[Buddha-l] Acting on emptiness

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Richard Hayes schreef:
> On Tue, 2008-10-21 at 11:52 +0200, Erik Hoogcarspel wrote: 
>  
>   
>> I have a hard time understanding the statement 'conventional truth
>> just is ultimate truth'.
>>     
>
> I think the claim is that whatever is ultimately true is also
> conventionally true, and whatever is ultimately false is also
> conventionally false 
>
>   
>> Are CT and UT synonimous?
>>     
>
> I don't think that is quite what is meant. As far as I can understand
> the claim under discussion, it is simply that truth is truth and
> falsehood is falsehood. What distinguishes conventional from ultimate is
> not the content of the claims deemed true or false, but the attitude
> with which truth is recognized. If the truth is appreciated by a mind
> still under the sway of desire and aversion, the the truth is grasped
> conventionally. If the same truth is appreciated without any clinging,
> then it is grasped and let go.
>   
This would introduce what Wittgenstein called 'private language', the 
meaning of the words depend on the speaker or hearer, but that would 
make and discussion meaningless since we would always speak about 
different things. Moreover, if then sentence 'We live in the year 2008' 
is conventionally true and heard by a person under the influence of 
strong desire, would it mean anything different when heard by a buddha? 
And what would it mean for a buddha, something along the line of 'could 
you please pass me the salt please'? The words I write now would have 
different meanings according to who reads them.
You know that Buddhists also use the concept of pramāṇa, how could UT 
depend on pramāṇas, since those are conventions?
I never realised how individualised Tibetan thinking has become. Those 
monks clapped their hands so long they forgot all about the meaning of 
the word 'truth'.
>   
>> Well in that case read Quine's Empiricism without dogma's and you'll
>> see that this is problematic.
>>     
>
> Are you thinking of "The Two Dogmas of Empiricism"?
>
>   
Yes, sorry I got the title wrong.
>> The question of how to tell if a person grasps the ultimate truth
>> seems to me ot have two sides. At one side it seems to boil down to
>> the question 'what does it feel like to be enlightened?' At the other
>> side you could say that if one can tell if a person grasps UT by her
>> actions then it is possible to identify these actions or kind of
>> actions, so a pragmatist would say that grasping UT is acting in the
>> way of A. This seems at odds with what Nāgārjuna has to say.
>>     
>
> I am not entirely sure what Candrakirti was getting at when he said that
> ultimate truth is manifested in how one acts rather than in what one
> says. Which passages in Nāgārjuna seem to you at odds with such a claim?
>   
Well I think it's all over the work. If we start with the first chapter,  where Nāgārjuna says there is no causality, but we cannot do without it. I understand this to mean that causality is a conventional term, but ultimately it doesn't exist. I don't read him saying anything even remotely referring to individual behaviour being different bya buddha. In chapter 22, the most difficult one, he even mocks everybodyt who talks about a buddha as being this or that or behaving like this or that. See verse 10 a.o. 
I really don't see how behaviour could communicate something that's beyond conventions, enlighten me if you can. One could of course behave unconventionally, but never aconventionally.
And besides: how would Candrakirti know this, since he never watched 
Nāgārjuna, he only has his words? Or does Candrakirti think that 
Nāgārjuna didn't have clue as to what he was writing about?

Erik

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