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Husserl and Yogacara Dan Lusthaus (2002). Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogacara Buddhism and the Ch'eng Wei-shih Lun.

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A book on Buddhist phenomenology can be either phenomenalist or phenomenological. The first option derives from the fundamental philosophical assumption that the only things we deal with are the phenomena, the appearances organized into an external and internal world by certain transcendental-aesthetic and logical schemata, as in the critical philosophy of Kant. The second option leaves open the door for the noumena to enter and, after stripping them of all existential contingency, calls them by their proper name: self-manifesting essences (sichselbst- zeigende-Soseinheiten). This is the way followed by Husserl and the transcendental phenomenology.

In the former case, we have a world of everchanging appearances with no self-being (svabhava) behind them (or at least with no svabhava given to our cognitive powers), while in the latter case, we dispense with the world of changing phenomena and reach for the absolutely apodictic realm of the self-manifesting and selfsubsisting eide governed by the rules of the Transcendental Subjectivity. The self-evident phenomena - divorced from all sense data and seen in the light of the a priori regularities of the Transcendental Subject - form the many-layered horizontal ontologies within the framework of the transcendental-phenomenological doctrine of constitution. This is the real philosophical pathos of the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl: Down with the mischievous senses, back to the things themselves.

Yogacara philosophy, argues Dan Lusthaus, is the Buddhist phenomenology (p. 11). This true statement is paradoxically based on two false premises:

(1) the naturalist interpretation of Husserlian phenomenology, and (2) the contention that Yogacara philosophy is not a form of ontological idealism. What is common to both is seen rather in the idea that “there is no thought, feeling, idea, memory, or knowledge of any kind that does not come to us through our senses” (p. 1). Husserl would reply to this with the famous “praeter intellectum” of Leibnitz, while Asanga and Vasubandhu, the two biggest authorities in Yogacara, would totally disagree: “Just on the contrary, there is nothing in the senses that could be interpreted as different from the intellect, because the senses are but pure intellect, citta-matra.”

Before presenting evidence of the author’s false attitude to both Husserl and Yogacara, a few introductory words should be said about the structure and the purport of the book as a whole. The subtitle proclaims it to be a philosophical investigation into the Yogacara Buddhism and the Hsuan-tsang’s Chinese commentary on Trimsika of Vasubandhu, known as Ch’eng Wei- Shin Lun. The book consists of a Preface, Five parts, Appendices, Bibliography, and an Index. Part One, Buddhism and Phenomenology, outlines the basic Yogacara tenets, its doctrinal alternatives, and the phenomenology of Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in

two fundamental aspects – the nature of the sensational material (hyle) and the intentional arc with its noematic and noetic poles. Part Two, The Four Basic Buddhist Models in India, describes the four paradigms along which the Buddhist schools and doctrines have been evolving through the ages: The psychological model of exploring the world of our experience from the point of view of the dharmas (elemental experience data, kind of experiential atoms) and the five aggregates (skandha) comprising them. The causal model of the co-dependent origination (pratitya-samutpada).

The cosmological model of the three fundamental world-axes (tridhatu), including the world of desire (kama-dhatu), the material world of rupa-dhatu, and the immaterial world of arupa-dhatu. The soteriological model of (a) normative life (sila), (b) vita contemplativa (samadhi), and (c) the perfection of wisdom (prajna) as a skillful means (upaya) for getting the desired fruit of the ultimate liberation (nirupadhisesa-nirvana).

An intermittent chapter has been added to “illustrate in part how the four models … were deployed by Buddhism” (p. 123), but in fact, Chapter Seven deals quite logically with the two ways of becoming liberated that were not covered by the progress of the cognitive Yoga as depicted in the four preceding chapters. These are the two kinds of meditation representative of the so-called transcognitive (asamprajnata) soteriology, namely, the meditation, or better, direct intervention into the world of the subconscious (asamjni-samapatti), and the meditation on the very notion of cessation (nirodha-samapatti). Both of them are listed on page 544 of the book as subliminal tendencies not related to consciousness (cittaviprayuktasamskara- dharma).

Chapter Eight presents a summary of the four models and a suggestion that, above all, prajna is a “practical knowledge”, on the simple ground that the “prefix pra- (cognate to pro- in English)” is indicating ‘moving towards’ (p. 164). The Sanskrit prefix pra- can be traced to the Latin prae- and the Slavic pra- with the meaning of something preceding, archaic, fundamental. Prajna, translated as wisdom, is what precedes the knowledge; it is the fundament and the source of knowledge. This might not be so clear to those who study the Hindu intellectual traditions, but for a Buddhologist, this comprehension of prajna is a must – considering its status as cittasamprayukta-samskara-dharma in all Abhidharma lists, and its role of cognitive indriya (power) in the Sarvastivada systematics of the 24 indriyas.

Part Three deals with traditional topics, like karma and meditation, in their relation to the epistemology, restoring to some extent the meaning of prajna as transcendental perfection. Part Four contains the original Sanskrit text of Vasubandhu’s Trimsika and its two Chinese translations by Paramartha and Hsuan-tsang. In this regard, every version is separately translated into English, annotated, and cross-analyzed. Part Five, The Ch’eng Wei-Shin Lun and the Problem of Psychosophical Closure: Yogacara in China, though not philosophical but rather psychosophical - is the investigation promised by the subtitle, followed by the very handy One Hundred and the Seventy-Five Abhidharma lists, duly translated and compared.

Now let us proceed with the textual criticism providing concrete examples of Dan Lusthaus’ misinterpretation of Husserlian phenomenology and Vijnanavada. The deviation starts with his outlining of the methodological principles along which the comparative study of Yogacara and phenomenology will be performed. On the very first page, we read "We are constituted by how we respond to and interpret our sensations." The phenomenology of both Husserl and Yogacara takes the opposite stand; they believe that the way we respond to, and interpret, the sensations is predetermined by our transcendental constitution. It is important to note that the phenomenological constitution has nothing to do with our naturalistically attained and interpreted sensations. On the contrary, according to

Yogacara, even the simplest definite sensation implies an act of inference, and, as demonstrated by Dignaga, can be defined as a kind of affirmative syllogism (anuvyavasaya). The intentionality is an act of imparting meaning to the sense data; hence our preformatted constitutional schemata (kalpana in the language of Yogacara) are molding the material provided by the senses.

According to Yogacara our mental experience is changing, alterating (parinama, pravrtti) every moment. In this fluctuating stream (vijnana-santana) we tend to posit two constants ... Atman ... and dharmas (affective, thetic, and ‘objective’ circumstances) ... (ibid.)

Let us remember that the Atman and the dharmas have been defined as constants. Constant means unchangeable, stable, ergo, permanent. Is Dr. Lusthaus trying to convince us that dharmas are unchangeable, stable, and permanent constituents of our mental flux? Yes, dharmas have been determined unequivocally as constants. Is Dr. Lusthaus aware of the existence of ksanika-vada (theory that everything is momentary)? Evidently he is. Why then does Dan Lusthaus define the dharmas as constant elements of our everchanging experience? This is curious because he underlines the idea that both Atman and dharmas are “constructions fabricated (parikalpita) through our attempt to suppress the anxieties and fears which [notions of] change, impermanence, uncertainty, instability and death arouse in us [and then forgetting all this] we invest our invented constants with ultimate sanctity and significance.”

So, it turns out that both Atman and dharmas are parikalpita, imagined constructions of ours. Not paratantra and certainly not parinispanna (the other two natures accepted by Vasubandhu in his Trisvabhava-nirdesa). Turning to Vasubandhu, we find out that parikalpita is a characteristic of all imagined phenomena that have no real referent behind them, like the parikalpita elephant of the mayavadin (illusionist) which disappears as soon as the mayavadin withdraws his mantra. Atman and dharmas, according to Dan Lusthaus, are illusions, mirages, magically created noematic visions in our ever-changing noetic flux of our never-ending desires.

Vasubandhu, however, defines the dharmas as samvrttisat (empirical) when they allow further analysis, and as paramarthasat (transcendental truths) when no further analysis is possible. In the region of transcendental phenomenology, there is no time; permanent and impermanent are highly irrelevant characteristics when applied to tathata or bhutarthatva nature of all dharmas, i.e., when we take dharmas as ultimate objects of samadhi-prajna, the Indian equivalent of phenomenological Wesenschau. On the first page of his psychosophical study, Lusthaus defines Atman and dharmas as parikalpita phenomena, and thus makes the application of any reasonable, historically valid phenomenological approach to the object of his study – the Yogacara epistemology – impossible.

There is another questionable definition on this starting page, namely that dharmas are “affective, thetic, and ‘objective’ circumstances.” Affective - if we look at the rupa-skandha (group of matter), we will not find a dharma capable of being predicated as “affective.” How could earth, water, fire, and air be affective circumstances? Affective is a qualification that is applicapble only – and partly – to vedana-skandha and to some dharmas from the range of samskaraskandha. In no case are all dharmas affective. So the first element in this starting definition of the dharma is defective as it is too specific (asadharana) and cannot be used as a valid dharma-visesana (qualifier).

Thetic - the word implies that all dharmas be posited, and not pre-found as “existing” or, to use the proper word, as “prajnaptically” (mentally) or “vyavaharically” (empirically) subsisting, i.e., not as ultimate phenomena accessible by this or that form of Buddhist samapatti (valid direct attainment of the cognitive content being an object for meditation). Every thetic act of consciousness requires a thetic actor. And since there is no Atman to take the role of the transcendental subject (TS), we have to look for the actor among the dharmas themselves. This will lead us to the conclusion that there are two types of dharmas - positing dharmas, playing the role of the absent TS, and posited dharmas. So, we are led once again to conclude that the qualification “thetic” is also too specific as it does not cover all types of dharmas, or, if it does, then it requires something other than the

dharmas, namely, the TS which could serve as the dharmin (bearer) of all posited dharmas. ‘Objective’ - the single quotes imply that the dharmas are in fact not objective; hence they are subjective, because the third is not given. But how can they be subjective if there is no subject in Buddhism? Subjective means appending to some subject or produced by some subject. We have dismissed the Atman as an illusory mental construction (parikalpita). What is then our quasi-

subjectivity? So, the third visesana is invalid in its philosophical implications. Dharmas are either objective without quotes, or subjective. They cannot be subjective by default. What now remains is to define them without any quotes as objective. Here, I should like to add, objective does not necessarily mean existential, substantially existing. By doubting the possibility of acquiring objective knowledge about the objective dharmas, Dan Lusthaus is cutting off the last chance of producing a sustainable phenomenological interpretation of Yogacara idealism.

The last element in Lusthausdefinition throws the baby out with the bath water, because the dharmas are by no way "circumstances." The irony of the author's interpretive methodology is that by circumstances, Dan Lusthaus understands nothing else but the object of cognition, the grasped as such (grahya, visaya, gocara). The three terms in the brackets are listed as synonyms which does not make much sense because something can be visaya (object) without being grahya (grasped, as, for instance, is the case with the grasping, the noetic acts as such and the graspers taken as objective targets, alambana, of meditation) while gocara is the intentional horizon of all indriya-specific objects rather than the objects themselves; gocara, so to say, is the pasture with the grass for the indriyas (sense organs), not the grass itself.

How, based on such misconceived ideas about the nature of Buddhist epistemology, will the author manage to apply the phenomenological method of Husserl to Yogacara? Lusthaus understands the phenomenology as the projection of our misconceived ideas onto the “objective reality.” Yet, there is an attempt to reach for our true identity obscured by theories “by which we give value and identity to ourselves through the values and identities we project on the objects.” This is the case in the eidetic phenomenology too, but Husserl is not found saying, “we grasp physical objects precisely because of the theories we have of them and ourselves” (ibid.). The ‘etiology’ of our cognitive phenomena is a genetic-phenomenological question. For quite a long period, Husserl disregarded the genetic

phenomenology as irrelevant to the phenomenological method. Its main goal was to bracket all existential characteristics of the objects posited in our natural Einstellung for the sake of making phenomena self-appear. Causality pertains to the realm of Dasein, hence it is subject to phenomenological reduction. If we look at, say, Dharmakirti, we will find that causality is the proper energy of the selfrevealing phenomena called svalaksana. In fact, causality in Buddhist logic is the svalaksana of the Ultimate Reality. The ultimate phenomena in the case of Buddhist transcendental logic are the sources of all causal energy of our prapancita (phenomenal) world. For Husserl, and especially for Max Scheler, who was far more radical in developing the metaphysical implications of the phenomenological method, the ultimate and pure phenomena are lacking causal energy, they are powerless (and this should not be interpreted in the sense that the phenomenology is methodologically powerless).

After repeating what has already been said about the “theoretical projectedness” of our Atman and dharmas (interpreted as external projections, or exteriorizations of our theories), and which has already been critiqued, the author continues with a seemingly trivial statement that “according to Buddhism what we fundamentally lack is a ‘self’, and our frantic search and grasping for ‘things’ is at once a sign of our sense of this lack ..." (p. 2). According to Buddha, those who hold the nonexistence of the Self are called nihilists (ucchedavadins) and those who maintain the eternality (sasvata) of the Self are called

eternalists (sasvatavadins). What any Buddhist would follow is the Middle Way between eternalism and nihilism. Consequently, what this implies is that Buddhism does not approve of the theories that claim that there is fundamentally no Self at any level of reality. While such uncritical claims are popular with the general Buddhist public, it is not very clear what their raison d'etre is in such a serious academic work. The only reason, as it seems, is to stress that while Buddhism is exempt from the ’mcdonaldizing’ quest for things, “religions such as Hinduism may formalize and valorize this frantic pursuit”

(p. 2). This is a strikingly non-academic and politically incorrect declaration in such an academic book! What about ‘tarati sokam atmavid’ (the knower of the Self puts an end to the sorrow)? Will it also be interpreted as know thyself in order to get rich?

Here comes the revealed secret of the semantic potential of the word ‘projection’. “The world that the unenlightened experience is the projection (pratibimba) of their own desires and anxieties (Pali, asava, Skt., asrava)” (ibid.). I have perused several dictionaries in search of a possible interpretation of pratibimba as projection. The Monier-Williams Sanskrit- English dictionary explains the word as reflection, resemblance, or shadow of the real world, counterform, as the etymology of the word suggests, an image that is depending in its visual being on something else. Nyaya-kosa, the most authoritative Sanskrit dictionary of philosophical terms, explans on page 534: pratibimbanam - 1 anukaraNam | ythA dRSTAntas tu sadharmasya

vastunaH pratibimbanam ... | 2 bimbAnurUpa-praticchAyAbhavanam | yathA mAyAvAdi-vedAntimate jIveZvarayor bimba-pratibimbabhAvaH ityadau |

Pratibimbana here is defined as imitation, or resemblance of an image to a thing possessing the same properties (dharma). Or, as the second definition runs, it is an experience of the isomorphic shadow cast by the original, and an example of such a relation of bimba and pratibimba (original and reflection), according to the Vedantic doctrine of illusionism, is the relation between Isvara and the individual soul. Again we have the original and dependent image. In our case, the phenomenal world which we experience as real is, in fact, a reflected image of the immanent and transcendental-cognitive reality. The nature of the phenomenal world, according to this definition, is paratantric, dependent. This is what Dr. Lusthaus states on the second page of his book. However, on the first page he determines the nature of Atman and dharmas, making up the content of the phenomenal world, as illusionary fabrications (parikalpita).

According to Vasubandhu, there are three different natures (trisvabhava) of realityimagined (parikalpita), ontologically dependent (paratantra), and metaphysically ripe (parinispanna). On two consecutive pages, Lusthaus has managed to define one and the same object – the phenomenal reality – with the help of two excluding characteristics; first, as imagined, and, second, as ontologically dependent. This suggests that the ideas he has about the nature of the main Yogacara philosophical tenets are not much parinispanna Knowing Dan Lusthaus to be one of the finest Yogacara scholars, it was surprising to discover on page 3 of his book the following claim: That realization [namely, that no permanent, immutable self has ever or will ever exist], when experienced at the root of all one's cognitive activities and abilities (mula-vijnana), is liberation; the after-effect of this realization is nirvana...

This sounds very much like ideological Atiyoga slogan rather than as a documented Yogacara tenet. One can liberate oneself from the idea of the Self on a purely empirical-psychology level – there are many examples of ideologically imposed depersonalizations of Buddhists without proceeding to immediate liberation of that “person.” What then is the difference between realizing anatma on a psychologypenomenological level and realizing it on the

level of mula-vijnana (root consciousness)? What we have from the discourses of Buddha is anatma-vada on a descriptive-psychological level, which by no means presupposes or requires the non-existence of the Self as a lemma. In three suttas, the most important of which is the Anattalakkhana- sutta, Buddha explicitly says what Atma is not – rupa is not Atma, vedana is not Atma, etc., because, IF THEY WERE, they would have been permanent, painless, and unchanging, or, as the Anuradha-sutta says: - Yam pan aniccam dukkham viparinamadhammam kallannu tam samanupassitum ‘etam mama eso'ham asmi, eso me atta’ iti?

