7 Mysticism and Rationality

Mysticism and Rationality

It is very common today to claim that mystics are irrational: their discourse is “beyond reason,” “logic does not apply to mystical discourse,” mystics are “unconstrained by logic” or have “abandoned the intellect.” They are claimed to have “their own unique logic,” or to be unable to speak without falling into “contradictions and gibberish.” Scholars routinely declare that mystics are by definition irrational, without further discussion (e.g., Garfield & Priest 2003). Indeed, mysticism is often considered the very paradigm of irrationality, and conversely any irrational claim is label “mystical.” Mystics’ alleged irrationality is taken as grounds to place mystical experiences among the emotions rather than among cognitive activities. However, such claims do not hold up when mystics’ writings are actually examined. In fact, their writings are typically rational by traditional “Western” standards. This is not to deny that mystics often revel in paradox, but only to claim that mystics can also produce rational arguments on occasion and that the paradoxes can be explained.1

In chapter 3, one question was whether it is rational for mystics or nonmystics to accept mystical cognitive claims or to adopt a mystical way of life today. Here the issue is whether mystics themselves “think rationally” in the statements and arguments they make. As noted in chapter 3, today persons usually are called irrational only if their thoughts or actions defy the well-established knowledge of their day or if their beliefs are not coherent but contain blatant contradictions. Of course, what is considered the “best knowledge of the day” varies from culture to culture and era to era. Thus, what it is to be rational will depend on the reasons and beliefs of a particular culture and era: they determine what is “reasonable,” “natural, “logical,” and “plausible.” It was once rational to believe that the earth was flat and did not move, but that is no longer rational. Mystics from classical cultures will differ from modern “common sense” in the premises of their arguments and perhaps in what is taken to be a reasonable inference, both because their experiential base is broader than ours and because the beliefs of different premodern cultures differ from modern science-inspired beliefs, and what is accepted as “rational” in science may change as research progresses. But that does not mean that mystics are necessarily irrational in their reasoning. Today naturalists may equate “being rational” with “being scientific,” but it is not obvious that accepting experiences as cognitive that cannot be checked in a third-person empirical manner, as scientific claims in principle should be, necessarily make mystics irrational in their reasoning. (Mystics must also find transcendent claims meaningful, even if philosophers today raise objections.)

Logic was not a major topic of concern to classical mystics.2 Nevertheless, mystics can be as logical as nonmystics. For example, Shankara argued that contradictory properties cannot exist together (Brahma-sutra-bhashya 2.1.27), and much of his commentaries on the Upanishads deals with resolving apparent contradictions. So too, mystics’ arguments may be logical in their structure by Western Aristotelian standards. A culture need not devise an Aristotelian syllogism to follow the rules implicitly. And mystics’ writings do typically implicitly abide by the three basic principles central to Aristotelian logic: the law of identity (x is x and not not-x), the law of noncontradiction (that nothing can be both x and not x), and the law of the excluded middle (that anything is either x or not x with no third possibility). In Indian philosophy, all schools accept some form of inference (anumana) as a means to at least the conventional kind of correct knowledge. But the reasoning is in terms of concrete things found in our experience of the world rather than in terms of necessities and probabilities, and there are no discussions of logical principles in the abstract or why these laws should be accepted. The syllogisms in the Nyaya Hindu school and Madhyamaka Buddhism differ in form from Western ones; in particular, examples (both positive and sometimes negative examples supporting a premise) are an element in the formal syllogism. What counts as a “necessary truth” or an induction does vary because of differences in the premises accepted and in what is considered important. Thus, even if there are some cross-cultural standards of reasoning, the criteria that each mystic employs to make judgments concerning different experiences and the views of other traditions may be internal to that mystic’s tradition.3 But the deductions themselves (i.e., truth-preserving inferences) obey the Aristotelian rules. If so, this is a bulwark against any complete postmodernist relativism in rationality in an argument.4

In sum, rationality requires having good reasons for one’s beliefs and actions, but such reasons and some aspects of valid arguments will be defined by one’s culture. However, if classical mystics accept the best knowledge of their culture and era and are logical in their reasoning, then it can be concluded that they are rational in the only way that can be judged today. (Note that this does not mean that classical mystics are being judged rational by alien cultural standards; rather, what would be shown is that the Aristotelian rules of logic are in fact implicit in their own standards of reasoning. Nor is the issue in the present chapter the one considered in chapter 3 of whether we would deem mystics to be rational today in believing the mystical claims of an earlier time and culture.) Whether mystics accept the best knowledge of their culture and era does not seem to be an issue. The metaphysical premises that classical mystics in various culture endorse may seem problematic in light of our modern beliefs, but they too are not an issue for rationality. Rather, the issue is how mystics argue. This question will be addressed here by looking at two topics: the alleged paradigm of mystical irrationality (paradox), and a case study of one mystic’s way of arguing (the Madhyamaka Buddhist Nagarjuna). But first a note on differences in the general style of reasoning among cultures.

Rationality and Styles of Reasoning

Most works by mystics, like most writings, do not contain developed arguments. Many are works of poetry. But mystics can write books of argument if the occasion calls for it, as shown by Shankara’s commentaries on the basic Hindu texts in which he takes on various opponents. In classical mystical traditions, appeal is often made to authoritative religious texts; this does undercut rationality since rationality is associated with first-hand experiences and reasoning, but it does not go so far as to make mystics’ reasoning irrational or illogical in structure. (It should be noted that mystical experiences are not considered means to “correct knowledge” in most Indian mystical schools, and as noted earlier, mystics in general do not appeal to their own experiences in arguments.) The important point here is that when mystics do construct arguments they do not defy logic. India also has a tradition of debates (vadas) over religious and related philosophical matters that includes pointing out alleged logical inconsistencies and conflicts with ordinary experiences in the doctrines of opponents (see Motilal 1998). (And it must be admitted that in the past such debates often included contests of miracle-working.) Buddhists such as Nagarjuna valued logical consistency and utilized such sophisticated arguments as reductio ad absurdum and the problem of infinite regression that rely on the law of noncontradiction to draw out logical inconsistencies. Thus, although the process of reasoning conflicts with actually having introvertive mystical experience at the same time and would at least interfere with receptivity in extrovertive mystical experiences, outside those experiences some mystics, as part of their mystical way of life, have written works advancing arguments for their understanding of what is experienced and against their opponents’ views that are logical in form.

But mystics are not typically trained in Aristotelian logic, although logic was part of the medieval Christian and Muslim curricula. Mystics will also use the styles of arguing and forms of formal presentation that are particular to their culture and era. The physical environment we have evolved in shapes our thinking and what we all consider real and reasonable; we all may also have evolved certain innate structures in our psyche. But cultures also shape what we consider reasonable and what styles of reasoning we adopt.5 If the social psychologist Richard Nisbett is correct, there is a basic difference between Western and East Asian ways of understanding and perceiving the natural world (2003). He is not saying that everyone in a given culture thinks the same way, but only that there are general cultural patterns of thinking: Westerners typically engage in “analytical thinking” that involves detaching an object from its context and categorizing objects by their attributes, whereas East Asians typically engage in “holistic thinking” that involves an orientation to context and environments as a whole. Analytical thinkers explain and predict in terms of rules governing an object’s attributes; holistic thinkers explain and predict in terms of the relation of an object to its context and to other objects. The former utilize chronological and historical relationships; the latter, causal patterns. The former are drawn to objects; the latter, to a perceptual field as a whole. The former decontextualize an object and manipulate its environment; the latter adjust themselves to their environment. The former try to understand the whole by how the parts work; the latter understand the parts by starting with the whole. The former see a logical contradiction between true and false; the latter see some merit on both sides and look for a middle way between them. The former naturally see distinct objects; the latter see a common substance. The former look for causes and agents; the latter, for relationships. The former come up with models simplifying how things work by removing things from their environment; the latter accept the complexity of the world. Western thinking fed Greek curiosity about how the world works and led naturally to the development of science; the latter are exemplified in Daoism and Zen. (Note that Nisbett does not place the origin of the holistic approach in mystical experiences or tie it in any way to such experiences.6)

There may be such broad cultural differences in how different people think and perceive particular to each culture.7 Such differences in outlooks would affect the premises and reasons in arguments. Moreover, every person may employ unique mental steps in his or her own reasoning. But the issue for rationality comes down to whether mystics must reject the basic rules of logic in how they reason. And they do not appear to do so. The early Buddhist Points of Contention (Kathavatthu) and Questions of King Milinda (Milindapanha) are good examples. In the latter, the questions posed by the Greek-influenced king often reflect a concern that Buddhist claims directly violate the law of noncontradiction. Questions are posed in the form of two-prong dilemmas, and the Buddhist monk Nagasena’s answers are implicitly based on the basic rules of logic. For example, he reconciled the apparently conflicting claims that the Buddha had no teachers and had five teachers by asserting that the Buddha did have teachers but none instructed the enlightening knowledge and thus he had no teacher of that (Mlp 235–36). Nagasena relied on similes in his arguments. That points to a difference in the style of argument, but many passages implicitly involve the law of the excluded middle in the form “If x, then y; if not-x, then not-y.” The arguments implicitly accept that these two options exhaust all the possibilities. We may not find all the reconciliations convincing—there is often no good reason to believe that arguments based on analogies or similes illuminate the subject being explained. But this is not to deny the logical structure of the arguments. The questions reveal an awareness of logically problematic aspects of mystical claims, and the answers reveal a rational response to them. Nothing in that text exhibits an “alternative logic” or cannot be explained to be logical.8 We may not agree with their premises, but the form of the arguments is logical by Western standards. Similarly, the Daoist Zhuangzi is not, as is often alleged, being “antirational” or “anti-intellectual” in using reason to show that reasoning cannot establish one limited point of view as absolute, universal, or otherwise uniquely grounded in reality. John of the Cross represented more than Christian mystics when he said in Ascent of Mount Carmel that “all matters must be regulated by reason save those of faith, which, though not contrary to reason, transcend it” (2.22.13).9 He also repeatedly used the principle that two contraries cannot coexist in the same subject (e.g., ibid.: 1.4.2). Or as Abu Hamid al-Ghazali said, “Reason is God’s scale on earth.” So too, a “love” mystic such as Hadewijch of Antwerp can value reason as a “gift from God” and claim that “reason never deceives” while still claiming that the limited reason-guided life of virtue must be transcended.10

One Buddhist strategy that is regularly cited as a rejection of two-valued logic is the “four options” (catush-koti).11 It came up when the Buddha tried to remain silent to persistent questioning but finally responded by rejecting any answer to certain questions (such as whether the universe is eternal or not), claiming that none “fit the case” (upeti)—even though the options exhaust all the logical possibilities. Thus, to the question of whether the enlightened exist after death or not, the Buddha rejected as “Not so” (ma h’evam) the four options that the enlightened exists, does not exist, both exists and does not exist, and neither exists nor does not exist (Majjhima Nikaya 1.485–87, 2.166).12 This appears clearly to violate the law of noncontradiction, and numerous attempts have been made to show that it does not. But the reason that all four options are rejected is simple: when all factors of the phenomenal world (dharmas) are removed at death, there is no means of knowledge and thus no means of description (Sutta Nipata 1075–76). We might affirm the second option that the enlightened do not exist after death at least as the factors of the world do, but because of the mirror theory of language, an unenlightened listener might take any affirmative answer as referring to a “real” entity that exists or does not exist after death, and so the second option also must be denied. This style of argument is not irrational since it is perfectly reasonable for the Buddha to assume (under the thrall of the mirror theory of language) that any affirmative answer would be misleading because to describe x by predicate y or by the denial of y would still lead the listener to think in terms of y when y in fact does not apply and there is no real x.13 (More on this below.)

Paradox

The most often cited instance of mystics’ blatant disregard for reason is the violation of the laws of logic in paradoxes. And mystics do frequently say something about what was experienced and then immediately deny it. But paradoxes are not any counterintuitive claims or inadvertent inconsistencies.14 Rather, they are purposeful combinations of the positive characterizations of what is experienced and their denial. That is, positive affirmations and their negations are knowingly linked in concise contradictory statements.15 To many philosophers, mystics speak in paradoxes simply because they have no coherent insights to state and so they deliberately obfuscate. Critics take such remarks to be the height of irrationality since we cannot consistently hold at the same time two beliefs we believe are inconsistent. Thus, paradoxes are grounds for rejecting everything mystics say about alleged transcendent realities.

Consistency of statements and coherence of all of one’s beliefs do seem to be basic to the idea of rationality.16 As a simple matter of the logic of belief, to believe a claim is to believe it is true and to reject genuinely conflicting claims as false. In dissent, some recent “dialetheists” in philosophy argue that the law of noncontradiction should not be applied in all cases, because some contradictions at the limits of our knowledge are true and there may be adequate grounds for holding explicitly contradictory beliefs. Walter Stace also believed that while some mystical statements are true (1960a: 182–183, 298–99, 305), they are inherently paradoxical (ibid.: 270–74). If so, consistency would not be a necessary condition of rationality. Graham Priest (2002, 2004) argues that all attempts at closure at the boundaries of thought and of what is knowable in science lead to contradictions—any conceptual process crossing those boundaries results in the paradoxes of self-reference—but that these contradictions state truths, and something contradictory about reality itself renders such contradictory statements true. This position tolerates at least some inconsistencies in a rational system of thought. Mysticism would be one such attempt at closure leading to paradoxes. But if mystical paradoxes can be shown to have a noncontradictory content, such a view of logic is not needed. To most philosophers, even if the world itself is inconsistent, this does not mean we should abandon reasoning about it in a self-consistent way—an inconsistency in our assertions indicates only that we do not know what we are talking about on that issue (Rescher & Brandom 1979: 139).

For the vast majority of philosophers, no contradiction can state a true fact. Most philosophers think that a statement cannot be intelligible without obeying the laws of noncontradiction and the excluded middle. Any “veridical paradox” requires “a repudiation of part of our conceptual heritage” (Quine 1976: 9). How can two claims be true if they contradict each other? How can I believe both that the Mets won the 1969 World Series and that the Yankees won that series when I know there can be only one winner? What exactly would my belief be about who won the series that could comport with the facts? Even at the boundaries of thought, what can a person be said to believe if his or her beliefs are a contradictory muddle? How can a person believe what he or she cannot understand coherently? Indeed, the basic principles of logic may merely make explicit how language operates. And Bertrand Russell can rightly ask how can we tell the difference between a paradox that veils a profound truth and one that is simply nonsense? As Ronald Hepburn put it: “When is a contradiction not a mere contradiction, but a sublime Paradox, a Mystery? How can we distinguish a viciously muddled confusion of concepts from an excusably stammering attempt to describe what has been glimpsed during some ‘raid on the inarticulate,’ an object too great for our comprehension, but none the less real for that?” (1958: 17).

But are mystical utterances really incoherent? It should first be noted that not all mystical utterances are in fact paradoxical. Paradoxes occur less often in “thin” phenomenal descriptions of mystical experiences’ characteristics and more often in “thick” accounts of mystics trying to understand what was experienced.17 Nevertheless, mystics do easily end up speaking in paradoxes: they ascribe something to a transcendent reality because it seems appropriate to what was experienced, but then because the mirror theory of language they must immediately deny it since the reality is not a phenomenal object and the unenlightened will assume words apply only to such objects. Thus, they may say God is a person and not a person, and so on. Or mystics may combine symbols in a way that appears paradoxical, as with John of the Cross’s “ray of darkness” or Laozi’s “dark brightness” to express the sense of experiencing a profound reality that cannot be comprehended with the analytical mind. In introvertive mysticism, the problem arises from the otherness of the transcendent realities that are experienced. In extrovertive mysticism, the problem arises from the fact that phenomena exist but are not distinct and self-existent, and hence they are not “real” in that sense. From the Diamond-Cutter Sutra (3): “However many sentient beings there are in the world of beings, … all sentient beings will eventually be led by me to the final nirvana. … And yet when this unfathomable number of living beings have all been led to nirvana, in reality not even a single being actually will have been led to nirvana.” This paradox of saving “nonexistent” beings plants a contradiction at the very heart of the Buddhist bodhisattva way of life: bodhisattvas see that sentient beings “do not exist” and yet they do not abandon them but lead them to (an equally nonexistent) nirvana. And the paradoxes do not stop there: the Prajnaparamita texts are replete with such confusing claims as “Dharmas are not dharmas,” “The teaching is a nonteaching,” “The practice is a nonpractice,” “The nature of all factors is a nonnature,” “Bodhisattvas strive for enlightenment, but there is nothing to strive for,” and “I am enlightened and yet it does not occur to me that I am enlightened.”18 The Sanskrit in each case makes it clear that contradictions are intended, even when consistent forms could have been stated in Sanskrit.19 And the sheer length of the texts testifies to the fact that these writers did not reject language in general. Thus, contradictions seem to be part of their program (see Jones 2012c: 220–23).

Sometimes paradoxes arise because a particular language cannot express something nonparadoxically that another language can express without contradiction. For example, in ancient Egyptian the word for “south” was “to go upstream” and the word for “north” was “to go downstream,” reflecting the direction of the northerly flow of the Nile River. So when Egyptian soldiers encountered the Euphrates River, which flows south, they had to call it “that circling water that goes downstream in going upstream” (Wilson 1949: 45–46). The physical situation itself was obviously not paradoxical, but their language simply could not handle what the soldiers clearly saw. That is, a coherent idea may simply not be statable in one particular language (see Henle 1949). (Also note that the soldiers’ conceptual framework did not control what they saw, contra constructivism: it was because they could plainly see what direction the Euphrates was flowing that they had a problem.)

Perhaps the Egyptians came up with new terms to handle the situation without contradictions, but the problem with mystical paradoxes does not seem solvable by devising a new language. In practice, no language appears to be more “mystical” than another—mystics East and West have the same problem whatever their native language is. New uses are given to old words through metaphoric extensions, and occasionally a new word is coined (e.g., being “oned” with the One), but the denials of the applicability of language to transcendent realities go on unabated. This indicates that the problem mystics see with language lies with the very nature of any language, and this explains why apparently no mystic has tried to invent a new language. To be more precise, if the problem lies with how we normally view language as working (i.e., the mirror theory), the problem would remain even if some mystic did invent an entirely new language. No new language will be exempt, since all languages must operate by making distinctions: we would still tend to project onto reality whatever categories the new language differentiated (and so extrovertive mystics would object), and the unenlightened would still tend to reduce any designated transcendent realities to merely unusual phenomenal ones (and so introvertive mystics would object). And the paradoxes of affirming features of reality and then denying them would remain.

Resolving Paradoxes

Some mystical paradoxes result from using different senses of the same word in both their affirmative and denial halves and so can be paraphrased consistently. For example, “knowing without knowing” can be unpacked as “experiencing a transcendent reality without being able to conceptualize or ‘grasp’ it after the experience.” So too, when Meister Eckhart said “no man can see God except he be blind, nor know him except through ignorance,” he is talking about mystically experiencing a transcendent reality by first “unknowing” sense-experience and worldly phenomena (see 2009: 140–41). Through such emptying, one attains the “inner desert” or “darkness” where God shines (ibid.; McGinn 2001: 153). Or when he said “Let us pray to God that we may be free of God” (2009: 422), he meant that God existed but he wanted to be free of even the idea of “God” so that he could be empty of all “images,” and thus let the inward “birth of the son” occur. Thus, one is full in one sense and empty in another: to be empty of all created things is to be full of God, and to be full of all created things is to be empty of God (Eckhart 1981: 288). The recurring plenum/vacuum paradox can be treated similarly: the source of the world’s being is empty of differentiated phenomena but full of beingness—the source is empty in one respect and full in another.20 The role of different senses can be seen in the matter of depth: God is present everywhere (in the depth of beingness) and nowhere (in the diverse surface phenomena). It is like a common light source being present in all of the colored spectrum: red is not blue, but their substance is identical in being from the same source. To imagine transcendent realities as the same in nature as phenomenal objects (as philosophers routinely do) would make this paradox unresolvable—we would end up with a bizarre nonmystical pantheism in which each object is identical to every other one. But beingness is not a matter of identity on the “surface” phenomena of the world: here objects remain differentiated. In Eckhart’s words, objects are distinct in their “creaturehood,” but they are the same in their “is-ness” (istigkeit). So too, he can paradoxically refer to creatures as “pure nothing”: they all exist, but their being comes only from God, and thus in themselves they are ontologically nothing. The same occurs with respect to the nature of transcendent realities. Thus, theistic mystics may deny that God exists in the way that phenomena exist and yet not want to deny that God exists at all, and so they may say “God both exists and does not exist” or “God is both real and unreal” when they mean only that the mode of existence of a transcendent reality is different from that of phenomenal objects.

In short, such paradoxes can be restated consistently and so are not evidence of inherent irrationality in mystics’ thinking.21 But many commentators have no problems accepting, for example, the Prajnaparamita paradoxes noted above, and in fact embrace the idea that these texts were not meant to be understood by “ordinary logic.” Edward Conze can say that a passage in the Heart Sutra propounds “just plain nonsense” (2001: 88) and that the Diamond-Cutter Sutra “has left the conventions of logic far behind” (1978: 19). Thich Nhat Hanh translates a passage from the Diamond-Cutter Sutra as “What are called ‘all dharmas’ are, in fact not ‘all dharmas.’ That is why they are called ‘all dharmas’ ” (2010: 21), and he later states “When we look at A and see that A is not A, we know that A is truly A” (ibid.: 118). Conze too thinks the laws of logic are violated in the Heart Sutra: “ ‘A is what A is not,’ or ‘what A is not, that is A’ ” (2001: 90). If this were the case, then the texts would indeed make no sense. Conze’s overall assessment is that the Perfection of Wisdom “had resorted to the enunciation of plain contradictions as a means of expressing the inexpressible” (1967: 141), and “In a bold and direct manner the Prajnāpāramitā Sūtras explicitly proclaim the identity of contradictory opposites, and they make no attempt to mitigate their paradoxes” (1953: 126).

But is Prajnaparamita thought in fact consistent? It is one thing to say that writers intentionally use paradox as a rhetorical device or for soteriological purposes (i.e., to free unenlightened minds of concepts), but as long as the content can be explained or the texts can be paraphrased without contradictions, the texts are rational.22 It is another thing to say that these writers intended nonsense (see Sangharakshita 1993: 24). Is the Diamond-Cutter Sutra really just simply meant to be chanted for esoteric reasons and never meant to have an intelligible message? In fact, it is fairly easy to render intelligible the contradictions presented above by paraphrasing and explaining them. The central point is that the factors of the experienced world (dharmas) do exist as parts of the phenomenal world but are not “real” only in one particular metaphysical sense: they do not exist by their own power or have some unchangeable intrinsic nature (svabhava) that separates each from other things, as the untutored mind normally supposes. It is then no mystery that the texts state both that there are dharmas but that they do not “exist” in the sense of existing through their own self-existence. All that is meant is the readily intelligible claim that there are dharmas in the world, but they all depend on other phenomena and thus do not exist separately and permanently. There is nothing paradoxical about the factual content of the claim, even if the form—“there are dharmas, but there are no dharmas”—is contradictory: there are dharmas in one sense (as dependently arisen parts of the world) but not in another (as self-existent entities). So too with the claim “The practice of the Perfection of Wisdom is a nonpractice”: there is a bodhisattva practice, but nothing about it is self-existent and thus it is not “real.” And so too with the basic bodhisattva paradox: there are no self-existent beings, but there is something there (impermanent configurations of “persons”) to point toward nirvana (which also is not self-existent). To generalize: there are things in the world, but they are free of any self-existence. Thus, the actual claims stated in paradoxical forms are resolvable consistently and intelligibly. The same with the apparent paradoxes resulting from the Buddhist “two truths” strategy when the conventional point of view is combined with the point of view of highest purposes: conventionally, there are impermanent configurations that can be labeled “houses” and “trees,” but from the ultimately correct ontic point of view there are no such self-existent units and thus such entities are not real.

Thus, the Prajnaparamita paradoxes resolve in a manner similar to that of the theistic paradoxes: the affirmative phrase and the denial phrases of a paradox involve different subjects or different senses of what is referred to. Here, there are dharmas, but they do not have any self-existence and so do not “exist” from the point of view of highest matters, since they are not permanent and independent—thus, they are first affirmed as part of the experienced world and then denied as self-existent. But these statements can be restated consistently: “There is no real, self-existent ‘I’ (or dharma, teaching, beings, and so on), but the conventional term is still useful for denoting fairly coherent but constantly changing parts in the flow of phenomena.” The “paradoxes” result from juxtaposing two senses of, for example, “a being”: beings in the ordinary sense that the mirror theory requires do not exist, but there is still some reality there. There is no separate and enduring entity to lead to nirvana, but the reality underlying the “illusion” of a self-existent entity is still there. In sum, things do exist but not in the way we normally imagine.

Some mystical claims appear paradoxical due merely to misunderstanding what the writer intended. Nagarjuna’s claim that “All statements are empty” (shunya) is often taken to mean that all statements are empty of any intellectual content, and thus paradoxically “it is not reasonable to take any statement seriously—including the one that states that all statements are empty” (Biderman & Scharfstein 1989: x)—or that “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth” or that he was profoundly skeptical about our ability to arrive at the ultimate truth about reality (Siderits 1989: 213, 247). In short, no statements are true. However, Nagarjuna never said anything of the sort. In saying statements are empty, he said only that they are not ontologically self-existent (svabhava), certainly not that they are empty of intellectual content or meaning. His claim is that statements, like all phenomena in the world, could not function if they existed self-existently (e.g., they would be permanent and never arise), not that they are meaningless. In fact, he addresses this objection in his Overturning the Objections (Vigrahavyavartani).

Jay Garfield and Graham Priest apply dialetheist ideas to Nagarjuna (2003), but they can do so only by making up statements in their “rational reconstruction” of Nagarjuna’s thought that he never made: “There are no ultimate truths, and it is ultimately true that everything is empty,” “Things have no nature, and that is their nature,” and “There are no ultimate truths, and that is one.” Nagarjuna instead said things that were consistent—to make up statements as they did: “There are ultimate truths, e.g., all things are dependently arisen and empty of anything self-existent,” and “The nature of things is that they have no self-existence.” To claim as they do that “Things have an intrinsic nature of having no intrinsic nature” would be to distort the nature of Nagarjuna’s arguments: to him only things that are self-existent have an “intrinsic nature” (svabhava), and so dependently arisen things can have no intrinsic nature. Garfield and Priest needlessly make a clear point paradoxical by combining two senses of “nature”: it is the nature (in the ordinary, nontechnical sense) of all phenomena that they are empty of anything—any “intrinsic nature” (svabhava)—that would give them self-existence. What Nagarjuna actually said is consistent (the “four options” is dealt with below). In short, Garfield and Priest are introducing paradoxes into Nagarjuna’s thought where there are none. And as they have to admit, later Madhyamikas do not help their case: Chandrakirti explicitly said never to accept contradictions, and they could not point to any Indian Buddhist commentators who accepted their alleged paradoxes (Deguchi, Garfield, & Priest 2013: 429). They also assert that such Tibetan commentators as Tsongkhapa explicitly worked to defuse apparent contradictions and that the Buddhist logicians Dignaga and Dharmakirti explicitly endorsed the law of noncontradiction. Chandrakirti wrote that there should be no debating with one who persists in maintaining a contradiction when confronted with it because there is no debating with someone who is out of their mind (unmattaka) (Clearly-Worded Commentary 15.10).

Sometimes translations create paradoxes where there are none. Consider Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation of part of the Diamond-Cutter Sutra: “What are called ‘all dharmas’ are, in fact, not ‘all dharmas.’ That is why they are called ‘all dharmas’ ” (2010: 21). The last sentence makes the claim sound absurd. And a phrase with that structure appears often in the Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines and has been translated in that way by many. But the proper translation of one Sanskrit word dissolves any paradox. For example: “The Buddha has taught that the factors specific to buddhas are not in fact (self-existent) factors of buddhas. In this sense (tena), the factors specific to the buddhas are spoken of.” Tena means “by this” or “in this way,” and to translate it as “that is why …” only needlessly introduces a paradox. Thus, unless one is committed to requiring the Diamond-Cutter Sutra to be paradoxical, the last line can be translated nonparadoxically to mean simply “Thus is the case with the factors” or “That is how we treat the factors of a buddha.” The actual point that there are no “real” (i.e., self-existent) factors of a buddha can come through the translation clearly without absurdities.

We certainly do not have to conclude that the Diamond-Cutter Sutra is meant to be an unintelligible and meaningless mantra only to be chanted and not to be understood (although its popularity may be in that regard). And the same is true of the other Perfection of Wisdom texts. Nor do we have to endorse Bhikshu Sangharakshita’s conclusion concerning the Collection of the Highest Qualities: “if it resists our attempts to make sense of it, if it refuses to be contained by our intellectual expectations, this is because it is not supposed to be useful to us in any way that we can understand” (1993: 24). He claims that perhaps the text only seems confusing because “we are locked into linguistic … conventions which require the text to offer itself in one specific sequence,” but “if we insist that the requirements of the logical mind be satisfied, we are missing the point” and if the text “were all set forth neatly and clearly, leaving no loose ends, we might be in danger of thinking we had grasped the Perfection of Wisdom” (ibid.: 44). But there is no need to argue that these texts are using paradox to convey an underlying irrationality of mystical insights. The Perfection of Wisdom’s message can be stated simply and consistently: all things are impermanent and dependent on other things; there is nothing self-existent in the world; and bodhisattvas try to guide the impermanent chains of dependent factors that we conventionally label “persons” toward the final rest that we conventionally call “nirvana.” No special experiences, mystical or other, are needed to see the rationality of the actual claims or to understand them.

Many alleged paradoxes arise from mixing points of view in this way and can be restated free of contradiction by indicating the differences in the affirmative and denial halves of the paradox. Implicitly accepting the mirror theory of language while knowing that language does not really mirror reality may be behind many paradoxes. Mystics do accept that some terms reflect the experienced reality as it is (“real,” “one,” “immutable”), but they also see the problem of the possible misunderstanding and distortion by the unenlightened, and so they immediately deny the applicability of the terms, resulting in a paradox. But the content of the paradox can be restated without paradox if the mirror theory is rejected—i.e., the denial half is not actually needed. A theistic mystic may say “God neither exists nor does not exist” when what is meant is that God neither exists in the manner phenomenal objects do nor does not absolutely not exist; in short, God exists but his mode of existing differs from that of anything else.

Shankara’s explanation of negation can also be explained by the mirror theory. Paradoxes result from superimposing attributes upon Brahman that are known to be false so that no one believes that Brahman does not exist, but these attributes must then be negated to show that they in fact do not apply to what is not an object (Brahma-sutra-bhashya 3.3.9). The mirror theory also accounts for his paradox that the world neither exists nor does not exist but has an indefinable or inexpressible (anirvachaniya) status: anything describing the status of the world that is not self-contradictory would indicate that it is real—which it is not since it does not meet the criterion of being permanent and unchanging—and so it must be denied, leaving its status inexpressible. If the mirror theory is rejected, Advaitins can consistently affirm that the world exists in some sense and deny it is either real (sat) in the way that Brahman alone is real (permanent and unchanging) or totally unreal (asat).

Many alleged paradoxes of the transcendent are simply conflicts with everyday ideas, which is only to be expected if transcendent realities are ontologically “wholly other.” Some claims appear paradoxical until they are explained, because they conflict with our currently accepted beliefs or have a conclusion that does not seem to follow from accepted premises. But if a claim can be explained in terms of analogies from the natural world (e.g., how a dreamer both is immanent to everything in the dream and yet transcends it), the apparent paradox disappears. But many religious people are not bothered by the contradictions in their theology. In fact, Christians have no qualms about “mysteries”—thus, they can affirm one claim (“Jesus is entirely human”) and turn around and immediately affirm the opposite (“Jesus is entirely God”) without blinking. Many Christians affirm both our freedom of will (so that we, and not God, are responsible for sin) and that God absolutely controls every event (so whatever happens is ordained by God) without being bothered by the blatant contradiction. Indeed, many theists believe things of God precisely because they are impossible—if the claims made sense, they would not need faith. They may accept that “human reason” cannot resolve the mysteries and simply accept the cognitive dissonance. To quote Tertullian’s famous dicta: “It is to be believed because it is absurd (ineptum),” “It is certain because it is impossible,” and “I believe because it is impossible.” These paradoxes result from conflicting religious doctrines—rather than paradoxes resulting from trying to express the experience of a transcendent reality in worldly terms—and may not be resolvable.

At least in mysticism, the paradoxes result from alleged encounters with reality and thus are more directly experientially based than general theological thought is. But the question here is whether mystical experiences necessarily require paradox. A genuine paradox results when a statement refers to one subject in a contradictory manner. It would not be resolvable into a consistent set of statements. But the apparent mystical paradoxes I know of can be paraphrased without a contradiction and without the loss of any of their assertive content because their affirmation and denial do not end up making conflicting claims. (This is not to say that mystics, any more than the rest of us, are always consistent—they may say one thing in one part of their writings that contradicts something elsewhere. The intentional contradictions of paradox are something else.) Each paradox must be examined in its context to determine if its apparent internal conflict can be defused. But that there are apparent paradoxes is not too surprising if a mystic does not see how the paradoxicality arises from an implicit theory of language. So too, mystics may often intentionally use paradoxes as soteriological tools for their shock value to emphasize both the otherness of transcendent realities or phenomenal reality free of conceptual boxes, and our inability to understand with the analytical mind what is experienced. (However, employing paradox is not an effective tool when people think the mystics are simply speaking gibberish.) Paraphrasing may also eliminate the soteriological value of paradox by removing its shock value.

The soteriological effect of paradox may explain the Prajnaparamita writers’ seeming delight in employing paradoxes. Zen koans can also be seen as soteriological in intent. These are mental puzzles, utilized in a form of analytical meditation, designed to force a disciple to see that concepts control our mental life and to attain a sudden breakthrough into our true selfless nature, free of the grip of thinking and experiencing through concepts. Koans are deliberately absurd and some involve paradoxes. They sound like meaningful sentences—“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”—but by contemplating them the disciple eventually sees that they are like the grammatically correct but absurd claim “She is a married bachelor” and eventually sees that there are no “real” (permanent, independent) objects for language to refer to.

Understanding the Paradoxical

Resolving paradoxes into consistent claims would be open to the charge of imposing logic onto what is illogical only if the paradoxes are in fact genuine. Some mystical paradoxes may be recalcitrant to explanations and paraphrasing because the context of the paradox does not make clear what the writers had in mind.23 Or some paradoxes may remain genuine and not merely prima facie. Rudolf Otto thought mysticism had its own “peculiar logic” that discounted the laws of noncontradiction and the excluded middle (1932: 64). Walter Stace thought mystical experiences were inherently paradoxical: the paradoxes are “incapable of rational resolution,” “the laws of logic … have no application to mystical experiences,” and mysticism is “simply nonlogical” (1960a: 251–76, 304–5). Or it may be that we are not able to express some things about reality consistently in any language. Why should evolved beings with our particular brains always be able to conceptualize all aspects of reality consistently, or why must all of reality conform to reasoning devised for events in the everyday world? Perhaps biologist John B. S. Haldane was correct in his suspicion that the universe is not only stranger than we suppose but stranger than we can suppose. For example, consider again the case of the electron: the best we can say is that it is something that manifests itself as a wave in some experimental setups and as a particle in others—what it is in itself we do not know. (An electron is not paradoxically both a wave and a particle, as is often claimed, but a reality that exhibits wavelike or particlelike behavior through the interactions in different experimental settings [Barbour 2000: 77].) If transcendent realities exist, perhaps they are like that: they only manifest themselves to us as either personal or nonpersonal, active or inactive—in themselves, they are something we do not know, as perennial philosophers suggest.24 Perhaps transcendent realities are “beyond logic”—perhaps logical relations are applicable only to matters of phenomena, and not to transcendent realities or to reality in itself. More generally, such realities, if they exist, may have to be characterized as John Locke characterized substance: “something I know not what.”

Even if some paradoxes are genuine, the experiences of that about which nothing nonparadoxical can be said would remain central. Coming up with consistent claims to believe may then not be a major concern to the experiencers. But even if so, to speak of “believing what is self-contradictory” is misleading: any concepts may make a transcendent reality seem paradoxical, but the sense of paradox only comes from trying to conceptualize what is experienced outside the awareness in dualistic consciousness. Indeed, it is important to note that no experience is paradoxical in itself, just as no experience is true or false—only statements trying to depict it or explain it can be true, false, or paradoxical.25 Experiences do not conform to the canons of reason or conflict with them—they just are. Nor do they conflict with each other—only our understanding of them can conflict. Mystical experiences may conflict with our expectations set up by our understanding of the world based on other experiences. But logic applies only to our claims, not to experiences. Thus, paradox is not a product of any experience in itself but of our use of concepts in our search for understanding a given experience and for creating a coherent and consistent picture for understanding all of our experiences. Thus, we deem some experiences delusions because they do not cohere with what the experiences we consider cognitive tell us about the world.

So too, no experience in itself is rational or irrational—only our attempts to depict or understand what is experienced can be either rational or irrational. Mystical experiences do not differ from other experiences in this regard. The situation is comparable to the Egyptians seeing the Euphrates: they would know what they experienced even if they could not state it without contradictions because of the nature of their particular language. Or recall the analogy of the drawn cube: it shows that we can apprehend a reality even if the result of trying to “translate” the experience into a drawing leads to the paradox of having both to affirm and to deny some features of the drawing. We would have to say “The angles are all 90 degrees and the edges do not cross, even though in the drawing they do not look that way.” But the drawing does not affect our experience of what is drawn. So too, when “drawn,” what is experienced in a mystical experience does not appear as experienced, and there is no longer a question of believing the verbal construction. If so, mystical insights may still be coherent even though they cannot be stated in any language without a contradiction. Mystics would be forced into a Tertullianesque situation of affirming what seems logically impossible while their interest remains focused on what was experienced.

Thus, the cube analogy shows that we can coherently apprehend a reality even if the result of trying to translate it into language is paradoxical. However, language is one tool that can “draw” the fact that it is a drawing (contra early Wittgenstein and other adherents of the mirror theory). And once this is done, we can see that reality need not mirror language. Even if using language leads to contradictions when applied to transcendent realities, mystics believe that what they have experienced is real. They know that the inconsistencies are not inherent in what is experienced, but only in our dualistic conceptualization of it. That is, mystics can see the drawingness of their “drawings” and see that the “paradoxes” are not genuine. But mystics also realize that the unenlightened will not see this, and so they may still deny that language can apply. The cube analogy also shows how mystics can still function rationally while using paradox: they can believe in and think about transcendent realities, understand their own claims, and make claims that reflect their experience (and reject claims that do not) even while using language that to those without the requisite experience seems hopelessly contradictory. They have good reasons based in experience to speak the way they do. Thus, one can agree that the paradoxes are intended by their speakers to be true, but nevertheless why paradoxes are accepted can be explained in a rational manner. (This would also be some evidence for the dialetheists’ position on contradictions, but only if some genuine paradoxes do in fact remain in mysticism.)

Even though reasoning alienates us from mystical receptivity by introducing another mode of consciousness, reason is not abolished in mystical ways of life as whole: reasoning is a part of mysticism, since after their mystical experiences even mystics themselves need to understand the nature of what they have experienced to align their lives with reality. Mystical paradoxes point to the need for an experience to understand why apparently contradictory statements are being advanced. Transcendent mysteries resist explication in “worldly” terms and thus at least apparent contradictions do arise in the mystics’ accounts. That the “two-dimensional” linguistic projections of our rational mind cannot capture a “three-dimensional” transcendent reality is only to be expected. This is true even if the cognitive content of the paradox can be stated in noncontradictory terms (and then denied because the language suggests to the unenlightened that what is experienced is just another item in the universe). But paradox is a way to point away from all of our accustomed ways of thinking toward transcendent realities and may be a useful soteriological device if listeners can resist thinking in terms of phenomenal objects.

In sum, the use of paradoxes does not mean that mystics are inherently irrational.

Nagarjuna’s Reasoning

Scholars are across the board on the relation of Nagarjuna’s arguments to logic—he is seen as doing everything from not understanding logic to denying logic altogether to advancing a new three-valued logic. Was he “obviously and profoundly distrustful of logic” (Huntington 2007: 111)? Did he reject the law of the excluded middle (Staal 1975: 39)? Did not his denial of one position logically commit Nagarjuna to holding the opposite position (which he also denies)? Did he “use logic to destroy logic”? Was he simply inconsistent or irrational—e.g., both affirming and denying the existence of entities, or claiming that what is dependently arisen cannot arise, or contradicting himself by resorting to a view to destroy all views? But the antirationalist position does not survive an examination of Nagarjuna’s works and the total context of each of his remarks. Nor is there anything in any of his works that suggests that he relegated rationality to the conventional level of truths or introduced a new multivalued logic. In fact, it appears from the structure of his arguments that he did not violate any of the basic laws of logic, nor was he in any other way irrational. In effect, in a reversal of what Parmenides used logic to do, Nagarjuna used reason to show that permanence is impossible and that all is changing, and he did so in an eminently rational way, including implicitly relying on both the law of the excluded middle and the law of noncontradiction.

Like most traditional people but unlike modern Western philosophers, Nagarjuna spoke of a conflict of properties, not statements—i.e., he said that something cannot be or have properties x and not-x or that x and not-x cannot be in the same place at the same time, not anything about the relation of statements. His focus was on the world, not the logic of statements. Many of Nagarjuna’s arguments proceed on the basis that x and not-x are mutually exclusive and that there is no third possibility. For example, he used the law of the noncontradiction in Mula-madhyamaka-karikas (“MK”) 8.7: “ ‘Real’ and ‘unreal’ are opposed to each other—how could they exist together simultaneously?” (see also MK 7.30, 21.3, 25.17, 25.25–27). An entity (bhava) and its absence (abhava) cannot exist together (MK 25.14). So too, he utilizes the law of the excluded middle: “A mover is not stationary, just as a nonmover is not stationary. And other than a mover or a nonmover, what third possibility is stationary?” (MK 2.15; see also MK 1.4, 2.8, 3.6, 4.6, 6.10, 8.1, 21.14).26 Indeed, Nagarjuna’s basic method of arguing fails if the contrast between x and not-x is not exclusive and exhaustive since his conclusion of emptiness (shunyata) as the only alternative to a world of self-existence (svabhava) would then not follow. So too, if Nagarjuna accepted that contradictions could state a truth, as Jay Garfield and Graham Priest (2003) contend, then again his argument would fail since the contradictions again would not be grounds to accept emptiness. That is, the only way Nagarjuna gets to emptiness is to eliminate self-existence, since he rejects advancing any independent positive arguments for emptiness, and so he has to remove all logical possibilities for self-existence—if a contradiction concerning self-existence affirms a truth, his arguments collapse.

Nagarjuna also employed the simplest form of an inference, recognized in the West as modus ponens (e.g., MK 19.6):

(1) If A, then B;

(2) A;

(3) Therefore, B.

He also used the more complex modus tollens (e.g., MK 24.24, 27.7):

(1) If A, then B;

(2) Not B;

(3) Therefore, not A.

For example, if (A) there were self-existence, then (B) there would be no change (since change of any kind is impossible for what is self-existent and thus permanent); but (not B) we see change; and so, (not A) there is no self-existence. Such reasoning is a staple of Western philosophy and logic.

But Richard Robinson thought that Nagarjuna violated one law of logic (1957: 297). Verse 13.7 of the Karikas reads: “If there were anything at all that is not empty, then there would be found something we can call ‘empty.’ However, there is found nothing that is nonempty—how then can there be the ‘empty’?” This and other verses of the same form (MK 10.7, 7.17) can be interpreted as violating the law of contraposition or the fallacy of the antecedent. It has this logical form:

(1) If A, then B;

(2) Not A;

(3) Therefore, not B.

It has the same logical form as “If it is sunny today, it is not raining; it is not sunny today; therefore, it must be raining.” Obviously this is wrong—it can be cloudy but not raining. However, Nagarjuna’s verse can also be given a reading that does not violate logic: only something real (i.e., self-existent) exists and thus could in principle be empty; and since there is in fact nothing self-existent, there is no reality that could be empty. That is, the first line states a necessary requirement: for something to be empty, it must first be real—otherwise, there is nothing existent to be empty. Hence, premise (1) would read: “Only if A, then B.” (Sanskrit does not have a form to distinguish “if” from “only if.”) The conclusion then does logically follow: “If A is necessary for B, and there is no A, then there can be no B.” If so, the verse does not have the fallacious type of inference and does not violate any law of reasoning. In fact, it is a very rational approach.

Nagarjuna also used another form of inference to make a point (MK 4.4, 13.4, 15.9, 20.1–2, 20.21, 21.9, 25.1–2, 27.21, 27.23–24).27 The form is:

(1) If A, then not B.

(2) If not-A, then not-B.

His point is that whether there is A or not-A, there is no B. For example, whether (A) there is self-existence or (not-A) not, (B) change is not possible: if something is self-existent, it is permanent and so there can be not change; if there is no self-existence, then nothing real exists, and so there is nothing that could change. Either way, there is nothing “real” that could change, and so there is no “real” change.

Nagarjuna also employed the “four options” form noted above concerning the Buddha’s teachings (MK 1.1, 12.1, 18.8, 22.11–12, 25.15–18, 25.22–23, 27.13, 27.20). Here he denies x exists, x does not exist, x both exists and does not exist, and x neither exists nor does not exist. Philosophers have spilled a lot of ink applying symbolic logic to Nagarjuna’s four denials to try to keep them from being paradoxical. Does not the denial of the first option logically commit the holder to the second? How can someone deny that something neither exists nor does not exist? The denial of the fourth option makes Nagarjuna look as if he is denying the basic law of noncontradiction. But the efforts to reconstruct the four options through modern symbolic logic to save Nagarjuna make him too sophisticated. (This is not to deny that symbolic logic can show that his conclusions are logically valid [see Jones 1993a: 260–61 n. 6]. But showing that is not the same as claiming that that is how Nagarjuna actually reasoned.) More importantly, such arguments miss the point: Nagarjuna is trying to state that we cannot think of anything in terms of self-existence. He uses the form of the four options simply to try to cover all positive and negative possibilities—i.e., he is saying there are no other possible options, and so we cannot think of any phenomenon in terms of “self-existence” in any way. He wants to cover all possibilities so that all claims involving self-existence in different contexts are eliminated, and thus emptiness—i.e., the absence of anything self-existent—is established by default as the only logical alternative.

And it can be shown easily and without resorting to technical rules that the four options approach is not logically contradictory. Consider again the fact mentioned in the last chapter that numbers do not have color. If someone asks what color the number 4 is, we might say “It is not blue, not a color other than blue, not both blue and another color, nor neither blue nor another color.” All four denials are true and consistent since numbers do not have color. The denial of any option does not logically commit someone to any other position on the color of four. We might think that the last option applies—“neither blue nor another color” (and thus is transparent)—but in Nagarjuna’s framework, as long as we are thinking in terms of color we are on the wrong track regarding the nature of numbers, i.e., as objects to which color terms could apply. So too, with the four options regarding whether something “exists”: to Nagarjuna, only something that is self-existent can exist or not exist, but as long as we are thinking of phenomena in terms of self-existence, we do not understand the true nature of reality but are thinking along conventional lines and thus in terms that cannot apply. To expand Bertrand Russell’s example of “The present King of France is bald”: it is wrong to answer “yes” or “no” or that “he is both bald and not bald” or that “he is neither bald nor not bald,” since he does not exist. To use the Buddhist analogy, it is like asking what direction a flame goes when a fire goes out—any answer shows that we are thinking along the wrong lines (i.e., that the flame still exists). So too, for Nagarjuna, only an entity existing by self-existence could be the subject of the four options, and the denial of all four options is consistent if there are no self-existent realities.

In sum, all Nagarjuna is saying is that the subject to each option does not exist. In addition, he treats the fourth alternative as a type of thing—if nirvana is neither an entity nor a nonentity, then it cannot be a “neither-an-entity-or-a-nonentity” (MK 25.16). Such an entity is the kind of entity that contrasts with the third option: if we can establish something that is “x-and-not-x,” then we can establish what contrasts with it—something that is “neither-x-nor-not-x” (e.g., MK 27.18, 27.28). Nagarjuna is arguing that the denial of x depends on there being x in the first place, and so if we cannot establish x as real (i.e., self-existent), we cannot establish its absence (i.e., a not-x) or a conjunction of the two (x-and-“not-x”) or the conjunction of their absences (neither-x-nor-“not-x”). The third option can be established only if the first two options can be (MK 5.6, 12.9), and the fourth could be established only if we could establish the third alternative (MK 25.15, 27.18, 27.28). Thus, since x is not real to begin with, none of the other options are possible. In addition, Nagarjuna would also add that we must reject the third option because x-and-not-x would be a composite of opposites, but opposites cannot exist together in the same place (e.g., light and dark [MK 25.14]). Thus, nothing more is needed to explain the four options than Nagarjuna’s general method of interconnecting terms. Indeed, by focusing instead on possible logical reconstructions of the four options, philosophers are missing how the arguments actually proceed—in short, they miss Nagarjuna’s actual reasoning entirely.

