Colophon

This text originally appeared in an incomparably more tastefully-formatted version in Ogdo V, out May 23rd, 2023.

The purpose of this text is the cessation of certain errors by the negation of their foundations. These errors may not disappear, but may be seen clearly, like cleaning a dirty glass. Nothing is added or taken away. The world is just so — but might, perhaps, be recalled for what it is.

This is neither a practice manual nor a received text. It is not the only way to communicate these points. It is not an initiation into or explication of any school of thought or practice, and no particular lineage or specific area of study. It makes no claims of representing any particular view passed down just so, even if sources for some of the phrasings or concepts may be easily recognised by those familiar with them; it is not held useful to here go further into any of those sources. It makes no claims of novelty or thoroughness; it only aspires to present what is correct, or at least ’true enough’.

Repetition is used throughout to establish thematic interconnections between threads that for reasons of presentation have been pulled apart; where tautologies seem to arise, they should be read as illustrations of equivalent wordings, not as attempts at proofs.

At places it is asserted that some thing, some state, condition or quality is or is not the case. It is important to here not read the negation of an assertion as the assertion of a negation, or vice versa. If it is said, “we have not established that there is nothing,” this does not mean, “we have established that there is something.” If it is said “it is not established that it is x”, this is not to say “it is established that it is not‐x.” If it is said “this is not different from that”, this is not to say “they are the same”. We mean not merely to deny a proposition, but refrain from taking a position at all — to show the question itself as without meaning. In this way, the basis for certain errors can be undone without replacing them with the basis for their equally erroneous contradictions.

We have two principal interests with respect to the contents of the world: how phenomena appear (or events occur), and that they appear at all. The questions to be asked are: what remains true when everything else has passed away? What remains true no matter what may appear, no matter the conditions? What do all things, events, states, moments of life, have in common?

1. All is experiential. 1.1. Everything appears. When we could say that an object exists, we affirm that the experience by which we know it arises. 1.2. “Experiential” means that something appears by some way of knowing. 1.2.1. As a matter of convention, we can put forward that some way of knowing is different from others; but however we make such divisions, all means of knowing, by virtue of arising at all, are necessarily experiential. 1.2.1.1. Judgment, division, union, reflection upon experiences, etc.: these all are experiences. To qualify experiences is experiential. 1.2.1.2. Thoughts and feelings, too, are sense impressions (the mind is a sense). 1.2.1.3. If it is known, if it arises, in any way whatsoever, even only insofar as being entertained as a notion, then it is experiential. 1.2.1.4. Division between senses is also experiential. Phenomena are designated as belonging to some sense or other by some quality or qualities supposed to be shared by them. This quality of ‘belonging to’ one sense instead of another is also experiential. 1.3. It does not follow that there is an audience for experiences separate from their appearing. Such an audience would not be known except by its appearing.

2. Objects to not arise independently. 2.1. All which arises and passes away, arises and passes away depending on some other, which also arises and passes away. 2.2. An object is defined as that which arises, or any composite thereof. 2.3. Any arising phenomenon arises by (‘as’) differentiation from all else. 2.3.1. 'By,' in the sense that an object depends on conditions in order to appear. 2.3.2. As’, in that for an object to be perceived qua object, means for it defined as that object and not any else. (For an object to be defined implies all that it is not.) 2.4. On the basis of prior conditions, objects appear. On the basis of current conditions, objects remain. On the basis of the change of conditions, objects change. On the basis of the conditions no longer obtaining, objects cease and pass away. 2.4.1. A fire requires a spark to come into being; it requires heat, fuel, and oxygen to sustain itself. When any of these cease, the fire goes out. 2.4.1.1. None of these in isolation from the fire might be known as such, as elements sustaining a fire. The same conditions of temperature, fuel, and oxygen that sustain the spark which lights the fire can also sustain a forest. It is by their relation to fire that these conditions become the conditions of a fire. 2.4.1.1.1. As the fire depends on the conditions of a fire to arise, remain, and pass away, so, too, the conditions of a fire depend on the fire to arise, remain, and pass away.

3. What is ultimate can neither arise nor pass away. 3.1. Any limited ultimate would be encompassed by an ultimate comprising it together with all that it is not, and would therefore not be ultimate. 3.2. An arising ultimate would have to arise by differentiation from something else.It would therefore be limited and hence, not ultimate. Therefore, the ultimate does not arise. 3.3. What does not arise cannot pass away.

4. Experience does not have a source. 4.1. A putative source for consciousness which receives outside inputs (data from sensory organs or receptors of any kind) and produces interior outputs (in the form of perceptions, thoughts, feelings, etc.), but which can only know those inputs through outputs, in fact only knows outputs. 4.1.1. Should a supposed source be found and be acted on (such as a person able to change their own brain), the act and its results would both already be outputs. 4.1.2. Any proof of causal events would also already be an output: any proof (including asserting it as self-evident) of a prospective cause for some phenomenon would have to itself consist of phenomena. 4.1.3. A source for consciousness, then, cannot be established from within consciousness. 4.1.3.1. An eye is not an object in its own field of vision. Consciousness is not an object of itself. 4.2. We distinguish daily consciousness, the stream of discrete experiences, from what we can call experience in itself. 4.2.1. A source of various discrete experiences may appear; a human brain may causally produce discrete experiences that we can qualify with ‘human’ as a term. It is not established that these discrete experiences are equivalent to experience in itself. 4.2.2. These discrete sources of discrete experiences also have sources on which they are conditioned. Then, it cannot be the case that these sources have a causal relationship with the fact of appearance, only with some discrete set of experiences or range of experiences.

5. Experience is not an object. 5.1. It is no discrete thing, no object, event, idea, realisation, state of being; no great thing, no great power, no deity; no nucleus, no essence; no collection of the same; nor is it some really existing void or lack of them, as if some hollow spot, some nihil, where one or more of them would fit. None of these will do; none of these are properly all-encompassing. 5.1.1. We might conceptualise it as an inhering quality of phenomena that they are experienced; but this is only a conceptualisation. No nucleus of experience which might inhere in phenomena is established. 5.1.1.1. No such inherent quality is to be found in any discrete thing. 5.1.2. If objects can be said to be in a dialectic with all they are not, then experience is idiolectic: not in conversation with any other, not in mutual relation to an other, not affected, not effected, and not truly comparable. 5.2. An other to experience is not established except as a nominal hypothetical label within a model. 5.2.1. Any contemplation of the supposedly nonexperiential would necessarily be experiential. 5.2.1.1. Confusion may appear between what is not experienced directly (such as a conception of what death ”is like”, what it might experientially “be like” not to experience) and what is not experienced at all. 5.2.1.1.1. The discrete experience of thinking about food differs from the discrete experience of eating food; but the food, whether hypothesised, sensed, or remembered, by virtue of being referred to at all, is nevertheless experienced — is experiential.

6. Experience is not causal. 6.1. What is not found as an entity in space cannot be lost as an entity in space. What is not found as an entity in time cannot be lost as an entity in time. 6.1.1. Time and space are not established as measurements of it. 6.1.1.1. We have not established that it is measurable at all. 6.1.1.1.1. Not one, not none, not multiple. 6.2. One can neither get further from nor closer to it. 6.3. Where might one flee from experience? 6.4. Experience can be no single linguistic device, more or less than any other; not a verb, not a noun, not a preposition, not any word, not any grammatical relation. 6.5. Without establishing it as an entity to be changed, without establishing it as having some other by which to compare it, without establishing some means of measure, on what basis would we call it ‘the same,’ compared even to itself?

7. Experience is not attained. 7.1. With no means to get further away, one has no means to get closer. As it can neither be arrived at nor departed from by any causal means or lack thereof, it cannot be the case that there is any ultimate state attainable by any species of ’doing.’ 7.1.1. ‘Nondoing’ as the cessation of performing an activity, ‘to do what doing will not’, is only a species of doing. 7.1.2. Is it of use to consider this from the perspective of ‘use’? Utility or lack thereof is a causal consideration. How could experience be given value without an other by which to compare it? 7.2. Discrete experiences do have causes and effects. 7.2.1. Awareness of the “experientialness” of events is causal and has effects.

8. Experience is not different from the mode of appearances. 8.1. Experience is not different from objects arising, remaining, changing, and passing away. It is not different from objects lacking a nucleus or point of fixation. It is not an essence; yet in this manner do objects arise and pass away. 8.1.1. How things arise, and that they arise at all, then, are not truly separate subjects. 8.2. It is no thing, but all things display it. 8.3. Appearance itself cannot be said to have fault or flaw. It cannot be said to be lacking, cannot be said to be helped or harmed, here or there. All these hopes and fears and anxieties, so habitual and familiar, all too fitting for the vagaries of daily life, have no use here. What is not broken does not need fixing. 8.4. Were these not‐two‐things truly different, they would have some other to themselves. Knowing them to not have any other, whatever arises is understood as appearance, as having experience as its mode.

Beings seek satisfaction, to be satisfied and to avoid dissatisfaction. Ignorant of the nature of appearances, they attribute different natures to appearances. They then base their satisfaction and dissatisfaction on attributed natures, on discrete appearances, on conditioned phenomena; and so their satisfaction is itself conditioned, contingent on the arising and persisting of temporary phenomena. Because it remains subject to arising and falling away, whatever its extent or conditions, conditioned satisfaction is not ultimately satisfying. Understanding the nature of appearances, basing satisfaction on what neither arises nor passes away, then satisfaction does not pass away.