Jnana wrote:It's quite simple really: In the context of the Kagyu teachings under discussion ālaya ≠ ālayavijñāna. And in the Indian Yogācāra tradition the revolved basis (āśrayaparivṛtti) ≠ ālayavijñāna. The ālayavijñāna is the root of all defilements, and the ālayavijñāna is eliminated through the revolution of the basis.
Okay. I get that you are telling us what the standard school dogma is. The OP was scrutinizing just these ideas. I was adding to that. The OP's mode of discussion was to try and see if the terms and associated systems withstand analysis. He is not asking what the standard ideas are. He appears to know those enough to comment.
deepbluehum wrote:I'd suggest to you that raising absurd qualms and objections probably isn't all that helpful.
You mentioned that just because I don't understand something does not make it meaningless. This advice applies here to you. The terms you quoted above do not show that the terms withstand analysis. I hope I don't have to give you a lesson on why that is. It should be obvious for someone with a college degree. But just in case, I will give you a hint. You have introduced premises, nothing more. We have not analyzed if these premises are feasible or necessary. I would suggest to you that if you were to look more closely at my posts in this thread, they show that the alternative valid formulation would suggest that none of these formulations are essential. Because if a premise is essential, there is only one way to form it logically, like pi. If there are multiple ways to formulate something, like 3-1-1=1 or 2-1=1, that fluidity would tend to show a more organic system that can be updated for greater efficiency and usefulness. Then, simply relying on past formulations would not be desirable.
Let's take the example of alayavijnana is ignorance, and when that ignorance is purified, it is the alaya/nirvana. There is a distinct logical problem in this premise, and that is ignorance is not a substance or a medium. It is an absence. Thus if the alayavijnana is just ignorance, there's no alayavijnana. This is also how I understand the OP's objections to Yogacara. But if you take the alayavijnana to be emptiness, and ignorance is the concurrent commission of 7 and down, then one can of course be ignorant of 8. Once that ignorance is gone, and knowledge of it arises, there it is in it's own pure form.
I would assert that these logical problems only arise because the ancient logicians treated processes as things. Where there was dynamism and verbing, their use of language solidified the processes into nouns. A pragmatic problem is thereby transformed into a metaphysical problem. And as we all know, metaphysics has been downgraded by advances in philosophy. If we take a pragmatic approach to these issues, it opens up this field to our modern world, of course, at the risk of contradicted past masters who might still be worshipped.