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

[Joy Vriens]

Hi Dan,

>After several messages decrying alleged a priori decisions you suspected of 
>the debaters, physicians, etc., you now present some of your own. 

With a little help from Régis Debray. It would be wrong to take all the credit myself. 

>Joy: 
>The former is turned outwards and targets the collective, the latter is 
>turned inwards and concerns the individual experience, including experiences 
>that are felt as going beyond the individual. 
 
>Dan: 
>I now see what you found attractive in Luther. This is the beginning of 
>Protestantism -- one becomes one's own foundation (paralleled by Descartes 
>famous je pense, donc je suis  as the epistemological foundation for all 
>knowledge). The Indian traditions I have been speaking about don't argue 
>that knowledge is always outward or doesn't need to be confirmed in one's 
>own experience, or is simply a matter of logic, etc. What they do say is 
>that if what one claims to know is not demonstrable -- by evidence (such as 
>anyone's immediate perception), argument, etc. -- then it is not knowledge 
>but something else and has no place in the public sphere. Anyone 
>disregarding this basic civilized requirement is either a quack, a fool, a 
>madman, or a conman. 

Isn't this all about attributing values? What is in the public sphere is in the public sphere, one can like or dislike it and say it has no place there, but that doesn't prevent it from being there. If the public sphere evolved on the basis of knowledge and the right conclusions that knowledge leads to and if those who don't attribute the same values to it are considered quacks, fools, madmen or conmen, then how would that be (potentially) less dangerous than the ideas of those spiritual zealots?   
 
>Buddhists -- and long ago this was discussed on buddha-l -- are criticial of 
>tarka (Pali takka), which unfortunately gets mistranslated as "reasoning, 
>logic, etc." too often. Tarka means rational or logical SPECULATION. That 
>does not yield firm knowledge (hence, e.g., the Nyaya Sutra clearly 
>distinguishes between Nyaya -- which is pramana based -- and tarka -- which 
>is not pramana based). If a conclusion reached by tarka happens to be 
>correct, that was a matter of luck, not based on methodological reliability. 

Ok I take note of these definitions and their different stated objectives, tarka being merely a desperate shot in the dark and pramana proceding in all glory on an enlightened path leading towards the light. The tarka adepts must have felt pretty miffed when they heard what they were considered to be doing...   
 
>As for your claim that it is impossible to get anywhere meaningful by 
>reasoning, logic, etc., neither the Buddha nor the Buddhists would agree. 
>Ceto-vimutti (liberation by using your mind with clarity and precision) is 
>precisely that. 

And from your own experience does that seem plausible to you? That it is perhaps one of the many factors that can help to contribute to liberation seems reasonable, but the only liberation achieved through clarity and precision I can imagine is liberation from lack of clarity and from lack of precision and even then to a certain degree. We like to dream of great achievements and of the sky being the limit, but that doesn't stop us from knocking our heads against the ceiling of our limited senses.
 
>Vimalakirti is, at heart, a VERY logical text, profoundly logical, and it 
>too rejects mumbo-jumbo irrationalities (its listing of chimeras at the 
>beginning of ch. 7 [in the Tib version], ch. 6 in the Ch and Lamotte, is one 
>of the most complete in Buddhist literature).

Are chimeras born or not-born, are non-chimeras born or not-born? What's the point in listing specific chimeras? Would that list be exhaustive? Does that knowledge liberate us?

> We can shift this discussion 
>over to the logic of Vimalakirti if you wish. Is he truly sick, or only 
>feigning illness (and isn't that a trick question? Do *we* get let in on the 
>joke/ploy, even if not all the characters can see through it? 

What I learned from this text is that I don't have to pick up that question, that I don't have to decide, that I don't have to direct my knowledge faculty at it and to arrive at a conclusion. It teaches a corrective reaction to what it considers shortcomings of earlier corrective reactions and it undermines its own seriousness so it doesn't require more corrective reactions. 
 
>Circular reasoning is tautological, and hence always favored by theological 
>speculation ("I am that I am", the self coinciding with itself [Hegel], 
>etc.). It gets you nowhere, and only congratulates you if you ended up where 
>it wanted you to start from in the first place (I think Rousseau once 
>compared metaphysicians to the minuet -- You start in one place, prance 
>merrily about in a complex of permutations of movements, exerting oneself, 
>"mince daintily about," only to end up exactly on the same spot where one 
>started.) That's why it such a friend of "faith" which basically involves 
>the same type of exercise. That is also why logicians -- including 
>Nagarjuna -- reject tautologies. 

Which reminds me of the Dance of Death (totentanz): You start in one place, prance  merrily about in a complex of permutations of movements, exerting oneself,  "mince daintily about," only to end up exactly on the same spot where one  started. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes. Were did you think you were going? ;-)
 
>It is impossible to change a tautological thinker's mind, since they will 
>recognize only what was pre-set out for them in the first place as valid, 
>and explain anything possibly novel in terms of what they already know, 
>managing not to go anywhere.

That's not how I see it. It is impossible (in my experience) to exclude reality. E.g. I don't see the dangers of nihilism or of mere emptiness. You simply open another perspective and reality will still be there. How could it be otherwise?  Think or believe or whatever that everything is non-existent or a dream, do you think that by doing so, reality will disappear? I think it will change our perspective on reality and that that is all it does. The same half glass of water can be half full or half empty.   

> That's why spiritual zealots are so stubborn 
>and dangerous. They'd like us all to be stuck in the same place they are. 
>Can one be detached from the attractiveness of circular thinking? It's fun 
>to think that outside of circular thinking there is some other kind of 
>thinking -- let's call it non-thinking -- that is more legitimate, freer, 
>unrestricted, liberating, nicer, etc. That outside, let's call "inside," 
>interiority, subjectivity, spiritual. Let's prize the inside over the 
>outside -- the outside is small, all of outdoors is tiny and cramped. Let's 
>delude ourselves and call this double model non-duality. Now let's make 
>faces at all the dualists who don't buy into our nonduality. 

As I see it the non of non-thinking is a modifier it doesn't negate thinking, it doesn't make it go away, it is different thinking or thinking experienced differently. Life with detachment and equanimity is still life.

Joy