[Buddha-l] Pudgalavada #2

[Stephen Hodge]

Dan Lusthaus wrote:
> Thanks for that translation. Stylistically much smoother than my effort.
Thank you for the compliment !  When shall I send another consignment of 
books :)

> To move that thinking along, it's pairing with prajnapti -- which implies 
> a
> linguistic construction -- is interesting. Something non-articulated
> alongside something with only linguistic reality, but otherwise unreal.
With all this "ineffable" stuff, I had expected "anabhilaapya" so I was 
surprised to see that the underlying and well-attested form is 
"avaktavya" -- and sometimes "avaacya", which is more understandable. 
Taking a hint from the Tibetan, I find it useful at times to translate 
"praj~napti" informally as "a label".   To me the position stated throughout 
these passages seems to be that we use labels to conventionally designate a 
pudgala or personal identity which is something we shouldn't really talk 
about anyway.  If this is what the Sammitiyas were actually saying, then the 
views conventionally attributed to them are a total distortion of their 
actual position.

> The pudgala is, on the one hand, merely a linguistic construction.
Yes, a convenient label for a bundle of processes or entities.

> On the other hand, it involves something in everyone's experience about 
> which we
> can say nothing definitively coherent. It is unreal (merely nominal), but
> experientially, and even soterically effective.
Yes, that is exactly what I understand these passages to be saying.


>The term "fiction" comes to
> mind. As the passage makes clear, it is attempting to forge a middle way,
> between extremes of eternalism and annihilationalism, existence and
> nonexistence, and yet affirming that, nevertheless, these ways of talking
> about things are requisites for the Buddhist paths.
Challenges that faced all the major Buddhist schools of thought.  So how 
come the pudgalavaadins became the quasi-Buddhist bogeymen ?!

I am now mulling over T1505 -- very difficult.  The punctuation is often 
wrong and the text is so elliptical !  Still I think I can suggest some 
improvements for you, though I doubt anybody can come up with a "definitive" 
translation.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge