[Buddha-l] a worthwhile read--Red Pine (BIll Porter) interviewed

[Dan Lusthaus]

As I said, "principle" has become the default equivalent, and sometimes li 
does mean that, but the idea that li can only mean principle and that to 
translate it as rationality or logic is wrong is simply vestigial ignorance. 
Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi) came later, and he is the one who imbued li with the sense 
of principle that scholars have been mistakenly reading back into its 
Buddhist usages. We can see clearly that the Buddhist translators understood 
li as "logic" since that is the term they used for Sanskrit terms for Logic. 
Interestingly in the last decade or so the ones to recognize that 
"principle" is a problematic retroactive reading of li and thus are 
attempting to employ other English terms in their translations, are the 
scholars working on Confucianism, who tend now to use terms like "patterns," 
instead of "principle" when working with pre-Neoconfucian texts. The 
stubborn ignoramusus remain the Buddhist scholars, since there doesn't seem 
to be a bad mental habit that Buddhists can't grow fond of.

That you haven't seen "rationality" is because you only read English. If you 
would read Chinese you would have long ago discovered that trying to stay 
faithful to "principle" for occurrences of Li in Buddhist texts -- Huayan 
and Chan included -- is frustrating and causes headscratching, since it 
becomes quickly obvious that "principle" doesn't make much sense in most 
contexts.

In terms of the so-called Bodhidharma texts translated by Porter, the Li vs 
practice distinction works something like "THEORY" (not principle) and 
"practice." Since the theories are reasoned, Porter opted for rationality, a 
healthy antidote to a common misconception about the nature of Chan and Chan 
literature.

Learn some Chinese and we can resume the discussion.

Dan

PS. The Digital Dictionary of Buddhism gives the following for li, in this 
order:

a.. The lines or grain in precious stone. [cmuller]
a.. Logic, reason (Skt. hetu, nyāya); correct cognition (Skt. pramāṇa). A 
theme. Theory. [cmuller]
a.. The fitness of things; right, as an abstract principle. Truth, reality; 
coherence. [cmuller]
a.. Original truth or universal principle. siddhânta [cmuller]
a.. Connected with the prior meaning, this term was invested with a special 
meaning by the Huayan school, as the underlying 'noumenon' or principle of 
emptiness contained in and which contains all individual phenomena. 
[cmuller]
a.. To arrange, regulate, rule, rectify. [cmuller; source(s): Soothill]
a.. (Skt. yukti, naya; artha, avakāśa, kāraṇa, niyama, nīti, myāyya, 
bhavitavya, mata, *yathā-bhūtam, yukta, *yuktitas, yuktimat, yoga, vartani, 
vyavahāra, saṃbhava) [cmuller; source(s): Hirakawa]
Note that the blurb on Huayan is the standard boilerplate, precisely the 
nonsense that needs to be revised. Phenomena (shi 事) don't contain the 
"principle of emptiness" -- they *are* empty. Li is used to indicate the 
"theoretical" understanding of that, the theory of emptiness applied to 
things, while shi properly understood instantiate emptiness. Hence the 
fourth dharmadhatu is shi shi wuai (phenomena non-obstructing phenomena), 
expressing their emptiness.

The reviewer was not "wrong" to think that folks have been using principle 
for li for some time. S/he was wrong to think that trying an alternative, 
like "rationality" for li was a misunderstanding. The misunderstanding, and 
lack of historical understanding, was all the the reviewers.