- No hetam, bhante.1

It is my belief that the Yogacarins developed this latent transcendental idealism of Buddha into a full-fledged philosophical system, with the Atman as the highest transcendental reality. And it is precisely on the level of mula-vijnana that one comes to the realization of the fact that one is Buddha, and that Buddha is one’s true Transcendental Self; while anatta applies to the level of descriptive phenomenology and performs the functions of apophatic advancement towards the realization of the Ultimate Truth. What follows further on the same page is a psycho-analytic interpretation of our distressed projection and

reprojection activity. We project our dissatisfactions and illusions as external reality (samsara). Phenomenology is not a helpyourself philosophy of the mentally retarded, reality dissatisfied, or sexually concerned individuals. It is about the immanent life of the mentally absolutely sound psyche, reaching from there out to the stage of the pure transcendental phenomena and, further, to the constitutive domain of the Transcendental Subjectivity. So far, with his declared denial of the existence of TS in Yogacara, Lusthaus makes impossible the realization of the basic intention of his book, which is to demonstrate that Yogacara is the Buddhist phenomenology. By ‘Buddhist phenomenology’ he understands the investigation of the dharmas. And the dharmas have been defined as

changing parikalpita phenomena, i.e., as empirical phenomena subject to the laws of the existential contingency. This provides pause for thought regarding the documented reasons for declarations of the following: “The affinities between Buddhist phenomenologists and Western phenomenologists are at times striking.” The phenomenology of Husserl has nothing to do with the existentially relative phenomena. Rather, it is the radical dispensing with them using different kinds of phenomenological reduction. This having been said, it is a somewhat useless task to analyze whether there are really any ‘striking parallels’ between the transcendental 1 “Is it reasonable to regard what is non-eternal, painful, and subject to change as: ‘This is mine. This is my Self. This is what I am’?” – “There is no reason, lord.” (BJT, p. 204, at ftp://scorpio.gold.ac.uk/jbe/Pali) phenomenology of Husserl and the Lusthaus' interpretation of Yogacara. For a traditional phenomenologist, it is clear that the phenomena of Lusthaus are not the phenomena of Husserl.

Calling his book Buddhist Phenomenology with the explicit promise that readers will find some worthy applications of the phenomenological method of Husserl to the study of Yogacara, is an empty intention. What has been promised on page 4 is quickly denied on page 5. Explaining what Yogacara is not, Lusthaus postulates three forms of idealism:

Metaphysical idealism. • Epistemological idealism (which seems to be the subjective idealism, where the subject is grasped as non-reducible entity).

• Critical epistemological idealism. These three idealistic paradigms are “thoroughly inappropriate for Yogacara” because Yogacara performs a total deconstruction of the illusion of subjectivity (self-hood). But, in its first stage, Yogacara follows a “similar trajectory to that typically found in epistemological idealism.” Kant, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty listed as equal representatives of the “epistemological idealism” are ‘appropriate’ for the Yogacara because they each hold that we should enquire about reality from the viewpoint of consciousness, but “thoroughly inappropriate” as long as they start

to treat consciousness as “ultimately real (paramartha-sat), much less the only reality.” Yes, this is the exact phrase; Kant and Husserl are dismissed by Lusthaus because they allegedly regard consciousness as real and declare it to be the only reality. If this chapter of the book were software, such allegations would have presented a major security hole for phenomenological and other “critical-epistemological” hackers to exploit and ruin the Lusthaus programme. Neither do Kant and Husserl define consciousness as the only reality, nor does Yogacara deny explicitly the paramarthasatta of such notions as akasa and the two nirodhas, let alone tathata, dharmata, or bhutarthata. Yogacara, says the author, displays a consistent methodology, and it is this methodology that is charcterized as ‘phenomenology’ (p. 9). We have seen that the “epistemological idealism” has been

assessed as a kind of discardable methodological prolegomena to the proper methodology of Yogacara seen in the perspective of a total deconstruction of the Transcendental Self. Yet, the title of the book misleadingly suggests classical phenomenology, and there are numerous equally misleading statements to the effect that it is the “Husserlian sense of phenomenology ... that the present work follows” (p. 11). It is true that Husserl defined his phenomenological project as transcendental idealism, but the difference between his own and Kant's transcendental idealism marks the fundamental distinction between

phenomenalism and phenomenologism. Kant's philosophy and Buddhist philosophy are phenomenalist to the extent that both recognize the facticity of the sense-data called phenomena (dharma). It is only in this meaning that HH Dalai Lama speaks of Buddhist phenomenology. The difference between Kant and Buddhist philosophy, according to Lusthaus, is that the Buddhist philosophy of Yogacara takes all phenomena as mental fabrications, not as appearances of the things in themselves – which are far from being mental constructions. Transcendental idealism is outlined as “a critical concern with epistemological issues, which is a recognition that knowledge comes through cognition, but without implying any metaphysical statement about the nature of reality as dependent on or created by mind” (ibid.).

This, however, is not a sufficient reason to declare the philosophy of Yogacara phenomenological in the Husserlian sense of the word. References to Maurice Merleau-Ponty with his phenomenology of a body-only doctrine are not helpful in explaining the Asanga-Vasubandhu mind-only philosophy, despite all postexplanations to the effect that vijnaptimatrata does not mean metaphysical or epistemological idealism. The fact is that vijnaptimatrata does not assign

any special constitutive role to the rupa (body) and samjna (perception), as is the case with the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. If we say that what makes Yogacara phenomenological is the insistence on the “cognitive roots of knowledge,” then all early 20th century positivists and analytical philosophers should have also been listed among the phenomenological philosophers. The “philosophical alienation” is still there between logical positivism and transcendental phenomenology, despite their common anti-metaphysical stance. Is the Yogacara philosophy really developing a project similar to that of Husserl? To name Yogacara phenomenological, one has to find and prove the existence in Yogacara of:

1. Phenomenological reduction 2. Phenomenological psychology 3. Eidetic reduction 4. Wesenschau 5. Transcendental Subject 6. Transcendental constitution 7. Intersubjective monadology (optionally)

Only then will the philosophical reader be convinced that we have a protophenomenological project in the philosophy of Yogacara, and that Yogacara is the Buddhist Phenomenology.

Judging from what is contained in Chapter Two, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, none of the above criteria is discussed or even touched upon. Instead, we find a ‘revolutionarydefinition of the transcendental idealism:

This idealism was ‘transcendental’ in the sense that its objects of investigation were the transcendental conditions of experience – ‘transcendental’ here meaning nothing more than what constitutes without giving itself as an object in that experience. For instance, the eye is transcendental to seeing ... (ibid.) The legitimate objects of the transcendental phenomenology are the eidetic phenomena, the pure morphological entities (Wesenheiten) as Husserl calls them. If

they were invisible to the Transcendental Subject, they would not have been called eidetic. Phenomena as the constitutive Wesenheiten of transcendental phenomenology are all visible because they are selbstzeigende Washeiten (self-manifesting quidditas). Something selsbtzeigendes is, by all means, transparent to the subject of cognition. There is no place here for the analytical-positivist notion of phenomenological transparency. .

eye as a physical sense organ of vision is as much a transcendent object of reduction as any external transcendent object bracketed during the first stage of the phenomenological reduction. The fact of being bodily or psychologically immanent is not a mark of the cognitive transcendentalism. Besides, transcendent and transcendental are two different categories, and, what is more, Husserl is distinguishing between two types of transcendence - the trancendence of the external object and the transcendence of the immanent fact when the latter is not entirely and not properly given to our consciousness. It is a kind of viparita-jnana, and this ‘state of being a perverted knowledge’ (viparitajnanatva) turns the psycho-cognitive fact into something transcendent.

Second, transcendental constitution does not proceed through the physical eye, much in the same way that what is seen in the samadhiprajna (the wisdom of meditation) is not constituted by the action of caksu (eye) for the simple reason that all physiological and noetic activity of the visual sense organ has been previously cancelled in the process of the phenomenological tapas (reduction, askesis). To quote from another authority in Yoga, samapatti (which is the Indian

analog to the phenomenological Wesenschau) follows upon cancelling all citta-vrtti (operational modes of consciousness) based on the functioning of the bahindriya (external sense organs), see, Yogasutra I.41. Or, as Nagarjuna has put it in his rarely translated mangala-vada to Mulamadhyamaka-karika, the perfectly Awakened has pacified the phenomenal world (prapancopasama). (See Bauddha-bharatigranthamala

Leaving the five senses to operate as ‘transcendental factors’ amounts to a continuous production of prapancita-vikalpas (phenomenal constructions), while the ultimate goal of Yoga (Yogacara means a Yogic behaviour) is to put an end to the world-variegating activities of consciousness and to start seeing the phenomena as such (tatha), which brings the samadhin to the state of the truth-abounding Dharma Cloud. Husserl used to radically oppose any interpretation of his transcendental phenomenolgy in terms of Plato's objective idealism. It is precisely this kind of Platonic understanding of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology that we find explicitly declared in Dan Lusthaus' work:

By ‘idealismHusserl meant the region of ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc., in other words, the total spectrum of conscious experience as it is constituted and present to us. (ibid.)

The region of the “ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc.,”, as any other ontological region, has two basic component parts - Dasein and Sosein. Husserl's transcendental idealism consists of suspending the Dasein elements of any Sein, both transcendent and immanent, and in analyzing the remaining Sosein elements. It is very difficult for a Yogacarin to grasp this, because instead of suspending the Dasein constituents of being, a Buddhist epistemologist would quite

naturally suppose the non-existence of such constituents, their emptiness, thus succumbing to an unreflected metaphysical presuppositionalism. The next move of the modern Buddhist epistemologist is to declare the Dasein constituents, already explained away, as identical to the transcendental subjectivity, thus falling pray to a kind of unfair-play sunyavada (nihilistic) extremism.

Proving himself a master of the free play with terms devoid of their proper phenomenological meaning, an attitude so characteristic of the postmodern intellectuals, Lusthaus states that “the reader will discover phenomenological and deconstructive terminology liberally spread throughout this work” (p. 12). I find myself agreeing with him regarding the “liberal spread” but herein lies a problem. The “spread” is so liberal in fact, that the terms used have nothing to do with their original Husserlian semantics, and express rather the opposite of what Husserl meant and said! The warning that using phenomenological

terminology should not be taken as evidence that concepts of the one system can be reproduced in terms of the other, does not help very much as the concepts behind the terms do not correspond to the original concepts implied by the use of phenomenological terminology. With the same success, if not greater, the author could have used the terminological apparatus of the quantummechanical phenomenology (QMP) to express his concepts (in fact, vikalpas) about Yogacara.

Lusthaus may not be informed about the proper meaning of the phenomenological terms used by Husserl, but he is competent enough to say that Husserl's “virtual neurosis for rewriting and reediting made it a marvel that he managed to publish at all” (ibid.). Having failed to point out the specific nature of Husserl's phenomenology against the ‘phenomenology’ of Kant and wrongly taken it to be a description of the Platonic framework, Lusthaus is aware so perfectly well of the various changing characteristics of the prajnaptic mindstream called ‘Husserl’ that he can “recite these characteristics and their alternation” (ibid.).

The claim that “Husserl is not self-identical with himself” (p. 13) does not release the phenomenological researcher from the burden of showing the specific identity of Husserl as a thinker, and to stick to this identity. Lusthaus denies that there is a standing conceptual identity in the phenomenology of Husserl. This makes all his further “phenomenological” studies highly irrelevant. Failing to recognize the identity of Husserlian phenomenology as a heuristic method – it is not the method of Husserl but rather Husserl himself that is identified as a “heuristic concatenation” (p. 12) – Lusthaus claims that “Yogacara is a form of phenomenology, with affinities to Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, etc., if not identities” (p. 13). Husserl is not identical to himself, while Yogacara reveals some identities with him.2

About the Author

Plamen Gradinarov holds a PhD in Phenomenology from Moscow State University (1982) and a DLitt in Indian Philosophy from the Russian Academy of Sciences (1990).

He is a former Professor from the Academy of Social Sciences and Management, Sofia, and is now the Director of Eurasia Academic Publishers, Bulgaria. Professor Gradinarov is the founder of several online projects like Orientalia (www.orientalia.org), 2 For an analysis of the concrete similarities and “identities” between the Phenomenology of Husserl and the Buddhist philosophy of Yogacara, see Intentionality and Alayavijnana. Discussion notes on the Buddhist Phenomenology of Dan Lusthaus are available


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