Labeling and inherent nature - Svatantrika vs. Prasangika

[catmoon]

This thread has, after a painstaking review involving over seven cat-minutes of painful effort, won an award. Yep, it's official.


It gives me great pleasure to devolve upon this thread the title





Mind Bendingly Fiendishy Intricate and Worse for Your Head Than Those Mushrooms You Found in the Foldout Sofa That Had Been There Since Jimi Hendrix Left Them There in 1967 Thread of the Year.

So let it be known.

[5heaps]

Actually if you re-read the posts I was the one to explain that for prasangika all minds are valid with regard to their appearing objects

if you say that then we're in agreement. but where did you say it?
"it is the mind that is described as being valid with respect to the appearing object (even when is a wrong consciousness) - not "car"!"
but that can't be it, since car is the appearing object of the book and car example, and you have said that there is nothing valid about car in this example (the meaning of car being valid is that the mind holding car has validly ascertained the factor car)

[Tsongkhapafan]

So a book could be labeled a cat, car, or cloud. Why not? There's no inherent nature.

1. Is this understanding of the criticism correct?
2. What is the Prasangika refutation?

No, it's not a valid criticism, but I can see how the criticism would arise.

The refutation would be that everything is a dependent arising, lacking inherent existence, and because of that, the causes and conditions that come together to produce cat and the causes and conditions that come together to produce car are quite different, and therefore their effects are quite different. They perform different functions and therefore, because the mere appearance of cat does not perform the function of the mere appearance of car and vice-versa, it is not suitable to label a cat as a car or a car as a cat.

Dependent arising and its implication, emptiness, are the very reason why it's not suitable to label anything as anything. Things are different because of emptiness, not because they are inherently existent.

[5heaps]

Dependent arising and its implication, emptiness, are the very reason why it's not suitable to label anything as anything.

as Berzin said, the appearance is accurate. even the appearing object of a hallucination that is a nonconceptual sense consciousness is accurate.

this means that 'cat' onto a book is not wrong, because there is nothing, no characteristic, from the side of the book, that has a power to reveal itself to the mind. it is established only by way of imputation and here the imputing consciousness is the conceptual mind which has cat as its appearing object. its only the schools which assert inherent existence that decide that something is accurate based on whether the apprehended object and the subjective aspect match causally, by way of findable characteristics