[Buddha-l] Fsat Mnifdlunses?

[Dan Lusthaus]

> The purpose of posting my jumbled paragraph was to show the discrepancy,
> on several levels, between what is constructed and what 'is'.

It's an example that suits Yogacara well. What one "sees" is words, 
simultaneously jumbled and unjumbled. What we recognize is language, which 
is already a human projection onto the world, that precedes each of us, and 
which we already embody from prior experience (your paragraph would not work 
for someone who only reads arabic script, or devanagri, etc. -- though it 
could be reproduced in languages using those scripts). Recognition 
irrespective of the jumble is still looking in the mirror. It is not just 
that first and last letters have to be intact. That helps, but the issue is 
the inductive and synthetic construction of meaning from what is available. 
We scour context to leap to meaningful conclusions. Seeing the jumbled words 
for what they are not -- since we see them as the actual words they 
represent imprecisely. Yogacara calls this abhuuta-parikalpa -- imagining 
something in a locus in which it does not occur. This is all a hall of 
cognitive mirrors, going back to language and cognition (Yogacara has a 
special type of vasana -- one of the three types of vasanas -- which is 
simply "language" vasana, responsible for your puzzle and more).


>  If I were to suggest that there is
> nothing to 'get at' apart from one's own projections, then that would be
> Yogacara. OK?

And you were almost there! No. That we see the gestalts, not pixels, etc. 
(not that pixels are any more "legitimate" than the scrambled words) means 
we have a propensity to see what we project on reality.

Take Vasubandhu's example from the Vimsatika (20 Verses), versions of which 
can be found elsewhere in Buddhist lit.: What we humans see as a stream of 
water, hell beings see as a river of fire, pretas see as flowing pus, blood, 
and other disgusting things; devas see as ambrosia (amrta). There is 
*something* there, but each type sees it as it would be projected by that 
type. Humans, of course, thinking they have the exclusive correct view, 
would take the "water" as real, and the ambrosia, fire, etc., as delusions 
projected by other beings on what is actually water. That's our root 
metaphor. But it is no less a projection onto what is there than the other 
"interpretations." What's there? We literally can't say (words are 
conceptually reductionist), but enlightened ones see yathaa-bhuuta, "just as 
it is becoming".

Clearer?

Dan