[Buddha-l] Re: G-d, the D-vil and other imaginary friends

[Stephen Hodge]

r.g.morrison wrote:

> Perhaps this notion of the icchantika arose among some lazy (or perhaps
> just more realstic) bodhisattvas who thought that 'we just can't save
> everybody, can we?'
Perhaps, but a close look at the use of "icchantika" in the MPNS suggests 
otherwise. The icchantikas are initally identified with the kind of monks 
who re-wrote parts of the Vinaya in order to justify their laxity and 
indolent behaviour -- probably the Mula-sarvastivadins.  Pages and pages of 
the MPNS attack these monks in fascinating detail.   The term is then 
extended to include those who are either overtly hostile to the Dharma or 
else who distort its teachings even though they might call themselves 
"Buddhists" -- among others, especially the Madhyamikas seem to be those 
targetted here.
It should also be remembered that the MPNS is basically a millenarianistic 
text -- at the time it was initially compiled (c200-300 CE), it was thought 
that the authentic Dharma would survive for less than eighty years from that 
time.  As is often the case at times of perceived crisis, issues become 
reduced to a simple black and white contrast.

> To this end the text is continually giving analogies to
> make this point unambiguously clear, for example the analogy milk and
> ghee.
> Milk plus the right conditions eventually gives rise to ghee.  But if you
> think that ghee in some manner actually exists in the milk, then you are a
> literal minded twit.

The problem here is that the Dharmaksema version is multilayered and
somewhat contradictory.  As I have mentioned elsewhere, the authors of the
extended parts of Dharmaksema have clearly set out to subvert the meaning of
the older Indic portion of the text.  Your statement above is contradicted
by a passage in the Indic version which, dealing with the same simile,
states, "Ghee arising from the cow does not arise from something else and
does indeed exist in all cases (= milk, curds, butter etc) inherently,
nevertheless it is not apparent because it is obscured by defects and
subsists mixed mutually with [the milk and so forth]".  The same idea is
repeated elsewhere.   Such alterations in later portions of the Dharmaksema
version indicate that the authors had an agenda to undermine or subvert the
doctrinal position of the Indic version.  Whether that position is correct
is another matter, but the interpretation in the Indic version seems to echo
the standard Indian adage that a result must inhere as a potentiality (at
least) in a cause.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge