[Buddha-l] the seeds of manas and achetypes

[Dan Lusthaus]

Elvin,

I am a "follower" of no one. The Hosso school is based primarily on the
translations of Xuanzang -- which are Indian texts translated into Chinese.
Based on Xuanzang's oral instructions, his students, such as Kiuji -- and
several Japanese monks who came to China to study with Xuanzang, and others
who came to study with Kuiji and then later Weishi (Vijnapti-matra) Chinese
masters, bringing it to Japan, where in the early phase of Japanese
Buddhism, the Nara period, Hosso was dominant.  Rev. Tagawa is a living
recipient of the Nara Hosso school. He wrote the book (in Japanese) for a
popular audience, since even in Japan Hosso is not well understood but it
has been undergoing a resurgence, especially in the Nara area and among the
most serious minded students of Buddhism (Japanese blogs are filled with
interesting discussions of difficult minutiae of Yogacara doctrine).
Tagawa's grasp of Yogacara doctrine is sound.

There are indeed some innovations that Japanese Hosso introduced, largely in
response to attacks from Tendai, Shingon, etc., but they didn't stray far,
and they still considered the Cheng weishilun and Yogacarabhumi definitive.
They did not invent their own theory of manas, but followed what they
perceived to be the orthodox model faithfully. They did nor Jung, nor Freud,
nor Gnostics, or any of the other irrelevant literature.

> Mr. Lusthaus is I think a follower of the Indian and Chinese
> Yogacarinn and the Hosso Rev. Tagawa is a follower of the Japanese
> Yogacarin (actually Hosso = "Japanese Yogocarin").

And you are representing the Jungian school of Yogacara?

The question would be: What do people imagine is gained by resisting to read
a text on its own terms, and insist on reducing it to models, categories and
assumptions that it does not share or accept?

"Compare and contrast" -- see what is the same (or similar) and what is
different about two *different* things. You want to minimize differences and
privilege identity -- at the cost of accurate understanding. That's vedanta,
not Buddhism. Buddhists relish contrast, difference, accuracy. We often
initially approach something new by trying to view it in terms of things we
already know, the "like knows like" principle. But in the end that's merely
narcissism; one has to outgrow that and see others for what they are. That
means being open to them, and stretching out from one's safe cubby hole of
treasured ideas wrapped in the security blanket of comfortable notions.
Emerging from that ignorant cave, coming to understand the other, the truly
different and radically new on its own terms is, finally, what "learning"
means. Otherwise one is just making a denser and denser narcissistic stew to
steep in. Overcoming narcissism, btw, is precisely the main thrust of
Yogacara. They call narcissism "vijnapti-matra."

As for manas, I think Jayarava's explanation of seeds was fine, and a good
place to start thinking about why Jung and Yogacara do not inhabit the same
universe. Jung's archetypes are actual archetypes -- once and for all
eternal types that take form within individuals. Yogacara seeds are
momentary, subject to cause and effect; manas does not house its own
seeds -- they are stored in the alayavijnana, and are in constant flux. The
main (and some claim only) cognitive object that manas perceives is the
alayavijnana and its activities, which it mistakes for a "self." Manas is an
introspective, proud, conceited, appropriating I-maker, a sensibility that
puts oneself above all others. The dissimilarities mount, the more you know
about it....

Dan