[Buddha-l] David Loy

[Joy Vriens]

Jamie,
  
>Joy Vriens wrote: 
>> 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?  

>What I meant, and I haven't looked at the book in a long time and my  
>memory dims, was simply that in the end all the forms of non-duality  
>that he dealt with ended up being the same thing--advaita, Mahayana, and  
>Taoism, if dim memory serves me.

I don't know about your dim memory, but I know my dim memory always disserves me. :-) Advaita, Mahayana and Taoism are merely names of brands, that haven't even been deposited btw. I try to deal with the source codes, you know the stuff that actually makes the software work. They are all very open source, although some build their own coktails and pretend they are a new creation, invention or discovery by wrapping them up in added value. 

>I just don't see how all of these  
>different philosophies can be one and the same-- that's all that I  
>meant.

A detergent manufacturer could explain you how there is a world of difference between the brand of detergent he produces and the other brands. 
Would you accept that although those different philosophies are not one and the same, that their goals and means can be quite similar? You say "philosophies" and I know what you mean, but of course they are more than simply philosophies in the commonly accepted sense. They are philosophies to be lived and often come with practice and exercises. And the actual carrying out of those philosophies may not be one and the same but they may target similar pshychophysical features of a human being. One can focus on similarities or on differences. The choice is ours, but it is only a choice.   

>Buddhism might be more fun if it is Taoism, but that is another  
>subject. Of course, perhaps the point of non-duality is that all things  
>are one (ah, the slippery difference 'tween non-duality and monism) and  
>why I find most forms of non-duality not simply philosophically  
>incoherent but rather boring to boot.

Well I wonder for whom non-duality is more slippery, for their supporters or for their objectors? :-)

> I mean, even Vimalakirti had to  
>shut up in the end and I prefer the conversation. So I like it earlier  
>in the text when the goddess chides Sariputra for being silent and  
>reminds him that words have the same value of emancipation as all else. 

A very crafty text eh? You have two contradictory instructions, so what to do with that? And then non-duality (picking neither of them or both), suspension of judgment if you like, is a possibility. You mention silence, which is an interesting feauture in different mystic philosophies. Would that silence, the practice of silence, be diifferent in advaita, mahayana and taoism? Would the resulting silence be different? Of course there is always a difference in the individual experience of silence by an individual (if one prefers to focus on the differences), but that is also true for individuals sharing the same philosophy.
 
>> 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?  

>Yes, I would-- I believe that this is an argument in Indian and Tibetan  
>Buddhist philosophy (is the emptiness of this dharma the same as the  
>emptiness of that dharma), but I have always preferred to talk about  
>"emptinesses" precisely in order to avoid the notion that there is one  
>big "emptiness" thing out there swooshing around the universe.

I am afraid you are slipping again with your portrayal of emptiness or non-duality as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

> When we  
>speak of emptinesses we remind ourselves that emptiness (or anatta) only  
>has meaning in the context of something that is empty of --lacking--  
>something else. The emphasis tends to remain on the phenomena rather  
>than what is missing.

Why rather and is "what is missing" really missing in a given phenomenon? Doesn't heat carry the notion of cold with it? Can heat be complete without the notion of cold? Can it even "exist" without it?

> Why bother with something that doesn't exist? Much  
>better, methinks, to be concerned about the things that do exist, that  
>is, inter-dependent phenomena, most of which need help. Non-duality,  
>emptiness--watch out for the shell game, it is beguiling! 

"Exist" is a far too complex notion for me. I have no idea what exists or what doesn't. If on top of everything else I already have to do, I also have to distinguish between things that exist and things that don't, I will run out of time.

>> 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. 

>I don't think that non-duality is a metaphor, I think that it is an  
>idea-- a view, if you will, and a pernicious one at that. The kind of  
>idea/philosophy that you can write entire books about, it seems. 
 
That's the worst kind of philosophy ;-)

>> "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).  
>I don't know what this has to do with non-duality (and ditto with your  
>quote below from Ajahn Chah); in fact, I believe that it was my old  
>buddy Bruce Burrill who pointed out that this was likely a direct  
>response to a different sort of All, that is, the monistic One of the  
>Upanishads, later elaborated into the unity of Sankara's advaita, which,  
>if my characterization of David's thesis is correct, is the same as  
>Mahayana and Taoism (yikes!!!): 

When you actually do the Buddha's freedom, do non-duality or do what Ajahn Chah was doing (or perhaps still is, what do I know? providing he was and is doing something at all :-)), which can be summarized as "just this", then what this has to do with non-duality is "just this". Is "just this" one and the same? Who cares one way or the other?
 
>> Yet there is also a mode that is unconditioned (Udana VIII.3), i.e. without *those* boundaries..  

>Ah, yes, Udana VIII.3. . . such confusion this little piece has created.  
>If the Buddha really did utter this, his editors should have left it out  
>of later compilations out of respect for the poor folks who latch onto  
>it, believing that it promises just what the Buddha denies. Others have  
>parsed this better than I, so I will just pass it by assuming that it is  
>a later interpolation rather than try to make it consonant w/ anatta--  
>life is too short. 
 
>But enough-- I have to get to work! 

Yes please do. If you are the Jamie Hubbard of Pruning the Bodhi Tree, I loved the book and the idea of putting all those articles with different views on "dhatu-vada" together. Worked very well. Only I found myself agreeing with every contradictory view as long as I was reading it. I am hopeless.

Cheers,

Joy