[Buddha-l] Pudgalavada

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard's replies are interesting, and I haven't been ignoring them. Rather,
his persistent harping on Siderits and Duerlinger has driven me back to
rummage through files to give especially the latter another look (it's been
years since I read his articles). Since D has pieces dealing with
Candrakirti's treatment of self in ch. 6 of Madhyamakaavatara (as well as a
series of articles on Vasubandhu's Kosa refutation of the Pudgalavadins),
that led me back to Candrakirti's sixth ch.

A full response to all of Richard's observations and complaints would
require more than email space or etiquette permits, so let me try to respond
briefly to at least some of it.

First, in looking through files (and seeking out some new ones), I came
across one I hadn't read before. Siderits apparently reviewed Paul Williams'
book _Altruism and Reality_, and in PEW 50, 3, 2000, 424-453, Williams
responded. Much of it turns on WIlliams challenging Siderits treatment of
the notion of self in "Santideva. Williams seems to have had the same
reaction to Siderits as I did -- that his notion of self is smuggling
Pudgalavadin views into "santideva, and that he is not reading "Santideva
right because of this. It's a lengthy piece so I won't summarize it further,
but it confirms that my reactions are not those of a lone madman. Williams
must be equally mad (or, Siderits *is* doing something funky with his "self"
theories).

Duerlinger's reading of Candrakirti and Vasubandhu never questions whether
either of them are accurately portraying their opponents -- he takes it at
face value and just goes on from there. (PEW, 34, 3, 1984, 261-272) So I
checked the translations of the Madhyamakavatara by Huntington and the one
by the Padmakara Translation Group, and reaffirmed my previous impression of
this work. While I am the #1 fan of his Prasannapadaa -- and consider it one
of the most brilliant and important Buddhist texts ever -- the
Madhyamakavatara is amateurish and substandard, probably a work of his
immature youth (or senile old age -- it's hard to say; he cross-references
both texts in each, so we don't know which he wrote first). The only action,
of course, is in the sixth ch., the one of prajnaparamita (the 10 chapters
are each devoted to one of the ten paramitas). The verses he apparently
identifies in his bha.sya -- but not the main text itself -- as refuting
Sammitiya views, does nothing of the sort. The view he attacks is one which
holds that the self is identical to one or more of the skandhas. What we
know of the Pudgalavadins -- even Priestley makes this abundantly clear -- 
is that their position was the pudgala is neither the same as, nor different
from the skandhas. In fact, that position is precisely the one Candrakirti
himself adopts. We have several of the verses involved in this part of his
text preserved in Sanskrit, and none of them mention a pudgala. They all
attack aatman.

Similarly, his supposed refutation of Yogacara in this chapter is nothing of
the sort. The "correct" view of citta-maatra that he advocates is precisely
the Yogacarin view itself, and precisely the same positions I spelled out as
Yogacara positions in my _Buddhist Phenomenology_. But let's not get off on
that tangent.

Huntington, p. 254, n.152, summarizes the targets of Candrakirti's argument
thus: "The Pudgalavadin identifies the self with all five of the aggregates,
and the Yogacarin identifies it with the mind alone." Do I need to point out
that the Yogacaras strenuously denied that the mind is a self, and made no
such identification? And as for the Pudgalavada, see above.

Duerlinger similarly writes (op. cit., p. 265): "Since it is clear that
there is no self that exists apart from the aggregates, some Buddhists,
among whom Candrakirti identifies at least the Sammatiiyas, have concluded
that one or all of the mind-body aggregates must be the self."

If anything is clear, it is that the Sammitiyas explicitly reject that
identification.

So Richard wants to know why are such clever people as Vasubandhu (and now
Candrakirti) getting their supposed opponents wrong (implying they don't,
only crazy people like Lusthaus get other people's positions wrong). This,
however, is not exactly the right question, and is a sign of how
unsophisticated our treatment of Buddhist philosophy still remains. By that
I mean we still remain largely naive about HOW Buddhists argued. They are
misconstruing opponents all over the place (one of the reasons that by the
time of Kumarila Bhatta and "Santaraksita they had taken to massively
quoting opponents verbatim, to try to minimize this foolishness). A strategy
one finds in the Pudgalavadin texts (including in the passages I posted), in
Xuanzang's refutation of Madhyamaka (recorded in his Biography), and
Candrakirti's refutations in ch. 6 of the Madhyamakavatara, is the
following:

Rather than reject an opponent and his position simplicitur, the strategy is
to indicate that they don't understand their own doctrines properly, since,
if they did, they would agree with "me." Xuanzang doesn't reject Madhyamaka,
but argues that any madhyamakas who reject Yogacara for various reasons
don't understand Nagarjuna well enough. The Pudgalavadins argue in the
passages I posted that other Buddhists don't fully appreciate all the
prajnaptis lurking in their own formulations, since if they did, they would
embrace the practical necessity of pudgala as a prajnapti. Candrakirti is
not rejecting Yogacara per se, but rather insisting that Yogacara properly
understood is concordant with madhyamaka (v.87 in MA does so explicitly,
but, as I suggested, the rest of his refutation follows the same tact). Were
there Sammitiyas at his time who miscontrued the teachings of their own
school and started to treat the skandhas as aatmans? Maybe. But
Candrakirti's own formulations are in perfect accord with the basic
Pudgalavada teachings (he accepts a samvrti self).

Now Richard is also worried that if given a choice between getting the
Pudgalavada position right, and making up a useful version that gets them
wrong but provides fodder with which to play with Analytics, we should go
for the latter. That's where I strenuously disagree, and reiterate what I
said much earlier about "accuracy," etc. If Buddhism stops being Buddhism
just so it can talk to Analytics in the name of Buddhism, that's a farce,
and it won't go very far.

Dan Lusthaus