Many thanks for your letter. Your joke about the government's ceiling on its land and the consequent lack of rain for my leaky cistern is in the worst of bad taste. Yesterday morning the cement (at last) arrived, and, it being cool, I decided to do the lining of the cistern at once. Of course, in the afternoon we had buckets of rain (or should I say buckets of pentagons?), which stopped, and threatened to ruin, my work (I had to finish it by lamplight at eleven o'clock when the rain stopped). This was doubly unfortunate; for not only did it interfere with my work on the cistern but it also came a day or so too soon -- the cistern wasn't ready. However, I now have a tar barrel, and I managed to catch about forty gallons in that, which is better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick. And it has given me a change of bath water in the field.

...As regards the word "Law" in "Law of Thought", I quite agree with you -- but I didn't invent the term, and do not insist that "A is A", for example, is a Law (whatever else it may be).

Is and ought and must. The equivocation(s) involved here (I feel there are several) have all somehow got packed into the simple word "duty", which means "what other people want one to do", but which clothes this rather too naked idea in the robes of Authority (the Law, the universal -- cf. Judge William --; God; the People; etc. etc.). "Duty", I feel, "is".

The pentagons are fascinating -- I think that henceforth I shall always prefer liquid to either solids or gases. Liquids consist entirely of misfits. Is there something ontological in this?

I now discover that I have been doing some double-think -- thinking two different things in contradiction. It fails, however, to be mauvaise foi, since they were in two separate departments of my thinking, and the contradiction became clear when these departments were brought together (mauvaise foi requires both terms of the contradiction to be intentionally thought at once -- one must think a contradiction). The discovery of this has already changed my point of view quite considerably, and may do so even more when all the repercussions have become manifest. In the Sketch I said "What I call my 'self' is precisely the something that on every occasion of change remains unchanged". This was the first time I said it. The last time I said it was in my last letter to you, where I wrote that "I am always the invariant of whatever transformation is taking place". But I have also been trying to work out things from first principles via Kummer, and in doing so I decided (independently) that the structure of the "self" is something quite different. Now it is quite true to say that the subject (or consciousness) is the invariant of each transformation, but -- as I had unwittingly assumed -- the subject is not the self (or "I"). There is, in fact, one transformation in which the "self", and not the subject, is the invariant, and that is death (indeed it was in thinking about death that I was led to the discovery of my contradiction): in death the gratuitous element of experience (the five indriyas) changes, whereas the necessary element ("I" or self) is invariant, but since the difference between gratuity and necessity is absolute or ultimate this transformation is the exception and not the rule. (The Sketch no longer proves rebirth, though it is still on the right lines.) In any other change there are both a gratuitous and a necessary element in both what changes and what is invariant -- in other words the subject-object distinction is at right angles to the gratuity-necessity distinction. This is to say that it is wrong to understand the subject-object distinction as equivalent to I-this, where "I" is necessity, and "this" is gratuity: the proper distinction (in the non-arahat) is I-Mine, where the necessary is represented on both sides. (I should, perhaps, make it clear that by 'necessity' I mean 'what must be', but seen in the immediacy of one's experience as being that which is opposed to the gratuitous or absurd -- the self is important, it is what matters, there simply could not not be my self, I cannot possibly conceive my own non-existence [whereas the characteristic of the gratutitous is precisely that it might just as well not be as be -- I can well conceive that this lamp, apart from its being "mine", might not exist. And also I might quite well be (doing) something else.])

Now, on my (erroneous) assumption that subject = self, I had come to the conclusion that since the arahat has put an end to self he has put an end to subject; but, since subject and object are inseparable, to put an end to subject is to put an end to object, and where there is neither subject nor object there is, of course, no being; and this, I thought, is why (or how) an arahat puts an end to being. But, from the Suttas, it is clear that an arahat continues to walk and talk and think and so on, and how this is possible when there is no more subject or object I could not imagine. And it was for this reason that I had been holding that an arahat (or rather any Sutta describing one) is incomprehensible and contradictory. Such Suttas are only to be understood -- so I was forced to conclude -- by "one who is himself an arahat. But now all this is changed. The arahat has not put an end to subject, he has put an end to necessity (which is "I" in the subject and "mine" in the object): an arahat is pure gratuity -- in a manner of speaking he is just the five indriyas (cf. the Itivuttaka Sutta on sa- and an-upádisesa parinibbána) --, but gratuity is present in both subject and object. Now what is required in order to walk and talk and think and, in general, to be conscious, is the Kummer hierarchy (which is the structure of the negative), and Kummer depends on subject-and-object, and not on necessity-and-gratuity. If you have the Kummer hierarchy with necessity and gratuity you have the non-arahat; and if you have it with gratuity alone you have arahat. (I now see that Kummer allows self but doesn't require or imply it.) And, since the arahat has put an end to necessity, there is no invariant, when he dies, to require that a fresh gratuity (or five indriyas) come into being. So you see -- if you have followed me -- that all these Suttas describing arahats at once become intelligible. This, as you may well imagine, is a great step forward for me. (It might be said that there is no difficulty about such Suttas, and that they are perfectly intelligible. I shall not deny this; but this is not the point. My difficulty in the matter was that these Suttas were unintelligible on ontological or philosophical grounds, and not simply because I was unable "to imagine an arahat". I now seem to understand why these Suttas are intelligible, that is to say, I now seem to see why an arahat is possible, and not impossible -- and I can give some structural reasons.) Immediately, of course, the question of the p.s. arises -- to what extent does the p.s. apply to an arahat? The answer is rather odd -- a purely gratuitous p.s., which needs some thinking about. The key to the situation is áyu (see the Mahá Vedalla Sutta): áyu is purely gratuitous, for the very good reason that na te va áyusankhárá te vedaniyá dhammá.[1] One can, if one wishes, regard áyu as dependent upon avijjá -- but an avijjá that is strictly non-phenomenal, and when this "non-phenomenal avijjá" ceases so does áyu, and if there is no phenomenal avijjá still in existence, that is the end. In other words the whole of the p.s. applies to the arahat with the proviso that some of the terms are non-phenomenal. In practice, of course, this simply means that not all the terms of the p.s. apply to the arahat; but I put it that way to show the structure of gratuity. (Some care is needed to decide which terms apply, and which do not, bacause some terms apply in one way but not in another). All this raises the question of the proper definition of being. Either all that is phenomenal -- i.e. both pure gratuity and necessity-gratuity -- exist (in which case the arahat clearly exists) or only what depends upon (phenomenal) avijjá -- necessity(-gratuity) but not gratuity alone -- exists (in which case the arahat clearly does not exist): both definitions are possible, but we must be clear, in some contexts, which meaning we intend. (The distinction être pour-soi and être en-soi is quite invalid.)

P.S. The fine nánakada you sent me last year did not survive the cementing of the cistern. With the consent of the residents, and supposing one is available, could you send me a surplus andana from the store to serve as a bathing cloth?



[EL. 147]   28.ii.1959

A few revisions and developments of my last letter. I said that, except at death, self is the invariant of every transformation (as I had formerly thought), and I also said that the subject is the invariant. This needs some qualification. I find that there are, in every situation, three independent dualities, namely, (i) Subject-Object (viññána-námarúpa or sankhárá), (ii) Necessity-Gratuity (which, I now note, seem to correspond to the commentarial notion of kammabhava and uppattibhava -- but more of this anon), and (iii) Generality-Particularity (invariance-transformation, thitattá-aññathattá). [To visualize how these are related, you may imagine a cube divided in three ways, so: --

.]

Two lines of thought have developed from these changes, the first being the nature of death, and the second the interpretation of the p.s. I said that the Sketch no longer proves rebirth. This is true. But the argument there certainly proves something. It proves that this life has neither beginning nor end. It does not prove rebirth, for the good reason that it does not show that we can die or be born. The point is that since áyusankhárá are not vedaniyá dhammá this life is gratuitous, and its ending (death) is gratuitous. Given this life, the Sketch shows that it is without beginning or end. Death is the end of this life, that is to say, of what is given -- it is the end of gratuity. But Necessity must have gratuity (to organize), and "seizes" a fresh gratuity (or life), and this is birth. This, however, is in the realm of gratuity, and cannot be proved. It is possible, with the use of Kummer, to give an exact structural description of this life, and it is also possible to give an exact description of the ending of this life -- but this very description shows that the ending of this life is not implied by this life. If we turn our attention to our entry into this life (i.e. birth), we fare a little better. From the argument in the Sketch it is clear that, if we have not always been living this life, then we come into it when it had already been going on beginninglessly in the past. But then what were we doing all this time? The suggestion is (but it is no more than a suggestion) that we were living another life (or lives) of which this life was a possible alternative -- that this life was always going on, in the absent mode, parallel to the life we were actually living. This is on the analogy of the structure of negatives and absent possibilities in this life; but since áyusankhárá are totally out of reach of reflexion we can get no further than this. We can say that the argument of the Sketch shows that the idea of rebirth is -- on the analogy of the structure of this life -- conceivable or thinkable, that is to say, that it does not involve contradiction. This, in itself, is not negligible, since Scientific Opinion would deny it. But it does not seem possible to show that the structure of this life necessarily prohibits either annihilation (where the ending of gratuity at death would take necessity with it into a common destruction) or eternal continuation (where, even in the absence of necessity, the ending of gratuity at death would be automatically followed by the appearance of another gratuity). All that can be said is that, since this life is beginningless, either we have always been living it, or, if we have been living other lives parallel to it, then those lives did not end in annihilation. (This, it is true, is perhaps not all that can be said about annihilation and continuation, but it is all that the Sketch has to say.) When one "meets", as one does here, "the existence of a non-phenomenal structure" -- áyusankhárá --, one has to confess that there are certain limits to what one can obtain by reflexion. At this point one simply has to trust (saddhá) that the Buddha has informed us correctly. In no case, however -- except as a temporary measure ("perhaps this will become clear later") -- is faith in what is self-contradictory needed. We have to distinguish carefully between what is incomprehensible and what is impossible (or inconceivable).

About the p.s. As noted above, the distinction between Necessity and Gratuity seems to correspond to that of the Commentary between Kamma and Uppatti. This, together with the differences in kind between death/birth and any other change, seems to bring me back closer to the traditional p.s. interpretation. This is to be welcomed, since I do not disagree with the Commentary simply for the sake of disagreeing with it but because it seems to be mistaken. But this apparent return to the fold is deceptive -- now, no more than before, do I allow that the three-life interpretaion is valid, but it is now easier to see how it has arisen. The point is this. In the non-arahat there is both necessity and gratuity, or, as the commentary says, both kammabhava and uppattibhava. Now certain terms in the p.s. do not have different names according as they "contain" necessity (i.e. are associated with kamma) or not. It has, accordingly, no doubt as a welcome, though quite unjustified, simplification, been decided that they are uppatti or gratuitous, and are simply the result of kamma in the past. The first one is viññána: the viññána of the three-life scheme is uppatti, and is therefore quite the same whether found in the puthujjana or arahat. But this is not so. In the puthujjana consciousness grows (as the Suttas tell us), whereas in the arahat it stands -- tad apatitthitam viññánam avirúlham anabhisankhacca vimuttam; vimuttatá thitam...[1] (Khanda Samy. vi,2). Another is vedaná, and the discrepancy is even more evident here -- the feeling accompanying rága (for example) can by no means be described as simply the result of past kamma. It was, in fact, owing to the contradictions that I encountered in trying to reconcile the three-life interpretation with the Suttas that I abandoned it. What this interpretation fails to see is that necessity (attá, tanhá, avijjá, etc.) alters these things. (It is just like Sartre's mistake, that though we perceive more and other than we see, yet this "more" and "other" consists wholly of néants which don't really affect the object at all -- and at the end of 700 pages of L'Être et le Néant, tucked away in his metaphysical postscript, he suddenly informs us that the question of action, i.e. how we actually do change the world by our intentions, remains intact. Of course it does if you deny the possibility of its solution to begin with. N.B. I am not identifying intentional change of the world with avijjá, since the arahat also can change the world. I am only concerned here to point out that Sartre's mistake is similar to [but not the same as] the Commentator's.) The opposite one-sided interpretation we find in sankhárá, which is labelled kamma. The Sutta definition of sankhárá as it appears in the p.s. is káya-, vací-, and citta-sankháro, which, from the Cúla Vedalla Sutta (and elsewhere) we know to be assásapassásá, vitakkavicárá, and saññá and vedaná, respectively (presumably the minimum actions). It is evident that it will depend entirely upon the individual concerned (puthujjana or arahat) whether these things are kamma or uppatti. (The arahat still breathes, though he no longer acts.) In the puthujjana you have puññábhisankhárá, apuññábhisankhárá, and aneñjábhisankhárá; whereas in the arahat you have (clearly uppatti or gratuitous): --

Na me hoti Ahosin ti. Bhavissan ti na hoti me;
Sankhárá vibhavissanti: tattha ká paridevaná.

