• About me
  • About this blog
  • Comment rules
  • Other writings

Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Buddhaghosa

Right view vs. true statements

13 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Anger, Attachment and Craving, Early and Theravāda, Epistemology, Philosophy of Language, Truth

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Abhidhamma, Buddhaghosa, Noble Eightfold Path, Pali suttas, Paul Fuller, Wilfred Cantwell Smith

Paul Fuller’s The Notion of Diṭṭhi in Theravāda Buddhism, as its title might suggest, is a dry, abstract, technical monograph. It may also be one of the more spiritually beneficial books I have ever read.

I suppose maybe both of these things are appropriate to the book’s subject matter, the Pali Canon. One of the Canon’s “three baskets”, the abhidhamma, is notorious for its level of technical abstraction – and yet Theravāda tradition has consistently held it to be of great spiritual benefit. Erik Braun has demonstrated how the modern Burmese traditions of vipassanā meditation, now enormously popular around the world, have their origins in study of the abhidhamma.

Continue reading →

A Sellarsian solution for the self?

09 Sunday Jun 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, Karma, Metaphysics, Self, Truth

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Buddhaghosa, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, conventional/ultimate, G.W.F. Hegel, Jay Garfield, Madhyamaka, Maria Heim, Pudgalavāda, qualitative individualism, Śāntideva, Wilfrid Sellars

The conflict between Buddhism and qualitative individualism is a major difficulty for my own philosophy. In addressing that conflict, there is one approach that has repeatedly stuck out at me. I don’t think it actually solves the problem, but it may be a step towards a solution.

That step is to build on the similarities between the Buddhist conventional/ultimate distinction and Wilfrid Sellars’s distinction between the manifest and the scientific image. Both of these dichotomies are focused on the human person or self: at the conventional (sammuti/vohāra) or manifest level, selves and their differences are real and important, and stories can be told; at the ultimate (paramattha) or scientific level, selves disappear, reduced to smaller particles that form a more fundamental level of explanation.

We may note here a key way that Sellars departs from at least Buddhaghosa’s Buddhism. He agrees with Buddhaghosa’s view that the ultimate/scientific level is an important respect truer than the conventional/manifest. But the further difference is very important: for Sellars, the manifest image is necessary for ethics (and probably aesthetics and politics.) Continue reading →

Conventional teaching wrongly taken as an equal

26 Sunday May 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Hermeneutics, Truth

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Abhidhamma, Buddhaghosa, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Charles Hallisey, conventional/ultimate, Maria Heim, pedagogy

I demonstrated last time why Buddhaghosa believes the ultimate (paramattha) to be higher and truer than the conventional (vohāra or sammuti). But this is not to say that he finds the conventional unnecessary. Charles Hallisey rightly points out its value in his important “In defense of rather fragile and local achievement“. Hallisey notes that the conventional is essential for pedagogical purposes, and those purposes matter. The conventional is at least as important as the ultimate – but the ultimate, as I noted last time, remains truer. If it were not truer, there would be no need for it; the conventional would simply be superior, since it is more effective at teaching and persuading people.

In The Forerunner of All Things – a generally strong book of which I stand by my previous praise – Maria Heim claims that in that same article Hallisey argues “the Theravādins do not see ultimate (paramattha) teachings as truer than conventional (sammuti) teachings”, following this up with her own comment that “They have different purposes but are equally truthful ways of describing the world, and the Theravāda sources do not place them in a hierarchy.” (Forerunner 90)

But that is not quite what Hallisey says in the chapter at issue. Continue reading →

Mere convention vs. seeing correctly

12 Sunday May 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Hermeneutics, Metaphysics, Truth

≈ Comments Off on Mere convention vs. seeing correctly

Tags

Buddhaghosa, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, conventional/ultimate, Maria Heim, Wilhelm Halbfass

Continuing my response to Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, I want to turn back now to the original point of contention with which our exchange first began: the role of conventional (sammuti/vohāra) and ultimate (paramattha) in Buddhaghosa’s thought. First and foremost, I am deeply puzzled by Ram-Prasad’s claim in his comment on my previous post that “Buddhaghosa does not use the locution ‘merely’ (matta) in reference to conventional language”, when one can find this passage on page 1094 of his and Heim’s own article:

