[Buddha-l] Sabba Sutta

[Jayarava]

Richard, I'm exploring the use to which the Sabba Sutta has been put and our friend Kalupahana has made much of it. I've found your "Gotama Buddha and Religious Pluralism", J. of Religious Pluralism 1:65-96 (1991), in which you critique the view that he justifies using the Sabba Sutta.

In his 1976 book - Buddhist Philosophy - Kalupahana includes an appendix on epistemology in which he makes the case that the Buddha's empiricism was similar to the Positivist rejection of metaphysics. You argue that other views expressed by the Buddha - largely value judgements - run counter to the spirit of Positivism. The context is a discussion of the Buddha's silence, and it seems that your pointing out the Buddha's own answer is a killer argument. However I have a question.

You write "Wisdom consists in the ability to discriminate those actions of the body, speech and thought that are competent from those that are not. But such discrimination is a matter of judgement, and judgement necessarily goes beyond any knowledge that can be acquired immediately through the senses". p.8 (you miss this bit out in your Appreciation of Nagarjuna which largely repeats the argument p.358 f.).

I read Kalupahana as including the mind sense in his empiricism. Surely discrimination is a function of, and wisdom is acquired through, the mind sense? Doesn't this contradict what you are saying?

Kalupahana has of course rewritten that book - A History of Buddhist Philosophy, 1992 -  and has dropped that appendix and the reference to Positivism. However he retains the view that the physical senses and the mind are the only possible sources of knowledge (here of course he cites the Sabba Sutta). He insists that Insight/Wisdom cannot be completely divorced from the senses (he again includes the mind I think). (p.112)

Have you an opinion on Kalupahana's newer version of the Buddha's empiricism?  

Do we, from an early Buddhist point of view, have sources of knowledge other than the physical senses and the mind? 

Best wishes
Jayarava