[Buddha-l] Fsat Mnifdlunses?

[Dan Lusthaus]

> I know nothing of philosophy or philosophers. I am way out of my depth.

One doesn't have to "know" or have read philosophers to be influenced by 
them. The culture at large does that for you. One needn't read Descartes to 
assume that mind and matter are very different, and to think finding the 
link between them is a profound and challenging business. (philosophers 
today refer to that as the "mind-body problem", and scholars have proposed 
to find it in Buddhist, Daoist, etc. literature; more gazing in mirrors). 
Why would you think there is "reality" beyond your cognitive apprehension? 
How would you even know about it? Who whispered that in your ear, much less 
convinced you that something entirely outside your field of experience-- by 
definition -- is really there, though forever unattainable? What an 
interesting fairy tale. And the scary thing is, you are not the only one 
walking around these days with that fantasy. Does that story have a history? 
Sure does, and Kant is a key place to look for how many of our 
contemporaries have come to assume what they assume.

> "That's vedanta, not Yogacara. For Yogacara, eliminating apprehension of
> an object consequently eliminates apprehension of a subject, No "unity,"
> monism, pantheistic self-hugging, or other displays of cosmic
> narcissism."
>
> I picked the wrong word with 'unity' because I was trying to avoid
> 'non-separateness' because it sounded too clumsy.

No. Actually, quite refreshingly you chose the right word. If the idea were 
to reify the subjective producer of cognition, then Yogacara would be open 
to the charge of atma-drsti -- self-view. On the contrary, they propose 
negating the object precisely to negate the self.

>So we are probably best served by 'non-separateness'.
> Indeed, you seem to be saying that apprehension is the separating agent:

No, you are saying that, only attributing that to me. Perception is an 
appropriative act, a grasping of something. We "get" ideas, we "apprehend" 
sights, sounds, etc. Nonapprehension is not simply nonappropriative 
perception. It is having something that otherwise might have been 
apprehended suddenly go absent. It's not there. Does this nonapprehension 
involve images (aakaara) or not (niraakaara)? Buddhists debated that for 
centuries.


> I get the impression that philosophy is a return ticket. One comes back
> to the same place having passed through some enthralling verbal scenery.

I think it was Rousseau who compared metaphysicians to dancers of the 
Minuet. They begin with everything neatly aligned, begin to prance daintily 
about in increasingly intricate patterns, panting and weazing, until they 
finally end up in exactly the same spot they began.

Dan