At XVIII.28, [Buddhaghosa] says that “there comes to be the mere common usage of ‘chariot’” (ratho ti vohāramattaṃ hoti) from its parts but that an ‘examination’ (upaparikkhā) shows that ultimately there is no chariot.” Likewise, when there are the five aggregates of clinging, then there comes to be the mere common usage of ‘a being’, ‘person’”… Continue reading →

There is only name and form

28 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Consciousness, Early and Theravāda, Metaphysics, Self

≈ Comments Off on There is only name and form

Tags

Abhidhamma, Buddhaghosa, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, conventional/ultimate, Maria Heim

I now begin my responses to Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad on the thought of Buddhaghosa. Let me first reiterate a point I made early on: what I refuse is the interpretation that Buddhaghosa’s understanding of ultimate, conventional and the aggregates are merely phenomenological and not ontological. That is, I reject Heim and Ram-Prasad’s claim that “Buddhaghosa does not use abhidhamma as a reductive ontological division of the human being into mind and body, but as the contemplative structuring of that human’s phenomenology.” Emphasis added. I am not, and never was, denying a phenomenological element to Buddhaghosa’s ideas; I would have no objection to the claim that Buddhaghosa uses abhidhamma categories as both an ontological division of a human being and as a structuring of that human’s experience (contemplative or otherwise). As far as I can tell, the ontology/phenomenology distinction is not one that Buddhaghosa employs; in Heim and Ram-Prasad’s article I do not see any evidence that Buddhaghosa makes such a separation.

Indeed that very distinction of phenomenology from ontology seems to me to depend on a distinction between subject (the topic of phenomenology) and object (the topic of ontology). Such a split seems to me one that Buddhaghosa is unlikely to want to make, given his commitment to deconstruct the self/subject. And I think the refusal of such a split may be lent support by Heim and Ram-Prasad’s article itself, on points which I did not refer to because I suspect I am in agreement with them: namely, that Buddhaghosa makes no significant split between mind and matter. Continue reading →

The importance of reading Buddhaghosa closely

21 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Hermeneutics, Self

≈ Comments Off on The importance of reading Buddhaghosa closely

Tags

Buddhaghosa, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Maria Heim

A while ago, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad made a thoughtful reply to the last of my post series on Buddhaghosa. I thank Ram-Prasad for that reply; I appreciate his willingness to engage with my rather cheeky attempt to reply to an article before it was even published. Now that his and Maria Heim’s article has reached publication (in Philosophy East and West 68(4), October 2018), I think it is time to take that reply back up again. Continue reading →

Buddhaghosa on seeing things as they are (3)

13 Sunday May 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Truth

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Buddhaghosa, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, conventional/ultimate, Maria Heim, Śāntideva

My continuing dispute with Maria Heim and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, over the ideas of Buddhaghosa, now returns to where it began: the distinction between ultimate (paramattha) and conventional (sammuti or vohāra).

Heim and Ram-Prasad admit that for some Buddhist traditions these terms refer to different truths or levels of truth. (When Śāntideva employs the ultimate/conventional distinction, for example, he describes them explicitly as satyadvaya, two truths.) But Heim and Ram-Prasad claim that for Buddhaghosa it is not so. Continue reading →

Buddhaghosa on seeing things as they are (2)

29 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Truth

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Buddhaghosa, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Itivuttaka, Maria Heim, Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha)

I continue my argument from last time dissenting from Maria Heim and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad’s interpretation of Buddhaghosa. I turn to a second passage that Heim and Ram-Prasad use – incorrectly, in my view – to claim Buddhaghosa is not trying to take a position on the way things actually are. They note correctly that Buddhaghosa contrasts those who see correctly, one one hand, with those who “resort to views” (the diṭṭhigata) on the other. But what does this distinction mean, exactly? Continue reading →

Buddhaghosa on seeing things as they are (1)

15 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Epistemology, Meditation, Metaphysics, Self, Truth

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Abhidhamma, Buddhaghosa, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, conventional/ultimate, Maria Heim, Milindapañhā

Earlier this year I examined the classic Pali Milindapañhā dialogue and its claim that while one can speak of oneself as a “convention” (vohāra), ultimately (paramattha) a person is not found. I referred in passing to the Visuddhimagga (Path of Purification), the most famous work of the great Theravāda philosopher Buddhaghosa, as following this understanding. And I noted that on this view a person, or a chariot, can most accurately be described in reductionist terms, as atomized parts; the ultimate reality lies beyond that convention.

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad took issue with this description in a comment, referring me to Maria Heim’s forthcoming book The Voice of the Buddha – and to an article he wrote with Heim in Philosophy East and West entitled “In a double way”. Neither of these has been officially published yet, but I could find a preprint version of “In a double way” on PEW’s site for “early release”.

The article claims that Buddhaghosa uses abhidhamma categories, such as the five aggregates (khandha), not as “as a reductive ontological division of the human being” but rather as “the contemplative structuring of that human’s phenomenology.” (1)1 That is to say that according to Heim and Ram-Prasad, Buddhaghosa is not trying to talk about what exists or what human beings and other entities really are, just about the kinds of experiences human beings have, and especially those found in meditation. The article comes to this conclusion through a welcome close reading of the Visuddhimagga, something which, the authors note accurately and unfortunately, “has rarely been attempted in competing views of him…” They add: “It would be a welcome development in the study of Buddhaghosa if other scholars were to offer further or contrasting interpretations – e.g., as that he engaged in constructing a metaphysical dualism – based on such textual analysis rather than on an a priori commitment to a picture of abhidhamma and its interpreters.”

To this I reply: challenge accepted. Continue reading →

Ethics of disposition, not decision

18 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Action, Analytic Tradition, Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, Mahāyāna, Metaphilosophy, Morality, Psychology, Unconscious Mind, Virtue

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Andrew Ollett, Aristotle, Buddhaghosa, Damien Keown, Daniel Kahneman, Śāntideva, trolley problem, virtue ethics

I’ve been thinking further on the decision/capacity distinction first articulated by Andrew Ollett, and I want to take a further step. So far Andrew and I have merely acknowledged the existence of this distinction – identifying different thinkers on either side and exploring the distinction’s implications for philosophical methodology. But I am, at this point, ready to make a more substantive claim: the “capacity” approaches are better. In ethics, we should be “capacity” rather than “decision” thinkers. I had stressed before that we can and should address the “capacity” approach philosophically and not merely historically; now I want to actually do so, and say that it is correct. Continue reading →

← Older posts

Welcome to Love of All Wisdom.

I invite you to leave comments on my blog, even - or especially - if I have no idea who you are. Philosophy is a conversation, and I invite you to join it with me; I welcome all comers (provided they follow a few basic rules). I typically make a new post every other Sunday. If you'd like to be notified when a new post is posted, you can get email notifications whenever I add something new via the link further down in this sidebar. You can also follow this blog on Facebook or Twitter. Or if you use RSS, you can get updates through the RSS feed.

Recent Comments

  • Seth Zuiho Segall on In praise of cultural appropriation
  • Jeremy on In praise of cultural appropriation
  • Nathan on In praise of cultural appropriation
  • Benjamin C. Kinney on Literature as representation and rasa
  • Nathan on The Mary Ellen Carter and the secret of happiness

Post Tags

20th century academia Alasdair MacIntyre Aristotle ascent/descent Augustine autobiography Buddhaghosa Canada conferences Confucius conservatism Disengaged Buddhism Engaged Buddhism Evan Thompson Four Noble Truths Friedrich Nietzsche G.W.F. Hegel gender identity Immanuel Kant intimacy/integrity justice Karl Marx Ken Wilber law Martha Nussbaum Mencius modernity Pali suttas pedagogy Plato rebirth religion Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha) T.R. (Thill) Raghunath technology theodicy Thomas Aquinas Thomas Kuhn Thomas P. Kasulis United States utilitarianism Śaṅkara Śāntideva

Categories

  • African Thought (11)
  • Applied Phil (237)
    • Death (36)
    • Family (34)
    • Food (17)
    • Friends (12)
    • Health (20)
    • Place (21)
    • Play (6)
    • Politics (133)
    • Sex (18)
    • Work (31)
  • Asian Thought (368)
    • Buddhism (265)
      • Early and Theravāda (103)
      • Mahāyāna (111)
      • Modernized Buddhism (78)
    • East Asia (80)
      • Confucianism (51)
      • Daoism (12)
      • Shinto (1)
    • South Asia (125)
      • Bhakti Poets (3)
      • Cārvāka-Lokāyata (5)
      • Epics (15)
      • Jainism (23)
      • Modern Hinduism (35)
      • Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika (6)
      • Sāṃkhya-Yoga (13)
      • Vedānta (33)
      • Vedas and Mīmāṃsā (7)
  • Blog Admin (24)
  • Method (222)
    • M.T.S.R. (128)
    • Metaphilosophy (148)
  • Practical Philosophy (321)
    • Action (10)
    • Aesthetics (37)
    • Emotion (135)
      • Anger (28)
      • Attachment and Craving (20)
      • Compassion (5)
      • Despair (3)
      • Disgust (3)
      • Faith (17)
      • Fear (5)
      • Grief (5)
      • Happiness (46)
      • Hope (14)
      • Pleasure (25)
      • Shame and Guilt (6)
    • External Goods (43)
    • Flourishing (75)
    • Foundations of Ethics (99)
    • Karma (42)
    • Morality (59)
    • Virtue (134)
      • Courage (2)
      • Generosity (10)
      • Gentleness (5)
      • Gratitude (10)
      • Honesty (13)
      • Humility (22)
      • Leadership (4)
      • Mindfulness (12)
      • Patient Endurance (26)
      • Self-Discipline (6)
      • Serenity (24)
      • Zest (4)
  • Practice (101)
    • Karmic Redirection (5)
    • Meditation (28)
    • Monasticism (36)
    • Physical Exercise (2)
    • Prayer (13)
    • Reading and Recitation (10)
    • Rites (19)
    • Therapy (9)
  • Theoretical Philosophy (309)
    • Consciousness (14)
    • Epistemology (102)
      • Certainty and Doubt (14)
      • Prejudices and "Intuitions" (25)
    • Free Will (17)
    • God (61)
    • Hermeneutics (47)
    • Human Nature (25)
    • Logic (27)
      • Dialectic (15)
    • Metaphysics (84)
    • Philosophy of Language (17)
    • Self (60)
    • Supernatural (48)
    • Truth (57)
    • Unconscious Mind (13)
  • Uncategorized (1)
  • Western Thought (389)
    • Analytic Tradition (87)
    • Christianity (134)
      • Early Factions (8)
      • Protestantism (20)
      • Roman Catholicism (45)
    • French Tradition (46)
    • German Tradition (81)
    • Greek and Roman Tradition (103)
      • Epicureanism (23)
      • Neoplatonism (2)
      • Pre-Socratics (5)
      • Skepticism (1)
      • Sophists (6)
      • Stoicism (17)
    • Islam (34)
      • Mu'tazila (2)
      • Salafi (3)
      • Sufism (8)
    • Judaism (33)
    • Natural Science (81)
      • Biology (18)
      • Philosophy of Science (46)
    • Social Science (131)
      • Economics (24)
      • Psychology (51)

Recent Posts

  • In praise of cultural appropriation
  • Literature as representation and rasa
  • The Mary Ellen Carter and the secret of happiness
  • Would eternal life be meaningless?
  • Defending the removal of suffering

Popular posts

  • One and a half noble truths?
  • Wishing George W. Bush well
  • Do Speculative Realists want us to be Chinese?
  • Why I am not a right-winger
  • On faith in tooth relics

Basic concepts

  • Ascent and Descent
  • Intimacy and integrity
  • Ascent-descent and intimacy-integrity together
  • Perennial questions?
  • Virtuous and vicious means
  • Dialectical and demonstrative argument
  • Chastened intellectualism and practice
  • Yavanayāna Buddhism: what it is
  • Why worry about contradictions?
  • The first philosophy blogger

Personal favourites

  • Can philosophy be a way of life? Pierre Hadot (1922-2010)
  • James Doull and the history of ethical motivation
  • Praying to something you don't believe in
  • What does postmodernism perform?
  • Why I'm getting married

Archives

Search this site

All posts, pages and metadata copyright 2020 Amod Lele. Comments copyright 2020 their comment authors. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) licence.

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.