Within the Sanlun tradition, logic and reasoning occupy a paradoxical yet indispensable place. They are treated as precise instruments, but never as ultimate authorities. Sanlun thinkers deploy rigorous argumentation—especially forms of reductio—to expose the incoherence of any claim to inherent existence, whether of self, phenomena, or abstract principles. Rather than constructing a positive metaphysical system, they use analysis to reveal the limitations and internal tensions of all such systems. This method is often described as “refuting without establishing,” indicating a deliberate refusal to replace one dogmatic stance with another.

Logic thus functions as a kind of spiritual therapy. By systematically dismantling fixed views and conceptual attachments, it loosens the grip of intellectual clinging and conceptual proliferation. When reasoning shows that every position—existence, non-existence, both, neither—collapses under scrutiny, the practitioner is gently but firmly guided away from reliance on any fixed standpoint. In this way, logical analysis clears a space for direct insight into emptiness, an insight that is not itself reducible to conceptual thought or linguistic formulation.

At the same time, Sanlun thought is sharply critical of any tendency to reify rationality itself. Logic and reason are understood to be empty in the very sense they reveal emptiness elsewhere; they are skillful means, not foundations of ultimate truth. Even the most refined formulations, including statements about emptiness, are to be relinquished once their provisional function is fulfilled. The classic image is that of using a thorn to remove another thorn: reasoning is employed to uproot attachment to views, and then both the attachment and the tool used to remove it are set aside. In this way, the Sanlun school honors logical rigor while turning it back upon itself, allowing reasoning to perform its work and then gracefully step aside so that wisdom may stand unobstructed.