[Buddha-l] Sabba Sutta

[Dan Lusthaus]

[This message was too large, and bounced back, so I am resending as two
separate messages]

(first half)
Hi Jayarava,

> I'm confused though. You cited a bunch of authors who were all at least
one century post Dignaga.

Dating Indians can be a futile endeavor, though many have tried. The best we
can usually do is date them relatively, i.e., who preceded whom, etc., and
even that gets dicey all too frequently. We don't know with precision the
time span between Dignaga and Bhavaviveka. Depends on how you date each of
them, and there are lots of proposed dates for both. They could be near
contemporaries or a century apart. Similarly, whether Sthiramati preceded
Bhavaviveka, or vice versa, or if they were contemporaries has been argued
back and forth. I think the material in Bhavaviveka's ch. on Yogacara in his
Madhyamakah.rdaya (the one whose translation by D. Eckel has just come out)
strongly suggests that Bhav. was responding -- in his treatment of the
Trimsika -- not just to Vasubandhu, but to Sthiramati's comm. on the
Trimsika; which would mean Sthiramati did not post-date Bhav. Eckel himself
is more circumspect and resists making that claim.

There is no discussion of Dignaga or his theories prior to that in the
extant literature as far as I know (with the exception of "Sankarasvamin's
Nyayapravesa, which is a concise overview of anumana, basically following
Dignaga, but with a few deviating moves).

What you failed to notice about the examples I gave -- it seems I have to
make everything more than explicit -- is that there is not just one group
claiming he is a Yogacara. Unlike the hypothetic examples you gave, it is
not simply later Yogacarins claiming some cool predecessor as their own.
Their opponents (Bhav., Candrakirti, etc.) also identify as such, so much so
that each devotes a major portion of their Yogacara refutation specifically
to Dignaga's theories, not just Asanga and Vasubandhu and their more obvious
commentators.

If nothing else, a good philosopher -- not just historian -- has to ask why
do both their enemies as well as they themselves see Dignaga as a Yogacara?
What about him screams out "Yogacara" to friend and foe alike? This is not a
case of opponents falsely labeling him as something they want to refute -- 
since the Yogacaras themselves don't deny Dignaga as one of their own. And
it is not a case of later Yogacaras simply but mistakenly claiming him for
themselves, since their keenest opponents also placed him in their camp.

In Bhavaviveka's case, this is even more significant, since Bhav. himself is
powerfully influenced by Dignaga. One of the key issues for him -- why his
version of Madhyamaka comes to be called svatantrika -- is that he insists
that one can employ Dignaga's style of logical inference and still be a
Madhyamakan. If anyone should want to claim Dignaga, it should be Bhav. But
he identifies Dignaga as a Yogacara.

Let's put this another way. We have centuries of Buddhists from near his own
time right up to and past Dharmakirti who, without a single dissenting
voice, identify Dignaga as a Yogacara.

This is just one prong, but an important one that can't be neglected.

>You only seem to talk about later commentators.

The "only" is wrong. That is one prong. Pop-quiz: what were the others?

> I still can't see how you can claim anything but influence here. Perhaps
you could cite a central Yogacara doctrine and show us how Dignaga as a "key
Yogacara figure" writes about it with a particularly Yogacara flavour?

I did:
(1) eliminate erroneous cognition.
(2) sva- and para- bijas (cf. Vimsatika and Alambana-pariksa).
(3) develop pramana theory (yes, Jayarava, this was a project that Yogacara
put on the map for Buddhists; there were some brief and unsophisticated
discussions in Abhidharma literature on pramana, which was the main debate
tradition in Buddhism prior to Dignaga; but it is not until Asanga that it
is given a thorough systematic working over, and Vasubandhu further
developed it; then comes Dignaga -- direct hetuvidya lineage).
(4) Asanga's usage of apoha (defining things by what they are not) which is
further developed into one of Dignaga's signature doctrines.

As I suggested (and the point of including Takasaki's TOC) is that Yogacara
is NOT simply what everyone seems to think are the "central" doctrines.
Alayavijnana and trisvabhava are the exotic doctrines, the ones that appear
most dissimilar to prior Buddhist doctrines. But those are not the key
doctrines of Yogacara, and especially not the key to Yogacara. In fact, I
would flip this whole discussion around, and say that if one wants to
understand what Yogacara is, read Dignaga (all the rest is window dressing).

> By contrast many people choose to treat Gotama as a avatar of Viṣnu but
this ignores every thing attributed to him as a thinker.

You will continue to confuse yourself if you keep playing like this instead
of keeping your eye on the ball. How many Buddhists claim Buddha is Visnu?
This is not comparable to the situation we are talking about.

Buddhists of that time, and for centuries afterward, saw Dignaga as a
Yogacara, regardless of their own affiliation. Non-Buddhists also saw
Dignaga as an exemplar of vijnana-vada (the ambiguity here is that the term
"vijnanavada" applied to Sautrantika as well as Yogacara; and some
Abhidharma texts also apply it to Sthaviras).