Hello and welcome to the OHP Africana and South Asian Mosque Series.
Please join us to let everyone think is wrong about the subthemes African and South
Asian mosquitoes and the values and education of our public policy journalists.
Being one in 10 to 11, 2021, together,
we as students begin to acquire our traditions and studied in your American institutions by
investigating institutions and the way our traditions present these philosophies and beyond,
we intend to participate in ameliorating deficits in representation and resources required to transform our minds.
That decision was snatched at Evergreen. We'd like to thank Professor Zohar so much for joining us today.
And now he's going to provide us with an introduction to his book. Put simply, according to the Buddhist,
at the root of human suffering lies deep discord between how we ordinarily conceive of reality and how he truly is.
Major factors in actively creating and maintaining this accord,
our language and the way in which our conceptual scheme pass attempt to fix is permanent.
In this really hold on to what is, by nature, a fleeting and fluctuating stream of events.
In this respect, language is not merely a veil that obscures true reality, but forever an active force.
According to some Buddhist philosophical schools, the casual element involved in its fabrication,
it is the metaphysical workshop in which entities are forged and once produced are earnestly believed to be real.
Language of form is part of the disease. But inevitably, it is also part of the cure.
This is because, on the one hand,
while Buddhist Ford is underlined by a deep devaluation of languages means for representing, describing or reaching reality.
On the other hand, in so far, it is required for any so this so this discourse language is viewed as necessary for liberation.
The staunch anti realism of some Buddhist schools deprives language of its obvious reference and Buddhist
views regarding the basic in express ability of the ultimate reality further undermine its status.
But at the same time, Buddhist Ford faces the need to uphold the meaningfulness not just of ordinary language,
but of the often overtly metaphysical Buddhist discourse itself.
At the heart of Buddhist philosophical thought, Zen lies the paradox that is language.
As a consequence, Buddhist philosophical texts present a palpable tension that arises from the
inherently paradoxical need to argue against words by using words to devalue language
through language resolving or at least in some way containing this tension was
arguably one of the main challenges confronted by Indian Buddhist thought.
The story of which can indeed be told through the successive strategies and solution employed by its various schools to meet these challenges.
This book focuses on the ingenious response to this tension that one Buddhist school in one of the early Indian yoga charts for its sixth century CE,
roughly in one tinkering, particularly steer, Marty proposed fruit sweeping claim that all language use is in fact metaphorical picture in Sanskrit.
Over the last several decades, so-called metaphorical turn proposal,
propelled by a scholarly fascination with the fundamental role that metaphors play in our
concept formation is explored the implication of a similar pun metaphorical picture.
In a sense, this fear, ethical trend curse metaphor is a substance that is in many ways like in the air we breathe
all pervasive and essential to mental life and transparent to us most of the time.
What if it seems to be transparent?
What if our awareness were awakened to the metaphorical nature of nearly everything we see, including our most prosaic utterances?
What if our language that reef of dead metaphors in the memorable image coined by the linguist Guy Deutscher suddenly came alive?
The ogasawara, this book argues, workin' You're aware of this overwhelming pervasiveness of metaphor,
as well as of the philosophical benefits of being made aware of it.
Exploring the profound implications of the school's pan metaphorical claim,
the book makes the case for viewing the Ogasawara account of metaphor as a broadly conceived theory of meaning linguistic and perceptual,
one that is applicable in the words of the 6th century you, which are thinkers tirumurti both in the world and in texts.
This theory of meaning, the book argues, allowed you to try to carve out a position that is quite exceptional in the Buddhist landscape,
a position that views ordinary language as incapable of representing or reaching reality,
but at the same time justifies the meaningfulness of the schools on with the physical and civic discourse.
This scheme, the book demonstrates bears in our interpretation of the yoga cherub by radically reframing the schools
controversy with the Mahdi Army Corps the Middle Way school by reinstating the place of zero mufti,
who is known for his commentaries as an innovative thinker in his own right,
and by establishing the importance of the school's contribution to Indian philosophy of language and its
potential contribution to contemporary discussion of related topics in philosophy and the study of religion.
In this respect,
this book is also about the wider Indian philosophical conversation about meaning that took place around the middle of the first millennium in India.
Although some of what the yoga drawings had to say about metaphor was highly innovative.
The reflections on this issue should be understood against the backdrop of is conversing with specific
theories of meaning put forward by such non Buddhist schools as the mumps denier and the grammarians,
especially bartra heart by grounding the yoga charas pun metaphorical claim in its broader intellectual context.
Both Buddhists and Buddhist, the book covers an intense philosophical conversation about metaphor and language that
took place in India during the time and which reached the cross sectarian lines.
This picture is reframes.
The usual depiction of the Buddhist fort of the period is somewhat isolated and less engaged in exchange with normal Buddhist philosophical schools,
integrating formal analysis of Indian philosophy with the history of ideas.
The book was functions as an argument for a deeply contextual consideration of Buddhist philosophy,
one that looks beyond sectarian demarcations and traditional narratives of sexual transmission.
Even in this early period. Finally,
then this book is about how Buddhist thinkers reflected on and understood the metaphorical
function of language and about when a forced meaning do within Buddhist philosophical text.
Figurative language is palpable, oblique present in Buddhist philosophical texts in general and in the yoga law in particular,
ants are a relatively few existing studies of this topic.
And when theorising these studies tend to appeal to contemporary philosophical and literary theories of metaphors.
In the present study, by contrast,
I attempted to reconstruct the body of theory and metaphor as formulated by Buddhist thinkers that is using their own terms as much as possible.
My hope was that this book provides readers of Buddhist philosophy with refreshed scholarly
perspective for appraising not only the overall Buddhist understanding of language,
but also more concretely or particular metaphors operate within this text.
OK, so hopefully a good starting point might be to understand the context and circumstances that shaped your book where she
rose from the purpose of the projects for you and your readers and hence your intended audience in writing this work.
This might have its on style and language and direct readers to further resources and discussions.
Essay or less familiar so that they can have this modest investigation that you provide.
These circumstances might also issued by your methodological choices, which came up in our seminar and just more discussions.
And as that connotations and associations may differ between discrete fields, which was also kind of like a feature of our free seminar group.
Because it's Buddhist studies, it's a few lots and people from all different backgrounds,
so we can understand basically the parameters of your choices and the significance in the context that you're
engaging in and the topics you intended to address and how this actually affected your process itself,
which can be methodology, presentation or language.
So we've kind of take a few questions to get it that Katie has the first question to ask.
Yeah. So we thought we might approach this through thinking about the title of your book.
So we were hoping that you could tell us any like deliberations regarding the title and how the project of the book came about,
especially kind of the very delicate discussion of selecting and translating the charas metaphor
and your kind of intended projects and your audience and maybe kind of publishing forces.
And we were wondering why use metaphor and not chara in the title and how important it is to you?
And how does it relate to kind of your motivations for publishing the work?
I don't mean this kind of too profoundly, because I know that any translation from atom,
from Sanskrit to English will usually kind of alter the meaning, sometimes quite dramatically.
But translating is a tricky business, and I remember being in the title of your PhD dissertation.
And so I was wondering why metaphor and not Ipaja in the title of your monograph?
Yeah, OK. That's thank you.
That's a great question. A lot of questions, actually, and it's and it's great because we rarely are asked about the process of of the work.
It's always the product that is at stake and the process is really important.
Yeah. In choosing. I'll start with the question of the title and choosing metaphor.
There are, of course, market forces. Right. It's the or the the publisher requires the the audience that you want to to appeal to.
And Petra is. Is the notion or is a word that needs explication and explanation, and you need to read the book in order to understand it.
And you want to approach audiences that will have an interest in the book to begin with.
But this is not just a marketing decision. It's way beyond it has to be translated.
The picture has to be translated. A thesis is something that you know is written to a very limited readership.
The professional expertise, readership. It's something, you know, a little bit like a driving licence.
In a way, it enables you to write the work that you really want to do.
So there are different considerations there and in translating will picture to metaphor.
There is actually the rationale is deeply tied and connected to the entire motivation and rationale of this project.
But in order to to explain that,
I'll have to go back and tell you a little bit about about the motivations for the project and how it came about and the process.
And that might take hours. So I'll try to do it very briefly and just, you know, tell me if I if I start rambling too much about it.
But all these questions are connected, so I was my training.
Was in philosophy in Western analytical and phenomenological tradition,
also in cognitive psychology and in Indian philosophy as well from very early on.
And I was intrigued when I did my Ph.D. at Columbia University with the literary.
Aspect or philosophical of Indian philosophical texts?
That is the various uses of figurative language and analogies and true styles in order to get a philosophical argument or a message across.
And this is not just in texts where figures or analogies replaced arguments that serve.
This actually is something that turns the argument into something more complex, more layered, more interesting.
And I was intrigued how Indian thinkers conceived and understood their own use of these tropes and styles and figures, and so on.
And I went searching through that and I didn't find much.
I found what I found was. Let's say the trodden roads dealing with Buddhist hermeneutics or on the one hand or the the issue
of a pile of skilful means right when metaphors and analogies are ever used as a tool for teaching,
for getting the message across, or they are involved in discussions of hermeneutics and interpretations, which are very closely related.
And there was a lot of engagement with analogies, tropes, metaphors, but there were always content oriented.
That is, they deal with specific the content of specific metaphors, what they do to the argument, how they develop it.
And I had a sense that there must be more than that.
I was almost convinced that the little boy had very little evidence, so the best thing I could, I mean the best metaphor to describe it.
It's not the very Buddhist metaphor, but is it is is a hunting expedition or fishing?
You know, it was more of going fishing at the beginning, but then going on a hunting expedition and trying to find the context in which Buddhist,
formulated or discussed theoretically their own use of literary instruments and means
in philosophical texts with the understanding that they wouldn't do that explicitly.
In the sense they would say, here is where we discuss literary aspects or philosophical texts because it's not in any kind of Buddhist,
formal philosophical discourse. It doesn't fall under a manner that is epistemological fury.
It's not. We don't have an early Buddhist the theory of aesthetics, an unconscious draw.
It comes very late. So it would have to be implicit.
It would have to be something that will have to be dug or excavated, maybe even reconstructed in the texts.
And A. Kind of. Earlier on, I stumbled upon Stuart Monty, who's a sixth century commentator, a yoga teacher,
a commentator is much more than that actually is a very bright and unique, innovative thinker.
And in a way, he's a person that is responsible, at least to some extent, in creating what we call here,
which are a school of thought that is integrating and synthesising a lot of texts from from a
roughly delineated tradition that until then was not did not have that kind of sectarian identity,
I would say. But anyways, to throw money, apart from being very bright and interesting in his commentary on value bundles,
work treaties and 30 vs. car actually presents a view of what he calls up charro, which roughly can be translated as metaphor.
We'll get to that later on, but which he claims that all language is metaphorical.
And the context series overtly linguistic.
It has to do with the theory of meaning, it has a discussion of the reference of words or preferential relations,
but also of consciousness and of cognitive imposition superimposition and so on and so forth.
So it was a very interesting discussion that involves philosophy of language, Buddhist geology and philosophy of mind,
all in a commentary to a single verse in Vasudevan, those treaties where the term or Potrero was only mentioned once.
So it's it's kind of his contribution where he also integrates stuff from other schools, some of them non Buddhist.
So this was mind blowing in a way for me, but then I said, your money didn't operate in a vacuum.
You know, we had it. It had to. You didn't invent the might be innovative.
It might be original. But of course, he's using concepts and terms.
He's a traditional commentator in some kind of ideas that probably floated around or are taken from other texts.
And my hunting expedition was actually trying to reconstruct or trace or find the
context in which these ideas came from or thrived or worked with or responding to.
And this involved moving and growing concentric centres around steer them.
That is trying to reconstruct is context.
And basically exploring almost the unknown in that sense.
And what was interesting to me, I started doing that as a Ph.D. student is that what I found was.
Was surprising, it went against all my expectations as a good trainee in Buddhist studies,
because I would think that ideas come to the yoga cha because it's a Mahayana philosophical school from Mahayana sutras,
and maybe some of these ideas come from the Abbey Dharma and some of these ideas or concepts or notions come from the Pelikan or canonical materials,
earlier materials and. And that wasn't what I found.
I found the term Potrero specifically in in the use of metaphorical or figurative designation.
Is not found in the public, and he has very little presence in the Mariana Sutra was related to the yoga cha.
On exception is the Lanco Sutra, but is ubiquitous in the Abbey Dharma texts,
especially of those who Bando and in non Buddhist schools of thought deny mumps the grammarians that use it in the same sense.
In the same kind of meaning,
which is overtly philosophical in the context of theories of meaning and has to do with referential relations and the meaning of language,
and uses same, very similar terminology, formulaic phrases, examples, even stock examples.
So there was this kind of family resemblance of a discourse between Buddhists and non Buddhists around the same time the cross sectarian lines and.
Pointed out there might be a different conversation going on here in a different context to construct.
And this is what I tried to do. No, sure, sure of worse and any time.
I think you. We do have some more questions about the section of the tape about it,
but I'm just tracing the trajectory and wondering kind of chronologically, was it that you kind of like noticed an absence and.
A specific exploration of the type of use of this treatment.
And then you found Sarah Massey first, and the piece was outstanding because it sounds outstanding like a sandwich found based on one first and
then afterwards you found similar text in the drama side by best here and in the many months as well.
Or did you come across some disparately and connect them retrospectively?
You know, it's all a blur. Not exactly, but.
But what I remember is I remember that I didn't find anything for a long time or I found too much in a way, you know,
we we share our successes, we never share our failures in our dead ends and and places where research and our hypothesis kind of crashed.
And basically, I was shooting again that metaphor, but I was aiming everywhere and I was looking everywhere as I had this huge documentation of it.
Although any terms that refer to figurative language and there is a lot in Sanskrit,
I was working mostly in Sanskrit and Tibetan because these are languages that are most proficient in.
And you know, there is upper char, but there is opium, which is simile, and you have rupiah, which is in hyper bowl roughly OK.
And you have there's is Sanskrit.
There is a huge stock of terminology for any kind, any figurative language, and it changes also in between genres and between theories.
So I'll encourage Shastra theory of politics would have kind of a different use for terms than,
let's say, shastra philosophical discourse and living within Shastra,
you would have people using terms differently and you have the same terms that are used completely in different other senses,
for instance, or Pujara has a wide, has a huge semantic range.
It means different things in medicine. It means different things in astronomy.
It means different things in early Buddhist or poly materials.
Pujari itself, by the way, is a metaphor. It's an approximation, it's something that comes close to nothing.
So I had all these and really couldn't kind of, you know, it was.
Kind of mapping a huge a huge field.
And part of that being a little bit clueless in a way I spent I had a year of fellowship,
by the way, is the American Institute for Indian Studies in India,
where I read some Sanskrit and worked the manuscript and where I spent the summer a very hot summer.
I know you have a heat wave now in. In England, so you can kind of.
Imagine how it was in Puna in the summer,
sitting at the Deccan College script to use the Sanskrit Dictionary script for you Project Sanskrit Dictionary Project Script Oreum,
which is an ongoing, huge and admirable project that for a Sanskrit dictionary and by the way,
grateful to stuff there to Dr Part and Doctor and Professor Sethi and other people.
That helped me, but I was sitting in that hole, you know,
under the fans and basically going over slips of paper index cards that the compilers of the dictionary compiled of collecting
all the various Indian words or foreign names connected to to a certain terminology and just trying to see what terms are there,
you know, just trying to map the the field.
And then I've noticed the recurrence of Jupiter in the sense of figurative designation metaphor maintaining a wide range,
but that it comes again and again and again.
In that sense, in just Greek discourse that is in the works of the Maya, in the works of the mums and in and in the literature.
So actually,
I used it was the dictionary that pointed out to me that you petroleum might be termed the crosses sectarian lines and is something that is used.
In the notion of figurative designation in an overtly philosophical context that is not very much interested with the content of metaphors,
not so very much interested in the aesthetic effect of metaphor, but is interested in their semantics and pragmatics.
I knew of Sarah Matta earlier, but I never noticed this central city.
I've read the text. But it didn't occur to me that this notion is so central to it.
And then I went back to studio audience and said, OK, this is the crux of what I'm looking.
This is the ethics, and now I need to figure out how it came about.
So I didn't start with zero, Martha, I got to steal money in the middle in a way,
but then it became a stable for point, a kind of comedian point for which to lift my entire.
I think this is fascinating because I think it addresses a lot of our questions as well.
It seems really difficult, a mammoth task.
