Video
Audio
"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."
So today we begin with
the second analysis of
going and coming and
like I said yesterday,
perhaps it may be in
some sense a little harder
to hold on along the
lines of the questions
that are being asked
there in that chapter,
but it's basically the
same challenge, it's
just focusing on exactly
what the question is
and then seeing if it's
what your own reply
is. Not being confused
by the difficulty that
we find in replying,
but instead sort of trying
to meet the questions
head on and not sort
of becoming scattered,
thinking about other
issues when really trying to
comprehend the argument.
Then of course later
on we can have all the
time or all the
opportunity we want to be
as expensive and
creative and confused as
we can, but at that
particular point when
the questions are
being asked it's a matter
of just focusing on
precisely what's being
asked.
And then at the same
time it's also less abstract
because this really
focuses on something that
is going on in the
present. So it's
the act of walking, so it's
something that we can
keep in mind as we
walk, whereas arising is
a little more at a
distance because we have
to think of past, present
and future in order
to have this sense
of cause leading to an effect.
But here it's what is going on right now, the movement in the present moment and particularly in the example of walking. And then to just illustrate that or to show what it is we're talking about. Okay, but this is what we'll be looking at, so try and… what is really going on there?
Obviously it's people who are walking and they're moving their feet in a certain way.
This is a good example of… we'll be speaking about this in close detail right away. What happens when you move the legs in this way the heels of the front foot hit the ground first and then there's this rolling over the foot and there's a lifting as we see there so that the foot behind… we roll on the toes of the foot behind. And here there's someone who has walked and left some evidence of it. "Sorry you're not sharing your video." Ah, man. Okay. Thank you for letting me know about that. Let's try again because it merits a lot of attention, yeah? It's complex stuff that we're talking about.
Still no sound though, but that's fine. Then my sound is there though. Good. Here is somebody walking, see? This very particular way of moving the feet so that you roll on the foot toe on the leg that is behind and you hit the ground first with your heel on the leg that is in front and so this rolling movement of the feet occurs, yeah? Lifting one leg and putting it ahead of the other. This is a very nice description of what goes on when walking, an illustration of what goes on when walking. There we see it again, toes on the ground with the back foot and the front foot has hit the ground already, yeah? So we can walk around in this way in many places and we do so. There's this person who has gone on soft, nice sand and then left imprints behind. We can also walk in a distracted fashion or in this way. So many forms of walking, but there's something quite distinct about the movement that takes place, yeah? So that we can say something about the way the feet hit the ground and the way the heel then lifts up and this rolling on the foot takes place, yeah? Okay, thank you. Tell me if you would like to see it again, yeah? So if we then begin with the text.
And you would like me to stop sharing, no? "Yes." So I thought I had stopped sharing, but... Is this as it should be? Yeah, okay. Great. Now, the first verse says...
There's also this tradition of pointing out the way the analysis are grounded in teachings from the Prajñāpāramitā literature, yeah? So no going and no coming is a common theme in the Prajñāpāramitā. So now we're going to not just listen to that, that there's no coming and going, like it says form does not come from anywhere nor does it go anywhere nor does it remain anywhere in the Prajñāpāramitā. This is something that we hear again and again in many different variations in the sacred literature.
But now we're going to inquire to see whether it's really true what the sūtra says, yeah? That there is no going and no coming. And we will take the path of reason. And the first verse says: "Where there has been going, there is none." Where it has yet to occur, there is no going either. Aside from what has been traversed and what has not,
No place where walking occurs can be identified."
So first of all...about walking.
If there's walking, then there must be someone who walks, there must be an act of walking, and there must be a place where it occurs. If either one of these are missing, then it makes no sense to talk about walking.
In this way we can talk about three things that are required for walking, for walking to make sense. There's a path that it occurs upon, we could call that the object to which walking relates. And then there's the agent, the one who walks, and then there's the action, the act of walking.
Now, when we then think of someone who walks on a path, then where that walking has already occurred, meaning when...
Where the agent has already walked, there is no walking, right? And where the agent is yet to walk, then there's no walking either, it's still to occur. So in other words, what we try to do to begin with is to look at the path where walking occurs.
We say that if there's walking, if there's movement of this sort by someone or something, then it has to occur somewhere. So now in order to be able to make sense of walking, then we also need to be able to find the exact place where walking occurs. But where going has already occurred, meaning where the agent has already placed his or her or its feet on the ground, then the act of walking has already happened. And where it is yet to touch the ground, there the act of walking is still to occur. So it does perhaps make sense to look at the video one more time.
So if we now try to.. keep this in mind, where walking has occurred, meaning where the feet have already..let's try again like this, see, this is quite a nice picture. So you can see the left foot, the toe is on the ground.
In other words, that path has already been covered. If the front foot had not yet touched the ground, then that would be the path where your walking is yet to occur. And now the foot that has already landed, the front foot, the heel is on the ground. And so we can say where the heel touches, that's the path where walking has occurred. And if the sole of the foot is still slightly lifted, then there's that part of the path, meaning what corresponds to this part of the foot, is the path where the act of walking is yet to occur.
So when we try to look for a path where we can say, "That's where the present walking takes place," then all what we find are instances of either walking having already occurred or walking having not yet occurred. Paths that are qualified by walking completed or walking yet to be done. So what about the present walking? Apart from, as the verse says: "Aside from what has been traversed and what has not, no place where walking occurs can be identified." So that is very, very short and concise. And the commentators say that that's actually sufficient. We don't need all the other examinations. The point has already been made at this point. But of course it may be that we don't feel very convinced about that. In particular we are saying that.. we're not talking about these static points, no? We're talking about a place that is qualified by movement. And that's where we find going. So that's what we hear in the second stanza, where someone objects saying: "Where there is movement there's going and movement is found where walking takes place. Not where going has been, nor where it has yet to occur. Hence going is found where walking takes place." So it's someone who says, well, you may say that..
that there is no path that we can point to and say, "This is the path upon which present walking occurs." And you may say that either it is walking an act that has already – whenever we zoom in and look at the picture of walking, then we see either instances of completed walking or not yet done walking. But someone may say, "I don't really think so, to be honest, because I see movement and it's in the movement that walking occurs." What I'm talking about when I say walking is not the path where it has occurred. I'm not talking about where it has to still occur. I'm talking about right now where the movement is, that's where the walking takes place. But let's perhaps before we proceed to what then follows in a sort of tour de force of introduction to dependent construction, let us perhaps go back a little bit to the first verse and see what we can make of that. So basically it's argued that first of all we have to say there are three factors that need to be accounted for if we can rightly speak about walking. Okay, there's the act of course, the action that takes place, walking. But that also means that there is someone or something that walks, otherwise there could be no action. There are no actions without agents of those actions. And furthermore, if that is the case, if we have someone, something walking, then that must happen somewhere. So there's a path also. These three are always there if it is indeed an instance of walking that we are concerned with. But then it is argued that okay, there are places where walking has already occurred. Think of someone walking along a path. There are certainly places where that walking has occurred and in fact where the feet have already touched the ground, that's where the act has been completed. It's done. It belongs already to the path of the past and not the path of present walking. And where the feet have not yet hit the ground, the act of walking is still to come. And apart from the act of walking having been completed or not, there is no third alternative. So that's what is being said in the first verse. So what do you think about that? There will be much more to follow, but the commentators do say that this is actually good enough in itself. So what do you think when you hear that?
Student: "I'm confused why the emphasis is on place where walking occurs if then by logical reasoning after reading that verse we can't define the act of walking as being existent. We can't talk about a place where walking has occurred if we can't actually identify the place where walking is occurring and so then therefore there is no walking that we can speak of with any validity, no?"
So we just can't say anything about walking? Student: "Well, I'm just waiting for the part where then no walking occurs at all and maybe that's coming next." Well, that's what they say now, that this verse is actually sufficient, yeah? So if you're already there, that walking cannot be accounted for in any way at all, then... "Yeah, it seems it can't if this is true." Well, but is it true? "Yeah."
Yeah
Student: "So I guess you could try then to find the present moment but I guess logically you could never find it because you could just sort of try and find a moment in time where walking is taking place in the present but however you tried that would always be in the future or the past. You could never pin down that present moment. So you could never have a present moment of walking. Does that make sense?" Yeah, I think so. "It would always sort of be delineated by time. It would always be past or present or past or future. You could never pin down that present moment." Yeah, well, there's something about an act that is happening, which is strange because it's meant to be there. It's the same as with the seed that is arising. It's meant to be there and at the same time not there because it's not over. The act is not over. It's occurring. So it's incomplete and complete at the same time. So can we tolerate that? Can we, does it.. for present action to make sense then it cannot be completed action and it cannot be future action. So it has to be something which is partly there and partly not there. So what is that? What kind of thing is there and not there at the same time?
Do you agree that present walking will have to be of that kind? That it cannot be fully there because then the act, the walking has already manifested and is then completed. It's complete. The walking is complete. And it is not entirely a thing of the future, yet entirely a thing of the future either because it's present. It's present walking. So it requires presence and absence at the same time of the very same thing that we're talking about. It has to both be there and not be there.
Is that how it is with all actions?
Yeah so try and think about that.
Student: "I usually don't like to use science metaphors, but I do think this is pretty applicable here. They talk in quantum physics, I don't know much about quantum physics. There's one little thing I know is that when you try to locate a photon, photons behave like waves when you are trying to measure their velocity. And..but when you try to pinpoint their location in space, they behave like particles. It strikes me that there's something similar going on here. Walking seems to imply motion, movement, and movement seems to imply taking place at an undefined location, like across locations, within the concept. And actually in verse two, it defines going as the act of leaving behind one location proceeding to another. Conspicuously absent in that definition is any mention of a particular location that it's happening at. The specific definition of 'going' references only that which went in the past and that which is coming in the future. So implied, and I think maybe this is somewhat what Andrew was getting at, we haven't really defined walking or movement. So one attempt here is walking or movement is something that happens over a span of space and over a span of time. So the effort to try and find THE place where movement is occurring is impossible, definitionally impossible, I guess I'd say. So it doesn't actually refute going. It just misunderstands what we mean by going."
I didn't quite get how so. "If going definitionally is something that happens not at a particular place, across places, and across moments in time, then trying to find a place, it's like it's definitionally impossible. Like, because it's been defined a particular way, we can never find the place. It's like trying to find the fourth side of a triangle. No, a triangle is defined as a three sided shape. Like, it's not like, oh, wow, we figured out that triangles don't exist if they don't have a fourth side. It's like, no, we define triangles, we've got three sides." So okay. So is it then wrong to say, right now I'm walking?
"I guess I feel like…" That should be impossible, no? "It would be impossible to say right now. There's so many reasons that would be impossible to say." So then if I can't say right now I'm walking, I can't say anything about what I'm doing right now.
