http://www.mountainman.com.au/Stcherbat ... _logic.htm
- First conversation - Subject Monism
1-st Vedantin ... Real at the beginning was the Nought.[1]
2-nd Vedantin ... Real at the beginning was neither Existence nor the Nought.[2]
3-rd Vedantin ... Real at the beginning was only Existence, the One-without-a-Second.[3] It was Brahman.
4-th Vedantin ... The Brahman is identical with our own Self. The «This» art «Thou![4]»
Parmenides ... There is no Nought.[5] The Universe is the One. It is immovable.
Democritus ... Immovable is the Nought. It is Empty Space. It is filled by moving atoms.[6]
The Buddhist ... There is an Empty Space. It contains an infinity of perishable Elements. There is a Nought (Nirvana), when all the perishable Elements have perished.
Nagarjuna ... All perishable objects are relative and void. Their Nought, or the Great Void,[7] is the only reality. It is the Buddha (in his Cosmical Body).
Spinoza ... There is only One Substance! It is God (in his Cosmical Body).
Dignaga ... The Culmination of Wisdom is Monism[8]. This Unity is the Buddha (in his Spiritual Body).
Dharmaklrti ... The essence of Consciousness is undivided![9] Subject and object is an illusive division. Their unity is Buddha's Omniscience, his Spiritual Body!
Yogacara Buddhist ... With the only exception of Buddha's knowledge which is free from the division in subject and object, all other knowledge is illusive, since it is constructed as subject and object.[10]
Second conversation. Subject Dualism and Pluralism
Sankhya ... There is not one eternal principle, but there are two: Spirit and Matter. Both are eternal, but the first is eternal stability, the other is eternal change. There is no interaction at all possible between them. However the change of the one is somehow reflected, or illumined, in the immovable light of the other. Inside Matter itself, six receptive faculties and six respective kinds of objective Matter are evolved. There is thus a double externality; the one is of the Matter regarding the Spirit. The other is of one kind of matter regarding the other. There is no God!
Descartes ... All right! There are only two substances, the one extended, the other conscious. But both are eternally changing. There is a God, which is the originator and the controller of their concerted motion!
The Buddhist (Hinayana) ... There is neither a God, nor an Ego, nor any spiritual, nor materialistic enduring substance. There are only Elements (dharmas), instantaneously flashing and disappearing. And there is a law of Dependent Origination in accord with which the Elements combine in aggregates. Just as in the Sankya there are six receptive faculties and six corresponding objective domains. There is thus here also a double externality. The one is of all Elements regarding one another, the other is of the six objective domains regarding the six receptive faculties.
Sankhya ... These Elements are infra-atomic units (gunas), they are unconscious and eternally changing.
Heracleitus ... These Elements are flashes appearing and disappearing in accord with a Law of continual change.
Democritus ... These Elements are Atoms (material).
Herbart ... These Elements are Reals (immaterial).
Mach ... These Elements are nothing but sensations. Both the Ego and Matter are pure mythology. When philosophy is no more interested in the reality of an Ego, nothing remains but the causal laws of Functional Interdependence of sensations, in order to explain the connection of the whole.
J. St. Mill ... The so-called Substance is nothing but a permanent possibility of sensations. "The notions of Matter and Mind, considered as substances, have been generated in us by the mere order of our sensations». Phenomena are held together not by a substance, but by an eternal law (of Dependent Origination).
Nagarjuna ... Dependent Origination is alone without beginning, without an end and without change. It is the Absolute. It is Nirvana, the world sub specie aeternitatis.[11]
Footnotes:
Conversation 1:
1. Chandogya, III.19.1; cp. Deussen, Allg. Gesch. d. Phil. I, pp. 145, 199, 202,
and his Sechzig Upanishads, p. 155. 8
2. Rgv.10.129.1.
3. Chandogya, VI. 2, 1-2.
4. tat tvam asi.
5. ouk esti me einai.
6. Cp. H. Cohen, Logik d. r. Erk., p. 70; me on apparently = tadanya =
= tadviruddha = paryadasa = parihara; ouk on = abhava.
7. maha-Sunyata = sarva-dharmanam paraspara-apeksata.
8. prajna-paramita jnanam advayam, sa Tathagatah (cp. my Introd. to the ed. of
Abhisamayalamkara).
9. avibhago hi buddhyatma, an often quoted verse of Dharmakirti, cp. SDS., p. 32.
10. sarvam alambane bhrantam muktva Tathagata-jnanam, iti Yogacara-matena,
cp.NBTTipp., p. 19.
Conversation 2:
11. Cp. my Nirvana, pp. 48.
LC