[Buddha-l] Sabba Sutta

[Dan Lusthaus]

Hi Jayarava,

> Could you say if these commentators were critiquing Dignaga on the basis
of his own writings, or are they critiquing the presentation and
interpretation of him by Yogacarins? It's not clear.

Clearly the former. They quote him.

> If the detractors only wrote about Dignaga as they found him in the
writing of the Yogacarins, then I would assume that they only knew about him
in the context of the writings of the Yogacarins, and had not read him
directly.

That wasn't the case. They knew his texts, and quote them.

> Never heard of any of these. So this is probably why I overlooked you
"explicit points". I was looking for something that was recognisably
Yogacara, but couldn't see anything.

Having spent many years reading Yogacara texts, all the things I mentioned
are "recognizably Yogacara." We are not "redefining" Yogacara, but bringing
out to Western audiences what is common knowledge about Yogacara in Asia.
Takasaki, for instance, is actually a Huayan specialist, not specifically a
Yogacara scholar. But, as any good scholar of early Huayan would know, you
can't do Huayan without doing Yogacara, and so his work has led him to
devote a book to Yogacara. Never having met him personally (as far as I
remember), we are certainly not conspiring to do something new. We have
never communicated on anything and he may never have heard of me. Muller's
point in citing Takasaki's TOC (which he said was pulled off his shelf at
random) was simply to show that if one reads Yogacara literature and the
typical Asian sources on it, rather than what has been the typical Western
secondary lit., the outline of their school that I proposed is pretty much
self-evident -- already.

> > 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.
>
> Well again this kind of redefinition is far from established outside your
rarefied world.

Not rarified. Standard, except in the West. Skilton, by the way, is a
first-rate scholar and knows a great deal about many things Buddhist.
Unfortunately Yogacara does not seem to be one of them.

> I think it's clear that it's you who are confusing me. I am looking for
parallels that might make a bridge, because you aren't providing one.

Well, I have, apparently too much so. That you don't know anything about
Yogacara is not my fault. That fact, however, does not put you in a very
good position to judge the merits of the case, does it? If I wanted to judge
between the claims of two astrophysicists, and they sent me reams of
complicated mathematical formulas I can't read, I would be too humble to
insist *they* haven't made their case, rather than simply recusing myself.

> But I think it's clear that this isn't that meaningful. In the light of
your redefinition of what is important in Yogacara we can see that received
traditions can be really quite wrong! If the general view of Yogacara is
wrong, very wrong according to you, then why not this view?

This sort of sophistry doesn't become you. If the in-group and the out-group
both agree on something, then by Dignaga's standards, that is prasiddha, an
acceptable, valid part of an argument. Everyone in India considered him a
Yogacara -- not a single dissenting voice that I am familiar with... until
we get to modern day scholars. And you are accusing me of inventing new
stuff?

> > 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).
>
> There is ambiguity and you are exploiting it to your favour, which hardly
bolsters your case.

Again, not knowing this literature, you are grabbing at straws.
Jinendrabuddhi (an important Indian commentator on Dignaga -- Dignaga's own
writings do not survive in Sanskrit, and this commentary is the closest we
have to the original Sanskrit wording of a Dignaga text; it is only now
becoming available, being edited and published in multiple volumes)
repeatedly explains specific arguments in Dignaga as appealing to
Sautrantikas and/or Yogacaras; but the final position, when they come into
conflict, is invariably the Yogacara position, according to Jinendrabuddhi.
(Dan Arnold has an essay on that)

> I haven't the heart to carry on with part 2 or your post. I think I've
learned that I'm not going to learn much by pursuing this. I'm going back to
the Sabba Sutta which I am learning a great deal from investigating.

Sabba sutta is good stuff. Enjoy.

Dan