Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A lively classroom debate over whether a hermaphrodite is a man — and whether hot-and-cold is itself hot — anchors this 38-minute introduction to Buddhist dialectic logic by Ven Jampa Gendun. He opens with a quick outline of the eight Collected Topics (color, established base, isolates, generality, cause and effect, and more), then introduces the session’s central tool: a framework of four possible relationships between any two things. He walks through mutually inclusive (color and hue) and mutually exclusive (man and woman), but student challenges immediately complicate both — producing extended live debates over compound subjects, hermaphrodites, and the day’s shifting weather. Gendun frames the whole enterprise as productive doubt-creation rather than winning arguments, drawing on the Dalai Lama’s teaching on debate. Suited to complete beginners with no prior background in Buddhist logic.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 CT 1988 03 08.mp3
UUID: f2c9715c-e230-483c-ac82-25599eb4bfe5
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Collected Topics (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-03-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 38.4 minutes
Words: ~4,730
So the fourth was reverse of being and reverse of non being. Third? Oh, I’m sorry. No, it’s my mistake. You were right.
First is color. Second is established base. Third is identifying isolate, isolate, isolate, identify and isolate or sometimes this is called double reverse. But anyway, isolate has been Take take my word out. For now.
You can challenge me later. You know, I have to tell you, we have the school I went to, we have tremendous respect for our teachers, which is they deserve respect. But we don’t but it’s it’s the kind of the the atmosphere that pervades with the school is you don’t take things, you just don’t accept things, that you question everything, and you question your teacher. We would debate with our teacher even as he was giving a lecture. We would stop him.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. We would say very respectfully that we would imply that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And we would debate, and sometimes we prove him wrong. Teachers make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes.
But it’s this feeling of learning that the Dalai Lama says, you know, that when we debate, we’re not just trying to win debates. We’re trying to create doubts, clear up misconceptions, find out what our misconception is. You know, we go to a debate, it’s said, and we don’t come away with more questions than we went to, then we actually were lazy. We actually didn’t go into the topic that should have been discussed. You should come away with more questions than you went with.
And then we would go to the next lecture the next day, and we’d we’d we’d bring up all these doubts that came up. We’re trying to find we’re trying to think, probably, for the first time, very deeply into minor what appears at first to be very simple minded subjects. But when they are actually analyzed, it opens up a whole new area, a whole new way of thinking that even very simple issues we don’t understand. Generally, we’re quite concerned with very profound, abstract ideas. So we’re trying to create doubt.
We’re trying to find out what our misconceptions are and clear them up. So you’re quite welcome to question everything I say, but you may not get the answers. Or I mean I mean not even if I were to know I might not give them to you. The sixth is generality and particularity. Generality and particularity.
The seventh is cause and effect. In this case the introductory explanation of cause and effect. Sixth was general this is the seventh cause and effect, the introductory explanation. And the eighth is substantial and reverse phenomena. Substantial and reverse phenomena.
So as I said, I don’t have a book to show me what are acceptable translation terms, so I’m going to have to make do. And I know some of them won’t be the best translation terms. I’m quite certain of that. And, you know, it takes someone who knows who knows both Western logic, epistemology, philosophy, and Eastern, which I don’t know much western or eastern for that matter. And someone who goes into the subject trying to find what what is the best word to translate that.
And I I don’t have that ability. So I’m I’m going to do the best I can for what my understanding is of these various terms. So the first is color. The second is established base. The third is identifying isolates.
The fourth is reverse of being and the reverse of non being. The fifth is isness and is notness. That one I made up. Is ness and is naught ness or not is ness. You’ll see.
Sixth is generality and particularity, or you could say set and subset. Yeah. Generality and particularity, or another way to look at it, if you’ve taken set theory is set and subsets, set and element, element of a set anyway. There’s lots of possibilities. Seventh is cause and effect, an introductory explanation.
And the eighth is substantial and reverse phenomena. Substantial and reverse phenomena. So what I want to do now is again I don’t have there’s not enough of these but you can share them for now. We’re going to begin the study of, dialectic debate. We can make some more just right after class.
So this first slide, is headed by study group, this first page, This is this is going to be a tool to help us debate, to help us learn. I think I’m I’m going to leave this first slide for you to look at on your own and then we can go into it next week because this is a more formal way of presenting what on the other side in which is going to be directly applicable to our debate. The other one is a little more abstract and this is going to be applicable directly to what our debate is going to how our debate is going to run. For our purposes I’m going to read For our purposes in debating the possible similarities and differences of two things, we will make use of four possible two class relations illustrated here by A and B, okay? Now this is our first tool in learning how to debate the possibility of seeing relationships between two things.
A, we’re going call A and B. It could be man and woman, It could be rocket ship and tree. It could be love and hate, anything. Just A and B. We’re gonna see we’re gonna develop a tool to help us be able to approach, be able to some system, some method for determining what are the similarities and difference between A and B.
It’s a very simple tool but it’s quite useful. Okay. The first. First is called mutual inclusive, mutually inclusive. Okay.
For for When we’re going When we debate for abbreviation purposes, for brevity, we’ll just say inclusive. We don’t have to use the word mutually over and over and over again. If I say, What is the relationship between A and B? You can just answer inclusive. If you want to say mutually inclusive, that’s fine.
But in the heat of the moment, maybe inclusive is a little bit quicker to get out of your mouth. Speaking very quickly is important in debate. When there’s two hundred monks all yelling at the same time, If you’re a slow speaker, you don’t have a chance. It’s true. Okay.
So the first tool Now, general, there are going to be four possibilities of the way two things can relate. It doesn’t matter what these two things are, if they’re existent love, hate, war, peace, trees, houses, people, dogs. There’s two ways, there’s four ways that two things can relate. And these are simply listen to the four possibilities. The first one is mutually inclusive.
For example, color and that which is suitable to be hue. By hue I just mean, the intensity of the color, the brightness of the color. This would be illustrated if you want to do it graphically. Whatever is A is B, whatever is B is A. Mutually inclusive.
You use the word synonymous. It’s not quite correct but it’s technically it’s not quite correct. But for our purposes at the moment you could think synonymous and later on we can explore why the word synonymous doesn’t quite work. But for now you could think of the word synonymous. Exactly the same.
Whatever is all a’s are b’s, all b’s are a. Whatever is a color is is that which is suitable to be a hue. Whatever that whatever is suitable to be a hue is a color. Yeah? That’s pretty straightforward.
The second possibility of the way A and B could relate would be mutually exclusive or simply exclusive. Graphically, you know, have a we have a over here and over here we have b. There’s nothing there’s no there’s no connection between them, you know. It’s like a pot and a pillar, a tree and a house. Example, man and woman.
Whatever is a man is not a woman. Whatever is a woman is not a man. They’re mutually exclusive or contradictory. If something is a man, it can’t be a woman. If something is a woman, it can’t be a man.
Anybody wanna question that? Best case. How about androgynous? How about a hermaphrodite? Yeah.
Anybody? A hermaphrodite is neither. Why is a hermaphrodite not a man? It’s both. So then this is wrong. This is wrong.
Right? Yeah. Is a hermaphrodite a man? Okay. Is a hermaphrodite a man?
Then hermaphrodite is not a man. No. Is a hermaphrodite a woman? No. Then hermaphrodite is neither a man or a woman.
Is a a man and a Is a hermaphrodite a man and a woman? No. I think so. Then a hermaphrodite’s a man? No, it’s not.
If it’s a man and a woman, it must be a man. If it’s both, it must be one and the other, wasn’t it? If an Australian male, if you’re an Australian and a male, don’t you have to be both Australian and a male? Yeah? So if you’re a man and a woman, don’t you have to be a man and also a woman?
Hemaphrodite seems secretly a man or secretly a woman. But is hemaphrodite a man and a woman? A hermaphrodite is a man and a woman? Then a hermaphrodite is a man and a woman. Hermaphrodite is a man and a woman.
The hermaphrodite is a man. Hermaphrodite is a man. In order to be this gets biological. Is thirty five percent of a man a man? Okay, let’s take an easier example.
Let’s take a that’s more difficult. We’ll just say a house and a table. Is a house in a table a house in a table? So there’s a house on a table, a house on a table? Actually No.
I I Well, my question is my question is is you take this as one subject. Is this a house Is this what’s between these parentheses? Is that a house and a table? Yeah. Then then this is a house.
Yes? House and table is a house. No. No. No.
It’s okay. Alright. When when when you debate, you have to listen very carefully to exactly what is said and answer not what you would like, what you think is being inferred or what you think the speaker is trying to say, but what he actually said, which we usually don’t do. So this is a house. House and table’s a house.
Yes. A table House and table’s a house? Yes. Then a house table is a house. Right.
The house and a table is a house. Yes. Then then a table is a house. No. Perfect.
Collection of the two things, house and table, make house and table. So does this make does this does this make a house? No. Is a house and a table a house? No.
A house on the table is a house because a house on the table is a house on the table. Is a house on the table a house on the table? So the house on table is a house on table, right? So if a house on a table is a house on a table, then a house on a table must be a house because it’s a house and it is a table. If someone is Australian and a male, he must be both Australian and a male.
If something is a house and a table, he must be must be both house and a table. I’m not saying it. Is a house and a table a house and a table? Yes? Then a house and table is a house.
No. It’s a house, isn’t it? And a table is a table. A is a table. A a table.
Table. There’s a house and people. House and So is a house of people? Anybody? Same way, an Australian is not necessarily a male.
No. We’re No. We’re if if someone is Australian and a male, he must be must be both Australian and he must be a male. That particular one. Yeah.
If something is a house and a table, then it must be both a house and it must be both and also a table. It’s the same. Yeah? In that case. Yeah.
Yeah. Just take Okay. So if this if a house on table is a house on table, it must be both a house and also it must be a table. Yeah? So is a house on table, house on table?
So therefore a house on table is a house. Yes? We’re trying we’re trying easier. I’m more Hot and cold. Hot and cold.
Is hot and cold hot and cold? Hot and cold is hot and cold. And hot and cold is hot. It’s not hot. Is hot and cold hot and cold?
Yes. And if hot and cold is hot and cold, it must be hot. Hot and cold must be hot. Hot and cold is hot. And hot and cold is cold.
If I no. You know, I’m stating my subject. You know, you can you can you can make up your own subject, but you won’t be answering my question. So my subject is hot and cold. Yeah.
I wanna know I wanna know something about hot and cold. I wanna know first off, is hot and cold the temperature? Yeah? I don’t think it has any energy because they’re opposite. Hot and cold is not a temperature.
A range. A range of temperature is a temperature. Is five degrees below zero temperature? Is a hundred degrees temperature? So they’re both temperature.
What did you say? Is hotter temperature? Is colder temperature? Is hot and colder temperature? Is.
Oh, okay. We’ll have a problem. In Tibetan, there’s no plural. We’re have problems with plurality and other aberrations of the language. Okay.
So so hot and cold is the temperature. Hot and cold is English? Is English language? Yeah. So we we make we’re making statements about what hot and cold is.
Now another thing I want to know about hot and cold is, is it hot and cold? Okay. Is it hot and cold a, a table? Why not? Is hot and cold the table?
Why is it why is it yes or no? It could be hot or cold cold. But it’s hot and cold the table. Why? The table is something you can’t you cannot set an object on hot and cold.
And and and if something is a table, must be able to set something on it. Something roughly like that. Okay. So we can we can we can talk about lots of things about what hot and cold is and is not. Now one thing I want to know is, is hot and cold This is one subject, one thing.
Is it hot and cold? Is this between these parentheses hot and cold? Yes. It is hot and cold. Yes?
So then So so then this is hot. Hot and cold is hot. Yeah. Hot and cold is hot. Yeah.
Okay. About okay. And hot is hot and cold is cool? Yeah. Okay.
Now, generally, in the English language, when we use the word hot and cold, we can make a very we’ll make a very rough estimate about what is from the point of view of degrees of temperature, what is hot and what is cold. Okay? So what what would you say hot is roughly? I think you’ve just changed that question. No.
I’m gonna define what I mean by I’m gonna define what I mean by hot and cold. That’s all. Okay? We have a general agreement what we mean by hot, roughly. Okay.
Hot and cold. No. Let’s but you must say temperature. Degrees. Degrees centigrade.
Anybody? Forty plus. Forty plus. Right? And cold?
Forty minus? Forty, forty degrees minus?. Okay. What is cold? Hot is approximately forty degrees plus. Not the our own body temperature is what we’ve got as the main.
Okay. We’ll say that’s the mean that we’ll call that lukewarm. Lukewarm. I don’t know. What is that in in Centigrade.
In centigrade? Thirty seven and forty two. Thirty seven degree. And then but what is cold? Hot less than thirty seven?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Less than thirty seven. So is this hot and cold above forty degrees?
Yes. Is this below thirty seven degrees? Yes. How can somebody be above forty degrees and below thirty seven at the same time? Is this above forty degrees?
Yes? You debate with him. Is hot and cold above forty degrees? No. It is because it’s hot.
And we said hot was above forty degrees. But if you’re saying that, that means that forty degrees plus must be cold. Pardon? Hot and cold is not good. Now, what is we’re saying hot is above we’re just saying hot is above forty degrees.
Right? So if this is hot, it must be above forty degrees. That’s our definition of what hot means. Alright? So if that’s cold, then that means cold must be about forty degrees to Well, then then word cold has no meaning because it’s the same meaning as hot.
I think you’ve established the hot and cold mutually exclusive. No. They aren’t mutually exclusive because they’re this hot and cold is hot and cold. Both there’s one thing which is both. They’re mutually inclusive.
We’ve I think we’ve just established that there is no such thing as something which is about hot and cold. There is because this is it. This is this is it. This is hot and cold. I’ve got put it up Cath Cath is saying this this is this is hot and cold.
Yeah. That they’re not mutually exclusive. Because to be hotter, it has to be less cold. To be hotter, it has to be less cold. That’s that’s true.
That’s true. Okay. Cath, is this this above forty degrees centigrade? Yes. Anything Well, you step that.
Okay. This is above forty degrees centigrade. Then it then it is Then not cold. It’s not cold. It’s not because it cannot be below thirty seven degrees and above forty at the same time.
That’s an impossibility. Yeah. But you put those down in the hand. Okay. You supply.
You supply. What temperature would you like for hot and cold? I said it’s degrees. I didn’t say temperature as did. What do you Okay.
Give me a definition for hot and give me a definition for cold. Whatever Okay. Degrees. Okay. Give me one.
Degrees? Just degrees. Degree? Hot means degree. Cool?
Yes. Cool. No. Think that’s that would be more just the idea of temperature, not not one type of temperature. Ah, yes.
But you can ask for hot. Yeah. Well, ask for hot. That’s a type of temperature. Anything that I feel is hot is hot.
Okay. But what are you we’re trying to we’re trying to quantify it. We’re trying to get it on a scale. This is what I think, right? I think hot and cold are inclusive in that they are terms used in explaining temperatures, right?
Right. Now, the question we’re coming back. We’re going try to work our way back to this hermaphrodite, actually. Right? That’s where we want to go back to.
I’m using a parallel example, analogous example to a hermaphrodite. Somebody who’s both male and female. You know, we could put up here male and female, but I’m using hot and cold. I’m so I’m using hot and cold. Adventure suggestion here.
Is it possible to say that hot and cold is hot and cold? Hot is hot. Cold is cold. And you always ask me the question, hot and cold. That would be differentiates of warm?
Differentiation of warm. That we don’t need the word cold. Well, cold is cold. Cold stands for cold. Hot stands for Hot and cold stands for hot cold.
It’s it’s a separate thing. It’s an entity in itself. The three entities. I disagree. Totally.
Hot I see I see hot only only means anything at all. It it has no no sense or meaning without without its relationship to cold. And vice versa, cold has makes no sense, has no cannot stand alone without hot in the shadows, so they’re opposite ends of the same spectrum and cannot exist independent of each other. Hot makes no sense. What happens when you put hot water in a bucket and then you pour cold water in the bucket?
Do you have hot and cold water in that bucket? Well, because they Yes? No. No. Whatever If you pour black paint and white paint together, what do you have?
You have white and black paint or you have gray? Let’s take a look. If we put up here day and night, is day and night day and night? But I think if we pursue this, you’re going to find that your position is untenable. I mean you can’t support you cannot longer support your position.
If logically follow through with this in a straight line of thinking, you’re gonna find you have to find the hot and cold is not hot and cold. But you have to come to that decision yourself. Okay. Catharine say no. No.
No. I’m fine. Saying. You said So how does this relate back to men? Okay.
Does it Well, does anybody I You know, it’s not easy to see this. The hot and cold is not hot and cold. No. I agree. Mean, it took me, you know, years of, you know, sleepless nights of wondering whether hot and cold was hot and cold.
When you’re a monk, you don’t have much to do at night. So what are trying to say? Okay. So if hot and cold Is there a hermaphrodite? Is there a male or a female?
Male. Female. Female. Is a male and a is a hermaphrodite that which is both female and a male, is that a female and a male? Exact same.
What’s the difference? It’s not clear. You ask for a number. Okay.
Think about that during the week. We can come back to it. So that’s an example of mutually inclusive or just simply inclusive. And we are going to finish. We don’t have to rush through it.
