THE TENTH MAN : 36




Abolition of Opposites


All opposites are the voidness of mind which is what we are - cognised as such when apperceived as void of opposition.

'Voidness of mind' is what remains when mind is voided of mind.

We cannot apperceive opposites as not-different without at the same time seeing them as different, why and how they are fundamentally and eternally different as phenomena. Their essential phenomenal separation or division-into-two itself constitutes their inseparability and indivisibility noumenally, just as, or because the separation of phenomena themselves conceptually from noumenon, is the very expression of their ultimate or non-conceptual identity.

All are just the absence of non-conceptuality; that is to say that they are what every concept is, which in fact as a concept is not any 'thing', so, being no 'thing', thereby is not at all.

Opposites themselves are not different from their composites, when conceivable, for the same reason, i.e. because they both are what any thing, which is never in fact a 'thing', and so is no-thing, is not.


Ethical and Affective Opposites

No action can be either 'right' or 'wrong', because there is no such thing as volitional 'action'; and non-volitional action, being inevitable, cannot be qualified at all. Therefore there cannot be any thing that can be qualified as either, and neither has any existence other than as an arbitrary judgement without factual basis.

'Liking' and 'disliking', also, are affective reactions on the part of a pseudo-entity which as such has only a conceptual existence. Being relative expressions of an inference, they have no validity whatever, either as such or in their more developed expressions as 'love' and 'hate'. Their difference, then, is only apparent.

All adjectives are void, because no noun to which they can be attached has any existence except as a concept. Therefore the difference of each from its opposite can only be a phenomenal interpretation.

'Result' and 'method' are one, which means that neither is the cause or effect of the other; 'methods' may follow 'results' in a time-sequence, which is to say that they may appear to result from 'results', and vice-versa, but they are opposing manifestations devoid of difference except as appearance. They offer a ready means of apperceiving that cause/effect also are not separate in origin.

This applies also to 'difference' and 'identity' (as non-difference), which should dispose of the 'opposites' - which are neither different nor identical (as non-different); and also the seeing of this mutual voidness and the non-seeing of it (as not being conscious of not seeing it), for all are simultaneous apperceptions and at the same time spontaneous.


(© HKU Press, 1966)
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