[Buddha-l] Buddhists taking a stand against Islamaphobia

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Thanks Dan, you gave me a lot to chew on.

Op 9-8-2012 22:06, Dan Lusthaus schreef:
>>
>> No, it is mostly ontological, see:
>> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/solipsism
> Using non-specialized dictionaries to define philosophical terms is not a
> good idea, but to humor you this time, let's examine what merriam-webster
> has to say when defining "solipsism":
>
> "a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications
> and that the self is the only existent thing; also : extreme egocentrism"
>
> Please take careful note of the word "and" which links two related but
> distinct claims. The first, that one cannot know anything except mentally.
> That is epistemological idealism. The second, "the self is the only existent
> thing" is the extreme version known as solipsism -- exactly as I explained
> previously.
Sorry, but when I learned logic 'and' was the combination of two 
conditions which both have to be fulfilled. Be we can just settle for 
the solution as indicated in the Wikipedia lemma, where there is both an 
epistemological and a metaphysical solipsism.

>> So yes, you can only know what is
>> going on in the world, there is nothing else to know,
> Really? You have no imagination? Or that is "in the world"? Can't tell the
> difference between fantasy and reality? Have you worked through Husserl's
> _Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898-1925)_?
>
> http://tinyurl.com/bpckbr7
>
> I recommend it. Might clear up some of your misconceptions and is directly
> germane to the games you are trying to play.
Before you accused me of an ad hominem, that is okay, but it would give 
you some credit if you could refrain form this kind of insinuations.
I agree that the question of the imagination is a complicated one and in 
the later works is it hooked up with the problem of time. But 'the 
world' or the life world (Lebenswelt) is a standard concept in 
phenomenology, it is the horizon of all horizons, the 
Verweisungszusammenhang (referral cohesion) of things and persons. So 
yes imagination if it takes place is knowable in so far as it publicised.
In fact time is part of the lifeworld, and the imagination takes part in 
protentions, so the imagination takes part in the cognitive process.
>
>> but you 'do' this
>> with your mind, and in this sense you only know what is in your mind.
> Husserl, almost as strongly as Buddhists, would remind you that there are
> senses at play --
Well sense by itself cannot know anything. You need consciouness with 
its categorical and other acts, to know something.
> Just as you would fail to read the names of Augustine, Maimonides and 
> Aquinas in the Bible, and yet it is obvious that they read and were 
> influenced by the Bible. Merleau-Ponty himself discusses the optic chiasm;
where?
>   
> it contributed to his selecting that term for an important aspect of his
> later philosophy -- an "interleaving" (as some have translated it), not a
> simple "mutual interpenetration", which would describe Huayan perhaps, but
> not Merleau-Ponty. His sense of dialectic was always more complex than that.
> There might be some "ambiguity" when trying to differentiate between the
> lived body and perceptual field, but their difference is felt and primary.

'...the idea of a /chiasma/, which means every relation with being is at 
the same time grasping and being grasped, the grasp is being grasped, it 
is registered en registers in the same being that takes it.'  (Working 
notes VI 1960) In VI the last chapter is about chiasm and intertwining, 
but intertwining of perception and perceiver and intertwinings of 
perceptions. Your association with optical chiasm is nothing short of 
the kind scientism Hussler and other phenomenologists fought against all 
of their lives.

Thanks for the list, I will copy it and save it, though the readers are 
not very usefull, I have all of Merleau-Ponty's books here right beside 
me. For secondary literature I prefer the French or German, because they 
suffer less from the language barrier.
> The "working notes", compiled and homogenized (sort of) by the 
> editors, were in fact not his final outlines of where he was headed. 
> For more details, see Douglas Low's book mentioned above. 
Thanks for the hint, I'll look into this Low.
>> He may have inspired Derrida, but you will find no 'différance' in Le
>> visible et l'invisible.
> Meaningless sloganeering.
Thank you, you really know how to please a guy.
> MMK, Ch. 26. (and my reading is anything but "realist")
well, my point is that N has a different take on being. The things we 
take for real are just an illusion according to him and this is not 
because of language, like Russell and Wittgenstein argued, but because 
we believe in things and persons, we live by them. This has to do with 
wrong view feeded by attachment. I gathered from you that you blame 
language as the analytics do and I do not agree that this is N's view.
>
> Explaining the word "kalpitātmanā" that ends v. 10, Vasubandhu writes:
>
> yo bālair dharmāṇāṃ svabhāvo grāhyagrāhakādiḥ parikalpatas tena
> kalpitenātmanā teṣāṃ nairātmyaṃ na tv anabhilāpyenātmanā yo buddhānāṃ viṣaya
> iti |
>
> "buddhānāṃ viṣaya" (buddhānāṃ is genitive) expresses correspondence, the
> viṣaya of the buddhas.
>
> Kochumuttom's less than ideal translation renders the above passage thus:
>
> "[The self and the objects are non-substantial]
> With regard to their imagined nature.
>
> The ignorant people imagine that dharmas are in the nature of being
> graspable and grasper etc. The non-substantiality of the dharmas is with
> regard to this imagined nature, not with regard to the ineffable nature,
> which is the object [of the knowledge] of the enlightened ones."
>
> All this comes about as Vasubandhu responds to an objector who accuses the
> vijnapti-matra understanding of dharmanairātmya of entailing that no dharmas
> at all exist (yadi tarhi sarvathā dharmo nāsti tad api vijñaptimātraṃ
> nāstīti kathaṃ tarhi vyavasthāpyate), an interpretation Vasubandhu
> explicitly and forcefully rejects (na khalu sarvathā dharmo nāstīty evaṃ
> dharmanairātmyapraveśo bhavati | api tu | *kalpitātmanā*)
>
> dharmanairātmya only deems parikalpita (grasper-grasped, etc.) as the
> rejectable nonexistent, not all dharmas. Buddhas, devoid of such parikalpa,
> still have viṣaya, but (as Dignaga would remind us) such a viṣaya is
> nonlinguistic, nonconceptual (anabhilāpya).
Interesting, so when the Buddha saw a stone he didn't know that is a 
stone nor did he know the word for it? How would the Buddha know his way 
to Śravaṣti when going on alms round if he didn't have any concepts? How 
could he preach all these sūtras?
And if the Buddha can do without concepts, the correspondence theory 
doesn't apply in his case, so he doesn't know the truth. If so how can 
he be a Tathāgata (one who has come to the truth)?
>
>> A dog also gets mad when
>> you take away his food, but this does not mean that he has a clear idea
>> of possession.
> His bark and bite demonstrate he does possess a VERY clear idea, one he is
> eager to act upon, and he is more than willing to share his idea with you
> should you try to take from him what is his.
I love dogs and I have often watched their behaviour. They have greed 
sometimes, they get hungry, angry etc., they even have emotions, but 
they certainly have no idea at all (unlike in Walt Disney's cartoons) of 
what they are doing, they have no 'world'. They have no language and yet 
they are not Buddhas.
I heard a biologist describe a cat fight the other day and it struck him 
that the cats didn't seem to get angry, but just acted out their part in 
the game. You don't need ideas to 'act'. Some people act a lot and 
rarely have ideas, we call them bankers, politicians, generals, CEO's, 
etc. They act automatically and even see this as a part of their 
expertise. They say they know how the system works and how to play ball. 
But they have NO idea.

Erik