And the Demons were Hunger and Cold

And a Lake of yellow Snakes roiled like waves.
The foam of the coils was the foam of the wind
That blew us away from the lumbering gait
Of the elephant shining a wishing-well-soul.
That that spray keeps us high
That brash music keeps fate
That the Kingdom is Thunder and Gold.

“But in the area of the Dhamma, simply sitting still with the right intention is a form of work or action. Lying down with the right intention is a form of work or action. Sitting, standing, walking, lying down: All of our movements and postures, if done with the right intention, are a form of work or action. When our actions are right, we’ll experience peace and ease. And then how will suffering come our way? The reason we suffer is because our actions are wrong. We sit, stand, walk, and lie down in ways contrary to the Dhamma. And then when we take on other work in addition to our basic actions, that work is bound to turn into wrong action as well. This was why the Buddha improved his manners in how he sat, stood, walked, and lay down, so that they were all pure in terms of the intentions of his mind. What this means is that he kept practicing tranquility meditation in all his activities. His mind had to stay with what the body was doing. If the mind told the body to do something, but didn’t do it along with the body, then he didn’t succeed in what he wanted to do. He couldn’t let the body work on its own. The mind had to work along with the body. Otherwise, his old manners would come back and take charge of the mind.”

Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo, Right Action, Right Result, November 11, 1958

I am not a postmodernist because I take certain things to be universally true. There are only a small number of these.

1. There exists a general notion or operation called “separation” This involves the decay, falling apart, or impermanence of mental, spiritual, physical, or any other qualification of phenomena.
2. There exists a general notion or operation called “Union” you could equally call it “Equal” or “same” or “synthesis” “thing” or “gathering,” “Being,” “Idea,” or “word.” The reason for the many terms for Union is Union is vague, and words are vague. How and what joins together varies, but in general there most definitely is an operation, be it mental, physical, spiritual or whatever, that I call “Union”. Since “thing” is included in “union” all things are unions.
3. There was no original Union or Separation. The coming together and falling apart has no beginning nor end.
4. All Unions are subject to Separation. Separation is another word, as such it is subject to decay or falling apart. Do not cling to a particular notion of Separation, they are just as vague and impermanent as notions of Union. There is still a universal truth that all Unions are subject to falling apart, dissolution. The words in this description of Universal Truths are like rain water that has pooled long enough to have a clear drink. Soon, these words will drain away from anything serviceable.
5. The process of union and separation is called “Time” or “Space” or “Mind” or “Spirit” or “Ether” or many others. The principle of the arising of Unions and their Separation accounts for the many names of this “process.”
6. There is Awareness of Absolute Truth, this Truth is not really grasped with words or any other Union. The sixth truth could be simply called “Awareness,” It can be experienced through one of many doors such as a mental, physical, spiritual or other door. When it is experienced it is experienced in every way as well–as mental, as physical, as spiritual, and as any other way nameable. In other words, it is a special kind of Union. The 6th truth can not normally be maintained through “Time” or the 5th truth, except by equally grasping all 7 truths. Awareness of the first 6 truths can be achieved without meditation.
7. There is ignorance of the Truth. This manifests as a lack of awareness: mental, physical, spiritual, or any other (un)nameable awareness. Ignorance of the Truth arises from over-attention or over-aversion to one way or some ways (but not all ways) of being aware. In other words, ignorance is excitement, zealousness, greed, aversion, passion, ecstasy, and suffering or any kind of uncontrolled, unrestrained energetic state involving some (but not successfully all) unions or universal truths. Ignorance is a lack of equanimity in your ability to experience the Truth, or application of awareness. It is the Separation of the 6th truth. The separation of the 6th truth is called “Creation of a Union.” Creation of Unions is the result of the 7th truth. It happens when there is no mastery or awareness of the 7th truth.
8. There is full Awareness of the 7th truth. Awareness of the 7th truth does not result in creation of a Union. The 8th truth amounts to saying that none of these words adequately describe anything absolutely true. The 8th truth is Nirvana, and is experienced as the perfect maintenance, permanence, or continuation of awareness of the 7 truths. Mastery and Awareness of the 7th truth must be cultivated with some kind of meditation.

A lot of my work can be reduced to the debate on essentialism, and of course, my book comes down on the side of non-essentialism. This is the idea that there are not universal ideas or categories to to label with a word. That language is not enough for inquiry or truth-seeking.

“When we define something, then, what we are really doing is drawing a circle around a set of objects. But this circle will always have blurry edges, because our language simply cannot be infinitely precise (nor need it be, most of the time).”

This looks like my consideration of Pierce’s circle as the only mark needed to do Aristotle’s logic.

The circle in this notation is the negation operation, or distinction. And I do argue that the marks used to make circles have blurry edges. I go a little further and say that because these logical marks have blurry edges, we can actually create different kinds of marks, that still count as a kind of distinction. Its like saying you don’t have to only use a scalpel or a pen to mark the circle around logical objects or reality to create identities or logical statements. There are many other tools you could use. Intuitionist logic has a different understanding of logical negation, so the way they mark the circle is different from the way Aristotelian logician marks a circle. And these are different from the ways paraconsistent logics slice up reality, in other words, paraconsistent logicians use different tools from just scalpels or pens to do their mental arrangements.

It is true that you can reduce these different tools to a single tool, for the most part. We would not be able to begin talking about different slicers that slice reality, (extending from the nonessentialist observation that there are different ways to slice reality) if we didn’t turn our scalpel on itself, or use another scalpel on it, to tamper with it and modify it. So you could say that all these tools depend on the scalpel. Doing that is like writing computer code and only using the if, then, elseif, else code for everything, without the many other tools like loops, and so many others. Or trying to talk about computers using only algorithms and no data structures, or vice versa. Pragmatically, it is better to talk about the different logics as different tools for slicing reality, rather than reducing them all to a single kind of scalpel.

In my book (2019 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1688505717) I make the case for why logic is changeable and therefore temporary. The crux of the argument is that the inequality between a lemon and a lime does-not-equal the inequality between a star and a question, which draws the concept of identity into question. This implies that everything changes, including language or how we slice up reality with words. It amounts to the Buddhist maxim ” everything is impermanent” including words and mathematical words/objects.

This is not to endorse nihilism. Language is still very helpful in learning truth, but truth is not something that can be expressed with language. See this blog post: https://questionsarepower.org/2020/03/22/the-fools-song/ Language doesn’t amount to nothing; it is like lunch. You need it to keep your mind going on its path to truth, just like you need lunch to accomplish much of anything in life. You read and think in language so your mind can keep moving. It is very important, even hypnotic. Ultimately, as a delightful art form, it is a means to an end. It is not an end in itself.

I should add that this requires a particular theory of identity: how it is like and different to other things is how it gains its identity. As usual, not a perfect theory. But surely, how we relate an apple to the rest of the world changes. Maybe over a thousand years we decide apples don’t taste good, or are dirty, or whatever else. It is actually easier to see how mathematical objects change, because our taste for them changes them even more than it does an apple.

Are there some questions that you can accept or reject? If I reject this question, is it a question? Or am I merely answering the question by rejecting it? It is true that when you really answer a question, it is no longer in question. But how is that different from rejecting a question?

I think all questions involve words and terminology. You can disagree with the terminology used to ask a question. When you do that, are you rejecting the question? Can questions change and still be the same question? Can answers change and still be the same answer?

Suppose I ask “do you beat your wife or are you a sexual offender?”

Most people would disagree with the terms of this question, because the answer is usually neither, and that is not allowed with the English “or”

but only a minor change in the question: “do you neither beat your wife nor are a sexual offender?” makes the terms acceptable. The problem is not the question but the logical rules for “or” that we normally use to answer questions.

Perhaps the best model for the relationship between questions, truth and falsehood is the Jungian model for the relationship between the earth-tree, heaven, and hell.

Carl Jung: “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”

In this model we are all trees, as long as we are growing. So if we are asking questions, and asking questions about the terminology in our questions, we are like a growing tree, in the center of the universe. As these questions stretch towards the world, both vertically and horizontally, the tree grows, until its roots reach down into hell and its branches reach up into heaven. Heaven is the truth, hell falsehood. We cannot reach either without asking questions. Rejecting a question is denying growth to the tree, which is necessary to reach the truth, even as its roots continue to reach down into falsehood.