Malcolm wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2023 12:53 am
So you are equating the citta of Advaita with the ultimate truth in Buddhism?
I thankfully found Duckworth basically making all the points I've been trying to make, and what he says merits close reading:
Awareness cannot be reduced to an object (in phenomenology not ontology) because it is fundamentally different in nature. It is not different in its nature in terms of what is absent (intrinsic reality understood as essence) but is different in terms of what is present (the lived or living dimension). In this sense, awareness has (or rather is) intrinsic nature, just not an intrinsic essence that can be adequately conceived; it must be lived in or through, as a contemporary phenomenologist, Evan Thompson, states: “Consciousness is something we live, not something we have.
Through the ontological analyses of Madhyamaka, all objects are determined to be empty, or stated otherwise, all phenomena are determined to be indeterminate. While this kind of ontological analysis is a powerful tool to undercut reification, the role of the subject, or awareness, in these kinds of analysis is treated in the same way as an object. This kind of impartiality—that treats all phenomena the same way—gives arguments explanatory power but also limits their import. It gives arguments power because the mind is not given a privileged place; everything without exception is subjected to a deconstructive analysis and is determined to be empty. However, awareness is not an object, or not just an object, and this presents a challenge to the universality of ontological analyses, for treating awareness as an object is arguably making a category mistake.
Mistaking the nature of the subject as an object is not simply a mistake that is on the order of mixing apples and oranges, but of taking infinity as a geometric object. Apples and oranges are both fruit, yet while infinity can be treated as a geometric object, it is not just a geometric object, and it also is not only that object. In the same way, subjectivity can be treated like an object (as in Madhyamaka ontological analyses), but it is not delimited solely by such analysis.
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Mind-Only denies the reality of subject-object duality and asserts nondual cognition, which is the way things are (known) when reality is seen as it is. Since there is no real object, there is no real subject, either; and without a real subject, there is no real subject-object duality.
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In certain ways the status attributed to awareness in the phenomenology of Mind-Only is not unlike the role of the “self” in the Advaita Vedānta tradition ... In this description of Advaita Vedānta, conscious experience is not an internal space as opposed to external objects, but is a non-thetic presence, the condition for the possibility of subjects and objects that cannot be adequately represented by objective description ... this “witness consciousness” is not an internal subject as opposed to an object, but is the pure horizon of experience and subject/object disclosure, “the pure ‘subject’ that underlies all subject/object distinctions” as Eliot Deutsch said, or “the ‘field’ of consciousness/being within which the knower/knowing/known arise.”
So, yeah, that's basically what I've been trying to explain all this time.
Malcolm wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2023 12:53 am
If there is an experiencing subject, there must be an object.
An assumption being stated as a fact. I mentioned this above, that your claim here rests on whether one's assumed starting premise accept reflexivity or not. Cāndrakīrti doesn't, Dharmakīrti does, Śankara does. If you accept reflexivity, awareness can logically rest in itself, without any object. This is non-duality, beyond subject and object, and explains how you can start with a subject and move to non-dual awareness, as Duckworth explained above, and the Dṛg-Dṛśya-Vivek explains as well.
As such, from within Vedanta's own terms (like I said, (a) favoring experience (or phenomenology to use Duckworth's terms) over conceptual arguments (or ontology, per Duckworth) and (b) accepting reflexivity of awareness), I think Śankara's refutation of Madhyamaka's no-self argument makes perfect sense. Madhyamaka's responses (and thus yours) are only acceptable if you already buy into the premise that favors ontology over phenomenology, which Vedanta doesn't. So, as I said, everyone's arguments only work from within their own starting premises, which are always assumed and never proven.
Malcolm wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2023 12:53 am
You think Advaita is defensible?
My refutation of Advaita is its inability to provide a convincing ontological status for maya that isn't dualistic. (There are somewhat parallel problems in the way that some Buddhist accounts treat ignorance as a causal factor at the start of the chain of dependent origination, as it also is on murky grounds in terms of its ontological status.)
Malcolm wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2023 12:53 am
We conventionally term the wisdom (prajñā) that apprehends emptiness free from extremes a "yogic direct perception," but this merely a convention, since there is no object that is directly perceived, and thus, no actual direct perception as such. In this state the mind simply subsides through the exhaustion of analytical options and merges into the dharmadhātu. This is not an "experience" per se, since there is neither subject nor object—the mind has become the very image of the dharmadhātu free from all extremes, like the reflection of the blue sky in a still lake.
Again, Cāndrakīrti's take on yogic direct perception differs from that of others and is a source of debate. I don't take him as definitive, nor do any gzhanstongpas that I know of. And, yes, I get that the canonical reading is that because emptiness as a supporting object (ālambana) has no signs (nimittas), the only consciousness that could be a subject is one that doesn't arise, and hence vijñana ceases and jñana arises. What this (non)experience is like in phenomenological terms is fairly hard to fathom and I don't know that Cāndrakīrti ever offers any detailed account.
But, even still, if you read Cāndrakīrti's Prasannapadā closely, he doesn't necessarily refrain from making positive statements about yogic perception. In commenting on MMK 25.6, he says that jñana has a form (rūpa) which he describes as transcending all multiplicity (sarvaprapañcātīta) and commenting on MMK 25.15-16 also says that he doesn't deny that the Tathāgatā exists in some way, but describes it as simply inexpressible and outside the domain of multiplicity (na ca vayaṃ sarvathaiva niṣprapañcānāṃ tathāgatānāṃ nāstitvaṃ brūmaḥ yadasmākaṃ tadapavādakṛto doṣaḥ syāt). So, who knows, Cāndrakīrti may allow for some sort of positive direct yogic experience in jñana, lest he be accused of sheer denialism (apavāda).
Malcolm wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2023 12:53 am
The fault of the Gelukpas is turning emptiness into a conceptual object.
Agreed. "Emptiness cures all wrong views, but the view of emptiness is incurable."
Malcolm wrote: ↑Sun May 28, 2023 12:53 am
For example, what is the object of a nondual equipoise free from proliferation?
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[I am putting aside the question of empty forms because it is not applicable, we were talking about madhyamaka, not completion stage practices].
Fair enough, but you know from our prior conversations that gzhanstong emphasizes these empty forms, because they initially appear as non-conceptual objects of meditation that take you beyond subject-object duality, as they are the nature of both subject and object; in so doing, they transcend the narrow understandings of how form and emptiness relate via Prajñāpāramitā that Cāndrakīrti and such tend to have, because it shows that emptiness has a form (see Tāranātha's commentary on the Heart Sutra, for instance). This, again, is why Dölpopa introduced Madhyamaka with Appearances as a category that transcends Prasangika and Yogacara, but synthesizes their best qualities. (I know you disagree, and think of it as a Frankenstein's monster, so obviously I'm not trying to convince you of this point and we don't need to rehash it).