[Buddha-l] American Philosophical Society

[Richard Hayes]

On Feb 24, 2013, at 09:40 , Erik Hoogcarspel <jehmsi at xs4all.nl>
 wrote:

> The Buddha himself hesitated for a while to teach, because he considered his teaching to be too difficult for people to understand.

As I read the text, the Buddha did not consider his teaching to be too difficult to understand. Rather, he thought that most people would be unwilling to accept them. 

> You have been studying the texts of Dignaga and Dharmakirti, which AFAIK very few people call straightforward.

Dignāga was straightforward enough. What made it difficult to study him for some time was that his writings were available only in two rather flawed Tibetan translations, but as his writings have become available in Sanskrit, they turn out to be rather easy to understand. Dharmakīrti, of course, was another story. He was a very bad writer with a lot of half-baked ideas. People who have muddled thoughts that are ambiguously expressed are rarely easy to understand. I personally regret having wasted so much of my life trying to understand Dharmakīrti and that other philosophical charlatan, Nāgārjuna.

> So if we are in degenerated times, this has begun a long time ago.

I quite agree that it started long ago. I was not suggesting that the age of counterfeit dharma is new. Rather, I'm saying that we are now very deep into the age of degenerate dharma, an age in which useless teachings outweigh useful teachings by a considerable degree.

Richard