[Buddha-l] Non-arising

[Dan Lusthaus]

Dear Bernhard,

> 1. 'anupattika-dharma-kṣānti:
> if I subsume the arguments about this point, I think the following would
> not be completely wrong:
> 'stability and patience resulting from an experience of the non-arising'.

That would be the diplomatic, straddle-both-options, solution. I'm not sure 
it is fully satisfactory.

Going back to Lamotte, he clearly differentiated two major, distinct senses 
in which ksanti is being used in Buddhist literature, noting that he is not 
the first to notice that different texts and authors define it differently.

The scholarly approach to evaluating this would not to simply play some 
etymological games, which are ok for email shorthand, but to carefully 
examine each of the texts he brings into evidence. After doing so, it will 
become increasingly more difficult to maintain the diplomatic solution 
without feeling dishonest. Examining each of those texts is probably not 
most efficiently accomplished on an email list, but if people want spend the 
time...

> 2.
>> Where water, earth, fire, & wind have no footing:
>>     There the stars do not shine,
>>         the sun is not visible,
>>         the moon does not appear,
>>         darkness is not found.
>> ...
>> Note the inclusion of "darkness is not found." Important.
>
> Why ist this point important for you?

It's also important for the commentators. Darkness (tamas) is a euphemism 
for ignorance. This is also a case where something (supposedly) positive is 
being defined negatively, by what it is not. After listing the absence of 
light-sources, it also says darkness (tamas) is not found. Does one leap to 
the opposite side, and assume there IS light? Is something else going on? It 
recontextualizes everything that precedes; it's not just another item on a 
checklist.

> I understand this just as a description of an 'experience' of the
> non-arising.

Why? It arose as a direct consequence of a conversation, however brief, with 
Buddha, driven by an obsessive compulsion to know. Many Zen stories mirror 
this (though they usually only make it to the moment of death, and then 
resolve the problem before death occurs). It has causes and conditions, 
context, and an urgent timeliness within the narrative.

The narrative of this sutta is not just a story-frame for an exceptional 
exchange and closing verse (though it is that as well). The narrative is, in 
my opinion, perhaps more important or at least equally important to the 
"wisdom words" encompassed within, like pearls in a smelly oyster. Every 
detail is crucial, from the egotism, to the dead relative, to the obsession, 
to relentless pursuit of the teacher's attention, to the quick exchange, to 
the blessed mother-cow (what does being awakened but being unable to tell a 
dangerous cow from a nonthreatening one tell us about what being awake 
means?), to the eulogy and funeral of a non-monk as if an arhat.

The sutta is the quintessential zen story -- obsession leads to 
enlightenment, with a "turning phrase". Stupas, asking 3 times, Buddha's 
guiltless reaction to the cow tragedy (or was the stupa business 
conscience?), another case of a laymen "getting it" almost instantly while 
monks trudge back and forth to town endlessly and remain clueless (yeah, but 
if he would have been a monk on breakfast rounds he might have avoided the 
cow....). He is treated to the royal monk funeral, though not a monk. An 
honorary brother (there are a number of these interesting post-death 
pronouncements by the Pali Buddha, e.g., re: suicide, etc.). Enlightenment 
does not prevent death or tragedy, and apparenlty it does not include the 
ability to read warning signals from overdefensive bovines. So much for 
omniscience (Buddha's or Bahiya's -- but of course in the Tevijjavacchagotta 
in Majjh. N. Buddha denies omniscience). His unwittingly predictive comment 
to get B to talk to him: Hey, Mr. B., we don't know how long you will live 
or how long I will live (so let's get with the program!). His inpatience is 
so American...

The sutta can be endlessly, fruitfully interrogated.

> Why do you stress this 'iti' - I cannot see the difference?

iti can serve several functions, one of which is to act as closing-quotation 
marks for a quote. One usually does not use it when merely speaking 
extemporaneously, but when quoting something or someone, or setting off the 
previous expression is some way. As I mentioned, in the other version of the 
boilerplate addressed to Māluṅkyaputta (which also explicitly labels the 
boilerplate as the Condensed version of Buddhadharma for people who don't 
have long to live and are in a hurry to "get it") there are no iti-s. The 
Māluṅkyaputta version is much slicker, more worked over, more redacted, at 
least in my opinion. We have a more raw version -- though clearly carefully 
crafted, in the Bāhiya sutta version.

