Yogacara idealism

[birgit kellner]

First a general remark concerning Satya Upadhya's message on Buddhist
pramANa, SautrAntika and YogAcARa, which might also be of interest
considering Stephen Hodge's comment about there being a problem taking
DharmakIrti to be a YogAcArin; further below a few more specific remarks
(or rather quibbles).

The problem, hinted at by Chattopadhyaya, how pramANa-tenets can be
advanced by an idealist arises only when being an idealist is taken to
mean that a philosopher is to advance only idealistic arguments about
the world at large. Once it is taken into account that DharmakIrti
advances a number of arguments on different levels of philosophical
discourse that address diverse religious and philosophical concerns, the problem quite simply vanishes: Some of the arguments
that he advances address YogAcAra concerns and are to be interpreted
on the background of YogAcAra doctrines, others do not. This insight
is neither new nor revolutionary; the fact that DharmakIrti's commentators
sometimes say "this definition has been advanced in a fashion that is
consistent both with SautrAntika and YogAcAra", and at other times say
nothing of that sort can be taken as an indication that the relevance
of certain doctrinal notions to some contexts and their irrelevance to
others was perfectly clear to them (though they might have held
different views about which notions are relevant in which contexts, of
course). For this reason, I generally prefer to attribute adjectives
like "idealist" or "representationalist" to specific tenets or
arguments rather than to the philosophers that hold or advance them -
Tibetan doxographical assertions, which are interesting in their own
rights, nonwithstanding.

This means that it is of course possible to rely on tenets found in
DharmakIrti's works in order to find out what YogAcAra is and what it
isn't, or rather what it can be and cannot be - one simply has to be
careful what arguments to rely on. I believe, and I think that John
Dunne would agree with me on this, that the
sahopalambhaniyama-argument is not a particularly good argument to
rely on for such an investigation, and I frankly don't understand why
it is considered as necessary by Satya Upadhya to concentrate on this
argument for an examination of whether or not YogAcAra can be
considered as "idealism". John has indicated a couple of better
starting-points in his message.

Here come a few more specific remarks:

>> >The most important interpreter of Dignaga is Jinendrabudhi, without whose
>> >detailed commentary on the main work of Dignaga (Pramana samuccya), it
>> >would
>> >be practically incomprehensible for modern scholars.

Jinendrabuddhi is the only one whose commentary on DignAGas PS has
been transmitted. Arguing that he is *therefore* the most important
interpreter of DignAga is quite a stretch - philosophically speaking,
I would say that DharmakIrti is the most important interpreter of
DignAga. Furthermore, even if it is not possible to make textual sense
of a text without reading a certain commentary, this does not mean
that one has to accept all philosophical interpretations of that
commentary, nor that these interpretations are particularly important
either historically or philosophically.

>>Most popular among commentars of Dharmakirti are
>> >Vinitadeva and Dharmatottara.

Most populare where, when, and with whom? Dharmottara's importance for
the development of the Buddhist epistemological tradition
nonwithstanding, I fail to see the crucial importance of VinItadeva,
whose textual interpretations - and philosophical interpretations he
hardly provides anyway - are on the whole treated with great
scepticism by (guess whom) Dharmottara. Arriving at an idea about the
philosophical impact of DharmakIrti's writings on the basis of
VinItadeva's commentary seems a quite futile undertaking to me,
given the character of VinItadeva's work.

>> Dharmottara, who belongs roughly to the next
>>century,
>> >is more scholastic. For understanding his commentary we have often to
>> >depend
>> >on a subcommentary written on it called the
>> >"Nyayabindu-tika-tippani"--often
>> >referred to briefly as "tippani"--by somebody whose name is controversial
>> >but who is probably a junior contempory of Dharmottara.

Actually, the TippanI is only transmitted for a part of the first
chapter of the NyAyabinduTIkA, so we cannot depend on it for reading
Dharmottara's NyAyabinduTIkA on the whole. What *we* rely on most in
case of problematic passages is the sub-commentary of Durvekamizra,
entitled "DharmottarapradIpa".

>> >
>> >These then are the interpreters of Dignaga and Dharmakirti, on whom we
>>have
>> >to depend. It is therefore not of little interest to note that that none
>>of
>> >them finds it permissible to assert outright that the discussion of the
>> >pramanas on the part of the Masters is fully consistent with their
>> >idealism.....

These are by no means the only interpreters of DignAga and
DharmakIrti, nor are they necessarily the most competent ones for all
contexts and purposes. Furthermore, I would like to know on what basis
it is asserted that neither of them finds it "permissible" to claim
full consistency between idealism and the discussion (which one in
particular?) of pramANas. As stated above, idealist notions are simply
not relevant to certain arguments in DharmakIrti's works, so it is
quite understandable why certain interpreters do not regard it as
necessary to expressly state full consistency with idealism, or
YogAcAra.
In general, it is quite dubious to argue from "N.N. does
not state that A is fully consistent with B" to "N.N. does not consider it
as permissible to state that A is fully consistent with B". I do not state
that this my message is fully consistent with English grammar, yet I would
consider it permissible to do so (provided that it were necessary, and
provided, of course, it really were fully consistent with English grammar
:-)).

---
Best regards,

Birgit Kellner
Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies
Vienna University