[Buddha-l] Acting on emptiness

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Richard P. Hayes schreef:
> The ultimate truth is that no being anywhere has an intrinsic nature.
> The conventional truth is also that no being anywhere has an intrinsic
> nature. Delusion is the belief that things do have intrinsic natures.
>   
I disagree: conventional truth is that things do have an intrinsic nature. If we're out of bread there's a thing called 'bread' that is objectively and factually missing. Or in the words of Wittgenstein: language is a projection of the world. Our conventions are entirely based on svabhāva's. Sarah Palin is a reïncarnation of Calamity Jane, but if you take her apart, like she does with mooses, you willn't find anything that makes her Sarah Palin. In fact I suspect you'll just find a lot of silicon and wires. Still people listen to her because conventionally she's a politician. (It suddenly becomes clear to me why the Russian philosopher Michale Bakhtin, who lived during Stalin, developed such a lively interest in the carnival.)
I think that this is exactly where Nāgārjuna is after. Look at Chapter 24, where he's having a ball with some Sarvāstivādaish figure who advocates the conventional truth. The absolute truth is that someone who takes the conventional truth for definitive one 'forgets the horse he just mounted'.

Erik

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