[Buddha-l] bodhi

[Dan Lusthaus]

Joy! It's been a long time since you posted. Glad to see you are still with 
us. Hope all is well.

There are numerous other passages in the Pali texts similar to the one you 
chose. Since "luminous mind" becomes central in East Asian and Tibetan 
Buddhism via tathatagarbha, any standard piece of Japanese scholarship will 
usually devote the first chapter or two to rounding them all up... I won't 
repeat that here, since anyone interested can now do the same with 
e-versions of the Pali Tipitaka and a decent search engine.

The passage you picked will do for "instructional" purposes:

---
There seems to have been some messing about with light in Anguttara
nikaya 1.49
“Pabhassaramidam bhikkhave cittam tanca kho akantukehi uppakkilesehi
uppakkilittham”
“Monks, naturally the mind is bright, but by the visit of defilements,
it is polluted.” (English translation picked up somewhere on the Internet)
----

PTS Dictionary offers:

Pabhassara (adj.) [fr. bhas] shining, very bright, resplendent S i.145; 
v.92, 283; A i.10, 254, 257 sq., iii.16; Sn 48 (=parisuddha pariyodata Nd2 
402)

But the literalists in our midst might object to translating <uppakkilesehi 
uppakkilittham> as "by the visit of defilements,
it is polluted", since "defilements" and "polluted" derive from distinct 
roots, while <uppakkilesehi uppakkilittham> are redundant reiterations of 
the same underlying term (so, either "defiled by defilements" or "polluted 
by pollutants").

Eric will tell you that this defilement, like light, comes from "elsewhere" 
(Persia, most likely), so the way to enlightenment, er, I mean awakening, is 
to shake all the foreign Iranian radioactive dust from your eyes.

>Could there possibly be a link between light and awakening?

Apparently folks need some reminding that the "Awakening" story of the 
Buddha places him under a tree through the night, seeing things throughout 
the three watches (roughly 2100h-midnight, 000h-0300h, and 3h-6h -that's 
9pm-midnite, midnite-3am, 3am-6am in US daylight savings time), which 
culminates in his waking from his nightlong meditation just at the moment 
that the sun cracked the horizon illuminating the scene. Coincidence? Or was 
he awakened from his meditation by a Persian sun traveling eastward?


>It is my personal bias to consider
exclusion more biased and less enlightened or awakened than inclusion.
That tends to make things messier, but also provides more fun.

You would fit in fine with E. Asian Buddhists who share that prejudice... 
harmony above all is the way they would put it. The Indians, on the other 
hand, stressed *exclusion*, the word for which is apoha.

Dan