by Tang Huyen
Tang Huyen was among the most philosophically rigorous contributors to talk.religion.buddhism in the mid-2000s, consistently situating the Buddha's thought in dialogue with Western philosophy. This essay, posted in October 2006, takes its title from a thread about Charles Hardwidge's vertiginous prose — and becomes an extended meditation on why vertigo might be precisely the right response to reality.
The central argument is comparative: Plato's Thaetetus presents Heraclitus's doctrine that nothing is one thing by itself but always in the process of becoming, that every perceived quality arises in the meeting of perceiver and perceived and belongs to neither, and that no name can be given without the named immediately slipping away. Tang Huyen argues that this is, in essence, the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence and dependent arising — and that the Chinese Buddhist text, the Scripture on Ultimate Emptiness (Paramārtha-śūnyatā-sūtra), says almost precisely what Plato says about Heraclitus.
The essay then turns to Chrysippus and the Stoics, who contribute two further convergences: that every word is ambiguous by nature, and that goods and evils exist only in polar opposition to each other, with no self-standing being on either side. These Greek voices arrive at the same destination as the Buddha's dharma-saṃketa — the "linguistic-convention on thing-events" that names dependently arisen processes without mistaking the name for a fixed reality.
There is a famous exposition of vertigo, which moreover presents the Buddhist theory of flux (impermanence horizontally and ambiguity vertically) in Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge, Thaetetus of Plato, 49 — though neither Plato nor Heraclitus knows anything about Buddhism — where the important passage is:
"nothing is one thing just by itself, but is always in process of becoming for someone, and being is to be ruled out altogether, though, needless to say, we have been betrayed by habit and inobservance into using the word more than once only just now. But that was wrong, these wise men tell us; and we must not admit the expressions something or somebody or mine or this or that or any other word that brings things to a standstill, but rather speak, in accordance with nature, of what is becoming, being produced, perishing, changing. For anyone who talks so as to bring things to a standstill is easily refuted. So we must express ourselves in each individual case and in speaking of an assemblage of many — to which assemblage people give the name of man or stone or of any living creature or kind."
The Thaetetus Passage in Full
Below is a more complete quote expounding the philosophy of Heraclitus as Plato sees it:
SOCRATES. I will tell you. And indeed the doctrine is a remarkable one. It declares that nothing is one thing just by itself, nor can you rightly call it by some definite name, nor say it is of any definite sort. On the contrary, if you call it large, it will be found to be also small; if heavy, to be also light; and so on all through, because nothing is one thing or some thing or of any definite sort. All the things we are pleased to say are, really are in the process of becoming, as a result of movement and change and of blending one with another. We are wrong to speak of them as being, for none of them ever is; they are always becoming.... Think of it, then, this way. First, to take the case of the eyes, you must conceive that what you call white colour has no being as a distinct thing outside your eyes nor yet inside them, nor must you assign it any fixed place. Otherwise, of course, it would have its being in an assigned place and abide there, instead of arising in a process of becoming.
THEAETETUS. Well, but how am I to think of it?
SOCR. Let us follow our recent statement and lay it down that there is no single thing that is in and by itself. On that showing we shall see that black or white or any colour you choose is a thing that has arisen out of the meeting of our eyes with the appropriate motion. What we say is this or that colour will be neither the eye which encounters the motion nor the motion which is encountered, but something which has arisen between the two and is peculiar to each several percipient....
SOCR. ... Their first principle, on which all that we said just now depends, is that the universe really is motion and nothing else. And there are two kinds of motion. Of each kind there are any number of instances, but they differ in that the one kind [the sense objects] has the power of acting, the other [the sense organs] of being acted upon. From the intercourse and friction of these with one another arise offsprings, endless in number, but in pairs of twins. One of each pair is something perceived, the other a perception, whose birth always coincides with that of the thing perceived. Now, for the perceptions we have names like seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling cold, feeling hot, and again pleasures and pains and desires and fears, as they are called, and so on. There are any number that are nameless, though names have been found for a whole multitude. On the other side, the brood of things perceived always come to birth at the same moment with one or another of these — with instances of seeing, colours of corresponding variety; with instances of hearing, sounds in the same way; and with all the other perceptions, the other things perceived that are akin to them. Now, what light does this story throw on what has gone on before, Theaetetus?...
As soon, then, as an eye and something else whose structure is adjusted to the eye come within range and give birth to the whiteness together with its cognate perception — things that would never have come into existence if either one of the two had approached something else — then it is that, as the vision from the eye and the whiteness from the thing that joins in giving birth to the colour pass in the space between, the eye becomes filled with vision and now sees, and becomes, not vision, but a seeing eye; while the other parent of the colour is saturated with whiteness and becomes, on its side, not whiteness but a white thing, be it stock or stone or whatever else may chance to be so coloured....
The conclusion from all this is, as we said at the outset, that nothing is one thing just by itself, but is always in process of becoming for someone, and being is to be ruled out altogether.... But that was wrong, these wise men tell us; and we must not admit the expressions something or somebody or mine or this or that or any other word that brings things to a standstill, but rather speak, in accordance with nature, of what is becoming, being produced, perishing, changing.
...
THEODORUS. How can that be done, Socrates, or how can anything else of the kind you mean be called by its right name, if, while we are speaking, it is all the time slipping away from us in this stream?
SOCR. And again, what are we to say of any perception of any sort; for instance, the perception of seeing or hearing? Are we to say that it ever abides in its nature as seeing or hearing?
THEOD. It certainly ought not, if all things are in change.
SOCR. Then it has no right of being called seeing, any more than not-seeing, nor is any other perception entitled to be called perception rather than not-perception, if everything is changing in every kind of way.
THEOD. No, it hasn't.
There is nothing new under the sun, as Jewish wisdom says.
The Buddhist Convergence
Ultimate reality is taken in Buddhism as the whole sense-field, as received in sensation, before thought jumps in to cut it up into bits and pieces and process the results according to concepts and categories, structures and frameworks. It is not a homogeneous blank, but fully differentiated, and our mentation attempts to duplicate its incommensurable richness, in vain, of course, like trying to empty the ocean with a spoon, as Leibniz says.
The Scripture on Ultimate Emptiness (Paramārtha-śūnyatā-sūtra, SA, 335, 92c; Harivarman, Tattva-siddhi, T, 32, 1646, 255b1, 332c7–9, 333a17; Dà zhì dù lùn, T, 25, 1509, 295a4):
The eye, when it arises, does not come from anywhere, and when it ceases, does not go anywhere. Thus the eye, having not become, becomes, and having once become, disappears (cakṣur bhikṣava utpadyamānam na kutas cid āgacchati, niruddhyamānam ca na kva cit samnicayaṃ gacchati, iti hi bhikṣavas cakṣur abhūtvā bhavati bhūtvā ca prativigacchati). There is deed, there is return of deed, but there cannot be obtained (nopalabhyate) the doer, who throws away these aggregates and takes up other aggregates, except for a linguistic-convention on thing-events (dharma-saṃketa), namely, this being, that is; this arising, that arises; this not being, that is not; this not arising, that does not arise (asti karma asti vipākaḥ kārakas tu nopalabhyate ya imāṃś ca skandhān nikṣipaty anyāṃś ca skandhān pratisaṃdadhāty anyatra dharma-saṃketāt, tatrāyaṃ dharma-saṃketo yad utāsmiṃ satīdaṃ bhavaty asyotpādād idaṃ utpadyate, asmiṃn asati idaṃ na bhavati, asya nirodhād idaṃ nirudhyate).
The formulae of dependent arising survive in Pali, but not the highly significant expression "the linguistic-convention on thing-events" (dharma-saṃketa).
The passage of Plato quoted above, which presents and/or reconstructs what Heraclitus has to say, nearly says much of what the Buddha and Nāgārjuna have to say: no thing-event or phenomenon can be definitely circumscribed, no thing-event or phenomenon can be cleanly cut off from what surrounds it and labelled with precision, and the content that enters sensibility is a-logos — deprived of language and thought and reason (logos means all three) — and for practical purposes of life, it may be cut up and labelled with some imprecision, and always leaves some indelible margin of ambiguity, uncertainty.
The Buddha says: "this being, that is; this arising, that arises; this not being, that is not; this not arising, that does not arise" — but the "this" and the "that" (actually the same word in different case endings) are temporarily circumscribed and named, and the Buddha is careful to add: "there cannot be obtained (nopalabhyate) the doer, who throws away these aggregates and takes up other aggregates, except for a linguistic-convention on thing-events (dharma-saṃketa), namely, this being, that is; this arising, that arises, etc."
The linguistic-convention on thing-events (dharma-saṃketa) is just what Plato ascribes to Heraclitus — just read the passage again, especially: "we must not admit the expressions something or somebody or mine or this or that or any other word that brings things to a standstill, but rather speak, in accordance with nature, of what is becoming, being produced, perishing, changing."
I have not found anything in Buddhism that in any way exceeds the slipperiness of names and concepts (and more generally thought and language) as described by Plato on behalf of Heraclitus in the above passage.
The Buddha never denies that there is stuff undergoing change, just as he never denies — instead asserts very strongly — the laws that regulate the change. The seizing is in the cutting up of the wholesome sensible input, the labelling of it and the grasping of suchlike labels, especially the "I", the self. Just as in the Perfection of Wisdom scriptures and Nāgārjuna, emptiness is the denial of essence which is imputed at the second (metaphysical) level, not the denial of sensible input at the phenomenal level.
The sensible input, when thought-up (and therefore when essence is imputed in the wake of cutting up and labelling), is delusion; but when not subject to thought and language, is reality and ultimate reality. So that "there" when not thought-up is reality and ultimate reality to the Buddha — though of course it is not thought up as a "there", and not cut up into bits and pieces and processed accordingly, with labels and associations, intellective, affective or whatever.
Not here, but elsewhere, Plato goes on to build his heaven of the essences or Forms to give stability to thought (no stability can be given to sensible input, which is beyond redemption to Plato). What Plato does consciously is what we do unconsciously, in that we automatically build up stable concepts and attribute essence to those concepts and to the instances of those concepts. Plato simply turns that process into theory.
To the Buddha, the "this" and the "that" that he cuts up and labels in the stream of life — ignorance, the compositions, consciousness, name-and-form, etc. — are useful for meditation on Dependent Arising but not ultimate. Ultimately, all those bits are slippery and cannot be cut up with precision and labelled with precision. Our names and concepts attempt to cut off a bit of the stream of life, freeze it and stabilise it, and this process serves us to some extent, but ultimately is futile and untrue to what it attempts to grasp.
Chrysippus and the Stoics
I'll take this opportunity to point out how similar some Stoic sayings are to Buddhist ones. There are two passages from Chrysippus that are unfortunately preserved only in Latin translation, and that are as good as anything from Buddhism on the topic of the ambiguity of our conceptual delimitations. This ambiguity is not just de facto but also de jure, and can never be wholly removed.
Chrysippus said that every word is ambiguous by nature (Chrysippus ait omne verbum ambiguum natura esse). — Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, I, 227, item 37N.
There is absolutely nothing more foolish than those who think that there could have been goods without the coexistence of evils. For since goods are opposite to evils, the two must necessarily exist in opposition to each other and supported by a kind of opposed interdependence. And there is no such opposite without its matching opposite. For how could there be perception of justice if there were no injustices? What else is justice, if not the removal of injustice? Likewise, what appreciation of courage could there be except through the contrast with cowardice? Of moderation, if not from immoderation? How, again, could there be prudence if there were not imprudence opposed to it? Why do the fools similarly wish that there were truth without there being falsity? For goods and evils, fortune and misfortune, pain and pleasure, exist just the same way: they are tied to each other in polar opposition, as Plato said. Remove one, and you remove the other (nihil est prorsus istis insubidius, qui opinantur bona esse potuisse si non essent ibidem mala. nam cum bona malis contraria sint, utraque necessum est opposita inter sese et quasi mutuo adverso quaeque fulta nisu consistere...).
— Long and Sedley, ibid., I, 329, item 54Q.
Also preserved in Greek, from Plutarch, De Communibus notitiis, 1078e (Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, I, 298, 50C):
There is no extreme body in nature, neither first nor last, into which the size of a body terminates. But there always appears something beyond the assumed, and the body in question is thrown into the infinite and boundless.
Nothing in Buddhism surpasses those three Stoic sayings, just as nothing in Buddhism surpasses the Thaetetus passage. All of Buddhism, so long as it is Buddhism, is an attempt to put those sayings into real life.
The Higher Critique
The ambiguity and uncertainty inherent in human life and human judgement (and what is the Buddha's teaching except judgement?) are part and parcel of the Buddha's teaching, but jump out in one moment. The Buddha usually teaches his stuff at the first level, but at one time goes one level up, performs a "higher critique" of his usual teaching, and says: "self and what belongs to self are unobtainable and cannot be made known as real and established in the present things; the views, fetters and latencies in the mind are unobtainable and cannot be made known."
This takes all thing-events to be fluffy, slippery, unobtainable — they cannot be pinned down. Since they cannot be pinned down, the only possible thing to do about them is to be serene and let them be, just the way they are and not the way one wants them to be or thinks them to be. In Buddhism one cannot change the world but can change the way one deals with it.
Colophon
Written by Tang Huyen. Posted to alt.zen and talk.religion.buddhism, October 2006, in response to a thread about Charles Hardwidge's vertiginous prose style. The essay uses the occasion to develop a sustained philosophical comparison between Buddhist impermanence and dependent arising, Heraclitean flux as reconstructed in Plato's Thaetetus, the Chinese Buddhist Scripture on Ultimate Emptiness (SA, 335), and two Chrysippus fragments on the ambiguity of words and the interdependence of opposites.
Tang Huyen was a regular contributor to talk.religion.buddhism in the 2003–2009 period, known for engaging Buddhist canonical texts in Pali, Sanskrit, and Classical Chinese. This essay exemplifies his cross-traditional method: finding in Heraclitus and the Stoics not mere analogues but genuinely convergent philosophical insights — arrived at independently — that illuminate the Buddha's teaching from an unexpected angle.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Works Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].
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