The tetralemma (catuṣkoṭi) is an ancient logical form, most famously developed in Madhyamaka Buddhism (Nāgārjuna), but it also appears in early Greek skepticism and some pre-Socratic thought. It is a way of structuring inquiry where the usual binaries are not just questioned but dissolved from within.

At its simplest, the tetralemma lays out four possible positions about a proposition P:

1. P

2. Not-P

3. Both P and Not-P

4. Neither P nor Not-P

But this isn’t a quirky logical game. It’s a deliberate pressure test applied to the structure of assertion itself.

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What the Tetralemma Does

1. It exposes the limits of binary logic.

In classical logic, we assume that “P or not-P” covers everything. The tetralemma breaks this open: it shows how the real, the lived, the experiential can exceed the conceptual grid we try to fit it into.

2. It interrupts metaphysical reification.

Nāgārjuna uses it as a dismantling tool. When someone asserts:

“X exists,”

he runs through the four corners of the tetralemma to reveal that none of these claims can be coherently affirmed as metaphysics. The point is to block the mind’s slide into giving ontological solidity to things that are dependently arisen.

3. It is not relativism, and it is not nihilism.

People often misunderstand it as an “anything goes” logic. But it’s more like a disciplined refusal to allow the mind to freeze dynamic processes into fixed substances. It is closer to:

a way of preventing thought from lying to itself.

Your own process-relational orientation fits naturally here: the tetralemma is almost a pre-figuring of a process metaphysics that refuses to grant the One or the Many ontological priority. Nothing has a single determinate essence; everything is relationally configured.

4. It creates a space of ‘non-grasping’ inquiry.

Each of the four options becomes untenable when pressed. The practitioner is left not with confusion but with releasement—with a kind of luminous suspension where the thing itself is no longer forced into a single cognitive posture.

This is why Zen kōans often resonate with tetralemma-style structures: they require the mind to exhaust its categories, not to transcend them dialectically but to stop pretending that conceptual closure is possible.

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How It Works in Practice

Take the question: “Does the self exist?”

Classical logic: yes or no.

Tetralemma:

1. The self exists → leads to reification.

2. The self does not exist → leads to nihilism.

3. The self both exists and does not exist → collapses into contradiction if treated as a single metaphysical statement.

4. The self neither exists nor does not exist → dissolves the presupposition that “existence” is the right category.

And what is left? Not an answer, but the exposure of the conceptual frame as inadequate.

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In short

The tetralemma:

• is a fourfold logical structure,

• used to disclose the inadequacy of fixed categories,

• aimed at preventing ontological capture,

• and functioning more as a method of deconstruction than a positive doctrine.