[Buddha-l] Sabba Sutta

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard Hayes wrote:

>You chose to focus on only one aspect of Jung's
> multi-dimensional theory of the collective unconscious and to treat it
> as if that was the entire picture.

I brought out the aspect that you were trying to suppress, which was
germane. The question was whether the alayavijnana is specific to specific
individuals or something more communal or collective. I indicated that
Yogacara texts are vociferous in insisting that each individual has its own
alaya, and it is not a collective or communal consciousness shared across
individuals (although we all influence each other). You claimed Jung's
collective unconscious, despite how others have understood it, is also not
that type of collective. I pointed out in response that he used it for
racial stereotyping of the crudest sort. There is, by the way, now an
abridged paperback edition of the Jung's Seminar on Nietzsche's Zarathustra,
reducing the two thick volumes to 352pp. Guess what got expunged? The
Seminars, by the way, occurred in the period 1934-39, two years beyond the
1937 essay you cited.

See, e.g., http://tinyurl.com/5skrj4

I don't know whether Nick Lewin's book, _Jung, War, Politics and Nazi
Germany: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious_ (Karnac Books) has been
published yet. When it is, we can return to these questions...


> I am fully aware of the "evidence". I acknowledge its role in forming
> the received opinion on Dignāga's scholastic affiliations. That
> notwithstanding, I do not think it is in any way productive to regard
> Dignāga as representing the views of any school. Attaching scholastic
> labels to him is a bankrupt enterprise. It sheds no light whatsoever on
> his thought. It is his thought that interests me, not his real or
> imagined affiliations.

It is his thought that interests me as well. From one point of view the term
"Yogacara" is altogether useless even for discussing Asanga, Vasubandhu,
Sthiramati, Xuanzang, etc., since they all are different from each other,
and went through their own intellectual developments in which their thinking
changed (Vasubandhu is one of the most restless Buddhist thinkers on
record). On the other hand, there are threads that tie their projects
together in ways that reflect greater affinities between them (despite their
serious differences) and distinguish them from non-Yogacaras, and, more
importantly, contextualize them. It is these that they share with Dignaga
and he with them. "Cleaning up cognition" as the primary practice for a
Buddhist was not the obvious desideratum for Buddhists that we now take for
granted, largely because of Asanga, Vasubandhu, Dignaga, Dharmakirti, et al.
E.g., for Theravadins like Buddhaghosa, and Vasubandhu while still
Vaibhasika, merely eliminating erroneous cognitions was never enough; one
had to also acquire "positive" knowledge, primarily insights into the four
noble truths dissected in multiple ways.

Dan Lusthaus