Thus, the apparent paradoxicality can be explained away. Certainly we should not immediately jump to the conclusion that a thinker from another culture and era is irrational simply from the form of his writings. Nor should we ascribe to Nagarjuna the state of the art in philosophical logic from our own culture and era. The question is not whether a given verse is contradictory in form, but whether the thought behind his expressions has a consistent content in terms of his beliefs. And if we can paraphrase consistently what Nagarjuna writes, then his thought may in fact be rational. If so, then the fact that the idea can also be stated illogically is irrelevant.28 For example, if I am standing in a doorway between two rooms with one foot in each room, I can state this paradoxically: “I am in this room and not in this room” or “I am in two rooms at once” (see Priest 2004: 28). But I can also state the situation more completely without paradox: “I am partially in one room and partially in another.” Genuine paradox occurs only if I claim “I am entirely in two different rooms at the same time.” But this statement is not only paradoxical but false and no one believes it. That the situation can be stated incompletely and inaccurately as a paradox is irrelevant—the true situation can be stated clearly and consistently. And the same applies to the situation with Nagarjuna’s seemingly paradoxical passages: we do not have to torture what he says to see that what he writes is logical within his framework of beliefs.

In sum, Nagarjuna’s arguments are rational and logical. And we can understand his points without trying to make him into a twenty-first-century Oxford logician. This is not to say that his arguments are convincing (see Jones 2104b: 171–76), but only that they are not irrational: an argument may be logically sound in the sense that a conclusion logically follows from the premises without the premises being acceptable to us. So too, not all mistakes in reasoning are logical fallacies. But there is no need to import modern theories of alternative logics or to accept that some irresolvably contradictory statements actually make intelligible claims to make Nagarjuna’s works understandable. Nor was Nagarjuna “using reason to destroy reason”—he was trying to show by rather rigorous conceptual analysis and the use of rigorous logical reasoning that any metaphysical system that affirms self-existing, permanent entities involves inconsistencies with what we see actually happening in the world and thus cannot be held. Indeed, logic and the avoidance of contradictions are absolutely central to how his arguments proceed.

Also note that he did this without appeal to mystical experiences: he appealed to the conflict of his opponents’ alleged claims with ordinary experience, but he never appealed to other types of experiences. However, this does not mean that he was not a mystic: his arguments are addressed to other Buddhist and Hindu theorists, but his works overall show that his aim was to clear the mind of the unenlightened of the process of projecting concepts onto phenomenal reality (prapancha) in order that they may experience the real that-ness (tattva) of the phenomenal world as it truly is (yathabhutam), thereby freeing the listeners from the suffering that ensues when we try to force reality to conform to our preconceived ideas of discrete “real” entities and from the desires driving rebirth.

Mysticism and the Question of Universal Reason

Nothing examined here suggests that cultivating or undergoing mystical experiences causes a person to be irrational or that mystics have a unique logic of their own. For the issue of rationality, there is nothing unique about mystics’ reasoning. Rather, mystical texts appear to be logical by ordinary Western standards.29 Mystical systems of belief are sometimes quite complex; their premises may be unacceptable to the scientifically minded and may also mix factual and evaluative elements; the systems are grounded in experiences that we may not take to be cognitively supreme; what is taken to be evidence and the standards of evidence may differ; mystics’ concerns may not be ours; and mystics may in general weigh different cognitive considerations differently than modern Westerners do. But none of this makes mystics’ thoughts irrational. From what was shown here, how mystics handle the different elements within their frameworks is not necessarily irrational or illogical. Thus, mystics cannot be condemned as necessarily irrational or obscurantists in this regard. Nor can they be condemned as irrational or anti-intellectual for arguing that ideas cannot replace the need for experience. This is true for everyday life and science—that nonordinary states of consciousness and alleged realities are involved only highlights the matter for mystics.30

Nevertheless, philosophers typically argue that mystics must in the end reject logic and reasoning. True, the act of reasoning (which necessarily involves differentiated ideas) is incompatible with having at least introvertive mystical experiences at the same time, and mystical experiences and enlightenment are not the result of reasoning or a reasoning-produced intuition. But after the experiences, distinctions are present in the mind, and thus the opportunity arises in that state to be either logical or illogical in the arguments one makes. And mystics can consistently claim that reasoning must be part of enlightened ways of life to establish the correct understanding of what was experienced. Mysticism is broader than only having mystical experiences—it is about how one lives one’s life—and thus reasoning can be a part of mysticism. Advancing arguments to establish the superiority of one particular mystical interpretation would then not be inconsistent with being a mystic. Meister Eckhart, standing in the medieval scholastic tradition, can agree that reason can find proofs of the truths revealed in Christian scriptures while still maintaining that God dwells beyond the limits of the mind (1981: 27–28, 31). In Buddhism, reasoning (tarka) is rejected as a means to enlightenment, but Buddhists do produce arguments. In general, mystics do make arguments that are logical in structure. Their problems of understanding in worldly terms what was experienced and a soteriological concern for the unenlightened may lead mystics to speak paradoxically, but the contradictions occurring in paradoxes can be explained away.

Since mystics are considered exemplars of irrationality, if mystical works can be shown to be implicitly conforming to the laws of logic, this has implications for the broader question of whether the basic Aristotelian logic is universal or only specifically Western. There may not be any cross-cultural “universal reason” because of the differences in fundamental premises, in how different considerations are weighted, and different styles of reasoning, but if mystical works that appear to be a confusing muddle actually exemplify being genuinely logical, then this is at least some prima facie evidence that some logical principles are universal for any belief-system that can be communicable to others—i.e., the core structure within each such system regardless of culture may still implicitly conform to these logical laws, and thus these laws are not the product of the structure of Indo-European languages.

The examples utilized here are too limited to show that all cultures of the world accept the rules of logic, and the possibility that I am imposing rationality onto mystical writings can never be ruled out. But this chapter does show at least that there is a very real possibility that mystical works are rational. Not everyone may be rational, nor may anyone be totally rational in all of his or her thoughts, but the obvious instances of mystical strategies that on the surface appear irrational can be seen on closer examination possibly to be rational. (Indeed, intentionally employing paradoxes for soteriological purposes would be the exception that proves the rule: this practice would show that mystics are aware that consistency is the norm and only utilize paradoxes to startle listeners about what is experienced in mystical experiences.) At a minimum, these examples present difficulties for any characterizations about the “inscrutable Oriental mind” or other characterizations about mystics in general that present them as necessarily operating irrationally or with their own unique standards.