And and also it seems like that process itself affects your philosophical reading of the text, and so it's really insightful to close this today.
I think we often don't stress methodology and also can be analytic philosophy
and especially when you do in cross-cultural discourse like limited resources,
perhaps it can be particularly relevant. And so that's why it's such a concern of us and.
I think you've kind of addressed some of this, but I'm I'm also wondering, given these horses, this metaphor of the hunt,
like you had this idea and you trying to look into it to investigate, but you also had some strange but quite specific disciplinary background.
And I kind of have a similar ish, the same background and happened to be like somewhat prepared to engage with the discourse like I had.
Some say same philosophy and find shelter like it's been a graduate level and my dad was carrying a guitar with a lot.
And it did my undergraduate thesis in a similar area and very fortunately had topics specifically on some of the methodological
concerns you address and are very specific questions you raised in philosophy language that I think exclusively.
I've read addresses and it's kind of inadequately addressed in.
Well, I had studied at the undergraduate level, so I kind of with the cohort,
came prepared and very excited to find someone like magically answering all these things.
But given there are tonight monks and nuns and people with cuts like history or theology, but you also had your specifically give specific background,
but then you published a book, we were wondering, given that disparity when you actually were working on the books publish.
Look to him when you trying to speak in publishing the book and how did that affect your presentation of the book?
Because it ranges a lot and it covers lots of material. Mm-Hmm.
And I think it provides a great foothold to understanding, but.
What what do you have in mind? Hmm. Great, great questions.
I'll probably say that to all your questions, but it is OK, I'll say something.
You know what? I'm thinking about doing Indian philosophy.
So I realised through the years that my background influences a little bit the way I'm thinking about it.
I had earlier training.
I never had a B.A., a bachelor degree, but I had a master's degree in some programme at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv University.
Philosophy department is unique, was unique and is still unique in the sense that since the mid 60s,
it incorporated Indian philosophy and Chinese philosophy and Muslim philosophy, you know, middle age and mediaeval, Muslim philosophy and so on.
Into the curriculum is where they were taught alongside analytical and continental traditions without any questioning,
without any apologetics in a way as legit philosophical traditions that can be, you know,
if we can study Plato as a history of philosophy, we can also study Nagarjuna.
And and for me, that was kind of natural.
And only when I went out and I did my bit to the religious studies department did I understand how philosophy,
how this state of affairs is not, you know, is not natural or is not what is practised in philosophy departments across the world.
It's changing, has changed and is changing rapidly actually right now.
But in that sense, I was always writing or thinking in both worlds and to both of the audiences.
You know, it's not just writing for the analytical, thoughtful analytical philosophy,
the Anglo-Saxon analytical tradition and to the Indian or to the Buddhist studies guys.
But it's thinking of all of them both or in these crowds or in this context while writing.
So I don't do that kind of binary to begin with, although I am aware that there is different readership.
So I would say that if the book addresses or is intended for a different audience, it's mostly the book and the footnotes.
These are basically I wrote the book is two different books because there wasn't a conscious decision that it's important to be important for me.
To be clear, to be lucid, I think that you cannot.
There's nothing too complicated to explain that you can't explain to people who are not experts in the field.
If you do that, you know, if you know exactly what you want to say and you and you do that in a gradual way.
So it was important for me to be very clear in my explanations and not to lose the force
of the argument and the trajectory of where I'm going and the ideas I'm developing.
And that meant pushing a lot of stuff into the footnotes where where the main theological work is done,
the one that is addressed to a kind of Buddhist studies,
linguistic and experts and so on, and where the support is done in a word, the evidence where I bring on the evidence.
So the book is mostly a kind of a. Developing argumentation,
the support is in the footnotes of logical work is in the footnotes and also the branching off to different fields is in the footnotes,
where I flirted with the phenomenological tradition a little bit with deconstruction as well.
And. And luckily, my publisher at Oxford University Press and my editor went along with that.
You know, there is a tendency which is very much understandable to try and cut footnotes and so you know, and make a book less less dense.
For contemporary readership, but she went alone along with that, and actually it enabled me to have these two books in parallel.
So the expert might find the kind of detail and support that she requires.
And it wouldn't say a lay reader think, you know, someone would pick up the book and read the Buddhist theory of metaphor.
Kind of, you know, it was a book for a flight or something.
But but for grad and undergrads, hopefully and people of the field that can kind of go through it with the footnotes or that you score.
I don't think it's just an Oxford thing,
but especially the philosophy of saying it doesn't contribute towards an argument like we put it in the footnotes.
And so I tweeted that it graciously. I think that kind of touched a bit as well.
Kind of on the next question that might be a sign of this kind of section.
I'm sorry for interrupting. I just remembered something.
Go ahead and maybe ask that at that later on because you are also about the nuns and monks, and I forgot to address the.
Go ahead. Go ahead. OK, sorry.
And I just wanted to say that the but the book is not, you know, it's not kind of a philosophical reconstruction or it's not just a theological,
it's also deeply invested in Buddhist terminology and understanding of the past and so on.
And. It's by no way engaged Buddhism,
but but it was very important for me to show how the kind of questions that Buddhist that were
important to those Buddhist thinkers and that it went beyond just issues of philosophical issues of,
you know, getting the storm epistemology right or meaning of language, right?
But you cannot really understand Buddhist philosophy in the ogasawara without
understanding their superior logical motivations and the issues they were engaged with.
And the whole book is kind of directed to the sixth chapter, which deals with the issue of incommensurate ability.
She's a kind of a classical, philosophical questions for 20th century philosophy.
But it was a palpable difficulty for Buddhists, who wanted to address the issue of how a layperson and a Buddha can converse in a meaningful way.
Despite the epistemic abyss that lies between them.
And so it's not just the. You know, disengage or a disembodied philosophical question,
it has to do with the basic theory logical no to religious motivations of Buddhists in presenting those questions.
So. I don't think that you can write about Buddhist philosophy without thinking about what interested interested these thinkers as Buddhists.
So I think the book well, by addressing that and with suffering when it retreats.
I think as well, we sort of met my friends, by Chinese way, but as philosophy to other philosophers,
we always emphasise strategy and how it's inseparable from understanding and what's going on.
And I think also the understanding of, say, to urology and what that means to this comes to light more specialities kind of shred, shred.
Let's get rid of some of our western preconceptions of what that might mean, which we think perhaps we'll soon talk about,
which I think also maybe at the end is where we talk about some of the social concerns that come from epistemology.
It kind of shows that you can't have separate logic or anything from the way we live in the world.
And sure, we sometimes one question I have to follow up on.
Straddling three disciplines that perhaps wasn't ever really starkly these for you is that with your methodological approach,
that's kind of an synchronic. You see him in my sweater to take a dress, central issues in both fields, the methodology that you pursued.
So I was quite perhaps an alternative avenue for cross-cultural conceptual philosophy.
Then the folk genealogical approach and that itself come back to stark historic hysteresis and contemporary,
animalistic philosophy while mostly developing and into textual conceptual history.
It may be kind of a museum like intellectual history approach that sometimes the imprint itself in the field.
But studies in the fields have studies that we might find in the Oriental Institute.
We are enterprises and so.
Often, though, you know, those issues aren't discussed in those fields of study either,
and you take the time to explicitly discuss your methodological sense concerns and make them more transparent,
and that also makes them more available for critical reflection. And so I was wondering basically if you could elaborate on why you did do that,
why those choices are significant beyond helping you figure out a way from what sounds like a very difficult,
widespread search itself to make progress and how that affects the quality of your exploration rather than just going along with what?
What's the done thing in the field? Hmm. Thanks.
Well, I'll answer first. The methodology is important, and it has to be explicit.
You know, it has to be critical. It's part of the philosophical. Endeavour, in a way that methodology is explicit, is stated,
is open for criticism and is out there in in the context of what we're doing is
extremely even more important because of the colonial and post-colonial heritage
and context and with the fallacy that we sometimes have that we can pick up
materials that Charles and others that are so removed from us in time and in space.
And sometimes in culture. And that we can basically treat them as transparent.
That is, as is accessible to us, as something that we can do fine and extract meaning they wish.
So there is, I would say, first attitude that needs to be of kind of respect to the text that is in way of.
I respect that is expressed in the effort.
That one is making to. Come to the takes is possible.
In the text own terms rather than one ones on the terms, in a way,
try to figure out the kind of hermeneutic or theoretical framework that the text requires of ones rather than imposing your own on that.
So. So that's a basic methodological issue that is experienced in basic discussion of hermeneutics in the 20th century and not just,
you know, Buddhist did that from the first century and later on.
But you know the question of how you approach otherness.
And the text here is.
Another, you know, not just because of being in Sanskrit and and from the first century CE, but basically any kind of text in any.
Instance of otherness. So there is the question of how do you approach otherness in a way that doesn't impose your own bias and prejudice?
You know, how do you kind of aspire to a fusion of horizons in the American way?
So there are all these hermeneutic all considerations to take into account.
And then there is a specific context of which I've mentioned of Indian text,
you know, sitting at the Sanskrit script for whom is is American funded student,
you know, capitalising in a way on the work of people that worked on the dictionary but still hasn't published it in a way.
What is my position, politically, socially scholarly in that context?
What do I do in order to make that context explicit?
And the way it affects my reading and my enter into practises of interpretations and so on.
So that's also a thing to consider.
And then there are plainly the empirical constraints of what to do with Indian materials on which we have very little information.
Apart from the text itself, we don't know much about the offers of those texts.
We don't know much on the periods in which they were composed or in the dating.
We don't we know very little about their practises or related practises, how they will read, read or when by whom, in what context.
You know, all this is kind of the work of. Guesses and conjecture is and it's based in most cases on very little hard evidence,
but on philological and hermeneutic all schemes and evidence, right?
The dating, for instance, of those who bundle the dating of serial multi day into Textual Connexions,
how texts are related to age, which schools are related to age?
It's all kind of guesswork to a large extent that is based on theological and interpretive interpretative schemes in a very circular circular way.
This is how the field is. Now this can be taken to be lamentable.
That is, you know, we're working with no evidence. We're actually kind of the outsider guessing.
But it's not that bad in a way, because when you look at the way that Indian thinkers, Buddhists and others.
Pursue the work, this is something that Ginevan Canary written beautifully about.
So you see that the most significant context for them was over texts.
There were not so interested above biographies and about dating and so on,
but worked in an intellectual arena in which other texts were the significant in that sense and questions of origins and into textual.
The direction of intellectual borrowing are important, but they are not critical in that sense.
More critical is the reconstruction, the reconstruction of this intellectual context.
That was important for those offers when they created zero ideas and written the works.
And this can be done also within Synchronic.
Scheme, not just that plainly dire chronic one in the I think that the challenge is to reach
a kind of a fine balance between a dire chronic scheme and a synchronic scheme.
In doing this work, using whatever dire chronic data is available but not neglecting the way in which texts reverberate.
Echo deal we've referred to extract from other text without having a clear direction for intellectual bar.
And I think that explicating the methodology in this case is important because otherwise.
You know, you create a false presentation of your material.
You either create a two kind of a robust and firm narrative of textual transmission and and the way that
ideas passed or something that is too loose and both are kind of something that is very hard to work.
So it's a kind of a realistic to my understanding depiction of the situation in which we operate, but which is not necessarily bad or lamentable.
They'll answer your question, is there something else that I should ask you to?
Now, I think there could quite quite beautiful.
I think the thing that we've discussed and noticed is perhaps like how some of your methodology
and your approach generally reflects also on the philosophy that you are demonstrating
that this is just reminding me of like the openness of interpretation and language and the
possibilities for that approach that you kind of talk about in the book itself as well.
And so. It's probably a good time to move on to ask a bit more in depth about methodological questions that arise not great seminar.
Before we approach how to make the book's arguments and ideas more accessible,
this episode is about accessibility and we do another episode in more detail about ghosts and into subjectivity and things I said at the time.
Do you want to add anything for we move on your hands? Not yet.
Not yet. OK. So basically here would like to relate our first questions to the topic,
just discuss it based on your methodology that reaches out in concentric circles,
as you already mentioned and from selected based on this correctly and parameters based on time period.
And also in other intellectual characterisations,
how are we to balance seeing this is a good char compared to a ceremony, conceptual history and how much can we take?
Ceremonies rising to represent our thoughts when you seek to challenge the commercialisation of flight schools and traditions, and this works,
so you kind of address the blurriness, try to perhaps get that some dynamics to think about what's actually being presented to us.
So how do we balance like his students? You are encountering that tradition of this station being challenged,
how to continue using the traditional terms and like the escalations that hawks hawk into the school scheme while also using them to develop
new and not yes agreed upon approaches because they obviously have really useful things like catalogue of references like shorthand.
But sometimes that can also misconstrue what's going on is perhaps challenging as well.
And so how do we use them without misconstruing what they potentially represent and what would your advice
be to students in the field and training at this time that's going on about how to grapple with that?
Yeah. Well, I would advise students to relax a bit in the sense that the question is important and it's pertinent to everything that we do.
But there is no view from nowhere, right?
We're all we're always equipped with certain baggage of terminology, presuppositions and and notions in our research apparatus.
And so the only concern should be whether we're critically attuned to the way that we use.
You know, or conceptual and terminology go terminal, logical toolkit and whatever, and where this is appropriate or adequate to our subject matter.
So. I use, you know, the book is a kind of an argument in a way a little bit against the use of schools.
Right now, Indian darkness, as you know, the kind of the this is the calm,
but I use names of schools and I use the category of schools, but the kind of the proof is in the pudding in a way,
I use it in a way that points out that it's better to be to the we address them as, for instance,
textual traditions like Burhan Patel and Larry McRae are suggesting, which is a very good suggestion.
And specifically about the ogasawara, I mean, one of the arguments of the book is that your guitar is a constructed thing.
You know, the yoga teacher, the term yoga teacher is something that appears very early.
Referring to meditating monks, the Yoga Yoga Tribe Issues is a very well-known paper by Jonathan Silk about that.
And that may be are centred around this initial mammoth of a text called the Yoga Chopra Bhoomi,
the foundations of the yoga practise and yoga practise, and so on and so forth.
But it doesn't stand for a kind of a sectarian scholastic tag identity tag that we use Yoga Chopra for now.
They use yoga teacher and now the think first instance that we have.
The use of yoga as a school is a distinct mine and a school is in the army context, the the Mahdi Army carried the air in the Dhaka Jwala by Vivica.
Which is the Luxor graffiti, right, and this is where you have your guitar, the docks, some graphical label.
It talks about the guitar and he refers mostly to the your guitar boom is a text.
Yoghurts are thinkers like a Sangha invisible, though do not refer to themselves as yoga, and they do not use the term so your money as well.
So they refer to themselves as Mahayana, usually.
Connected to various sutras, maybe to various doctrines, but never as yoga teacher.
So this is a way, you know, and so it's basically what is your batteries and use by Chinese?
Commentators and translators and later, by the Tibetan tradition, call it the only school symptom.
So this label, yoga terror is something that we're actually using, you know,
in order to navigate within this sea of doctrines and schools and identities and so on.
That is is a label. But then when you look at the yoga on this textual tradition or sectarian or whatever that you call yoga try,
you see that basically you have different strands.
And where this turns into a real school is in the works of commentators like Sarah Monty and Don Paula.
Maybe, but you know where they kind of weave different takes that are very different sometimes in terms of their doctrines or in their views,
into a coherent whole and under a kind of roughly unified textual tradition or a lineage of transmission.
And you can see this work going on in the commentaries.
Resolving contradictions, bringing doctrines that do not sit so well together and merging them and so on and so forth.
So this work of philosophical identity is something that is on the go.
It's being done through the ages. So.
But we have to use this terms, this notion is, you know, yoga charter schools and so on in order to kind of.
Navigate within this world, but we should use that critically, and you risk the click and instrumentally that is not verified,
and this is where the yoga teacher philosophy and Buddhist philosophy, you know,
comes into the the fore in that sense that these should not be raised like this should not be.
You know, I say that language is a kind of a metaphysical workshop,
so our philosophy making should not be that kind of workshop in which we create identities and then believe in the reality.
So we use your literature, but we kind of explicate that and this is what the book is trying to do, uses these terms,
but tries to critically engage with them and present the kind of a thick description
term I'm taking from her apology actually of these terms and of these uses.
The book promotes or leans on a very fundamental notion of meaning as a function of its use.
Right. We can stay. We can change and sing, but also yoga teacher thing in in a sense.
And I think that we should approach these categories with the same, the same framework.
