[Buddha-l] Prapanca

[Richard Hayes]

On Thu, 2008-02-14 at 03:15 -0500, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> Richard proposed understanding prapanca as a dismissable dismissal because
> he wanted to dismiss something previously said by others that included the
> characterization of prapanca. Bad methodology, bad motive, and bad
> conclusion. Junk in, junk out.

Your gift for reading other people's minds and discerning their
motivations is amazing. In this one instant, however, you missed the
mark. My discussion of prapanca is motivated by nothing other than
curiosity. As you know from my own discussions of the term, I have
always found it a somewhat puzzling term, and it fascinates me that it
has been translated in so many ways, even by terms that do not belong in
the same category (such as "mental proliferation", "ontological
proliferation" and "obsession"). This suggests to me that the term is
difficult to nail down and is perhaps used without precision to refer to
some kind of bad thinking. (In fact, as I recall, "bad thinking" is how
I myself have often translated it.)

My curiosity about what the term means in Buddhism was piqued by the
discovery many years ago of how the term is used in grammatical
treatises, where it does not have a negative connotation at all. 

> Etymologically prapanca implies verbal proliferation.

Not necessarily. As you well know, in the Upanishads the term refers to
the expansion of the universe into a multiplicity of forms. It is the
going forth (pra) of the five (panca) elements. There is nothing verbal
or conceptual about it. I think the verbal and conceptual is a derived,
scondary, figurative use.

> Richard is right to complain that there is a certain ambiguity to the term
> prapanca,

What I said was a simple observation, not a complaint.

> As for its use in the hetuvidya literature that Richard mentioned, his take
> on that might be right, but there is another possibility.

I made no mention at all of any hetuvidyaa literature. The term is very
uncommon in the writings of Dignaaga and Dharmakiirti. Dhk uses it only
six times, five of them in the Vaadanyaaya, which is a debate manual.
There the term refers to a proposition that is either far-fetched or
meaningless (atiprasanga or vyartha).

>  Debate is not
> solely about logical coherence, but about articulation, hesitation, verbal
> proficiency, etc. I've tended to see the fault of prapanca in this context
> as someone who, finding himself in trouble, begins to rant, to overtalk, to
> say too much, which may or may not make sense, but, in short, to display his
> discomfort and nervousness by verbally overcompensating, going on tangents,
> etc.. That's the giveaway that he's lost it, and such a display renders him
> a loser of the debate.

That's an interesting display of creative speculation, but it's
completely unsupported by the texts. One might say of your claims that
it is itself a splendid example of what it purports to be about.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico