[Buddha-l] Sabba Sutta

[Richard Hayes]

On Mon, 2008-12-01 at 04:11 -0800, Jayarava wrote:

> 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

That is not quite my position. My position is that I am agnostic on the
question of whether Dignāga was a Yogacārin, and moreover I find the
question of his doctrinal affiliations potentially misleading. Like
Vasubandhu, he was far too innovative to be classified easily. To the
extent that he can be put into a mold, he was the inventor of the mold.
Perhaps others tried to squeeze themselves into the molds they made, but
Vasubandhu and Dignāga themselves were far too busy making interesting
philosophy to concern themselves with what "school" they might be
perceived as beloning to.

> 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.

And, I gather, because a bunch of twenty-first century scholars have
tried to come up with a set of characteristics that make someone a
Yogacārin and have called anyone a Yogacārin who has those
characteristics. It sounds to me a bit like those Unitarians who claim
that Plato was one of them.

I think the difference between Dan and me may reflect the differences in
our disciplines. He has always struck me as being primarily a historian.
My interests are philosophical. Philosophers and historians of ideas ask
different kinds of questions of the texts they read. Because they look
for different things, they see different things.

> There is this tendency in Buddhology to start with what you like (X),
> and then to work backwards looking for something similar (Y).

This tendency pretty much defines the field of Buddhist studies, most of
which is stuck in the taxonomic categories of medieval Chinese and
Tibetan polemics and apologetics. People in Buddhist studies are, on the
whole, terrified of thinking for themselves. They are very good at
citing authorities and rather poor at looking at anything afresh or
asking philosophically interesting questions (just as philosophers tend
to be rather poor at accepting authorities as evidence or asking
historically interesting questions).

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico