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wundermonk
28 August 2012, 12:11 AM
Greetings all,

Here (http://www.scribd.com/doc/80550080/Empty-Terms-Nyaya-and-Buddhist-JIP) is an interesting article contrasting the treatment of empty terms in Nyaya and Buddhism.

The Buddhist attempts to prove the following:

(1)Whatever exists is momentary.

Whenever a universal statement like this is made, it needs to be supported by a positive example and a negative example which should be agreeable to both sides of the debate.

The Buddhist, however, runs into a difficulty when he attempts to provide a negative example. Note that the negative example in support of (1) would need to be an example of something that is non-momentary and hence does not exist.

The negative example offered is "A hare's horn, being non-momentary, does not exist."

However, it is shown by the Naiyayika that that example is invalid. The Nyaya claims that a property can not be meaningfully predicated on a non-existent entity, like a hare's horn. To show this, he argues as follows.

Let us grant that the proposition "A hare's horn is not sharp" is true. But how would someone go about disproving the following proposition "A hare's horn is sharp" if a hare's horn does not exist? It therefore appears that if A refers to a non-existent entity, like a hare's horn, both of the following are undecideable and actually meaningless empty terms:

(a)A is X.
(b)A is not-X.

Since the truth value is undecideable, "A hare's horn, being non-momentary, does not exist", can not serve as a negative example in this case. In fact, the Nyaya argues that the Buddhist can not meaningfully provide even one single negative example in support of (1)Whatever exists is momentary.

shian
29 August 2012, 11:20 AM
"Bhiksus, you should know that all of the teachings I have given to you are a raft.' All teachings (Dharma) must be abandoned, not to mention non-teachings."

shian
31 August 2012, 06:18 PM
Acctually, Buddhism is not about Sunya , sunya state is near enlightenment but not yet enlightened. Not about eternalism or nihilism.
Also not about anattman ( no self ), no self state is also not perfect enlightenment.
If no self theory is enlightenment, so whole Buddhist is enlightened because they know about anattman theory.

Just like the words from Lord Buddha i post :
"Bhiksus, you should know that all of the teachings I have given to you are a raft.' All teachings (Dharma) must be abandoned, not to mention non-teachings."

Like Hindu , many peoples is ONLY know Hindu is ONLY about caste by born, so many of ignorance peoples make joke about Hindu with caste issue. But Acctualy Hindu is not only about caste, and even different sect of Hindu have different theory about caste. And so many other popular theory who make peoples miss understanding.