[Buddha-l] Re: Emptiness

[Richard Hayes]

On Tuesday 23 October 2007 18:44, Dante Rosati wrote:

> both can be deconstructed, for example a la madhymaka, to show that
> they are not designations of anything, but just designations.

Pease don't bring deconstruction into the conversation. That is a strategy 
(and a very bad one) that arose in modern times and that has absolutely no 
relevance to conversations of Buddhist thought. Terminology aside, I quite 
agree that from a Madhyamika perspective, designations are just designations. 
(I happen to agree with the Madhyamikas on this point.) But I cannot see how 
appealing to this notion aids in any way with the topic under discussion.

> so if 
> there is no actual "body" or "mind" then where do designations come
> from?

It does no good to say that there is no body or mind. There are phenomena 
(dharmas if you like) that appear as the contents of experience, and these 
phenomena are referred to collectively as bodily or mental phenomena. So it 
turns out there are referents to the designations after all, but the 
designations do not refer to any single thing. Rather, they refer to a 
multiplicity of things.

> our immediate experience of the actual present is not a 
> designation

Well, yes, true enough. But so what? How is that observation relevant to the 
topic under discussion?

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico