Bill!, and Group,
On re-reading T.R.V. Murti's book from time to time, THE CENTRAL PHILOSOPHY OF
BUDDHISM -- A STUDY OF THE MADHYAMIKA SYSTEM, a line or two or a paragraph will
stand out, and be memorable for a few days or weeks. The slow digestion and
re-digestion of this material is a bit reminiscent of how ruminants feed (but
let me not dwell on that).
Murti's language is precise and uncluttered. The reading is not difficult, but
the concepts may seem merely abstract if you have no experience that is at the
core of them. You shouldn't suffer that handicap.
Well, I retraced the other day a section in which he writes about ignorance,
Avidya. It's in the chapter on "The Madhyamika Concept of Philosophy as
Prajna-Paramita", p. 227, as I have it here in the 1998 paperback from Harper
Collins-India (the book was first c. 1955 from Allen and Unwin, London).
I remembered our exchanges here in the Forum about intellect, and our agreement
that it is of little or no value in helping us to awaken, as in Zen, and how
our engaging it can very often be -- if not always! -- an outright hindrance to
awakening. In other words, it plays little positive role in helping, and often
plays a large role in hindering. And this is why insistent and inflexible
Intellectuals most often have the hardest time entering the stream of Zen
practice.
We know that in the Buddhist view, awakening brings Prajna, wisdom, which
erases Avidya. But I was very struck by Murti's expression -- which I see as
accurate -- that it is our activity of conceptualizing which itself IS Avidya.
Let me quote the lines that have stayed with me:
"Prajna as non-conceptual knowledge removes avidya, which, in this system, is
the inveterate tendency to conceptualize things. Passions (attachment and
aversion), all of which have their origin in this tendency, cease on the
attainment of prajna. Prajna is not merely Intuition, but Freedom as well."
(the "system" is the Madhyamika system of Buddhist Philosophy, the "Middle
Way").
Just a small sample. I can recommend his (entire) book very highly. ;-)
--Joe
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