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What Is Buddhist Logic?
An Introduction for the General Reader
Preface: Why Study Buddhist Logic?
To a modern reader, many Mahāyāna sūtras sound puzzling, even paradoxical. The Diamond Sutra declares: “A Bodhisattva is not a Bodhisattva; therefore he is called a Bodhisattva.” The Heart Sutra proclaims: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” At first, such words resemble riddles or contradictions. But they are not word games. They point instead to the limits of ordinary logic in grasping reality.
This is where Buddhist logic comes in. Rather than treating reality as built upon fixed categories and permanent identities, it teaches us to see the world as a web of interdependent, ever-changing conditions. It questions whether the laws we take for granted — “A is A,” “a thing cannot both be and not be” — truly hold at the deepest level.
Studying Buddhist logic is more than an intellectual exercise. It transforms how we read scripture, how we think about ourselves, and how we live. Once we see why the Buddha and later teachers challenged notions of identity, existence, and non-existence, the Mahāyāna sūtras open before us with a new clarity — a clarity rooted not in rigid categories, but in freedom from them.
