[Buddha-l] Withdrawal of the senses

[Richard Hayes]

On Thursday 16 November 2006 14:21, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> Curt, I have no interest in either debunking or affirming
> neoplatonic-gnostic perennial philosophy per se. It is the superimposition
> of neoplatonic-gnostic perennial philosophy onto INDIAN thought that needs
> debunking.

I agree, although I would want to refine this a bit and say that there are 
plenty of Indian philosophers who are in no sense perennialists, but I 
wouldn't go so far as to say that there are no Indians at all whose projects 
bear important resemblances to neo-Platonic thought. I would even say that 
the are some thinkers who can be interpreted as being quite similar to 
perrenialists. In other words, one can arrive at legitimate perennialist 
interpretations of some Indian thinkers. Nagarjuna, for example, lends 
himself to being interpreted that way (and to every other way one can 
imagine --- since he was not saying anything important, he can easily be seen 
as saying everything that anyone thinks is important).

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