Thanks! ...Bill!
--- In [email protected], "Joe" <desert_woodworker@...> wrote:
>
> 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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