[Buddha-l] As Swami goes, so goes the nation? (Dan Lusthaus and Richard P. Hayes)

[Dan Lusthaus]

Bernie writes:

> Here is what Traga Rinpche had to say about the three natures, takenf
> rom my notes

This is one of the standard Tibetan explanations of the models. The 
explanation of parikalpita and paratantra are close to the orthodox Yogacara 
accounts:

Imputed = parikalpita
variegated (?!) = prajnapti
nonexistent = abhuta, asat, etc.

post-meditation = pṛṣṭhalabda, actually "post-Awakening experience" or 
post-āśraya-parāvṛtti; how the world conventionally looks to someone 
Awakened.

Note that some Yogacaras would treat prajnapti as straddling parikalpita AND 
paratantra, in the sense that some talk, concepts, models, etc., are "true" 
while others are not.

His "mistaken" and "unmistaken" dependent is what Asanga and Xuanzang call 
"defiled paratantra" and "pure paratantra", respectively.

Where the Rinpoche's treatment is exclusively Tibetan with no parallel in 
India or China is in identifying parinispanna with svasamvitti 
(self-cognizing awareness). This is a relatively late Tibetan development 
with a convoluted history.

Note that Richard's short summary of the trisvabhava is ok except for 
(following, again, Tibetan doxographers and numerous western secondary 
sources that imitate each other) placing the subject-object duality at the 
core. The subject-object dichotomy is a distinctively western philosophical 
dilemma (embodied, for instance, since Descartes, in the feud between 
idealism and materialism, e.g., Marx vs Kierkegaard). Some western scholars 
were attracted to the mysterious East because they imagined it could solve 
their unresolved issues, Subject vs Object being one of the loudest (just go 
through the Western philosophical, religious and mystical literature of the 
last two centuries and good luck trying to avoid it). So they impute that 
Buddhism solved it for them. That would be fine, except Buddhists, and 
especially Yogacaras, never talk about subjects and objects. They talk about 
graspers and grasped things (grahaka and grahya), or perceivers and 
perceived (alambaka and alambana) -- that is, activities (karma) engaged in 
appropriation (upadana, the crucial link in pratitya-samutpada according to 
Asanga and many abhidharmikas). Those scholars make it sound like the texts 
are concerned with subject-and-object by translating terms like 
grahya-grahaka as object and subject. That would be like translating the 
word "tofu" as "cheese" and then claiming that Asians are obsessed with 
dairy.

What purified paratantra reveals is not a resolution to the subject-object 
dichotomy, but the causal domain in its naked glory, otherwise called 
"tathata" (which, like all asamskrta dharmas, is a prajnapti).

Dan

>> The Cittamatrin school divide phenomena into three kinds, the
>> imputed, the dependent, and the truly established. The imputed is
>> divided into variegated and the nonexistent. The variegated are
>> concepts like cups and pens. The nonexistent are like sky flowers
>> and son of a barren woman. The dependent are mistaken and
>> unmistaken. The mistaken are all phenomena as they appear to our
>> deluded mind. The unmistaken are the experience of a noble one in
>> post-meditation, where phenomena are seen as dreams. The truly
>> established is self cognizing awareness. It is free of the duality
>> of subject and object and action. Its cause is beyond
>> characteristics, its result is beyond aspiration, and its nature is
>> emptiness.