in terms of how we conceptually know them, how we think them. The definition of an affirmation phenomenon is “a validly knowable phenomenon that is apprehended in a manner in which an object to be negated is not explicitly precluded by the sounds that express the phenomenon.” So, there are two parts to the definition. The first part makes a very clear distinction. The first part is that an affirmation is one in which an object to be negated has not already been previously precluded or actually cut off (“precluded” is a better word). In a negation we did previously preclude, actually preclude – the word “actually” is very important here – so, it’s to “actually preclude” something to be negated. It’s like we made a set, and in order to make this set for negation, we excluded something from that set, such as “this thing is not in this set.” We can see that obviously we have to know what we are excluding, what we have precluded, and it has to be actually precluded from that set. For an affirmation phenomenon, we did not actually preclude anything in order to form a set.
This part of the definition of an affirmation phenomenon is very clear in making a dichotomy, an actual dichotomy. “Actual dichotomy” means that something that we can validly know has to be in either one or the other category. We are not talking about two poles of an axis, like black and white. That is not an actual dichotomy, although they are the opposite of each other. It’s not that something is only black or only white, or either black or white, nothing in-between. Here this is an actual dichotomy: there is nothing in-between.
The first part of the definition specifies that an affirmation phenomenon is derived from previously having not cut off, not precluded something that we want to negate to derive this, like we were saying “apple” to get the concept of “apple,” to think “apple.” We didn’t previously have to preclude “orange” or “dog” or anything like that in order to derive “apple.” We just think “apple.” With a negation, we did have to preclude something previously. To get “not apple,” we had to preclude, we had to exclude “apple” in order to derive “not apple.”
You cannot preclude something that you haven’t affirmed before. We have to know an apple in order to exclude it.
That’s right. That’s exactly right. We have to know an apple in order to exclude it.
They are the same. An affirmation and a negation, that’s the same process. It’s a process of differentiation between things. If you differentiate between “this” and “that,” you have to know “this” is “this” and not “that.” So, you have to know both of them.
Well, this is a very good point. Because when we know “apple,” do we also know “not apple?” We touched on that a little bit before, and it has to do with how we specify something. How do we specify something? We have to specify it with “it’s not anything else,” it’s not anything other than itself. That is a different type of negation. I think we have this even in Western philosophy, can we know the “Ding an sich?” Can we know the thing in itself, or do we have to define it in terms of excluding what it is not? Which comes first, knowing what it is or excluding what it’s not? However, that’s a very deep discussion, and one that I would certainly have to think about a little bit more, and we would have to debate it. These are the types of things that we need to debate in order to really understand how the mind works.
When you learn a language, and you learn first what it is: “This is a pencil.” “Is it?” “Yes, it is a pencil.” You learn first the affirmation and then you differentiate what it is not.
Right. In learning something, first, we learn a word. We learn an acoustic pattern. If we want to think about it, that’s all that it is; it’s an acoustic pattern of sounds. One could question whether animals even consider acoustic patterns of sounds as words. Anyway, we learn a set of acoustic sounds. We learn that it is a word. Then, we have to learn the meaning of the word. A baby can say “mama mama,” but is that a word? Does the baby know what it means? As you were saying, in cognition theory, we’d first learn the meaning of the sounds. The baby didn’t have to know all the other possible sounds and exclude them in order to be able to say, “mama mama,” did it? It’s only later, when the baby knows all the sounds of words and language that the baby specifies, I want to say “ma” and not “da.” The baby didn’t even know that “da” existed, that it could make that sound. The baby learns “mother” first. The baby didn’t have to know “refrigerator” or “computer” and exclude these in order to know “mother.” But in order to know “not mother,” the baby had to know “mother.” Interesting, isn’t it?
Does the Sound of a Word Preclude Anything?
The second part of the definition of an affirmation phenomenon, “by the sounds that express the phenomenon” is trickier. The second part of the definition is talking about what is it that has the power to make this preclusion (bcad-pa) or previous exclusion (sel-ba)? What is it that does that? Is it the word, is it the sound of the words? Or is it the mind? Well, this is the interesting part of the definition, because in the definition of an affirmation phenomenon it says that – and now we are talking about an actual elimination – so, of course, the important word here is “actual,” what do we mean by “actual?”
The definition of an affirmation phenomenon has that the actual rejection is not made by the sounds of the words. In the definition of a negation phenomenon, that exclusion or preclusion is done by the power of the conceptual thought, of the mind. We had to remember what “mother” was in order to know “not mother.” Well, we didn’t have to know anything else. The baby just knows “not mama,” “Mama isn’t here;” it doesn’t know anything else. It doesn’t know “computer” or “refrigerator” in order to think “not mama,” “where is mama?”
This is the question, do words make an actual exclusion, or does thought (the cognition) make the actual exclusion? That’s the real issue that needs to be explored and where we have different interpretations. The important thing in that discussion is, does a word automatically exclude a meaning, or does it only exclude a sound? Also, does it exclude only a sound, or does it exclude a sound and a meaning? Which one is an actual exclusion? That gets into the whole philosophical discussion of, do words have meanings inherent in them? We can see that it’s a discussion that has many, many ramifications.
There are some words whose sound entails a negation, but they are so frequently used as an affirmation that it’s no longer relevant. Like, for example, “atom.” “Atom” is a negation because “a” means “non,” and “tom” means “breakable.”
This is a wonderful, wonderful example. “A” in “atom” is a negation phenomenon, and “tom” means breakable, and “temnein” is Greek for “to cut,” “to separate.” When we think “atom,” are we thinking a negation, or are we thinking an affirmation even though there is a negating word, a negating prefix in it? That is exactly the point that is so crucial in understanding that when we focus on nonstaticness, it’s actually an affirmation phenomenon, like “atom,” even though it has the prefix “non” static. To focus on “nonstatic” is very different from “not static,” in which case, “not static” is a negation phenomenon based on knowing what static is and negating it. So, it’s a very good example. It’s very clear that to derive the phenomenon, the concept of the word “atom,” we didn’t have to know what “tom” was, what something cuttable was, and negate it, actually negate it, although the sound of the word negates it. So, a very good example.
If you don’t have this explanation, you might see it differently, and Greeks might also conceptualize the word “atom” differently.
Right. This is exactly the point, and we will get to that with an example. If the person, the Greek, actually knew the word “tom” and knew all that meaning, and thought “atom,” does that make “atom” a negation phenomenon? Then, we would contradict our rule that it’s an actual dichotomy, either an affirmation or a negation. I think that we can understand this better with an easier to understand example.
Let’s go back to our definition of a negation. For a valid cognition actually to preclude an object to be negated, it has to be based on a previous apprehension of an object to be negated. An apprehension (rtogs-pa) is a cognition… I don’t know what word we’re going to use in English, as “apprehension” isn’t the greatest English word, either. Its definition is a cognition that – two things – it correctly and, secondly, decisively cognizes its involved object. It’s not only correct, but it’s decisive about it. For a valid cognition actually to preclude an object to be negated, it has to have known that object correctly and decisively. Our example will show the difference between these two.
How Do You Know “Not-Tenzin”?
Suppose I want to point out a picture of Tenzin in my photo album from my visit to India to my new friend, who doesn’t know any people in the photo album. My friend does not even know if Tenzin is a man or a woman, or even if Tenzin is Tibetan. Tenzin is a common name that Tibetans give to both men and women, and there are many Western people who also go by the name Tenzin, so it could be anybody. My friend has absolutely no idea. That’s the situation. Now, we thumb through the pages of the photo album and come to a page without a photo of Tenzin. I look at a photo of someone else on that page and I think “not Tenzin,” and my friend also thinks “not Tenzin” because I quickly turn the page. Both thoughts are correct, but there is a difference, isn’t there? We’re not talking about a photo of scenery with no people in it; obviously, that’s not Tenzin, but even then, that’s different.
How did he know the name?
I told him, “I’m going to show you Tenzin in my photo album.” I didn’t say anything else.
So, the friend associates only the name. But you, having the name in mind, you see a person who is absent.
That’s right. That’s very right. My friend is only thinking of a name, and I am thinking of a person – the meaning of the name. That’s correct. We’ll get to that; let’s not jump ahead.
Let’s just talk about it from the point of view of the cognition itself. They’re different. My thought is valid. My friend’s thought, if he meant by “not Tenzin” a person and didn’t just mean a name, if he thought that this photo of a woman really was not Tenzin – because maybe he thought that there are no women called Tenzin (in fact, there are a lot of women called Tenzin) – then his was just presumption. It was a correct guess; it wasn’t a valid cognition. That’s from the point of view of the mind, the conceptual mind. Then, the question really is, what about the object? If by “not Tenzin” he meant the same person as I did, then both my friend and I are excluding the same object, a person. If his “not Tenzin” was just words that did not refer to a specific person and my “not Tenzin” did, then we weren’t thinking of the same thing. His non-Tenzin was not decisive. It was a correct guess, but it wasn’t decisive.
This is the thing. What is it decisive of when we just think the words “not Tenzin?” It’s decisive about the word; it’s not decisive about the person, the meaning of the word. The words, the sound of the words “not Tenzin” decisively exclude the sound of the words “Tenzin,” but they don’t necessarily exclude a person, the referent object of “Tenzin.” To verbally think “not Tenzin,” of course, we had to know the word “Tenzin” before. So, is that simply the distinction that we want to make in our definitions, or do we want to make a meaning distinction? We can see how we can interpret the definitions several ways.
So, you only exclude verbally?
Right. This is the point, verbal, an exclusion of sounds and words. An exclusion of words, or an exclusion of the meanings of words, the referent objects of the words. That’s the big issue. It obviously has a lot of relevance when we talk about meditating on voidness, not true existence. What in the world are we focusing on? It’s not just a theoretical question here. We heard “not true existence,” and we have no idea what’s really meant by true existence. Then, we sit down and try to meditate on “not true existence.” We try to figure out “not true existence,” we’re thinking about the sound of the words “not true existence,” not the meaning of “true existence.”
It’s obvious that we know that the “not” is the opposite of “true existence,” but we have no idea of what true existence is. We have made an exclusion just by the power of the word, of the sound of the acoustic pattern “not,” which our society has arbitrarily decided means a negation. It doesn’t necessarily mean that to somebody who doesn’t know our language. By its own power, the acoustic pattern “not” doesn’t even necessarily exclude the word after it, let alone the meaning of the word after it.
Remember the example that I gave. Perhaps the friend thinks that Tenzin is only the name of a man and doesn’t know that it can also be the name of a woman, and so every woman that he sees in the photo, that person thinks “not Tenzin.” This is a further example where he gives a wrong meaning to the word “Tenzin.” There are many variations of what is “not Tenzin.” Is it just the words? Is it excluding something that is incorrect, like any woman being called Tenzin? Or does he have a different Tenzin in mind? He knows somebody called Tenzin and thinks “not Tenzin.” That’s the question, is the “not Tenzin” the same thing that they are thinking? Is that one phenomenon, or are we talking about different phenomena?
The friend who has no information about Tenzin – but he does have some information: he knows Tenzin must be a human being, not a dog, or a plant, or mountain, or something else in the picture. He has some information; he’s looking for a human being. So, the other person says, “No, Tenzin is not in the picture” and has in mind the full person that he knows, his friend Tenzin. He knows that Tenzin’s a woman and a certain age, etc. The difference between the two viewers of the photo is the difference in information of the topic in question, Tenzin. The friend only has very little information; he’s looking for a human. The other, who knows Tenzin, has a lot of information.
To really negate something, well, this is a very interesting question. “Not Tenzin,” this we had with the example yesterday. It’s not exactly the same example. Your example is that the person knows that Tenzin is not the name of a mountain. Maybe it is the name of a mountain, Mount Tenzin, or the name of a dog. I had a dog in India, and the name of that dog was Tsultim, which is also a human name. This person doesn’t know.
Then, he has no information?
Well, we can’t be certain. This was the example that we used yesterday. I bring my friend to India, and I want to show him a mongoose. My friend has absolutely no idea what a mongoose is, and so we see a cat. I think “not a mongoose,” and he thinks “not a mongoose.” He thinks it’s “not a mongoose” because he knows that that’s a cat, and if it were a mongoose, he would see something different. However, because he doesn’t see something different then, because of that non-perception of something else, he knows it’s not a mongoose.
Now according to one Indian non-Buddhist school of philosophy, the Mimamsaka (Skt. Mīmāṃsaka), they would say that his way of knowing is correct and a separate valid way of knowing. Buddhism would say no, because how does he know? Maybe “mongoose” is the Indian word for cat. Maybe mongoose is a type of cat. He doesn’t know. So, how much information do we have to know in order to exclude something? Do we have to just know the thing that we’re excluding (a mongoose), or do we have to know absolutely every other knowable phenomenon to know that every possible knowable phenomenon is “not Tenzin?” We can’t know every other possible knowable phenomenon; we just have to know Tenzin.
Well, if we exclude everything, can we really get the meaning? It’s only in the sense of a specifier that we get the meaning. Who is Tenzin? The “Tenzin” that I’m thinking of is “nobody other than Tenzin.” So, that specifies it. That is all that it does. That’s enough for the word to be combined with the meaning. That is the heart of the more advanced level of the discussion of negations that we really can’t go into this weekend.
We could try to describe Tenzin just by using negations by saying, well, the person is not male; she’s not got black hair, etc. But then can you actually get a picture of what Tenzin actually is just by using negations?
It all depends on how much we specify. If we try to specify everything that Tenzin is not, when could we ever really, really specify Tenzin? We can get an approximation, but it would be endless. We might forget the point of no earrings, that she never wears earrings.
So, if it’s endless, would it also be endless with “not true existence?”
No, no, it’s not endless with “not true existence;” that’s a different thing. The point is that to specify that something is nothing other than what it is – it’s not anything else. That exclusion doesn’t require actually going through everything else and individually excluding them. That is a slightly different type of exclusion. Do we actually have to go through everything else that it’s not? In other words, to know “not Tenzin” and then exclude it, what did we have to know about “not Tenzin”?
As I say, that is a much more advanced level of this whole topic, and not what I want to jump into because I really haven’t prepared that. I really, personally, have to think much more deeply on the topic because it’s very much involved with how we define a category. To formulate a category, we, basically, draw a circle around a certain set of phenomena and exclude what does not fit in the circle. That specifies the category. Then, of course, there’s a big discussion, are there actual lines around things making categories and items? This was our big discussion, remember? Findable existence – that there’s something on the side of the object that makes that line, that makes it into an item, excluding it from everything else that it is not. Prasangika (Skt. Prāsaṅgika) says, “No, that’s just mental labeling; a line doesn’t exist on the side of the object; we can’t find anything like that.”
We can see this discussion is very central to our whole understanding of what in the world is meant by mental labeling, that we can only establish the existence of things by merely mental labeling, by just the fact that the mental label refers to something. There is nothing on the side of the object that proves that it exists, that establishes its existence, not even as an item that can be known. I’m sorry that I just started talking about it, but I really don’t want to jump to an advanced level of this topic before we have really covered the basic level of the topic.
That’s exactly the point. How much are we going to exclude before we give up? If we are looking for true existence, a truly existent “me,” and we don’t find it – up our nose, or in our mind, or anything like that – when do we finally conclude that there is no such thing? Or do we have to examine every single atom of our body, and then every single atom of the universe, in order to try to find it, before we finally decide to give up and conclude that it doesn’t exist? It’s a very important question.
Let me give a good example. How does a baby learn the concept of “food?” What’s edible? A baby doesn’t know that concept. A baby tries eating everything, so does the baby actually have to try to eat absolutely everything in the universe before the baby gets the concept of food and what’s edible? However, food is a specific category that excludes everything that is “not food.” Yet there’s nothing on the side of food that sort of puts them in that category of all the possible things that are food, like a line around it, like a tag, a findable characteristic, like a stamp that says, “I am food.” There is no such thing, yet food has a definition. So, then we get into the whole discussion of… Well, I wanted to stop this, didn’t I? We get into the whole discussion of where do definitions exist. Do they exist on the side of the object or not? I couldn’t resist that. I’m sorry!
Prasangika says the definitions aren’t even on the side of the object. The defining characteristics are also made by the mind; they’re arbitrary. Just choose defining characteristics and choose categories defined by them. If that’s true in the case of food, for sure it’s true in the case of good and bad, and these sort of judgmental words.
Continuation of the Analysis of “How Do You Know Not-Tenzin?”
We had a very good example during the tea pause of how do we know who’s here? Did we have to know everybody who is not here in order to know who’s here? We certainly didn’t, but we do know that everybody who’s here is not somebody who is not here. The logical pervasions here work like that.
Let’s go back to trying to show to my friend a picture of Tenzin in my photo album from my visit to India. We are both looking, and we went through many pages, and I was thinking, “not Tenzin,” and I turn the page and “not Tenzin.” I turn the page, “not Tenzin,” and eventually, my friend expected that the next page that I looked at would also not be Tenzin, and so he thought, “not Tenzin” as well. Then, we looked at it, and it was correct, it wasn’t Tenzin, but my thought was valid; his thought was just a correct guess.
Now, what happens if we come across a photo of Tenzin, but I wasn’t paying attention and I think “not Tenzin” and my friend also thinks “not Tenzin?” That’s an error. An error message comes up, but I had a correct idea of Tenzin. My mistake was that I knew “not Tenzin,” but I applied it to the wrong object; I applied it to Tenzin. That’s an example of actually knowing what “not true existence” is but applying it to the wrong thing or applying it with the wrong meaning because I really wasn’t paying attention, which very often happens in meditation, we’re really not paying attention. I know what it means, but I’m not paying attention, so I apply it incorrectly.
Let me think of an example. We can think of it in another system, not in Madhyamaka (Skt. Mādhyamaka). Remember, we had three kinds of phenomena in Chittamatra (Skt. Cittamātra). One was totally conceptional, like categories. There are also dependent phenomena, like the table, and there are thoroughly established phenomena, like voidness. According to Chittamatra, both the table and voidness have true existence – by their definition – and categories don’t have true existence. For Chittamatra, having true existence means being an ultimate object, one that appears to an arya (Skt. ārya). For non-conceptual cognition of voidness, first the table appears and then its voidness – voidness according to the Chittamatra definition, the lack of a dependent phenomenon coming from a separate natal source than the ways of being aware of it in a nonconceptual cognition. So, in Chittamatra, only totally conceptional phenomena lack true existence.
But we get confused because we were thinking about the Prasangika system, where all phenomena lack true existence, defined as existence established from the side of the object, like with a line. Nothing exists with a line around it. So, we mistakenly think that in Chittamatra, as well, all three types of phenomena lack true existence as defined in Prasangika. We are negating the wrong object to be negated and applying it to objects for which the Chittamatra definition does not apply. So, a real mess.
In our example here of the photo album, it was more an example of we just weren’t mindful, we were inattentive, and we applied the negation phenomenon, not Tenzin, to the wrong object, Tenzin, so that could also be the case in our meditation, that we were inattentive, we forgot what the meaning was. Or it could be because we didn’t know the meaning sufficiently well. In other words, we knew the category “non-truly existent,” and it’s like we had a box, but we put too much in it of what doesn’t really belong into the box. We have the definition, so we knew what the box meant, but we put something into the box that didn’t really fulfill the definition. That’s different – that’s making a mistake – that’s different from knowing that this thing doesn’t belong in the box but putting it in by mistake because we weren’t paying attention.
All these things come up in meditation. We have to be able to identify what we are doing wrong in order to correct it. If we do not correctly identify what we are doing incorrectly, how can we correct it? It’s a very good point of negation, isn’t it? We don’t recognize correctly what we are doing incorrectly. How can we correct it and not do that? How can we know “not that,” if we don’t know precisely and decisively and correctly what we are doing wrong in order to know “not that?”
That’s why they make such a big point about subtle dullness in the meditation texts, because subtle mental dullness is very, very difficult to identify, and it is very easy to think that we have perfectly correct concentration, but we still have subtle dullness. The texts make a big, big point about really being able to distinguish it in our meditation; otherwise, we can never get rid of it. Also, if we only know the words “subtle dullness” and that perfect meditation doesn’t have that, it doesn’t really make a big difference in our meditation. That’s merely an affirmation, that perfect meditation doesn’t have subtle mental dullness. The sound of the words “not subtle dullness” negates merely the words “subtle dullness,” not subtle dullness itself. We haven’t excluded the meaning of the words.
Does anyone remember what subtle dullness is?
When you are dull without being mindful of it.
Wrong. See? He has a word, but he gives the wrong meaning to it, and he eliminates that from his meditation. Has he eliminated subtle dullness? He’s eliminated something else that he calls “subtle dullness.” This is a perfect example. His “subtle dullness” that he has removed is not the subtle dullness that we are talking about. They are two different phenomena, his subtle dullness and my subtle dullness, even though the words are the same.
Subtle dullness is lack of freshness; we’re not fresh in each moment. Being fresh is not being stale. It’s like the intention. I established the intention at the beginning of the class, but it is not fresh anymore. It has to be fresh in each moment, freshly established in each moment, and doesn’t get stale. That’s subtle dullness. It is continuously established and established freshly. It’s not that we have to go through a line of reasoning every time, every moment. It has nothing to do with whether or not our object is in sharp focus; that’s a more gross level of dullness.
Another example is we meditate on voidness, and when we started, we knew what it was, we understood. However, after we’ve been concentrated for five minutes, our understanding isn’t really fresh. It’s very weak; it’s dull. It’s not that we’ve lost it completely, that’s a grosser form of dullness. It’s not “vivid” – another word that’s used. It happens all the time. We just sink into like a trance. So, words and meanings are very important, especially if we want to exclude something from our meditation in order to meditate correctly.
I’ll give another example, an example of what you just said. You just said, Mark, “It was a half-hour ago when you said that.” Now it certainly was not a half-hour ago, but you applied the concept of “half-hour,” and you know what a half-hour is, and how long a half-hour is. You applied it incorrectly to a period of, let’s say, ten minutes. You know what a half-hour is. I mean we do this all the time.
But it could be a different convention.
Yes. You could have a different idea of what a half-hour is.
It’s a social convention to use it in that way.
Right. It’s like saying a dessert is “really bad” or “wicked,” when in colloquial American English, that means “good.” But if I didn’t know what you meant, let’s say I was a German, and as an American, you said, “Wow, this chocolate pudding dessert is really bad!” I’d get very insulted, whereas you meant that it was great.
Preclusion of a Word or of the Referent Object of a Word
What we’ve understood is that regardless of whether or not this knowable phenomenon “not Tenzin” applies or is correctly applied, the “not Tenzin” that I think when I know who Tenzin is and the “not Tenzin” that my friend thinks when he doesn’t know who Tenzin is are different. Then, the question is, are they both negations? It depends on how we understand the definitions.
Now we get to the meaning of the word “preclusion.” My Tenzin was based on the preclusion of a specific referent object of the word, “Tenzin,” of a specific person. That’s the meaning or the referent object of the word, and that’s how I derived “not Tenzin.” Mine is a negation, and that’s an actual negation. My friend, his concept of “not Tenzin” was not based on actually excluding a referent object of the word “Tenzin.” He didn’t know who Tenzin was, so he didn’t reject a person.
We look at the definition of an affirmation: no actual rejection of an object to be negated. However, he was thinking, “not Tenzin.” There was a negating word there, so is it still a negation or not? The sound of the word “not” negates the sound of the word “Tenzin.” Actually, the answer is, according to Jetsunpa, the “not Tenzin” that he’s thinking of is just an affirmation of the two words “not” and “Tenzin.” He is thinking two affirmations, two words. One happens to verbally exclude the other, but that is irrelevant. The “not Tenzin” that he is thinking is an affirmation of “not” and “Tenzin.” The “not Tenzin” that I am thinking of is a negation of a person, of a meaning, a specific referent object of Tenzin. I can think “not true existence” and have no idea what that means. It is an affirmation of the words “not” and “true existence,” and “true” and “existence.” There’s nothing else. That is not really a negation.
But if I think “not true existence,” isn’t it like rejecting some totally abstract phenomenon?
Well, if we are thinking of something abstract like, for instance, “no impossible ways of existing,” although we could say that “no true existence” would be included within the larger category of “no impossible ways of existing,” but, nevertheless, if we haven’t a clear idea of a meaning of “impossible ways of existing,” then thinking abstractly like that is much too vague. I think it would have to fall back into the category of thinking of an affirmation phenomenon with respect to the precise meaning that we want to negate here, namely “true existence.” The same thing is true in terms of thinking abstractly, “no true existence.” If we don’t have a precise meaning for that, I think that still would have to be an affirmation phenomenon.
Words themselves are affirmation phenomena. Even collections of words like, for instance, in a long definition, they’re just affirmations. The conceptual mind that knows these words didn’t have to reject anything else in order to be able to know them. I can memorize the words of a definition, for example, and know them, but not have the slightest idea of what they mean. Also, the words, from their own side, don’t have inherent in them a meaning. The meaning is something that is mentally labeled by the conceptual mind that takes these words as objects through which to cognize the meaning or a referent object of these words. It’s only when that mind, in using these words to think conceptually, actually rejects something in order to know the meaning of these words, that then the words become negations or, more precisely, “negatingly known phenomena.” That means that words or phrases that contain a word of negation can be either affirmingly known or negatingly known, depending on whether or not the mind understands the meaning of the word.
Then, we have to get into the whole issue of understanding it correctly, and also mentally labeling that word with even the accurate meaning onto an appropriate object to which it applies. Sometimes the same words are given different meanings. They have different referent objects. Like, for instance, there could be two different people called Tenzin. That doesn’t make them into the same person, even though they have the same name, and there could be two different people who are “not Tenzin.” That also doesn’t make them into the same person.
Similarly, there can be the term “true existence” and the term “no true existence” and, depending on the mind that understands them and uses them, they could be referring to two different things. Now, I’m talking about minds that actually give it a precise meaning; I’m not talking about giving it a vague meaning. If there’s only a vague meaning, then there’s no decisiveness to that mind, so it’s not a valid way of knowing. When it’s thinking with those words conceptually, then it’s thinking an affirmation phenomenon; it’s not thinking a negation phenomenon. To be more precise, it could be a valid way of thinking the words “no true existence” as an affirmation phenomenon. In other words, it’s thinking those words accurately and decisively, but it certainly is not a valid way of conceptually thinking of the meaning of these words as a negation phenomenon.
That’s very important, especially when we study Buddhism and these tenet systems, and we find out that each tenet system has quite a different definition of “true existence.” They’re all using the same word, the same set of words, and many of them say that certain phenomena don’t have that, they are not truly existent. Are they all talking about the same thing? It is a big mistake to try to understand the Prasangika definition “no true existence” with the Chittamatra definition of “no true existence” or vice versa. We know what “not true existence” is from the Prasangika point of view, and we think that’s what the Chittamatras are talking about. They’re not. The words are the same. It’s interesting because we have these expressions.
This we find in Shantideva all the time, that he’s saying the same words, and in two verses, there’s “not truly existent,” but the two verses have completely different meanings, based on how we define “not true existence,” and the words of the verse communicate both. This is the elegance of Buddha speech: with the same words, we convey many different meanings, and people understand differently; in different levels of their development, they understand differently, by the same words, that’s Buddha speech. That is why these root texts are so extraordinary. That’s why it’s called a root text; it’s a root from which different levels of meaning can grow.
I just wanted to give another example, which is that we’re an English speaker and we listen to German (or German listening to Dutch), and we hear a word that is also a word in our language, and we think it means the same thing in their language as it does in our language, and it doesn’t. That’s also a very good example. What they say makes perfectly good sense, both with the meaning of the word that we think it has in our language and the meaning of the word that it has in their language, but what we think it means is not what they think it means, but it was expressed by the same words. For example, “aktuell” in German means “current,” and “actual” in English means “real,” the same word. We read about the “aktuell Nachrichten,” the current news, and we think this is the “real” news, and everything else is trivial. Or an actual sale, that’s even better, because we see that as well. It’s like that. There are many examples.
I have a concept of what peace is, and President Bush talks about peace. He can give a whole speech about peace and have a completely different concept of what peace means from what I think. I could read his speech, or hear his speech, and think, “Oh, wonderful. He’s all for peace.” That’s a type of propaganda. They think that you mean what they want it to mean, but they really have quite a different idea. “If you accept all this surveillance equipment, you’ll be safe!”
Consider another example, the dedication we make at the end of a session, “Whatever understanding we’ve gained, may it go deeper and deeper, so we can really apply it. May it help us in our meditation to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.” Whatever understanding I have, it might not be the most precise one. Your understanding might not be your teacher’s understanding, and his understanding might not be his teacher’s understanding. All of them could be useful, though; each level could be useful. Again, we don’t throw out completely what’s not the most precise meaning, but we always try to improve it. That’s like trying to describe the person only by the negatives – that they don’t have brown hair, and they don’t have this, and they don’t have that. It’s correct that they don’t have brown hair, and it’s correct that they are not Tibetan, but we could be more precise.
Thank you.
When did Jetsunpa live?
Jetsunpa lived about 100 years after Tsongkhapa. He lived in the late 1400s, beginning of the 1500s. He was about two or three generations after Tsongkhapa. He and Panchen were the two main authors of the Gelugpa monastic textbooks – Tendarwa, as well, who was a little bit younger. However, Panchen basically interpreted in what is considered the older way. Jetsunpa was a contemporary, and he came up with rather different views. Then Tendarwa was a little bit younger but was still around at the same time. He took some of one, some of the other, and then added some of his own. Kunkyen lived about two or three hundred years later, and he took a combination of some of those three and something else.
- Tsongkhapa (Tsong-kha-pa Blo-bzang grags-pa) (1357–1419)
- Jetsunpa Chokyi Gyaltsen (rJe-btsun-pa Chos-kyi rgyal-mtshan) (1469–1544)
- Panchen Sonam Dragpa (Pan-chen bSod-nams grags-pa) (1478–1554)
- Kedrub Tendarwa (mKhas-grub dGe-‘dun bstan-pa dar-rgyas) (1493–1568)
- The First Kunkyen Jamyang Zhepa Ngawang Tsondru (Kun-mkhyen ‘Jam-dbyangs bzhad-pa Ngag-dbang brtson-‘grus) (1648–1721).