[Buddha-l] Fsat Mnifdlunses?

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard,
>Perhaps we
> should take a page from Rorty's book and modify his famous quip to our
> issue by saying "Yogācāra is just a word in search of a referent."

True. Same goes for "madhyamaka," "Buddhist," "Indian," "Nagarjuna," and 
pretty much every other proper noun (and many improper ones as well), esp. 
if a referent is expected to be univocal.

As for Dharmakirti's argument in Santanantara-siddhi, my understanding of 
what he argues is a bit different, but I await further elucidation from you. 
I understand that his argument is not about affirming other minds at the 
expense of denying they have bodies, but something more nuanced, viz., that 
to the question: 'How do we know other minds?' (already posed in Buddhist 
literature earlier, e.g., in Vimsatika), he responds that we don't know them 
directly, but indirectly, by inference. How do we make such inferences? By 
observing their bodily and vocal gestures (what the Abhidharmikas would call 
kaya-mano-vijnapti), recognizing that when we ourselves do such actions 
(e.g., carry food by hand from plate to mouth, or speak in certain tone of 
voice) our physical action is mentally directed by certain intentions. Ergo, 
the other bodies out there are likely acting with comparable intentions. So, 
not only is he failing to deny that others have bodies, he is arguing that 
it is only because they and we have bodies that we can know what they think, 
intend, feel, etc. Is that not what he argues?

As for the fact that opponents of Yogacara often tried to paint them into an 
absurd idealist corner should be taken no more seriously than when the very 
same accusers accuse Madhyamaka of being nihilist (naastika). It is because 
such baseless charges were constantly being leveled that Dharmakirti had to 
take the time to refute the accusation of being a solipsist, and the 
Yogacara lit. is filled with comparable denials of all the other baseless 
charges that continue, to this day, to be leveled against them. Perhaps 
someone will one day write a dissertation gathering all the responses WITHIN 
the Yogacara texts to these distortions.

Dan