[Buddha-l] Acting on emptiness

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Richard Hayes schreef:
> On Thu, 2008-10-23 at 22:05 +0200, Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:
>
>   
>> An argument that pleads against this assumption is that the madhyamakas 
>> accept all four of the traditional pramāṇas. I cannot see how they could 
>> do this without recognising a kind of abhidharma as a conventional 
>> truth, because it's founded on tradition and reasoning.
>>     
>
> Many false and dubious claims are based on reasoning. If one's reasoning
> is bad enough, one can arrive at just about any conclusion. I think the
> claim that abhidharma fails to be true even conventionally is based on
> the assumption that the reasoning of abhidharma is faulty, especially
> the reasoning that leads to the demonstrably false conclusion that
> dharmas have intrinsic natures.
>   
 

True, but if Nāgārjuna would have discussed the conventional claims, he would have showed where the Sarvāstivādins went wrong and he would have had to come up with a better abhidharma (in the sense of explanation of the sūtras). Instead of dharmas he might have come up with shoestrings or waves. In that case he could rely on the pramāṇas. But this is apparently not what he wants. He is aiming his attacks at the ontology of the Sarvāstivādins, at least that's my understanding. 

Erik

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