Name-and-form: Form is the static of name. Name is the dynamic of form.

The association of ideas is the intersection of fields.

Dhamma is subjective intention. Sankhára is objective intention, or the product of intention -- the breaths; thoughts and pondering; feeling and perception (all objective as in námarúpa).

'But according to our conclusions, the laws of physics are a property of the frame of thought in which we represent our knowledge of the objective content, and thus far physics has been unable to discover any laws applying to the objective content itself.' Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science, p. 217

'That my will moves my arm is not more intelligible to me than if somebody said to me that he could stop the moon in its orbit.' I. Kant, Dreams of a Spirit Seer, p. 117

'I dotti di regola nimangono dotti.' K. E. Neumann

There is no 'conflict of feelings': our present attitude (however brief) is stable at all levels of feeling.

Craving is the gradient of feeling (unpleasant -> pleasant).

Self-consciousness (conscience (de)) -- to feel
Consciousness of (conscience de) -- to perceive
You feel a feeling, but you perceive (not a percept but) matter. And in perceiving matter you feel a feeling.
The perceiving of matter is a percept; a percept is pleasant, painful, or neutral; thus perceiving matter and feeling a feeling are inseparable.
A feeling is cakkhusamphassajá vedaná (i.e. (of))
A perception is rúpasaññá (i.e. of)

Matter is the inertia of objects, the sluggishness of things.

'L'esprit de sérieux... [The spirit of seriousness has two characteristics: it considers values as transcendent givens independent of human subjectivity, and it transfers the quality of 'desirable' from the ontological structure of things to their simple material constitution] ...constitution matérielle.' Sartre, p. 721 [Being and Nothingness, p. 626]

'A spokesman for the masculine inverts stated the bisexual theory in its crudest form in the following words: "It is a female brain in a male body." But we do not know the characteristics of a "female brain". The substitution of the anatomical for the psychological is as frivolous as it is unjustified.' Freud, Three Contributions

'Our own death is indeed unimaginable, and whenever we make the attempt to imagine it we can perceive that we really survive as spectators. Hence the psychoanalytic school could venture on the assertion that at bottom no one believes in his own death, or to put the same thing in another way, in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.' Freud, 'Thought on War and Death', Collected Papers IV, p. 304

'A word as the point of junction of a number of ideas, possesses, as it were, a predestined ambiguity.' Freud, Interpretation of Dreams (The field of points of transition from one idea to another.)

To be actual is to be possessed of a hierarchical organization approaching a limit. This must not be confused with the independence of the object, although they are usually associated. In fact there sometimes occur non-actual objects that are independent, and also all action consists in preventing some particular aspect of independence.

Feeling exists as self-consciousness (of) feeling.
Self-consciousness (of) feeling is craving (gradient of feeling).
Craving (gradient of feeling) exists as self-consciousness (of) craving.
Self-consciousness (of) craving (gradient of feeling) is series of feeling (of lower order).
Each feeling (of lower order) exists as self-consciousness (of) feeling.
Thus we have self-consciousness (of) feeling is self-consciousness (of) series of self-consciousness (of) feeling (of lower order).

Patigha is an arbitrary step-change in the gradient of feeling, it is the source of resistances -- but there must already be a gradient of feeling, that is to say, action.[12]

'Nous ne cherchons jamais les choses, mais la recherche des choses.' Pascal XXIV[13]

Indeterminacy is a pause in determinacy, and I am that pause.
Time is a pause in instantaneousness, and I am temporalization.

All my possibilities exist now in various degrees of absence, and my being consists simply in choosing which one shall be present.

'It is, of course, the ideal of science to reach unambiguous answers to all such general questions of fact. The assumption is that,[14] with appropriate methods of study, any question can in time be properly answered.' J. B. Rhine, Journal of Parapsychology, June 1956

To get from one space to another takes time: to get from one time to another takes space.

You have other fish to fry.

You are breaking the deterministic laws of Science every time you allow an electron to shift.

 ____| Two spaces in the same time*
|                                      \
|                                       }  Transcendence
|   _| Two times in the same space     /
|  |
|  |_| Pathavim maññati - he conceives earth
|    | Pathaviyá maññati - he conceives internality of earth
|
|____| Pathavito maññati - he conceives externality of earth
     | Pathavim me ti maññati - he conceives 'earth is mine'

* Time has thickness = 1. This defines time.

A star, unlike a planet, having no size, must needs twinkle. There is more in this than meets the eye.

An unchequered colour, too, being rigorously equivalent to a point, must twinkle.

What does Humanity care?

'The thinker who can forget in all his thinking also to think that he is an existing individual, will never explain life. He merely makes an attempt to cease to be a human being, in order to become a book or an objective something, which is possible only for a Munchausen. ...' S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 85

If there exists at all an absolute system -- that is, one to which the group property applies -- then there exists an observer whose sole property is to conceive only absolute systems. And this observer is himself an absolute system. Thus, if the group property applies anywhere, it applies everywhere. If the observer should remark 'All systems are absolute: all things are things', he himself is included in its scope.

If any thing exists at all, it exists as an absolute system. Now an absolute system possesses the group property. But if an absolute system is to exist there must also exist an observer for whom that absolute system exists: that is to say the observer must have the property of conceiving absolute systems, and since he, too, exists, he must be an absolute system. Thus, if any thing exists at all, it must possess a group structure such as will account also for an absolute observer for whom that thing is a thing. And since the observer exists, he will need a further observer for whom to exist. Thus the group structure must justify its own application or validity.

Truth is = 'Truth is' is. And so on. Cf. S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 170.

'When the question of truth is raised in an objective manner, reflection is directed objectively to the truth, as an object to which the knower is related. Reflection is not focussed on the relationship, however, but upon the question of whether it is the truth to which the knower is related. If only the object to which he is related is the truth, the subject is accounted to be in the truth. When the question of truth is raised subjectively, reflection is directed subjectively to the nature of the individual's relationship: if only the mode of this relationship is in the truth, the individual is in the truth even if he should happen to be related to what is not true.' (ibid. p. 170)

'But the absolute difference between God and man consists precisely in this, that man is a particular existing being..., while God is infinite and eternal.' (ibid. p. 193) God, then, is not an existing being: he does not exist, that is to say. How, then, can he be anything (whether it is infinite or eternal, or what you will)? This is where K. goes off the rails.

'God does not exist, he is eternal.' (ibid. p. 296)

If 'Truth is' is the truth, then 'Truth is' is; which proves it.

...Absolute Systems of Absolute Systems of Absolute Systems of... And it is only because every part is absolute that one might say that the whole is absolute. But we cannot, ultimately, speak of the whole; for 'existence must be revoked in the eternal before the system can round itself out; there must be no existing remainder, not even such a little minikin as the existing Herr Professor who writes the system.' (K.)

'The right way up' is the body pour-autrui. If I see that a tumbler, for example, is 'the right way up' (against a blank background and relative to my body), that is a quality of the tumbler; for my eye cannot tell which way up a tumbler is -- the tumbler must tell my eye. And 'to be the right way up' is evidence of my body, objective evidence.

To say that a particle spins is to say that for a single eye, unattached to a body, things do not appear any way up, right or wrong.

When you see the straight edge of a table, and then run your finger along it, you may say that your touch confirms your vision. But the truth is, that you were already touching the edge with your eye. Would it appear straight to an eye unprovided with muscles?

Pure vision can only give coloured blocks (extension -- and, strictly, not even spatial extension -- and colour, but not direction[15]): all outline (or direction) comes of our faculty of moving the eye bodily. (Our tongue gives us only blocks of taste.)

Our body, perhaps, gives us only blocks of direction (thus, direction has no spatial extension). (That is, if we consider that hot and cold and the like are another sense.)

The body (muscular) The body (tactile)

} will this do?

(The second to be further subdivided -- temperature, pressure, ? etc.) Gravity, then, would be the intersection of the spin of the body (muscular) and that of the body (tactile-pressure). Gravity is the being 'the right way up', not merely relative to the body, but of the body.

In each sense there is non-spatial extension, if by space we understand direction [which is confined to the body (muscular)]. This extension is the ajjhattikáyatana, while the colour (for example) or the direction is bahiddhá. (Being the relation between two successive colours -- i.e. the temporal aspect.) [Direction, then, is time-like!]

Movement occurs when the object of one of two intersecting senses changes its transcendence independent of the other. In order that the object shall continue to be the same in both something has to give. Since the eye gets the directional orientation of its objects from the body it has no objection if the body changes it. A change in visual directional orientation (i.e. peripheral movement) is simply a unilateral bodily (muscular) change in orientation.

Eternity (or samsára), when seen as the sum of individual things or experiences, each of which is impermanent, is comic; when seen as the unchanging or permanent structure of these things or experiences, it is pathetic. An exister is in existence, and he can (if he wishes) look at structure (the Dhamma) from the point of view of content (of dhammas) and the tragic will appear, and he can look at content from the point of view of structure (with the Dhamma behind him) and the comic will appear. There is no other point of view, nor is there anything else to see. In immediacy structure does not appear, that is to say that the tragic does not appear; and when the tragic does not appear neither does the comic. Only in sheer reflexion do they both appear, and then reciprocally. Suddham dhammasamuppádam suddham sankhárasantatim (Theragáthá 716). The first is comic, the second pathetic.

'He who would only hope is cowardly, he who would only recollect is a voluptuary, but he who wills repetition is a man, and the more expressly he makes his purpose clear, the deeper he is as a man.' Kierkegaard, Repetition, p. 5

'Repetition is reality and it is the seriousness of life. He who wills repetition is matured in seriousness.' p. 6 (Repetition = uniformity of structure, i.e. sankhárasantatim.)

'The only possible way of drawing a distinction between thought and action is to relegate thought to the sphere of the possible, the disinterested, the objective, and to assign action to the sphere of the subjective. But along this boundary there appears a twilight zone. Thus when I think that I will do this or that, this thought is not yet an action, and in all eternity it is qualitatively distinct from action; nevertheless, it is a possibility in which the interest of action and of reality already reflects itself.' S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 302

'The real action is not the external act, but an internal decision in which the individual puts an end to the mere possibility and identifies himself with the content of his thought to exist in it.' Ibid.

'The very maximum of what one human being can do for another, in relation to that wherein each man has to do solely with himself, is to inspire him with concern and unrest.' Ibid., p. 346

Humility is no more virtue than pride.

AB - AB   Same/Different AB - BA   Neither/Both AB - AB   One/Two

}

Either/Or None/Some

(i) Nothing is what two things have in common that have nothing in common.
(ii) The negative is the unification of opposites.
(iii) Two things have nothing in common -- otherwise, to the extent that they have something in common, they are one.
(iv) Mediation is the passage via the negative from one opposite to the other.

Something is related to Nothing by way of sixteen negatives, six of them negative.

For Hindus all religions are one; for Buddhists they are not. Herein they differ.

I do this because there is nothing else to be done.

À moi c'est tellement égal.[16]

Pathaví Pathaviyá Pathavito Pathavim me

:   Essence (and Existence) :   Essesnce (less Existence) -- Essence precedes :   Existence (less Essence) -- Existence precedes :   Existence (and Essence)

Does one precede two? No: duality is what is given; therefore two precedes one. But only one thing, namely duality, is given; therefore one precedes two. What, then, is given -- one or two?

Since, in practice, we cannot start with repetition, but only with a repeated thing (A) we allow A to precede always, but remain uncertain whether it is identity or repetition. The object is always an ex-subject.

'...every politically wise government knows -- and this the lovers only discover afterwards -- that man is reduced to insignificance by marriage...' S. Kierkegaard, Attack, p. 215

The Law of Entropy: any given closed system gets more and more boring.

The passage of time is the waning of interest.
The passage of space is the transfer of interest.
The passage of time the transfer of the object.
The passage of space is the waning of the object.

Nibbána is not nothing, because 'nothing' is something.

You say that in seeking what benefits me I am being selfish? And that it is better for me to be unselfish? Better for me, did you say? How selfish, then, to seek to be unselfish!

Things that are absolute are members of a group; but a thing must be a group to be absolute.

It is said of a sage that when people asked him pressingly for counsel in important affairs he invariably replied, 'But I myself am plunged even now into anxiety about an important transaction. At this very instant it may turn into frightful urgency', and so saying he would turn a deaf ear and immerse himself in meditation. And even then he only attained to heavenly rebirth.

An electron behaves like anything else.

Everything is repetition; everything is repeated. That is existence.

An operation is repetition of an operation.

'This is a dialectical qualification which must be kept sharply in mind -- only when the object exists does the desire exist, only when the desire exists does the object exist; desire and its object are twins, neither of which is born a fraction of an instant before the other. But though they are thus born at exactly the same instant, and with no time interval between, as is the case with other twins, the importance of their thus coming into existence is not that they are united, but, on the contrary, that they are separated.' S. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, O.U.P. London 1944, p. 64

Time tends to accelerate; eternity repeatedly comes to an end. This is an hierarchical secret.

If a scientist has before him two nervous systems and he wants to make a strictly objective description of them (as he is bound to do as a scientist), the two descriptions will be, except for accidentals, indistinguishable. To make his descriptions he will use whatever instruments (microscope, electroencephalograph, clock, ruler) are necessary, and his descriptions will be in terms of pointer readings on these instruments. These readings can be checked by another scientist, thus ensuring that the descriptions are truly objective. The scientist's function is limited to setting up the apparatus, noting the readings, and arranging the results to form a coherent picture.
   Now it may happen that whenever an identical stimulus is applied in turn to the two nervous systems (say A and B) the scientist notices a pain as the stimulus is applied to A, but not as it is applied to B. Since, however, the pointer readings on the instruments are essentially the same as the stimulus is applied to A as it is applied to B, the scientist cannot admit the pain as distinguishing stimulus of A from stimulus of B; for he is limited to the data provided by his instruments. He is bound to conclude that 'pain' does not enter into the scientific description of nervous systems. For example, there is no way of telling whether the pain was 'caused' by stimulus of A or by the scientist's leaning on a drawing pin every time he stimulated A but not when he stimulated B.
   It might be, however, that he would wish to account for the occurence of pain together with stimulus of A and its non-occurence together with stimulus of B. He cannot (as noted above) say that pain distinguishes stimulus of A from stimulus of B, but he might perhaps say, 'A is my nervous system; B is somebody else's nervous system'; therefore stimulus of A causes pain in me, and stimulus of B causes pain in somebody else; there is pain in both cases, which is why the pointer readings are the same.' But how does the scientist know that A is his nervous system and B not, seeing that the instruments make no distinction? If another scientist is collaborating with the first, both will observe the same pointer readings, as noted above. But this second scientist may come to the conclusion, 'B is my nervous system, A is somebody else's.' Which is the objective scientific truth -- 'A is my nervous system' or 'B is my nervous system'?

--Why do you punish?
--I am a Judge, and it is a Judge's duty to punish.
--It is a Judge's duty to punish, true; but is it your duty to be a Judge?

If anything is, everything else is.

The eye is exactly as large as what it sees.

Both theist and atheist accept the laws of common sense, now known as the laws of science, as certainly true, as not admitting of exceptions. The theist, however, admits that exceptions to these laws do occur, and he calls these exceptions 'God'. God, thus, both does not exist, since exceptions to these laws cannot occur, and does exist, since exceptions to these laws do in fact occur. God is a logical contradiction. The atheist, on the other hand, will not admit that such exceptions occur, and asserts that God does not exist, that there is no God. It might be thought that he has resolved this logical contradiction by his denial of the attribute of existence to God. But no. Since, in fact, exceptions to these laws of common sense or science do occur, the atheist is in effect saying, 'These laws do not admit of exceptions; but exceptions to them do occur, and this is God; but these exceptions that do occur do not occur, and God, who both does not exist and does exist, does not exist.' The atheist, thus, accepts the theist's God before denying him, and is even more deeply in contradiction than the theist.

The laws of common sense, however, are no more than probably true: the laws of science are laws of statistical probability, obtained by induction. That exceptions to them should occur is nothing wonderful, and far less an occasion for inventing God.

Matter/things are as they seem; good; but what if they fail to seem? When something seems in some degree permanent, then in fact it is failing to be wholly seen. A permanent thing, being without termination, would not be determinate, it would not be a thing. Nothing can seem wholly permanent, and, wholly to seem, a thing must seem wholly impermanent, that is, wholly determined to termination.

Q. When is a thing not a thing?
A. When it is mine.

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Footnotes:

[12] 'that is to say, action' is pencilled out --Ed. [Back to text]

[13] 'We never search for things, but for the search of things.' --Ed. [Back to text]

[14] Ven. Ñánavíra Thera's italics --Ed. [Back to text]

[15] And not even side by side -- one taste is not beside another, though it has extension. [Back to text]

[16] As for me, it is the same. --Ed. [Back to text]