[Buddha-l] David Loy

[Joy Vriens]

Jamie Hubbard wrote,     
      
>David is indeed a great fellow, wonderful writer, and persuasive critic,  
>but I have to say that I disagree on this one-- perhaps my aversion to  
>non-duality just runs deeper than yours, Richard, but I found the  
>various non-dualities that he treated in his book seemed to merge  
>together in a way that made them "all one." And, like the famous joke  
>about the DL asking the hot dog vendor to "make him one with  
>everything," I just don't find that very appealing.

I can't answer for Richard, who must be busy correcting student copies or learning Dutch, but I wondered what you meant by making various non-dualities merge into one? When we talk about non-duality, and even when we talk about "all one", we talk about a corrective to a view (reifying individuality) that causes dukkha? Like when we talk about anatta, emptiness and the equality of all dharmas in their essence, those teachings are surely meant to be corrective and not descriptive. Would you also fear that all anattas and emptinesses could be merged into one and what effect would you imagine that to have? The Buddha himself has played with the idea of "oneness" but in a similar metaphoric way as non-duality theories play with it. At least that is how I and I hope David Loy and of course those theories themselves :-) interpret them.

"Just as in the great ocean there is but one taste — the taste of salt — so in this Doctrine and Discipline there is but one taste — the taste of freedom"

Freedom is an experience, not a thing. Non-duality, or even oneness or the one, is also an experience, not a thing. I would even say there is a big chance that the Buddha's freedom, non-duality and all the oneness theories (merged into one if one likes) are referrring to a similar experience. The experience of no boundaries, or no conditioned things if you prefer. Of course conditioned things is a pleonasm. All is unsatisfactory, the Buddha says and "What is the All? Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas. This, monks, is called the All." (Sabba sutta). Yet there is also a mode that is unconditioned (Udana VIII.3), i.e. without *those* boundaries.. "One who has reached the end has no criterion by which anyone would say that for him it doesn't exist. When all phenomena are done away with, all means of speaking are done away with as well."(Upasiva-manava-puccha).

I will end with a quote of Ajahn Chah and would like to ask you in what way what Ajahn Chah describes with words would differ from the experience of no boundaries, or even of being one with everything in yet other words?

"A devout elderly lady from a nearby province came on a pilgrimage to Wat Pah Pong. She told Ajahn Chah she could stay only a short time, as she had to return to take care of her grandchildren, and since she was an old lady, she asked if he could please give her a brief Dhamma talk. Ajahn Chah replied with great force, "Hay, listen! There’s no one here, just this! No owner, no one to be old, to be young, to be good or bad, weak or strong. Just this, that’s all - just various elements of nature going their own way, all empty. No one born and no one to die! Those who speak of birth and death are speaking the language of ignorant children. In the language of the heart, of Dhamma, there are no such things as birth and death."  
http://www.dharmaweb.org/index.php/No_Ajahn_Chah:_Reflections 

When Ajahn Chah says "just this", where would the boundaries delimiting this "this" be?

Joy