In mind. And the same goes, you know, for using the term metaphor.
But your career didn't really answer your question before, so I'm not evading and kind of now I'm kind of dealing with that, you know?
So why translate petrol to metaphor? Is a petrol, really?
Metaphor.
Well, not really, because, for instance, the reason the picture does not distinguish between measurement, medicine or synecdoche or metaphor.
And it doesn't map well or necessary or exactly to the way we're using metaphor.
But let us ask, how are we using metaphor when we're saying metaphor?
What exactly is it that we mean? Do we mean metaphor in the Aristotelian sense?
Do we mean metaphor in Davidson's sense? Or do we talk about conceptual metaphor like lack of an Jonsson sense, which is completely different?
Right, so metaphor is itself a term that, you know, we say, OK, when you call a boy a tiger, that's a metaphor.
That's a picture for the Buddhists or for the Sanskrit.
So in that sense, we can say that metaphor is in the chart.
But when we unpack metaphor and when we unpack with Petra, we start to see the differences.
So we have an option not to translate, you know, to kind of create singular systems of meaning and terminology that are isolated.
And that kind of subverts the idea of dialogue and the idea of understanding to my ear and also of, you know, kind of the cross-cultural encounter.
The other option is to translate and to assume that they're, you know, that terms will not overlap.
Exactly.
That there wouldn't be a kind of, you know, that there would be deviations in meaning and to explicate and to present that and to make that explicit,
that is to make it into a description to show how meaning is within use of that system.
And I think that's the the greatest benefit that we get from this kind of.
Cross-Cultural engagement with philosophy, apart from uncovering and explaining our implicit presuppositions,
it's also this kind of descriptions that.
Make us understand that we know now what is or try to understand what is Petro, but in a sense, we understand more.
What is metaphor in our own? Whatever that may be, system will fall.
Yeah, I mean, to perch, I think. The article that he shared with her sister, I think an example of that and with dealing with different systems,
especially to bring out like Plato parallel example,
the spark and the insight that can come from brushing different systems together and to make use of terms and different theories more explicit to us.
So I think I think you see what the talk basically. Yeah, I think so.
You think so. Relatedly,
we were wondering about your reasons for restricting your study to Sanskrit sources and restricts doesn't really feel like the right word
because it's such a vast undertaking in itself that a member of our cohort shared some terms like hunter nidus and a real eye opener,
which also referred to metaphor or figurative language and lecture.
Also, Dr Matthew Osborne wrote a review of your work and commented on how you didn't work with Chinese yoga resources.
And I feel like these comments are important to address in our discussion of your methodology.
For me, though, there's this sort of critique has to come with an acknowledgement that there's this
pressure in academia to be multilingual and use all relevant sources available.
And I know that in Buddhist studies in the UK, there's this huge emphasis on textual scholarship and comparative philology.
And I think that being able to read all of the extant versions of a text or group of texts in multiple languages is a great principle in theory,
but a really high expectation to hold people to in practise.
Yeah, and then this is free and interdisciplinary. It's the other side for me.
First philosophy in England and British philosophy institutions.
Sometimes there is a special emphasis on language learning, on languages, on English anyway, especially early on.
And despite the fact that translations like we've been discussing can make an important difference to arguments,
and your work demonstrates that you're committed to a tech strategy and strategy, so integrate your thoughts and quality.
And let's see. Like I said, professors who think to basically say that there can be technological innovations to help us with this,
like big dictionaries of how words have been used,
kind of like the online version of the Sanskrit and the compilation that you've been working with or
something you trust the experts and different traditions of translation things in different ways.
And so how have the languages we were given? We focussed on Sanskrit and you are aware of all the different.
People who are involved in influencing ceremonies in the UK and development,
how did what you chose to focus on influence your theory development, especially my idea and philosophy of language.
And what medium did you consider like or could you share with us what medium advantages so Marty would
have actually been engaging with that would have been engaging with the Chinese translations as well?
And how would that affect as well? How do you think about the outputs in the theory that you developed?
Yeah. Well, of course.
They're having as many languages, proficiency, language proficiency in many relevant languages as possible is great.
No, it's a good thing to have, but life is short and full of suffering, and there is a certain amount of what you can either learn or do so.
Unfortunately, unfortunately, I don't read Chinese or Japanese.
So to begin with, my focus was on Sanskrit and Tibetan translation, mostly.
So that was a kind of a constraint.
Which started my my project and for me was more important to advance in my thinking or progress in the project rather than take,
let's say, four more years and study Chinese property.
But of course, there's the one should aspire to know as many languages as possible and to read texts in, you know, in older versions.
But, you know, knowing languages doesn't necessarily train you to read the texts.
That is. There are issues of interpretation of hermeneutics, theory or philosophy, so that training is no less important,
no, you re being able to reconstruct or get a text physiologically doesn't mean that you can understand it.
And then what about in what traditions should you train?
Should you be proficient in Buddhist hermeneutics?
Read Buddhist texts, for sure. What about 20th century hermeneutics, right, in the tradition before?
Well, not necessarily because you are working within the tradition and within that terminology?
And what about philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics and a little touch of phenomenology, you know, to add, wouldn't hurt you.
So there's no limit actually to the kind of expertise that one requires in order to do a good job.
The question is what are you aiming for and what is necessary and what is less pertinent to your project?
So for me to begin with, I was interested in a specific question.
And I found a case study, which I found was fair, which I thought was fascinating, which was zero.
And then I asked the question, You know, I went, as I mentioned in concentric circles trying to do you know,
the basic underlying question was why does your party say that in how he came to say that?
What are were the reasons, the motivation? What does it serve and by influence of what?
What is new, what he took from other people and.
And that that kind of questions set the boundaries of where I looked, you know,
and the text that I picked up and how far I ventured in trying to answer these questions.
So the Chinese tradition professors are awesome, but the comment is to the point you know,
that there are there is a lot of yoga teacher materials that were translated into
Chinese and a lot of engagement with metaphor in that sense and with this fury.
And it's highly relevant. But these are later materials or not later material.
They construct their own kind of. Tradition or way of thinking about yoga,
Chara made its commentators and people that translators and their commentators in Zaire create their own kind of system of thought,
which is fascinating. But I was not qualified to deal with it because I don't read Chinese.
And secondly, it would take a second book to do that, and I think I'm kind of expecting Professor Osborne to do that, and then I'm waiting for that.
I think it would be an important and wonderful contribution.
You know, in dealing with the the kind of the hermeneutic call and textual conception of the early Chinese tradition of the overthrow.
So that data in respect to the Chinese materials,
they also took a lot from the way that Stuart Amati defined his own context surrounding sets himself within a
certain lineage of transmission in which those who bundle my tree up Maitreya Sun and Vosloo bundle are included.
And he addresses opponents from other Indian schools like Daniel and the mom, so without naming them but specifying the doctrine.
So this is already kind of contoured the context that came into consideration.
The I think the other constraints is that one has to stop at some point.
You know that this that you have to kind of decide where to end things and my.
After constructing a kind of context that seemed coherent and cohesive and self-contained and kind of evidential and in, you know, support the.
Mum, my point of of ending this project was once presenting the kind of arguments fought
for extracting the kind of arguments that I thought were pertinent or important.
And this is where I drew the line, I could go on and on. You know, I could even I don't have to venture into Chinese materials, for instance,
the 8th century there is a kind of explosion of takes on Alan Carr car shastra.
Buddhists as well in a way or influenced by Buddhism,
which deal powerfully profusely with various terms of figurative language, and I could do what I'm doing a little bit now.
You know, dealing, for instance, with Buddhist Korean literature, I'm now working on entrepreneurship.
The Buddhist poet and philosopher and could work on figurative language there and his use of literary tropes for philosophy or philosophy,
for literature and so on and so forth. That was also a natural context in a way.
But one has to draw the line and I drew it around.
Kind of coherent context I could draw.
Spinning or revolving around serial for.
Thank you. Yeah, but learn your language as well and do whatever your professors tell you to.
They all have different opinions. Yeah, I think that's who these were also taking these stocks in place, right?
And you have to make philosophical arguments or any argument at some point and not even sometimes.
I think some of the theological disputes can be evasive to saying anything useful on the philosophical side.
I think actually we've managed to address a number of things that we had wanted to ask about and simple questions,
so I'm going to try and synthesise pieces and maybe we can talk about some of the topics that we discussed for like implications of the theory.
So this this question to me, like if there's anything you want to add about this and it's just the realists assumptions that.
A similar between, say, the new philosophies attached to you and your success, your own fitness,
and even with this life, a number of fitness and content families feel the a of.
Mainstream European philosophy. I'm going to kind of maybe get back into iTunes later and see basically the point
is that you don't write in with terms that analytic philosophies of language,
can I say not necessarily at this familiar.
And at the same time, much your American let's take philosophy precedes upon realist assumptions that frequently themselves aren't articulated.
I say dominant that many such folks this narrow already may be made consciously aware of to articulate or to defend this sentence.
Or I can go it right, incredulous bombing philosophy, or even considering reasoning without such grounds.
Well, maybe this is just in our philosophy that I've encountered. So in this way,
such a philosopher might not be prepared to engage with philosophy is the challenge realism or to
encounter the same terms used beyond a realist in Maine or outside of realist idealist dualism.
And this might indicate the limits of clinging to our original categories and frameworks
in pursuing cross-cultural expansive philosophy and kind of just how to do that already.
And. So just talking about how to have more protected philosophical approaches more generally.
But one example that comes up is the preoccupation mainly with modern thinkers, with the guitar idealism in question,
which you briefly address and say that it can be corrected for any policy reasons that have to do with this because it might be.
I think it might be like a symptom of our realist preconceptions, which suggests the text,
and we would like to discuss this after addressing what we don't really, I don't think need to address.
Turns it right and my glossary.
So to continue this trend, Fort Campbell, the have been your American and philosophies and peace to use his aides to
understandings entries to the in-stadium language games and metaphysical nonsense,
or continue their dirty and deconstruction 14 year patriotism.
It's just a it's too engaging with Indian philosophy and perhaps the fact that you've come from a department that did this
more effectively than some others or in places where it's more new since world around and contemporary philosophy from which,
how do we navigate that usefulness as little inlets? And this is why this is just an add on, because you addressed this a lot success in the US.
You want to say there is the potential of forcing non-native or MSHA systems
upon distantly or other texts because distance really doesn't fit similarity.
But it seems, and this is my concern,
and we spend a lot of energy as a group trying to match the antitrust fees to our own categories at risk of placing
their potentially transformative potential and the understanding that each outsider and tax profile systems.
And so by developing new charters terms, you might be sympathetic to this concern.
How do you recommend navigating using terms from a range of philosophies to achieve it?
Transformed into these are all throughout this space as anything else you want to say.
These are a lot of questions, different questions, though.
No, it's all of them are good and great, but I'll ask you to prioritise,
you know, tell me what is most pertinent because I could and then I would lose.
Also, the, you know, I might not be focussed at all.
I think we're hoping to come back to realism after addressing this.
So that was a little preamble. So we could pop out now.
Sure. And I guess the question is how to.
It allows our heuristic devices to be transformative of our understanding, which nobody approach to school,
but like tools vs. forcing screening upon something else which you have talked about before, I'm any anyone you have.
And you're asking in a way how we're not our kind of engagement with these terms does not obliterate their transformative power.
You're talking about specifically about imposing analytical discourse, for instance,
on Indian discourse in that sense and in philosophical discourse or generally in philosophy.
How do we maintain the transforms formative our philosophy?
Yeah, I think I mean, I think this could be like a case example where there limits just just have to be unless you have,
like some example, kids in my mind, I have not think of what your is on the young people do.
But there are books in in the domain of recent philosophical like the European angle European philosophy that use those devices specifically as well.
And they have their limits and. And so.
In a sentence like how do we. And at what point do we make the jump from the terms that we use is entries to.
Transformed like the actual conversation, so how do we explore things side by side, basically united side by side, just together?
Mm hmm. And you're talking about the transformation of the conversation off of persons, you know of the philosophers.
Or both? You're talking about making a difference in the discourse or about transformative.
Just just to be to see that I'm I'm clear about what you mean.
I mean, I would see the answers. Hand in hand.
OK. They could. But if you don't, it's fine, I mean, I love.
OK, so I'll pick this up as a question about transformation. OK, in a way.
I'll try to answer and tell me, if I'm answering you, I'm not sure.
OK. You know, one of the.
The book, in a way, is about the limits of language and expression.
Right, it's it's it's a book on that question.
And more more specifically, it's about the Buddhist devaluation or ambivalent, sorry ambivalence towards language because language is.
No misrepresents, falsifies or cannot represent or touch or reach true reality on the one hand, but on the other hand,
it is necessary for liberation in so far that it is necessary for any kind of sadistic, which is also philosophical.
Also this. So, so that potential, you know, youknow,
so faced potential is intrinsic to language that it can be something that is very, you know, that is informative.
But it is something that is transformative as well, and this possibility, this potential that was very, I think, visit.
And present to the Buddhists when they dealt with language is also something that.
It's possible for us in our philosophical discourse.
And I think that you can present the spectrum of philosophers.
Not dividing now into, you know, movements and streams to analytical versus continental and to deconstruction.
And so on, but thinking about thinkers or even ideas that you can kind of place them on the spectrum of how they consider their own philosophy,
making something that is trans transformative or not.
And in what ways? Is it is being clear, lucid, analytically kind of immaculate?
Creating the the the the most the the let's say that is more effective in terms of transformation or effect or is it a kind of rhetoric that.
You know, it creates a feeling a mood, a sense of understanding an intellectual environment that is more effective in that sense.
I'm just giving examples, you know, I'm kind of I'm playing here.
And what is unique about Buddhist philosophers that I think they were very consciously and.
Explicitly, we're working, we're very aware of this.
Potential of language of this double language is a double edged sword.
And they explicitly acknowledge that and it was something that accompanied their philosophising.
That is it was on the table, it was it wasn't something implicit, it wasn't something they were very open.
About the the the stakes of philosophising involved in philosophising of how is philosophising or is
connected or not to transformation or should or should not be connected to linked to transformation.
And this is something that I find very compelling.
Compelling also, because it's explicit and it's critical and brings something that is often very much implicit,
something that remains in the, you know,
in the in the in the back room or philosophy, some philosophical systems into the foreground and deals with that explicitly and open to criticism.
And there is something more appealing if what you.
You know, if one joins the philosophical journey as a way, or at least for its transformative power, its power to transform minds,
thinking outlooks, understanding of the world sources, something you know, something appealing in that as well.
Should it be more prevalent and explicit in contemporary philosophical discourse, I think it should.
I think it is in many forms of philosophical discourse, but I think it should be.
I don't know if I answered your question.
I think you're getting to we're you get to speak for us and we also kind of have and we will have an episode in a series
dedicated to what's best and we can hopefully I never probably reached the end of our time that talked a bit about it.
Perhaps I have. Security is the question.
And then maybe we can talk about these ramifications a bit more based on a you want to say and then perhaps to the specifics.
But I think, yeah, talking about my body will be important, especially because it's there them.
So one thing that really stood out to me when I was reading the book is that you seem to mimic the argumentative strategy of yoga thinkers.
So, for example, you don't get too stuck on the historic debate of yoga and idealism.
All externality that yoga cha- a challenge of other external objects.
Two things exist independently for the mind outside the mind.
You mentioned that historic debate in your introduction, but it doesn't take centre stage,
which I thought was really refreshing given how dominant the conversation is yoga chara idealist in the field so far.
And I also notice this in your acceptance speech for the Toshiaki de Nomatter book award,
where you responded to a paradox with reference to the three natures.
So I was wondering whether co-opting the internal logic and style of yoga chara has been a conscious decision in your work,
maybe even part of your methodology, or if it's just a stylistic choice.
Hmm. That's a great question. Very observant.
I wasn't aware that I was incorporating the Utah style of argumentation actually about Sochi the moment I didn't remember that.
So it's kind of. So maybe I'm doing that inadvertently, you know,
without noticing that it's kind of I've internalised that and I've turned into yoga charring without realising that.
But but I say, whoa.
But what I aspire to do is basically when I'm asked something about the yoga Chopra that is about their views,
I am trying to answer this is the attempt of the book, you know, to formulate a theory of metaphor in as possibly in the orchestra's own terms.
So it's all be asked about you, which are metaphysics. All first, try to think, what would you say, which are respond to that?
And then I would think what I would respond to that. So I make a difference in that sense as to the.
So this is about Toshi, the normative notion, no matter how I thought about it,
because I read your question and I went back to the the the question was asked, actually?
Was asked, I think by Adam Thomson. Maybe I don't remember. But he was asked.
It was asked by then, but it was actually a more dynamic question.
So Evan kind of presented them with the army point of view question, and I answered with a yoga teacher her point of view answer.
So I was answering to his underlying dynamic logic in a way, and we were engaging in this kind of we were mimicking, I think, kind of.
Bristol argument as to the the the issue of idealism is different, sir, in answering that, I'm not.
I'm not really dealing with that, I'm not necessarily I'm I am reliant on the material,
but I'm not giving you a literal response to that because the nature of my answer is that there isn't a yoga teacher.
Our response to that and that is the most important thing for me.
When I'm dealing with this question, I am mostly,
I would say that I mostly use 20th century hermeneutics and literary theory for approaching this question, and I'm saying this question is not.
Is not the kind of question that can receive a decisive answer without dealing with the context.
The point of view from which the question is asked and whereabouts in which the answer is sort.
You know, the environment and the textual environment in which we seek to to answer it.
So asking the question in a car is a kind of a perennial philosophical question.
You know, the idealist idealism versus realism is already superimposing a kind of historical, ideological, even intellectual framework.
And on the subject matter, which is not necessarily responsive to that,
it's a question that interests us in terms of the history of philosophy in those,
let's say, starting from the 19th century in that sense or an 18th century, 18th century philosophy.
So if you first, if you want to pose this questions about the longer term, we need to qualify it and people have qualified it.
You know, they're done when they explain what they mean by idealism and realism,
and they try to kind of, you know, it's more intricate and it is qualified.
But then it really. But it presupposes a lot of servic principles is that there is a thing that is called your Kuchera,
for instance, that when you asked this question about was one, do you have this kind of a school that has a stance, you know,
a unified stance that you can say is over idealist or realists realise this is not the case.
Texts that are distinctively considered to be a which are like the sections of the English are booming,
for instance, the result of a booming, for instance, or touchable or at the bottom.
The fourth chapter in the and the lack of a thorough sutra yoga Chopra related sutra and wushu one.
Those treaties and 20 verses or in 30 verses have a completely different account of.
I have a different, different ontological commitment in what they're willing to say on theologically or to commit to ontological.
And they're all yoga. You know, the Bodhisattva, Bhumi, speaks about a verse to a thing that exists, that is inexpressible but exists,
it's out there to something that later, you know, which are on materials would not necessarily be willing to say they're much more parsimonious.
They will call it made the Harmattan that the such suchness, they'll say it's inexpressible, but they will not necessarily call it and just think.
And the same, the Loncar, the Torah Sutra, which is much more idealist to my understanding, you know, in what we sense of subjective idealism.
So. So in asking this question,
how much are we motivated by our need to kind of try to figure out yoga charge within
18 19 20th century debate rather than understand the yoga Chopra for what it means?
So the question this question is tax specific. It's period specific.
It's context specific, and it's worthwhile to ask it, but you have to qualify.
In a way. And also, it's not a question that seems to be very much interesting for the yoga teacher.
Itself. Could I perhaps bridge this into questions about ramifications of the theory of taking some time to that?
Because although I don't think. This is taking your last point that it's perhaps not that concerned,
but I could see how some of the concerns might arise from why people are preoccupied with.
Whether it's realistic idealist,
if that even could be a question in parallel with some of the debates that are sometimes generated is between your guitar and the my maker,
and I think they both have the same concern for each other,
like moral nihilism and say like someone might be concerned with idealism or that kind of notion that if everything is constructive,
you somehow get solipsism. Why do we have any moral motivation to act and care about others if it's if they just constricts?
And I think you could see the similar concerns arising?
I know people like its pose, sometimes as your guitar facing that challenge to the mighty America.
But I think the much armacost have that concern about the guitar.
And I think some of your book and your following article as well that you shared with those addresses
that and you could see the motivation to say and take this course and to make it meaningful.
Likewise, you could say that the meaning of that arises from the fact that there is or that somehow
arises the culture or discrimination and so on that that's all there is to solve the discourse.
And so I'm wondering how we might explain what you might explain how the guitar or ceremonies
specifically would address a challenge like that or why it's different to ask it to a matchmaker.
Think of it since you're you're talking specifically about the ethical issue or the ramifications.
Yeah. OK. Yeah.
You know, so in continuation to call into your into intervention, so I don't think that the idealism question is not important or interesting.
And it's been asked also in Buddhist contexts.
It's not just a Western imposition or so, but it's one question that you can ask about your culture and not necessarily the only one.
It's it's framed a lot in Tibetan context and.
A in the discussions and debates between the yoga teacher and the AMI.ca there,
it becomes a very important thing because it's something that distinguishes for the Tibetans yoga cha from them with yoga.
You which are on, so let's get to do your training with the Army Corps debate you try and make them make a debate is often depicted as
a debate on on metaphysics that is on the the ontological on how ontological commitment one is willing to be right.
Do you withdraw? The dynamic is very parsimonious. It's actually not on theologically committed heads or supposed to have under some interpretations,
no metaphysics or it's anti metaphysics in the ogasawara,
in varying interpretations has some minimal metaphysical commitments to some interpretations.
Actually, not so minimal. They're actually there are theorists right to say reality exists.
And it's not just reality, it's it's a reality of the mind.
It's consciousness for some interpretations in the book I try to show.
And to give that show an alternative way of looking at this argument.
For various reasons, also, because I think that sometimes this way of presenting the argument is not always accurate.
And also sometimes it's too simple.
You know, it's not really looking at the nuances and the intricacies of the arguments of both scored that were very sharp.
You know, we're very kind of on their toes in this argument and this is Harry Reid ceremony and the of
their votes commentator in understanding this argument that it's mostly not about ontology,
but it's about language. And more profoundly about meaning.
And the. Both of you which are in and Madhukar Mahayana, so they both adhere to emptiness of the intrinsic nature of some of.
So they both will not argue for any kind of at time, the existence of any kind.
But their debate is on the level or or.
On the extent in which you are willing to describe in language or to commit in language to any kind of description of reality,
the Mahdi Army Corps is parsimonious. It doesn't. It says that, you know, language is a kind of a closed system self-referential.
It conveys no information about reality, and it's basically uses as a device of self-destruction itself.
It's it's something that annihilates itself and in through this kind of sceptical undermining of language
and of meaning kind of points out to liberation and to the ultimate truth and what is out there.
So language is is the use of language is instrumental, and it's basically for something to manifest its own demise.
If if you're willing and. To perform to us, to show to us the limits of language and force in that sense.
And the yoga choice is is much more. Needs more needs, needs, language do more than that.
This is because the yoga treasurer has a metaphor metaphysical discourse in any reading.
I think even if it's idealistic. Idealist or not, you know, your guitar has some very explicit claims about the nature, true nature of reality,
that it is normal to the least to the lose inexpressible, that it is reached in this level of the past.
Can be minimal, it can be less minimal, but it has a core metaphysical discourse which needs to be meaningful.
Not in the ultimate sense, because this course is always conventional, you know,
words cannot represent reality, so only a kind of point out gesture in the direction of reality.
So all discourse is conventional, but within that conventional discourse, you have to have levels or degrees of meaning.
You have to have some utterances that are more meaningful than others.
Or that you use more meaningfully than others.
And. According to the yoga charter, a stalemate in this case, the MCA self-referential view of language is self-referential,
is patently self undermining or involves a contradiction because they subvert or undermine the the.
The very cook their own this course, very the very conditions of its meaningfulness when speaking.
The Mahdi Army Corps would be.
Happy to grant that they say, yeah, exactly, you know, nothing represents reality, and this is why this is why it's important to us.
This is how emptiness is manifest. And this is what we aim for, but for the overcharge cannot grant that.
They cannot grant there because they have a minimal metaphysical discourse.
This course has to be meaningful, not patently self undermining and not self-referential in that sense.
It has several levels of meaning and also they have agama.
This is a thing that people tend to forget. That was a bundle in the Sungai except agama that is tradition testimony as a Promina.
You know, we have the sutras, we have scripture.
And what scripture says is interpretable, you know, we should stick with the meaning and not the words,
but it's still a use of language that is liberating.
So we have to grant that at least scripture, you know, though it's in language is conventional, conventional is more meaningful.
Then ordinary discourse, redefined discourse.
And that's the whole motivation to my understanding for the overture, a theory of language and then a debate with them at the Amica.
It's their minimal metaphysical discourse and their adherence to scripture.
It's a religious motivation.
We would say today, you know, and the studies and their engagement with scripture, they're very much invested into hermeneutics.
And these are not things that they kind of, you know, self-consciously decide to have in their debate with them at the Amica.
This is how they developed as a school. This is what stearate already brings into baked.
The tradition that they inherited her inherited from the early Dharma.
There hermeneutics their approach to text to the on text, their minimal metaphysical discourse,
and this is what he needs to protect, and this is why devises his theory of meaning.
And this is why in historical. Account.
All philosophical stances is important, not because, you know, we have to have, as you said, this kind of theatre view of.
But in order to understand its deep motivations, you know,
where is there muddies arguing for what kind of textual and tradition development of the end, the development of the tradition.
You know, is in the in the context of argumentation.
So. Given that that makes my honest schools.
We might. And using that scheme so that.
Both my John McCain and guitar have the same motivation to create human beings.
I'm still nervous how much we can distinguish that it's still just whether or not it's a difference and.
What way of teaching, given that at the church, perhaps they're still seeing these utterances as efficacious towards that goal is.
Just a difference in opinion of what the most effective way to achieve liberation for all
sentient beings is in terms of the teaching and how much were the press and critics say,
well, that's by saying the emptiness of emptiness because to me, that is in line.
Itself with a unitary theory. And someone might say at different levels of discourse, we abandon one theory for another for probably cemeteries.
We use one at one time or another, and that doesn't seem incompatible to me with what, in my count, McCain might respond to you.
Yeah. And I've been wondering about this.
So, I mean, that's that's that's interesting, and it's and it's true also.
But you know, when we are dealing with them with the American unilateral, we're.
Most of the times are kind of busy or preoccupied with who's winning the argument.
In a way, and the media, Michael, by the way, will always win.
You know, the sceptics the Peruvian take leaves no one standing in the battlefield.
Naturally, the question is at what cost? So I think the important question is not who wins, but what are the, you know, what are the costs?
What is gain and what is lost? And the Mahdi Army Corps wins in the overture, by the way, I think the ceremony consents.
You know, we. Basically, he's aware that the Mahdi Army Corps wins the argument.
But to his understanding,
the Mahdi Army kind of loses something which is more fundamental that for him is the Buddhist tradition and the Buddhist way.
So. Both of them are my young both, you know, adhere to the notion of the Buddhist outline and the deliverance of all sentient beings.
And to the project parameter, for instance, OK, it's a text that the yoghurts are in also mentioned and quotes from a lot the perfection of wisdom.
Now insulins are not, they don't have just their own sutras they consider themselves to be.
But for them, as yoghurt showrooms, they also have a discourse on meditation.
Of stages of the path of. And I mentioned scripture already and the important status of scripture and so on.
And these are doctrines that for them are necessary for liberation.
That is, you know, it's not just, you know, something that we adhere to, it's something that is important for the body, subtle way.
They have this notion of the bodhisattva as someone that reaches nearly Copacabana on conceptual
awareness and then comes back to a state that follows that in which she operates within samsara.
You know, and interacts with different beings,
and the guitar has an entire explanatory apparatus in terms of the philosophy of mind and of language of how this works.
And they need to defend the coherence of that discourse of how the bodhisattva engages in the world.
And also their ability to make these arguments to defend their legitimacy of making such descriptions,
which the Mahdi Army Corps would not do because it's all provisional, right?
It's kind of, you know, this we into change in a palace, in me as you call that very beautifully as a palace, me, you know, opinions.
You know, we we say whatever is useful to get people liberated.
Nobody orchestra has a notion of the path and of the Buddhist sect of activities.
It's conventional. It's pronounced in the world. It's just true in a realistic sense.
But this is something that needs to be out there and we need to defend the legitimacy of saying that.
Therefore. Her approach to language and metaphysics must be difference, and so they lose the argument.
But. To their understanding, they win something which they cannot forgo.
And to their understanding, the Mahdi Army does, and in that sense, it might be nihilistic let because it says everything doesn't exist.
But in the sense that it is willing to.
Let go of certain. Transformative and informative schemes that the younger child thinks is necessary to have in order to reach liberation.
I mean, I think that's really interesting, and that probably tunes us a lot and towards the end of the book.
Well, I found this really, really insightful.
You answered a lot of questions that I think will help people grapple with just digging into the book, especially if they've not got the background.
And then I would love to discuss some of the ethical implications, especially.
Some of these things that sometimes look the same and then there's something different going on.
And especially this last topic. So your work brought scholarly attention to this less explored topic of the philosophical
use of metaphor in yoga studies without side tracking to ongoing debates about idealism,
externality or this constant comparative analysis with the magic school that we find?
You acknowledge these things, but you look at something else and bring more attention to that.
And it's exciting to see a study that develops yoga terms and has such strong into textual discourse.
So given this context in scholarship, I wanted to ask you what your opinion is or what's next for you,
guitarist of these other research topics within yoga or philosophy of language or related topics in South Asian or contemporary analytic philosophies,
which you hope will receive more attention in the next few years, either in your work or in the work of other scholars.
So that's a wonderful question. You know, I should be in a position to answer that.
There was a culture of the Yoga Ogasawara Studies Unit Group at the American Academy of Religion for five years where we kind of discussed every year.
You know, we had panels on your guitar, on various various issues and topics, historical and modern and with other groups.
So I but I but I'm hesitant.
To point just one direction, I would say, you know,
there's not a lot there should be or there is not a lot there should be more done and there is some promising work along the way.
Yoga Chara. Functions or played a role in modern are Buddhist revivals, for instance, in China since the 19th century,
even earlier and in South and East Asia, which is something that people like yellow vivo working on are working on.
And there's a lot to say about it, and that's a fascinating field that I think is going to develop in.
The next year or so, because you're with China, for some reason,
you would think that would be the last school to be picked up in modern revivals of Buddhism,
but actually it was very popular in a sense, perhaps, you know, going along with kind of transcendental idealists or idealists, friends of Europeans.
So this is a fascinating topic.
But more generally, I think that the most important to me, I would say, but I think that there is to be a little bit cosmic here.
But you asked for it, you know, in your question, the important questions, 20th-century philosophy and maybe the 21st.
Twenty first century philosophy is questions of meaning and normative ity in the most general sense.
Hey, I'm talking about meaning in the in the sense of how the world becomes meaningful for us and meaning in its most broad sense,
perceptual that is existential and linguistic altogether, which is something that I try to touch a little bit in the book.
And the other most interesting question is about normal activity, how we come to create, adopt, justify or normative view of our world.
And this is something that I think that the most exciting things in philosophy are being done in that field and in Buddhist studies as well.
I think one of the most interesting books in Buddhist studies,
recent ones is actually uniting Buddhist studies, but it's a person that writes about Buddhist studies.
It's by Jay Garfield that makes the concealed art of costume.
It's a book about David Hume, about David Hume's treatise and its book about how normal activity is being created
and the origin of normal activity and how it's being created and regulated.
And I think that would be the most important question us for approaching the yoga Chopra.
Which is something that has not been dealt with a lot in respect to you,
which are awful about your with your ethics, about how to understand normative the tea in the conventional room.
There are people working on your mature ethics, like Jonathan Gold from Princeton and Princeton and other people.
But I think this is where the field in a way is heading apart, of course,
from doing the textual work of translating common teaching and interpreting the overall text,
especially in the Chinese tradition and Tibetan traditions, which is an ongoing effort.
So that would be my kind of 10 cents, two cents, actually.
With her response. Thank you.
I mean, if to follow friends and the whole thing and. Actually, most translations will be more revealing to us as well.
Well, thank you for giving us so much time.
It's a significant chunk of your day, let's say grateful if you hope to spend another significant time with us in a few months.
By then, I might have my questions. This was I find it useful.
I'm sure I find useful and.
Thank you so much for inviting me and for your great questions and for reading the book so closely and with such attention,
I think you're my best reader so far anyway. Some of.
Thank you so much. That's such a culture, it's such a pleasure to have.
Thank you for making room for the possibility of strengthening for or contesting our interpretive frameworks and your consideration.
Many thanks to the entire BPP de Chelsea torch and podcast teams you know towards your crying with you.
Do find you next, possibly next Wednesday. See you then.