Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

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MiphamFan
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Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

Post by MiphamFan »

In another thread, now locked, a poster called Atom indicated that based on the work of some scholars’ interpretation of Prajnaparamita texts, there are practitioners who have based their practice around attaining a state of cessation of sensory experiences. They base this mainly around the idea that dependent arising only refers to sensory phenomena, not as a general explanation of how things arise.

Atom also mentions that quite a few studies on meditation based on the idea of cessation have appeared since 2020.

I am curious on a few points:

1. Are these scholars actually promulgating this view? Especially e.g. Huifeng, who actually trained as a monk in Chinese Chan? I want to put aside the question of “Chinese origins”, which I don’t find very interesting at all, unlike Jayarava, and stating that Pratītyasamutpāda ONLY applies to sensory phenomena, which I find rather ludicrous, reductionistic, and based on a modernist metaphysical viewpoint.

In the traditions I have studied, there is always some element of an idea that pratītyasamutpāda applies to both “external” and “internal” phenomena, not only that but throughout Buddhist literature, there is a pervasive idea that teachings apply on the outer, inner, and perhaps secret levels of understanding, whether it’s the Abhisamayalankara or tantra. The teachings on the Bodhisatva stages apply just as much to the stages of an ordinary practitioner.

2. Who are the people who are espousing this view, and what do they say about it exactly? From Atom’s post, it seems that they believe that nirvana is just cessation of sensory experience and that this is to be accomplished as an end in itself?

The closest state to this described in a positive sense in Buddhist literature is nirodha samapatti, however, there are similar states without sensory awareness that are described as creating a cause for animal rebirths.

It is generally only in Sravakayana (Abhidharma and Theravadin Abhidhamma) that nirodha samapatti is something to be striven for, and only in a given context (at the culmination of cultivating the Dhyanas), in much of Mahayana, it is actually something warned against, as going towards the extreme of annihilationism.

So it seems that this group of people actually reinterpreted Prajnaparamita to be a sravaka practice, if I try to connect what Atom says.

Of course, I might very well be wrong, feel free to correct me

3. What are the studies published on these meditative states as Atom alluded to?

——

I hope the above is “academic” enough for this forum, I mainly just want to know what the sources (in this case, these scholars, the studies) say, and also what the group of people Atom refers to say, as well as the studies Atom alludes to.

Addendum: I went down a slight rabbit hole of trying to search for this topic on my own, I mainly found a few subreddits and other fora discussing how to attain what they claim is nirodha samapatti, they cite various unorthodox, what they claim are “pragmatic” sources. Nothing I saw was really based in much scholarship, either of the Western academic kind, or traditional Buddhist kind. I won’t link it here, if someone is really curious maybe we can open a new topic in Open Dharma, I am just mentioning it in passing. Maybe I didn’t go down the rabbit hole deep enough but I really am curious if Atom can provide some scholarly resources.
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

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MiphamFan wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:06 pm 2. Who are the people who are espousing this view, and what do they say about it exactly? From Atom’s post, it seems that they believe that nirvana is just cessation of sensory experience and that this is to be accomplished as an end in itself?
I think even Jayarava would say Nirvana is the cessation of suffering, and not nirodhasamāpatti. He writes: "The way to cultivate it is to minimise sensory experience, both in daily life and more radically in meditation. The goal of practice is a form of knowledge, not a form of existence. We call this knowledge prajñā or paragnosis, knowledge from beyond the cessation of sensory experience." So, it seems like he is suggesting that by engaging in nirodhasamāpatti, one can gain knowledge about dependent origination, but that cessation is just the way to gain that. I think Orsborn's contribution is to suggest that non-apprehension is something done in that kind of meditative state.

Edit: Just looking at his post again, he seems also to equate three things: "cessation of experience (nirodha, śūnyatā, nirvāṇa, etc.) in meditation". So, he does see nirvāṇa synonymous with nirodha etc.
MiphamFan wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:06 pm It is generally only in Sravakayana (Abhidharma and Theravadin Abhidhamma) that nirodha samapatti is something to be striven for, and only in a given context (at the culmination of cultivating the Dhyanas), in much of Mahayana, it is actually something warned against, as going towards the extreme of annihilationism.

So it seems that this group of people actually reinterpreted Prajnaparamita to be a sravaka practice, if I try to connect what Atom says.

Of course, I might very well be wrong, feel free to correct me
I guess the idea is that they are trying to suggest that the roots of the Mahāyāna were something very contiguous with śrāvakayāna, in so far as one can be seen as naturally developing into the other without the massive shifts or revolutionary breaks that we would assume occured if fully mature Mahāyāna just appeared one day in the middle of the circle of āgama bhaṇakas. But you are absolutely right that the kind of practice and the understanding that they are espoousing is not what the mature Mahāyāna thought of these matters, and it is not the general or mainstream Mahāyāna point of view, which went more in the direct the Madhyāmaka went—I suppose that is their point, to upset this kind of narrative.

My feeling is that Jayarava's inteinterpretations look a bit like a kind of secular Buddhist approach—how one can conceive of nirvāṇa without rebirth, and how prajñāpāramitā can make sense outside of the context of the six/ten pāramitās and the interminable bodhisattva path with immense accumulations of merit and wisdom. It's a very convenient way of understanding the idea. You can attain the PP in your living room by shutting off your sensory experiences and bliss out without having to do any work to liberate beings that it invariably entails in the sūtras.
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

Post by MiphamFan »

Zhen Li wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 10:00 am
MiphamFan wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:06 pm 2. Who are the people who are espousing this view, and what do they say about it exactly? From Atom’s post, it seems that they believe that nirvana is just cessation of sensory experience and that this is to be accomplished as an end in itself?
I think even Jayarava would say Nirvana is the cessation of suffering, and not nirodhasamāpatti. He writes: "The way to cultivate it is to minimise sensory experience, both in daily life and more radically in meditation. The goal of practice is a form of knowledge, not a form of existence. We call this knowledge prajñā or paragnosis, knowledge from beyond the cessation of sensory experience." So, it seems like he is suggesting that by engaging in nirodhasamāpatti, one can gain knowledge about dependent origination, but that cessation is just the way to gain that. I think Orsborn's contribution is to suggest that non-apprehension is something done in that kind of meditative state.

Edit: Just looking at his post again, he seems also to equate three things: "cessation of experience (nirodha, śūnyatā, nirvāṇa, etc.) in meditation". So, he does see nirvāṇa synonymous with nirodha etc.
MiphamFan wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:06 pm It is generally only in Sravakayana (Abhidharma and Theravadin Abhidhamma) that nirodha samapatti is something to be striven for, and only in a given context (at the culmination of cultivating the Dhyanas), in much of Mahayana, it is actually something warned against, as going towards the extreme of annihilationism.

So it seems that this group of people actually reinterpreted Prajnaparamita to be a sravaka practice, if I try to connect what Atom says.

Of course, I might very well be wrong, feel free to correct me
I guess the idea is that they are trying to suggest that the roots of the Mahāyāna were something very contiguous with śrāvakayāna, in so far as one can be seen as naturally developing into the other without the massive shifts or revolutionary breaks that we would assume occured if fully mature Mahāyāna just appeared one day in the middle of the circle of āgama bhaṇakas. But you are absolutely right that the kind of practice and the understanding that they are espoousing is not what the mature Mahāyāna thought of these matters, and it is not the general or mainstream Mahāyāna point of view, which went more in the direct the Madhyāmaka went—I suppose that is their point, to upset this kind of narrative.

My feeling is that Jayarava's inteinterpretations look a bit like a kind of secular Buddhist approach—how one can conceive of nirvāṇa without rebirth, and how prajñāpāramitā can make sense outside of the context of the six/ten pāramitās and the interminable bodhisattva path with immense accumulations of merit and wisdom. It's a very convenient way of understanding the idea. You can attain the PP in your living room by shutting off your sensory experiences and bliss out without having to do any work to liberate beings that it invariably entails in the sūtras.
Thanks for the reply, I think you’re right.

It seems that “Atom” is Jayarava’s alt or someone associated with him, since Atom’s posts largely seem to be based on the same themes as Jayarava.

I don’t see much evidence of scholarly sources in Jayarava’s post that you linked, yes in the beginning he cites Orsborn and some other scholars on very specific points regarding the Chinese origin hypothesis, but the rest of the article goes into a long personal conjecture with no solid evidence to indicate that the authors of the Prajnaparamita literature intended such an interpretation.

IMO, Jayarava is Iike going “notice me senpai” at the academics, who rightly don’t think his work has the same standard of rigour as other scholarly publications.
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

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MiphamFan wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:45 pm IMO, Jayarava is Iike going “notice me senpai” at the academics, who rightly don’t think his work has the same standard of rigour as other scholarly publications.
He's done quite well for himself as an independent scholar without, as far as I know, a PhD. That he has gotten published repeatedly in both academic and popular publications is quite laudable. But he also throws out these provocative statements as if they are evidently true, when they are not so evidently the case (not that academics are innocent of this, but they also have careers on the line).

The issue is, this theory started to be mentioned a few times on DW and I also saw it on Reddit, and might be gaining traction. I don't see it clearly in the sources he cites (primary or secondary), and it's a disservice if the public is misled by this, since he's far more vocal than everyone else who writes about Prajñāpāramitā. Also. his translations of sections make me doubt his understanding of the underlying Sanskrit, or at least, that he is content to present as a translation something which is quite idiosyncratic and individual in interpretation. This is no problem if his readerbase were people who can read Sanskrit and can see what he is doing, but 95% of the time it isn't going to be.
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

Post by MiphamFan »

OK, I read through his FB group and some of his blog.

His theory is basically this:

Prajnaparamita refers to a state of sensory non-apprehension and reflects a meditative tradition that existed before the Buddha/Buddhism. All the Buddhist scholars and practitioners failed to understand this and interpreted Prajnaparamita in a paradoxical way to apply to ontology rather than thoughts and sensations. Only he, and perhaps a few other modern scholars (who as far as I know never actually said this outright) discovered this tradition.

This is absurd on many levels, basically the myth of Protestantism recast in a 21st century ex-Buddhist context.

In his own FB group, he admits that he doesn’t really meditate at all, but he claims that people are following this technique of non-apprehension (“amanasikara” meditation) with results. I read up on some of the sources he linked, like Bhikku Analayo’s Emptiness and Compassion + Kevin Schanilec‘s site; they actually don’t teach what he claims.

What the Avici is a state of non-apprehension good for? It sounds like a kind of solipsistic, masturbatory state like being a rock. Just cultivating the brahmaviharas is likely to bring more benefit to practitioners and those around them, even if they reject the “metaphysical” parts of Buddhism.

Second, while we don’t have direct records of the authors of the earliest Prajnaparamita texts, we have some idea of what Kumarajiva et al were teaching and practising, there they seem to be teaching meditations very similar to Sravaka schools with the Dhyanas etc but with the addition of cultivating bodhicitta. There are no early meditation manual from Kumarajiva’s time about “amanasikara” meditation but quite a few about the dhyanas.

Schisms are also well known in Buddhist history, if there actually existed a sect of people who engaged in such meditation, there likely would exist polemics against them. I know absence of evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, but schisms have happened for less important issues than basing the entire path on something so utterly different.

In fact, a later debate did seem to emerge between Kamalashila and a caricatured version of Chan which engaged in what they also called “amanasikara”, but it seems that in real life, no Chan practitioners actually did that.

I think this guy has some issues with Madhyamaka, mainstream Buddhism etc and wants to make a name for himself as a “renegade” in Buddhist studies.

Yeah, I agree with him that the Heart Sutra is probably Chinese in origin, doesn’t really matter in terms of teaching anyway. Some texts that are 21st century in origin are core to my practice, so what?

IMO this series of short blogs by Sam van Schaik on the Tibetan Chan debate sums up the context of this practice in Prajnaparamita much better than Jayarava’s ravings: https://earlytibet.com/2008/06/10/tibe ... g-moheyan/
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

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MiphamFan wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2023 6:48 am Prajnaparamita refers to a state of sensory non-apprehension and reflects a meditative tradition that existed before the Buddha/Buddhism. All the Buddhist scholars and practitioners failed to understand this and interpreted Prajnaparamita in a paradoxical way to apply to ontology rather than thoughts and sensations. Only he, and perhaps a few other modern scholars (who as far as I know never actually said this outright) discovered this tradition.

This is absurd on many levels, basically the myth of Protestantism recast in a 21st century ex-Buddhist context.
Essentially, he's not interested in Prajñāpāramitā or Mahāyāna as a tradition, he's interested in a kind of possible perennialist core. Even if his arguments were correct, his approach is simply not the way Buddhists took the tradition either in the early period or for the rest of their history. It would belong to some kind of preliterate Mahāyāna.
MiphamFan wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2023 6:48 am Second, while we don’t have direct records of the authors of the earliest Prajnaparamita texts, we have some idea of what Kumarajiva et al were teaching and practising, there they seem to be teaching meditations very similar to Sravaka schools with the Dhyanas etc but with the addition of cultivating bodhicitta. There are no early meditation manual from Kumarajiva’s time about “amanasikara” meditation but quite a few about the dhyanas.

Schisms are also well known in Buddhist history, if there actually existed a sect of people who engaged in such meditation, there likely would exist polemics against them. I know absence of evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, but schisms have happened for less important issues than basing the entire path on something so utterly different.
I think you are right here about the meditative practices. David Drewes goes the opposite extreme, and suggests that Mahāyānists didn't meditate because there are not "instructions" in any of the sūtras, in this logic, states of mind like non-apprehension are things that come about through realisation and listening to the Dharma—if you have the right karmic seeds and met Buddhas in your past lives, you will get it, otherwise, you won't. I think Drewes goes a bit far, and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. It is true that a lot of Mahāyāna realisations are not actually linked to meditation, but Kumarajīva's manual is a good picture of how they were actually meditating in central Asia, and by some extent, India. Doug Osto's article "Altered States and the Origins of the Mahāyāna" also is a great exploration of the ways that Mahāyānists went about inducing samādhi and visions of buddhas. Without a doubt, samādhi and visions of buddhas, induced or spontaneous, are core to Mahāyāna meditation.
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

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“Master Gotama, it’s when the eye sees no sight and the ear hears no sound. That’s how Pārāsariya teaches his disciples the development of the faculties.”
“In that case, Uttara, a blind person and a deaf person will have developed faculties according to what Pārāsariya says. For a blind person sees no sight with the eye and a deaf person hears no sound with the ear.”

(Indriyabhāvanāsutta)

“Suppose there was a black ox and a white ox yoked by a single harness or yoke. Would it be right to say that the black ox is the yoke of the white ox, or the white ox is the yoke of the black ox?”
“No, reverend. The black ox is not the yoke of the white ox, nor is the white ox the yoke of the black ox. The yoke there is the single harness or yoke that they’re yoked by.”
“In the same way, the eye is not the fetter of sights, nor are sights the fetter of the eye. The fetter there is the desire and greed that arises from the pair of them. The ear … nose … tongue … body … mind is not the fetter of thoughts, nor are thoughts the fetter of the mind. The fetter there is the desire and greed that arises from the pair of them.”

(Koṭṭhikasutta)
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?

2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.

3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.

4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.


1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

Post by Queequeg »

Interesting discussion.

1. If PP literature turns out to be a bridge between Sravakayana and Mahayana is that problematic? From an academic perspective, I don't see the controversy. From "Buddhist" perspective, I guess it depends on the tradition and the place that PP literature occupies in the canon. In the Tiantai system, PP literature is considered a middling Mahayana that doesn't actually lead to bodhi. It is higher than what is labeled Vaipulya - this would cover devotional and what I might describe as "world building" literature, but lower than Lotus/Mahaparinirvana literature. I think Lotus/Mahaparinirvana literature could be understood as a kind of Tathagatagarbha view which squarely orients the whole of Buddhist practice to engagement with suffering beings and away from terminal cessation. My point is not to bring up this particular system, but to point out that people have long recognized deficiencies in PP literature as compared to mature (tathagatagarbha) Mahayana. This view of PP as secondary in profundity I think is not Chinese in origin but can be traced at least to Kumarajiva, suggesting at least some origin in Central or S. Asian forms of Mahayana. Arguably, its a view in texts like the Lotus pretty explicitly.

2.
Doug Osto's article "Altered States and the Origins of the Mahāyāna" also is a great exploration of the ways that Mahāyānists went about inducing samādhi and visions of buddhas. Without a doubt, samādhi and visions of buddhas, induced or spontaneous, are core to Mahāyāna meditation.
I have been told that attainment of such visions is very much a living tradition on Mt. Hiei in Japan and I've read about similar practices in Tibetan traditions that initiate such visions. I'm interested to read Osto's article. Maybe its surprising that these kinds of traditions endure to this day, but they do. From what I understand, the intimate details on the methods are kept guarded, but the biggest buffer to greater knowledge of this stuff is probably the sheer insanity of the practices that defy all modern conventional wisdom. Not sitting, lying down or sleeping restfully for 90 days? It defies belief that such a thing is possible, and yet people are doing it. I don't think they are aiming for nirodha. The practices as I understand are aiming for purification - I think that's different in practice and concept than seeking nirodha.

3. IIRC, the Buddha rejected termination of consciousness, didn't he? I thought this was what he rejected when he realized asceticism was not the way to the end of suffering. He basically said, I've gone down this path as far as anyone can go, and this is just going to kill me. I'm not that familiar with the Nirodha as equivalent to attaining arhatship, but how is that squared with the Buddha's experience as an ascetic in Theravada?
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

Post by Malcolm »

Queequeg wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2023 2:21 pm My point is not to bring up this particular system, but to point out that people have long recognized deficiencies in PP literature as compared to mature (tathagatagarbha) Mahayana.
People who imagine there are deficiencies in Prajñāpāramitā literature don't understand Prajñāpāramitā literature. Tathāgātagarbha is for those people. :stirthepot:
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

Post by Kai lord »

MiphamFan wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2023 6:48 am
Second, while we don’t have direct records of the authors of the earliest Prajnaparamita texts, we have some idea of what Kumarajiva et al were teaching and practising, there they seem to be teaching meditations very similar to Sravaka schools with the Dhyanas etc but with the addition of cultivating bodhicitta. There are no early meditation manual from Kumarajiva’s time about “amanasikara” meditation but quite a few about the dhyanas.
Ekavyāvahārika, Prajñaptivādins and Lokottaravāda were among early nikaya schools and they were widely regarded as proto Mahayana sects.

Some of their texts like Kaccānagotta Sutta and Mahāvastu, were dated back to 200 BC at least and they contained Mahayana themes like idea of an universal/transcendental Buddha, twofold emptiness of self and phenomenon, etc.

Ekavyāvahārika even taught an early form of Buddha nature.

The above schools are regarded by scholars as the bridge between early Mahayana and the rest of Nikaya schools

While Kumarajiva is famous and widely quoted or mentioned, he actually had a contemporary that had surpassed him both in wisdom and meditative levels but for some reasons, rarely being mentioned. He is known as Buddhabhara who was not only a translator and a teacher of Dhyana practices given that he had attained Anagami or the non returner.

In fact his dhyana techniques was so good that the founder of Tian Tai, I Chih, used it as a foundational or lower vehicle practice for meditation and developed further and more advanced Mahayana meditative techniques on that basis. They are known as the the lesser insight Shamatha practice (天台小止觀) & great insight Shamatha 大止觀
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

Post by Malcolm »

Zhen Li wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 10:00 am
MiphamFan wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:06 pm 2. Who are the people who are espousing this view, and what do they say about it exactly? From Atom’s post, it seems that they believe that nirvana is just cessation of sensory experience and that this is to be accomplished as an end in itself?
I think even Jayarava would say Nirvana is the cessation of suffering, and not nirodhasamāpatti.
Atwood writes, "Between us, we ought to have created enough doubt to suggest the need for a reappraisal of Prajñāpāramitā philosophy."

This is a risible statement on the face of it. He imagines the whole of Prajñāpāramitā thought is encapsulated in the Heart Sutra?

Prajñāpāramitā concerns gnosis (jñāna), not emptiness. The 8k says it best, "Bhagavān, prajñāpāramitā is omniscience (sarvajñāna)."

His other errors, in the post you reference, are, first, the assertion that cessation is the end goal of practice, "Cessation is something we can systematically cultivate. The way to cultivate it is to minimise sensory experience, both in daily life and more radically in meditation." While I can sympathize with this Epicurean ideal, this sort of ataraxia is not the goal of Buddhadharma. The goal of Buddhadharma is not limiting the senses, but rather, eliminating afflictions.

Secondly, that there is some contentless awareness one is trying to reach. All cognitions are "contentless," just as all reflections are contentless. Again, his critique of Buddhist idealism is fine, but it is not unique, and it most eloquently stated by Longchepa.
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

Post by PeterC »

MiphamFan wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2023 6:48 am
In his own FB group, he admits that he doesn’t really meditate at all, but he claims that people are following this technique of non-apprehension (“amanasikara” meditation) with results. I read up on some of the sources he linked, like Bhikku Analayo’s Emptiness and Compassion + Kevin Schanilec‘s site; they actually don’t teach what he claims.
Anyone who takes actual practice advice from Jayarava should pause and look more closely at his background and teachers.
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

Post by stong gzugs »

MiphamFan wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2023 6:48 am In fact, a later debate did seem to emerge between Kamalashila and a caricatured version of Chan which engaged in what they also called “amanasikara”, but it seems that in real life, no Chan practitioners actually did that.
Amanasikāra is also a term Maitrīpa uses in his cycle of mahāmudra teachings. But the practice is fairly opposite to what Attwood (and the Cūḷasuññata-sutta) describe.
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Re: Cessation of sensory experiences as the state of Prajnaparamita

Post by sphairos »

I have read Jayarava's paper. He is wrong, because the non-being, abhāva (and synonyms) is often mentioned in the prajñāpāramitā literature as a synonym or essence of śūnyatā. He is cherry-picking the instances of "the non-perception" (anupalabdhi). I don't think any philologist with knowledge of prajñāpāramitā would even bother to reply to Jayarava.
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