[Buddha-l] Re: Filtered Buddhism

[Vicente Gonzalez]

Richard wrote:

RH> One of the things that is claimed about being an arhant is that one knows one
RH> is an arhant. But how can this be? The state of being an arhant is defined
RH> purely in negative terms. An arhant is one in which all the afflictions are
RH> absent. But how can one possibly know that all latent tendencies to think and
RH> act in unskillful and pain-producing ways ways have been wholly eradicated
RH> and are not simply lying dormant? 

maybe it is related with the understanding about overcoming suffering.
Maybe an Arhant can know the suffering is not in him because the self
becomes a functional thing; there is awareness of the function
(knowledge) and of the essence (emptiness), and this awareness simply
it exists without be sustained by nothing; like an echo in the All.
When we scream in front the mountains, the echo and its source
are part of the All. Therefore, the real source is the All not
oneself. However, our position is wrong.


RH> This is not a trivial problem at all. It led to a cottage industry among
RH> Buddhist epistemologists, who worried themselves sick over the question of
RH> how one can know for sure that something is absent. (Their worry, I assure
RH> you, shows they were not arhants and hence probably not worth listening to.)

this exact discussion around absence was here in 29,30,31 Oct-2006
Subject "there he goes again (sam harris)"
Although I doubt such knowledge is of arhants. Anyone know when some
thing is absent or not. You say: 

RH> What he says is that the failure to observe something THAT WOULD BE
RH> OBSERVED IF IT WERE PRESENT suffices to prove that it is absent. But how does 
RH> one prove that something would be observed if it were present?

I think you have here your own trap with the word "present", because
this word addressed us to avoid past and future.
The condition for any thing is present is our observation of that.
And in reverse direction, any thing observed is present for us; even
its same absence when we observe this. When some thing exists but it
is not observed by us, then such thing simply is not present.

The question about existing things which are not present is only our
imagination playing with the time. Such things are not here and now,
therefore they are not present neither they exist for us.
If you put your pencil under your table, you don't have any evidence
the pencil still exists. You will need put it again over your table to
be sure.


best regards,