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

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard H. writes:
> 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.

Perhaps. It would seem to be Nagarjuna's point -- and we were discussing 
MMK -- that no language is innocent, especially when employed in 
philosophical claims or ontological claims or talk of nirvana vs samsara, 
etc. Nagarjuna's insight -- if we might be allowed to call it that -- is 
that svabhavic presuppositions lurk where we least expect them, and his 
method -- if we might be allowed to call it that -- is to expose those 
presuppositions, ferret them out, and encourage the adept to eliminate them.

Whether something is being reified or not becomes, on the one hand, a 
judgement call, and, on the other, an artifice of language. Might someone's 
language subliminally commit them to a svabhavic reification without their 
realizing it? If that were not the case, MMK would have been unnecessary.


> 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

I didn't say I took it personally, or even that I was offended. Only that 
there was some name-calling entering the tone of the otherwise polite 
exchange. I would have to be an idiot to take it personally.

> No, I do not have the position that there is something there at all.

If I understand your further clarifications, you are now saying that someone 
else might have this or that "idea" about a process (bhāva) -- which aren't 
necessarily "ideas" that you personally share.

The question was not whether you personally are committed to either or both 
alternatives in MMK 25.9, but what those ideas themselves are, and how they 
relate to each other. Did you -- "a Buddhist who knows that taking things 
personally is a form of moha" -- think we were talking about your personal 
belief rather than your proposed interpretation of the karika?

> You are not attributing to me words I have not used. You have simply 
> interpreted them incorrectly.

Am I getting warmer?

>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.

Doesn't the karika itself structurally and conceptually require that, since 
it is the bhāva-coming-and-going that can be seen samsarically or 
nirvanically, yes? Or, even more forcefully, it is precisely the 
bhāva-coming-and-going upadayicly and pratitya-ly that -- when not-upadayic 
and not-pratityic -- is taught to be nirvana. Repeat:

The bhāva-coming-and-going upadayicly or pratitya-ly -- when not-upadayic 
and not-pratityic -- is taught to be nirvana.
 ya ājavaṃjavībhāva upādāya pratītya vā |
 so 'pratītyānupādāya nirvāṇam upadiśyate ||

So the identity between the two views of process is not a matter of your 
personal choice or preference, but part of how the karika is constructed.

No?

Dan