Chapter 7: Examining Contradiction
Contradiction is one phenomenon impairing another — impairing its arising, its development, or the unbroken continuation of its continuum. Like connection, it is posited by the exclusion-cognition and is not found in things themselves. The classification turns on the status of the contradictory class: where it is a real entity the contradiction is one of non-coexistence, as with fire and water; where it is a non-entity the contradiction is mutual exclusion.
Condensed from Khenpo Sodargye’s Chinese lecture transcripts on the Pramāṇayuktanidhi, and rendered into English. Root verses are given as the lectures give them; the prose beneath summarises the exposition. On the provenance and the limits of this rendering, see the series introduction.
Chapters: 1. Objects · 2. Cognition · 3. Universals and Particulars · 4. Proof and Exclusion · 5. Expressed and Expresser · 6. Connection · 7. Contradiction · 8. Definitions · 9. Perception · 10. Inference for Oneself · 11. Inference for Others
Two parts: (1) the general definition of contradiction; (2) the detailed classification of its instances.
i. The General Definition of Contradiction
Whatever can harm some phenomenon — That is the contradictory class of the latter.
Contradiction, like connection before it, must be posited before the exclusion-cognition; unposited there, it does not exist at all. In the nature of things neither connection nor contradiction is present. The definition mirrors the one given for connection in Chapter Six: connection is one phenomenon not forsaking another; contradiction is one phenomenon impairing another — impairing its arising, its development, or the unbroken continuation of its continuum. Fire and water, light and darkness are the standard worldly cases: where one is present, the other cannot abide with it as one body or in close proximity.
ii. The Detailed Classification of Instances
Two parts: a general statement and a specific explanation.
General Statement
When the contradictory class is a real entity — the contradiction of non-coexistence; When it is a non-entity — the contradiction of mutual exclusion. In view of the difference in their objects, These two kinds are asserted.
All contradiction falls under these two, divided by whether the contradictory class is a real entity or a non-entity. Some treatises add a third, “contradiction with valid cognition,” but it too is subsumed here.
Non-coexistence: both terms are real entities that cannot occupy one place — fire-particle and water-particle, light and darkness, the wisdom of selflessness and superimposition, antidote and object of abandonment. Illustrated by two people at odds: one arrives, the other leaves at once, or insists on sitting far off.
Mutual exclusion: the contradictory class is a non-entity. The pillar is real; its contradictory class is “non-pillar,” meaning the negation portion, the sheer absence of the pillar. Mipham Rinpoche and Sakya Paṇḍita agree on this point.
[Earlier Epistemologists, and some later Gelug masters] Whatever is a distinct entity is a mutual-exclusion contradiction — pillar and vase, yellow and white, yak and sheep. Their reasoning: the vase is not the pillar, so from the pillar’s side the vase is a non-pillar; pillar and non-pillar are mutually exclusive; therefore pillar and vase are.
[Reply] From one angle they are right — yellow truly is not white — but the position will not stand, because in this system the contradictory class must be a non-entity. If the pillar’s contradictory class were a non-entity and the vase counted as that class, the vase would become a non-entity, which the seven treatises cannot accept. Correctly stated: “non-vase” means the absolute negation of the vase, and only that negation portion is mutually exclusive with it; the real entities that happen to be non-vases are not included in the contradictory class.
The consequences of the opponents’ view are severe. If every distinct entity were contradictory, seed and fruit would be contradictory (the seed is not the fruit), and contradictory things cannot be causally connected — so nothing could be produced. The mind of the first instant and of the second are cause and effect, wholly distinct entities; on their view these too would be mutually exclusive. Further, the Buddha’s speaking and his omniscience are distinct isolates, yet Dharmakīrti states plainly that they are not contradictory; the opponents’ rule would make Dharmakīrti self-contradictory.
Sakya Paṇḍita’s position, followed here by the Nyingma and Sakya systems: distinct entities are not necessarily contradictory. Some are contradictory, some connected, some neither. As among people — one you get on with, one you clash with, one who is simply a stranger.
Specific Explanation
Two parts: the contradiction of non-coexistence and the contradiction of mutual exclusion.
A. The Contradiction of Non-Coexistence
Four parts: (1) definition; (2) the locus in which contradiction exists; (3) the time at which the harmed is eliminated; (4) the valid cognition that ascertains contradiction.
