[Buddha-l] MMK 25.09 (was: as Swami goes...)

[Richard Hayes]

On Apr 29, 2010, at 4:02 PM, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> Richard, it's clear you don't see the problem, so I probably did not spell 
> it out with sufficient clarity. You believe there is no problem. I haven't 
> time now to spell out in detail why there is. We would have to review 
> several MMK chapters, starting with ch. 2 perhaps to clarify why there can 
> be no casual idioms implying continuities for Nagarjuna, especially one's 
> employing the loaded terms used in MMK 25.9.

I understand that. And that's why I make the claim in as many ways as I can that I am not using any causal idioms that imply continuities. It is very difficult to communicate using language without using words. If anyone who uses words is accused ipso facto of reification, then there can be no communication. If the Buddha can say (and mean) "I use the same language as everyone else, but I am not misled by it," then I can say (and mean) the same thing; I take it one need not be a Buddha to have taken the cure against the disease of reification.

> That you've taken to name-calling 
> doesn't help matters.

I have not taken to name-calling at all. I have taken to punning. The words "idiom" and "idiot" proved irresistible to me. (It's not much of a pun, I admit, since both are derived from the same Greek word, but I had hoped it would make someone smile.) It never occurred to me that anyone would be so hypersensitive that they would take it personally—especially a Buddhist who knows that taking things personally is a form of moha. 

> That your position has been that (1) there is 
> something there, which you designate a "process",

No, I do not have the position that there is something there at all. My only commitment is to the position that there are two ideas. One idea is that there is a coming into being and a passing away due to conditions. That idea has the label saṃsāra. The other idea is that there is a coming into being an passing away without conditions. That idea is called nirvāṇa.

> (2) whether that 
> process is to be considered samsara or nirvana depends entirely on how one 
> looks at it (psychology),

Close, but no cigar. More accurate it would be to say that my position is that one can have an idea that a process is conditioned, or one can have an idea that a process is not conditioned. 

>  is not something I am falsely attributing to you.

You are not attributing to me words I have not used. You have simply interpreted them incorrectly. You have made a mistake in exegesis, and despite my trying in various ways to inform you that I do not mean anything like what you claim I mean, you persist in thinking that I mean what you imagine I mean rather than what I in fact do mean. (I can't help seeing a parallel between this issue and a host of other issues we have talked about. There is a tendency on your part to practice the opposite of charitable interpretation. Your style takes the form of assuming that your interlocutor is saying something quite outrageously wrong-headed.) 

> And you accuse Nagarjuna of equivocating.

I accuse him of equivocating because he uses terminology in different senses to make an argument appear valid. What I am doing is using one word in two phrases and insisting that despite the use of the same word, I am not claiming the two words have the same referent. That is not equivocating at all. It would be as if I were to say "I have a dream of a world in which there is no more war," and Geert Wilders were to say "I have a dream of a Europe free of Muslim immigrants," and then someone were to say "Aha! You are claiming there is one and the same dream that that has one quality in your mind and another quality in Geert Wilder's mind. So you must believe in svabhāvas." I hope you can see that there would be no validity at all that that claim, and I hope that by now you also see that when I say that one person sees a conditioned process and someone else sees an unconditioned process, there is no need to assume that there is only one process that is being viewed by two different people in different ways. 


-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
MSC03 2140
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001

http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
rhayes at unm.edu