[Buddha-l] Realism, anti-realism and Buddhism

[Dan Lusthaus]

[continued]

> > (They weren't "idealists.")
>
> Quite a few people disagree with you. John Taber and John Dunne seem to
> treat them as idealists. As far as I can see, so does Schmithausen. So
> did Matitlal.

And so does Arnold. And, with the exception of Schmithausen, none of them
are much better read in Yogacara literature than you. What they do read, if
that, is restricted to a very few, short works, such as Vimsatika, which
they profoundly misunderstand since they don't read the rest of the
literature which would inform them on how to understand it.

Schmithausen's case is different, and rather than take up time here with
that (since it would quickly become too technical for this list), I refer
people to Paul Griffiths' review of Schmithausen's Alaya-vijnana book (I
don't have the citation on hand -- perhaps PEW; anyone know the reference?),
which gets it right. There is a huge difference in understanding between
reading philologically and reading philosophically. Schmithausen does the
former very well; the latter is beyond his ken (which doesn't prevent him
from making claims about Yogacara's philosophical orientation).

>I am more inclined to agree with Bruce Hall that the
> positions outlined in Vasubandhu and Dignaga are not idealist positions
> but rather phenomenalist positions.

I'm not comfortable with the phenomenalist label either. Nor are they
metaphysical idealists. They are epistemological idealists up to a point,
but true epistemological idealists always consider noumena unreachable,
whereas Yogacaras disagree with that.

> Yes, as Hattori has shown quite convincingly, there is a great deal of
> influence from Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosha.

My recent aforementioned work on Cheng weishilun and Buddhabhumyupadesa also
indicates that all the Yogacara commentators were also heavily immersed in
the Kosa. Dignaga and Sthiramati wrote commentaries on it, and Gunamati,
Sthiramati's teacher, was broadly known as a Kosa expert (among other
things). I would suggest, however, that Abhidharma is much larger than the
Kosa, and that the Kosa is not a fair representative of Sarvastivada (and
other) abhidharma positions or arguments, as becomes clearer once one reads
through works such as Mahavibhasa, Nyayanusara, etc. Hence my strong
recommendation of Dhammajoti's work. Those primarily envisioning abhidharma
(or Sarvastivada, or Sautrantika, or Darstantika, etc.) through the Kosa
will be surprised to find out what was really going on. Dhammajoti engages
in very little polemical posturing -- he just presents the texts and
arguments. He is a Malaysian Chinese Theravada monk who taught (Abhidhamma,
etc.) in Sri Lanka for many years, and now teaches at the University of Hong
Kong. In command of Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese, and
having practiced for most of his life in a living abhidhamma tradition, he
is singularly qualified to sort out and present what the fullest possible
range of sources tell us in an informed manner. And like us, his primary
interest is in the arguments.

Dan Lusthaus