On Zen Language and Zen Paradoxes

·期刊原文
ON "ON ZEN LANGUAGE AND ZEN PARADOXES":

ANGLOS-SAXON QUESTIONS FOR CHUNG-YING CHENG
John King-Farlow
Journal of Chinese Philosophy
Vol.10
1983
P.285-298
Copyright (c) 1983 by Dialogue Publishing Company,
Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.

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P.285

Professor Cheng's remarkable paper "ON Zen
(Ch'an) Languages and Zen Paradoxes", (Journal of
Chinese Philosophy, I 1973) 77-102), is extremely
welcome. Unlike the more popular interpreters of
Zen, such as D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts, Cheng
speaks as a scholar no less at home with
Harvard-style analysantia than with the Buddhist and
Taoist background of Zen analysantia. Thanks to
Cheng's encouragement, I shall offer a series of
requests for clarification. This may enable him to
bridge still further the gap between the Zen
Masters' understanding of paradox as a tool and the
initial puzzlement of Anglo-Saxon analysts. It
should be clear that I write as one of those to whom
Cheng addresses himself, as someone with only a
European training, who cannot tell whether even the
translations are close renderings. My questions to
Cheng will be mainly of the form: How useful for
understanding Zen discourse is the following body of
comment, which arises from my still very limited
understanding of your most welcome cross-cultural
essay?

Part 1

Question I: ANALYSIS OF TYPE 1 OF THE ZEN
"PARADOXES" MENTIONED

How useful is the folliwng Body-of Comment I ?

Comment : Cheng provides the following general
formula for the "schemata of paradoxes": "(H) P is q
if and only if P is not q, where q is some suitable
sentential predicate of either logical or semantical
or pragmatical significance." (85) Among the
possible values for q he specifically mentions (A)
"meaningful", (B) "intelligible", (C) "relevant",
(D) "acceptable", (E) "satisfactory" and (F)
"relevant (for some purpose)". What Cheng calls Zen
paradoxes must exemplify one of these possible
values of q in H, or several of them, or several of
them and other possible values of q or even all
possible values of q. The rang of q is going to be
very great

P.286

indeed, and I have no doubt of Cheng's ability to
find some philosophically important value for each
of what he calls his paradoxical examples (given a
very loose,Cluster-Concept analysis of "paradoxical",
"logical", "semantical" and "pragmatic"). What is
not clear to me at all is the sort of
appropriateness of predicates (A) to (F) to certain
examples that he gives. Let me deal first with what
Cheng calls "paradoxes in Zen language......Type I:
Paradoxes with paradoxicality in a simple demand or
in a single question". (87) The force of examples
seems to me better 'schematized' by the formula"
Apparently it is implied or contextually implicated
the P is both q and NOT- q). Cheng stresses that
such questions must be understood as following in
the context of conversations between people with
great learning in the fields of Taoist and Buddhist
thought (80). Presumabley those conversing will each
have a healthily trained memory, imagination,
facility for discovering logical fallacies, and
ability to produce sentences which seem to have no
non-deviant uses but really do. Thus it would appear
to me that the best interpretation of many examples
of Type I paradoxicality (?) is that the speaker
seems to be asking or stating something paradoxical
(in one or more of a broad range of senses), but it
is something which a gifted student need not find
very paradoxical in isolation from the sentences of
the dialogue. Instead, in the case of most of the
fifteen examples which Cheng gives for Type I, the
gifted student should be able to make fairly good
sense of what the teacher says, in that he can think
of a reasonably natural context in which some
illocationary use or uses of the teacher's words
will be easy to understand. (The context need not be
at all obvious to everyone who is philosophically
lethargic.) I speak of a conventional illocutionary
use in contrast with the Zen master's perlocutionary
use for shocking people into Enlightement. This
latter use is covered further in Part II of my
essay.

