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

[Joy Vriens]

Dan, 

>> 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 seems to be giving a lot of power to arguments and to their "soundness". An a priori that seems to be to the disadvantage of adepts of Prajnaparamita or Emptiness adepts. I guess the arguments put forward had to be somehow practical and pragmatic. Their soundness couldn't have been merely based on the connection they were believed to have with truth, or utilate truth. It also sounds like the series of arguments put forward had to be a sort of package deal. If most of one opponent's arguments were judged sound, but if one or a couple of them weren't in comparison to the ones of the other opponent, then would the victory of the one and the unvalidity of the arguments of the other be proclaimed on that basis? That would darw the main attention onto the skill of the debaters and not their arguments, like a boxing match with a victory not by KO but by points. It makes the debates look like a sport for the major distraction of the king. Debating skills were more valorised tha!
 n the arguments that were actually used. At least that is what it liooks like to me.     
 
>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. 

Having a king judge on the validity of the arguments and the main objective being access to the absolute is very strange. A king guarantees the safety of its citizens, stands for the moral order etc. It is difficult to see how in his function he could judge favourably on arguments that relate to absolute values instead of the temporal ones that are his onw domain. It is to admit a priori that arguments going into direction of society, maintaining society etc. will be favoured. Of course a king will prefer the arguments of a Kamalasila rather than of a Mohoyen that could shake the foundations of society. For me the real meaning of Upaaya is the decision to go after the absolute without undermining society.    
 
>"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. 

I have been reading Hamlin's Discourse in Lankavatara recently and I now read Bernard Faure's translation of two treaties attributed to Bodhidharma. I was initially appalled by Zen because of what you call the Tertullian's approach, but find early Chan as explained  by those authors very charming. It tries to state someting through language first and then to deconstruct what it has said through language again obviousy if the deconstruction is textual, so it can't be taken as a reference. My favourite Buddhist text is the VimalakirtiNirdesa. I need a bit of humour. And it's hard to find a text more playful than the VKN.   
 
>>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. 

Perhaps thanks to Hamlin I have found a tool to make Pure Land more palatable ;-) But like tantrism it will always seem as a roundabout to me. 

Joy