"Yeah, I mean, I think if you're trying, if what you mean by 'right now' is at a single…
It's so hard. It's like, you know, impute moments. Fine. Let's impute moments. And if you view moments and you try to discover a walking in this moment, you will not find such a thing. I think that's true. But still, why would I not say I walked here? But because the point, because what's nice about I walked here is that it doesn't actually have to impute walking in a particular moment. It just, it takes actually a span of moments, the span of moments that it took me to walk here and says walking took place then. It's a little strange if I can never say anything about what I'm doing right now. Yeah, but we can only… That presumably what I do right now is the basis for all of these imputations, no? Because I think I came here would certainly be an imputation. If I can't say ever that I'm actually right now walking, then to say, but I came here, the whole path is behind me. That would be an excellent example of an imputation. And particularly because I can never say anything at all about what I'm doing. If I cannot say anything about what I'm doing, then I can't say anything about who I am either. "Yeah, I think both of those things are true. At least again, frame is super important. Relatively you can." And relatively I do. "And relatively you do. And it makes sense. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if you try to apply logic to it, then you find all these problems. Because…" So what does it mean that there's nothing wrong with it? That's again like my continuous… There's nothing wrong… When you say, "there's nothing wrong with it," except when I look for any real justification for what I'm saying, except then I don't find any. But there's nothing wrong with it. Yeah, exactly. Look at you. Look at me. I got here walking. Like I showed up late, unfortunately today. But I got here because I have this functional idea, just like you said, of walking. And so many of my…" So is anything that seems functional, is that true also? "No, not by a… Not true.
You're asking after something, yeah. I just think these terms need to be defined. It's true in the way that we need it to be, to get here." Student: "Sorry, I think I got stuck in the previous… Even before. So if you look at this verse itself, it says, "Okay, I cannot find current walking because it's either happened or yet to happen." But to me it seems like then my question will be, "How do I define something that has already happened and yet to happen?" Because if I cannot do that, then I'm using some seemingly false reasoning to prove or disprove something. Then where is the ground of that?" I think that's also what you pointed out and you. And I think exactly. So very quickly, it becomes perhaps… So does this mean it's the option of this discussion that we've had now, that going and walking in the present, in the past and in the future is completely unidentifiable? "I don't think I'm there yet. It's just looking at the verse itself. It always strikes me with… I always have this doubt with the Mādhyamaka reasoning. It seems to me that, okay, I wanted to prove something or disprove something, but using something that cannot be defined to prove that." What is something that can be defined? "So there is nothing can be defined. Like how.. If you wanted to prove there is no current walking and this sounds perfectly reasonable because it's either happened or yet to happen. But then on the other hand, how do I define something has already happened and yet to happen? If I cannot, then I cannot use this thing that cannot be defined to define something." Right. Yeah, that's a very important observation. The very reason itself that we get to this conclusion also dissolves.
"Then how can you say this is a good reasoning? If both dissolves, then nothing is…" Well, we don't have to say it's a good reasoning. Our task is to show that it's bad reasoning. If we can't do that, then we just have to go with it. We don't have to qualify it as good or bad, but that's just the way it is.
So what we should try to do now is to see what is wrong.
"So where there's movement, there's going and movement is found where walking takes place, not where going has been or where it has yet to occur. Hence going is found where walking takes place." So it's this very natural response to say that
I know very well when I see someone walking and when I do it myself, I can also notice that there's some movement of the legs taking place and wherever, on whichever path I am at that point, that's where present walking takes place, easy. But it's also, as we can hear, a way of not really responding to what was said in the first verse. But it's nevertheless a response. It just says, well, I can see movement and it's where the movement occurs, present movement, that the walking occurs. So if you want to know where the location, the path upon which present walking occurs, you just have to look for that movement and you have found it already. So then follows an extensive analysis that I think we should begin today.
And here..
it is again helpful, I hope.. to look at this.
These are the three things that walking requires. So this is very important to be completely at home with. There has to be an agent, someone who does the walking, and then that movement, particular movement that we talked about before, has to be there also, performed by that agent. And if there is an agent performing an action, that agent will have to be located somewhere also. So then someone, you mentioned quantum physics. We've talked about it before also. And in quantum physics you do hear statements to the effect that.. yeah, I better not try to, but that don't really follow this framework of these three necessarily entailing each other.
And I think what I can say and what I think can be rightly said about that is that we can take that as an evidence of these three being constructed, yeah? And that quantum theory is very powerful, right? There are many things that can be done only with the help of quantum physics and otherwise not. So it's a theory that is extremely counterintuitive, there's this cliché that nobody, if you think you understand quantum physics, then it's a sign that you don't, and so on. So it's certainly very complex. And at the same time, it's an empirically extremely powerful model. But it's a model, of course. So what I think the extraordinary power of quantum theory can be used as evidence of reality really, that if we can--I have to be careful what I say, no--that these, that the way we structure and are bound to structure the world and ourselves, each other, conceptually, is not really borne out by reality itself, because it is possible to, yeah, by allowing
reformulations of seemingly strictly bound concepts, then it's actually possible to reach some powerful result that would otherwise not be the case. So there's a little aside about that, yeah? But for us, is it not certainly the case that for there to be a meaningful act of walking, these three are necessarily always entailed? Let's spend a little time on that. If there is movement, as in the case of walking, does it require that something walks there? Yes or no? Otherwise what movement is happening if it's not performed by anyone or anything? And if there is something there, and if that something performs some action, well, someone there, that means that there's a location as well, no? And this means that locations of this type are qualified in a particular way, namely qualified by the presence of the act of walking. Whenever there's an agent of walking, whenever there's someone who walks, then there's also a place which is the place where walking occurs. So there are places then that are qualified in a particular way, namely by the presence of this particular action, walking. Can you think of a way that there could be one in isolation or two combined but not the third? When you look at this agent, action, and location framework, or agent, action, and objects, if we take the act of walking as relating to some object, the path, what do you think? Is it possible to conceive of instances where you have only one or two of these? Or is it indeed always the case that if there's one to two others are by necessity also there?
Student: "Can I just check with location, because walking is like a present continuous, so it's something that's over a space of time, like it's happening now. Could the location be this space which it happens over? So I might be mid-step walking across a wider location. Can that work? Yeah, at this point, or right now, what we're trying to understand is just whether these three are always mutually inclusive. Right now we're not trying to do what we did before, focus on where does present walking take place, but just taking it as a given that there is such a thing as walking, then is it not also a given that there's something or someone who walks, if really there is walking? And if there is someone or something walking, that there's a place where that action occurs? Is it possible to in any way at all conceive or imagine an occasion where one or two of these could be absent and yet the third is still there?
Student: "The example that would come to mind is dreaming, yeah? Walking somewhere in your dream. And I guess the question I have then is there's also such a thing as sleepwalking, right? So then if the person in their dream is walking on a prairie, but in waking life someone outside observer is watching them walk up their stairs or something, then it would be an interesting conversation about where exactly that person is walking." Yeah, but in the dream and from the perspective of the outside observer, there's still someone who walks somewhere. So if they're not sleepwalking and they're just in the dream and walking, is this equally valid as a situation of location or would it not be because it's not observable to an outside audience? So then that would disqualify all three, no? If you say, but actually he's just dreaming, that would mean there's no one walking, no one, no act of walking and no place of walking. "So walking then requires an observed condition, no? There must be something outside of these three to observe and qualify the act of walking." No, I thought you were suggesting that if someone looks from the outside of this, observes someone sleepwalking and infers this person dreams about walking somewhere. So in that case, there would be one instance of dismissing all three in one go and one instance of affirming all three in one go, because the outside observer would look at the person and say, "he's walking right there, it's in my room he's walking, nowhere else, and he's there, this is the path that he takes." So it's an affirmation of all three principles simultaneously and it would not be possible for that outside observer to say, that's only one thing. And at the same time, he thinks the outside observer, my friend is dreaming, he thinks that he's walking somewhere altogether different, but he's not. And in fact his dream self doesn't exist, it's just an imagination, something imagined. So the walker, the act of walking and the place are dismissed, all three. "Is that only in the presence of an outside observer or is that then the basis of authority of how we're deciding what's valid?" No, we're just asking ourselves, can I possibly imagine a situation where it would be the case that I could find perhaps just walking but no one walking? And perhaps just a place of walking but without anyone walking? Or could it be that there is a walker that doesn't walk anywhere? That is what we ask ourselves now, yeah? "Yeah, I understand the question. Then in that case then just the person by themselves asleep in bed that's having a dream about walking, how would we then treat this?" So we would ask the dreamer, we would
ask ourselves how… your question again was? "So if the person is now alone in their room dreaming of going somewhere and they're walking on a beach let's say, there's no one else there to observe them, now what is the authority like linchpin with respect to how we validate these three criteria? In their experience there's an agent, a dream agent, there's a dream action and there's a dream location." Right. So if that's the case, if that is our opinion, then it's another example of how it seems that we must always have all three and we can't have just two or just one of these without the other two. "Okay."
Student: "I think it, I could imagine action and location without agent depending on how strong of a definition of agent we're using. If we're using like free, like free agent in the sense of some kind of libertarian freedom, then you could make an argument against the possibility of such agency and maintain the action and the location like if you were, for example, a determinist and you believed that all matter in the universe was sort of just the product of the combination of the laws of nature plus some state of affairs, then any kind of understanding of agent doesn't really apply. But I don't think you can get away from a weaker definition of agent, which just uses the idea of like a thing that is moving, right? Not a free thing, not a sort of thing that's choosing to move, but just the, I guess you wouldn't say object because you're using the location as the object, but something that is kind of in motion." Yeah, exactly. And it is the weaker definition of agent. That's the relevant one here. It's just that which does the action. So if there's an action taking place, is there something that does that action? That's the basic question, no? And it seems to be entailed, does it not? But try and think about that at home. Is it possible, is it conceivable, intelligible in some way that there could be just one and not the other, or perhaps two and not the third?
So now, so there's just five minutes left. I wonder if we should do it because it's kind of, you have to hold tight. But maybe, yeah. So "Going where walking takes place, how could that make sense when without going there cannot reasonably be a place where walking takes place? So we'll just briefly introduce this, yeah? And then we can speak much more about it tomorrow.
So if we then think of an instance of someone walking, of someone performing the act of walking somewhere, then we're talking about one action. And there's only.. that act of walking is one entity. The fact that it's one entity is illustrated by the fact that there's only one destination. There's only one arrival. There's only one effect of walking. When someone walks somewhere, that person doesn't arrive many places simultaneously, but one place. So there's one action being performed. Now then we can say if there's really only one action, there's really and truly something called the act of walking. And it's one thing, yeah? It's one entity. It's one.. whatever we want to say, yeah? There's really such a thing as walking. That real walking is just one. And yet we know that there are these three things that are necessarily implied by there being an act of walking. There's then also someone or something that moves in that way. There's someone that walks. And there is also a place where the walking occurs, yeah?
So if we then say the agent of the act of walking must be qualified by being the one who performs this act. Otherwise that agent wouldn't be the agent, right? So there's one act of walking. To whom or to what does that act belong? It belongs to the agent. Fine. Then what about the place where walking occurs? Is that then not qualified by an act of walking?
It cannot be because we have combined, we have qualified the agent by being the possessor of this action, yeah? There's just one action. And yet, and that action is a property or it's something that belongs intrinsically to the agent. So we have no more walking left, so to speak, to qualify the location with. Now the location where walking occurs is a place without walking.
Try to think about that carefully, yeah? You've got the lines in the argument. It sounds very strange and kind of funny to begin with, yeah? But try to think at home, yeah? Quite carefully about this. Three things are always required for walking. The action, the agent and the location. Now there's just one action, not many. We're talking about one act of going, right? So if there's someone who walks, then it's that person who performs the action, of course. So we combine those two. The action belongs to the agent. What then happens with the place where walking occurs? Is that a different kind of action? No, couldn't be. We're talking about just the same act, no? We're just accounting for this very simple instance of someone walking. Then we say because there's one act and because that act appears to be intrinsically connected to the agent, it makes good sense to say that those two belong together. But we also said that we need a place in order to make sense of walking. We can't just have walking occurring nowhere. It needs to take place somewhere. But since we now see walking and agent as intrinsically connected, there's no connection to the act of walking. So how could this make sense that going occurs where walking takes place, when without going there cannot reasonably be any place where walking takes place?
So we'll continue with that tomorrow. Thank you.
But here it's what is going on right now, the movement in the present moment and particularly in the example of walking. And then to just illustrate that or to show what it is we're talking about. Okay, but this is what we'll be looking at, so try and… what is really going on there?
Obviously it's people who are walking and they're moving their feet in a certain way.
This is a good example of… we'll be speaking about this in close detail right away. What happens when you move the legs in this way the heels of the front foot hit the ground first and then there's this rolling over the foot and there's a lifting as we see there so that the foot behind… we roll on the toes of the foot behind. And here there's someone who has walked and left some evidence of it. "Sorry you're not sharing your video." Ah, man. Okay. Thank you for letting me know about that. Let's try again because it merits a lot of attention, yeah? It's complex stuff that we're talking about.
Still no sound though, but that's fine. Then my sound is there though. Good. Here is somebody walking, see? This very particular way of moving the feet so that you roll on the foot toe on the leg that is behind and you hit the ground first with your heel on the leg that is in front and so this rolling movement of the feet occurs, yeah? Lifting one leg and putting it ahead of the other. This is a very nice description of what goes on when walking, an illustration of what goes on when walking. There we see it again, toes on the ground with the back foot and the front foot has hit the ground already, yeah? So we can walk around in this way in many places and we do so. There's this person who has gone on soft, nice sand and then left imprints behind. We can also walk in a distracted fashion or in this way. So many forms of walking, but there's something quite distinct about the movement that takes place, yeah? So that we can say something about the way the feet hit the ground and the way the heel then lifts up and this rolling on the foot takes place, yeah? Okay, thank you. Tell me if you would like to see it again, yeah? So if we then begin with the text.
And you would like me to stop sharing, no? "Yes." So I thought I had stopped sharing, but... Is this as it should be? Yeah, okay. Great. Now, the first verse says...
There's also this tradition of pointing out the way the analysis are grounded in teachings from the Prajñāpāramitā literature, yeah? So no going and no coming is a common theme in the Prajñāpāramitā. So now we're going to not just listen to that, that there's no coming and going, like it says form does not come from anywhere nor does it go anywhere nor does it remain anywhere in the Prajñāpāramitā. This is something that we hear again and again in many different variations in the sacred literature.
But now we're going to inquire to see whether it's really true what the sūtra says, yeah? That there is no going and no coming. And we will take the path of reason. And the first verse says: "Where there has been going, there is none." Where it has yet to occur, there is no going either. Aside from what has been traversed and what has not,
No place where walking occurs can be identified."
So first of all...about walking.
If there's walking, then there must be someone who walks, there must be an act of walking, and there must be a place where it occurs. If either one of these are missing, then it makes no sense to talk about walking.
In this way we can talk about three things that are required for walking, for walking to make sense. There's a path that it occurs upon, we could call that the object to which walking relates. And then there's the agent, the one who walks, and then there's the action, the act of walking.
Now, when we then think of someone who walks on a path, then where that walking has already occurred, meaning when...
Where the agent has already walked, there is no walking, right? And where the agent is yet to walk, then there's no walking either, it's still to occur. So in other words, what we try to do to begin with is to look at the path where walking occurs.
We say that if there's walking, if there's movement of this sort by someone or something, then it has to occur somewhere. So now in order to be able to make sense of walking, then we also need to be able to find the exact place where walking occurs. But where going has already occurred, meaning where the agent has already placed his or her or its feet on the ground, then the act of walking has already happened. And where it is yet to touch the ground, there the act of walking is still to occur. So it does perhaps make sense to look at the video one more time.
So if we now try to.. keep this in mind, where walking has occurred, meaning where the feet have already..let's try again like this, see, this is quite a nice picture. So you can see the left foot, the toe is on the ground.
In other words, that path has already been covered. If the front foot had not yet touched the ground, then that would be the path where your walking is yet to occur. And now the foot that has already landed, the front foot, the heel is on the ground. And so we can say where the heel touches, that's the path where walking has occurred. And if the sole of the foot is still slightly lifted, then there's that part of the path, meaning what corresponds to this part of the foot, is the path where the act of walking is yet to occur.
So when we try to look for a path where we can say, "That's where the present walking takes place," then all what we find are instances of either walking having already occurred or walking having not yet occurred. Paths that are qualified by walking completed or walking yet to be done. So what about the present walking? Apart from, as the verse says: "Aside from what has been traversed and what has not, no place where walking occurs can be identified." So that is very, very short and concise. And the commentators say that that's actually sufficient. We don't need all the other examinations. The point has already been made at this point. But of course it may be that we don't feel very convinced about that. In particular we are saying that.. we're not talking about these static points, no? We're talking about a place that is qualified by movement. And that's where we find going. So that's what we hear in the second stanza, where someone objects saying: "Where there is movement there's going and movement is found where walking takes place. Not where going has been, nor where it has yet to occur. Hence going is found where walking takes place." So it's someone who says, well, you may say that..
that there is no path that we can point to and say, "This is the path upon which present walking occurs." And you may say that either it is walking an act that has already – whenever we zoom in and look at the picture of walking, then we see either instances of completed walking or not yet done walking. But someone may say, "I don't really think so, to be honest, because I see movement and it's in the movement that walking occurs." What I'm talking about when I say walking is not the path where it has occurred. I'm not talking about where it has to still occur. I'm talking about right now where the movement is, that's where the walking takes place. But let's perhaps before we proceed to what then follows in a sort of tour de force of introduction to dependent construction, let us perhaps go back a little bit to the first verse and see what we can make of that. So basically it's argued that first of all we have to say there are three factors that need to be accounted for if we can rightly speak about walking. Okay, there's the act of course, the action that takes place, walking. But that also means that there is someone or something that walks, otherwise there could be no action. There are no actions without agents of those actions. And furthermore, if that is the case, if we have someone, something walking, then that must happen somewhere. So there's a path also. These three are always there if it is indeed an instance of walking that we are concerned with. But then it is argued that okay, there are places where walking has already occurred. Think of someone walking along a path. There are certainly places where that walking has occurred and in fact where the feet have already touched the ground, that's where the act has been completed. It's done. It belongs already to the path of the past and not the path of present walking. And where the feet have not yet hit the ground, the act of walking is still to come. And apart from the act of walking having been completed or not, there is no third alternative. So that's what is being said in the first verse. So what do you think about that? There will be much more to follow, but the commentators do say that this is actually good enough in itself. So what do you think when you hear that?
Student: "I'm confused why the emphasis is on place where walking occurs if then by logical reasoning after reading that verse we can't define the act of walking as being existent. We can't talk about a place where walking has occurred if we can't actually identify the place where walking is occurring and so then therefore there is no walking that we can speak of with any validity, no?"
So we just can't say anything about walking? Student: "Well, I'm just waiting for the part where then no walking occurs at all and maybe that's coming next." Well, that's what they say now, that this verse is actually sufficient, yeah? So if you're already there, that walking cannot be accounted for in any way at all, then... "Yeah, it seems it can't if this is true." Well, but is it true? "Yeah."
Yeah
Student: "So I guess you could try then to find the present moment but I guess logically you could never find it because you could just sort of try and find a moment in time where walking is taking place in the present but however you tried that would always be in the future or the past. You could never pin down that present moment. So you could never have a present moment of walking. Does that make sense?" Yeah, I think so. "It would always sort of be delineated by time. It would always be past or present or past or future. You could never pin down that present moment." Yeah, well, there's something about an act that is happening, which is strange because it's meant to be there. It's the same as with the seed that is arising. It's meant to be there and at the same time not there because it's not over. The act is not over. It's occurring. So it's incomplete and complete at the same time. So can we tolerate that? Can we, does it.. for present action to make sense then it cannot be completed action and it cannot be future action. So it has to be something which is partly there and partly not there. So what is that? What kind of thing is there and not there at the same time?
Do you agree that present walking will have to be of that kind? That it cannot be fully there because then the act, the walking has already manifested and is then completed. It's complete. The walking is complete. And it is not entirely a thing of the future, yet entirely a thing of the future either because it's present. It's present walking. So it requires presence and absence at the same time of the very same thing that we're talking about. It has to both be there and not be there.
Is that how it is with all actions?
Yeah so try and think about that.
Student: "I usually don't like to use science metaphors, but I do think this is pretty applicable here. They talk in quantum physics, I don't know much about quantum physics. There's one little thing I know is that when you try to locate a photon, photons behave like waves when you are trying to measure their velocity. And..but when you try to pinpoint their location in space, they behave like particles. It strikes me that there's something similar going on here. Walking seems to imply motion, movement, and movement seems to imply taking place at an undefined location, like across locations, within the concept. And actually in verse two, it defines going as the act of leaving behind one location proceeding to another. Conspicuously absent in that definition is any mention of a particular location that it's happening at. The specific definition of 'going' references only that which went in the past and that which is coming in the future. So implied, and I think maybe this is somewhat what Andrew was getting at, we haven't really defined walking or movement. So one attempt here is walking or movement is something that happens over a span of space and over a span of time. So the effort to try and find THE place where movement is occurring is impossible, definitionally impossible, I guess I'd say. So it doesn't actually refute going. It just misunderstands what we mean by going."
I didn't quite get how so. "If going definitionally is something that happens not at a particular place, across places, and across moments in time, then trying to find a place, it's like it's definitionally impossible. Like, because it's been defined a particular way, we can never find the place. It's like trying to find the fourth side of a triangle. No, a triangle is defined as a three sided shape. Like, it's not like, oh, wow, we figured out that triangles don't exist if they don't have a fourth side. It's like, no, we define triangles, we've got three sides." So okay. So is it then wrong to say, right now I'm walking?
"I guess I feel like…" That should be impossible, no? "It would be impossible to say right now. There's so many reasons that would be impossible to say." So then if I can't say right now I'm walking, I can't say anything about what I'm doing right now.
"Yeah, I mean, I think if you're trying, if what you mean by 'right now' is at a single…
It's so hard. It's like, you know, impute moments. Fine. Let's impute moments. And if you view moments and you try to discover a walking in this moment, you will not find such a thing. I think that's true. But still, why would I not say I walked here? But because the point, because what's nice about I walked here is that it doesn't actually have to impute walking in a particular moment. It just, it takes actually a span of moments, the span of moments that it took me to walk here and says walking took place then. It's a little strange if I can never say anything about what I'm doing right now. Yeah, but we can only… That presumably what I do right now is the basis for all of these imputations, no? Because I think I came here would certainly be an imputation. If I can't say ever that I'm actually right now walking, then to say, but I came here, the whole path is behind me. That would be an excellent example of an imputation. And particularly because I can never say anything at all about what I'm doing. If I cannot say anything about what I'm doing, then I can't say anything about who I am either. "Yeah, I think both of those things are true. At least again, frame is super important. Relatively you can." And relatively I do. "And relatively you do. And it makes sense. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if you try to apply logic to it, then you find all these problems. Because…" So what does it mean that there's nothing wrong with it? That's again like my continuous… There's nothing wrong… When you say, "there's nothing wrong with it," except when I look for any real justification for what I'm saying, except then I don't find any. But there's nothing wrong with it. Yeah, exactly. Look at you. Look at me. I got here walking. Like I showed up late, unfortunately today. But I got here because I have this functional idea, just like you said, of walking. And so many of my…" So is anything that seems functional, is that true also? "No, not by a… Not true.
You're asking after something, yeah. I just think these terms need to be defined. It's true in the way that we need it to be, to get here." Student: "Sorry, I think I got stuck in the previous… Even before. So if you look at this verse itself, it says, "Okay, I cannot find current walking because it's either happened or yet to happen." But to me it seems like then my question will be, "How do I define something that has already happened and yet to happen?" Because if I cannot do that, then I'm using some seemingly false reasoning to prove or disprove something. Then where is the ground of that?" I think that's also what you pointed out and you. And I think exactly. So very quickly, it becomes perhaps… So does this mean it's the option of this discussion that we've had now, that going and walking in the present, in the past and in the future is completely unidentifiable? "I don't think I'm there yet. It's just looking at the verse itself. It always strikes me with… I always have this doubt with the Mādhyamaka reasoning. It seems to me that, okay, I wanted to prove something or disprove something, but using something that cannot be defined to prove that." What is something that can be defined? "So there is nothing can be defined. Like how.. If you wanted to prove there is no current walking and this sounds perfectly reasonable because it's either happened or yet to happen. But then on the other hand, how do I define something has already happened and yet to happen? If I cannot, then I cannot use this thing that cannot be defined to define something." Right. Yeah, that's a very important observation. The very reason itself that we get to this conclusion also dissolves.
"Then how can you say this is a good reasoning? If both dissolves, then nothing is…" Well, we don't have to say it's a good reasoning. Our task is to show that it's bad reasoning. If we can't do that, then we just have to go with it. We don't have to qualify it as good or bad, but that's just the way it is.
So what we should try to do now is to see what is wrong.
"So where there's movement, there's going and movement is found where walking takes place, not where going has been or where it has yet to occur. Hence going is found where walking takes place." So it's this very natural response to say that
I know very well when I see someone walking and when I do it myself, I can also notice that there's some movement of the legs taking place and wherever, on whichever path I am at that point, that's where present walking takes place, easy. But it's also, as we can hear, a way of not really responding to what was said in the first verse. But it's nevertheless a response. It just says, well, I can see movement and it's where the movement occurs, present movement, that the walking occurs. So if you want to know where the location, the path upon which present walking occurs, you just have to look for that movement and you have found it already. So then follows an extensive analysis that I think we should begin today.
And here..
it is again helpful, I hope.. to look at this.
These are the three things that walking requires. So this is very important to be completely at home with. There has to be an agent, someone who does the walking, and then that movement, particular movement that we talked about before, has to be there also, performed by that agent. And if there is an agent performing an action, that agent will have to be located somewhere also. So then someone, you mentioned quantum physics. We've talked about it before also. And in quantum physics you do hear statements to the effect that.. yeah, I better not try to, but that don't really follow this framework of these three necessarily entailing each other.
And I think what I can say and what I think can be rightly said about that is that we can take that as an evidence of these three being constructed, yeah? And that quantum theory is very powerful, right? There are many things that can be done only with the help of quantum physics and otherwise not. So it's a theory that is extremely counterintuitive, there's this cliché that nobody, if you think you understand quantum physics, then it's a sign that you don't, and so on. So it's certainly very complex. And at the same time, it's an empirically extremely powerful model. But it's a model, of course. So what I think the extraordinary power of quantum theory can be used as evidence of reality really, that if we can--I have to be careful what I say, no--that these, that the way we structure and are bound to structure the world and ourselves, each other, conceptually, is not really borne out by reality itself, because it is possible to, yeah, by allowing
reformulations of seemingly strictly bound concepts, then it's actually possible to reach some powerful result that would otherwise not be the case. So there's a little aside about that, yeah? But for us, is it not certainly the case that for there to be a meaningful act of walking, these three are necessarily always entailed? Let's spend a little time on that. If there is movement, as in the case of walking, does it require that something walks there? Yes or no? Otherwise what movement is happening if it's not performed by anyone or anything? And if there is something there, and if that something performs some action, well, someone there, that means that there's a location as well, no? And this means that locations of this type are qualified in a particular way, namely qualified by the presence of the act of walking. Whenever there's an agent of walking, whenever there's someone who walks, then there's also a place which is the place where walking occurs. So there are places then that are qualified in a particular way, namely by the presence of this particular action, walking. Can you think of a way that there could be one in isolation or two combined but not the third? When you look at this agent, action, and location framework, or agent, action, and objects, if we take the act of walking as relating to some object, the path, what do you think? Is it possible to conceive of instances where you have only one or two of these? Or is it indeed always the case that if there's one to two others are by necessity also there?
Student: "Can I just check with location, because walking is like a present continuous, so it's something that's over a space of time, like it's happening now. Could the location be this space which it happens over? So I might be mid-step walking across a wider location. Can that work? Yeah, at this point, or right now, what we're trying to understand is just whether these three are always mutually inclusive. Right now we're not trying to do what we did before, focus on where does present walking take place, but just taking it as a given that there is such a thing as walking, then is it not also a given that there's something or someone who walks, if really there is walking? And if there is someone or something walking, that there's a place where that action occurs? Is it possible to in any way at all conceive or imagine an occasion where one or two of these could be absent and yet the third is still there?
Student: "The example that would come to mind is dreaming, yeah? Walking somewhere in your dream. And I guess the question I have then is there's also such a thing as sleepwalking, right? So then if the person in their dream is walking on a prairie, but in waking life someone outside observer is watching them walk up their stairs or something, then it would be an interesting conversation about where exactly that person is walking." Yeah, but in the dream and from the perspective of the outside observer, there's still someone who walks somewhere. So if they're not sleepwalking and they're just in the dream and walking, is this equally valid as a situation of location or would it not be because it's not observable to an outside audience? So then that would disqualify all three, no? If you say, but actually he's just dreaming, that would mean there's no one walking, no one, no act of walking and no place of walking. "So walking then requires an observed condition, no? There must be something outside of these three to observe and qualify the act of walking." No, I thought you were suggesting that if someone looks from the outside of this, observes someone sleepwalking and infers this person dreams about walking somewhere. So in that case, there would be one instance of dismissing all three in one go and one instance of affirming all three in one go, because the outside observer would look at the person and say, "he's walking right there, it's in my room he's walking, nowhere else, and he's there, this is the path that he takes." So it's an affirmation of all three principles simultaneously and it would not be possible for that outside observer to say, that's only one thing. And at the same time, he thinks the outside observer, my friend is dreaming, he thinks that he's walking somewhere altogether different, but he's not. And in fact his dream self doesn't exist, it's just an imagination, something imagined. So the walker, the act of walking and the place are dismissed, all three. "Is that only in the presence of an outside observer or is that then the basis of authority of how we're deciding what's valid?" No, we're just asking ourselves, can I possibly imagine a situation where it would be the case that I could find perhaps just walking but no one walking? And perhaps just a place of walking but without anyone walking? Or could it be that there is a walker that doesn't walk anywhere? That is what we ask ourselves now, yeah? "Yeah, I understand the question. Then in that case then just the person by themselves asleep in bed that's having a dream about walking, how would we then treat this?" So we would ask the dreamer, we would
ask ourselves how… your question again was? "So if the person is now alone in their room dreaming of going somewhere and they're walking on a beach let's say, there's no one else there to observe them, now what is the authority like linchpin with respect to how we validate these three criteria? In their experience there's an agent, a dream agent, there's a dream action and there's a dream location." Right. So if that's the case, if that is our opinion, then it's another example of how it seems that we must always have all three and we can't have just two or just one of these without the other two. "Okay."
Student: "I think it, I could imagine action and location without agent depending on how strong of a definition of agent we're using. If we're using like free, like free agent in the sense of some kind of libertarian freedom, then you could make an argument against the possibility of such agency and maintain the action and the location like if you were, for example, a determinist and you believed that all matter in the universe was sort of just the product of the combination of the laws of nature plus some state of affairs, then any kind of understanding of agent doesn't really apply. But I don't think you can get away from a weaker definition of agent, which just uses the idea of like a thing that is moving, right? Not a free thing, not a sort of thing that's choosing to move, but just the, I guess you wouldn't say object because you're using the location as the object, but something that is kind of in motion." Yeah, exactly. And it is the weaker definition of agent. That's the relevant one here. It's just that which does the action. So if there's an action taking place, is there something that does that action? That's the basic question, no? And it seems to be entailed, does it not? But try and think about that at home. Is it possible, is it conceivable, intelligible in some way that there could be just one and not the other, or perhaps two and not the third?
So now, so there's just five minutes left. I wonder if we should do it because it's kind of, you have to hold tight. But maybe, yeah. So "Going where walking takes place, how could that make sense when without going there cannot reasonably be a place where walking takes place? So we'll just briefly introduce this, yeah? And then we can speak much more about it tomorrow.
So if we then think of an instance of someone walking, of someone performing the act of walking somewhere, then we're talking about one action. And there's only.. that act of walking is one entity. The fact that it's one entity is illustrated by the fact that there's only one destination. There's only one arrival. There's only one effect of walking. When someone walks somewhere, that person doesn't arrive many places simultaneously, but one place. So there's one action being performed. Now then we can say if there's really only one action, there's really and truly something called the act of walking. And it's one thing, yeah? It's one entity. It's one.. whatever we want to say, yeah? There's really such a thing as walking. That real walking is just one. And yet we know that there are these three things that are necessarily implied by there being an act of walking. There's then also someone or something that moves in that way. There's someone that walks. And there is also a place where the walking occurs, yeah?
So if we then say the agent of the act of walking must be qualified by being the one who performs this act. Otherwise that agent wouldn't be the agent, right? So there's one act of walking. To whom or to what does that act belong? It belongs to the agent. Fine. Then what about the place where walking occurs? Is that then not qualified by an act of walking?
It cannot be because we have combined, we have qualified the agent by being the possessor of this action, yeah? There's just one action. And yet, and that action is a property or it's something that belongs intrinsically to the agent. So we have no more walking left, so to speak, to qualify the location with. Now the location where walking occurs is a place without walking.
Try to think about that carefully, yeah? You've got the lines in the argument. It sounds very strange and kind of funny to begin with, yeah? But try to think at home, yeah? Quite carefully about this. Three things are always required for walking. The action, the agent and the location. Now there's just one action, not many. We're talking about one act of going, right? So if there's someone who walks, then it's that person who performs the action, of course. So we combine those two. The action belongs to the agent. What then happens with the place where walking occurs? Is that a different kind of action? No, couldn't be. We're talking about just the same act, no? We're just accounting for this very simple instance of someone walking. Then we say because there's one act and because that act appears to be intrinsically connected to the agent, it makes good sense to say that those two belong together. But we also said that we need a place in order to make sense of walking. We can't just have walking occurring nowhere. It needs to take place somewhere. But since we now see walking and agent as intrinsically connected, there's no connection to the act of walking. So how could this make sense that going occurs where walking takes place, when without going there cannot reasonably be any place where walking takes place?
So we'll continue with that tomorrow. Thank you.
"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."
So today we begin with
the second analysis of
going and coming and
like I said yesterday,
perhaps it may be in
some sense a little harder
to hold on along the
lines of the questions
that are being asked
there in that chapter,
but it's basically the
same challenge, it's
just focusing on exactly
what the question is
and then seeing if it's
what your own reply
is. Not being confused
by the difficulty that
we find in replying,
but instead sort of trying
to meet the questions
head on and not sort
of becoming scattered,
thinking about other
issues when really trying to
comprehend the argument.
Then of course later
on we can have all the
time or all the
opportunity we want to be
as expensive and
creative and confused as
we can, but at that
particular point when
the questions are
being asked it's a matter
of just focusing on
precisely what's being
asked.
And then at the same
time it's also less abstract
because this really
focuses on something that
is going on in the
present. So it's
the act of walking, so it's
something that we can
keep in mind as we
walk, whereas arising is
a little more at a
distance because we have
to think of past, present
and future in order
to have this sense
of cause leading to an effect.
But here it's what is going on right now, the movement in the present moment and particularly in the example of walking. And then to just illustrate that or to show what it is we're talking about. Okay, but this is what we'll be looking at, so try and… what is really going on there?
Obviously it's people who are walking and they're moving their feet in a certain way.
This is a good example of… we'll be speaking about this in close detail right away. What happens when you move the legs in this way the heels of the front foot hit the ground first and then there's this rolling over the foot and there's a lifting as we see there so that the foot behind… we roll on the toes of the foot behind. And here there's someone who has walked and left some evidence of it. "Sorry you're not sharing your video." Ah, man. Okay. Thank you for letting me know about that. Let's try again because it merits a lot of attention, yeah? It's complex stuff that we're talking about.
Still no sound though, but that's fine. Then my sound is there though. Good. Here is somebody walking, see? This very particular way of moving the feet so that you roll on the foot toe on the leg that is behind and you hit the ground first with your heel on the leg that is in front and so this rolling movement of the feet occurs, yeah? Lifting one leg and putting it ahead of the other. This is a very nice description of what goes on when walking, an illustration of what goes on when walking. There we see it again, toes on the ground with the back foot and the front foot has hit the ground already, yeah? So we can walk around in this way in many places and we do so. There's this person who has gone on soft, nice sand and then left imprints behind. We can also walk in a distracted fashion or in this way. So many forms of walking, but there's something quite distinct about the movement that takes place, yeah? So that we can say something about the way the feet hit the ground and the way the heel then lifts up and this rolling on the foot takes place, yeah? Okay, thank you. Tell me if you would like to see it again, yeah? So if we then begin with the text.
And you would like me to stop sharing, no? "Yes." So I thought I had stopped sharing, but... Is this as it should be? Yeah, okay. Great. Now, the first verse says...
There's also this tradition of pointing out the way the analysis are grounded in teachings from the Prajñāpāramitā literature, yeah? So no going and no coming is a common theme in the Prajñāpāramitā. So now we're going to not just listen to that, that there's no coming and going, like it says form does not come from anywhere nor does it go anywhere nor does it remain anywhere in the Prajñāpāramitā. This is something that we hear again and again in many different variations in the sacred literature.
But now we're going to inquire to see whether it's really true what the sūtra says, yeah? That there is no going and no coming. And we will take the path of reason. And the first verse says: "Where there has been going, there is none." Where it has yet to occur, there is no going either. Aside from what has been traversed and what has not,
No place where walking occurs can be identified."
So first of all...about walking.
If there's walking, then there must be someone who walks, there must be an act of walking, and there must be a place where it occurs. If either one of these are missing, then it makes no sense to talk about walking.
In this way we can talk about three things that are required for walking, for walking to make sense. There's a path that it occurs upon, we could call that the object to which walking relates. And then there's the agent, the one who walks, and then there's the action, the act of walking.
Now, when we then think of someone who walks on a path, then where that walking has already occurred, meaning when...
Where the agent has already walked, there is no walking, right? And where the agent is yet to walk, then there's no walking either, it's still to occur. So in other words, what we try to do to begin with is to look at the path where walking occurs.
We say that if there's walking, if there's movement of this sort by someone or something, then it has to occur somewhere. So now in order to be able to make sense of walking, then we also need to be able to find the exact place where walking occurs. But where going has already occurred, meaning where the agent has already placed his or her or its feet on the ground, then the act of walking has already happened. And where it is yet to touch the ground, there the act of walking is still to occur. So it does perhaps make sense to look at the video one more time.
So if we now try to.. keep this in mind, where walking has occurred, meaning where the feet have already..let's try again like this, see, this is quite a nice picture. So you can see the left foot, the toe is on the ground.
In other words, that path has already been covered. If the front foot had not yet touched the ground, then that would be the path where your walking is yet to occur. And now the foot that has already landed, the front foot, the heel is on the ground. And so we can say where the heel touches, that's the path where walking has occurred. And if the sole of the foot is still slightly lifted, then there's that part of the path, meaning what corresponds to this part of the foot, is the path where the act of walking is yet to occur.
So when we try to look for a path where we can say, "That's where the present walking takes place," then all what we find are instances of either walking having already occurred or walking having not yet occurred. Paths that are qualified by walking completed or walking yet to be done. So what about the present walking? Apart from, as the verse says: "Aside from what has been traversed and what has not, no place where walking occurs can be identified." So that is very, very short and concise. And the commentators say that that's actually sufficient. We don't need all the other examinations. The point has already been made at this point. But of course it may be that we don't feel very convinced about that. In particular we are saying that.. we're not talking about these static points, no? We're talking about a place that is qualified by movement. And that's where we find going. So that's what we hear in the second stanza, where someone objects saying: "Where there is movement there's going and movement is found where walking takes place. Not where going has been, nor where it has yet to occur. Hence going is found where walking takes place." So it's someone who says, well, you may say that..
that there is no path that we can point to and say, "This is the path upon which present walking occurs." And you may say that either it is walking an act that has already – whenever we zoom in and look at the picture of walking, then we see either instances of completed walking or not yet done walking. But someone may say, "I don't really think so, to be honest, because I see movement and it's in the movement that walking occurs." What I'm talking about when I say walking is not the path where it has occurred. I'm not talking about where it has to still occur. I'm talking about right now where the movement is, that's where the walking takes place. But let's perhaps before we proceed to what then follows in a sort of tour de force of introduction to dependent construction, let us perhaps go back a little bit to the first verse and see what we can make of that. So basically it's argued that first of all we have to say there are three factors that need to be accounted for if we can rightly speak about walking. Okay, there's the act of course, the action that takes place, walking. But that also means that there is someone or something that walks, otherwise there could be no action. There are no actions without agents of those actions. And furthermore, if that is the case, if we have someone, something walking, then that must happen somewhere. So there's a path also. These three are always there if it is indeed an instance of walking that we are concerned with. But then it is argued that okay, there are places where walking has already occurred. Think of someone walking along a path. There are certainly places where that walking has occurred and in fact where the feet have already touched the ground, that's where the act has been completed. It's done. It belongs already to the path of the past and not the path of present walking. And where the feet have not yet hit the ground, the act of walking is still to come. And apart from the act of walking having been completed or not, there is no third alternative. So that's what is being said in the first verse. So what do you think about that? There will be much more to follow, but the commentators do say that this is actually good enough in itself. So what do you think when you hear that?
Student: "I'm confused why the emphasis is on place where walking occurs if then by logical reasoning after reading that verse we can't define the act of walking as being existent. We can't talk about a place where walking has occurred if we can't actually identify the place where walking is occurring and so then therefore there is no walking that we can speak of with any validity, no?"
So we just can't say anything about walking? Student: "Well, I'm just waiting for the part where then no walking occurs at all and maybe that's coming next." Well, that's what they say now, that this verse is actually sufficient, yeah? So if you're already there, that walking cannot be accounted for in any way at all, then... "Yeah, it seems it can't if this is true." Well, but is it true? "Yeah."
Yeah
Student: "So I guess you could try then to find the present moment but I guess logically you could never find it because you could just sort of try and find a moment in time where walking is taking place in the present but however you tried that would always be in the future or the past. You could never pin down that present moment. So you could never have a present moment of walking. Does that make sense?" Yeah, I think so. "It would always sort of be delineated by time. It would always be past or present or past or future. You could never pin down that present moment." Yeah, well, there's something about an act that is happening, which is strange because it's meant to be there. It's the same as with the seed that is arising. It's meant to be there and at the same time not there because it's not over. The act is not over. It's occurring. So it's incomplete and complete at the same time. So can we tolerate that? Can we, does it.. for present action to make sense then it cannot be completed action and it cannot be future action. So it has to be something which is partly there and partly not there. So what is that? What kind of thing is there and not there at the same time?
Do you agree that present walking will have to be of that kind? That it cannot be fully there because then the act, the walking has already manifested and is then completed. It's complete. The walking is complete. And it is not entirely a thing of the future, yet entirely a thing of the future either because it's present. It's present walking. So it requires presence and absence at the same time of the very same thing that we're talking about. It has to both be there and not be there.
Is that how it is with all actions?
Yeah so try and think about that.
Student: "I usually don't like to use science metaphors, but I do think this is pretty applicable here. They talk in quantum physics, I don't know much about quantum physics. There's one little thing I know is that when you try to locate a photon, photons behave like waves when you are trying to measure their velocity. And..but when you try to pinpoint their location in space, they behave like particles. It strikes me that there's something similar going on here. Walking seems to imply motion, movement, and movement seems to imply taking place at an undefined location, like across locations, within the concept. And actually in verse two, it defines going as the act of leaving behind one location proceeding to another. Conspicuously absent in that definition is any mention of a particular location that it's happening at. The specific definition of 'going' references only that which went in the past and that which is coming in the future. So implied, and I think maybe this is somewhat what Andrew was getting at, we haven't really defined walking or movement. So one attempt here is walking or movement is something that happens over a span of space and over a span of time. So the effort to try and find THE place where movement is occurring is impossible, definitionally impossible, I guess I'd say. So it doesn't actually refute going. It just misunderstands what we mean by going."
I didn't quite get how so. "If going definitionally is something that happens not at a particular place, across places, and across moments in time, then trying to find a place, it's like it's definitionally impossible. Like, because it's been defined a particular way, we can never find the place. It's like trying to find the fourth side of a triangle. No, a triangle is defined as a three sided shape. Like, it's not like, oh, wow, we figured out that triangles don't exist if they don't have a fourth side. It's like, no, we define triangles, we've got three sides." So okay. So is it then wrong to say, right now I'm walking?
"I guess I feel like…" That should be impossible, no? "It would be impossible to say right now. There's so many reasons that would be impossible to say." So then if I can't say right now I'm walking, I can't say anything about what I'm doing right now.
"Yeah, I mean, I think if you're trying, if what you mean by 'right now' is at a single…
It's so hard. It's like, you know, impute moments. Fine. Let's impute moments. And if you view moments and you try to discover a walking in this moment, you will not find such a thing. I think that's true. But still, why would I not say I walked here? But because the point, because what's nice about I walked here is that it doesn't actually have to impute walking in a particular moment. It just, it takes actually a span of moments, the span of moments that it took me to walk here and says walking took place then. It's a little strange if I can never say anything about what I'm doing right now. Yeah, but we can only… That presumably what I do right now is the basis for all of these imputations, no? Because I think I came here would certainly be an imputation. If I can't say ever that I'm actually right now walking, then to say, but I came here, the whole path is behind me. That would be an excellent example of an imputation. And particularly because I can never say anything at all about what I'm doing. If I cannot say anything about what I'm doing, then I can't say anything about who I am either. "Yeah, I think both of those things are true. At least again, frame is super important. Relatively you can." And relatively I do. "And relatively you do. And it makes sense. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if you try to apply logic to it, then you find all these problems. Because…" So what does it mean that there's nothing wrong with it? That's again like my continuous… There's nothing wrong… When you say, "there's nothing wrong with it," except when I look for any real justification for what I'm saying, except then I don't find any. But there's nothing wrong with it. Yeah, exactly. Look at you. Look at me. I got here walking. Like I showed up late, unfortunately today. But I got here because I have this functional idea, just like you said, of walking. And so many of my…" So is anything that seems functional, is that true also? "No, not by a… Not true.
You're asking after something, yeah. I just think these terms need to be defined. It's true in the way that we need it to be, to get here." Student: "Sorry, I think I got stuck in the previous… Even before. So if you look at this verse itself, it says, "Okay, I cannot find current walking because it's either happened or yet to happen." But to me it seems like then my question will be, "How do I define something that has already happened and yet to happen?" Because if I cannot do that, then I'm using some seemingly false reasoning to prove or disprove something. Then where is the ground of that?" I think that's also what you pointed out and you. And I think exactly. So very quickly, it becomes perhaps… So does this mean it's the option of this discussion that we've had now, that going and walking in the present, in the past and in the future is completely unidentifiable? "I don't think I'm there yet. It's just looking at the verse itself. It always strikes me with… I always have this doubt with the Mādhyamaka reasoning. It seems to me that, okay, I wanted to prove something or disprove something, but using something that cannot be defined to prove that." What is something that can be defined? "So there is nothing can be defined. Like how.. If you wanted to prove there is no current walking and this sounds perfectly reasonable because it's either happened or yet to happen. But then on the other hand, how do I define something has already happened and yet to happen? If I cannot, then I cannot use this thing that cannot be defined to define something." Right. Yeah, that's a very important observation. The very reason itself that we get to this conclusion also dissolves.
"Then how can you say this is a good reasoning? If both dissolves, then nothing is…" Well, we don't have to say it's a good reasoning. Our task is to show that it's bad reasoning. If we can't do that, then we just have to go with it. We don't have to qualify it as good or bad, but that's just the way it is.
So what we should try to do now is to see what is wrong.
"So where there's movement, there's going and movement is found where walking takes place, not where going has been or where it has yet to occur. Hence going is found where walking takes place." So it's this very natural response to say that
I know very well when I see someone walking and when I do it myself, I can also notice that there's some movement of the legs taking place and wherever, on whichever path I am at that point, that's where present walking takes place, easy. But it's also, as we can hear, a way of not really responding to what was said in the first verse. But it's nevertheless a response. It just says, well, I can see movement and it's where the movement occurs, present movement, that the walking occurs. So if you want to know where the location, the path upon which present walking occurs, you just have to look for that movement and you have found it already. So then follows an extensive analysis that I think we should begin today.
And here..
it is again helpful, I hope.. to look at this.
These are the three things that walking requires. So this is very important to be completely at home with. There has to be an agent, someone who does the walking, and then that movement, particular movement that we talked about before, has to be there also, performed by that agent. And if there is an agent performing an action, that agent will have to be located somewhere also. So then someone, you mentioned quantum physics. We've talked about it before also. And in quantum physics you do hear statements to the effect that.. yeah, I better not try to, but that don't really follow this framework of these three necessarily entailing each other.
And I think what I can say and what I think can be rightly said about that is that we can take that as an evidence of these three being constructed, yeah? And that quantum theory is very powerful, right? There are many things that can be done only with the help of quantum physics and otherwise not. So it's a theory that is extremely counterintuitive, there's this cliché that nobody, if you think you understand quantum physics, then it's a sign that you don't, and so on. So it's certainly very complex. And at the same time, it's an empirically extremely powerful model. But it's a model, of course. So what I think the extraordinary power of quantum theory can be used as evidence of reality really, that if we can--I have to be careful what I say, no--that these, that the way we structure and are bound to structure the world and ourselves, each other, conceptually, is not really borne out by reality itself, because it is possible to, yeah, by allowing
reformulations of seemingly strictly bound concepts, then it's actually possible to reach some powerful result that would otherwise not be the case. So there's a little aside about that, yeah? But for us, is it not certainly the case that for there to be a meaningful act of walking, these three are necessarily always entailed? Let's spend a little time on that. If there is movement, as in the case of walking, does it require that something walks there? Yes or no? Otherwise what movement is happening if it's not performed by anyone or anything? And if there is something there, and if that something performs some action, well, someone there, that means that there's a location as well, no? And this means that locations of this type are qualified in a particular way, namely qualified by the presence of the act of walking. Whenever there's an agent of walking, whenever there's someone who walks, then there's also a place which is the place where walking occurs. So there are places then that are qualified in a particular way, namely by the presence of this particular action, walking. Can you think of a way that there could be one in isolation or two combined but not the third? When you look at this agent, action, and location framework, or agent, action, and objects, if we take the act of walking as relating to some object, the path, what do you think? Is it possible to conceive of instances where you have only one or two of these? Or is it indeed always the case that if there's one to two others are by necessity also there?
Student: "Can I just check with location, because walking is like a present continuous, so it's something that's over a space of time, like it's happening now. Could the location be this space which it happens over? So I might be mid-step walking across a wider location. Can that work? Yeah, at this point, or right now, what we're trying to understand is just whether these three are always mutually inclusive. Right now we're not trying to do what we did before, focus on where does present walking take place, but just taking it as a given that there is such a thing as walking, then is it not also a given that there's something or someone who walks, if really there is walking? And if there is someone or something walking, that there's a place where that action occurs? Is it possible to in any way at all conceive or imagine an occasion where one or two of these could be absent and yet the third is still there?
Student: "The example that would come to mind is dreaming, yeah? Walking somewhere in your dream. And I guess the question I have then is there's also such a thing as sleepwalking, right? So then if the person in their dream is walking on a prairie, but in waking life someone outside observer is watching them walk up their stairs or something, then it would be an interesting conversation about where exactly that person is walking." Yeah, but in the dream and from the perspective of the outside observer, there's still someone who walks somewhere. So if they're not sleepwalking and they're just in the dream and walking, is this equally valid as a situation of location or would it not be because it's not observable to an outside audience? So then that would disqualify all three, no? If you say, but actually he's just dreaming, that would mean there's no one walking, no one, no act of walking and no place of walking. "So walking then requires an observed condition, no? There must be something outside of these three to observe and qualify the act of walking." No, I thought you were suggesting that if someone looks from the outside of this, observes someone sleepwalking and infers this person dreams about walking somewhere. So in that case, there would be one instance of dismissing all three in one go and one instance of affirming all three in one go, because the outside observer would look at the person and say, "he's walking right there, it's in my room he's walking, nowhere else, and he's there, this is the path that he takes." So it's an affirmation of all three principles simultaneously and it would not be possible for that outside observer to say, that's only one thing. And at the same time, he thinks the outside observer, my friend is dreaming, he thinks that he's walking somewhere altogether different, but he's not. And in fact his dream self doesn't exist, it's just an imagination, something imagined. So the walker, the act of walking and the place are dismissed, all three. "Is that only in the presence of an outside observer or is that then the basis of authority of how we're deciding what's valid?" No, we're just asking ourselves, can I possibly imagine a situation where it would be the case that I could find perhaps just walking but no one walking? And perhaps just a place of walking but without anyone walking? Or could it be that there is a walker that doesn't walk anywhere? That is what we ask ourselves now, yeah? "Yeah, I understand the question. Then in that case then just the person by themselves asleep in bed that's having a dream about walking, how would we then treat this?" So we would ask the dreamer, we would
ask ourselves how… your question again was? "So if the person is now alone in their room dreaming of going somewhere and they're walking on a beach let's say, there's no one else there to observe them, now what is the authority like linchpin with respect to how we validate these three criteria? In their experience there's an agent, a dream agent, there's a dream action and there's a dream location." Right. So if that's the case, if that is our opinion, then it's another example of how it seems that we must always have all three and we can't have just two or just one of these without the other two. "Okay."
Student: "I think it, I could imagine action and location without agent depending on how strong of a definition of agent we're using. If we're using like free, like free agent in the sense of some kind of libertarian freedom, then you could make an argument against the possibility of such agency and maintain the action and the location like if you were, for example, a determinist and you believed that all matter in the universe was sort of just the product of the combination of the laws of nature plus some state of affairs, then any kind of understanding of agent doesn't really apply. But I don't think you can get away from a weaker definition of agent, which just uses the idea of like a thing that is moving, right? Not a free thing, not a sort of thing that's choosing to move, but just the, I guess you wouldn't say object because you're using the location as the object, but something that is kind of in motion." Yeah, exactly. And it is the weaker definition of agent. That's the relevant one here. It's just that which does the action. So if there's an action taking place, is there something that does that action? That's the basic question, no? And it seems to be entailed, does it not? But try and think about that at home. Is it possible, is it conceivable, intelligible in some way that there could be just one and not the other, or perhaps two and not the third?
So now, so there's just five minutes left. I wonder if we should do it because it's kind of, you have to hold tight. But maybe, yeah. So "Going where walking takes place, how could that make sense when without going there cannot reasonably be a place where walking takes place? So we'll just briefly introduce this, yeah? And then we can speak much more about it tomorrow.
So if we then think of an instance of someone walking, of someone performing the act of walking somewhere, then we're talking about one action. And there's only.. that act of walking is one entity. The fact that it's one entity is illustrated by the fact that there's only one destination. There's only one arrival. There's only one effect of walking. When someone walks somewhere, that person doesn't arrive many places simultaneously, but one place. So there's one action being performed. Now then we can say if there's really only one action, there's really and truly something called the act of walking. And it's one thing, yeah? It's one entity. It's one.. whatever we want to say, yeah? There's really such a thing as walking. That real walking is just one. And yet we know that there are these three things that are necessarily implied by there being an act of walking. There's then also someone or something that moves in that way. There's someone that walks. And there is also a place where the walking occurs, yeah?
So if we then say the agent of the act of walking must be qualified by being the one who performs this act. Otherwise that agent wouldn't be the agent, right? So there's one act of walking. To whom or to what does that act belong? It belongs to the agent. Fine. Then what about the place where walking occurs? Is that then not qualified by an act of walking?
It cannot be because we have combined, we have qualified the agent by being the possessor of this action, yeah? There's just one action. And yet, and that action is a property or it's something that belongs intrinsically to the agent. So we have no more walking left, so to speak, to qualify the location with. Now the location where walking occurs is a place without walking.
Try to think about that carefully, yeah? You've got the lines in the argument. It sounds very strange and kind of funny to begin with, yeah? But try to think at home, yeah? Quite carefully about this. Three things are always required for walking. The action, the agent and the location. Now there's just one action, not many. We're talking about one act of going, right? So if there's someone who walks, then it's that person who performs the action, of course. So we combine those two. The action belongs to the agent. What then happens with the place where walking occurs? Is that a different kind of action? No, couldn't be. We're talking about just the same act, no? We're just accounting for this very simple instance of someone walking. Then we say because there's one act and because that act appears to be intrinsically connected to the agent, it makes good sense to say that those two belong together. But we also said that we need a place in order to make sense of walking. We can't just have walking occurring nowhere. It needs to take place somewhere. But since we now see walking and agent as intrinsically connected, there's no connection to the act of walking. So how could this make sense that going occurs where walking takes place, when without going there cannot reasonably be any place where walking takes place?
So we'll continue with that tomorrow. Thank you.
But here it's what is going on right now, the movement in the present moment and particularly in the example of walking. And then to just illustrate that or to show what it is we're talking about. Okay, but this is what we'll be looking at, so try and… what is really going on there?
Obviously it's people who are walking and they're moving their feet in a certain way.
This is a good example of… we'll be speaking about this in close detail right away. What happens when you move the legs in this way the heels of the front foot hit the ground first and then there's this rolling over the foot and there's a lifting as we see there so that the foot behind… we roll on the toes of the foot behind. And here there's someone who has walked and left some evidence of it. "Sorry you're not sharing your video." Ah, man. Okay. Thank you for letting me know about that. Let's try again because it merits a lot of attention, yeah? It's complex stuff that we're talking about.
Still no sound though, but that's fine. Then my sound is there though. Good. Here is somebody walking, see? This very particular way of moving the feet so that you roll on the foot toe on the leg that is behind and you hit the ground first with your heel on the leg that is in front and so this rolling movement of the feet occurs, yeah? Lifting one leg and putting it ahead of the other. This is a very nice description of what goes on when walking, an illustration of what goes on when walking. There we see it again, toes on the ground with the back foot and the front foot has hit the ground already, yeah? So we can walk around in this way in many places and we do so. There's this person who has gone on soft, nice sand and then left imprints behind. We can also walk in a distracted fashion or in this way. So many forms of walking, but there's something quite distinct about the movement that takes place, yeah? So that we can say something about the way the feet hit the ground and the way the heel then lifts up and this rolling on the foot takes place, yeah? Okay, thank you. Tell me if you would like to see it again, yeah? So if we then begin with the text.
And you would like me to stop sharing, no? "Yes." So I thought I had stopped sharing, but... Is this as it should be? Yeah, okay. Great. Now, the first verse says...
There's also this tradition of pointing out the way the analysis are grounded in teachings from the Prajñāpāramitā literature, yeah? So no going and no coming is a common theme in the Prajñāpāramitā. So now we're going to not just listen to that, that there's no coming and going, like it says form does not come from anywhere nor does it go anywhere nor does it remain anywhere in the Prajñāpāramitā. This is something that we hear again and again in many different variations in the sacred literature.
But now we're going to inquire to see whether it's really true what the sūtra says, yeah? That there is no going and no coming. And we will take the path of reason. And the first verse says: "Where there has been going, there is none." Where it has yet to occur, there is no going either. Aside from what has been traversed and what has not,
No place where walking occurs can be identified."
So first of all...about walking.
If there's walking, then there must be someone who walks, there must be an act of walking, and there must be a place where it occurs. If either one of these are missing, then it makes no sense to talk about walking.
In this way we can talk about three things that are required for walking, for walking to make sense. There's a path that it occurs upon, we could call that the object to which walking relates. And then there's the agent, the one who walks, and then there's the action, the act of walking.
Now, when we then think of someone who walks on a path, then where that walking has already occurred, meaning when...
Where the agent has already walked, there is no walking, right? And where the agent is yet to walk, then there's no walking either, it's still to occur. So in other words, what we try to do to begin with is to look at the path where walking occurs.
We say that if there's walking, if there's movement of this sort by someone or something, then it has to occur somewhere. So now in order to be able to make sense of walking, then we also need to be able to find the exact place where walking occurs. But where going has already occurred, meaning where the agent has already placed his or her or its feet on the ground, then the act of walking has already happened. And where it is yet to touch the ground, there the act of walking is still to occur. So it does perhaps make sense to look at the video one more time.
So if we now try to.. keep this in mind, where walking has occurred, meaning where the feet have already..let's try again like this, see, this is quite a nice picture. So you can see the left foot, the toe is on the ground.
In other words, that path has already been covered. If the front foot had not yet touched the ground, then that would be the path where your walking is yet to occur. And now the foot that has already landed, the front foot, the heel is on the ground. And so we can say where the heel touches, that's the path where walking has occurred. And if the sole of the foot is still slightly lifted, then there's that part of the path, meaning what corresponds to this part of the foot, is the path where the act of walking is yet to occur.
So when we try to look for a path where we can say, "That's where the present walking takes place," then all what we find are instances of either walking having already occurred or walking having not yet occurred. Paths that are qualified by walking completed or walking yet to be done. So what about the present walking? Apart from, as the verse says: "Aside from what has been traversed and what has not, no place where walking occurs can be identified." So that is very, very short and concise. And the commentators say that that's actually sufficient. We don't need all the other examinations. The point has already been made at this point. But of course it may be that we don't feel very convinced about that. In particular we are saying that.. we're not talking about these static points, no? We're talking about a place that is qualified by movement. And that's where we find going. So that's what we hear in the second stanza, where someone objects saying: "Where there is movement there's going and movement is found where walking takes place. Not where going has been, nor where it has yet to occur. Hence going is found where walking takes place." So it's someone who says, well, you may say that..
that there is no path that we can point to and say, "This is the path upon which present walking occurs." And you may say that either it is walking an act that has already – whenever we zoom in and look at the picture of walking, then we see either instances of completed walking or not yet done walking. But someone may say, "I don't really think so, to be honest, because I see movement and it's in the movement that walking occurs." What I'm talking about when I say walking is not the path where it has occurred. I'm not talking about where it has to still occur. I'm talking about right now where the movement is, that's where the walking takes place. But let's perhaps before we proceed to what then follows in a sort of tour de force of introduction to dependent construction, let us perhaps go back a little bit to the first verse and see what we can make of that. So basically it's argued that first of all we have to say there are three factors that need to be accounted for if we can rightly speak about walking. Okay, there's the act of course, the action that takes place, walking. But that also means that there is someone or something that walks, otherwise there could be no action. There are no actions without agents of those actions. And furthermore, if that is the case, if we have someone, something walking, then that must happen somewhere. So there's a path also. These three are always there if it is indeed an instance of walking that we are concerned with. But then it is argued that okay, there are places where walking has already occurred. Think of someone walking along a path. There are certainly places where that walking has occurred and in fact where the feet have already touched the ground, that's where the act has been completed. It's done. It belongs already to the path of the past and not the path of present walking. And where the feet have not yet hit the ground, the act of walking is still to come. And apart from the act of walking having been completed or not, there is no third alternative. So that's what is being said in the first verse. So what do you think about that? There will be much more to follow, but the commentators do say that this is actually good enough in itself. So what do you think when you hear that?
Student: "I'm confused why the emphasis is on place where walking occurs if then by logical reasoning after reading that verse we can't define the act of walking as being existent. We can't talk about a place where walking has occurred if we can't actually identify the place where walking is occurring and so then therefore there is no walking that we can speak of with any validity, no?"
So we just can't say anything about walking? Student: "Well, I'm just waiting for the part where then no walking occurs at all and maybe that's coming next." Well, that's what they say now, that this verse is actually sufficient, yeah? So if you're already there, that walking cannot be accounted for in any way at all, then... "Yeah, it seems it can't if this is true." Well, but is it true? "Yeah."
Yeah
Student: "So I guess you could try then to find the present moment but I guess logically you could never find it because you could just sort of try and find a moment in time where walking is taking place in the present but however you tried that would always be in the future or the past. You could never pin down that present moment. So you could never have a present moment of walking. Does that make sense?" Yeah, I think so. "It would always sort of be delineated by time. It would always be past or present or past or future. You could never pin down that present moment." Yeah, well, there's something about an act that is happening, which is strange because it's meant to be there. It's the same as with the seed that is arising. It's meant to be there and at the same time not there because it's not over. The act is not over. It's occurring. So it's incomplete and complete at the same time. So can we tolerate that? Can we, does it.. for present action to make sense then it cannot be completed action and it cannot be future action. So it has to be something which is partly there and partly not there. So what is that? What kind of thing is there and not there at the same time?
Do you agree that present walking will have to be of that kind? That it cannot be fully there because then the act, the walking has already manifested and is then completed. It's complete. The walking is complete. And it is not entirely a thing of the future, yet entirely a thing of the future either because it's present. It's present walking. So it requires presence and absence at the same time of the very same thing that we're talking about. It has to both be there and not be there.
Is that how it is with all actions?
Yeah so try and think about that.
Student: "I usually don't like to use science metaphors, but I do think this is pretty applicable here. They talk in quantum physics, I don't know much about quantum physics. There's one little thing I know is that when you try to locate a photon, photons behave like waves when you are trying to measure their velocity. And..but when you try to pinpoint their location in space, they behave like particles. It strikes me that there's something similar going on here. Walking seems to imply motion, movement, and movement seems to imply taking place at an undefined location, like across locations, within the concept. And actually in verse two, it defines going as the act of leaving behind one location proceeding to another. Conspicuously absent in that definition is any mention of a particular location that it's happening at. The specific definition of 'going' references only that which went in the past and that which is coming in the future. So implied, and I think maybe this is somewhat what Andrew was getting at, we haven't really defined walking or movement. So one attempt here is walking or movement is something that happens over a span of space and over a span of time. So the effort to try and find THE place where movement is occurring is impossible, definitionally impossible, I guess I'd say. So it doesn't actually refute going. It just misunderstands what we mean by going."
I didn't quite get how so. "If going definitionally is something that happens not at a particular place, across places, and across moments in time, then trying to find a place, it's like it's definitionally impossible. Like, because it's been defined a particular way, we can never find the place. It's like trying to find the fourth side of a triangle. No, a triangle is defined as a three sided shape. Like, it's not like, oh, wow, we figured out that triangles don't exist if they don't have a fourth side. It's like, no, we define triangles, we've got three sides." So okay. So is it then wrong to say, right now I'm walking?
"I guess I feel like…" That should be impossible, no? "It would be impossible to say right now. There's so many reasons that would be impossible to say." So then if I can't say right now I'm walking, I can't say anything about what I'm doing right now.
"Yeah, I mean, I think if you're trying, if what you mean by 'right now' is at a single…
It's so hard. It's like, you know, impute moments. Fine. Let's impute moments. And if you view moments and you try to discover a walking in this moment, you will not find such a thing. I think that's true. But still, why would I not say I walked here? But because the point, because what's nice about I walked here is that it doesn't actually have to impute walking in a particular moment. It just, it takes actually a span of moments, the span of moments that it took me to walk here and says walking took place then. It's a little strange if I can never say anything about what I'm doing right now. Yeah, but we can only… That presumably what I do right now is the basis for all of these imputations, no? Because I think I came here would certainly be an imputation. If I can't say ever that I'm actually right now walking, then to say, but I came here, the whole path is behind me. That would be an excellent example of an imputation. And particularly because I can never say anything at all about what I'm doing. If I cannot say anything about what I'm doing, then I can't say anything about who I am either. "Yeah, I think both of those things are true. At least again, frame is super important. Relatively you can." And relatively I do. "And relatively you do. And it makes sense. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if you try to apply logic to it, then you find all these problems. Because…" So what does it mean that there's nothing wrong with it? That's again like my continuous… There's nothing wrong… When you say, "there's nothing wrong with it," except when I look for any real justification for what I'm saying, except then I don't find any. But there's nothing wrong with it. Yeah, exactly. Look at you. Look at me. I got here walking. Like I showed up late, unfortunately today. But I got here because I have this functional idea, just like you said, of walking. And so many of my…" So is anything that seems functional, is that true also? "No, not by a… Not true.
You're asking after something, yeah. I just think these terms need to be defined. It's true in the way that we need it to be, to get here." Student: "Sorry, I think I got stuck in the previous… Even before. So if you look at this verse itself, it says, "Okay, I cannot find current walking because it's either happened or yet to happen." But to me it seems like then my question will be, "How do I define something that has already happened and yet to happen?" Because if I cannot do that, then I'm using some seemingly false reasoning to prove or disprove something. Then where is the ground of that?" I think that's also what you pointed out and you. And I think exactly. So very quickly, it becomes perhaps… So does this mean it's the option of this discussion that we've had now, that going and walking in the present, in the past and in the future is completely unidentifiable? "I don't think I'm there yet. It's just looking at the verse itself. It always strikes me with… I always have this doubt with the Mādhyamaka reasoning. It seems to me that, okay, I wanted to prove something or disprove something, but using something that cannot be defined to prove that." What is something that can be defined? "So there is nothing can be defined. Like how.. If you wanted to prove there is no current walking and this sounds perfectly reasonable because it's either happened or yet to happen. But then on the other hand, how do I define something has already happened and yet to happen? If I cannot, then I cannot use this thing that cannot be defined to define something." Right. Yeah, that's a very important observation. The very reason itself that we get to this conclusion also dissolves.
"Then how can you say this is a good reasoning? If both dissolves, then nothing is…" Well, we don't have to say it's a good reasoning. Our task is to show that it's bad reasoning. If we can't do that, then we just have to go with it. We don't have to qualify it as good or bad, but that's just the way it is.
So what we should try to do now is to see what is wrong.
"So where there's movement, there's going and movement is found where walking takes place, not where going has been or where it has yet to occur. Hence going is found where walking takes place." So it's this very natural response to say that
I know very well when I see someone walking and when I do it myself, I can also notice that there's some movement of the legs taking place and wherever, on whichever path I am at that point, that's where present walking takes place, easy. But it's also, as we can hear, a way of not really responding to what was said in the first verse. But it's nevertheless a response. It just says, well, I can see movement and it's where the movement occurs, present movement, that the walking occurs. So if you want to know where the location, the path upon which present walking occurs, you just have to look for that movement and you have found it already. So then follows an extensive analysis that I think we should begin today.
And here..
it is again helpful, I hope.. to look at this.
These are the three things that walking requires. So this is very important to be completely at home with. There has to be an agent, someone who does the walking, and then that movement, particular movement that we talked about before, has to be there also, performed by that agent. And if there is an agent performing an action, that agent will have to be located somewhere also. So then someone, you mentioned quantum physics. We've talked about it before also. And in quantum physics you do hear statements to the effect that.. yeah, I better not try to, but that don't really follow this framework of these three necessarily entailing each other.
And I think what I can say and what I think can be rightly said about that is that we can take that as an evidence of these three being constructed, yeah? And that quantum theory is very powerful, right? There are many things that can be done only with the help of quantum physics and otherwise not. So it's a theory that is extremely counterintuitive, there's this cliché that nobody, if you think you understand quantum physics, then it's a sign that you don't, and so on. So it's certainly very complex. And at the same time, it's an empirically extremely powerful model. But it's a model, of course. So what I think the extraordinary power of quantum theory can be used as evidence of reality really, that if we can--I have to be careful what I say, no--that these, that the way we structure and are bound to structure the world and ourselves, each other, conceptually, is not really borne out by reality itself, because it is possible to, yeah, by allowing
reformulations of seemingly strictly bound concepts, then it's actually possible to reach some powerful result that would otherwise not be the case. So there's a little aside about that, yeah? But for us, is it not certainly the case that for there to be a meaningful act of walking, these three are necessarily always entailed? Let's spend a little time on that. If there is movement, as in the case of walking, does it require that something walks there? Yes or no? Otherwise what movement is happening if it's not performed by anyone or anything? And if there is something there, and if that something performs some action, well, someone there, that means that there's a location as well, no? And this means that locations of this type are qualified in a particular way, namely qualified by the presence of the act of walking. Whenever there's an agent of walking, whenever there's someone who walks, then there's also a place which is the place where walking occurs. So there are places then that are qualified in a particular way, namely by the presence of this particular action, walking. Can you think of a way that there could be one in isolation or two combined but not the third? When you look at this agent, action, and location framework, or agent, action, and objects, if we take the act of walking as relating to some object, the path, what do you think? Is it possible to conceive of instances where you have only one or two of these? Or is it indeed always the case that if there's one to two others are by necessity also there?
Student: "Can I just check with location, because walking is like a present continuous, so it's something that's over a space of time, like it's happening now. Could the location be this space which it happens over? So I might be mid-step walking across a wider location. Can that work? Yeah, at this point, or right now, what we're trying to understand is just whether these three are always mutually inclusive. Right now we're not trying to do what we did before, focus on where does present walking take place, but just taking it as a given that there is such a thing as walking, then is it not also a given that there's something or someone who walks, if really there is walking? And if there is someone or something walking, that there's a place where that action occurs? Is it possible to in any way at all conceive or imagine an occasion where one or two of these could be absent and yet the third is still there?
Student: "The example that would come to mind is dreaming, yeah? Walking somewhere in your dream. And I guess the question I have then is there's also such a thing as sleepwalking, right? So then if the person in their dream is walking on a prairie, but in waking life someone outside observer is watching them walk up their stairs or something, then it would be an interesting conversation about where exactly that person is walking." Yeah, but in the dream and from the perspective of the outside observer, there's still someone who walks somewhere. So if they're not sleepwalking and they're just in the dream and walking, is this equally valid as a situation of location or would it not be because it's not observable to an outside audience? So then that would disqualify all three, no? If you say, but actually he's just dreaming, that would mean there's no one walking, no one, no act of walking and no place of walking. "So walking then requires an observed condition, no? There must be something outside of these three to observe and qualify the act of walking." No, I thought you were suggesting that if someone looks from the outside of this, observes someone sleepwalking and infers this person dreams about walking somewhere. So in that case, there would be one instance of dismissing all three in one go and one instance of affirming all three in one go, because the outside observer would look at the person and say, "he's walking right there, it's in my room he's walking, nowhere else, and he's there, this is the path that he takes." So it's an affirmation of all three principles simultaneously and it would not be possible for that outside observer to say, that's only one thing. And at the same time, he thinks the outside observer, my friend is dreaming, he thinks that he's walking somewhere altogether different, but he's not. And in fact his dream self doesn't exist, it's just an imagination, something imagined. So the walker, the act of walking and the place are dismissed, all three. "Is that only in the presence of an outside observer or is that then the basis of authority of how we're deciding what's valid?" No, we're just asking ourselves, can I possibly imagine a situation where it would be the case that I could find perhaps just walking but no one walking? And perhaps just a place of walking but without anyone walking? Or could it be that there is a walker that doesn't walk anywhere? That is what we ask ourselves now, yeah? "Yeah, I understand the question. Then in that case then just the person by themselves asleep in bed that's having a dream about walking, how would we then treat this?" So we would ask the dreamer, we would
ask ourselves how… your question again was? "So if the person is now alone in their room dreaming of going somewhere and they're walking on a beach let's say, there's no one else there to observe them, now what is the authority like linchpin with respect to how we validate these three criteria? In their experience there's an agent, a dream agent, there's a dream action and there's a dream location." Right. So if that's the case, if that is our opinion, then it's another example of how it seems that we must always have all three and we can't have just two or just one of these without the other two. "Okay."
Student: "I think it, I could imagine action and location without agent depending on how strong of a definition of agent we're using. If we're using like free, like free agent in the sense of some kind of libertarian freedom, then you could make an argument against the possibility of such agency and maintain the action and the location like if you were, for example, a determinist and you believed that all matter in the universe was sort of just the product of the combination of the laws of nature plus some state of affairs, then any kind of understanding of agent doesn't really apply. But I don't think you can get away from a weaker definition of agent, which just uses the idea of like a thing that is moving, right? Not a free thing, not a sort of thing that's choosing to move, but just the, I guess you wouldn't say object because you're using the location as the object, but something that is kind of in motion." Yeah, exactly. And it is the weaker definition of agent. That's the relevant one here. It's just that which does the action. So if there's an action taking place, is there something that does that action? That's the basic question, no? And it seems to be entailed, does it not? But try and think about that at home. Is it possible, is it conceivable, intelligible in some way that there could be just one and not the other, or perhaps two and not the third?
So now, so there's just five minutes left. I wonder if we should do it because it's kind of, you have to hold tight. But maybe, yeah. So "Going where walking takes place, how could that make sense when without going there cannot reasonably be a place where walking takes place? So we'll just briefly introduce this, yeah? And then we can speak much more about it tomorrow.
So if we then think of an instance of someone walking, of someone performing the act of walking somewhere, then we're talking about one action. And there's only.. that act of walking is one entity. The fact that it's one entity is illustrated by the fact that there's only one destination. There's only one arrival. There's only one effect of walking. When someone walks somewhere, that person doesn't arrive many places simultaneously, but one place. So there's one action being performed. Now then we can say if there's really only one action, there's really and truly something called the act of walking. And it's one thing, yeah? It's one entity. It's one.. whatever we want to say, yeah? There's really such a thing as walking. That real walking is just one. And yet we know that there are these three things that are necessarily implied by there being an act of walking. There's then also someone or something that moves in that way. There's someone that walks. And there is also a place where the walking occurs, yeah?
So if we then say the agent of the act of walking must be qualified by being the one who performs this act. Otherwise that agent wouldn't be the agent, right? So there's one act of walking. To whom or to what does that act belong? It belongs to the agent. Fine. Then what about the place where walking occurs? Is that then not qualified by an act of walking?
It cannot be because we have combined, we have qualified the agent by being the possessor of this action, yeah? There's just one action. And yet, and that action is a property or it's something that belongs intrinsically to the agent. So we have no more walking left, so to speak, to qualify the location with. Now the location where walking occurs is a place without walking.
Try to think about that carefully, yeah? You've got the lines in the argument. It sounds very strange and kind of funny to begin with, yeah? But try to think at home, yeah? Quite carefully about this. Three things are always required for walking. The action, the agent and the location. Now there's just one action, not many. We're talking about one act of going, right? So if there's someone who walks, then it's that person who performs the action, of course. So we combine those two. The action belongs to the agent. What then happens with the place where walking occurs? Is that a different kind of action? No, couldn't be. We're talking about just the same act, no? We're just accounting for this very simple instance of someone walking. Then we say because there's one act and because that act appears to be intrinsically connected to the agent, it makes good sense to say that those two belong together. But we also said that we need a place in order to make sense of walking. We can't just have walking occurring nowhere. It needs to take place somewhere. But since we now see walking and agent as intrinsically connected, there's no connection to the act of walking. So how could this make sense that going occurs where walking takes place, when without going there cannot reasonably be any place where walking takes place?
So we'll continue with that tomorrow. Thank you.
17:26
Root of The Middle Way – Session 15
Interplay of Actions and Locations in Walking
Teacher:
Location:
- Rangjung Yeshe Institute - Nepal
- Date: March 2, 2023
Description >>
Session 15 delves into the intricate connection between “going” and “coming” in walking. The lecture explores the concept of walking, arguing that for it to make sense, there must be an agent, action, and a path. The paradox arises that in places where walking has already happened or is yet to occur, present walking seems elusive. Movement is discussed as spanning time and space, defying a fixed location for walking. The concept of “going” is examined as extending through moments in time. The lecture urges contemplation on action and time’s nature.
