Western Philosophy and emptiness

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Malcolm
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Malcolm »

stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 3:52 pm
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 12:01 pm We’ve already established that all your blather about qualities and so on is just so much verbal hot air
No. I established above that the Ratnagotravibhāga describes buddha qualities to humble arrogant rangtongpas. (If the shoe fits...)
The point is that you have already admitted this is just so much conceptual language. That means it is provisional, not definitive. The real issue between gzhan stong pas and gelukapas is whether or not this verbal description is to be taken literally or not. You both agree that meditative equipoise is free of proliferation, where such conceptualizations are absent. So in the end, you are just arguing about how the room is decorated.

When it comes to Vajrayāna, it does not really matter what post-equipoise view one holds. That's why I regard all these polemics to be total bullshit, though sometimes entertaining. What matters in Vajrayāna is the example wisdom, not analytical wisdom.


Longchenpa states:

Within this dhātu that has always been naturally perfected,
samsara is Samantabhadra, nirvana is Samantabhadra,
but there is never been samsara or nirvana in the dimension of Samantabhadra.
Appearance is Samantabhadra, emptiness is Samantabhadra,
but there is never been appearance or emptiness in the dimension of Samantabhadra.
Birth and death are Samantabhadra, happiness and suffering are Samantabhadra,
but there is never been happiness and suffering or birth and death in the dimension of Samantabhadra.
Self and other is Samantabhadra, permanence and annihilation are Samantabhadra,
but there is never been self and other or permanence and annihilation in the dimension of Samantabhadra.


He comments:

Since vidyā bodhicitta has never been established in the space-like essence, whatever appears such as samsara and nirvana, appearance and emptiness, birth and death, happiness and suffering, self and other has never been established. Since those appearances as a mere state, potential, or play self-appear without ceasing and due to the absence of inherent existence in appearances—like illusions, dreams, moons in the water, optical illusions, fairy castles, and emanations—all phenomena of samsara and nirvana have never existed from the moment they appear, are baseless, and never move from transcendent state of Samantabhadra and Samantabhadri.

That includes all your qualities. Longchenapa's two favorite Indian treatises to cite from are the Uttaratantra and the Madhyamaka-avatara. He often cites them side by side.
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 12:01 pm “All views of emptiness are a source of error.”
Sounds like a view of emptiness to me.
It isn't, no more than pointing out the error of asserting hair on tortoises is view.

Gorampa's "Jonang is eternalist, Geluk is nihilist, the middle way is between them" isn't exactly groundbreaking stuff. Plus Gorampa's critiques of Jonang are basically derivative of Rendawa. He should have studied Dölpopa's Mountain Dharma more closely, particularly the section that distinguishes between absolute and relative Cittamātra.
Gorampa was the person who originated this distinction. So, at the time, ground breaking. And no, his critiques do not come from Rendawa. The extant translation out there has a translation error. The text, translated by Geshe Jamspel, incorrectly identifies Rendawa's critique of gzhan stong as the one Gorampa favors, when in fact it is the more gentle criticism leveled by Rongton he favors. I received this teaching directly, so I am quite certain this the translation you have is mistaken here. Rongton's more gentle criticism labels gzhan stong an intermediate view between false aspectarian yogacāra and proper madhyamaka. Gorampa in fact devotes very little time to gzhan stong in Moonrays, mostly because in the end gzhan stong pas basically agree with the approach to meditative equipoise free of proliferation found in classic Madhyamaka, despite whatever other erroneous claims they make.

Pelden Dorje also says the differences between Jonang and Sakya aren't about the ultimate like Gorampa says, but about the conventional.
Then he did not read Moonrays very carefully. What Gorampa states very clearly in his summation of critiques of Jonang is this, quoting Jetsun:

“If it is said ‘…there is existence in the ultimate,’ now then, because of falling into the extreme of existence, it will not be path of madhyamaka. But if it is said ‘…you assert non-existence in the ultimate, also you fall into the the extreme of non-existence,’ because we never established existence in the ultimate, we do not assert nonexistence."

Now then, if it is asked ‘…what do you assert?’ However things exist in the relative, we assert them as such, and hence we are freed from the extreme of annihilationist view in the relative. Since there is nothing whatever to assert as ultimate, since we are free from all extremes we are called ‘Mādhyamikas.’”


In other words, the basic point here is that if there were something truly established as ultimate, it should be seen in the equipoise of an ārya, but since nothing is perceived in the equipoise of an ārya according to any of the four extremes, being totally free of proliferation, there is nothing to assert as ultimate in post-equipoise. This is quite different than asserting the ultimate is "rang stong" or "gzhan stong." This brings us back to Longchenpa:

Since vidyā bodhicitta has never been established in the space-like essence, whatever appears such as samsara and nirvana, appearance and emptiness, birth and death, happiness and suffering, self and other has never been established.

This why Longchenpa can assert that the kāyas and wisdoms abide in the basis, without being a gzhan stong pa, because he agrees that even the appearances of nirvana have "never been established" and "have never existed from the moment they appear."

Gorampa even criticizes Chokden for holding the Jonang view in his Distinguishing the Views.
Gorampa does not mention Shakya Chogden in Moonrays at all. I translated the text.
the original intention of the Sakya founders as being closer to Jonang.
No. The locus classicus for Sakya view is a text called rin po che ljon shing by Jetsun Drakpa Gyaltsen, which is on the abhisamaya of the Hevajra Tantra.

He indeed proclaims that the view of the Hevajra Tantra, freedom from extremes, is higher than Madhyamaka. What is Jetsun's final view in this text? gNas lugs med pa, i.e. "There is no reality." Why? Because nothing can be found by way of an analysis of any of the four extremes in the relative or the ultimate. Since no relative phenomena can be found be means of such an analysis, there is nothing in the ultimate that can be found to exist in any of the four extremes nor in the middle. The Samputa says, "The yogi does not rely on emptiness, nor on nonemptiness, nor on the middle." The Sgra thal gyur states when explaining liberation from extremes (mtha' grol), "Since the extremes are not found, the middle is not found; since the middle is not found, the extremes are not found."


If you want to say that your infinite, uncompounded qualities exist in the ultimate, the very claim they exist in the ultimate makes you an eternalist because you are claiming something exists in the ultimate, and you are claiming the ultimate exists. The only way out of this problem is to accept that "all phenomena of samsara and nirvana have never existed from the moment they appear" like like illusions, dreams, moons in the water, optical illusions, fairy castles, and emanations.
stong gzugs
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by stong gzugs »

Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 5:32 pm The point is that you have already admitted this is just so much conceptual language. That means it is provisional, not definitive. The real issue between gzhan stong pas and gelukapas is whether or not this verbal description is to be taken literally or not. You both agree that meditative equipoise is free of proliferation, where such conceptualizations are absent. So in the end, you are just arguing about how the room is decorated.

When it comes to Vajrayāna, it does not really matter what post-equipoise view one holds. That's why I regard all these polemics to be total bullshit, though sometimes entertaining. What matters in Vajrayāna is the example wisdom, not analytical wisdom.
Roughly, I agree. Here's the complexity. For sutra, the question, per KTGR above, is whether people who have developed a habit of negation through their analytical techniques can ever truly eliminate subtle conceptualizing and therefore ever really be nisprapañca. For tantra, I agree more generally that views shouldn't matter. In the specific case of the Kālacakra, we've already discussed this before, but I've seen Geluk practice texts and they change the actual practices from even what their source of Buton laid out, in ways that read their rangtong view into the yoga and may produce different experiences of aspected vs.non-aspected emptiness. So I'm not sure that the equipoise experiences are completely the same, as they aren't doing the practices in the same way. This all also has to do with what we were discussing in the "Nyingma View of Emptiness" thread, which had some neat comments, that I'll dig up sometime in the coming week, where Kālacakra practice fundamentally changes "post-equipoise" experience (at this point, the equipoise vs. post-equipoise distinction becomes irrelevant), such that all appears as the divine other non-dual Kālacakra mandala, in ways that make it meaningful to describe it in more ultimate definitive terms, and certainly go beyond room decorations.
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 12:01 pm It isn't, no more than pointing out the error of asserting hair on tortoises is view.
The "I hold no views, but just point out the errors in others' views" is obviously a cheap rhetorical trick in a polemical context (to dodge critiques of one's own (albeit masked) positive assertions) and a questionable method for actually eliminating conceptualization (because one is still using conceptual mind to eliminate these views in analytical meditation, and thus developing habits of subtle conceptualization that could be overcome by more profound modes of meditation). Among others, the 8th Karmapa points this out in relation to Cāndrakīrti, I believe in his Lamp Excellently Elucidating Gzhanstong Madhyamaka. I'll start a new thread on this at some point, as I don't have time to debate this further now.
KTGR wrote: "...many Shentong masters criticize the Prasangika Madhyamikas for their claim that they do not hold any views. In the opinion of these masters, Prasangikas just dodge the issue because they refute everyone else's views and then avoid the refutation of their own views by claiming not to have any."
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 5:32 pm Rongton's more gentle criticism labels gzhan stong an intermediate view between false aspectarian yogacāra and proper madhyamaka. Gorampa in fact devotes very little time to gzhan stong in Moonrays, mostly because in the end gzhan stong pas basically agree with the approach to meditative equipoise free of proliferation found in classic Madhyamaka, despite whatever other erroneous claims they make.
We've already debated this point about whether Rongton properly read Dölpopa re: gzhanstong being an intermediate view here and I don't think much more is left to be said on that account.
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 5:32 pmGorampa does not mention Shakya Chogden in Moonrays at all. I translated the text.
Cabezón sees this as a shot at Chokden. Do you disagree?
Certain persons of coarse mental faculty, holding the eternalistic view [of the Jo nang pas] secretly in their hearts, take sides with the philosophical views of others for the sake of diplomacy, and claim that the Sa skya and Jo nang pa schools are not incompatible as regards their philosophical views.
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 5:32 pm
stong gzugs wrote:the original intention of the Sakya founders as being closer to Jonang.
No.
I don't have any opinion on the founding of Sakya, I'm just stating what Sakya Chokden and Jonang Kunga Drolchok argued. I think you mentioned somewhere that you studied with them for awhile before switching to Dzogchen, so I'm sure you're more invested in this question than I am.
krodha
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by krodha »

Gzhan stong pas really think the equipoise of gzhan stong and so-called rang stong are different? Or is this just your own fantasy, stong gzugs?
Kai lord
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Kai lord »

stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 6:59 pm The "I hold no views, but just point out the errors in others' views" is obviously a cheap rhetorical trick in a polemical context (to dodge critiques of one's own (albeit masked) positive assertions)
Isn't that the infamous complaint that Adi Shankara had for Madhyamaka? Which also drove him to ignore Madhyamaka in its entirety when criticizing various different Buddhist's positions.
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stong gzugs
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by stong gzugs »

Kai lord wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 8:06 pm Isn't that the infamous complaint that Adi Shankara had for Madhyamaka? Which also drove him to ignore Madhyamaka in its entirety when criticizing various different Buddhist's positions.
It's complaint that many have had and a valid one. There have been scholarly analyses that go through the MMK and identified views that Nagarjuna asserts that don't follow as consequences of deconstructing the views of his opponents, in addition to the indigenous critiques by Mikyo Dorje and others. (Similarly for Cāndrakīrti who, I cannot stress this enough, was not a serious commentator for centuries after his death and rose to prominence in Tibet in a polemical context, in large part to counter the Ratnagotravibhāga's influence, so people who claim to describe "classical" Madhyamaka but do so through the lens of Cāndrakīrti are deceiving themselves).

As to your other question, from my reading, Śankara and most Hindu critics of Buddhism primarily emphasize problems with the radical doctrine of momentariness, which makes it hard to explain many important functions of human memory. They found Dignaga and Dharmakirti way more interesting interlocutors than Nagarjuna for such reasons as you mention. Namely, to summarize their argument, because the atman is defined in Vedanta as incapable of being objectified (as it is always the witnessing awareness and never the object of awareness being witnessed), and anything you can refute through analytical meditation is necessarily an object of awareness, you can't refute the atman using Nagarjuna's methods. So, the kind of self that can be refuted is one that Advaita doesn't accept anyways (the five skandhas, the pudgala, the koshas, the ahamkara, the dualistic manas, etc.) Śankara offers this as a critique of Madhyamaka in the Brahma Sutra Bhasya, which if I recall correctly, basically tosses a moment of self-inquiry into the mix. You do some sort of analytical meditation to realize no-self, and then Śankara pops up and says "And to whom did this realization occur?" If the awareness that realized no-self exists, then this is what is meant by the atman, and if the awareness doesn't exist, then the realization is impossible.
Malcolm
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Malcolm »

stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 6:59 pm
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 5:32 pm The point is that you have already admitted this is just so much conceptual language. That means it is provisional, not definitive. The real issue between gzhan stong pas and gelukapas is whether or not this verbal description is to be taken literally or not. You both agree that meditative equipoise is free of proliferation, where such conceptualizations are absent. So in the end, you are just arguing about how the room is decorated.

When it comes to Vajrayāna, it does not really matter what post-equipoise view one holds. That's why I regard all these polemics to be total bullshit, though sometimes entertaining. What matters in Vajrayāna is the example wisdom, not analytical wisdom.
but I've seen Geluk practice texts and they change the actual practices from even what their source of Buton laid out, in ways that read their rangtong view into the yoga and may produce different experiences of aspected vs.non-aspected emptiness.
Gelukpas in general, do not accept the example wisdom to be insight, they claim it is a special calm-abiding, and insist that one must supplement one's sadhana practice with analytical analysis.
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 12:01 pm It isn't, no more than pointing out the error of asserting hair on tortoises is view.
The "I hold no views, but just point out the errors in others' views" is obviously a cheap rhetorical trick
No:

Verse 400 from Aryadeva's 400 Verses:

The one who has no position concerning
concerning existence, nonexistence, and both existence and nonexistence,
cannot be refuted
even after a long while.


in a polemical context (to dodge critiques of one's own (albeit masked) positive assertions) and a questionable method for actually eliminating conceptualization (because one is still using conceptual mind to eliminate these views in analytical meditation, and thus developing habits of subtle conceptualization that could be overcome by more profound modes of meditation).
This is just not the case. You've already admitted that there are no extremes of existence to be found in the ultimate, and that āryan equipoise is free of proliferation of extremes, well, since there are no extremes found in ultimate analysis. If there was something to find, there might be a fault, but since you already admit there is nothing to find, you are just being attached to words and concepts. The Uttaratantra comments on cessation:

I bow to the sun of the Dharma, that which is not nonexistent, nor existent, not both existent and nonexistent, and not other than existent and nonexistent, which cannot be analyzed, is undefinable, to be personally known, peaceful, endowed with the light rays of immaculate gnosis, which destroy attachment, aversion, and confusion with regard to all objects.

This is the inexpressibility personally-known gnosis that one discovers through systematically going through the four extremes. As the Uttaratantra continues:

Unthinkable, nondual, nonconceptual,
pure, clear, antidotal,
free of attachment, freeing from attachment,
having the characteristic of the two truths.

Freedom from attachment includes
the truths of cessation and the path,
according to the proper sequence,
to be known through the three former and three latter qualities.

Because it can't be analyze conceptually, nor expressed,
because it is known by the āryas, because it unthinkable,
because it is peace, without the two,
like the sun, with the trio of purity, so on.


In sutrayāna, this can only be discovered apophatically. I mentioned before that the Uttaratantra and Candra are perfectly consistent with each other, and indeed Longchenpa does just that throughout his commentaries, as does Gorampa.

As Nagārjuna states, the dharma of the Buddha is the two truths. There are not more than two truths. The ultimate truth is inexpressible, beyond all extremes. It is arrived at by negating the extremes one by one and by no other way, because the profound emptiness of Mahāyāna is freedom from four extremes.
KTGR wrote: "...many Shentong masters criticize the Prasangika Madhyamikas for their claim that they do not hold any views. In the opinion of these masters, Prasangikas just dodge the issue because they refute everyone else's views and then avoid the refutation of their own views by claiming not to have any."
A mādhyamika does not hold views about ultimate existence; obviously they hold views about all kinds of conventional phenomena.
Cabezón sees this as a shot at Chokden. Do you disagree?
There were many people who held gzhan stong views in Sakya when Gorampa was writing, that is why he scolds them by reminding them of Jetsun Drakpa Gyaltsen's passage in rin po che ljon zhing. It was so bad, that the Sakya Trizin of the day had to do a mo with four-face Mahākala to see whose view was to be enshrined as the canonical Sakya view.

I don't have any opinion on the founding of Sakya, I'm just stating what Sakya Chokden and Jonang Kunga Drolchok argued. I think you mentioned somewhere that you studied with them for awhile before switching to Dzogchen, so I'm sure you're more invested in this question than I am.
My education is Sakya. I didn't switch to Dzogchen, my Sakya teacher sent me to study with Norbu Rinpoche in 1992, who was also educated in Sakya. The latter frequently describes Dzogchen view as follows:

If I have a position, I would be guilty.
As I alone have no position, I alone am not guilty.


When it comes to sutra and lower tantras, up to the level of Hevajra and Kalacakra, my opinions are pretty much inline with Sakyapa.
Kai lord
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Kai lord »

stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 8:55 pm
Kai lord wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 8:06 pm Isn't that the infamous complaint that Adi Shankara had for Madhyamaka? Which also drove him to ignore Madhyamaka in its entirety when criticizing various different Buddhist's positions.
It's complaint that many have had and a valid one. There have been scholarly analyses that go through the MMK and identified views that Nagarjuna asserts that don't follow as consequences of deconstructing the views of his opponents, in addition to the indigenous critiques by Mikyo Dorje and others. (Similarly for Cāndrakīrti who, I cannot stress this enough, was not a serious commentator for centuries after his death and rose to prominence in Tibet in a polemical context, in large part to counter the Ratnagotravibhāga's influence, so people who claim to describe "classical" Madhyamaka but do so through the lens of Cāndrakīrti are deceiving themselves).

As to your other question, from my reading, Śankara and most Hindu critics of Buddhism primarily emphasize problems with the radical doctrine of momentariness, which makes it hard to explain many important functions of human memory.
Yes Shankara used the argument that alaya is too unstable due to the constant flux as a result of momentariness to act as a support for impressions and memories and a mental continuum. However he also failed to address Vasubandhu's argument that an entity with an unchanging substratum (like atman) is unable to undergoing transformation as a result of impression, memories of past experiences, etc that it collects, stores and carries from one life into another.

Unfortunately, both of them lived centuries apart, I would love to see a live debate between them.

They found Dignaga and Dharmakirti way more interesting interlocutors than Nagarjuna for such reasons as you mention. Namely, to summarize their argument, because the atman is defined in Vedanta as incapable of being objectified (as it is always the witnessing awareness and never the object of awareness being witnessed), and anything you can refute through analytical meditation is necessarily an object of awareness, you can't refute the atman using Nagarjuna's methods. So, the kind of self that can be refuted is one that Advaita doesn't accept anyways (the five skandhas, the pudgala, the koshas, the ahamkara, the dualistic manas, etc.) Śankara offers this as a critique of Madhyamaka in the Brahma Sutra Bhasya, which if I recall correctly, basically tosses a moment of self-inquiry into the mix. You do some sort of analytical meditation to realize no-self, and then Śankara pops up and says "And to whom did this realization occur?" If the awareness that realized no-self exists, then this is what is meant by the atman, and if the awareness doesn't exist, then the realization is impossible.
Bhāvaviveka tried to address that inadequacy by combining Mādhyamaka and Pramāṇa into what is called Svātantrika madhyamaka tradition to address the non Buddhist opponents but his approach as you know, was ridiculed. Fortunately Śhāntarakṣita later took Bhāvaviveka's model and came out with a much better version of it by applying Yogacarin method instead of Sautrāntika to the relative side of things.
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by stong gzugs »

Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 9:32 pm
stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 6:59 pm The "I hold no views, but just point out the errors in others' views" is obviously a cheap rhetorical trick
No
I'll start another thread on this at some point. It's an interesting and important debate.
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 9:32 pm The Uttaratantra comments on cessation...

In sutrayāna, this can only be discovered apophatically.
The Vyakhya glosses cessation using the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanādasūtra as follows:
The name “cessation of suffering,” Bhagavan, indicates the dharmakaya of the Tathagata, which is beginningless, unproduced, unborn, unarisen, without extinction, free from extinction, permanent, eternal, peaceful, everlasting, naturally pure, free from the cocoon of all. afflictions, and endowed with inseparable and inconceivable buddha attributes that far surpass the sand grains in the river Ganga [in number]. {D81a} Bhagavan, this very dharmakaya of the Tathagata that is not freed from the cocoon of the afflictions is called “tathagata heart.”
Hardly apophatic. It then continues:
The paths of seeing and familiarization that [consist of] nonconceptual wisdom are the causes for attaining this dharmakaya of the Tathagata, which bears the name “cessation of suffering.” [This wisdom] is to be understood as resembling the sun by way of being similar to it in three ways for the following reasons. By virtue of being similar to the orb [of the sun’s] being completely pure, it is free from all stains of the proximate afflictions. By virtue of being similar to [the sun’s] being what makes forms manifest, it shines its light on all aspects of knowable objects. By virtue of being similar to [the sun’s] being the remedy for darkness, it serves as the remedy for all aspects of what obstructs seeing reality.

As for “what obstructs,” due to the rising of their latencies, passion, hatred, and bewilderment, which are preceded by mentally engaging in focal objects that have the characteristic of being unreal entities, arise... When neither characteristics nor focal objects are seen, true reality is seen. Thus, these phenomena are completely and perfectly realized by the Tathagata as being equal by virtue of their equality. In this way, [the Tathagata] does not see characteristics and focal objects, which are nonexistent, and sees ultimate reality, which is existent, in just the way it is in true reality.
Gzhanstong all day long.
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 9:32 pm I mentioned before that the Uttaratantra and Candra are perfectly consistent with each other
I mean, kinda. Cāndrakīrti calls it of expedient meaning, so he can interpret away the parts that conflict with his worldview. Ratnākaraśānti points out flaws in his understanding of cessation and, as I've been saying, the 8th Karmapa, Mikyo Dorje, explains why, the "we have no view" is simply a rhetorical cover-up.
Candrakirti and others identify the [fact that] the nature of phenomena is not seen by the ultimate nature of phenomena as “seeing ultimate reality.” However, let alone speaking of this as the ultimate, they would have to accept many contradictions in their own systems even in terms of words [on the level] of seeming [reality]. Therefore, in order to eliminate this flaw, they say, “We Madhyamikas have no assertion whatsoever.”
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 9:32 pm When it comes to sutra and lower tantras, up to the level of Hevajra and Kalacakra, my opinions are pretty much inline with Sakyapa.
Ah, very neat to know more about your background! I assumed you were Nyingma because of your emphasis on Dzogchen.
Kai lord wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 10:02 pm However he also failed to address Vasubandhu's argument that an entity with an unchanging substratum (like atman) is unable to undergoing transformation as a result of impression, memories of past experiences, etc that it collects, stores and carries from one life into another.

Unfortunately, both of them lived centuries apart, I would love to see a live debate between them.
Yeah, if you really want to imagine a fun debate, get the Kashmiri Śaivas into the mix for their take on momentariness. Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta, for instance, use Buddhism and Dharmakirti to refute Advaita, and then refute Dharmakirti using his own notion of svasaṃvedana. It'd be fun to watch.
Fortunately Śhāntarakṣita later took Bhāvaviveka's model and came out with a much better version of it by applying Yogacarin method instead of Sautrāntika to the relative side of things.
Got a favorite reading on these discussions?
Malcolm
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Malcolm »

Kai lord wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 8:06 pm
stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 6:59 pm The "I hold no views, but just point out the errors in others' views" is obviously a cheap rhetorical trick in a polemical context (to dodge critiques of one's own (albeit masked) positive assertions)
Isn't that the infamous complaint that Adi Shankara had for Madhyamaka? Which also drove him to ignore Madhyamaka in its entirety when criticizing various different Buddhist's positions.
Shankara ignored Madhyamaka because he cribbed his arguments from Madhyamaka, which Shantaraksita busts him for in the Tattvasamgraha.
Malcolm
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Malcolm »

stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 10:52 pm
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 9:32 pm
stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 6:59 pm The "I hold no views, but just point out the errors in others' views" is obviously a cheap rhetorical trick
No
I'll start another thread on this at some point. It's an interesting and important debate.
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 9:32 pm The Uttaratantra comments on cessation...

In sutrayāna, this can only be discovered apophatically.
The Vyakhya glosses cessation using the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanādasūtra as follows:
The name “cessation of suffering,” Bhagavan, indicates the dharmakaya of the Tathagata, which is beginningless, unproduced, unborn, unarisen, without extinction, free from extinction, permanent, eternal, peaceful, everlasting, naturally pure, free from the cocoon of all. afflictions, and endowed with inseparable and inconceivable buddha attributes that far surpass the sand grains in the river Ganga [in number]. {D81a} Bhagavan, this very dharmakaya of the Tathagata that is not freed from the cocoon of the afflictions is called “tathagata heart.”
Hardly apophatic. It then continues:
You neglected to mention that in this sutra it is declared unequivocally that only tathāgatas can see tathāgatagarbha, aka dharmakāya.



Gzhanstong all day long.
No, silly, this is entirely apophatic:

When neither characteristics nor focal objects are seen, true reality is seen.

That's why Shantideva states:

When neither an existent nor a nonexistent appear before the mind,
at that time, there being no alternative, [the mind] is pacified.


And:

The ultimate is not within the domain of the mind,
the mind is relative.

Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 9:32 pm I mentioned before that the Uttaratantra and Candra are perfectly consistent with each other
I mean, kinda. Cāndrakīrti calls it of expedient meaning, so he can interpret away the parts that conflict with his worldview. Ratnākaraśānti points out flaws in his understanding of cessation and, as I've been saying, the 8th Karmapa, Mikyo Dorje, explains why, the "we have no view" is simply a rhetorical cover-up.
Candra cites the Lanka, where tathāgatagarbha is described as a salve for those afraid of emptiness. Commenting on the same passage, since the Lanka identifies the all-basis consciousness with tathāgatagarbha, Jayānanda notes that here, the ālaya should be understood to be emptiness, and consciousness, to be the consciousness that apprehends that emptiness. This is why the Sakyapas maintain, contra the Gelukpas, that the all-basis consciousness is actually acceptable to Prasangikas.

Candrakirti and others identify the [fact that] the nature of phenomena is not seen by the ultimate nature of phenomena as “seeing ultimate reality.” However, let alone speaking of this as the ultimate, they would have to accept many contradictions in their own systems even in terms of words [on the level] of seeming [reality]. Therefore, in order to eliminate this flaw, they say, “We Madhyamikas have no assertion whatsoever.”
This is a specious objection. Not worth the bytes it took to copy it.
Last edited by Malcolm on Fri May 26, 2023 11:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Kai lord
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Kai lord »

stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 10:52 pm Got a favorite reading on these discussions?
The Adornment of the Middle Way: Shantarakshita's Madhyamakalankara with Commentary by Jamgon Mipham
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Malcolm
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Malcolm »

Kai lord wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 11:08 pm
stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 10:52 pm Got a favorite reading on these discussions?
The Adornment of the Middle Way: Shantarakshita's Madhyamakalankara with Commentary by Jamgon Mipham
Oh, you mean the text where Mipham confesses his undying allegiance to Prasangika, :applause:
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by stong gzugs »

Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 10:54 pm Shankara ignored Madhyamaka because he cribbed his arguments from Madhyamaka, which Shantaraksita busts him for in the Tattvasamgraha.
His take on Madhyamaka is in the Brahma Sutra Bhasya, as I mentioned to Kai Lord above.
stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 8:55 pm As to your other question, from my reading, Śankara and most Hindu critics of Buddhism primarily emphasize problems with the radical doctrine of momentariness, which makes it hard to explain many important functions of human memory. They found Dignaga and Dharmakirti way more interesting interlocutors than Nagarjuna for such reasons as you mention. Namely, to summarize their argument, because the atman is defined in Vedanta as incapable of being objectified (as it is always the witnessing awareness and never the object of awareness being witnessed), and anything you can refute through analytical meditation is necessarily an object of awareness, you can't refute the atman using Nagarjuna's methods. So, the kind of self that can be refuted is one that Advaita doesn't accept anyways (the five skandhas, the pudgala, the koshas, the ahamkara, the dualistic manas, etc.) Śankara offers this as a critique of Madhyamaka in the Brahma Sutra Bhasya, which if I recall correctly, basically tosses a moment of self-inquiry into the mix. You do some sort of analytical meditation to realize no-self, and then Śankara pops up and says "And to whom did this realization occur?" If the awareness that realized no-self exists, then this is what is meant by the atman, and if the awareness doesn't exist, then the realization is impossible.
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Malcolm »

stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 11:12 pm
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 10:54 pm Shankara ignored Madhyamaka because he cribbed his arguments from Madhyamaka, which Shantaraksita busts him for in the Tattvasamgraha.
His take on Madhyamaka is in the Brahma Sutra Bhasya, as I mentioned to Kai Lord above.
stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 8:55 pm As to your other question, from my reading, Śankara and most Hindu critics of Buddhism primarily emphasize problems with the radical doctrine of momentariness, which makes it hard to explain many important functions of human memory. They found Dignaga and Dharmakirti way more interesting interlocutors than Nagarjuna for such reasons as you mention. Namely, to summarize their argument, because the atman is defined in Vedanta as incapable of being objectified (as it is always the witnessing awareness and never the object of awareness being witnessed), and anything you can refute through analytical meditation is necessarily an object of awareness, you can't refute the atman using Nagarjuna's methods. So, the kind of self that can be refuted is one that Advaita doesn't accept anyways (the five skandhas, the pudgala, the koshas, the ahamkara, the dualistic manas, etc.) Śankara offers this as a critique of Madhyamaka in the Brahma Sutra Bhasya, which if I recall correctly, basically tosses a moment of self-inquiry into the mix. You do some sort of analytical meditation to realize no-self, and then Śankara pops up and says "And to whom did this realization occur?" If the awareness that realized no-self exists, then this is what is meant by the atman, and if the awareness doesn't exist, then the realization is impossible.
Your realist proclivities are showing.
the atman is defined in Vedanta as incapable of being objectified (as it is always the witnessing awareness and never the object of awareness being witnessed), and anything you can refute through analytical meditation is necessarily an object of awareness, you can't refute the atman using Nagarjuna's methods.
The very fact it can be held to be a witness means it has already been defined as a subject in dependence on an object, hence dependent and relative. The conventional existence of a cognizing subject does not entail the consequence that cognizing subject exists ultimately or is immune to analysis.
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by stong gzugs »

Malcolm wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 1:12 am Your realist proclivities are showing.
Being able to describe a tenet system, doesn't imply that one embraces it.
Malcolm wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 1:12 am
stong gzugs wrote:the atman is defined in Vedanta as incapable of being objectified (as it is always the witnessing awareness and never the object of awareness being witnessed), and anything you can refute through analytical meditation is necessarily an object of awareness, you can't refute the atman using Nagarjuna's methods.
The very fact it can be held to be a witness means it has already been defined as a subject in dependence on an object, hence dependent and relative. The conventional existence of a cognizing subject does not entail the consequence that cognizing subject exists ultimately or is immune to analysis.
This is why Sankara's refutation was so short, these traditions start from completely different premises. You are, following Madhyamaka, giving primacy to argumentation, saying witnessing awareness can be refuted using an argument and therefore doesn't exist ultimately. Shankara, following Vedanta, is giving primacy to phenomenology, saying that even if you conduct such a refutation, your awareness while doing so is still aware of the refutation, so it must exist ultimately. Just a difference in premises about whether to favor arguments over experience.

In terms of whether a witnessing awareness must be dependent on an object, that's again usually a matter of starting premises, as some start out with the premise that there must be a consciousness dependent upon an object, no matter how deep you go (like the Geluk, with nonconceptual voidness as the object and subtlest clear light mind as the subject). The Vedantic Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka makes the point that as you rest in this witnessing awareness and de-identify from objects successively until you withdraw even from the field of cognition (citākasha), the duality between seer (dṛg) and seen (dṛśya) collapses. Why? Because awareness can rest in itself in Vedanta as it's self-illuminating (svaprakāśa), whereas for Cāndrakīrti, such reflexivity isn't allowed.

So a core Vedantic text like the Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka isn't as vulnerable to the sort of "the atman is a reified subject" arguments that people expect, and even makes some arguments that would be agreeable to many Buddhists, but it does so without fitting with Madhyamaka assumptions about reflexivity and self-illumination, for instance.
Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka wrote: 1. All objects are perceived by the senses. The senses are, in turn, perceived by the mind. The mind, in turn, is a movement that unfolds in Awareness. Awareness is not perceived by any other structure. It is its own perceiving.

15. Identification with the belief of separation gives rise to limited understanding. Limited understanding creates a veil wherein the mind splits unitive Awareness into two: an internal perceiver that believes itself to be separate, and a perceived separate external world.

16. The mind splits unitive Awareness into perceiver and perceived. The perceiver, which is only a thought, then identifies with the belief that it is an empirical self, separate from a perceived external world, which again, is only a projection of the mind.

17. Misperception arises when the mind identifies with its own movement of thought and projects the belief that it is a separate self. The mind believes itself to be a perceiver who is separate from what it perceives. When the mind awakens to this misperception, the belief in being a separate self disappears. What was all along non-existent is re-cognized to be non-existent.

18. Awareness is conceptually divided by the mind into perceiver and perceived, subject and object. The division of subject and object is misperceived by the mind to be real.

19. When essential nature, Awareness, is realized, all division is understood to be only the product of the mind as thought.

20. Every object is composed of five elements. These elements appear to exist as separate phenomenal aspects, but in reality are not separate from their homeground, which is Awareness. The first three - space, air and fire - resemble Awareness, while the latter two - water and earth - appear more solid.

21. The five elements make things appear as separate and different. Yet everything - earth, water, fire, air and space - which come together to form everything animate and inanimate - nature, animals, humans and even the Gods - arise in and are not separate from Awareness.

22. Name and form are merely concepts, thoughts. But, they can serve as pointers back to Awareness in which they arise. When Awareness re-cognized and awakens to Itself, there is uninterrupted abiding as Awareness even as name and form continue to arise.

30. All external and internal objects are changing: world, body, senses and mind. All changing objects appear and disappear in unchanging Awareness. When the understanding of essential nature as unchanging Awareness arises, identification with changing objects ceases. Through meditative inquiry all objects are realized to be expressions of, and therefore not separate from, unchanging Awareness. Constant abiding in this realization of the truth of Oneness reveals that everything is only an expression of unchanging Awareness.

31. Constant abiding as Awareness dissolves all misperceptions. Then, the heart opens, all doubts are resolved, suffering ceases and there is liberation from the notion of being a separate self.

37. The sense of being a separate I-self who experiences a separate universe has existed since the beginning of time. Time is a creation of the dividing mind that splits what is timeless into the notion of past, present and future. The notion of being a separate self who is aware of a separate universe has only empirical existence, is only conceptual and remains true only until awakening as Awareness. Both self and world are not separate from Awareness and are cognized to be real only as long as the mind projects, identifies with, and believes in the notion of separation.
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Malcolm »

stong gzugs wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 3:53 am
Malcolm wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 1:12 am Your realist proclivities are showing.
Being able to describe a tenet system, doesn't imply that one embraces it.
Malcolm wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 1:12 am
stong gzugs wrote:the atman is defined in Vedanta as incapable of being objectified (as it is always the witnessing awareness and never the object of awareness being witnessed), and anything you can refute through analytical meditation is necessarily an object of awareness, you can't refute the atman using Nagarjuna's methods.
The very fact it can be held to be a witness means it has already been defined as a subject in dependence on an object, hence dependent and relative. The conventional existence of a cognizing subject does not entail the consequence that cognizing subject exists ultimately or is immune to analysis.
This is why Sankara's refutation was so short, these traditions start from completely different premises. You are, following Madhyamaka, giving primacy to argumentation, saying witnessing awareness can be refuted using an argument and therefore doesn't exist ultimately. Shankara, following Vedanta, is giving primacy to phenomenology, saying that even if you conduct such a refutation, your awareness while doing so is still aware of the refutation, so it must exist ultimately. Just a difference in premises about whether to favor arguments over experience.
That conclusion does not follow from the premise. The premise is faulty, so the conclusion is invalid. It’s a false consciousness, that’s why it is invalid. It has nothing to with argument and everything to with perception, an incorrect perception of the way things are. Claiming something is beyond concepts, therefore it can’t be refuted is a fool’s argument.
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Kai lord »

Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 10:54 pm
Kai lord wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 8:06 pm
stong gzugs wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 6:59 pm The "I hold no views, but just point out the errors in others' views" is obviously a cheap rhetorical trick in a polemical context (to dodge critiques of one's own (albeit masked) positive assertions)
Isn't that the infamous complaint that Adi Shankara had for Madhyamaka? Which also drove him to ignore Madhyamaka in its entirety when criticizing various different Buddhist's positions.
Shankara ignored Madhyamaka because he cribbed his arguments from Madhyamaka, which Shantaraksita busts him for in the Tattvasamgraha.
Since they were contemporary, it begged the question of why neither Kamalaśīla nor Shantaraksita bother seeking Shankara out and defeated him in a live debate given the latter's vast influence in the vedic circle and anti buddhist tendencies

Oh, you mean the text where Mipham confesses his undying allegiance to Prasangika,
You went over the fact that he subtly criticised gelug prasangika a lot and labeled them as disguised Svātantrika. :tongue:
Life is like a game, either you win or lose!
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Aemilius »

Kai lord wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 11:10 am
Aemilius wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 10:13 am
(b) Next, the kindred Gnostic and Neo-Platonic modes of thought, especially the later Neo-Platonists, like Proclus and Damascius, and also their Christian form in Origenes and in Dionysius Areopagita, who in some passages of his Mystical Theology gives what may well be called a Christian version of the Heart Suutra.
Plotinus, the founder of Neo platonism, traveled to Alexandria where he learned about hindu and Buddhist philosophy and no doubt heavily influenced by them. Likewise for Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, who taught three disciples; one of whom was called Thomas and the latter wrote the famous gospel of Thomas and was widely regarded as one of the early founders of gnosticism.
Thanks!. In Edward Conze's article the sentence "Among Western contemplatives, shuunyataa corresponds to the "desert of the Godhead," to Ruysbroeck's "idle emptiness," to Eckhart's still wilderness where no one is at home, etc.." resembles a zen koan in

Blue Cliff Record 18, Book of Serenity 85,The National Teacher's Gravestone/National Teacher's Seamless Monument:

"Danyuan responded:
The south of the river, north of the lake:
In between there's gold, which fills the whole land.
Under the shadowless tree all people are in one boat;
In the crystal palace there is no one who knows. "
svaha
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Sarvē mānavāḥ svatantrāḥ samutpannāḥ vartantē api ca, gauravadr̥śā adhikāradr̥śā ca samānāḥ ēva vartantē. Ētē sarvē cētanā-tarka-śaktibhyāṁ susampannāḥ santi. Api ca, sarvē’pi bandhutva-bhāvanayā parasparaṁ vyavaharantu."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1. (in english and sanskrit)
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by Malcolm »

Kai lord wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 8:43 am
Malcolm wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 10:54 pm
Kai lord wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 8:06 pm

Isn't that the infamous complaint that Adi Shankara had for Madhyamaka? Which also drove him to ignore Madhyamaka in its entirety when criticizing various different Buddhist's positions.
Shankara ignored Madhyamaka because he cribbed his arguments from Madhyamaka, which Shantaraksita busts him for in the Tattvasamgraha.
Since they were contemporary, it begged the question of why neither Kamalaśīla nor Shantaraksita bother seeking Shankara out and defeated him in a live debate given the latter's vast influence in the vedic circle and anti buddhist tendencies

Oh, you mean the text where Mipham confesses his undying allegiance to Prasangika,
You went over the fact that he subtly criticised gelug prasangika a lot and labeled them as disguised Svātantrika. :tongue:
As to first point, the Tattvasamgraha was written after Shankara passed away. As to the second point, this is just recycled Gorampa, like much of Mipham’s Madhyamaka.
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Re: Western Philosophy and emptiness

Post by stong gzugs »

Malcolm wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 4:10 am Claiming something is beyond concepts, therefore it can’t be refuted is a fool’s argument.
That's not exactly the claim. Ultimately anything that we believe conceptually has to cash out in experience, otherwise it's idle philosophizing, this much is common to buddhadharma and sanatanadharma. It's not enough to know the three marks conceptually, for instance, you have to experience them in meditation to have actual insight. Śankara's point is that when you, for instance, engage in the practice of searching for the self in the skandhas and fail to find it, a realization of "no-self" dawns within awareness; that awareness within which the realization of no-self dawns is what he calls the atman. That atman itself is not refuted experientially in this practice (but the self in the skandhas/koshas/etc. are refuted, which Vedanta agrees with). In contrast, when we apply madhyamaka reasoning to time, for instance, our experience of time as an abstract transcendent dimension collapses, and we experience only time as an immanent sequence. So time can be refuted experientially. So can the solidity of seemingly solid objects, as when they appear dreamlike and wispy with madhyamaka analytical meditation, etc. Unlike some of the Theravadins who emphasize black-out states like nirodha-samāpatti, I don't know that Mahayana practices really try to experientially refute the type of awareness being emphasized in Vedanta, as in the Dṛg-Dṛśya-Vivek verses I provided, like the below, and these verses do experientially refute the two selves that we seek to refute as well. Hence my point that we have to recognize different starting premises when trying to subject one tenet system to the rules of the other.
Dṛg-Dṛśya-Vivek Verse 37 wrote:The sense of being a separate I-self who experiences a separate universe has existed since the beginning of time. Time is a creation of the dividing mind that splits what is timeless into the notion of past, present and future. The notion of being a separate self who is aware of a separate universe has only empirical existence, is only conceptual and remains true only until awakening as Awareness. Both self and world are not separate from Awareness and are cognized to be real only as long as the mind projects, identifies with, and believes in the notion of separation.
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