[Buddha-l] Photographs of buddha-l regulars

[Richard Hayes]

On Thursday 02 November 2006 08:17, Kåre A. Lie wrote:

> In our book "Tanke og virkelighet" Svein Myreng and I have translated and
> commented Vasubandhu's Madhyantavibhaga. There we argue that Vasubandhu was
> not an idealist (in the Western philosophical sense of the word), at least
> not as far as can be judged from his Madhyantavibhaga.

Vasubandhu striks me as one of the most diverse thinkers in all of Indian 
Buddhism. Not only was the range of topics about which he wrote wide, but his 
ability to look at all sides of an issue makes it impossible to pin any label 
on him for very long. I think one can easily find some passages in some of 
his works that make him look a lot like an idealist of some sort, but there 
are plenty of passages elsewhere that make that label peel off. 

Another thinker, of much less breadth than Vasubandhu but equally difficult to 
label, is Dignaga, and yet another is Dharmakirti. And of course we also have 
Nagarjuna, that Teflon monster to which no label sticks even for a few 
moments.

When I stop and reflect on just how difficult it is to pin scholastic or 
dogmatic labels onto the people whom I have come to respect as India's 
greatest thinkers, the immediate result is that I become impatient with those 
who allow themselves of false certainty with respect to whether any of these 
folks were or were not idealists.

> Hmmm ... maybe we should have the book translated into English, for the
> benefit of those few of you who are not quite fluent in Norwegian yet ...

An English translation would be most welcome, although your book might provide 
an incentive to some of us to learn Norwegian. My wife comes from Norwegian 
stock in Minnesota (which I understand is a Nowrwegian phrase that 
means "Eskimos don't have enough words for snow"). She and I keep thinking it 
might be fun to try to learn at least enough of the language to gain deeper 
insight into an American comic essayist named Garrison Keillor. Keillor 
claims of Norwegians that whenever they encounter anything they do not 
understand, they put sugar on it and bake it into a pie.

Is Vasubandhu pie a favourite dish in Norway?

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes