Dmytro wrote:It's great that you express your understanding of my words. This makes it possible to detect the misunderstanding.
If you would like to understand me, please reread my words......
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Yet, I must say, I am tired of efforts to maintain semblance of understanding, and of your remarks.
Sorry if my "remarks" have offended you; but I do believe that reliance on post-Buddhist texts, are a restraint to a simple understanding of the EBTs. It leads too often, to just a reinforcement of incorrect views.
My somewhat acerb tone, might have had also to do, with the general attitude you seem to have towards me.
https://justpaste.it/1b6o3 - And I am very dispirited to have to go to such low level, to have things be a bit more fairly moderated.
In other words, being good in Pali, does not make you a pundit in Buddhism. Otherwise, grammarians would be teaching philosophy at universities.
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Now, my remark on how you grasp the concept of a physical eye and its ability (sight), is also founded.
Let's come to the core problem of the general view in your quoted link
https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=13799
On Fri Aug 31, 2012, you say:
In the recently published Pali-English dictionary Margaret Cone gives the appropriate contemporary meanings:
cakkhu, 1. the eye; the organ of sight; the faculty of seeing, sight;...
Sue Hamilton ... concludes that "cakkhu" (eye), etc. do not refer to the physical organs.
And, from the above, you have concluded that:
the "cakkhu", etc., denote the sense spheres (ayatana), and not the physical organs.
This is why I said that you (and the two people you quote,) are making a distinction between the physical organ, and the ability of that organ.
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However, the problem is that the issue is not in making a distinction between the physical organ (eye, nose, ...) and its
ability (sight, smell, ...); but in seeing how the faculty (indriya) operates on, for instance, the cakkhu, considered as a general field of sensory experience (viz. the physical organ, as well as its ability).
By the way, what Margaret Cone calls a "faculty" should be called an "ability", to make things clearer.
One has to make a real distinction between what one generally calls "faculty" (indriya,) in Buddhism, and the ability (sight, smell, ...) of a physical organ, that we also call "faculty". That is why, it is better to call the latter "ability".
You will see in the following, that the "ability" (sight, smell,) of an organ (taken as a all), is of a marginal interest in a Buddhist sensory experience.
As I said in my previous post, when one read the following extract:
Passati bhagavā cakkhunā rūpaṃ,
the Blessed One sees a form with the eye,
Chandarāgo bhagavato natthi.
yet there is no desire and lust in the Blessed One.
SN 35.232
One cannot say from the above extract, that the Blessed One - because he restrains his faculties (indriyāni) - has no "sight"(?).
And that this is the reason why, he has no desire and lust?
It's not the "sight" that counts. But the nature of the sensory experience, through the magnitude of the indriya.
So one can say from the above extract, that the Blessed One - because he restrains his faculties (indriyāni) - has a sensory experience proportional to its indriya.
The ability of "sight" is just there, as a quite irrelevant interface.
Indriya does not really interact with the "sight".
Indriya interacts with the nature of the sensory experience, through the particular organ.
It is the nature and amplitude of a particular sensory experience, linked to the nature of a particular organ, and induced by the intensity of the indriya, that matters.
(Please see the notes at the bottom of this page
https://justpaste.it/18u12 , for further explanation).
Also, maybe you should look at the following, to see how a sensory experience takes place in Buddhism
https://justpaste.it/1ac3r. (all suttas with parallels).
P.S.
All the post & late Buddhist texts have just emphasized the distinction between the physical & the ability. Which is not the real issue.
Reinforcement in nescience, I suppose.