[Buddha-l] Sabba Sutta

[Jayarava]

I'm intrigued by this argument - without knowing much about Yogacara or anything about Dignaga my response is about form rather than content. Richard says Dignaga is not a Yogacarin based on a reading of his surviving works; while Dan argues that Dignaga is a Yogacarin because later sectarians (and lets face it a century is a long time even in Buddhism) claim him as one. 

Consider the Heart Sutra - all of the Tibetan commentaries show unmistakable signs of being rooted in later tantric thought, which they impute backwards onto the HS. But it was probably composed in China, on the basis of the Large Perfection of Wisdom text, many centuries before for example the Kalacakra or Hevajra Tantras. What's more it was quite likely translated into Sanskrit in India by Xuanzang (following Nattier's argument). It purports to be a Perfection of Wisdom text, but is recorded as being a favourite of Xuanzang. Alex Wayman even composed a Yogacara style commentary on the HS. But does all this make it a statement of Yogacara (or even later Tantric) doctrine? It does not. 

I think Dan needs to go beyond the circumstantial and show in more detail *how* what Dignaga says conforms with Yogacara ideas of his time or before. In particular you need to show that what has *not* happened is that Yogacara thought was modified *in the light* of Dignaga - because then they would be latter day Dignagavadins rather than the other way around. Personally I think this is a more plausible explanation of what you have presented so far. It fits the patterns of the history of ideas generally, and influence tends not to extent backwards in time.

There is this tendency in Buddhology to start with what you like (X), and then to work backwards looking for something similar (Y). Having found Y it is then stated that Y is proto-X; or in this case simply Y is X. In extremis we say that, despite other evidence to the contrary, the similarity between X and Y proves that X actually dates from the same period as Y. Thus we push Tantra back 4-600 years for instance; and Madhyamika to the time of the Pāli texts, etc. Occam's Razor would seem to suggest that if Y resembles X, then X is a *development* of Y.

My interest is in finding Vedic precedents for Pāli suttas. But I'm very cautious about what conclusion to draw. I don't think it means that Buddhism is just Hinduism repackaged for export for instance. I don't think it means that Gotama knew the Upaniṣads - although he was clearly familiar with some themes and the general outline of the ideas some of them contain since he makes fun of them in several texts. I think it means that there were complex interactions between religious thinkers who were all looking for ways to describe experiences which were new in language that was old. There was interfaith dialogue between thinkers on a scale almost unimaginable in the Christian west. Thinkers both within and across traditions changed their views, or at least their terminology, on the basis of this dialogue. We have every reason to believe that this continued to be the case throughout the period we're talking about with Dignaga.

Perhaps, Dan, your claim would be a good subject for a full length article - because long lists of chapter headings make poor fodder for Buddha-L, and don't seem to prove anything.

Regards
Jayarava