Can We Kill Illusory People? Some Philosophical Reflections on Bodhi(sattva)caryāvatāra 9:11-13ab

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

Wading into the Stream of Wisdom is an impressive collection of essays by the students and colleagues of Reverend Dr. Leslie S. Kawamura (1935–2011), a key figure in the growth of Buddhist studies in North America. Born in Canada to a Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗 Buddhist family, Kawamura earned master’s degrees at Ryūkoku 龍谷 and Kyōto 京都, and pursued his doctorate under Herbert V. Guenther in Saskatchewan. In 1976, he entered the faculty of the University of Calgary, transforming the university into a center for Buddhist studies in Canada. This volume of fifteen essays will serve as an enduring testament to Kawamura’s legacy. The editors Sarah F. Haynes and Michelle J. Sorensen—both students of Kawamura—have organized the fifteen essays into four sections: "Ethics," "Text Criticism," "History," and "Praxis." These essays speak volumes about Kawamura’s academic range, and the valuable perspective he brought to Buddhist studies as a scholar-practitioner.

Part 1, "Ethics," begins with Paul Williams’s "Can We Kill Illusory People? Some Philosophical Reflections on Bodhi[sattva]caryāvatāra 9:11–13ab." Williams brilliantly explains some puzzling verses in the ninth chapter of the Bodhicaryāvatāra. These verses were variously interpreted by Indian exegetes who "are not always clear what the argument actually is" (p. 4). Williams convincingly establishes which verses are Śāntideva’s and which are the opponent’s, giving the reader a much clearer sense of the argument. In the debate Śāntideva argues that common people view sentient beings (sattva) as real, but the yogin sees beings as illusory (māyāvat). The opponent retorts that if beings are unreal and their minds are unreal, then there can be no bad merit in crimes like murder. Śāntideva responds that the mind is not "unreal" in the strong sense of a mirage or a magically generated elephant—it is "unreal" in the weaker sense of being dependent on causes and conditions. Williams labels the strong sense of unreality an "A-type" illusion and the weak sense of unreality a "B-type" illusion, and rightly observes that much Buddhist philosophical discourse drifts back and forth across these very different senses of unreality. Williams is not content with simply recovering the nature of this old argument between Śāntideva and his interlocutor; he goes on to argue that the interlocutor is right and Śāntideva is wrong. Williams agrees with Śāntideva’s critic that there can be no A-type illusory sentient beings, because "an illusory sentient being is not a sentient being at all. Like an extremely sophisticated robot, perhaps, it may look exactly like the real thing but it does not have consciousness: subjective first-order presentations, an awareness of what it is like to, say, see X or feel Y" (p. 15). Williams also finds Śāntideva’s retort, that beings and their minds are weak B-type illusions, to be basically useless. His argument is phenomonological: "If a sentient being had sensations such as pain, then since pain simply cannot be illusory and if it occurs it must exist with the fullest sort of existence such pain can have, it follows that the sentient being, inasmuch as it is the subject of pain, cannot be illusory either but must also exist with the fullest sort of existence a sentient being qua subject of pain can possibly possess" (p. 16). This is a provocative and insightful essay, and it clarifies how fundamental philosophy of mind is for engaging all sorts of Buddhist arguments. If, like Williams, one inhabits the qualia-saturated world of Thomas Nagel, then many Buddhist arguments will fall flat. If, on the other hand, one entertains the eliminativism of Daniel Dennett, Śāntideva’s argument becomes more plausible. (Source: H-Net Reviews)

Citation

Williams, Paul. "Can We Kill Illusory People? Some Philosophical Reflections on Bodhi(sattva)caryāvatāra 9:11-13ab." In Wading into the Stream of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Leslie S. Kawamura, edited by Sarah F. Haynes and Michelle J. Sorensen, 3–34. Berkeley, CA: Institute of Buddhist Studies; BDK America, 2013.

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Śāntideva (ཞི་བ་ལྷ་). Bodhicaryāvatāra [बोधिचर्यावतार]. byang chub sems dpa'i spyod pa la 'jug pa [བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའི་སྤྱོད་པ་ལ་འཇུག་པ།]. [The Way of the Bodhisattva]. Tengyur, RKTST 3216 http://www.rkts.org/cat.php?id=3216&typ=2.

Classical WorksAbout this item

An "Introduction to Bodhisattva Practice," the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra is a poem about the path of a bodhisattva, in ten chapters, written by the Indian Buddhist Śāntideva (fl. c. 685–763). One of the masterpieces of world literature, it is a core text of Mahāyāna Buddhism and continues to be taught, studied, and commented upon in many languages and by many traditions around the world. The main subject of the text is bodhicitta, the altruistic aspiration for enlightenment, and the path and practices of the bodhisattva, the six perfections (pāramitās). The text forms the basis of many contemporary discussions of Buddhist ethics and philosophy.