(1) Definition
Refuting Others’ Positions
[Objection:] To assert that non-coexistence is [merely] harmer and harmed — Under analysis this is untenable.
[Ngok Lotsāwa and certain other masters] The definition of non-coexistence contradiction is simply the relation of harmer and harmed obtaining between two real entities.
[Reply] Loosely stated this passes, but it fails under analysis, because a definition must be posited upon a single definiendum, and harmer and harmed cannot gather into one body. Of two phenomena, the stronger is the harmer and at that moment cannot be the harmed; the weaker is the harmed and cannot be the harmer. When fire blazes and dries the water, fire is in no way the harmed and water in no way the harmer. So the proposed definition is vague: is it the definition of fire or of water? Stated separately, each gets its own definition and the definition of contradiction is still missing — just as the definition of cause is not the definition of effect.
Establishing Our Own Position
[Reply:] Therefore the harmed and the harmer Are distinct entities, like cause and effect; That which renders the harmed powerless — This cause is called the harmer.
Harmer and harmed are distinct entities in the way cause and effect are, viewed as before and after — a distinctness that merely negates singularity, not a truly existent one. The stronger in force is the harmer, the weaker the harmed. The harmer is not the substantial cause of the harmed; it is only that in dependence on the one, the other’s nature undergoes a transformation.
The process runs in three instants: first, the two make contact; second, the harmed loses its capacity to go on arising; third, its continuum can no longer continue, while the harmer’s continues. Had the water never met fire, it could have gone on indefinitely. As with cause and effect, the definition is posited from the two sides — harmer and harmed, producer and produced — never upon a single phenomenon.
(2) The Locus in Which Contradiction Exists
Recognising Contradiction
All contradictions of non-coexistence Involve real entities as harmer and harmed; They belong to the continuum, not the instant, For they are the produced and the producer.
Three conditions. First, contradiction needs at least two phenomena — one cannot conflict with oneself, just as nothing can be connected with itself. Second, both must be real entities, since here the natures actually exist and one cannot abide with the other. Third, it is posited on the continuum, never on the instant: at the first instant of contact no harming has yet occurred. A continuum requires at least three instants, as “crowd” requires at least three people.
“Producer and produced” here must not be read as genuine causation — light does not produce darkness. Light of the first instant and second both arise; being stronger, the light renders the darkness powerless in the second instant; in the third the darkness enters a state where its continuum cannot continue, and that state is what is produced. Were this genuine substantial causation, contradictory and connected phenomena alike would be producer-produced and the world’s laws would collapse. The Autocommentary debates the same case of light and darkness. A counter-case marks the boundary: a barley-seed is powerless to produce a rice-sprout, but that powerlessness is not contradiction — the barley simply never had the capacity, whereas here a thing’s existing continuation is cut off. Strictly, the harmer works as a cooperative condition: darkness’s own substantial cause is exhausted by the third instant because the light acted upon it — as a vase perishes momentarily of itself while a hammer ensures its continuum cannot continue.
Removing Disputes about This
Examination of the object:
[Objection:] If instants are not contradictory, Then contradiction in the continuum cannot hold — your position is untenable.
[Opponents] Since a continuum has no real substance — the Abhidharmakośa likens it to an army or a rosary — and since no contradiction obtains on the instant, contradiction on the continuum is even less tenable.
[Reply:] From each preceding instant A subsequent, not-previously-existent [instant] arises; Superimposing this as a continuum, That which eliminates [the other] — there is no fault.
Granted that no continuum exists substantially. Still, in dependence on each preceding instant a not-previously-existent successor arises unceasingly, and people superimpose “continuum” on that. When such a continuum can no longer continue past the third instant, that overturning is what is called contradiction. No fault follows.
One might object that contradiction, unlike connection, must be real: fire exists and water does not, so surely the opposition lies in their nature. But were contradiction in their nature, at the very first instant of contact each would have to cease — which does not happen. Only in the third instant does one continuum fail, and the conceptual mind posits the whole process as contradiction. Hence conflicts between persons or nations have no truly existent nature either: examined instant by instant, when the harmer exists the harmed does not, and when the harmed exists the harmer does not.
Examination of the substance:
[Objection:] If the contradictory particles coexist, then your “non-coexistence contradiction” is already breached; If they do not coexist, then one destroys the other, And thereby cause and effect become simultaneous.
[Opponents] A dilemma about fire-particle and water-particle. If they coexist in the first instant, they can coexist in the second and third, and “non-coexistence” is a misnomer. If they cannot coexist even for an instant, then in that single instant the fire is being produced and the state of the water’s destruction is also produced — so producer and produced fall in one instant, and cause and effect become simultaneous.
Khenpo Sodargye notes that this is a genuinely formidable question, of the kind a non-Buddhist might have brought to the gate-keeper paṇḍita of Nālandā, and invites students to attempt a reply before reading on.
Refuting others’ reply:
[Objection:] Some assert [the weaker] becomes hidden; some assert it transforms upon meeting; Some assert there is no contact. All these eternalist schools are mistaken.
Three prior answers to the dilemma:
- [Sāṃkhya] The weaker particle becomes hidden within the stronger — as stars still exist by day but cannot be seen.
- [Vedists] The weaker transforms into the stronger while its substance persists — as sugar stirred into salt water dissolves into the salt particles and cannot be tasted.
- [Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika] The particles exist with an interval, never touching; the stronger occupies the weaker’s place and blocks its arising into coarse form. (The two schools differ slightly: Vaibhāṣika say particles truly touch, Sautrāntika that a gap always remains, as with one stone set on another, held apart by the dharma-nature force of things.)
All are called “eternalist” because the two non-Buddhist schools hold particles permanent, and the two Buddhist schools, though not asserting permanence outright, hold the partless particle indestructible.
If they coexist, contradiction is lost; If it transforms, that contradicts [their] assertion of permanence.
Against Sāṃkhya: if the water-particle really exists though unmanifest, the two exist together, and coexistence is not non-coexistence. Like a thief hidden in a house — he still lives there with the owner, so there is no conflict. Against the Vaibhāṣika/Sautrāntika: whether the particles touch or not, if both persist for three or more instants they coexist, and the notion of non-coexistence is lost entirely. Against the Vedists: transformation requires phases, and a permanent particle admits no phases — otherwise the not-yet-contacting fire-particle and the now-contacting one would have to be one and the same.
Stating our own reply:
Therefore particle produces particle; Since [one] renders [the other] powerless, there is no contradiction [in our view].
Each particle arises from its own preceding substantial cause. When fire and water are placed together, the stronger and more numerous meets the weaker in the first instant with no change to either; in the second the weaker is rendered powerless. The verse’s “no contradiction” means no contradiction in this account — not that fire and water are not contradictory with each other. Momentary coexistence within an instant or two is not a coexistence-contradiction, so the opponents’ first horn fails. Were the two exactly equal in force and number, they would simply vanish together in the second instant.
Rongtön Paṇḍita’s manual notes that light and darkness differ from fire and water: there is no first-instant contact and second-instant weakening — darkness is rendered powerless the moment it meets light, and its continuum is severed from then on. The chapter’s illustrations are drawn chiefly from fire and water.
The difference between connection and contradiction, put precisely: with causal connection the substantial cause produces its homogeneous effect unceasingly; with contradiction, the prospect of that homogeneous effect’s unbroken continuation is blocked by another thing. Both are relations of “without which it does not arise” — the barley-sprout arising from the seed in one case, the water’s continuum failing past the third instant in the other.
(3) The Time at Which the Harmed is Eliminated
Refuting Others’ Positions
[Objection:] Some say it takes three instants of accomplishment; Some say the two coexist for a long time.
[First view] Antidote and object of abandonment are exhausted only through three great instants of accomplishment (an instant of accomplishment being the whole span of a thing from beginning to end).
[Second view] The two coexist for a very long time: from the first ground to the buddha’s vajra-like samādhi — two incalculable aeons — the wisdom of selflessness and the latent traces of ignorance are both present, as the commentaries on the Madhyamakāvatāra seem to teach.
[Reply:] Long coexistence, yet “non-coexistence” — Such a contradiction is truly a rare marvel.
The verse is ironic: no learned master has ever inaugurated so “precious” a doctrine as one where the non-coexistent coexist for aeons. The sūtras say wisdom and affliction never coexist.
The apparent scriptural difficulty is resolved by type. As Maitreya teaches, the grounds divide into ten obscurations, each with its own wisdom as antidote. The first ground’s wisdom eliminates all the first ground’s objects of abandonment; the second ground’s obscuration remains because its antidote is the second ground’s wisdom. Analogy: at the first ground one sees the ocean from afar — the dharmadhātu’s face is genuinely seen as a whole; drawing nearer, the intervening veils recede and finer detail appears step by step. So speaking loosely one says wisdom and obscuration coexist; strictly, no two non-coexistent things ever do.
Establishing Our Own Position
Contact renders [the harmed] powerless; In three instants the object’s contradictory factor ceases. When ascertainment arises and the superimposition No longer arises — that is the contradiction of the mind.
Non-coexistence contradiction is of two kinds, external and mental, and their timings differ.
External object (heat-tangible and cold-tangible particles): first instant, contact — both arise from their own preceding particles, and this contact is admitted; second instant, the weaker begins to lose capacity; third instant, the stronger’s continuum continues while the weaker is utterly gone. Three instants for the harmed to perish.
On what decides the outcome: Jamyang Loter Wangpo’s manual makes it the more numerous particles against the fewer, but the Dharma King [Jigme Phuntsok] taught that strength of force matters more than number — the fire of “snake-heart sandalwood” burns seven times hotter than ordinary fire, and hell-fire hotter still, so few and tiny particles can destroy vast quantities of water.
“Producer and produced” applies in two distinct senses. Where cause benefits effect, it is the producer-produced of connection; where one thing brings about the state in which another can no longer continue, it is the producer-produced of contradiction. No conflict arises between the “benefactor and benefited” of causation and the “harmer and harmed” of contradiction, since these are the two different senses.
Mind: no three instants are needed. The moment the wisdom of selflessness arises in the continuum, the former trace of self-grasping is cut off at its very nature, and from then on self-grasping cannot arise. At the end of the path of application, at the highest worldly dharma, the next instant awakens to the nature of phenomena, and ordinary clinging to “I” is cast off. Mental contradiction is posited upon a single homogeneous continuum of one person; contradiction among things is posited from two heterogeneous bodies mutually excluding one another.
Removing Disputes
External object — parts and partlessness:
[Objection:] If a single instant is partless, then all coarse continua become impossible; If it has parts, [division] becomes endless; So “cessation in three instants” is hard to maintain.
[Opponents] Take the first of your three instants. If it is indivisible, it is a permanent partless thing, and three instants or a continuum cannot be composed from such. If it is divisible, it divides into three, and each of those into three, endlessly — so no third instant is ever reached and the harmed never perishes.
[Reply:] The instant is fundamentally partless; The continuum too arises only from instants. Since particle and instant are dissimilar, In three instants the contradictory factor ceases.
Conventionally, time must have a smallest unit, or nothing can be reckoned at all — as the year needs the hour, the hour the minute, the minute the second; as ten fen make a jiao and ten jiao a yuan, and without the fen neither can be posited. Under ultimate analysis (the diamond-sliver reasoning and the rest), no instant exists at all — every Buddhist accepts this — but that is Madhyamaka’s method, not the conventional analysis at issue here. The earlier argument stands: “since the three times do not arise at once, the present instant is partless.”
The key disanalogy is in the third line: particles and instants are not alike. Coarse particles must be composed of finer particles existing simultaneously; time needs no such simultaneous gathering, being continuous — each partless present instant arises unceasingly from its predecessor. So the composition problem the opponents press does not transfer.
An aside on subtle impermanence reinforces the point: pressed on whether an arising pillar is also perishing, one must say yes. Following the Abhidharmakośa’s autocommentary, arising is what did not exist and now does, perishing what exists now and later does not, and abiding is just this present instant — so arising, abiding and perishing all belong to a conditioned thing in one instant. The worldly notions of birth, growth and death are far too coarse for logic.
External object — unobstructed capacity:
[Objection:] Some declare thus: as for the cold-tangible’s unobstructed capacity, Does what it produces possess capacity or lack it? Either way, how does it follow that the cold-tangible needs no [fire]?
“Unobstructed capacity” is a technical term for a phenomenon whose succeeding instant faces no obstruction and is bound to arise — as the last instant of a barley-seed, after which the sprout arises at once.
