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Root of The Middle Way – Session 06

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  • Buddhist Classics and Philosophy
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  • Rangjung Yeshe Institute - Nepal
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Session 6 explores reconciling everyday perceptions with philosophical insights, especially regarding causality and reality's nature.

Session 6 focuses on Chapter 1, Verse 1 of “The Root of the Middle Way,” challenging our perception by stating, “Nowhere does anything ever arise.” It prompts discussions on causality’s alternatives: things arising from themselves, others, both, or being uncaused, ultimately seen as caused or uncaused. Discussions delve into cause and effect, considering identity, difference, or both, while questioning whether other possibilities exist.

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LanguageEnglishབོད་སྐད་English
Good morning. So, on Friday we began looking at the first verse of the first chapter, which reads, "Not from itself, not from another, not from both, and not uncaused-- Nowhere does anything ever arise." [1.1] So, before we get further into that, let's read the homage once more. "That which originates dependently does not cease and does not arise, is not annihilated and is not permanent, does not come and does not go, is not different and not the same. To the true teacher who reveals this peace, the complete pacification of constructs, to the perfect Buddha I bow down." And then we considered this very startling or bizarre claim that is made in the first verse. Nowhere does anything ever arise. Neither do things appear from themselves, nor from other things, nor from a combination of themselves and other things, and yet things are not uncaused either." And then, so it's a very bizarre and seemingly completely indefensible claim that is made, that nothing ever occurs anywhere, in any way at all. And in order to nevertheless consider it, despite the apparent nonsensical nature of the claim, then we said, "Okay, what are the assumptions that are made by making this statement?" Oh, no, not quite. How well does this statement fit with my beliefs? Is there some sort of, is there part of this that I can say, "Well, that part is something that I believe in." And then we said that the sense that something happens is something that we all agree, at least there was no one who said, "I don't believe that anything ever happens." Some said, "Maybe ultimately nothing happens," or, "I believe ultimately nothing happens," but that wouldn't mean that I don't feel or perceive or think in terms of things taking place. So as long as that's the case, then we already believers in things happening. It doesn't matter whether we then qualify it in some sense and say, "Not really happening," or, "It just seems to be that way." As long as it seems to be that way, that's good enough. We can't deny that seeming, or we wouldn't want to deny that. If someone wants to deny it, that's fine, then we can talk about that. It's more than fine if anyone would like to deny that.
So that was one simple piece of ground to cover. It does indeed seem that things occur. It's hard to deny that, if not outright impossible to deny that.
So then we noticed that the way that lack of arising is considered here is in terms of four alternatives. That things could perhaps arise from themselves, they could be caused by themselves, they could be caused by other things, they could be caused by both themselves and other things, or they could just be independent of causes. So in this way, the four alternatives come down to two alternatives, really, because things could have causes and they could also be uncaused. They could be just happening randomly, completely randomly, because if they're even a little bit not random, then there would still be some acknowledgement of causes and conditions. So there are two basic alternatives with respect to arising: caused and not caused. And then we spent some time considering whether that is a conclusive way of describing the apparent arising of things, or could there be an alternative? So I didn't make the jar yet with the names, but maybe one of you can explain what you think individually about this. Do things arise? Is that something you believe in or feel is true? Or what? And then secondly, do you think it is fair to say, in fact correct to say, that either this appearance has to be contingent on certain causes and conditions, or it has to be uncaused? And that those two basic alternatives capture all conceivable and inconceivable ways for things to arise. Anyone would like to explain what they think about that?
It's important that each one of us comes up with an account in this way, of where we are at with the reasoning. In our own minds we have to have reached some point of conclusion. When we come to the next class, then we have to have, maybe we can say, "Okay, I'm not done with thinking about this," but then we need to know what it is that we are done with thinking about. That's the only way to guarantee that something really profound will come from the contemplation. If we do that, then it's guaranteed. But if we don't, then of course it's probably not going to be very profound. I mean it might be fun and cool and so on along the way, but it's not going to be anything like what they talk about in the texts. But if we do make that effort to notice what exactly do I believe at this point? what exactly is my reply to the question that the text brought up or that we together sort of extract from the text? Then there's no question that it will be amazing. It's just an amazing fact about this text. So we can… Vijay, please. Student: "Thomas, this is first time ever in my life that I'm taking a class in a monastery, so please excuse me for my ignorance. But what you said I found it so profound was that do the things really never happen or they seemingly happen, okay?" Or just simply do I believe that things happen or not? "I believe things seemingly happen. That is my experiential level understanding. My intellectual level understanding is that things really never happen, you know. But I don't give a damn for intellectual understanding of the things as long as they are not in my behavioural conduct, you know. So I'm in the middle, I'm in the confusion. My state is that I theoretically believe that things never happen. But on an experiencer level understanding, I believe that things seemingly happen, you know. So I would like you to set some light on it, on my confusion, you know." Yeah, well, I can try to think about it at my end now and in my…
In whichever way I can participate, yeah? So thank you. I think this is again one of these issues that concern us all very much, you know. Certainly once we begin to study Buddhist philosophy or other forms of philosophy too, it could possibly make us arrive at this, who knows, maybe even some sort of, yeah. Variants of this sense could also come from some sort of scientific understanding where we perhaps say that, okay, things seem to me to be in one way but I understand or I believe that actually they have nothing to do, the way things are has nothing to do with what I see and believe that would be a variant of this kind of perception as well or this kind of belief as well, yeah. But then you say that my experience is more important, yeah? So then we have a choice, yeah, all the time to say what is more important, my experience or my understanding? And I think we probably shift, yeah, because we can't just go by experience and we can't just go by intellectual understanding. Of course what we think of as direct experience has a very sort of powerful and rich flavour but we still have to think about it, yeah? We can't just say, okay, it's so rich and so amazing so I don't need to think about it, I won't think about it. What goes on in my direct experience? We still have to make sense of it, I still have to think, okay, this was fantastic, now how do I get home? Or how can I get something to eat now? Stuff like that, those thoughts come up all the time, yeah, and there's no way of getting around those.
So the way we are equipped right now, I think it makes sense to say that we need both experience and intellectual understanding. Of course we can't go by pure intellectual understanding. Intellectual understanding is based on our experience or at least informed by experience. So they probably develop in some sort of dependency on each other, experience and understanding. Then the very strange thing that can happen is when it may begin to seem to us that there's a huge conflict between what I feel and perceive and what I actually believe is true. And especially if we begin to study this kind of philosophy or Buddhist philosophy in general, like we talked about just the absence of a personal self in the beginning of these classes. And that too seems to be very counterintuitive, that there's no enduring single individual. And yet we could find quite easily after just a little bit of contemplation that there was no basis whatsoever for that belief. So that is a very strange situation to be in. And I think it's how do we work with that profound dilemma?.. or it's worse than a dilemma. This is something that we will be addressing continuously.
So since we can't do with just experience and since we can't do with just intellectual understanding of things, now we are, and since we have the perception of things happening, it feels to us, it seems to us that things happen, now we would like to apply our intellect to that appearance and see, okay, it seems so overwhelmingly true that things happen, to the point that simply considering whether it might not be the case seems ridiculous, absurd. Nonetheless, now I will try to, if it is that clear experientially that things happen, then it should be possible also in some way to account for that rationally, that it happens and because of such and such, it must be possible to provide a somewhat okay account of why this seems so overwhelmingly to be the case. And that's what we're trying to get at now. We started out saying yes indeed, after having thought about it, we looked at our own experience and our own understanding of things. And then we recognized yes, it seems indeed to me that things arise. Now I want to see how so? Is that perception in accord with the way things actually are. I want to see how far I can get with this.
And in particular, because we hear here in the very first statement that the author makes the claim that nothing arises anywhere, nothing at all, anywhere, in any way at all. So it seems to be even including the immediate perception of arising, that that is something he says it just doesn't occur. Otherwise, why would he say nowhere does anything ever arise? He's not saying except that it may seem to be the case, but no, there's no but in this. It's a just completely unqualified denial of arising, seemingly. So let's try and see what we can do with that.
And you were going to say something about…
Student: "Yeah, I think the gentleman already answered the first thing how I would also perceive it. And yeah, I give a lot of credit to my direct perception basically, so therefore I'm more lenient to the sight of experience than to my intellectual understanding. But then I think…" It's interesting, just a comment here, it's interesting that people are different in this way. Like when people become philosophical about things, then they may go in that direction and say, "Experience is the most immediately accessible and directly meaningful." Or they may say, "But experience is so confused and unclear, so we need reason to figure out what really is going on." So it's the kind of choice we have. Like we can say, "I value this more," or "I value that more," but we can't just throw one out and keep the other. That's not an option. "Yeah, I think I do that because I work in psychiatry and I'm sort of a little bit afraid that I go cuckoo, you know, if I lose touch with the seeming reality. But still I'm not forgetting my intellectual understanding, but like little by little I try to test it maybe in my daily experience, to little by little bring it in. And the other question about cause and uncaused, yeah, I think there cannot be a third alternative. It is like, I think the German example is always a duck, you know, the bird. The bird is basically ducks and no ducks, non-ducks, you know. There's no third alternative because they're just conceptually contradictory. So therefore I think cause or uncaused or me or non-me's, yeah, there cannot be a third one." Okay, yeah, thank you.
Great, so that's an example of like having a good clear sense of where I'm at, no? Like I try to understand, analyze and investigate the nature of reality, but what I find is, seems to be in quite some contrast with what I immediately perceive. And I can't just take that in and it's also not perhaps altogether clear to me what then things are, if they aren't what they seem. But I feel that, just adding a little bit, yeah, I don't know if this is descriptive of where you're coming from, no? But what you said is a very nice example of having thought, okay, so what is it like for me? Where am I at in terms of this? So as long as we keep that up, then definitely we will learn so much. So one can feel like that and therefore it's very important that I don't forget the way things come across and that gives a grounding that would be terrible to lose. And then the question, do things arise? If they arise, is it fair to say that either they have some causal dependence or they're just uncaused and that there's no third option? And then Anna said, yeah, that makes sense to me because it's like one is the negation of the other and what would the third option be? So that's one way of, in one's own mind, settling that question. Anybody else? One from online. Okay, sure. Thank you. Okay, Andy, can you speak? Student: "Yes, can you hear me?" Yeah. "Can you hear me?" Yes. "Yes?" Yeah, thank you. "Thank you. Well, first, I just wanted to say thank you to Thomas for teaching this. It's already been quite valuable and an incredible experience, so just thank you. And second, I just wanted to preface by saying I have studied a little bit of Madhyamaka for a few years, so I'm not totally naïve, which is maybe worth nothing at all, but I just want to mention that as well. It seems to me when I investigate my experience that I sort of believe things sort of happen. They sort of happen. If my younger brother gets sick with a bacterial infection and then I need to, I will want an antibiotic to get rid of this bacterial infection. I will not be too interested in hearing that things don't arise and there are no causes. I just want to have the antibiotic from the pharmacy to give to him. But at the same time, if I'm pressed to defend a specific account of how exactly this antibiotic will get rid of this bacterial infection or is it absolutely the case that only this will cause the end of this bacterial infection, then I won't. I won't be able to defend a specific account and I will not be willing to say that absolutely this is the only factor at play here. And likewise with whether things happen or not, in my day-to-day life I will act as if they do and I'll try to find a rough correlation between things happening and some sort of rough correlation between the efficacy that my actions seem to have. But again, if I'm sort of pressed at a verbal or intellectual level to defend an absolute account, then basically I won't. I won't be willing to. So that's kind of my personal results of my investigation or your request to investigate it over the weekend." Thank you. Yeah, that's great. And I think what we can notice then here is that you then have looked at your own beliefs and your own perceptions and found a very nice example of a situation where this claim would be utterly useless. That nowhere does anything ever arise. It seems to have nothing to do with the concrete situation which clearly calls for your attention. Your brother is sick and you need to get a medicine. All of that is causal thinking of course. So basically what you're saying is, and we don't have to say, "Okay, if I believe in causality, I have to know everything about causality. I need to know exactly what is the right story about how the medicine works." That's not necessary here at all. The only thing we need to notice is precisely what you noticed already, that there is an immediate justification for believing in causes and conditions, like in the example of medicine. That person needs medicine. Without it, he will continue to suffer. And if he gets the medicine, he may be cured right away. It's a perfect, classic example of causes and conditions. So in other words, what you have arrived at very clearly and conclusively is that you believe in causes and conditions, that they have a relevance to the extent that a claim of this kind becomes, you can just forget about it. There is a situation where clearly some cause is required and if we don't get that causal constellation in place, something bad will happen. So great, you're 100% with Nāgārjuna, so to speak. To put it in those terms, you say, "Okay, he's talking about things happening or not and he's talking about causes or not. I certainly believe things happen and I certainly believe that there are causes and conditions." Thank you.
Student: "Hi Thomas. Thank you for teaching these lectures. So I have a question to you actually regarding what we've just been talking about. So you said at the beginning of the class that it's very important for us to reflect on our own experiences, what we believe in, and kind of reflect on the teachings of Nāgārjuna. And people have been sharing what they believe and their experiences. But my problem is I've basically come to the conclusion that my experience is very deluded. So experientially I think I'm deluded and intellectually I believe that I don't really know anything about the reality of things. And because of this, I don't really have a basis for me to kind of critically engage with this. I'm basically taking whatever Nāgārjuna says as right because I think experientially he's not as deluded as I am. Intellectually he's done a lot of thinking and research. So this way I'm kind of just taking whatever he says as the commandment. But you said it's important for us to reflect. So I don't know in this way how should I engage with the teachings?" Right, thank you. That's also something we can all relate to too. And we talked about that a little bit before also. Like how could I really know and have an informed opinion about this? Especially..
Even if we have just gone to school and learned about the things that we learn about in school, if we stay for several years, then we learn something about science and related topics that typically tell us that things are in ways that seem very different from what they seem. As soon as we go a little bit beyond the surface in physics, chemistry and what have you, biology or the whole range of science actually, then we find something that seems very different from what things seem to be. So how can I really, if we're talking about what reality is, how could I know that? It's a very natural hesitation or doubt to have.
So I think there are two things I would like to say about that. And one is, we talked about also in the beginning that there are two approaches to coming to understand the nature of reality. And one is the scholarly approach of learning and reflecting, resolving the view with the help of scripture and critical analysis. That is one classic highway. And then it's also possible, that process is comprehensive
and requires a lot of commitment, stamina to go through with. Typically in the monastic colleges, people spend their entire waking life immersed in scholarship, in learning, reflecting and meditating on what they learn. Getting up very early in the morning, going to bed quite late, and very little of the day is really spent in any other way. There are some breaks and meal times, but if you stay in that sort of institution, it's a very high powered environment to be in.
But it's also possible to be in a position to make an almost shortcut where this actually isn't necessary.
That is another classic approach which has been transmitted and instantiated numerous times. Many, many instances of great awakening taking place on a different path. That requires an experienced and realized teacher, and then a disciple who can connect with that type of wisdom teacher. And how can a disciple connect in that way? They say it requires 100% openness and no doubt whatsoever about the teacher and the teaching, so that you're just completely ready to take in. So that's an extremely vulnerable situation to be in. If you meet the wrong teacher, then you're done. And if you believe in reincarnation, you're done now and probably for a very long time. So it's a very, very risky space to be in. But on the other hand, if you meet an authentic teacher, then these things can happen. So again, we can try and look at ourselves and say, "Okay, I understand that there's such a thing that must be possible, that it must be possible to be introduced directly to the nature of awakened mind, whichever way we might want to phrase that. That it's possible to arrive at genuine insight without much analysis at all through some skillful interface and some extraordinary connection. But am I that kind of person who has complete, not a shadow of a doubt about this teaching being, this teacher and this teaching being able to show me reality just as it is or not? And probably many of us will feel that, "Okay, I sure believe and it's a wonderful person and those teachings are amazing. I love them. Actually, I've spent quite a few years trying to understand and practice these teachings. I try to follow my teacher and so on. That's all good, wonderful and excellent, if it is a good teacher, of course. As long as it's at least an okay teacher, then that is all great and wholesome teaching. But if we don't have that complete readiness to just receive and apply, that's also what we talked about in the beginning, that the instructions that are then given are not meant for analysis or just for us to wonder about. They're meant to be applied. And as long as we keep thinking about the instruction, we don't apply the instruction.
Am I that kind of person who is beyond wondering about the instruction and just applying or not? And I think many of us will feel that I'm not that doubt-free and that the only concern is realizing the nature of reality. Nothing else has any relevance at all. Like they say, like a starving person who has gone without food for many, many days. He or she doesn't go around wondering about many things, but only one thing matters. So are we that kind of person? And do we then have no doubt about what it is exactly that we need? Perhaps we are, but perhaps we are not. And I think especially in the common, in our time, it's probably quite likely that we aren't, because we have been taught from as long as we can remember that we have to be careful and quite skeptical and examine things well. There are good reasons for that, but it has become like our second nature. So it's very, very difficult to go about things in another way. So that was just the one thing I wanted to say. Sorry for being so, going on in such a long way. But the second thing is then that we can then connect with the scholarly approach in a profound way by studying a treatise like this one, "The Root of the Middle Way."n We don't have to necessarily spend a decade or two or three as scholars and becoming scholars, resolving the view through learning and reflection and meditation with the help of scripture and reasoning. We can spend much shorter time, as long as it's done sincerely and carefully and from the heart, then we can resolve a whole lot by just studying a treatise like this. But for us to be able to do that, then we have to take ourselves seriously. We have to say to ourselves, "Okay, to be honest, I don't feel very smart, intelligent, in terms of being able to know the nature of reality. Who could? Perhaps we feel that who could possibly know the nature of reality? Certainly not me, and to be frank, I don't think anyone actually can." That's perfectly possible that we think like that. But to benefit from the contemplation here, we have to go about it differently. We have to forget that attitude as we contemplate. And why? Again, it's just a practical matter. If we keep thinking like that, then that will be all that we ever think. Because I can't fully understand that no matter what we come to think, no matter what kind of seeming understanding we have, it won't matter that much to us. Because there's always that doubt. So that's something that we can again, something let's keep coming back to this again and again, see how it works to give oneself the guts and the pride to say, "I can understand this, why not?" And then as we go through with the investigation, what happens to that sense of not being qualified? I would like us all to remember that. Right now we probably all have that sense that I'm not really equipped to say conclusively something about the nature of reality. It may be in one way, it may be in another, and it may be in an altogether different way. Right now we probably all have that sense too, to some extent, but what happens as we keep learning and reflecting here to that sense? That sense of not being qualified. In any case, at the very beginning and throughout, it's very important that as we ponder these issues, we don't stray into that sort of thinking because it takes the whole energy out of the contemplation.
And like you said something about experience and the value of immediate experience, Vijay said so too, that there is something about experience that is just overwhelmingly real to us. So if it is that sense of something that is undeniable, it's also something that we have. And if we have that, then in a sense that's all what we need to examine here. We don't need to come up with a theory about how things actually are, we just need to look at our own perception of things. So that's an important difference. We're not asked to account for the nature of reality. We're just asked to account for what seems to be the case for me. And for example, that things happen. We don't feel unqualified to have an opinion about that, no? I think we all feel pretty qualified, no? The question, does it seem to me that things happen? I would be pressed to say, I would find it hard to say, "I don't know." So there are ways of getting at this problem.
So that was a very long answer, but it's a very important point that you make. So I hope it was somewhat helpful.
