[Buddha-l] Re: Filtered Buddhism

[Jamie Hubbard]

Richard Hayes wrote:
> One of the things that is claimed about being an arhant is that one knows one 
> is an arhant. But how can this be? The state of being an arhant is defined 
> purely in negative terms. An arhant is one in which all the afflictions are 
> absent. But how can one possibly know that all latent tendencies to think and 
> act in unskillful and pain-producing ways ways have been wholly eradicated 
> and are not simply lying dormant? 
>
> This is not a trivial problem at all. It led to a cottage industry among 
> Buddhist epistemologists, who worried themselves sick over the question of 
> how one can know for sure that something is absent. (Their worry, I assure 
> you, shows they were not arhants and hence probably not worth listening to.)
>   
This reminds me of how the Dalai Lama often tells the scientists that 
"not finding something is not the same as finding its non-existence." I 
don't think he is the first to make this claim, either in the Buddhist 
tradition or elsewhere, but in any case the DL usually says this in the 
context of consciousness existing without a physical basis, since for 
rebirth to work in the Buddhist sense consciousness has to be able to 
exist outside of the physical, no? So the DL is very reluctant to let 
any version of physicalism in the door, even more sophisticated versions 
than simple materialism.

Since folks have been talking about rebirth lately, Richard, can you 
give us a bit more about the cottage industry among Buddhist 
epistemologists? And is this discussion related only to asrava/klesa and 
the like or also to particular objects and universals -- that is, how 
does one find the *absence* of self, for example? Or "know" emptiness, 
the *absence* of own-being? I always thought that knowledge of those 
universal claims about what doesn't exist were inferences from 
particular experiences of not finding something. . .

BTW, I am also curious about your general thoughts about "not finding 
something is not the same as finding its non-existence." When HHDL uses 
this it always seems like a dodge to me . . .

Jamie