Suddham dhammasamuppádam suddham sankhárasantatim
Passantassa yathábhútam na bhayam hoti gámani.
   (Adhimutta Theragáthá 715-6)[2]

It now seems clear that the p.s., since it refers to the non-arahat (it has no need to refer to the arahat) is kamma from end to end. But -- as I mentioned before -- you can't get kamma (necessity) without uppatti (gratuity), since the former is a certain organizing of the latter. Thus it is also upppatti from end ot end. If you want to find out how the p.s. does apply to the arahat you must remove the kamma or necessity from each term, something like this: --

avijjá	->  (vijjá)
sankhárá	->  sankhárá [mine[a] ->  this]
viññána	->  viññána [I ->  Present]
námarúpa	->  námarúpa [mine ->  this]
saláyatana	->  saláyatana [Change of Orientation]
phassa	->  phassa [Avijjásamphassa ->  vijjásamphassa]
vedaná	->  vedaná [Sa-rága-dosa-moha ->  víta-rága-dosa-moha]
tanhá	->  -- [Comy. has somewhere the expression vipáka cetaná, which may serve us here.]
upádána	->  (upádána) [One Sutta in A. VIII or IX tells the arahat to do vipassaná on the pañcupádánakkhandhá, for sukhavihára. Upádána in the sense of holding or stability, purely gratuitous, of an object (but not káma, ditthi, etc.)]
bhava:
kamma	->  bhava
uppatti	->  uppatti
játi	->  (játi)
jarámarana	->  (jarámarana)

N.B. These last two I take as the two ends of the present life. In a puthujjana they will be the two ends of a kamma-associated life; whereas in the arahat they will be the two ends of a purely gratuitous life. In changing from puthujjana to arahat one does not retain the puthujjana beginning and get the arahat ending, one exchanges lines. But I am less insistent upon this particular interpretation, which I may modify. If játi is taken as the birth one is bound to have if one dies with avijjá, then of course the arahat has no játi. From the difficulty of being intelligible in this exercise one may gather that it is not an exercise that one is required to perform.

Two or three days ago, on my way to take a bath in the field, I very nearly trod on a medium sized (about three foot) tic polonga. It was lying on, or at edge of, the path, and I didn't see it until it moved, when I was then about one yard away. It moved, in a rather tired way, about four feet away, and coiled up at the foot of a small bush. I was still there when I returned.

The sandy space opposite the kuti has a rather peculiar property of magifying everything that goes on it when seen from the kuti. Squirrels look like mongooses, mongooses like foxes, dogs and jackals like wolves or calves, the small local cows like prize English bulls, and buffaloes one would almost mistake for elephants. Probably this is due to its being seen through the trees, which makes it seem further away than it really is -- it is actually twenty yards away. Perhaps you might wonder -- as I used to -- what an elephant would look like on it. I can tell you: it looks like a huge gray battleship sailing out of the jungle. It appeared at 5 p.m. the day before yesterday (the day after the polonga); I had some warning of its approach with the noise in the jungle of breaking branches, and, no doubt, I ought to have scared it away before it appeared, but there was some curiosity mixed with my apprehension, and I delayed. As soon as I let off a cracker it turned around (it had started coming up the path towards the kuti, which it had not yet seen) and sailed back into the jungle. No doubt one gets blasé about such things in the course of time, but not the first time. I had seen elephants at Yangalla, but at a greater distance, and from on top of the rock. Then, though large, they did not look so positively vast as the one that appeared on the magnifying sand patch. When they come at night, as they sometimes do, one has a double advantage -- one can't see them, and one can reach them with a torch, which they dislike. I am much braver by night. For the last week there have been elephants all around and much trumpeting by night.

Also a few days ago a young man from the village came and read (or chanted) some Sinhalese verses which he said were about me and had recently appeared in the Silumina. So I suppose that one of my visitors has been a kavi[3] (I have had two or three rather ceremonious visitors recently, so it's probably one of them). I could not follow what the verses said about me, but I was assured that they contained only good things. I hope this doesn't bring flocks of people here.

P.S. Thank you for the Ven. Nyanaponika on Belly Bhávaná. This controversy has an extraordinary vitality.

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[146.1] Life-determinations are not things to be felt (to be experienced). [Back to text]

[147.1] Unestablished and undeveloped consciousness, not having determined, is released; from being released, (there is) endurance.... [Back to text]

[147.2]

'I was' is not for me, not for me is 'I shall be': Determinations will un-be: therein what place for sighs? Pure arising of things, pure series of determinants -- For one who sees this as it is, chieftain, there is no fear. [Back to text]

[147.a] My breathing/my thinking/my feeling and perceiving. Note that to intend or to act (cetanáham kammam vadámi) is to keep an object in being; thus a given intention and a given object are the same; in this case the intention and the object are "breathing", "thinking", and "feeling-and-perceiving". (Russell says a table is an inference: Husserl says a table is an intention.) [Back to text]

[147.3] Poet. [Back to text]