I now introduce some crude, overlapping
diagnostic responses.(I) "Here is an element of
apparent contradiction that is really
pseudo-contradiction". (II) "Here is a false
inference or misleading implication." (III) "Here is
a play on different senses of a word." (IV)"Here is
a confusion of contraries and contradictories." A
pupil who can see how to apply these diagnoses to
his teacher's 'paradoxes' of Type I must have an
imaginative freedom and creativity, a relaxed yet
disciplined looseness or openness of mind, a fine
sense of humour about everyone (including his
teacher and, above all, himself). No doubt the Zen
Buddhist will say that perfect possession of such

P.287

qualities can only obtained after Enlightenment
through study up to Cheng's Stage III(83). Now for
the examples.
(1) "Show me your original face before you were-
born."This seems to be a question which presupposes
both that the student did once have a now diclosable
face of a certain kind and that the student never
did or never could have a now disclosable face of
that "original" kind. But the student could possibly
have good reason to think he has some relevant ideas
and is able to draw (I) what his face looked like
just before he was born, (ii)what his face looked
like in his immediately prior incarnation or in some
prior incarnation, of (iii) what his face might have
looked like in his first incarnation. So the student
even though he need not believe in reincarnation can
invoke diagnoses (I) "Pseudo-Contradiction" and
perhaps (III) "Play on different senses of the key
word 'original'. " At least the student can do this
if Cheng's English translation is closely synonymous
with the original sentence in the original language.
(2)"Whay is the clap of one hand? ("Listen to
the sound of one hand [clapping].") The question and
the command both seem to presuppose in P.
F.Strawson's terms, or contextually implicate in
H.P. Grice's terms, that there can be a sound of one
hand clapping and that there cannot. But though a
clap or clapping sound emitted by two hands pounding
palms together is not the same sort of clap as that
created by a person thumping his fingers on his palm
to create a clapping noise or by thumping something
with ones only free hand at the theatre to applaud
(with a degenerate type of clap that is equally
appreciated), a person can clap (paradigmatically)
with two hands or (somewhat analogously) with one.
Hence the diagnosis may be one of (I) and (III)
(3) "On producing a pitcher, Pai Ching asking:
'Don't call it a pitcher, but tell me what it is?'"
We again seem to get something like what H.P. Grice
calls the Contextual Implicature that two
contradictory propositions are ture: the pupil both
has a duty to say that it is pitcher, and also has
the duty not to say this, so that he does not have
the duty to say it! But actually in the context it
is reasonable just to expect that the pupil give a
fairly good identifying description of the pitcher
without using the word "pitcher"or that he use a
suitable synonym if available. Thus, "It is a jug"
or "It is a polished clay vessel for storing and
pouring water and other fluids" will get the pupil
'off the hook'. The diagnosis can be: (I) and (II).

P.288

(4) "I am him and yet he is not me".In the sense
that Sir Laurence is Hamlet when acting the leading
role in Hamlet, Hamlet is not Sir Laurence Olivier.
The diagnosis can be (I) and (III). Presumably
Kabuki actors and also other Chinese and Japanese
types of actors have some of the linguistic license
that Shakespearean actors have with regard to some
roughly synonymous sentence.
(5) "Call this a stick and you asset; call it
not a stick and you negate. Now you don't assert or
negate, and what do you call it? Speak and speak."
When a society's linguistic leader originally calls,
names, or entitles a thing of type X, stick, or when
he defines such a thing as a stick, he neither
asserts nor negates anything. His sentence is not
used to make a true of false statement: he performs
a different kind of linguistic act from asserting or
denying. When he originally decrees or defines
things of type X that are also of type Y not, to be
sticks, he neither asserts or denies anything. Or,
again, as Cheng mentions on page 88, the answerer
can respond by saying "What is it?" This need not be
strongly paradoxical as an answer, as Cheng holds,
since to reply "What is it?" is to speak and one is
commanded to speak here, while one is at the same
time being forbidden to assert or negate or call it
a stick. The contraries "You must not call it a
stick" and "You must not call it not a stick" are
treated illegitimately as contradictories, so that
one falsely seems to be obliged to go wrong by the
Law of the Excluded Middle. But this Law does
exclude the possibility that one speak but call it
nothing at all. Diagnoses (I), (II), (III) and (IV)
may all be in order. Speaking is not confined to
calling, nor in relation to Cheng's example (6)--
"Assertion prevails not, nor does denial. When
neither of them is to the point, what would you
say?"⌒ is saying things confined to asserting and
denying. Compare Aristotle's ditinction in De
Interpretatione, Chapter IV, between (1) sentences
for asserting and denying and (2) meaningful
sentences IN GENERAL.
The answer to Cheng's (7), the question about
how to get a growing goose out of a bottle, the neck
of which it is has outgrown, without damaging goose
or bottle, is answered by pointing to the masked
third possibility of expanding the bottle and /or
shrinking the goose. The best diagnosis may be (IV).
And the message may be the sound one that humans
wallow in abusing the Law of the Excluded Middle. (I
have argued elsewhere that Descartes' EGO,
unacceptable to Zen, results from such abuse).

P.289

The answer to Cheng's (8), the problem of what a
dedicated Buddhist should do when asked by others
for Enlightenment, while he is hanging on to a high
branch for dear life with his teeth, is that what
seem to be contradictories " I must stay silent now
to preach often again " and " I must preach now and
never preach again " are only contraries.
Possibilities like using ones legs for signalling to
the questioner to help the preacher down must also
be considered! (One might even tap out "S.O.S." in
Zen Morse code with ones heels!)
Cheng's (9)poses the question: how should one
address a buffalo that was the Monk Kuai Shan in the
previous life? As Buffalo or as Monk Kuai Shan?
Presumably it seems to the unskilled that these
alternatives must be inferred to be individually
unsuitable, and to be mutually exclsive, and to be
the only alternatives. But "O thou who art now
incarnated as a buffalo and was last incarnated as
the Monk Kuei Shan" would seem to do the trick. The
possible contraries " I ought to address X as Z "
and " I ought to address X as W" are treated as
contradictories. The diagnosis is again (IV).
(10 "I see mountain not as mountain; and I see
water not as water." Well, I can see the lights
projected onto a screen to form a film's great
battle scene as a real battle scene outside the
Great Walls of Peking and know it is merely the
effect of light beams and celluloid. What we seem to
have(I) "here is an element of pseudo-contradicton. "
(11) "What is gained is what is not gained." In
a religious context we can reasonably expect "
gained" to mean "stored up physically with other
things in one's treasure chest" or "added physical
and legally to one's property" in the word gain's
more worldly use, and to mean "attained by the mind,
spirit, soul, or new and highter form of
consciousness" in an unwordly use. Where is the
paradox? Or again, with Cheng's (12) "Attach to
this, detach from this", we expect in a religious
context that a man might be asked to protect a
temple's treasures earnestly, yet not to become
possessive about or arrogant about the treasures
that he guards. He must attach to the temple's
treasures yet detach from them. The diagnosis is
(III).
Cheng gives more fascinating examples, but I su-
spect that he and the reader can handle these on
similar lines to show that the philosophically
disciplined and imaginative mind need not find them
strongly paradoxical in a sense that Cheng has yet
made clear enough. This is not, of course, to
conclude that such questions and sayings are not
paradoxical in some ways.

P.290

Still less is it to say that they cannot be mind-
enlarging for persons still too prone to see
ordinary language as a mere tool for mainpulating
their fellows and their environment, or as the only
means for properly expressing and conveying facts
relevant to their aspirations. One might put it like
this: to pupils who know a lot about Taoism and
Buddhism and philosophical reasoning, but do not yet
know how to use such knowledge wisely and well,
Cheng's examples of type I will seem paradoxical,
but they are not paradoxical in any presently clear
sense.

Question II : ANALYSIS OF TYPE II PARADOXES

How useful is the following body of comment on
Cheng's paradoxes of Type II?
Type II paradoxes, says Cheng, are ones with
"paradoxicality in the dialogic relation where either
the question or the answer is paradoxical." (88).
"(1) Consider Type I,example (1) 'Show me your
original face before hou were born' as an answer
to the question "What is the principle of
Buddhism?'" (88). I have already suggested that for
several reasons the "Show me, etc." response seems
to have quite unparadoxical uses in a number of
contexts. Nor need the initial question, it seems
clear, be necessarly paradoxical in use. But the
combination can in many cases, probably not all, be
understood as what some linguists might be induced
to call deviantly paired.(Compare Cheng's predicates
(D) and (E) on page 85, previously cited.) A request
is made to an expert on Z, who is purported to be
willing to import discussive informative about Z.
Here the most conventional dialogic pairing  to
use Cheng's term is going to be Illocutionary-Art-
of-Questioning-about-the-nature-of-Z.(from-questioner)
FOLLOWED BY Indicative sentence-used-to-state-directly-
something-relevant-and-indeed-crucial-about-Z-(from-
respondent.) Instead the teacher replies with an
Illocutionary Art of Command, involving no direct or
obviously direct reference to the subject matter of
the question. In fact, the imperative sentence used
will seem bizarre in its own right, (as well as
bizarre qua response), to someone who cannot make
good use of his philosophical training. But when
used as an enlightening reminder, (trading on the
shock value of breaking conventional  or, some
would simply say, expected  patterns of dialogic
exchange).

P.291

that a person is not just a spatio-temporal chunk of
meat, nor just a---, nor just a...., the response
may be an invaluable means of getting someone to
understand one or more of the central truths and
goals of Buddhism. The pupil may have diligently
studied and memorized a great many Buddhist
writings. Nevertheless, the teacher's strange answer
in the context may induce in the student for the
first time the state of mind which the writings were
mainly intended to help all mankind to attain. This
sort of explanation of a 'Type II Paradox' is
sympathetic, but it seems to fall short of Cheng's
claims in at least two ways (i) It does not produce
a very striking contrast between the religious
discourse of Zen Buddhist and that of other
religious groups. Take, for example, those in the
Judaeo-Christian tradition. (ii) It may seem to lack
the very complex ontological significance that Cheng
insists upon. Let us now confine ourselves to (i):
the Judaeo-Christian radition abounds with examples
of questions posed by those with less understanding
that are parried with strange answers from the
enlightened: parables whose point is not immediately
obvious, a Jewish prophet like Amos telling the
Lawabiding that they betray the Law. Jesus' request
for a Roman coin when the Pharisees ask him about
conflicts between religious and political laws, etc.
(2) "Consider the following answers to questions
(like "Don't call it a pitcher, but tell me what it
is?"): It cannot be called sandals'. Or the answerer
does not speak but instead kicks down the pitcher."
(88). Answering "It cannot be called sandals", can
be a way of saying partly what X is by saying that
it is not Y. (Compare the Western concept of Via
Negativa). Such a way is not necessarily paradoxical
in response to one who forbids that a pitcher be
called a pitcher but demands to know what the pitcher
is. By contrast, Cheng's alternative, the response
of kicking down the pitcher, which is not a
linguistic response, is far more interesting. The
response can signify the respondent's admiration for
Chuang-Tzu's celebrated attacks on conventional
values and labels and linguistic patterns. The
response can thus be a Zenlike protest against the
tyranny of conventional distinctions and criteria, a
tyranny which results from treating language like a
perfect map and mirror of all reality, rather than a
tool like a net for dealing with some facets of
human life and its environment. (See Cheng's remarks
on page 82). Yet this useful response is not so
different from Jesus' act of remaining silent when
Pontios Pilnteasus " What is Truth? ": Jesus
indicates

P.292

by silence that the important truths of religion
cannot be expressed in the pat phrases of Roman Law,
or Romanized Hellenism, or Athenian Academies. It is
better expressed in many cases simply by personal
example, or by preaching in parables not just at any
timeas with the Romans' impersonal decress-but at
the right, personally relevant, opportune time, [To
Kairon], for the individuals who really seek truth
instead of posing detached questions. Compare Jesus'
clam silence before Pilate with his cries and
violent upturning of money-changers' tales in the
Temple. Hence in the case of Cheng's (2) it seems
that something of ontological importance may well be
signified, but not in a way that makes Zen methods
of religious teaching quite unique, as he appears to
suggest on page 78.

Question III :ZEN PARADOXES OF TYPES III AND IV.

How useful is the following body of comment?
Paradoxes of Type III are said to exhibit "para-
doxicality in the dialogic relation, but where the
question and the answer itself do not contain
paradoxicality." (p.89) Cheng's cases(1), (2), (3)
and (5) seem to from one quite distinct class. A
question is asked about a particular topic. Then a
deviantly paired 'response' is offered which is a
statement or an exclamation concerning an entirely
different topic. Thus we get Cheng's (1): " 'What is
the fundamental principle of Buddhism?' 'How tall
these bamboos are !' " The instructive Shock Value
of such pairings would seem to be extremely
vulnerable to the Law of Diminishing Returns. For
once the student ceases to expect as a matter of Zen
convention that a Zen master will respect the
convention that questions should be followed by
obviously relevant answers in response, the effect
of such answers will be largely the fulfilment of a
new conventional pattern. (If everyone in a
community cries "Wolf" when he feels lonely, it
becomes a convention in the end, but a
self-defeating convention.) Cheng's examples (4) and
(6) deserve to be separated from the rest.
" (4) ' What is a drop of water from Chao Brook
? ' ' It is a drop of water from Chao Brook.'
(6) ' What is ordinary mind ?' 'The foxes and
grasses are ordinary mind.' " (p.89)
In (4) a request for new information about some
x such that x is P is met, contrary to most of the
relevant normal conventions, by the contex-

p.293

tually uninformative response that such an x is P.
Such a pairing can be unconventional in context. But
it is often a conventional pairing by now when the
ordinary respondent offers such a reply as an
elegant mode of signalling that he refuses to
discuss the subject (any more), or that he has no
wish to converse about anything with the questioner,
or that the questioner is moving too fast on a
tricky subject and should slow down, or that the
questioner is talking too much when he should be
approaching the subject differently. If the Zen
Master wishes to utilize any of these normal
conventions, then there is nothing paradoxical about
the pairing to explain. Otherwie (4) is a different
sort of paradoxical pairing from (1), (2), (3) and
(5): it does say something about the subject of the
question but it adds nothing because it offers no
new information. As for (6) the expression "ordinary
mind" is to unclear perhaps a better translation is
needed-that the only natural answer in most contexts
would seem to " i don't know what you mean by
ordinary mind." Quite possibly some enlighteningly
Rylean sort of Category Joke is offered by the
respondent in the original language? The Anglo-Saxon
reader cannot tell until the meaning of the question
is elucidated.
Type IV paradoxes are said to exhibit paradoxi-
cality in the contrast of the plain discourse and
the background intention of the questioner (89). In
all three of Cheng's cases the questioner plays at
being interested in a subject and gets the
respondent to respond in deadly earnest. The teacher
then reveals that his interest lies not in the
subject mentioned, but in giving the respondent a
somewhat humorous and also somewhat violent push in
the direction of Englishtenment. Here again the
Shock Value diminishes as the student comes to
recognise not the violation of a convention but the
repitition of a now familiar pattern with a now
familiar purpose: a new (Zen) convention is being
followed. The Shock Value must soon derive not from
the 'paradoxical' following of a once novel-looking
convention, but from the ingenuity and originality
the teacher uses in following a now recognisable
convention. Even what is highly conventional in many
respects can be shatteringly unexpected for a
particular person in a particular dialogic exchange.

P.294

I find a need to try evoking still further res-
ponses from Professor Cheng about his important, but
difficult paper. I shall attempt this by suggesting
some topics that seem to merit further clarification
from Cheng's point of view.
Topic I : Illocutionary and Perlocutionary Acts.
Cheng shows strong interest in J.L.Austin's
philosophy of language on pages 81 and 100-101 of
his paper. It would be useful to know to what extent
he would approve of the following account of part of
what goes on in many dialogic exchanges between Zen
teachers and new pupils. When the new pupil arrives,
despite his familiarity with much Buddhist and
Taoist scriptures, he is largely unfamiliar with the
conventional patterns of Zen masters' conversations
and behaviour. For this reason the teacher can play
at performing various illocutionary acts of the new
pupil's own society. Illocutionary acts which are
grounded in conventions that the new pupil has
faithfully followed since childhood. Because the new
pupil does not realize that the teacher is really
playing at performing such illocutionary acts, the
teacher can 'perform' them and violate the
conventions in various ways in order to complete
what are non-conventional perlocutionary acts. (In
telling his listeners that he has uncontrolled
leprosy, a speaker performs an illocutionary act of
informing them of his condition. By using the
sentence he can complete the PERlocutionary acts of
warning them to be cautions and of verbally
upsetting them) . Thus it should be highly
undesirable for Zen Buddhists and their admirers to
let too many readers know about Zen masters' modus
operand should the prospective pupil no longer
expect the teacher to respect certain illocutionary
conventions, the perlocuionary effect of shaking
pupils up will become less easily attainable. The
class of illocutionary acts will tend to swallow
more and more of the class of perlocutionary deeds,
forcing the Zen teacher to abandon many traditional
techniquesor to seek his religious Shock Effect by
his orignality and ingenuity in making a known
convention of Zen continue to surprise even those
who know of the Zen convention.
Topic II:Assertions and Aberrations. John Searle,
a famous, but not slavish commentator on Austin, has
urged that we distinguish a seeming sentence which
really makes no semantic sort of sense from a
meaningful, intelligible sentence whose position in
a dialogue is aberrant. (Thus the

P.295

Wittgensteinian is right to say that " I know that I
can talk and see trees" is hard to pair, but wrong
to call it philosophers' NONSENSE.) This distinction
is largely observed by Cheng, (who might usefully
have touched a little on Searle in his exposition),
when he divides his 'paradoxes' into four types. The
Shock Value of a Zen response often depends upon its
being an aberrant utterance in relation to a certain
dialogue between certain speakers. But a sentence
normally appears aberrant to a speaker insofar as
its location strikes him as violating familiar
conventions rather than exemplifying them. So here
again there is something almost paradoxical about
a teacher or admirer of Zen's deliberate attempt to
tell the unconverted in advance about such a crucial
modus operandi. Sometimes, we learn from Cheng and
others, we find uses of odd gestures, like slapping
faces, kicking buckets, or tweaking the hearer's
nose painfully, to obtain the same results as are
sought in perlocutionary uses of ordinary discourse
by Zen masters. Once more the unexpectedness of such
gestures, their relatively aberrant character as one
might say, is crucial.
Topic III : Reducing Ontic Commitment by Des-
troying the Student's Metaphysical Allegiance to
Various Linguistic Forms. I find Cheng's
cross-cultural remarks about Ontic Commitment on
pages 90-95 profoundly suggestive, but exceptionally
hard to be sure of mastering. He resorts to W.V.
Quine's vexing contrast between objectual and
substitutional quantification. It might help to
simplify part of what he says if Chen would evaluate
the possible interest for Zen teachers of two rather
different methods for reducing ontic commitment by
shaking up a student's metaphysical attachments to
certain linguistic forms.
(1) Straightforward Replacemnt in Paraphrases.
For those who combine awe for ' Surface Structure'
with a belief that meaningful Noun Phrases must
denote some distinct obbject, one can sometimes
provide the needed jolt by appealing to
straightforward replacement in paraphrases.
Consider, for example, the following possible
answers to uses of the question: "Why did the Zen
Master who briefly turned policeman keep pelting the
noters with won-ton balls, marshmallows and cocktail
olives?"
A-I "Pacification (1) was the only purpose (2)."
A-II "It (1) was done for the sake (2) of peace
(3)."
A-III "The object (1) of all his (2) activity
(3) was their (4) ceasing (5) quickly to fight
(6)."

P.296

A-IV "In order to tranquillize those (1)involv-
ed, he (2) humorously followed this procedure
(3)".
A-V "Fighting (1) could only be stopped thus".

In answers I to V. we point out to the victim of
referential pertinacity, all amount to the same
answer, with no serious different in detail, given
the context of the question. Yet they seem to
suggest in their different ways, that a suitable
answer need commit us to at most one, at most three,
and at very least six different entities' existence.
Getting students to try such paraphrases for many
such sentences which occur to them may break the
spell of language, and especially of so-called
Surface Structure.
(2) The Distinction between Phenomenal Truth-
Checking Conditions and Transcendental Truth-
Conditions. The student trapped more stickily in the
web of ordinary language or of alleged ideal
languages may retort like this: "Perhaps
'Pacification was the only purpose' can be analysed
out in terms of many possible alternative entities
or pseudo-entities. But cases like 'Brutus stabbed
Caesar' and 'At least one Dowager Empress reigned
over China for thirty years' cannot be analysed out
in such a way that no clear ontic commitment is made
by a speaker who asserts their truth. Anyone who
asserts that Brutus stabbed Caesar is committed to
the existence of at least two distinct entities,
Brutus and Caesar. In the second case, he who makes
the assertion, and says it is literally true,
performs objectual quantification over at least one
female, human ruler and at least one spatio-temporal
chunk, China, and at least one class of
spatio-temporal chunks-the ordered pair: < Female
ruler (at ti-tn), Chinese subjects (at ti- tn)>".
The Zen teacher may now consider falling back on
the following tactic which I have advocated
elsewhere. One distinguishes between, first, the
Phenomenal Truth-Checking Conditions (PT-CCs) for
the ontological Plura-list's assertion of the
English sentence "Brutus stabbed Caesar", (or of a
synonymous Chinese sentence) and, second, the
Transcendental Truth Conditions (TTCs) that rival
metaphysicians hold to be satisfied by the PT-CCs.
The Pluralist-Platonist holds that the PT-CCs
warrant the inference that at least one Universal
outside of Space and Time, (STABBING), must be
included in ones ontology. The Pluralist-Nominalist
recognises no such inferences or abstract objects,
though he is no less familiar with the PT-CCs. All
ontological Pluralists insist that the PT-CCs
establish the existence of at

P.297

least two distinct entities. But the ontological
Monist replies that, according to his TTCs, the
PT-CCs merely allow this interence:

" Whereto THE ONE once Brutussed and Caesared
closely,
Thereto The ONE once stabbed and was-stabbed"

Hector Castaneda has recently produced a formal
language that is Pluralist yet devoid of Russellian
Relations. I suggest that by multiplying examples of
the profoundly differing ontological inferences
which coherent and articulate metaphysicians somehow
manage to derive confidently from the same set of
Phenomenal Truth-Checking Conditions, the teacher of
Zen can hope to make his pupil think twice about the
dogma that the ontological structure of Facts is
GIVEN in experience and WRITTEN STILL LARGER in the
sentences that everyone (or 'the expert' on logic)
uses to state such Facts.
Talk of using both (1) the Straightforward Para-
phrase Technique and (2) and PT-CC/TTC distinction
is talk that some teachers of Zen might find more
clear and more clearly to the point than arguments
about the controversial notions of substitutional
and objectual quantification in Quine's and his
rivals' writings. But I am far from sure of this.
FINAL TOPIC : Clarification of ways in which the
Zen teachings do and do not involve anything like
Ontological Commitment. On page 83, Cheng writes of
"Stage 3: The post-Enlightenmant stage where one is
able to freely use language for various purposes of
instruction and verification of certain relevant
experiences towards Enlightenment and where such use
of language becomes an integral part of the goal
achievement." In this stage one has "experience of
the ultimate truth." But surely something discursive
can be said with some point for the sympathetic but
unenlightened philosopher. Does the Zen teacher seek
ontic noncommitment about what is ultimate, because
the notion of a unified process is better than the
typical Western philosopher's preoccupation with
substances or individuals? Because both the
Pluralist's and the Monist's ways of looking at the
wrold are captured by the insights of enlightenment?
(Or rather, because neither model is at all
helpful?) Because talk of " nothingness" helps us to
understand that the world is not a thing or set of
things (substances, individuals) ? Because the
ultimate is causative like a Unit Set or Universal
Set, yet as unlike familiar

P.298

things as is the Empty Set?
I have not been ironic, nor sarcastically schem-
ing and schematizing, when I have proposed these
varied questions and topics for a series of comments
by Professor Cheng. Because of difficulties in
translation, or owing to great gulfs between what
Wittgenstein called Forms of Life, the points that I
have tried to raise may all prove to make me look
foolish. For maybe they are all wildly far off the
mark. But if the Western philosopher could even
grasp why such intended points and questions about
Zen must be wide of the mark, he might also gain a
philosophically deeper understanding of Zen thanks
to a specially humbling form of Negative Way. Thus I
respectfully submit this assortment of inquiries and
perplexities to Cheng. I hope that they may enable
him to make still clearer what Zen discourse is and
what it is not.