[Buddha-l] bodhi

[Gad Horowitz]

Gad Horowitz remarks:  Did someone say "Gad" was a strange idea?  You have 
no idea!


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Hayes" <rhayes at unm.edu>
To: "Buddhist discussion forum" <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
Sent: Friday, November 27, 2009 3:27 AM
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] bodhi


> On Nov 26, 2009, at 5:49 PM, Franz Metcalf wrote:
>
>> but the point is well
>> taken that "enlightenment" seems a good fit for the radiance of these
>> Buddhas and the blissful experience we might have in their Pure Lands.
>
> It is my role on this august November forum to steer good discussions
> into the wasteland of irrelevance. All this talk of which direction
> light goes reminds me of a linguistic turn that has taken place in
> Quaker circles. The founder of the Quakers, George Fox, spoke of an
> inward light. He insisted that it does no good to read scriptures in
> the absence of one's own inward light. It is pretty clear from his
> writings that he thought in terms of an inward light that is present
> in each person and that can be used by those who learn to still their
> minds. (Make the mind quiet and see reality? Gad, what a strange
> idea!) It is also clear that Fox thought of this light as shining
> inward from something else that is, well, outside. That outward source
> was, of course, the usual three suspects of Christian theology.
>
> The linguistic turn that has taken place is that very few modern
> Quakers talk of an inward light. The phrase has been replaced by inner
> light, the implication being that this capacity to see correctly is
> innate and needs nothing from the outside to enhance it. In those
> Quakers for whom all talk of God and the Holy Spirit are either
> linguistic habits from a previous age that have not quite died out yet
> or indirect ways of speaking of awareness, and for whom all talk of
> Christ is embarrassing and disturbing, the phrase "inward light"
> produces many heebies and even a few jeebies. Any phraseology that
> smacks of Other power stuns such Quakers into silence. If these
> Quakers were Buddhists, they would insist on rendering "budh" only as
> "awaken" and would advise that all who translate it as "be
> enlightened" be referred to a clearness committee for spirit-led
> mentoring until they see the light.
>
> A dimension of this discussion that has not yet come up (this time
> around -- this topic is one of the perennial favorites on buddha-l
> that returns like that last piece of pumpkin pie eaten on Thanksgiving
> day) is the discussion in Kathāvatthu. The discussion point is whether
> bodhi is a thing that can be obtained. Some Buddhists thought it was,
> and some thought it was not. The nay-sayers at the time of the
> Kathāvatthu included the Theravāda school. The reasoning was that
> anything that can be attained can also be lost. But bodhi cannot be
> lost. Therefore all talk of reaching it, attaining it, getting it,
> arriving at it and so forth must be seen as figurative language that
> cannot be taken literally without courting severe misunderstanding.
> The question naturally arises, if bodhi is not a thing that one
> attains, what can it be? The answer given is that "bodhi" is just a
> name given to the absence of delusion. One cannot reach, attain, get
> or arrive at an absence. All one can do is to wait until a presence
> goes away, and then one "has" an absence.
>
> That bodhi was seen as an absence (by some Buddhists) throughout the
> history of Indian Buddhism may account for why Dharmakīrti and his
> crew were so all-fired obsessed with the question of how one can know
> that something is absent. Knowing absence cannot be done through
> direct sense perception, so it requires a whole new kind of inference
> based on an anupalabdhi-hetu, evidence in the form of non-
> apprehension. It involves counterfactual reasoning of the form "If X
> were present, it would be perceived, provided that it is perceptible.
> But it is not perceived, so it must not be present (unless it is
> imperceptible)." All of the ink spilled by Buddhist epistemologists on
> this issue of how one knows absences gives all the appearance of being
> motivated by the larger question, "If bodhi is an absence, then how
> can one know that one 'has' it? Why do all those sūtras keep saying
> that when a person 'has' bodhi, she knows that she 'has' it?"
>
> I'd say more, but I have to go shift a paradigm. (If you don't turn
> paradigms over from time to time, they burn.)
>
> Richard
>
>
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