Richard J. Williams wrote: > > Well, I don't know where Judy got the impression that > > Nagarjuna had anything to say about the Indian term > > 'Brahman', since Nagarjuna was a Middle Way Buddhist > > writing before the advent of Adwaita; from Ken Wilber, > > I guess. She failed to credit her citation. Whoops! > > jstein wrote: > Here's what Judy actually wrote: > > > The thing about Brahman, as Ken Wilber points > > out, is that It is "One without a second," One > > without an opposite. If you say It is X, that > > means It is not not-X, which gives not-X an > > existence independent of Brahman; it gives > > Brahman an opposite, a second. > > No, here's what Judy actually wrote:
> Here's Nagarjuna's Four Negations: > > Brahman is not the relative. > Brahman is not the Absolute. > Brahman is not the relative and the Absolute. > Brahman is not neither the relative nor the Absolute. > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/141175 These of course aren't Nagarjuna's four negations, they are some made-up 'syllogisms' appended onto a paraphrase of Nagarjuna, which in any case he never said anything about a 'Brahman' thingy. In addition, Judy didn't say where she got the word 'Brahman' since that term isn't given in experience. It's actually a metaphysical term coined by Badarayana around 200 AD. You'd have to be a Sanskrit reader in order to know that, so I guess she picked it up from reading some transliteration of the Upanishads. However, if I were Nagarjuna, I'd ask her where she got that 'Brahman' thingy - from a book? If so, then I'd point out to her that all concepts will be found to be self-contradictory. > Whether Nagarjuna used the term "Brahman" or > whether he preceded Shankara's Advaita is, of > course, entirely irrelevant to this discussion. > What's is relevant is that using the faux-syllogism you stated above, you've made 'Brahman' into an illusion. According to Nagarjuna, all events, things, concepts, are an illusion, an appearance only. Shankara agrees with this, except that he posits a category, 'Brahman', and then seeks to make that the absolute. Why he'd do that after reading Nagarjuna and having his metaphysics blown to bits, I don't know. Maybe Shankara just couldn't put down the book and had to follow along with the Upanishadic concept of the Atman. Maybe Shankara didn't want to admit that he wanted to be a Middle Way Buddhist, but he couldn't go all the way, so he invented the idea of Maya to explain away his pre-conciened assumptions and still remain a orthodox Hindu.