[Opponents] The water-particle coexisting with fire has unobstructed capacity. Does that capacity produce its next instant or not? If it does, the fire beside it cannot harm it, since the successor is bound to arise. If it does not, the fire is superfluous, since the water would perish of itself in the second instant. Either way the fire does nothing. A worldly parallel: the weaker of two opposed parties — does his last unobstructed capacity produce a defeated man or a victorious one? If defeated, the enemy is unnecessary; if victorious, the enemy is useless.
[Reply:] The cold-tangible’s unobstructed capacity Is the substantial cause of the second instant; Only on meeting the corresponding cooperative condition Can it bring forth its effect.
The question admits no flat answer, because the unobstructed capacity is only the substantial cause; whether the effect appears turns on the cooperative condition. Meeting a strong fire, the water will not produce its second instant; meeting a weak one, it will. Compare a vase: its earlier continuum is the substantial cause of its later, but whether the continuum breaks depends on the force of the hammer beside it. Cooperative conditions work in both directions — earth, water, fire and wind aiding the barley-sprout’s arising; fire cutting off the water’s continuation. Distinguishing substantial cause from cooperative condition is the whole of the reply.
Worldly “conflict” is looser than the treatises’ contradiction — people at odds can still share a room. True contradiction is one thing’s force destroying another, such that within its range the other cannot exist.
Contradiction of the mind:
[Objection:] Whether [you] cut off the very nature of what is to be abandoned or its seed, In neither case is it tenable.
[Opponents] You say ascertainment cuts off superimposition. Which — its nature or its seed? Cutting off the nature proves nothing, since two conceptions cannot arise at once in one continuum: when my mind turns from the pillar to a vase or a buddha-image, the clinging to the pillar as permanent is absent anyway. And cutting off the seed is impossible for an ordinary being.
[Reply:] There is an antidote that cuts off the seed too; And with ascertainment there is no superimposition — neither of the two faults applies.
Both horns fail. Seeds are cut off: having generated decisive ascertainment on the paths of accumulation and application, one attains the irreversible wisdom of the path of seeing (the stream-entry fruit in the Hīnayāna, the path of seeing in the Mahāyāna), and by it every seed of superimposition is severed.
And the mere wandering of attention differs from ascertainment as heaven from earth. Without genuine ascertainment, when my mind returns to the pillar the clinging to permanence returns with it, and will do so forever. Once reasoning has established that the pillar is impermanent, every subsequent thought of the pillar carries impermanence instead. Like taking a coloured rope for a snake, then seeing it clearly by lamplight: from then on the rope is never again mistaken. As the Beacon of Certainty teaches, once genuine ascertainment arises no wrong clinging about that object arises again. The point generalises: faith not induced by reasoning can be lost when circumstances change; an unshakeable, other-independent view attained by one’s own reasoning is not lost in this life or in lives to come.
(4) The Valid Cognition that Ascertains Contradiction
Refuting External-Object Contradiction
Just like connection, this contradiction Is not established in the real object either; Merely by conceptual superimposition Is it posited as contradiction.
One might grant that connection is mind-imputed while insisting that contradiction is real — fire and water meet, fire wins, water perishes, and this seems to be forces in the object excluding one another. But run the three instants again. At the first instant both exist, so there is coexistence, not contradiction. By the third the weaker is gone, and contradiction needs two relata. When the strong fire is present the water has already perished; when the powerless water is present the fire has not yet arisen as harmer. So exactly as with cause and effect — cause present, effect absent; effect present, cause absent — the two terms are never available together. Non-simultaneous things cannot contradict either: the dead of one generation do no direct harm to the next.
Nor can any valid cognition find the relation in the object. Direct perception cannot: eye-consciousness grasps only momentary things, never a continuum, so no eye-consciousness sees both harmer and harmed, any more than it sees both cause and effect. Inference cannot establish it as existing in the object either, since the two never coexist. What is established is the momentary phenomenon grasped by non-conceptual cognition; the harmer-harmed relation is the conceptual mind’s addition — this is what “water and fire are incompatible” amounts to.
The scope is carefully bounded: this is not Madhyamaka’s ultimate analysis, under which the nature of contradiction does not exist at all. Logic says only that conventionally the harmer-harmed relation is not established as a particular in any external thing. And because the three-instant process outruns what eye-consciousness can see, ascertaining contradiction requires both direct perception and inference — which is why the treatment of connection insisted on both.
Establishing Contradiction before the Mind
Apart from the perceptible and the imperceptible, There is no other valid cognition that determines contradiction.
Contradiction is ascertained exactly as cause and effect are, by positive and negative concomitance across three stages of perceiving and not perceiving. Either: neither fire nor water is seen in a place, then forceful fire is seen, then the water is absent. Or: the cold-tangible is seen present, then the heat-tangible is seen, then the cold-tangible is gone. Jamyang Loter Wangpo’s manual gives just these two methods. The homely case: the room was cold, you lit a fire, and after a while the cold was wholly gone.
Human conflicts can be read off people’s speech — someone who repeatedly speaks ill of a third party is plainly at odds with them — but fire announces nothing about its quarrel with water, so concomitance is the only route.
Removing Disputes
[Objection:] For the cessation of the cold-tangible — [if you rely on] the universal “fire,” that is inconclusive; [if on] the forceful [fire], that is unestablished. [A third party:] Some say one should use the reason of the forceful [fire].
[Opponents] “There is no cold before me, because fire exists” is inconclusive, since a feeble fire need not remove the cold. “Because forceful fire exists” is unestablished, since while the cold-tangible is imperceptible one cannot establish that the fire is stronger than it.
[Some masters] The second formulation is the right one: the reason must be forceful fire.
[Reply:] The essence [of the reason] relies on the universal “fire” alone.
Sakya Paṇḍita accepts neither. The bare reason “fire” suffices, because wherever fire exists there is no cold — even a spark, within the range it governs, admits no cold. Adding “forceful” gains nothing and is itself relative: a large fire in your house leaves cold beyond its range all the same. The qualification “within the range it governs” is what carries the inference.
B. The Contradiction of Mutual Exclusion
Two parts: setting forth others’ untenable position, and establishing our own.
Setting Forth Others’ Untenable Position
Stating the Opponents’ View
[Objection:] If one says: whatever phenomenon stands apart from another Is a contradiction of mutual exclusion — Its division is direct and indirect contradiction, And indirect contradiction is also held to be of two kinds.
[Earlier Epistemologists and later Gelug masters such as Khedrup Je] Any phenomenon standing apart from another — the other not existing upon it — is a mutual-exclusion contradiction, as with pillar and vase. Since from the pillar’s side the vase is a non-pillar, the two are already mutually severed. Mutual exclusion divides into direct and indirect, and indirect into two: that having a directly-contradictory distinguishing feature and that lacking one.
The contradictions of substance and of isolate Each have [their] two kinds — six categories in all.
Three on the substance side, three on the isolate side.
Substance side: (a) direct — white and non-white, human and non-human, blue and non-blue; (b) indirect with a directly-contradictory feature — non-blue and the blue lotus, since non-blue and blue are directly contradictory and the lotus carries the feature of blue; (c) indirect lacking such a feature — red and white, yellow and blue.
Isolate side, illustrated from “the pillar is impermanent, because it is produced”: (a) direct — reason and non-reason, i.e. “produced” and “non-produced”; (b) indirect with a directly-contradictory feature — non-reason and “produced”; (c) indirect lacking one — the isolate “impermanent” and the isolate “produced”.
The scheme’s underlying flaw is that isolate-contradictions are mind-imputed while substance-contradictions are not established in the external object; the Earlier Epistemologists habitually mix the isolate and the substance of a thing, and posit their views by that conflation. (Chapter Eight returns to this.)
Refuting That Position
The Actual Refutation
If being apart from another phenomenon were contradiction, All connection would become contradiction. And if one accepts this, [refutation] through contradiction And establishment through connection would both collapse.
Fire and smoke, seed and sprout, father and son, husband and wife are all distinct — so on the opponents’ rule all connected phenomena become contradictory, “produced” and “impermanent” included. Two consequences follow, and they invert reasoning itself.
Refutation through contradiction fails. The proper form is “there can be no fire before me, because forceful water exists” — one contradictory term excludes the other. If connected things are contradictory, one would have to say “before me there is water, because fire exists,” reversing the inference.
Establishment through connection fails. “There is fire on the hill, because there is smoke” and “the pillar is impermanent, because it is produced” work by connection — the latter by connection of identity. If those pairs are contradictory, the conclusions invert: “the pillar is not impermanent, because it is produced”; “there can be no fire on the hill, because there is smoke.”
The Buddha case recurs: the Bhagavān’s speaking and his omniscience are distinct isolates, and the Nyāyabindu and other treatises state with one voice that they carry no contradiction. Khedrup Je’s replies to Sakya Paṇḍita on this point do not overturn him; Mipham Rinpoche holds the same. Contradictory things are indeed distinct, but the distinct is not necessarily contradictory.
Refuting their Reply that Wards off the Fault
[Objection:] Whether distinct entities are connected or unrelated, Each, being its own nature, negates the other’s nature.
[Opponents] Related or unrelated, all distinct things are contradictory, because each nature already negates the other: blue’s nature negates yellow, smoke’s negates fire, the isolate “produced” negates “non-produced”. What is smoke is not fire, and “is” and “is not” are contradictory. Likewise pillar and vase: search the pillar inside and out and not a particle of vase is found, so what is the pillar is not the vase.
[Reply:] Since contradiction is refuted by the reason of observing a contradictory factor, The reason of non-observation of the perceptible would be rendered needless.
The refutation works from the pairing of theses with their proper reasons. Genuinely contradictory things are refuted by the reason of observing a contradictory factor — “there can be no fire before me, because forceful water exists” (treated further under inference-for-oneself). Merely distinct things are refuted by the reason of non-observation of the perceptible — “there is no white upon this yellow thing, for were there white I would see it, and I do not.” If yellow and white were contradictory, the second reason would become redundant, and one would have to argue “there is no white before me, because red exists” — which is uncertain, since white’s presence does not settle red’s absence. The non-observation reason is the correct one, so the pair are not contradictory.
The decisive point, stated at the chapter’s outset, is that the contradictory class of mutual exclusion must be a non-entity. Non-coexistence has real entities on both sides; mutual exclusion does not. Although “non-pillar” includes the vase and the yak, the real-entity portion is not the contradictory class — only the negation portion that does not exist upon the pillar’s nature. So the vase is a non-pillar, yet pillar and vase are not a mutual-exclusion contradiction. Had the seven treatises meant a relation between two real entities, they would have said so.
Explaining the Intent in Calling Distinct Entities “Contradictory”
To call distinct phenomena “contradictory” Is in fact a nominal positing, just as with connection.
The Pramāṇavārttika and related texts do say that blue and yellow, smoke and fire, pillar and vase are contradictory. These are provisional statements carrying a hidden intent, not Dharmakīrti’s definitive meaning. (The Buddha’s provisional speech differs wholly from worldly lying: it carries no selfish motive, has a basis, and is adapted to what beings can benefit from.)
The parallel with connection makes the usage plain. Two horses tied to one pillar, or a yak and a horse roped together, are called “connected” though they have neither causal connection nor connection of identity. The word does work without naming the thing. So too “contradiction” is sometimes applied where one nature is simply not another — a nominal positing, not the mutual-exclusion or non-coexistence contradiction defined here.
Establishing Our Own Tenable Position
Three parts: positing single and distinct entity; positing contradiction and connection upon distinct entities; setting forth mutual-exclusion contradiction.
Positing Single Entity and Distinct Entity
In dependence on the difference of cause and of cognition, Single entity and distinct entity are posited.
Two grounds of division, and no third. Substance side: what is truly produced in dependence on its own uncommon substantial cause — one thing from one cause is a single entity, different things from different causes and conditions are distinct entities. Isolate side: what appears before conception rather than before non-conceptual cognition — “produced” and “impermanent” upon the pillar are one entity in nature, yet conception separates them into two.
Some manuals put it as “one phenomenon from one cause is single, many from many are distinct,” which raises difficulties (the Abhidharmakośa allows one seed to produce many things). The clearer formulation: single-and-distinct produced in dependence on a real thing’s cause is substance-side; single-and-distinct produced in dependence on the conceptual mind is isolate-side.
The Principle of Positing Contradiction and Connection upon Distinct Entities
Among distinct entities: where there is mutual benefit or harm, there is connection or contradiction; Where there is neither benefit nor harm, there are merely distinct entities.
The threefold division that answers the opponents. Among distinct phenomena: benefactor and benefited are connected (fire and smoke, since fire benefits smoke’s unbroken arising); harmer and harmed are contradictory (fire and water, since one’s arising blocks the other’s continuation); and those with neither benefit nor harm, each abiding in its own place, are merely distinct (pillar and vase). The same holds among nations — allied, at war, or with no exchange at all — and among people, who may be on good terms, at odds, or merely nod in passing.
A qualification on the level at which these are posited: genuine connection and contradiction obtain upon the instant, but we posit them by way of the continuum. The true boundary of cause and effect is the finest instant, where the cause perishes and the effect arises, and neither conceptual mind nor direct perception can discern it — no cognition sees both cause and effect. Yet through the continuum we understand it: the causal phase runs on until the sprout appears, and that final instant is the boundary we designate. So with fire and water — the water is present throughout, and the instant of its perishing is too fine to be seen, but the continuum makes it intelligible. So when the conceptual thought “this place has no water, because there was fire just now” spans hundreds of instants while genuine contradiction occupies one, the cognition is not thereby wrong.
An illustration of sequential perishing: a little water beside a steel furnace does not vanish at once. Its countless droplets dry gradually as the water-particles dwindle and the fire-particles maintain their strength — proof that the particles perish in sequence, each with its own final instant.
Setting Forth Mutual-Exclusion Contradiction
Negating its own non-self — that is direct contradiction; Indirect contradiction is when [the self] refutes the pervader of its non-[self].
Direct contradiction: a thing’s own nature negates what is not its nature — real entity and non-entity, permanent and impermanent, blue and non-blue, pillar and non-pillar. The relation holds between the thing and the negation portion opposite it, never between two real entities: “human and yak are directly contradictory because the yak is a non-human” is exactly the misreading to avoid.
Indirect contradiction: a thing’s nature refutes the pervader of its non-self. “Produced” and “permanent” is the model case. “Produced” and “non-produced” are directly contradictory; “non-produced” and “permanent” are mutually pervasive (whatever is permanent is non-produced, and whatever is non-produced is permanent); so “produced” and “permanent” are indirectly contradictory. One term of an indirect contradiction must still be a non-entity, or it falls outside mutual exclusion altogether — which is why the earlier claim that yellow and white are an indirect contradiction fails: both are real entities.
Removing disputes about it:
[Objection:] If blue and the like were not contradictory, [one] could not negate [the other].
[Opponents] If blue and yellow are neither a non-coexistence nor a mutual-exclusion contradiction, then blue’s nature does not exclude yellow’s, and the two would merge into one body; saying “blue” would not identify blue, since yellow would not have been excluded from it.
[Reply:] They are mutually exclusive but not contradictory.
The distinction the objection misses. Blue is certainly not yellow and yellow certainly not blue — the two are mutually severed, as a southerner is not an easterner — but mutual severance is not contradiction. Contradiction requires harmer and harmed, and blue and yellow can exist at one time in one place. Exclusion is therefore secured without contradiction, and no merging into one body follows.
Concluding Verse
The contradiction of mutual exclusion negates a single entity [posited of a distinct entity]; “It” is refuted by “non-it.” The two real entities that are mutually exclusive Are refuted by non-observation of the perceptible.
The chapter’s summary, restating the two reasons and the non-entity requirement. Mutual-exclusion contradiction negates the single entity of a distinct entity: since its contradictory class is a non-entity, and no truly particular distinct entity is ever established in nature, the relation is a negation, not a relation between two real things. The reasoning runs “it is refuted by non-it” — the pillar is harmed by the non-pillar, standing to it as real entity to non-entity. It must not be read as “the pillar is harmed by the vase”: even with the vase’s real-entity status granted, a real entity harming a real entity is not admissible in mutual exclusion.
Where two mutually-exclusive phenomena are two substances, the appropriate reason is non-observation of the perceptible. Pillar and non-pillar (a vase) cannot occupy the same body, and it is by not perceiving what would be perceptible that the vase is excluded from the pillar.
End of the Seventh Chapter, Examining Contradiction.
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