I was gonna give some homework, but Yeah. I think I think Yeah. So up to now, any questions on what we covered so far? I mean, we really think the hot and cold, which one of these categories? What do you think?
What I say exclusive. It’s mutually exclusive. Why is that? Because they’re different. Two sides of the of the of So how would we state that?
If we’re if we’re gonna state that in in your Explain inclusive as color and hue. In that that which is a hue is of being a color and that which is a color could be So if we look here, mutually inclusive is anything which is A is B. Anything which is B is A. Anything which is a color is a hue. Anything which is a hue is a color.
Anything yeah? Mutually exclusive. Anything which is a is not b. Anything which is b is not a. All a’s no a’s are b’s.
No b’s are a’s. You know? Completely, you know, like trees and dogs. There’s no relationship. One’s over here and one’s over here.
Nothing. They’re not touching. There’s no commonality between them whatsoever. You were saying there was a relationship between those two. What was I saying?
You were saying that those two were one whole. What? Those two things, like, hot and cold or whatever What two actually, that they weren’t exclusive, that they were one thing. That’s how you’re putting on a ball. Hot and cold.
What’s the relationship between hot and cold? There’s no Okay. Why? First off, are these two things? Is hot a thing and cold a thing?
No. They’re two sides of the same thing. Well, then they’re two things. Are they two things? Yes.
Are they two existences? Two phenomena? Are they two phenomena? If the two phenomena exist, they have one of these four relationships. They must be related in one of these four ways.
These two exist, they must be related in one of these four ways that we’re going to work with. Either they must be mutually inclusive, mutually exclusive or the or the relationship with three possibilities or four possibilities. What is the relationship between hot and cold? Anybody? Okay.
You say it’s exclusive. Does anybody disagree? Yes. About Then saying whatever is hot is not cool. And whatever is cold is not hot.
How about how about okay. How about the weather? Which one is that? Isn’t it? It can be any at one point in time, it can be hot, and another point in it can be cold.
For example, if today’s the today’s weather is warm, it’s hot? Today’s weather went through the whole went through So today’s weather is both hot and cold? Hot and cold. At one second, it might have been hot. Was today’s weather hot or cold?
Was today’s weather I’m talking today is a particular moment of time. It’s a particular time, isn’t it? Yeah. I’m not talking about weather in general. General.
I’m talking about today’s weather. Today’s weather March March eighth. There’s weather on March eighth, whether it’s hot or cold. It includes lots of weather. It’s a bigger group.
Well, we could talk about years of weather. I’m narrowing it down to today. What’s today If somebody asked you, you know, a couple weeks ago, how was it on March eighth? Was the weather hot or cold? What would you say?
Hot. But didn’t it get down to a pretty chilly night that night? Wasn’t it cold that night? It was tonight. What happened was there was a big shift in weather.
A front moved through. For in the morning, it was hot and in the evening, it was cold. Would would today’s weather be hot or cold? Which would it be? Was hot and then it was cold.
Hot and cold. So so these aren’t mutually exclusive? Events. The weather and the weather is a different event. It’s like a tap.
You can have hot and cold water coming through it, but it’s different. I’m talking about today’s Isn’t that one weather? No. No. It’s many weather.
Many weather. Oh, yes. There’s a weather that no other factors, weather that no other weather. Wow. Okay.
If I said, isn’t isn’t Alistair a male? Yes. There are many Alistair’s, aren’t there? There’s Alistair of yesterday, tomorrow, today’s Alistair. Many different Alistair’s, but we can say he’s a male, can’t we?
Why can’t we say today’s weather? Many weathers, but why can’t we say it’s either hot or cold just like when we say alister is a male? Because what defines me as a male has the common element. The biological things that make me a male are the common. It’s consistent.
Consistent and perfect. Then then then we can’t say today’s weather was hot or cold, can we? No. Because it’s not consistent? It has to be consistent?
Anyway, we can think about it. We’ll stop there. So I I hope you know, as I said, I’m just it’s like an experiment. I hope it’s of some benefit. If it’s not, then we can stop or do something else, whatever you feel.
And if you have any questions? Confusion is actually a fertile, fertile state of mind. As I said, coming back from debate, we had many more questions than we went to debate with because we really began to think about these things, even very simple things. Through these merits, may I soon attain the enlightened state of Guru Buddha, and may I lead every migrating being without exception to that state. May the precious bodhichitta, not yet born, arise and grow.
May that born have no decline but increase forevermore.