[Buddha-l] Sabba Sutta

[Richard Hayes]

On Sun, 30 Nov 2008 04:39:49 -0500
"Dan Lusthaus" <vasubandhu at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Absolutely right. And since everything I said about Jung is well documented
> and admitted by the leading practicing Jungians today, there is no need for
> me to document that any further here.

No one has disputed the claims you made. They are, as you have said,
very well know to scholars of Jung. They are also completely irrelevant
to any of the topics we have been discussing. You have simply used the
mention of Jung as an opportunity to make gratuitous attacks on him,
and in so doing have derailed what might have been an interesting
discussion on a various ways of understanding the notion of the
collective unconscious. 

> > > In part, that's because it doesn't seem to have sunk in that Dignaga and
> > > Dharmakirti were Yogacaras.
> >
> > That's an interesting claim, for which I have yet to see any evidence.
> 
> Bhavaviveka thought so

What interests me is what Dignāga thought. All the people you cite
wrote centuries after Dignāga had left the scene. It is well know what
later people believed. Beliefs, I have learned, are not always good
indications of what is actually the case.

> So, for that matter, did Jinendrabuddhi in his commentary of Dignaga's
> Pramanasamuccaya.

> Apparently all those poor devils lacked Prof. Hayes' profound understanding
> of what Yogacara really is, and so were profoundly mistaken in their
> unanimous opinion.

I have no understanding at all of Yogācāra except what I have read in
your book and in Prof. Schmithausen's work, and of course the Sanskrit
and Tibetan texts of Vasubandhu. From what I have seen in those works,
there is hardly anything that Dignāga has in common with the allagedly
Yogācāra ideas presented there. He strikes me as quite an independent
thinker with perhaps more of an affinity for Sautrāntika and Madhyamaka
than any other schools. But I see no need to assign any labels at all
on either Dignāga or Dharmakirti. They were both free thinkers, not
party hacks. And so I am still in the condition I was when I originally
said that I see no evidence for the claim that these gentlemen were
Yogācārins. 

> Willful ignorance fails to recognize the reliable.

It is a better course, I find, to doubt everyone who is commonly
thought to be reliable, until one finds good evidence for the veracity
of what they say. (In this, I have discovered that I have
unwittingly been following follow Dignāga's example.)


-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://dayamati.blogspot.com
http://dayamati.home.comcast.net
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes