[Buddha-l] Re: Aama do.sa I

[Dan Lusthaus]

Joy,

> Yes, but still it was very much a struggle for power. When reading bits
here and there I don't have the impression that each party put their
arguments foreward and simply accepted the king's decision sticking to their
arguments. If one party scored a point and got the king's support, the
others would adopt/adapt the arguments of their opponents. Very much like in
our time when one manufacturer has a succesful product, other manufacturers
will follow and imitate it to share in its market success. So the arguments
were a means to something else.

Major debates had major consequences. Sometimes they wagered their life on
the outcome (Xuanzang gives an example of that in his biography -- he won,
but took the loser on as a slave, rather than let him kill himself; his
"slave" later proved useful when Xuanzang prepared to debate another person
whose doctrine/arguments Xuanzang was unfamiliar with, but his slave had a
manual or treatise laying out the arguments and they studied it together
before the debate). Sometimes the losing school would have to pack up shop,
and move to the next district. So they weren't mere idle exchanges of ideas.
Fighting for patronage, etc., might be involved.

That they influenced each other, and "borrowed" ideas from each other is
clear. But that would not be a simple matter, especially on basic matters,
since one of the rules of debate is that one's position is faulty (and hence
one loses) if logically inconsistent. One of the forms of logical
inconsistency (already mentioned by Asanga in his YBh during his discussion
of hetuvidya) is for someone to espouse something inconsistent with the
doctrines of his own school That would be instantaneous forfeiture. A
Buddhist, for instance, cannot offer an argument that rests on a notion of
atman. A Vaisesika cannot offer an argument that assumes sound is eternal.
And so on. Dignaga and "Sa'nkararsvaamin's Nyaayaprave"sa reiterate those
stipulations. Part of this process is testing the limits of a doctrine's
coherence. One tests it vis-a-vis the challenge of the Other. All sides
recognized this as the healthiest practice for everyone.

One of the more fascinating results is the Mimamsika position on the
authorship of the Vedas. Hindus up to that point had accepted that the Vedas
were either authored by god(s) or by rishis inspired by the god(s). The
Buddhists put forth somewhat compelling arguments that any act of
communication has intrinsic dangers of miscommunication: the hearer could
have misheard, the speaker could be mistaken, etc. The Mimamsikas took that
to heart. Confronted with a choice of (1) keeping god(s) or (2) keeping the
authenticity of the Vedas as unimpeachable "sruti, they chose the Vedas, and
became atheists! The Vedas, they then claimed, were authorless, eternal, and
hence, not susceptible to error.

"And yet faith, a certain type of faith (that would need to be further
defined, probably along the lines of surrender or trustful acceptance), has
its importance. I am starting to think it is the major factor of the
Chan-like approach of Gampopa and Zhang's Mahamudra and of early Chan.
Ordinary mind is the Buddha."

Yes, faith does become important -- at an initial stage of practice -- in
East Asian Buddhism (and from there to certain forms of Tibetan as well).
Sung-bae Park tried to clarify this by saying the East Asian Buddhist sense
of faith was closer to Anselm's assensus (assenting to the validity of
something as yet unproven) rather than Tertullian's credo quia absurdum (I
believe it BECAUSE it is absurd). The latter implies fidelity, loyalty,
obedience, etc. The former can be more a hypothetical stance. Lots of modern
entusiasts for Zen embrace it because they think it personifies
Tertullian -- but that is a distortion in its transmission to the West by
the likes of DT Suzuki. Chan and Zen were always rational. The koans are not
absurdities but rational riddles. "The Sound of One Hand Clapping" is just a
colorful way of saying the coinciding of form and emptiness. Both are
abstractions until one "hears" that sound, until one has put them together.

>When reading some parts of Luther, I get the impression he definitely was
onto something, but failed to communicate it and perhaps lost himself (in a
pejorative sense) in his success.

Try Shinran's Kyogoshinshu (mentioned before on this list). A few centuries
before Luther, Shinran laid out much of what would becomes Luther's
theology. Maybe his Pure Land version will seem less lost to you.
Personally, I don't find either very attractive.


> :-) On the other hand, what more arguments (e.g. for resurrection) would
he need if he really did meet Jesus? ;-)

His longevity might be an issue, but he'd still have to prove that he wasn't
just lying low until Thomas caught a glimpse of him. Then, if Christians
decide to abandon resurrection for longevity, they might all join Chinese
emperors for cinnabar cocktails.

Dan