About the meaning of the silence of the Buddha

Abstract

The main purpose of the paper is to try to understand the Buddha’s silence as a proper answer to the ten unanswered question set. When regarded as di††hi, the undeclared questions are meant to be considered as a set of conceptually distorted propositions. The paper is divided into five sections. The first two sections deals with the Buddha’s own explanation of his silence. Its scope is mainly expository and aims to place the discussion in context. The third part is devoted to explain the mental mechanisms involved in generating conceptually distorted mental patterns. A detailed analysis of the cognitive mechanisms related to papañca has been given in order to clarify the meaning of both mental defilements and the notion of inflowing in the fourth section. Finally, the explanation of the Buddha’s silence is presented as an answer consistent with set of publicly avowed principles he professed.