[Buddha-l] Batchelor

[Dan Lusthaus]

>What's your opinion on
> the influence of Sāmkhya on the Yogacāra? I ask this because reading the
> phenomenologist Michel Henry reminded me of Sāmkhya.

Anxiety of Influence (cf. Harold Bloom). Yogacara borrows a lot of Samkhyan 
terminology and more, and is at pains to point out the difference between 
their own use of such terms and the Samkhyan usage. Samkhya was big around 
the time that Yogacara started, and continued to be influential until the 
8th c. or so, when it was eclipsed by other schools (Mimamsikas were the 
only Hindu atheists allowed after that -- even the Vaisesikas discovered 
God).

>Al Farabi, Duns Scotus and Thomas were positive about God's creation of
contingent things.

I said "some", not "all." These were the sorts of things hotly debated at 
the time. Did God know particulars (i.e., individuals), or only universals 
(Ibn Rushd and Maimonides held the latter to be the case; Aquinas insisted 
he knew individuals).

The contingent has SOME necessity in it -- and that is God's contribution. 
If he controls it all, then it is no longer contingent, everything becomes 
predestined, and all sorts of related problems follow.

> >  Enter Sartre -- a pure philosophy of the will,
>> projection can engender its own telos, living for the project, which can 
>> be
>> invented ex nihilo.
>Engagement, mon ami, and choice, freedom and responsability.

All defined vis-a-vis will. All matters of will par excellence.

Dan