[Buddha-l] bodhi

[Dan Lusthaus]

Hi Franz,

>I can't
agree when you write,

>> So the light model does not conform to transcendent other-power
>> paradigm
>> both you and Artur are wary of.

>That is going too far. Surely this model, like light itself being both
>a particle and a wave, does both.

I like to wave at the particles while they go by. My point was not to insist 
on a singular univocal reading, but to simply to point out that much ancient 
literature -- throughout the ancient and medieval world, hence I could 
provide a discussion of related models in Aristotle and Arab philosophy --  
had a a fairly clear and distinct "model" of perception and light emitting 
from the eyes that they presupposed. We risk misconstruing what they say 
about quite a few things if we neglect to recover their presupposed model, 
and read things in some other way. One of the consequences of reading such 
things with *their* model, rather than our own, is that it is no longer 
requires connotations of the transcendent. Of course, if folks feel happier 
insisting it does, just in order to reject it, that seems like an awful lot 
of work to end up with nothing (except the feeling that someone else has 
been outsmarted), but feel free...

There are certainly all sorts of uses for "light" imagery throughout 
Buddhist literature, and they needn't all boil down to the praka"sa model. 
But why presume they were imagining the universe with the same spatial terms 
(the sun is up there) that we presuppose? That leads to (1) misunderstanding 
what they said, (2) thinking they were primitive dummies for not being aware 
of what we consider "obvious", (3) and feeling confused when reading 
something like Genesis 1 that tells us light was created but the sun, moon 
and stars didn't come along until days later (see point #2; then think about 
point #1). Shame on us for our stubborn blindness (if only we could see the 
light....).

cheers,
Dan