To try and sum up--it appears that in tantra, words can have multiple meanings simultaneously, depending on the level of meaning.
This is very difficult for those of us who had our formation in Western cultures.
In the Greek Scriptures, Jesus states, "Let your 'yes' be 'yes', let your 'no' be 'no'. Anything else is from the Evil One."
Unlike India or the Himalayas, the defining texts (Hebrew Scriptures, Greek Scriptuers)put an emphasis on truth and on honoring oaths that maintain community consensus. God is depicted as taking direct interest in human affairs and in lawfulness. And in boundaries. (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's spouse, thou shalt not move thy neighbor's boundary marker)
God promises by covenant to be faithful and just. The Gods of India did not promise to be just or faithful to human beings. The creation of the universe is described in Hindu stories (and tantra derived from practice in the old Hindu territories)..the creation of the universe in the Hindu stories is described as leela, play.
This is different from the Genesis story in which Gods act of creating is described as work, as an expression not of play but of purposeful adult creativity a creativity which God finds to be 'Tov' -- 'Good'. God is the First Builder and Worker.
The first human, Adam, before the fall, participates by assigning names to what God, the Worker, has built or propagated.
Though we may not go to church, shul, or Masjid, this is the Story behind Judeo Christian society.
To move from this into the world of tantra in which yes may mean more-than-what-is -conventionally-understood-to-be-meant-by-the-word-yes--that requires a giant shift in perspective. And can lead to confusion or worse.
First, even if we are not university trained, in the West, much of our reasoning is still based on classical Aristotelian logic. In this form of logic the one we are familiar with, an argument is true or false.
But, Agehananda Bharati, in his landmark book,
The Tantric Tradition, and a tantric practitioner/initiate and scholar in his own right, suggested as far back as the 1960s that new techniques were needed for Westerners to properly understand tantra. Among these tools suggested by Bharati was multivalued logic. He had found that the either/or true/false binary system of classical, Aristotelian logic was not enough to assist Westerners in understanding the multiple levels of meaning that occur simultaneously in tantric language and ritual.
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In the early 1960s, in the first chapter of his book
The Tantric Tradition, Agehananda Bharati wrote:
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"Scholars who wrote and write on Indian 'philosophy' -Schterbatsky, Raju, Gasenapp, Edgerton, Radhakrishnan, to mention but a few, did not seriously attempt to read modern philosophy and use its accurate terminology.
(Corboy: And if one is to translate texts from the original language or teach with any accuracy, one has to create an accurate terminology)
" All (of the above named) somehow assume that western philosophy had reached its climax with Kant, Hegel, or Bradley, and hence they do not (keep in mind Bharati was writing 50 years ago) did not feel a need to improve on their archaic terminology.
"I think the are mistaken. Terminologies previous to that of the analytical schools of twentieth century philosophy are deficient...modern philosophy uses all the tools of the classical philosophical tradition, plus the considerably sharper and more sophisticated tools of multi-value logic, logical empiricism, and linguistic analysis.
(pp 12-13 The Tantric Tradition, Agehananda Bharati, Rider & CO, London, 1965)
Here is Wikipedia on multi-valued logic
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webcache.googleusercontent.com]
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In logic, a many-valued logic (also multi- or multiple-valued logic) is a propositional calculus in which there are more than two truth values
(Its beyond "let your yes be yes, let your no be no" -- Corboy)
"Traditionally, in Aristotle's logical calculus, there were only two possible values (i.e., "true" and "false") for any proposition.
"An obvious extension to classical two-valued logic is an n-valued logic for n greater than 2.
"Those most popular in the literature are three-valued (e.g., ¨©ukasiewicz's and Kleene's, which accept the values "true", "false", and "unknown"), the finite-valued with more than three values.
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History"The first known classical logician who didn't fully accept the law of excluded middle was Aristotle (who, ironically, is also generally considered to be the first classical logician and the "
father of logic"[1]). Aristotle admitted that his laws did not all apply to future events (De Interpretatione, ch. IX), but he didn't create a system of multi-valued logic to explain this isolated remark.
"Until the coming of the 20th century, later logicians followed Aristotelian logic, which includes or assumes the law of the excluded middle.
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(Law of Excluded Middle)http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:R5vtJ2xymmAJ:[
en.wikipedia.org]
In logic, the law of excluded middle (or the principle of excluded middle) is the third of the three classic laws of thought. It states that for any proposition, either that proposition is true, or its negation is true.
The law is also known as the law (or principle) of the excluded third (or of the excluded middle), or, in Latin,
principium tertii exclusi. Yet another Latin designation for this law is
tertium non datur: "no third (possibility) is given".
(Corboy note: On page
The earliest known formulation is Aristotle's principle of non-contradiction, first proposed in On Interpretation,[1] where he says that of two contradictory propositions (i.e. where one proposition is the negation of the other) one must be true, and the other false.[2] He also states it as a principle in the Metaphysics book 3, saying that it is necessary in every case to affirm or deny,[3] and that it is impossible that there should be anything between the two parts of a contradiction.[4]
"The 20th century brought back the idea of multi-valued logic. The Polish logician and philosopher, Jan ¨©ukasiewicz, began to create systems of many-valued logic in 1920, using a third value, "possible", to deal with Aristotle's paradox of the sea battle. Meanwhile, the American mathematician, Emil L. Post (1921), also introduced the formulation of additional truth degrees with n ¡Ã 2, where n are the truth values. Later, Jan ¨©ukasiewicz and Alfred Tarski together formulated a logic on n truth values where n ¡Ã 2. In 1932 Hans Reichenbach formulated a logic of many truth values where n¡æinfinity.
"
(Corboy note: to make this a little less intimidating, lets compare the verdicts possible in American law, English law and old Scottish law. In English and American law, the only possible verdict was Guilty or Not Guilty. (A hung jury was not a verdict; it merely was a jury that could not arrive at a verdict)
Jurors in the first two systems had an either or binary choice--guilty or not guilty
In old Scots law there were three possible verdicts--guilty, not guilty and not proven.
Or as one joker put it, Not Proven or
'Guilty, but dont do it again'.)
In tantric understanding, there are many more levels of meaning than either or.
And in tantra, there is an understanding among the initiated in-group that it is permissible to speak in code so as to conceal the practices from the uninitiated.
What to an unitiated person seems concealment or a lie, is boundary keeping and integral to tantric practice, so far as the initiate is concerned.
This means that persons who grew up in families or societies permeated by ego driven lying and secrecy are well advised to avoid tantra and those whose tradition does include tantra. It would risk a disastrous re-enactment of the primary family dynamics.
In tantra, an initate or a master would, in many cases, probably feel it appropriate to say "
No I do not practice or teach tantra" when asked, flat out, "Do you practice tantra or teach tantra?" by someone who is 1) not initatiated 2) demonstrates fear (such as a person who wants to avoid exposure to anyone involved with tantra, having heard bad stories about situations gone wrong) or by someone taking a stance deemed disrespectful or intrusive by the tantric initiate/being who is being questioned.
This is on the principle that a teacher must adapt a teaching to each students level of understanding.
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In qualification, the Nyingmapa (the oldest lineage of Vajrayana--the others share this perspective)do not equate a value judgment with the yana (practice), one is not better than another, the yana most appropriate for a practitioner is determined by their karma, propensity and proclivity. The majority of practitioners stay within one yana for the duration of their lifetime.
Tibetan Buddhist doctrines unite a seemingly diverse group of practices to offer a variety of ways to truth (Sanskrit: satya; refer Two Truths) and enlightenment (Sanskrit: bodhi) in accordance with the different qualities and capacities of sentient beings.
These practices involve the use of tantra and yoga. Yoga used as a way to enhance concentration