[Buddha-l] Mereological nihilism

[Richard Hayes]

On Sunday 20 April 2008 17:49, Wong Weng Fai wrote:

> Is it just Dharmakirti or isn't all of Buddhism mereological nihilistic?

I can't speak for all of Buddhism, because East Asian Buddhism mystifies me 
and seems in many ways the antithesis of Indian Buddhism. But Indian Buddhism 
certainly does tend to reject the view that composite beings have anything 
but conceptual existence. I usually call the Buddhist view anti-holistic, but 
mereologically nihilistic amounts to much the same thing.

> Also "Some Buddhists often attempt to maintain that the minds are equal to
> the atoms of mereological nihilist reality"? Really? Who? Sarvastivadins?

I can't recognize this position at all. Indeed, the whole paragraph you cited 
strikes me as unnecessarily opaque. Must have been written by a philosophy 
major (or someone trying to sound like one).

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico