[Buddha-l] Fsat Mnifdlunses?

[andy]

On Wednesday 12 August 2009 10:59:47 Dan Lusthaus wrote:
> You are echoing the kantian and post-kantian impasse -- no way to reach the
> noumenal, except in phenomenal approximations. The noumenal is supposed to
> be forever out of reach.
>
> But Yogacara, like pretty much all Buddhists, accepts there is something
> called anuttara-samyak-sambodhi which at minimum includes, at maximum is
> constituted by seeing yathaa-bhuutam, which, to rephrase in kantian
> terminology, would be direct cognitive access to the noumenal. The final
> barrier, j~neya-aavara.na (obstruction from the knowable) is overcome.
>
> >  In my very
> > limited understanding, Yogacara seems to suggest that the realisation of
> > things as they are would be unity of perceiver and perceived through the
> > elimination of the projections.
>
> 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.

Wow, this is just, so,   wrong!  Sankara, after all, was a crypto-Buddhist!  
And what we need here is a Hegelian idealism, any way. Noumena?  Show me your 
noumena, and I will show you mine!  Great threat to make, since you can't show 
me yours, since there is none and if you did it would be mine anyway, but even 
better since you can't show me yours, I can still pretend to have mine? 

Somehow I knew that the idealism/Yogacara thing would set Dan off.  But I 
still have to insist, as a non-practicioner, that the reality that one is to 
awake to is the lack of reality, or pratchityasamutpada, dependent co-
origination, so there is no noumena, only nirvana.   The "mysterium et 
tremendum" constantly calls, don' it?  Like your original face, before your 
parents were born.   So lets go easy with the philosophical debates, lest  we 
end up in ad filiams. 

-- 
Ari Fleisher said people should watch what they say.  Obama says people should 
be careful who they listen to.  See the difference?