Fazang's Corollary
davie...@osu.edu
shows low self-importance because each individual is the exact same as
every other individual. However, he also claims that if a particular
individual suddenly was not a part of existence, then the rest of
existence would change because of it. This appears to be a statement
of high self-importance because it implies that you play an extremely
vital part in everything. To me, these two statements create a
discrepency.
Does anyone have any ideas or comments regarding this? Thanks.
den...@osu.edu
answers your question but here goes. Farzang says that we are all the
same and extends that statement to say that the universe is part of
us. To me this seemed kind of strange, but when he described the Net
of Indra analogy to me it understood it better. Saying that if you
have a bunch of jewels they all have the reflections of all the other
jewels. Therefore, All the other jewels make up each jewel. This
makes sense to me because if you ever look closely at a diamond or
something you see your reflection and everything else around you in
the diamond. So when Farzang says that if one thing changes
everything changes its easy to see that with the jewels. If you put a
red stripe on one jewel, it reflects that red stripe on all the other
jewels, so they all change.
Nicholaos Jones
around. Think about a non-philosophical case: Clark Kent is identical
to Superman. But this means they are the same person. Some paper
money has tracking numbers stamped on it, to trace its journey through
the country -- if I were to run into someone who said they had a
dollar identical to the one in my wallet, we'd be talking about the
same dollar. So, usually, when we say that two things are identical,
we're really talking about only one thing. This suggests that,
according to our usual way of speaking, if someone were to say that
you are identical to me, they'd be saying that really there is only
one thing (think: Indian philosophy and Atman). But Fazang doesn't
mean this when he says that everything is identical to everything
else, because he also thinks there is more than one thing -- somehow
his idea is that different things are identical despite not being the
same thing. So, unless we want to sell his thought short and say that
he's just being silly or speaking nonsense, we need to think about how
his claim could be true (even if we ourselves think it is false).
In the paper I have posted online, I suggest the following way of
understanding Fazang's claim that each thing is identical to
everything else. He means that each thing is such that, if it were
different everything else were different, and that it being the way it
is makes everything else the way they are. Think about Indra's Net.
It's not that there is only one node -- there are many nodes.
Nonetheless, Fazang thinks each of those nodes is identical to every
other node. And if we think of identity in the way I've just
suggested, this makes sense. If one node were different, all other
nodes would be different, because they would each have different
reflections in them. But if one node has a particular pattern of
reflections in it, then all the other nodes have to be the way they
are (because if they were different, the reflection in the particular
node would be different). If we think of identity in out usual way,
though, then Fazang's analog does not make any sense.
All this illustrates a general point about methodology in studying
texts from different intellectual traditions: don't assume their
concepts are the same as our concepts, and don't criticize them on the
grounds that they happen to use concepts in a different way than we
do. After all, if we wanted to say that Fazang is just confused on
the basis of the way we think of identity, that's a bit pretentious of
us, because we're assuming that other people have to think the way we
do in order to be making any sense. This is why, when we were talking
about joy in the Upanishads, I stressed that we shouldn't bring too
many of the connotations we associate with the word "joy" when we're
trying to understand what the Upanishads mean by joy: we have to
confront other thoughts on their on terms, and this often involves
being flexible and open as to what those other thoughts might be.