One iti would have suggested the above is template. Two separate iti-s 
suggest that the two passages are both quotes taken from elsewhere. Since it 
seems they only occur together (the Māluṅkyaputta version being the only 
other occasion), the two iti-s suggest that there used to be versions of 
these templates where the two passages that were brought together in this 
sutta where originally separate. The seams have been erased in the 
Māluṅkyaputta version (where further contextual explanation is provided, 
i.e., this is what you tell to those getting close to death, implying that 
one should read back into the Bāhiya version a predictive quality to Buddha 
having chosen that particular condensed version -- as if the Māluṅkyaputta 
version is a partial commentary on the Bāhiya version).

All this goes directly to the important philological questions raised by 
Bankei. When reading the Pali texts you are not reading transcripts, but 
carefully crafted and heavily redacted accounts. And not always the earliest 
versions (Schopen has demonstrated that).

> Well - cute.
> Might be Buddha would have answered to you: 'I will not tell you' :-)
> My background is that of a theoretical physicist and a longyears
> buddhist practioner. So if you come up with 'causes' and Nagarjuna, I
> would say: does not apply.

Nagarjuna says it does apply -- Buddhism is not a vacation from physics 
unless it relinquishes its claim to speak about things like "reality."

Nagarjuna's fellow Buddhists had similar misconceptions. While they didn't 
talk about the Transcendent, they do talk a lot about the Unconditioned 
(asamskrta). They quibble about what fits that category and what does not, 
and even whether it is a coherent category (e.g., Sautrantikas and Yogacaras 
consider asamskrta to be prajnapti, not dravya, which means only nominal 
existents, not actual entities). Lots of Buddhists considered nirvana to be 
asamskrta (though it is never included on Abhidharma lists of asamskrta 
dharmas).

Unconditioned means precisely that it is not produced by causes and 
conditions, i.e., nonarising, nonceasing. So Nagarjuna asked his fellow 
Buddhists a version of the same questions I asked:

If Nirvana is unconditioned, then there are no causes and conditions which 
can produce it.
Buddhists say there is a Marga (Path/method) that if you do X, Y, and Z, you 
will attain nirvana.
If X, Y, and Z lead to the attainment of nirvana, then nirvana is not 
unconditioned, since one has just stipulated the conditions.
OR
Nirvana IS unconditioned, in which case the claim that X, Y, and Z lead to 
the attainment of Nirvana is nonsense.
In either case, Nagarjuna concludes, Buddhists are speaking nonsense.


>from the modern mathematical viewpoint Nagarjunas logic is full of
> errors - but I will not discuss this here - so forget this statement.) 
> ;-))

Why? You might draw Richard H. out of hiding. That's been one of his 
favorite theses for many years.

Nagarjuna's "logic" is sound, in my opinion, as the example above suggests. 
One has to be careful to not "mistranslate" his statements into strawman 
versions of his arguments when converting them to mathematical 
(non-)equivalents.

> For example 'cause & effect':
> this concept in its traditional simple form is not an adequate
> description of experiences of this world.

And here you agree with Nagarjuna who takes up this point in the very first 
chapter on his Mula-madhyamaka-karika.

> So these meditation experiences I'm talking about are 'non-causal' in
> that sense, that you cannot control these experiences, but they are
> causal in that sense, that they have a base (a cause) in our brains.

Don't say "brain" in front of Dee. She prefers her bio-psychology in the 
2500 year vintage when the thinking organ was the heart.

>the experience of 'no-time', while an external clock is running on,
> is only for philosophers an annoyance :-)

Philosophers are delighted, not annoyed, with these sorts experiences. They 
fill books with them.

But you must recognize that you have entered a very strange linguistic 
space. Causes are not called "causes," experiences in time and of time are 
called "atemporal," and everything gets a name close to the opposite of what 
it is. That is not only confusing and misleading (and the reasons why that 
sort of reversal is attractive, even thrilling, is of great interest to 
Nagarjuna and Yogacaras), it is what the Buddhists label viparyasa, turning 
things up-side down, lit. "perverse."

Dan