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

[Dan Lusthaus]

Joy,

> That seems to be giving a lot of power to arguments and to their
"soundness".

Dan:
If there is any basic lesson one can have in mind when thinking about the
difference between Indian religions and Western Religions (particularly
Christianity), in India Knowledge always trumps mere belief, and -- to
repeat what I mentioned previously -- the *consensus* among all the schools,
Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike, is that the validity of religious claims
has to be rationally grounded; they must be demonstrable proofs. To make
so-called religious claims that are undemonstrable would have been
considered lunatic ravings by any of the Indian religions. That the
situation in Western religion is dramatically different hardly needs
exposition. This hasn't prevented the stereotype that the "West" is logical
and rational while the mysterious "East" -- especially India -- is mystical
and irrational (or arationa) from becoming ubiquitous. In the case of
religion, the truth is just the opposite.

Joy:
>An a priori that seems to be to the disadvantage of adepts of
Prajnaparamita or Emptiness adepts.

Dan:
Only if they are logically sloppy mumbo-jumbo mumblers. There is a reason
that Bhavaviveka (in a generation or two following Dignaga) claimed that
Nagarjuna's madhyamaka was consonant with syllogistic arguments (as he
attempted to demonstrate).

Joy:
> 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.

Dan:
Anyone can believe anything. That doesn't make anything true. Insistence is
no substitute for sound reasoning and evidence. If you "believe" it, but
can't prove it, you have no business putting it out in public. Personal
madness should be kept to oneself. That basic standard was accepted -- once
again -- by all the competing schools. Even your hierophantic Shaivite
priest could be asked for his arguments, and would have to make a decent
account of himself, or he could be dismissed as a buffoon. There is only so
long that he could duck a debate before too many eyebrows would be raised.

Joy:
>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?

Dan:
There, indeed, is a degree of art to the debate, and the skill of the
debator -- his eloquence, ability to recognize and capitalize on his
opponent's weaknesses or slip-ups, etc., would play a role. In the Nyaya
commentarial literature, some attention is paid to the question of the
qualifications and acuity of the presiding judges, with a recognition that
they may not be the sharpest lights on the planet, and one should not get
too subtle for them to follow (though getting too subtle for your opponent
to follow is a way to win). It is, indeed, like a sport -- I have called it
the national sport of India, and it continues today, though the arguments
today are more likely to be about politics and current events than about
religious doctrines. One of the interesting places one can gauge the changes
in attitudes about this in the Nyaya literature is the attitude they express
about various types of "tricks." While recognizing that if you are caught
"cheating," you immediately are declared the loser, some Nyaya texts say it
is ok if used to shut up an immature, unworthy opponent (assuming the judges
won't catch it), while subsequent Nyaya texts consider it a dangerous and
misguided tactic that should never be used. It's something like cheating at
a sport. OK, if you can get away with it -- disasterous if caught. So some
argue that one should never cheat -- one reason being that the arguments,
even if they prevail that day because the opponent and judges were too dull
to catch it, can be reviewed at a later date and declared fallacious -- 
which would then reflect poorly on the cheating school and undermine the
ostensible truth claims that were supposedly supported and defended by such
cheating.

Joy:
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.

Dan:
See above. Debating skill is one factor, but ultimately the logical
soundness and coherence of a position are what matters.

Joy:
> 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.

Dan:
Why odd? Many rulers fancy themselves "wise." Obviously some were sharper
than others, and many were quite sharp and enjoyed a good contest. Xuanzang
reports on a King "Siiladitya who ruled while Xuanzang was visiting India
(7th c). Every five to seven years he would empty his coffers to host
debaters from all over (he favored Buddhists, but everyone was invited). He
would put on lavish ceremonies, parades, housing for them, etc., and the
debates would go on for weeks. Some attribute the roots of that way of
"giving to the Dharma" to Asoka.

In general, however, debates could be small affairs between just two people,
with possibly a small audience, all the way up to these huge public
spectacles, with hundreds, maybe thousands in attendance. That would be the
big time (World Cup as opposed to local teams).

Joy:
 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.

Dan:
It would seem the so-called Lhasa debates never happened -- they were a
later invention by certain Tibetan elements hoping to convince themselves
that all pollution from "Chinese" Buddhism and its weirdo ideas had been
successfully purged from that date forward, and that only a pure
transmission from India took root. There was no Mohoyen.

On the larger question, however, all the schools -- as Richard pointed
out -- offered "moral edification" discourses. Such material, in the Indian
Buddhist tradition, is attributed to such radical thinkers as Nagarjuna and
Candrakirti -- one tells rulers morally edifying fairy tales, just as one
would little children, because they are like children.

In China, Buddhists and Daoists were often at each other. Buddhists were
particularly scandalized by a set of texts that alleged that Sakyamuni was
actually instructed by Laozi (Lao Tzu) after he went West and discovered
Sakyamuni struggling under the Bodhi-tree. Hence, Daoists would claim,
Buddhism is just the re-importing to China of Daoism through the distorting
filter of Western Barbarian misunderstandings. During the days of Kublai
Khan, according to an important work called The Secret History of the
Mongols, the two schools arranged a debate, with Kublai as the arbitrator:
the stakes were that the winner would become the state religion, and the
loser would have to close all its monasteries, burn all its books, and the
clerics would have to return to lay life. Both "teams" sent their best
debaters, and the contest began with Kublai asking a question that both had
to answer: "What is the best way to rule?" The Daoists went first, spinning
a long and metaphysical yarn about yin and yang, ethers, and whatnot. When
it was the Buddhist's turn they took a page from the Confucian Mencius,
brought things back down to planet earth, and offered a version of the
Golden Rule based on compassion for all living beings. Everyone enjoys
happiness and pleasure, and loathes pain and suffering; alleviate the
suffering of your subjects, don't do to them what you wouldn't want done to
you, provide them the means for pleasure and prosperity, and they will honor
you. Kublai declared them the victors. They were particularly eager to see
the scandalous works burnt (and many of them have not survived), but they
insisted that the Laozi text itself (Daodejing), NOT be destroyed, that it
was an authentic spiritual classic. It has always been interesting to me
that the Buddhists had no clear Indian prototype on which to draw, and had
to "borrow" from the Confucians (albeit packaged in Buddhist garb) in order
to have anything to say that would even address the question.


> >Try Shinran's Kyogoshinshu

Another of my numerous typos -- sorry. It should be Kyogyoshinsho. DT Suzuki
did an English translation late in life (when one gets closer to death, all
that Zen nonsense doesn't seem so reassuring anymore, so even Suzuki turned
to Pure Land). There are some problems with it, but it is highly readable
and gives a decent impression of Shinran's thinking. I think there are some
partial translations of sections of Kyogyoshinsho online done by others, so
you can sample it.

Dan