r0b’s Reviews > Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy > Status Update

‘When asked for any ultimate ground, such as direct contact with reality or transcendental justification, the Madhyamika shakes her head, suggesting that the very idea of such a ground is incoherent; convention, human practice, is all we have, and all we need.’

‘The Heideggerian approach to consciousness and reflexivity is anticipated by Dōgen, and offers an interesting alternative.’

It may well be that the phenomenological project as prosecuted by Dignaga, Husserl, and as resurrected by Coseru and Zahavi, may be misguided for a simple reason: There may be nothing that it is like to be me because there is no me; there may be nothing that it is like for me to see red, because I don’t.’

‘...”Could there be nothing more to being me than being me? To tasting a tomato than tasting a tomato? To seeing red than seeing red?”...
It may well be that the phenomenological project as prosecuted by Dagnāga Husserl, and as resurrected by Coseru and Zahavi, may be misguided for a simple reason: There may be nothing that it is like to be me because there is no me;...

‘We should begin to suspect that “what it is like” is like the self, on Candrakirti’s analysis- a useful facon de parler, but nothing more, a term that simply refers to nothing at all.’

‘To take what introspection delivers as reality is, from a Buddhist perspective, simply to embrace delusion.’

But that presupposition reflects more the fact that we imbibe certain religious prejudices with our mother’s milk, and that philosophical reflections...is often little more than a rational reconstruction of and apology for uncritically accepted prejudices whose religious and cultural origins are unacknowledged.’

‘...much philosophical reflection about the self begins with the presupposition that we are in some metaphysical sense substances with identity conditions. The task then is to locate that substance, and to articulate those identity conditions...

‘Mipham’s reading [of Śāntaraksita’s Ornament of the Middle Way] distances him from an idealist or ontological understanding of Yogācāra according to which the mind and appearances are taken to be truly existent, while external objects are taken to be nonexistent.

‘Consider all phenomena comprised under causes and effects. They are not substantially different from consciousness...But ultimately, even mind does not exist. For ultimately, it has neither a singular nor a manifold nature.’

Gyeltsap, 15th century Tibetan philosopher