[Buddha-l] Re: Where does authority for "true" Buddhism come from?

[Richard Nance]

On 1/30/06, Benito Carral <bcarral at kungzhi.org> wrote:

> BTW,   according   to  the  teachings,
> consciousness  are  not bearers of anything, but a name
> given to a set of impermanent properties.

According to which teachings, Beni?

In the Abhidharmako'sa, Vasubandhu classifies consciousnesses among
seventy-five categories of dharma-s, and offers an etymological
analysis of the term "dharma" that tracing the term to the root
"dh.r": "to bear" (svalak.sa.nadhaaranaad dharma.h). What, in his
view, do dharmas bear? They bear defining properties -- svalak.sa.na-s
-- that enable us to categorize them as tokens of discrete types.

Of course, Vasubandhu may be wrong about this. He may have completely
misunderstood "the teachings" that you have in mind. But it's for
precisely this reason that a phrase like "the teachings" is way too
vague. Perhaps you mean "the Buddhist teachings before Buddhist
abhidharma hijacked history"?

Best wishes,

R. Nance
Ann Arbor, MI