What does Nagarjuna's tetralemma have to do with ethics? — Agent Smith

What does Nagarjuna's tetralemma have to do with the Noble Eightfold Path?

Well, how are they - Nagarjuna's tetralemma & ethics - connected? — Agent Smith

Who says they are??

Yeah, I get that virtue is a reward in itself but all religions, without exception I'd say, peddle virtue as a means to paradise, attaining nirvana, achieving moksha and so on.

On the flip side, the highest good, in these very same ideologies again, is to expect no reward for one's good thoughts/words/deeds. — Agent Smith

Can you support this claim with doctrinal evidence?

What you're saying is often claimed by various religious/spiritual people, as a display of one's grandeur and piousness, and as an implicit way to demand generosity and goodwill from others.
But I can't think of any actual doctrinal references that would actually support this notion of "expecting no reward for one's good thoughts/words/deeds."

So you mean to say that the Buddha "deceives" people into being ethical by dangling the false gift of nirvana before their eyes? Most interesting! Nevertheless, there is a reward, even if only an illusion of one and that brings us back to what I referred to in my posts - ethics as a means to...happiness. — Agent Smith

This is Mahayana doctrine. Not all Buddhist schools teach such things.

Mahayana — baker

:snicker:

"expecting no reward for one's good thoughts/words/deeds." — baker

On point! Bravo!

What does Nagarjuna's tetralemma have to do with the Noble Eightfold Path? — baker

That's exactly what I wanna know! Buddhism, it seems, is more complex than I imagined it to be. It suffers from internal paradoxes which if people notice is going to kickstart a mass exodus out of Buddhism.

Who says they are?? — baker

I feel they should be.

Oh, Smith.

Oh, Smith — baker

:snicker:

To do list

1. Understand Nagarjuna's tetralemma.

The Buddhist negation denial (vide Nyet in OP) is to reject a proposition p but avoids affirming the opposite proposition e.g. a Buddhist would say it isn't true that God exists but then would clarify that she doesn't mean God then doesn't exist. If then asked whether she thinks that both God exists and doesn't exist, she'd respond that that isn't what she meant either. Last but not the least, is she saying that neither God exists nor does not exist (categoery mistake feel)? No, she isn't.

The truth, if it could be called that, lies somewhere between p and ~p (the madhyamaka aka the middle path) for any proposition p.

It seems that Nagarjuna's tetralemma is designed to tackle undecidables


2. Find the connection between Nagarjuna's tetralemma and Buddhist ethics and practice (8-fold path).

It looks like we'd need to demonstrate that the undecidability of the reality of karma (ethical causation) is better than proving karma to be a fact, morally speaking.

Karma is one of the essential points of Buddhism while metaphysical questions are not

The choices are: Business deals OR Evil.

The truth, if it could be called that, lies somewhere between p and ~p (the madhyamaka aka the middle path) for any proposition p. — Agent Smith

Or maybe propositions don't apply to life? This seems to remind me of Parmenides and the logically deductive One of the gods and the uncertainties of the many random appearances in the world of opinion of people. Any connection? :chin:

If I asked seriously, How many angels, or neutrinos for nonbelievers, can dance on the head of a pin? What kind of answer would I expect? Could calculus help me?

What is the difference between Cratylus's and Wittgenstein's logically 2-valued silence and Nagarjuna's 4-valued silence? How is Nagarjuna's silence wiser?

It is intriguing that two separate points of view are "handled effectively" in the exact same way ( :zip: ).

It's kinda like how both border disputes and religious disagreements are "solved" by war.