Student: "I think it is absolutely necessary for us to understand the difference between, are we talking in the realms of appearing level truth in this class or relative level truth or the absolute level truth? If we mix or if we cross the lines of each other, then we will be falling into a never-ending pit trap. My only observation was that, which language am I talking in? German, French or English? So, one day Rinpoche said that it is absolutely important for you to understand the currency in circulation. There are appearing level truths. I somehow seemingly see you in a person and you in that camera. Thomas there, Thomas in that viewfinder of that camera, which Thomas is real? So I just wanted to make a wish also." I think it's okay. "Thank you for enlightening us." It's good to spend time on these issues at the beginning and they will come up also as we go on. Because as we talked about before, the practical dimension to this is crucial. Even if we adjust after philosophical knowledge, we need to know how to approach this text. Otherwise, it's very limited or relatively speaking very limited what we can get from it. So that's another sort of classic response. Are we talking about seeming reality or ultimate reality? At this point, I don't think we need to make a distinction. If there is an appearance, a seeming reality, that's good enough. That is what we, it is that seeming perception that we then are concerned with. And we can bracket what the nature of ultimate reality may be. So, in other words, we have all asked ourselves, is it the case that when someone says things happen and this is a world of events, things take place, that I will say "yes, of course." And we have said, "yeah, obviously. This is undeniable. I can't deny that there seems to be a world where things happen. And I'm in the middle of that world together with so many others. Undeniable." And yet then we have seen that this text begins by just saying sort of blanket denial of that. It says nowhere does anything ever arise. And if we look at the commentaries, then it says in any way at all. So, it's a complete denial of arising. So we have noticed both that we have a sense of belief in things occurring and that the text denies that 100%, says that you're wrong. Then we have also looked at the question of whether if things happen in the way that we say they do, whether it makes sense to say that in that case, either they happen because of certain things and not just randomly, or they happen randomly, they have no causes. And that there are just those two options. Now we will begin to look at the first option. If things happen and we say that they happen because of causes and conditions, then does it make sense? No, let's wait with that. Then about things arising from causes, there are three alternatives presented here. Things could arise from themselves, meaning it could be that
when a seed transforms and becomes a sprout, that it's just an appearance. And in fact, the nature of the seed and the nature of the sprout are completely indistinguishable. It's the very same thing, so to speak. That would be one possibility, right? If we have accepted that there are causes and conditions that make things happen, once those causes and conditions are not there, then those things will not happen. When we have said that much, then we could say about those causes and conditions and the things that are produced, that they are actually the same. Or alternatively, we could say that they are not. A seed is a seed, a sprout is a sprout. They are different things. So cause and effect are not identical. So we have two opposites, right? The cause and effect are the same, cause and effect are different. So that again seems to divide the world in two, there are just those two options. So that seems very reductionist, but it also perhaps makes good sense to do so. Let us try to consider that, yeah? There is a third option, which would be a combination. That part of the sprout and part of the seed, part of the effect and part of the cause are the same, but not everything. There are also certain things that are different. The shape and the form of the sprout is different from the shape and the form of the seed. But maybe, who knows what, some DNA in the seed is the same in the sprout. So that would be an example of both, yeah? Does it make sense to say that if there are causes and conditions that make things arise, that are responsible for the arising of things, who knows what they are? We are not talking about the details of this at all. But does it make sense to say that if that is the case, then three options are available and only three: Cause and effect could be one and the same. Cause and effect could be different from each other. Or there could be some combination, which is the case, such that some things about the cause are the very same in the case of the effect, and yet some things that are the case about the cause are different with respect to the effect. So again, at home, try to think whether that is thoroughly conclusive to say that there are only these three options. Of course, there are myriads of things that we can say about causes and conditions and effects, which are not captured by these three options. But whatever it is that we want to say about cause and effect, it will have to be something that finds its place within this framework of either sameness of cause and effect, difference of cause and effect, or a combination. So it's important again that we investigate whether there might be a fourth way for causes and conditions to produce effects, meaning without cause and effect being the same, without them being different, and without them being both same and different. Because if there is, then the whole working of the reasoning below will not be conclusive. Because what we will be considering after this are those three options. If in fact there is a way for causes and conditions to produce effects which is not in terms of identity of cause and effect, not in terms of difference of cause and effect, and not in terms of their combination, then whatever we may, if we fail to find any justification for those three options, then we can still go about being believers in cause and effect in true and real causality, because there is that fourth option which remains without any damage. So it's important that we investigate whether there is such a fourth option possible. So please think about that at home until tomorrow. And like these people did today, prepare a little speech. It doesn't have to be a long speech at all, no, but like where did I get to about this question? and why did I reach the conclusion? or why did I stop at the point I stopped? We can begin to consider the first option.
It may be the case that there are causes and effects, as indeed it seems to us, no? This is our immediate perception, we have said. And it may also be the case that we can say about those causes and effects that they seem to be different, because the appearance of difference of cause and effect is also quite undeniable, no? The seed sure looks different than the sprout. That's why we say one is the cause of the other, no? If it was just the seed and the seed, or the sprout and the sprout, then we wouldn't call it cause and effect, no? So there is a seeming difference, but it could also be the case that that's just a misperception, or something that only seems to us, but in fact there is no difference. There are philosophical systems like that, and in terms of classic Indian thought, the Sāṃkhya school had this notion of the prakṛti principle, which is transformative, and so things seem to go in and out of existence in the world, the world that I as the aware being, the puruṣa, perceive, those things seem to go in and out of existence. But in fact it's all an illusion, and what is there, the prakṛti, is always just that. It just takes on different forms. So there are many variants of this belief, no? Not just in India, but elsewhere too. And also in science, monist ideas in the philosophy of science would be of this kind perhaps, no? So that seems thoroughly possible, once we become a little philosophical about it, no?

So yeah, in... Oh, there's very little time.

This then takes us back to what we were talking about before, actually, you know, about valuing our immediate perception of things, yeah? b Because if there's no question that seed and sprout appear different, and in that sense there's no question that seed and sprout are different, right? Like if you tell me go and find a sprout in the garden and go and find a seed, I won't confuse those two, no? So if... Then we may want to say something about the nature of cause and effect, but that's not really what we are... That's not enough to say that therefore cause and effect are entirely different, are entirely the same, yeah? We may have a philosophical point of view about this, but the whole story of cause and effect cannot be told by saying that cause and effect are the same, because they sure don't seem like that, yeah? So all the causes and effects that I meet in the world, I meet because they are not the same, yeah? So I may have something to say about why they are... I may have something to say about how they are ultimately not different from each other, but that doesn't make it possible for me to deny that causes and effects are not identical in the way that they are encountered.
So in other words, if I want to say that cause and effect are the same, because yes, I know they look different, but really they are the same, then my account is not just identity, it's a sense of the third alternative, both, yeah? Because I will have to acknowledge that cause and effect, just even as I speak these words, they are two different words, no? They are two different concepts, and all the instances of cause and effect that I meet in the world, by virtue of being instances of cause and effect, stand out as different from each other. So I may have a story to tell about ultimate identity,
and if I do, then I belong to the group of people who believe in the third alternative, not the first.

and again prepare a few lines to explain what you get from that. There are three alternatives about cause and effect: Cause and effect could be identical, they could be different from each other, or they could be same but also different. Then we considered a philosophical stance that says apparently cause and effect are different, but wait, it is just an appearance, it is just an illusion, in fact they are one and the same. Then I was saying now that that is actually not a story about identity, but it is a story about a combination of identity and difference. So this does not qualify as cause and effect being truly the same. Is this correct or not? Or are we forgetting something? Whenever you feel that there is something that seems somewhat awkward or a bit forced, then that is the sign that you should slow down and focus on that. Whenever it seems that something that I say or that the text says, or that seems to be a little okay, maybe, but... when you get that feeling often that you cannot put your finger on it, but there is just something that sounds somewhat odd, that is the time to then really zoom in on that. Okay, thank you very much and see you tomorrow.
Good morning. So, on Friday we began looking at the first verse of the first chapter, which reads, "Not from itself, not from another, not from both, and not uncaused-- Nowhere does anything ever arise." [1.1] So, before we get further into that, let's read the homage once more. "That which originates dependently does not cease and does not arise, is not annihilated and is not permanent, does not come and does not go, is not different and not the same. To the true teacher who reveals this peace, the complete pacification of constructs, to the perfect Buddha I bow down." And then we considered this very startling or bizarre claim that is made in the first verse. Nowhere does anything ever arise. Neither do things appear from themselves, nor from other things, nor from a combination of themselves and other things, and yet things are not uncaused either." And then, so it's a very bizarre and seemingly completely indefensible claim that is made, that nothing ever occurs anywhere, in any way at all. And in order to nevertheless consider it, despite the apparent nonsensical nature of the claim, then we said, "Okay, what are the assumptions that are made by making this statement?" Oh, no, not quite. How well does this statement fit with my beliefs? Is there some sort of, is there part of this that I can say, "Well, that part is something that I believe in." And then we said that the sense that something happens is something that we all agree, at least there was no one who said, "I don't believe that anything ever happens." Some said, "Maybe ultimately nothing happens," or, "I believe ultimately nothing happens," but that wouldn't mean that I don't feel or perceive or think in terms of things taking place. So as long as that's the case, then we already believers in things happening. It doesn't matter whether we then qualify it in some sense and say, "Not really happening," or, "It just seems to be that way." As long as it seems to be that way, that's good enough. We can't deny that seeming, or we wouldn't want to deny that. If someone wants to deny it, that's fine, then we can talk about that. It's more than fine if anyone would like to deny that.
So that was one simple piece of ground to cover. It does indeed seem that things occur. It's hard to deny that, if not outright impossible to deny that.
So then we noticed that the way that lack of arising is considered here is in terms of four alternatives. That things could perhaps arise from themselves, they could be caused by themselves, they could be caused by other things, they could be caused by both themselves and other things, or they could just be independent of causes. So in this way, the four alternatives come down to two alternatives, really, because things could have causes and they could also be uncaused. They could be just happening randomly, completely randomly, because if they're even a little bit not random, then there would still be some acknowledgement of causes and conditions. So there are two basic alternatives with respect to arising: caused and not caused. And then we spent some time considering whether that is a conclusive way of describing the apparent arising of things, or could there be an alternative? So I didn't make the jar yet with the names, but maybe one of you can explain what you think individually about this. Do things arise? Is that something you believe in or feel is true? Or what? And then secondly, do you think it is fair to say, in fact correct to say, that either this appearance has to be contingent on certain causes and conditions, or it has to be uncaused? And that those two basic alternatives capture all conceivable and inconceivable ways for things to arise. Anyone would like to explain what they think about that?
It's important that each one of us comes up with an account in this way, of where we are at with the reasoning. In our own minds we have to have reached some point of conclusion. When we come to the next class, then we have to have, maybe we can say, "Okay, I'm not done with thinking about this," but then we need to know what it is that we are done with thinking about. That's the only way to guarantee that something really profound will come from the contemplation. If we do that, then it's guaranteed. But if we don't, then of course it's probably not going to be very profound. I mean it might be fun and cool and so on along the way, but it's not going to be anything like what they talk about in the texts. But if we do make that effort to notice what exactly do I believe at this point? what exactly is my reply to the question that the text brought up or that we together sort of extract from the text? Then there's no question that it will be amazing. It's just an amazing fact about this text. So we can… Vijay, please. Student: "Thomas, this is first time ever in my life that I'm taking a class in a monastery, so please excuse me for my ignorance. But what you said I found it so profound was that do the things really never happen or they seemingly happen, okay?" Or just simply do I believe that things happen or not? "I believe things seemingly happen. That is my experiential level understanding. My intellectual level understanding is that things really never happen, you know. But I don't give a damn for intellectual understanding of the things as long as they are not in my behavioural conduct, you know. So I'm in the middle, I'm in the confusion. My state is that I theoretically believe that things never happen. But on an experiencer level understanding, I believe that things seemingly happen, you know. So I would like you to set some light on it, on my confusion, you know." Yeah, well, I can try to think about it at my end now and in my…
In whichever way I can participate, yeah? So thank you. I think this is again one of these issues that concern us all very much, you know. Certainly once we begin to study Buddhist philosophy or other forms of philosophy too, it could possibly make us arrive at this, who knows, maybe even some sort of, yeah. Variants of this sense could also come from some sort of scientific understanding where we perhaps say that, okay, things seem to me to be in one way but I understand or I believe that actually they have nothing to do, the way things are has nothing to do with what I see and believe that would be a variant of this kind of perception as well or this kind of belief as well, yeah. But then you say that my experience is more important, yeah? So then we have a choice, yeah, all the time to say what is more important, my experience or my understanding? And I think we probably shift, yeah, because we can't just go by experience and we can't just go by intellectual understanding. Of course what we think of as direct experience has a very sort of powerful and rich flavour but we still have to think about it, yeah? We can't just say, okay, it's so rich and so amazing so I don't need to think about it, I won't think about it. What goes on in my direct experience? We still have to make sense of it, I still have to think, okay, this was fantastic, now how do I get home? Or how can I get something to eat now? Stuff like that, those thoughts come up all the time, yeah, and there's no way of getting around those.
So the way we are equipped right now, I think it makes sense to say that we need both experience and intellectual understanding. Of course we can't go by pure intellectual understanding. Intellectual understanding is based on our experience or at least informed by experience. So they probably develop in some sort of dependency on each other, experience and understanding. Then the very strange thing that can happen is when it may begin to seem to us that there's a huge conflict between what I feel and perceive and what I actually believe is true. And especially if we begin to study this kind of philosophy or Buddhist philosophy in general, like we talked about just the absence of a personal self in the beginning of these classes. And that too seems to be very counterintuitive, that there's no enduring single individual. And yet we could find quite easily after just a little bit of contemplation that there was no basis whatsoever for that belief. So that is a very strange situation to be in. And I think it's how do we work with that profound dilemma?.. or it's worse than a dilemma. This is something that we will be addressing continuously.
So since we can't do with just experience and since we can't do with just intellectual understanding of things, now we are, and since we have the perception of things happening, it feels to us, it seems to us that things happen, now we would like to apply our intellect to that appearance and see, okay, it seems so overwhelmingly true that things happen, to the point that simply considering whether it might not be the case seems ridiculous, absurd. Nonetheless, now I will try to, if it is that clear experientially that things happen, then it should be possible also in some way to account for that rationally, that it happens and because of such and such, it must be possible to provide a somewhat okay account of why this seems so overwhelmingly to be the case. And that's what we're trying to get at now. We started out saying yes indeed, after having thought about it, we looked at our own experience and our own understanding of things. And then we recognized yes, it seems indeed to me that things arise. Now I want to see how so? Is that perception in accord with the way things actually are. I want to see how far I can get with this.
And in particular, because we hear here in the very first statement that the author makes the claim that nothing arises anywhere, nothing at all, anywhere, in any way at all. So it seems to be even including the immediate perception of arising, that that is something he says it just doesn't occur. Otherwise, why would he say nowhere does anything ever arise? He's not saying except that it may seem to be the case, but no, there's no but in this. It's a just completely unqualified denial of arising, seemingly. So let's try and see what we can do with that.
And you were going to say something about…
Student: "Yeah, I think the gentleman already answered the first thing how I would also perceive it. And yeah, I give a lot of credit to my direct perception basically, so therefore I'm more lenient to the sight of experience than to my intellectual understanding. But then I think…" It's interesting, just a comment here, it's interesting that people are different in this way. Like when people become philosophical about things, then they may go in that direction and say, "Experience is the most immediately accessible and directly meaningful." Or they may say, "But experience is so confused and unclear, so we need reason to figure out what really is going on." So it's the kind of choice we have. Like we can say, "I value this more," or "I value that more," but we can't just throw one out and keep the other. That's not an option. "Yeah, I think I do that because I work in psychiatry and I'm sort of a little bit afraid that I go cuckoo, you know, if I lose touch with the seeming reality. But still I'm not forgetting my intellectual understanding, but like little by little I try to test it maybe in my daily experience, to little by little bring it in. And the other question about cause and uncaused, yeah, I think there cannot be a third alternative. It is like, I think the German example is always a duck, you know, the bird. The bird is basically ducks and no ducks, non-ducks, you know. There's no third alternative because they're just conceptually contradictory. So therefore I think cause or uncaused or me or non-me's, yeah, there cannot be a third one." Okay, yeah, thank you.
Great, so that's an example of like having a good clear sense of where I'm at, no? Like I try to understand, analyze and investigate the nature of reality, but what I find is, seems to be in quite some contrast with what I immediately perceive. And I can't just take that in and it's also not perhaps altogether clear to me what then things are, if they aren't what they seem. But I feel that, just adding a little bit, yeah, I don't know if this is descriptive of where you're coming from, no? But what you said is a very nice example of having thought, okay, so what is it like for me? Where am I at in terms of this? So as long as we keep that up, then definitely we will learn so much. So one can feel like that and therefore it's very important that I don't forget the way things come across and that gives a grounding that would be terrible to lose. And then the question, do things arise? If they arise, is it fair to say that either they have some causal dependence or they're just uncaused and that there's no third option? And then Anna said, yeah, that makes sense to me because it's like one is the negation of the other and what would the third option be? So that's one way of, in one's own mind, settling that question. Anybody else? One from online. Okay, sure. Thank you. Okay, Andy, can you speak? Student: "Yes, can you hear me?" Yeah. "Can you hear me?" Yes. "Yes?" Yeah, thank you. "Thank you. Well, first, I just wanted to say thank you to Thomas for teaching this. It's already been quite valuable and an incredible experience, so just thank you. And second, I just wanted to preface by saying I have studied a little bit of Madhyamaka for a few years, so I'm not totally naïve, which is maybe worth nothing at all, but I just want to mention that as well. It seems to me when I investigate my experience that I sort of believe things sort of happen. They sort of happen. If my younger brother gets sick with a bacterial infection and then I need to, I will want an antibiotic to get rid of this bacterial infection. I will not be too interested in hearing that things don't arise and there are no causes. I just want to have the antibiotic from the pharmacy to give to him. But at the same time, if I'm pressed to defend a specific account of how exactly this antibiotic will get rid of this bacterial infection or is it absolutely the case that only this will cause the end of this bacterial infection, then I won't. I won't be able to defend a specific account and I will not be willing to say that absolutely this is the only factor at play here. And likewise with whether things happen or not, in my day-to-day life I will act as if they do and I'll try to find a rough correlation between things happening and some sort of rough correlation between the efficacy that my actions seem to have. But again, if I'm sort of pressed at a verbal or intellectual level to defend an absolute account, then basically I won't. I won't be willing to. So that's kind of my personal results of my investigation or your request to investigate it over the weekend." Thank you. Yeah, that's great. And I think what we can notice then here is that you then have looked at your own beliefs and your own perceptions and found a very nice example of a situation where this claim would be utterly useless. That nowhere does anything ever arise. It seems to have nothing to do with the concrete situation which clearly calls for your attention. Your brother is sick and you need to get a medicine. All of that is causal thinking of course. So basically what you're saying is, and we don't have to say, "Okay, if I believe in causality, I have to know everything about causality. I need to know exactly what is the right story about how the medicine works." That's not necessary here at all. The only thing we need to notice is precisely what you noticed already, that there is an immediate justification for believing in causes and conditions, like in the example of medicine. That person needs medicine. Without it, he will continue to suffer. And if he gets the medicine, he may be cured right away. It's a perfect, classic example of causes and conditions. So in other words, what you have arrived at very clearly and conclusively is that you believe in causes and conditions, that they have a relevance to the extent that a claim of this kind becomes, you can just forget about it. There is a situation where clearly some cause is required and if we don't get that causal constellation in place, something bad will happen. So great, you're 100% with Nāgārjuna, so to speak. To put it in those terms, you say, "Okay, he's talking about things happening or not and he's talking about causes or not. I certainly believe things happen and I certainly believe that there are causes and conditions." Thank you.
Student: "Hi Thomas. Thank you for teaching these lectures. So I have a question to you actually regarding what we've just been talking about. So you said at the beginning of the class that it's very important for us to reflect on our own experiences, what we believe in, and kind of reflect on the teachings of Nāgārjuna. And people have been sharing what they believe and their experiences. But my problem is I've basically come to the conclusion that my experience is very deluded. So experientially I think I'm deluded and intellectually I believe that I don't really know anything about the reality of things. And because of this, I don't really have a basis for me to kind of critically engage with this. I'm basically taking whatever Nāgārjuna says as right because I think experientially he's not as deluded as I am. Intellectually he's done a lot of thinking and research. So this way I'm kind of just taking whatever he says as the commandment. But you said it's important for us to reflect. So I don't know in this way how should I engage with the teachings?" Right, thank you. That's also something we can all relate to too. And we talked about that a little bit before also. Like how could I really know and have an informed opinion about this? Especially..
Even if we have just gone to school and learned about the things that we learn about in school, if we stay for several years, then we learn something about science and related topics that typically tell us that things are in ways that seem very different from what they seem. As soon as we go a little bit beyond the surface in physics, chemistry and what have you, biology or the whole range of science actually, then we find something that seems very different from what things seem to be. So how can I really, if we're talking about what reality is, how could I know that? It's a very natural hesitation or doubt to have.
So I think there are two things I would like to say about that. And one is, we talked about also in the beginning that there are two approaches to coming to understand the nature of reality. And one is the scholarly approach of learning and reflecting, resolving the view with the help of scripture and critical analysis. That is one classic highway. And then it's also possible, that process is comprehensive
and requires a lot of commitment, stamina to go through with. Typically in the monastic colleges, people spend their entire waking life immersed in scholarship, in learning, reflecting and meditating on what they learn. Getting up very early in the morning, going to bed quite late, and very little of the day is really spent in any other way. There are some breaks and meal times, but if you stay in that sort of institution, it's a very high powered environment to be in.
But it's also possible to be in a position to make an almost shortcut where this actually isn't necessary.
That is another classic approach which has been transmitted and instantiated numerous times. Many, many instances of great awakening taking place on a different path. That requires an experienced and realized teacher, and then a disciple who can connect with that type of wisdom teacher. And how can a disciple connect in that way? They say it requires 100% openness and no doubt whatsoever about the teacher and the teaching, so that you're just completely ready to take in. So that's an extremely vulnerable situation to be in. If you meet the wrong teacher, then you're done. And if you believe in reincarnation, you're done now and probably for a very long time. So it's a very, very risky space to be in. But on the other hand, if you meet an authentic teacher, then these things can happen. So again, we can try and look at ourselves and say, "Okay, I understand that there's such a thing that must be possible, that it must be possible to be introduced directly to the nature of awakened mind, whichever way we might want to phrase that. That it's possible to arrive at genuine insight without much analysis at all through some skillful interface and some extraordinary connection. But am I that kind of person who has complete, not a shadow of a doubt about this teaching being, this teacher and this teaching being able to show me reality just as it is or not? And probably many of us will feel that, "Okay, I sure believe and it's a wonderful person and those teachings are amazing. I love them. Actually, I've spent quite a few years trying to understand and practice these teachings. I try to follow my teacher and so on. That's all good, wonderful and excellent, if it is a good teacher, of course. As long as it's at least an okay teacher, then that is all great and wholesome teaching. But if we don't have that complete readiness to just receive and apply, that's also what we talked about in the beginning, that the instructions that are then given are not meant for analysis or just for us to wonder about. They're meant to be applied. And as long as we keep thinking about the instruction, we don't apply the instruction.
Am I that kind of person who is beyond wondering about the instruction and just applying or not? And I think many of us will feel that I'm not that doubt-free and that the only concern is realizing the nature of reality. Nothing else has any relevance at all. Like they say, like a starving person who has gone without food for many, many days. He or she doesn't go around wondering about many things, but only one thing matters. So are we that kind of person? And do we then have no doubt about what it is exactly that we need? Perhaps we are, but perhaps we are not. And I think especially in the common, in our time, it's probably quite likely that we aren't, because we have been taught from as long as we can remember that we have to be careful and quite skeptical and examine things well. There are good reasons for that, but it has become like our second nature. So it's very, very difficult to go about things in another way. So that was just the one thing I wanted to say. Sorry for being so, going on in such a long way. But the second thing is then that we can then connect with the scholarly approach in a profound way by studying a treatise like this one, "The Root of the Middle Way."n We don't have to necessarily spend a decade or two or three as scholars and becoming scholars, resolving the view through learning and reflection and meditation with the help of scripture and reasoning. We can spend much shorter time, as long as it's done sincerely and carefully and from the heart, then we can resolve a whole lot by just studying a treatise like this. But for us to be able to do that, then we have to take ourselves seriously. We have to say to ourselves, "Okay, to be honest, I don't feel very smart, intelligent, in terms of being able to know the nature of reality. Who could? Perhaps we feel that who could possibly know the nature of reality? Certainly not me, and to be frank, I don't think anyone actually can." That's perfectly possible that we think like that. But to benefit from the contemplation here, we have to go about it differently. We have to forget that attitude as we contemplate. And why? Again, it's just a practical matter. If we keep thinking like that, then that will be all that we ever think. Because I can't fully understand that no matter what we come to think, no matter what kind of seeming understanding we have, it won't matter that much to us. Because there's always that doubt. So that's something that we can again, something let's keep coming back to this again and again, see how it works to give oneself the guts and the pride to say, "I can understand this, why not?" And then as we go through with the investigation, what happens to that sense of not being qualified? I would like us all to remember that. Right now we probably all have that sense that I'm not really equipped to say conclusively something about the nature of reality. It may be in one way, it may be in another, and it may be in an altogether different way. Right now we probably all have that sense too, to some extent, but what happens as we keep learning and reflecting here to that sense? That sense of not being qualified. In any case, at the very beginning and throughout, it's very important that as we ponder these issues, we don't stray into that sort of thinking because it takes the whole energy out of the contemplation.
And like you said something about experience and the value of immediate experience, Vijay said so too, that there is something about experience that is just overwhelmingly real to us. So if it is that sense of something that is undeniable, it's also something that we have. And if we have that, then in a sense that's all what we need to examine here. We don't need to come up with a theory about how things actually are, we just need to look at our own perception of things. So that's an important difference. We're not asked to account for the nature of reality. We're just asked to account for what seems to be the case for me. And for example, that things happen. We don't feel unqualified to have an opinion about that, no? I think we all feel pretty qualified, no? The question, does it seem to me that things happen? I would be pressed to say, I would find it hard to say, "I don't know." So there are ways of getting at this problem.
So that was a very long answer, but it's a very important point that you make. So I hope it was somewhat helpful.
Student: "I think it is absolutely necessary for us to understand the difference between, are we talking in the realms of appearing level truth in this class or relative level truth or the absolute level truth? If we mix or if we cross the lines of each other, then we will be falling into a never-ending pit trap. My only observation was that, which language am I talking in? German, French or English? So, one day Rinpoche said that it is absolutely important for you to understand the currency in circulation. There are appearing level truths. I somehow seemingly see you in a person and you in that camera. Thomas there, Thomas in that viewfinder of that camera, which Thomas is real? So I just wanted to make a wish also." I think it's okay. "Thank you for enlightening us." It's good to spend time on these issues at the beginning and they will come up also as we go on. Because as we talked about before, the practical dimension to this is crucial. Even if we adjust after philosophical knowledge, we need to know how to approach this text. Otherwise, it's very limited or relatively speaking very limited what we can get from it. So that's another sort of classic response. Are we talking about seeming reality or ultimate reality? At this point, I don't think we need to make a distinction. If there is an appearance, a seeming reality, that's good enough. That is what we, it is that seeming perception that we then are concerned with. And we can bracket what the nature of ultimate reality may be. So, in other words, we have all asked ourselves, is it the case that when someone says things happen and this is a world of events, things take place, that I will say "yes, of course." And we have said, "yeah, obviously. This is undeniable. I can't deny that there seems to be a world where things happen. And I'm in the middle of that world together with so many others. Undeniable." And yet then we have seen that this text begins by just saying sort of blanket denial of that. It says nowhere does anything ever arise. And if we look at the commentaries, then it says in any way at all. So, it's a complete denial of arising. So we have noticed both that we have a sense of belief in things occurring and that the text denies that 100%, says that you're wrong. Then we have also looked at the question of whether if things happen in the way that we say they do, whether it makes sense to say that in that case, either they happen because of certain things and not just randomly, or they happen randomly, they have no causes. And that there are just those two options. Now we will begin to look at the first option. If things happen and we say that they happen because of causes and conditions, then does it make sense? No, let's wait with that. Then about things arising from causes, there are three alternatives presented here. Things could arise from themselves, meaning it could be that
when a seed transforms and becomes a sprout, that it's just an appearance. And in fact, the nature of the seed and the nature of the sprout are completely indistinguishable. It's the very same thing, so to speak. That would be one possibility, right? If we have accepted that there are causes and conditions that make things happen, once those causes and conditions are not there, then those things will not happen. When we have said that much, then we could say about those causes and conditions and the things that are produced, that they are actually the same. Or alternatively, we could say that they are not. A seed is a seed, a sprout is a sprout. They are different things. So cause and effect are not identical. So we have two opposites, right? The cause and effect are the same, cause and effect are different. So that again seems to divide the world in two, there are just those two options. So that seems very reductionist, but it also perhaps makes good sense to do so. Let us try to consider that, yeah? There is a third option, which would be a combination. That part of the sprout and part of the seed, part of the effect and part of the cause are the same, but not everything. There are also certain things that are different. The shape and the form of the sprout is different from the shape and the form of the seed. But maybe, who knows what, some DNA in the seed is the same in the sprout. So that would be an example of both, yeah? Does it make sense to say that if there are causes and conditions that make things arise, that are responsible for the arising of things, who knows what they are? We are not talking about the details of this at all. But does it make sense to say that if that is the case, then three options are available and only three: Cause and effect could be one and the same. Cause and effect could be different from each other. Or there could be some combination, which is the case, such that some things about the cause are the very same in the case of the effect, and yet some things that are the case about the cause are different with respect to the effect. So again, at home, try to think whether that is thoroughly conclusive to say that there are only these three options. Of course, there are myriads of things that we can say about causes and conditions and effects, which are not captured by these three options. But whatever it is that we want to say about cause and effect, it will have to be something that finds its place within this framework of either sameness of cause and effect, difference of cause and effect, or a combination. So it's important again that we investigate whether there might be a fourth way for causes and conditions to produce effects, meaning without cause and effect being the same, without them being different, and without them being both same and different. Because if there is, then the whole working of the reasoning below will not be conclusive. Because what we will be considering after this are those three options. If in fact there is a way for causes and conditions to produce effects which is not in terms of identity of cause and effect, not in terms of difference of cause and effect, and not in terms of their combination, then whatever we may, if we fail to find any justification for those three options, then we can still go about being believers in cause and effect in true and real causality, because there is that fourth option which remains without any damage. So it's important that we investigate whether there is such a fourth option possible. So please think about that at home until tomorrow. And like these people did today, prepare a little speech. It doesn't have to be a long speech at all, no, but like where did I get to about this question? and why did I reach the conclusion? or why did I stop at the point I stopped? We can begin to consider the first option.
It may be the case that there are causes and effects, as indeed it seems to us, no? This is our immediate perception, we have said. And it may also be the case that we can say about those causes and effects that they seem to be different, because the appearance of difference of cause and effect is also quite undeniable, no? The seed sure looks different than the sprout. That's why we say one is the cause of the other, no? If it was just the seed and the seed, or the sprout and the sprout, then we wouldn't call it cause and effect, no? So there is a seeming difference, but it could also be the case that that's just a misperception, or something that only seems to us, but in fact there is no difference. There are philosophical systems like that, and in terms of classic Indian thought, the Sāṃkhya school had this notion of the prakṛti principle, which is transformative, and so things seem to go in and out of existence in the world, the world that I as the aware being, the puruṣa, perceive, those things seem to go in and out of existence. But in fact it's all an illusion, and what is there, the prakṛti, is always just that. It just takes on different forms. So there are many variants of this belief, no? Not just in India, but elsewhere too. And also in science, monist ideas in the philosophy of science would be of this kind perhaps, no? So that seems thoroughly possible, once we become a little philosophical about it, no?

So yeah, in... Oh, there's very little time.

This then takes us back to what we were talking about before, actually, you know, about valuing our immediate perception of things, yeah? b Because if there's no question that seed and sprout appear different, and in that sense there's no question that seed and sprout are different, right? Like if you tell me go and find a sprout in the garden and go and find a seed, I won't confuse those two, no? So if... Then we may want to say something about the nature of cause and effect, but that's not really what we are... That's not enough to say that therefore cause and effect are entirely different, are entirely the same, yeah? We may have a philosophical point of view about this, but the whole story of cause and effect cannot be told by saying that cause and effect are the same, because they sure don't seem like that, yeah? So all the causes and effects that I meet in the world, I meet because they are not the same, yeah? So I may have something to say about why they are... I may have something to say about how they are ultimately not different from each other, but that doesn't make it possible for me to deny that causes and effects are not identical in the way that they are encountered.
So in other words, if I want to say that cause and effect are the same, because yes, I know they look different, but really they are the same, then my account is not just identity, it's a sense of the third alternative, both, yeah? Because I will have to acknowledge that cause and effect, just even as I speak these words, they are two different words, no? They are two different concepts, and all the instances of cause and effect that I meet in the world, by virtue of being instances of cause and effect, stand out as different from each other. So I may have a story to tell about ultimate identity,
and if I do, then I belong to the group of people who believe in the third alternative, not the first.

and again prepare a few lines to explain what you get from that. There are three alternatives about cause and effect: Cause and effect could be identical, they could be different from each other, or they could be same but also different. Then we considered a philosophical stance that says apparently cause and effect are different, but wait, it is just an appearance, it is just an illusion, in fact they are one and the same. Then I was saying now that that is actually not a story about identity, but it is a story about a combination of identity and difference. So this does not qualify as cause and effect being truly the same. Is this correct or not? Or are we forgetting something? Whenever you feel that there is something that seems somewhat awkward or a bit forced, then that is the sign that you should slow down and focus on that. Whenever it seems that something that I say or that the text says, or that seems to be a little okay, maybe, but... when you get that feeling often that you cannot put your finger on it, but there is just something that sounds somewhat odd, that is the time to then really zoom in on that. Okay, thank you very much and see you tomorrow.
Good morning. So, on Friday we began looking at the first verse of the first chapter, which reads, "Not from itself, not from another, not from both, and not uncaused-- Nowhere does anything ever arise." [1.1] So, before we get further into that, let's read the homage once more. "That which originates dependently does not cease and does not arise, is not annihilated and is not permanent, does not come and does not go, is not different and not the same. To the true teacher who reveals this peace, the complete pacification of constructs, to the perfect Buddha I bow down." And then we considered this very startling or bizarre claim that is made in the first verse. Nowhere does anything ever arise. Neither do things appear from themselves, nor from other things, nor from a combination of themselves and other things, and yet things are not uncaused either." And then, so it's a very bizarre and seemingly completely indefensible claim that is made, that nothing ever occurs anywhere, in any way at all. And in order to nevertheless consider it, despite the apparent nonsensical nature of the claim, then we said, "Okay, what are the assumptions that are made by making this statement?" Oh, no, not quite. How well does this statement fit with my beliefs? Is there some sort of, is there part of this that I can say, "Well, that part is something that I believe in." And then we said that the sense that something happens is something that we all agree, at least there was no one who said, "I don't believe that anything ever happens." Some said, "Maybe ultimately nothing happens," or, "I believe ultimately nothing happens," but that wouldn't mean that I don't feel or perceive or think in terms of things taking place. So as long as that's the case, then we already believers in things happening. It doesn't matter whether we then qualify it in some sense and say, "Not really happening," or, "It just seems to be that way." As long as it seems to be that way, that's good enough. We can't deny that seeming, or we wouldn't want to deny that. If someone wants to deny it, that's fine, then we can talk about that. It's more than fine if anyone would like to deny that.
So that was one simple piece of ground to cover. It does indeed seem that things occur. It's hard to deny that, if not outright impossible to deny that.
So then we noticed that the way that lack of arising is considered here is in terms of four alternatives. That things could perhaps arise from themselves, they could be caused by themselves, they could be caused by other things, they could be caused by both themselves and other things, or they could just be independent of causes. So in this way, the four alternatives come down to two alternatives, really, because things could have causes and they could also be uncaused. They could be just happening randomly, completely randomly, because if they're even a little bit not random, then there would still be some acknowledgement of causes and conditions. So there are two basic alternatives with respect to arising: caused and not caused. And then we spent some time considering whether that is a conclusive way of describing the apparent arising of things, or could there be an alternative? So I didn't make the jar yet with the names, but maybe one of you can explain what you think individually about this. Do things arise? Is that something you believe in or feel is true? Or what? And then secondly, do you think it is fair to say, in fact correct to say, that either this appearance has to be contingent on certain causes and conditions, or it has to be uncaused? And that those two basic alternatives capture all conceivable and inconceivable ways for things to arise. Anyone would like to explain what they think about that?
It's important that each one of us comes up with an account in this way, of where we are at with the reasoning. In our own minds we have to have reached some point of conclusion. When we come to the next class, then we have to have, maybe we can say, "Okay, I'm not done with thinking about this," but then we need to know what it is that we are done with thinking about. That's the only way to guarantee that something really profound will come from the contemplation. If we do that, then it's guaranteed. But if we don't, then of course it's probably not going to be very profound. I mean it might be fun and cool and so on along the way, but it's not going to be anything like what they talk about in the texts. But if we do make that effort to notice what exactly do I believe at this point? what exactly is my reply to the question that the text brought up or that we together sort of extract from the text? Then there's no question that it will be amazing. It's just an amazing fact about this text. So we can… Vijay, please. Student: "Thomas, this is first time ever in my life that I'm taking a class in a monastery, so please excuse me for my ignorance. But what you said I found it so profound was that do the things really never happen or they seemingly happen, okay?" Or just simply do I believe that things happen or not? "I believe things seemingly happen. That is my experiential level understanding. My intellectual level understanding is that things really never happen, you know. But I don't give a damn for intellectual understanding of the things as long as they are not in my behavioural conduct, you know. So I'm in the middle, I'm in the confusion. My state is that I theoretically believe that things never happen. But on an experiencer level understanding, I believe that things seemingly happen, you know. So I would like you to set some light on it, on my confusion, you know." Yeah, well, I can try to think about it at my end now and in my…
In whichever way I can participate, yeah? So thank you. I think this is again one of these issues that concern us all very much, you know. Certainly once we begin to study Buddhist philosophy or other forms of philosophy too, it could possibly make us arrive at this, who knows, maybe even some sort of, yeah. Variants of this sense could also come from some sort of scientific understanding where we perhaps say that, okay, things seem to me to be in one way but I understand or I believe that actually they have nothing to do, the way things are has nothing to do with what I see and believe that would be a variant of this kind of perception as well or this kind of belief as well, yeah. But then you say that my experience is more important, yeah? So then we have a choice, yeah, all the time to say what is more important, my experience or my understanding? And I think we probably shift, yeah, because we can't just go by experience and we can't just go by intellectual understanding. Of course what we think of as direct experience has a very sort of powerful and rich flavour but we still have to think about it, yeah? We can't just say, okay, it's so rich and so amazing so I don't need to think about it, I won't think about it. What goes on in my direct experience? We still have to make sense of it, I still have to think, okay, this was fantastic, now how do I get home? Or how can I get something to eat now? Stuff like that, those thoughts come up all the time, yeah, and there's no way of getting around those.
So the way we are equipped right now, I think it makes sense to say that we need both experience and intellectual understanding. Of course we can't go by pure intellectual understanding. Intellectual understanding is based on our experience or at least informed by experience. So they probably develop in some sort of dependency on each other, experience and understanding. Then the very strange thing that can happen is when it may begin to seem to us that there's a huge conflict between what I feel and perceive and what I actually believe is true. And especially if we begin to study this kind of philosophy or Buddhist philosophy in general, like we talked about just the absence of a personal self in the beginning of these classes. And that too seems to be very counterintuitive, that there's no enduring single individual. And yet we could find quite easily after just a little bit of contemplation that there was no basis whatsoever for that belief. So that is a very strange situation to be in. And I think it's how do we work with that profound dilemma?.. or it's worse than a dilemma. This is something that we will be addressing continuously.
So since we can't do with just experience and since we can't do with just intellectual understanding of things, now we are, and since we have the perception of things happening, it feels to us, it seems to us that things happen, now we would like to apply our intellect to that appearance and see, okay, it seems so overwhelmingly true that things happen, to the point that simply considering whether it might not be the case seems ridiculous, absurd. Nonetheless, now I will try to, if it is that clear experientially that things happen, then it should be possible also in some way to account for that rationally, that it happens and because of such and such, it must be possible to provide a somewhat okay account of why this seems so overwhelmingly to be the case. And that's what we're trying to get at now. We started out saying yes indeed, after having thought about it, we looked at our own experience and our own understanding of things. And then we recognized yes, it seems indeed to me that things arise. Now I want to see how so? Is that perception in accord with the way things actually are. I want to see how far I can get with this.
And in particular, because we hear here in the very first statement that the author makes the claim that nothing arises anywhere, nothing at all, anywhere, in any way at all. So it seems to be even including the immediate perception of arising, that that is something he says it just doesn't occur. Otherwise, why would he say nowhere does anything ever arise? He's not saying except that it may seem to be the case, but no, there's no but in this. It's a just completely unqualified denial of arising, seemingly. So let's try and see what we can do with that.
And you were going to say something about…
Student: "Yeah, I think the gentleman already answered the first thing how I would also perceive it. And yeah, I give a lot of credit to my direct perception basically, so therefore I'm more lenient to the sight of experience than to my intellectual understanding. But then I think…" It's interesting, just a comment here, it's interesting that people are different in this way. Like when people become philosophical about things, then they may go in that direction and say, "Experience is the most immediately accessible and directly meaningful." Or they may say, "But experience is so confused and unclear, so we need reason to figure out what really is going on." So it's the kind of choice we have. Like we can say, "I value this more," or "I value that more," but we can't just throw one out and keep the other. That's not an option. "Yeah, I think I do that because I work in psychiatry and I'm sort of a little bit afraid that I go cuckoo, you know, if I lose touch with the seeming reality. But still I'm not forgetting my intellectual understanding, but like little by little I try to test it maybe in my daily experience, to little by little bring it in. And the other question about cause and uncaused, yeah, I think there cannot be a third alternative. It is like, I think the German example is always a duck, you know, the bird. The bird is basically ducks and no ducks, non-ducks, you know. There's no third alternative because they're just conceptually contradictory. So therefore I think cause or uncaused or me or non-me's, yeah, there cannot be a third one." Okay, yeah, thank you.
Great, so that's an example of like having a good clear sense of where I'm at, no? Like I try to understand, analyze and investigate the nature of reality, but what I find is, seems to be in quite some contrast with what I immediately perceive. And I can't just take that in and it's also not perhaps altogether clear to me what then things are, if they aren't what they seem. But I feel that, just adding a little bit, yeah, I don't know if this is descriptive of where you're coming from, no? But what you said is a very nice example of having thought, okay, so what is it like for me? Where am I at in terms of this? So as long as we keep that up, then definitely we will learn so much. So one can feel like that and therefore it's very important that I don't forget the way things come across and that gives a grounding that would be terrible to lose. And then the question, do things arise? If they arise, is it fair to say that either they have some causal dependence or they're just uncaused and that there's no third option? And then Anna said, yeah, that makes sense to me because it's like one is the negation of the other and what would the third option be? So that's one way of, in one's own mind, settling that question. Anybody else? One from online. Okay, sure. Thank you. Okay, Andy, can you speak? Student: "Yes, can you hear me?" Yeah. "Can you hear me?" Yes. "Yes?" Yeah, thank you. "Thank you. Well, first, I just wanted to say thank you to Thomas for teaching this. It's already been quite valuable and an incredible experience, so just thank you. And second, I just wanted to preface by saying I have studied a little bit of Madhyamaka for a few years, so I'm not totally naïve, which is maybe worth nothing at all, but I just want to mention that as well. It seems to me when I investigate my experience that I sort of believe things sort of happen. They sort of happen. If my younger brother gets sick with a bacterial infection and then I need to, I will want an antibiotic to get rid of this bacterial infection. I will not be too interested in hearing that things don't arise and there are no causes. I just want to have the antibiotic from the pharmacy to give to him. But at the same time, if I'm pressed to defend a specific account of how exactly this antibiotic will get rid of this bacterial infection or is it absolutely the case that only this will cause the end of this bacterial infection, then I won't. I won't be able to defend a specific account and I will not be willing to say that absolutely this is the only factor at play here. And likewise with whether things happen or not, in my day-to-day life I will act as if they do and I'll try to find a rough correlation between things happening and some sort of rough correlation between the efficacy that my actions seem to have. But again, if I'm sort of pressed at a verbal or intellectual level to defend an absolute account, then basically I won't. I won't be willing to. So that's kind of my personal results of my investigation or your request to investigate it over the weekend." Thank you. Yeah, that's great. And I think what we can notice then here is that you then have looked at your own beliefs and your own perceptions and found a very nice example of a situation where this claim would be utterly useless. That nowhere does anything ever arise. It seems to have nothing to do with the concrete situation which clearly calls for your attention. Your brother is sick and you need to get a medicine. All of that is causal thinking of course. So basically what you're saying is, and we don't have to say, "Okay, if I believe in causality, I have to know everything about causality. I need to know exactly what is the right story about how the medicine works." That's not necessary here at all. The only thing we need to notice is precisely what you noticed already, that there is an immediate justification for believing in causes and conditions, like in the example of medicine. That person needs medicine. Without it, he will continue to suffer. And if he gets the medicine, he may be cured right away. It's a perfect, classic example of causes and conditions. So in other words, what you have arrived at very clearly and conclusively is that you believe in causes and conditions, that they have a relevance to the extent that a claim of this kind becomes, you can just forget about it. There is a situation where clearly some cause is required and if we don't get that causal constellation in place, something bad will happen. So great, you're 100% with Nāgārjuna, so to speak. To put it in those terms, you say, "Okay, he's talking about things happening or not and he's talking about causes or not. I certainly believe things happen and I certainly believe that there are causes and conditions." Thank you.
Student: "Hi Thomas. Thank you for teaching these lectures. So I have a question to you actually regarding what we've just been talking about. So you said at the beginning of the class that it's very important for us to reflect on our own experiences, what we believe in, and kind of reflect on the teachings of Nāgārjuna. And people have been sharing what they believe and their experiences. But my problem is I've basically come to the conclusion that my experience is very deluded. So experientially I think I'm deluded and intellectually I believe that I don't really know anything about the reality of things. And because of this, I don't really have a basis for me to kind of critically engage with this. I'm basically taking whatever Nāgārjuna says as right because I think experientially he's not as deluded as I am. Intellectually he's done a lot of thinking and research. So this way I'm kind of just taking whatever he says as the commandment. But you said it's important for us to reflect. So I don't know in this way how should I engage with the teachings?" Right, thank you. That's also something we can all relate to too. And we talked about that a little bit before also. Like how could I really know and have an informed opinion about this? Especially..
Even if we have just gone to school and learned about the things that we learn about in school, if we stay for several years, then we learn something about science and related topics that typically tell us that things are in ways that seem very different from what they seem. As soon as we go a little bit beyond the surface in physics, chemistry and what have you, biology or the whole range of science actually, then we find something that seems very different from what things seem to be. So how can I really, if we're talking about what reality is, how could I know that? It's a very natural hesitation or doubt to have.
So I think there are two things I would like to say about that. And one is, we talked about also in the beginning that there are two approaches to coming to understand the nature of reality. And one is the scholarly approach of learning and reflecting, resolving the view with the help of scripture and critical analysis. That is one classic highway. And then it's also possible, that process is comprehensive
and requires a lot of commitment, stamina to go through with. Typically in the monastic colleges, people spend their entire waking life immersed in scholarship, in learning, reflecting and meditating on what they learn. Getting up very early in the morning, going to bed quite late, and very little of the day is really spent in any other way. There are some breaks and meal times, but if you stay in that sort of institution, it's a very high powered environment to be in.
But it's also possible to be in a position to make an almost shortcut where this actually isn't necessary.
That is another classic approach which has been transmitted and instantiated numerous times. Many, many instances of great awakening taking place on a different path. That requires an experienced and realized teacher, and then a disciple who can connect with that type of wisdom teacher. And how can a disciple connect in that way? They say it requires 100% openness and no doubt whatsoever about the teacher and the teaching, so that you're just completely ready to take in. So that's an extremely vulnerable situation to be in. If you meet the wrong teacher, then you're done. And if you believe in reincarnation, you're done now and probably for a very long time. So it's a very, very risky space to be in. But on the other hand, if you meet an authentic teacher, then these things can happen. So again, we can try and look at ourselves and say, "Okay, I understand that there's such a thing that must be possible, that it must be possible to be introduced directly to the nature of awakened mind, whichever way we might want to phrase that. That it's possible to arrive at genuine insight without much analysis at all through some skillful interface and some extraordinary connection. But am I that kind of person who has complete, not a shadow of a doubt about this teaching being, this teacher and this teaching being able to show me reality just as it is or not? And probably many of us will feel that, "Okay, I sure believe and it's a wonderful person and those teachings are amazing. I love them. Actually, I've spent quite a few years trying to understand and practice these teachings. I try to follow my teacher and so on. That's all good, wonderful and excellent, if it is a good teacher, of course. As long as it's at least an okay teacher, then that is all great and wholesome teaching. But if we don't have that complete readiness to just receive and apply, that's also what we talked about in the beginning, that the instructions that are then given are not meant for analysis or just for us to wonder about. They're meant to be applied. And as long as we keep thinking about the instruction, we don't apply the instruction.
Am I that kind of person who is beyond wondering about the instruction and just applying or not? And I think many of us will feel that I'm not that doubt-free and that the only concern is realizing the nature of reality. Nothing else has any relevance at all. Like they say, like a starving person who has gone without food for many, many days. He or she doesn't go around wondering about many things, but only one thing matters. So are we that kind of person? And do we then have no doubt about what it is exactly that we need? Perhaps we are, but perhaps we are not. And I think especially in the common, in our time, it's probably quite likely that we aren't, because we have been taught from as long as we can remember that we have to be careful and quite skeptical and examine things well. There are good reasons for that, but it has become like our second nature. So it's very, very difficult to go about things in another way. So that was just the one thing I wanted to say. Sorry for being so, going on in such a long way. But the second thing is then that we can then connect with the scholarly approach in a profound way by studying a treatise like this one, "The Root of the Middle Way."n We don't have to necessarily spend a decade or two or three as scholars and becoming scholars, resolving the view through learning and reflection and meditation with the help of scripture and reasoning. We can spend much shorter time, as long as it's done sincerely and carefully and from the heart, then we can resolve a whole lot by just studying a treatise like this. But for us to be able to do that, then we have to take ourselves seriously. We have to say to ourselves, "Okay, to be honest, I don't feel very smart, intelligent, in terms of being able to know the nature of reality. Who could? Perhaps we feel that who could possibly know the nature of reality? Certainly not me, and to be frank, I don't think anyone actually can." That's perfectly possible that we think like that. But to benefit from the contemplation here, we have to go about it differently. We have to forget that attitude as we contemplate. And why? Again, it's just a practical matter. If we keep thinking like that, then that will be all that we ever think. Because I can't fully understand that no matter what we come to think, no matter what kind of seeming understanding we have, it won't matter that much to us. Because there's always that doubt. So that's something that we can again, something let's keep coming back to this again and again, see how it works to give oneself the guts and the pride to say, "I can understand this, why not?" And then as we go through with the investigation, what happens to that sense of not being qualified? I would like us all to remember that. Right now we probably all have that sense that I'm not really equipped to say conclusively something about the nature of reality. It may be in one way, it may be in another, and it may be in an altogether different way. Right now we probably all have that sense too, to some extent, but what happens as we keep learning and reflecting here to that sense? That sense of not being qualified. In any case, at the very beginning and throughout, it's very important that as we ponder these issues, we don't stray into that sort of thinking because it takes the whole energy out of the contemplation.
And like you said something about experience and the value of immediate experience, Vijay said so too, that there is something about experience that is just overwhelmingly real to us. So if it is that sense of something that is undeniable, it's also something that we have. And if we have that, then in a sense that's all what we need to examine here. We don't need to come up with a theory about how things actually are, we just need to look at our own perception of things. So that's an important difference. We're not asked to account for the nature of reality. We're just asked to account for what seems to be the case for me. And for example, that things happen. We don't feel unqualified to have an opinion about that, no? I think we all feel pretty qualified, no? The question, does it seem to me that things happen? I would be pressed to say, I would find it hard to say, "I don't know." So there are ways of getting at this problem.
So that was a very long answer, but it's a very important point that you make. So I hope it was somewhat helpful.
Student: "I think it is absolutely necessary for us to understand the difference between, are we talking in the realms of appearing level truth in this class or relative level truth or the absolute level truth? If we mix or if we cross the lines of each other, then we will be falling into a never-ending pit trap. My only observation was that, which language am I talking in? German, French or English? So, one day Rinpoche said that it is absolutely important for you to understand the currency in circulation. There are appearing level truths. I somehow seemingly see you in a person and you in that camera. Thomas there, Thomas in that viewfinder of that camera, which Thomas is real? So I just wanted to make a wish also." I think it's okay. "Thank you for enlightening us." It's good to spend time on these issues at the beginning and they will come up also as we go on. Because as we talked about before, the practical dimension to this is crucial. Even if we adjust after philosophical knowledge, we need to know how to approach this text. Otherwise, it's very limited or relatively speaking very limited what we can get from it. So that's another sort of classic response. Are we talking about seeming reality or ultimate reality? At this point, I don't think we need to make a distinction. If there is an appearance, a seeming reality, that's good enough. That is what we, it is that seeming perception that we then are concerned with. And we can bracket what the nature of ultimate reality may be. So, in other words, we have all asked ourselves, is it the case that when someone says things happen and this is a world of events, things take place, that I will say "yes, of course." And we have said, "yeah, obviously. This is undeniable. I can't deny that there seems to be a world where things happen. And I'm in the middle of that world together with so many others. Undeniable." And yet then we have seen that this text begins by just saying sort of blanket denial of that. It says nowhere does anything ever arise. And if we look at the commentaries, then it says in any way at all. So, it's a complete denial of arising. So we have noticed both that we have a sense of belief in things occurring and that the text denies that 100%, says that you're wrong. Then we have also looked at the question of whether if things happen in the way that we say they do, whether it makes sense to say that in that case, either they happen because of certain things and not just randomly, or they happen randomly, they have no causes. And that there are just those two options. Now we will begin to look at the first option. If things happen and we say that they happen because of causes and conditions, then does it make sense? No, let's wait with that. Then about things arising from causes, there are three alternatives presented here. Things could arise from themselves, meaning it could be that
when a seed transforms and becomes a sprout, that it's just an appearance. And in fact, the nature of the seed and the nature of the sprout are completely indistinguishable. It's the very same thing, so to speak. That would be one possibility, right? If we have accepted that there are causes and conditions that make things happen, once those causes and conditions are not there, then those things will not happen. When we have said that much, then we could say about those causes and conditions and the things that are produced, that they are actually the same. Or alternatively, we could say that they are not. A seed is a seed, a sprout is a sprout. They are different things. So cause and effect are not identical. So we have two opposites, right? The cause and effect are the same, cause and effect are different. So that again seems to divide the world in two, there are just those two options. So that seems very reductionist, but it also perhaps makes good sense to do so. Let us try to consider that, yeah? There is a third option, which would be a combination. That part of the sprout and part of the seed, part of the effect and part of the cause are the same, but not everything. There are also certain things that are different. The shape and the form of the sprout is different from the shape and the form of the seed. But maybe, who knows what, some DNA in the seed is the same in the sprout. So that would be an example of both, yeah? Does it make sense to say that if there are causes and conditions that make things arise, that are responsible for the arising of things, who knows what they are? We are not talking about the details of this at all. But does it make sense to say that if that is the case, then three options are available and only three: Cause and effect could be one and the same. Cause and effect could be different from each other. Or there could be some combination, which is the case, such that some things about the cause are the very same in the case of the effect, and yet some things that are the case about the cause are different with respect to the effect. So again, at home, try to think whether that is thoroughly conclusive to say that there are only these three options. Of course, there are myriads of things that we can say about causes and conditions and effects, which are not captured by these three options. But whatever it is that we want to say about cause and effect, it will have to be something that finds its place within this framework of either sameness of cause and effect, difference of cause and effect, or a combination. So it's important again that we investigate whether there might be a fourth way for causes and conditions to produce effects, meaning without cause and effect being the same, without them being different, and without them being both same and different. Because if there is, then the whole working of the reasoning below will not be conclusive. Because what we will be considering after this are those three options. If in fact there is a way for causes and conditions to produce effects which is not in terms of identity of cause and effect, not in terms of difference of cause and effect, and not in terms of their combination, then whatever we may, if we fail to find any justification for those three options, then we can still go about being believers in cause and effect in true and real causality, because there is that fourth option which remains without any damage. So it's important that we investigate whether there is such a fourth option possible. So please think about that at home until tomorrow. And like these people did today, prepare a little speech. It doesn't have to be a long speech at all, no, but like where did I get to about this question? and why did I reach the conclusion? or why did I stop at the point I stopped? We can begin to consider the first option.
It may be the case that there are causes and effects, as indeed it seems to us, no? This is our immediate perception, we have said. And it may also be the case that we can say about those causes and effects that they seem to be different, because the appearance of difference of cause and effect is also quite undeniable, no? The seed sure looks different than the sprout. That's why we say one is the cause of the other, no? If it was just the seed and the seed, or the sprout and the sprout, then we wouldn't call it cause and effect, no? So there is a seeming difference, but it could also be the case that that's just a misperception, or something that only seems to us, but in fact there is no difference. There are philosophical systems like that, and in terms of classic Indian thought, the Sāṃkhya school had this notion of the prakṛti principle, which is transformative, and so things seem to go in and out of existence in the world, the world that I as the aware being, the puruṣa, perceive, those things seem to go in and out of existence. But in fact it's all an illusion, and what is there, the prakṛti, is always just that. It just takes on different forms. So there are many variants of this belief, no? Not just in India, but elsewhere too. And also in science, monist ideas in the philosophy of science would be of this kind perhaps, no? So that seems thoroughly possible, once we become a little philosophical about it, no?

So yeah, in... Oh, there's very little time.

This then takes us back to what we were talking about before, actually, you know, about valuing our immediate perception of things, yeah? b Because if there's no question that seed and sprout appear different, and in that sense there's no question that seed and sprout are different, right? Like if you tell me go and find a sprout in the garden and go and find a seed, I won't confuse those two, no? So if... Then we may want to say something about the nature of cause and effect, but that's not really what we are... That's not enough to say that therefore cause and effect are entirely different, are entirely the same, yeah? We may have a philosophical point of view about this, but the whole story of cause and effect cannot be told by saying that cause and effect are the same, because they sure don't seem like that, yeah? So all the causes and effects that I meet in the world, I meet because they are not the same, yeah? So I may have something to say about why they are... I may have something to say about how they are ultimately not different from each other, but that doesn't make it possible for me to deny that causes and effects are not identical in the way that they are encountered.
So in other words, if I want to say that cause and effect are the same, because yes, I know they look different, but really they are the same, then my account is not just identity, it's a sense of the third alternative, both, yeah? Because I will have to acknowledge that cause and effect, just even as I speak these words, they are two different words, no? They are two different concepts, and all the instances of cause and effect that I meet in the world, by virtue of being instances of cause and effect, stand out as different from each other. So I may have a story to tell about ultimate identity,
and if I do, then I belong to the group of people who believe in the third alternative, not the first.

and again prepare a few lines to explain what you get from that. There are three alternatives about cause and effect: Cause and effect could be identical, they could be different from each other, or they could be same but also different. Then we considered a philosophical stance that says apparently cause and effect are different, but wait, it is just an appearance, it is just an illusion, in fact they are one and the same. Then I was saying now that that is actually not a story about identity, but it is a story about a combination of identity and difference. So this does not qualify as cause and effect being truly the same. Is this correct or not? Or are we forgetting something? Whenever you feel that there is something that seems somewhat awkward or a bit forced, then that is the sign that you should slow down and focus on that. Whenever it seems that something that I say or that the text says, or that seems to be a little okay, maybe, but... when you get that feeling often that you cannot put your finger on it, but there is just something that sounds somewhat odd, that is the time to then really zoom in on that. Okay, thank you very much and see you tomorrow.
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